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> And I don't remember Bush ever saying that these are good times

The economy is strong, it's getting stronger

I think you mean:

Arrrr! Ye scurvey dogs shall walk the plank! Blast this skullduggery!

Hoorah! National Talk Like A Pirate Day has arrived!

This is very old news. The case has had about five iterations since then.

From what I have read, the current status is that the Florida Supreme Court has halted the release of abstentee ballots pending a decision in the case that might come Saturday. So far, both a trial judge and an appellate court have found that the Reform party is not a legitimate state party, and so Nader can't get on the ballot. The Secretary of State has appealled both decisions.

And here's a Miami Herald story, that's, you know, actually from today 'n shit.

He sure does.

Read the grandparent again. He was not denying that the Chechnyan separatists were Islamic radicals. He was denying that the Chechnyan separatists are the same Islamic radicals that are fighting in Iraq.

There is nothing wrong with referring to the perpetrators of the Russian school attacks as "Chechnyan separatists," because that's what they are. They're also militant, because they use military-style tactics and training to prepare for and execute their attacks. So I don't see that the "liberal media" is doing us a disservice by using those terms.

Where in the "liberal media" have the attackers in Russia been referred to as "activists" or "freedom fighters?" Doing a quick survey of Google News, I find one story from today referring to them as "captors," one that makes no mention of the attackers (it focuses on the US plans for dealing with similar attacks), one that refers to them as raiders, and a Guardian article laced with words like "extremist", "terrorists", and "child-killers" (quoting Vladmir Putin). The last article also mentions that Chechnya has a Muslim majority, and mentions the possibility that some of the attackers were Arabs with links to al-Qaeda.

Yes, Islamic militants are a major source of terrorism, and to ignore this in dealing with Islamic terrorists is a bad idea. But many of the people and organizations who use violence to achieve political ends have nothing to do with Islam, and it would be a mistake to conflate terrorism with Islamic militants, or Islamic militants with Islam.

I for one am looking forward to November, when Kerry will be elected. I personally think that the hyperconfrontational posture Dubya is taking can only energize terror networks around the globe.

http://www.nyse.com/cgi-bin/ny_charts?sym=HAL

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020709Page.html

http://www.nyse.com/cgi-bin/ny_charts?sym=UDI

The linkage between the Carlyle Group (TCG) and United Defense is known. UDI and Halliburton have both made oodles of money in the last year (see the charts on the bottom of the NYSE links). And it seems that Bush I is an owner of TCG.

And if that's not enough, check out Senator Bob Graham of Florida's book, Intelligence Matters, which is discussed here:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9584265.htm

It seems that the Bush-Bin Laden connection goes beyond simply what Michael Moore understates. Graham, an obsessive compulsive about detail who documents his life on a daily basis, alleges that the Bush administration stopped an investigation of two Saudis who funded the 9/11 hijackers and then had them flew out of the country. What's more, Graham alleges that this fact was among the 27 pages blacked out of the congressional inquiry report on 9/11.

Whether or not you like Moore or his spin, there are a lot of questions that he asks in F911 that need to be answered before Bush gets into office again. Just my two cents.

We are lead to assume (but never actually told) that the Bin Laden family was flying as a special exception to the faa's ban on air travel. This is not the case, and while Moore never states it, he leads you to the conclusion.

Why do you think there was no special exception? The flights out of the country to Saudi Arabia happened during the time that all other flights were grounded. Many -- but not all -- were members of the bin Laden family. Take this in conjunction with recent revelaations that actively sought to suppress an investigation:

And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

All evidence points to Bush giving Saudis special treatment at a time when they should have received no such treatment.

>But all of them? Even the ones of failing companies?

They get hired based on their percieved value to the company and get axed if they don't perform, same as anyone else. They get a golden parachute to ensure no public squabbling which would hurt public opinon/confidence in the company.

What would you suggest as an alternative? Tying pay to revenue/profit would be an incentive for short term thinking, as well as an impediment for finding someone to turn around an ailing business. Tying pay to the pay that the lowest paid worker gets is just an incentive to leave for greener pa$ture$ at the first opportunity.

>Years back, I heard Eisner's "total annual compensation" placed in the $100,000,000 range. If we guess that the guy serving the mouse-eared ice cream bars made $50,000 per year, that's not 40X, that 2000X. Further, I suspect the $50k estimate is generous.

Here is a rather informative discussion on Eisner's compensation history. Note that it points out that a lot of what he got is based on his gamble of taking stock options as a large part of his compensation, i.e. he got money based on his performance. As it should be.

As things started to go downhill, he got only direct pay plus a bonus based on meeting specific goals. (Here is a chart showing annual compensation after 1996 when things started to go downhill. (Note that the shown hypothetical stock option values are based on an accounting computation designed to estimate future value. As the Forbes article here points out, their actual value at the moment is zero.)

Now that things are really hitting the fan at Disney, people are trying to axe him. Also as it should be.

What's the problem?

>I still maintain that for most CEOs, outside of a few shining stars, they're in an overpay-ourselves club.

There's no doubt that there are outrageous compensation packages, but perhaps the people who hire CEOs are not as stupid as we think.

Credit to Dave Barry might be in order, no?

Hurricane season can make a storm shudder

clickable links one, two, three, four, five

Okay, fine, I'll cite a few other places... Happy now?

The current budget does, yes, include a few hundred million for Afghanistan. It didn't when the Bush administration proposed it to Congress; Congressional staffers had to add it.

How does Afghanistan have anything to do with Screwing Saudi Arabia and China, and why should that be our goal?

Oh, darn. I wasted my time looking those other citations up. Apparently you are unable to follow context, since you have totally missed the fact that I was replying to the parent post. I should have guessed, since you totally ignored the bulk of my post.

This is the biological basis for shopping. And this is why, even today, most men, when they shop, are yak-whompers. They do not wander: They go straight for the kill. I know I do. When I enter a store, I have a definite, practical, no-nonsense objective in mind, which is to locate, and secure, an electronic gizmo that I already have, except the new one has more features.

Very Dave Barry of you.

To those never entering the shitlist, what made a difference was the constant pounding of head against the beaurocratic [sic] brickwall, the humiliation of "sorry, you're not allowed to enter that flight", "you're not authorized by proper authorities", always have to submit to some greater authority. Always hearing "you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong". To most, that's something they could live with. And what it would take to change it had very little to do with leadership, it had to do with people getting off their asses.

Yours is one of the most informative comments I've read on Slashdot.

To anyone who doubts just how much we've become like the totalitarian societies we once despised, just compare what Dovregubbens Hall (583591) writes to your last visit to an airport or a Federal building.

We've learned to fear the screener for the Transportation Security agency, because if he doesn't like your attitude, he can keep you off your flight -- or from flying ever again. A year ago that screener was a janitor or a Microsoft Certification dropout. Today he can seriously disrupt your life if he wants to -- and for the first time in his life, he know he holds that kind of power.

We've got the government "training" long-haul truck drivers -- guys who routinely drive twelve or eighteen hours straight to meet deadlines --, and bus drivers, and rest stop workers to identify "suspicious" people and report them to a secret toll-free phone number. To think that this volunteer force can't be used to suppress dissent -- "Just keep a count of pro-choice bumper stickers" --is to be willfully blind to a century or more of police misconduct.

Even guys with cameras aren't safe from being scrutinized and added to government databases, because cops today wave the bloody shirt of 9-11 and invoke "patriotism" as a fig-leaf to justify anything they care do to -- reasonable or not, legal or not.

Protesters, exercising their First Amendment rights, are already being arrested solely because of the content of their speech. Whether they are eventually convicted or just harassed by cops and city inspectors, the message is clear: dissent will cost you at least a day in jail, enough money to hire a lawyer (or rely on a possibly incompetent court-appointed lawyer), and maybe a little roughing up by the cops.

Every war attracts a few war profiteers along with the honest, self-sacrificing patriots. Every increase in police powers gives police new tools to fight crime, but at the same time gives that minority of cops who are bullies, busybodies, and braggarts interested in throwing their weight around more occasion to lord that power over the innocent citizens.

The thing to fear is not another 9-11. It's not even Stalinist knocks on the door at midnight. What we need to fear is more subtle: a steady erosion of American liberties, of what it means to be an American.

I always believed that, as an American, I had a right to protest my government. It said so right in the Constitution. But now I'm reluctant not only to protest, but to even view protests, giving that several nurses at a conference in Washington D.C. were arrested along with protesters, just for being nearby.

I always believed that, as a citizen in a democracy, the police were not to be feared -- and weren't any "better" than me. Now we have the Hiibel decisi

June 19, 2004 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday buttressed President Bush's claim that Iraq posed a direct threat to America by saying Russian intelligence was tipped off that Saddam Hussein was preparing anti-American attacks after 9/11.

Putin said the warning was relayed to Bush, who personally thanked one of Russia's spy chiefs for it.

And then there are Zarqawi and Abu Nidal , two of the most blood-thirsty savages engaging in terrorism, both of whom found a home in Iraq.

No, I'm afraid you have it backwards, Saddam was both a participant and an enabler of terrorism. We did the right thing just based on terrorism.

That is not even considering the many banned activities going on in Iraq in defiance of the UN. Read David Kay's report sometime, or some of the other UN material. For your convenience, here is an excert from his statement:

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

- A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

- A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

- Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

- New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

- Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

- A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

- Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

- Plans a

You're proud? Why? Proud of legitimazing authoritarian rule? Proud of doing nothing to free prisoners of conscience? But you don't mind taking the time to criticize the US treatment of enemy combatants?
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/ 8222817.htm?1c
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0351/hentoff.ph p

Miami Herald, Jan. 23, 2002, Hundreds cast votes illegally in Broward: "The irregularities in Broward cast further doubt on the hotly contested Nov. 7 presidential election and amplify similar findings of illegal voting in Miami-Dade."

Palm Beach Post, May 27, 2002, Felon Purge Sacrificed Innocent Voters .

they might need a parachute soon.

Please send your nickels and dimes to the "Darl McBride this-is-not-hopeless-really fund".

The BBC isn't exactly a paragon of accuracy itself sometimes. Neither is NPR, PBS, or the printed press.

Well, some cars cost more than others. But then again, you'd expect Porsche parts to be expensive. The "easily stealable" part is what I take issue with. Imagine getting hit by these guys three, four times. Ouch!

Yahoo's not doing too bad. (Yahoo sizzling as its first-quarter profits double...)

As much as I loathe to even mention them in the same paragraph as Janet Jackson, I think Sonic Youth can do that one better. They released an album under the name Ciccone Youth called "The Whitey Album." On that album is a track called "Silence" and it is indeed about 63 seconds of silence. And, you can buy it on itunes as an individual track.

-S

Yeap, they do get pretty angry when people tell drivers to follow the law.

When I said "full article," I guess I meant this one that doesn't appear to be linked from the main story. So pay no mind about "RTFA."

He sounds like an interesting guy - not your typical privileged millionaire.

#1: This link quotes two men as stating they saw Bush when he was based in Alabama, the time that the Demo'rats (and you) claim he was AWOL. One mentions that he was his drill partner, and that Bush was present at all drills.

#2: While I cannot find proof that Bush has not attended any funerals of fallen soldiers (although there is plenty of rhetoric about him not attending), I did find this link which mentions several war time presidents, some of which and some of which did not attend troops funerals. Some who did, only attended those of children of family members or of men they personally met. Criticizing Bush for not going to these funerals is silly as he is not the only president to not do this.

#3: However, people are more likely to commit suicide today than ever before, too. Suicide, as any psychologist will tell you, is about depression, not about disagreement with a war. While, yes, there have been soldiers who filed "consciensious objector" status so they do not have to fight (but only 3 that I know of so far). It's possible that troops are depressed in Iraq due to a number of factors (heck, they are being shot at), but this does not mean they do not agree with the efforts.

#4: You're taking what I said out of context, which is what you Demo'rats like to do. The full statement was, "... the troops love hearing how Bill Clinton and Dick Clarke failed to deal with Iraq in 1997 as Clinton had planned." That statement is factually accurate. Clinton HAD planned to deal with Iraq in 1997 and FAILED to do so. This means, he did NOT do it, therefore he failed. I did not say that the situation in Iraq was Clinton's fault, it was Saddam's fault and the inability of the U.N. to uphold their own laws.

#5: However, in previous testimony, recordinds, and emails Clarke says the COMPLETE OPPOSITE. The GOP believes he lied under oath", and Clark praises Bush at a seperate point, and in his resignation letter, also praises Bush on how he handled 9/11. So what is it? Is he lying now... or was he lying then? Either way, he cannot be trusted... yet you believe him. Curious...

#6: Which you conveniently left out, this page says that Clarke is not a registered Democrat, but wants to be. And you can be registered "independant" as I am, so just because you're not registered demo'rat doesn't mean you need to be registered republican. So, of course, if he wants to be a registered Demo'rat, that re-enforces my assertion that he is doing this for political purposes.

#7: I don't have to respond to this one since You have stopped arguing this point.

There's your proof... have a good day!

*snerk* Yeah, Apple sure has suffered lately under their boneheaded, non-visionary leadership.

Hell, if they get any worse, their competitors are going to have to start going out of business just to keep from humiliating Apple...

Other articles on this can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

...it's actually trying to detect explosives... Chocolate isn't the only problem - peanut butter and cheese can also set those machines off.

Miami Herald story
The Boston Globe article
Washington Post article

"Who's watching all these ''reality'' TV shows? Nobody admits to watching them. Everybody agrees they're even stupider than those infomercials wherein Ron Popeil spends 30 minutes liquefying vegetables to the rapturous delight of a live, if half-witted, audience. And yet ''reality'' shows keep getting ratings. Who are the viewers? Have houseplants learned to operate remote controls?"

It's been six months since this story, and since then Kazaa:

might be sued by the US government for facilitating IP infringement,
is being sued in Australia for IP infringement, and
is being sued for possible IP infringement of the Kazaa software itself.

BitTorrent *is* cast in the same light as Kazaa, Morpheus etc. according to the media, and as such it will not (in the near future) be seen as legitimate, no matter how Atari or Blizzard uses p2p. Yes, p2p has legitimate uses, but until the world wakes up and realises that you can do more than download Britney_Spears_L33T-N3w-S0ng!.mp3, it will remain as shady as Napster 1.0.

The fact that you child was born with down syndrome has just about as much to do with the doctor that delivered him\her as the sex of that child does.

If your child has Cerebral Palsy, that could be the fault of the medical team who attended the delivery.

As many as 98,000 or more Americans die evry year because of preventable medical errors. We all know the horror stories about doctors amputating the wrong leg. Or doctors leaving forceps and other medical instruments INSIDE OF PEOPLE!

The total crap part is that you can sue ANYTIME after birth and claim that the doctor that delivered you caused any problems that you have now.

A child can not sue. In most states the law says that you can sue for a "reasonable time" after you reach the age of majority, most states also interpret this to mean that you can sue until the age of 21 for malpractice done to you as a child. If a doctor fucks up your delivery and you're parents aren't smart enough to take legal action, you shouldn't have to suffer for the rest of your life without compensation.

My Great Grandmother had surgery on her intestines, and the doctors left her abdomen packed with gauze. They had to operate again because she got a peritoneal infection. This was a women in her 70s who had to go under the knife again because of a preventable medical error. She chose not to sue. I would have. There is no excuse for that level of incompetence.

Its really sad when doctors are sued so often and so frequently that they have been driven to do this type of blacklisting.

The real shame is that doctors protect their own to the extent of keeping people in the practice of medicine who shouldn't even be trusted to change the oil on a car.

Insurance costs and lawsuits have gotten totaly out of hand in this country. it has driven medical costs through the roof and something has to give.

Inept doctors are the cause. Not the lawyers.

LK

1. Dave Barry wrote an important piece concerning nanotube application (in layperson's terms , carbon nanotubes are nanotubes made of carbon)
It also talks about those dummy close door elevator buttons (whose cousins, the crosswalk buttons were talked about a lot)

2. the original title was Dave Barry: Lawyers needed, many, to test space elevator , i'll get to that in a second.


OK let sum it up
youv'e got

a - a women suing her successfull son for slander (or ST) trying to get rich.
b - a women pretrnding to fall over in a day after Xmas DVD sale to sue the company (didn't it turn out that it was the 16th time she sued them ... (while being employed))
c - companies patenting facts, ideas , linux code.
d- a women suing (and winning) a department store claiming she sprained her arm tripping over a toddler (her own child)
e - a man suing his neighbor (and getting 5 figures) claiming the dog attacked him (which is true except that "he started it" by repeatedly shooting the dog with a BB gun)
(i appologize for not citing the reference but you can google for outrageous lawsuits to see that i downtoned)
These are syndromes of a society with too many lawyers, coupled with distorted get rich quick ideas


------ why don't all these people just meet up with wealthy nigerian businessmen/inheritors and split the $20,000,000,023.85 that just needs a resourceful individual like yourself ..

Too late, she died today.

Such is the case with a group of scientists from the National Research Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. (''Los Alamos'' is Spanish for ''More than One Alamo''). According to an Associated Press story that I am not making up, these scientists are proposing to build an elevator that would be 62,000 miles high. That's right: 62,000 MILES, which is 32 million stories. At the top would be a revolving restaurant serving what the scientists promise will be ''really mediocre food.''

- Dave Barry

I guess I would trust Bush'es administration a tad more if they were not using the excuse of 9/11 to prosecute organizations such as Green Peace. A more or less complete story can be found in The Miami Herald. If they are capable of using such antiquated law as ''sailor-mongering,'' (intended to deal with people would board a ship and use liquor and prostitutes to lure away the crew) to prosecute organization that is trying to stop illegal logging, how can you trust them they won't use Patriot act in some insidious way?

No, they $15 million in their first two months (Or about $3/song... Heh.) and have been laying people off.

I actually think 5 million is quite respectable--compare it to the non-existent numbers from BuyMusic.com, for instance. I guess Apple's success has raised expectations too much.

Do we really need this stuff? I could see arguments for more communications hardware up there, but hypervelocity weapons and lasers?

Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, long range missiles, calls the US "The Great Satan," and would no doubt love to nuke, in order: Israel, the US.

Libya had had a secret nuclear weapons program for years, long range missiles, a history of terrorism. It was only the example of Iraq, diplomatic pressure from the US & UK, and Libya's hope to rejoin the civilized world that is causing them to drop it. Will they reverse course? Who knows.

North Korea has had secret nuclear weapons program for years, claims to have nuclear weapons now, has long range missiles that could reach the US. This is also a country with which the US is still technically at war. It has pursued expensive nuclear weapons programs while it let as many as 2,000,000 people starve to death over the last couple of years, conducted experiments with chemical weapons on prisoners, and other atrocities.

Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons, long range missiles, and is in danger of falling under the power of Islamist extremists.

Space based defense probably won't help much against Al Qaida's nuclear weapons, if they really have them, but maybe space based surveillance capability will be useful.

Brazils leftist government has been making anti-American noises and has publicly indicated an interest in nuclear weapons. They already have some of the most advanced capabilities in South America.

There are a number of other countries pursuing nuclear weapons, some of which may be hostile to the US.

What we could put in the field now may be good enough against the wacko nations like North Korea. We've waited long enough.

Maybe not though. According to Dave Barry there's at least 14 or 15 people that are not on the internet yet. This type of campaigning would miss these people.

This is truly horrible... apparently Florida has decided that since it is not possible to do a recount for electronic voting machines, it is not necessary to attempt anything of the sort. Realize that the next election might be hacked, support Rush Holt's Voter Confidence bill, and don't forget to get the Diebold memos from the SCDC.

The diamond industry (mining, cutting, and selling) is quite large. Is it possible they can convince governments to regulate the man-made ones, and have them somehow marked to allow people to note the difference?

The synthetic diamond manufacturers have already agreed in principle to mark their diamonds. The one firm will engrave some acronym (what, I've forgotten), and the other is in discussions as to what to engrave.

But this idea you have that an industry would lobby government to prevent what's essentially generic competition is ridiculous.

I mean, the legislature would never write, the executive would never sign, laws to, for instance, force you buy a printer manufacturer's *cough* Lexmark *cough* replacement cartridges by calling generic replacements a violation of some Draconian Misapplied Copyright Abuse.

That's unpossible!

Hmmmm, I wonder, is it possible to slashdot someone's phone?

Yes, it is. Dave Barry did it to the American Teleservices Association.

They got a huge number of calls, the voicemail filled, and they finally had to disconnect the number.

Here's the article that did it:

"Ask not what telemarketers can do to you"

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - children show host Captain Kangaroo was found dead in his Hartford, Vt. There weren't any more details yet. I'm sure we'll all miss him, even if you weren't a fan of his work there's no denying his contribution to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

Twenty years ago that may have been the case. But it is extremely easy to imagine a robot with stereoscopic high definition cameras beaming data back to earth to virtual reality helmets.

Alot of space travel fanboys are going to say "it's not the same as being there."

Maybe not, but these people need to get a sense of reality. Former astronaut (and senator) John Glen estimates it will cost one trillion dollars

Does Bush have a sense of reality? "He wants to build like a space station on the moon, and then from the moon, he wants to launch people to Mars," David Letterman observed. "You know what this means, ladies and gentlemen? He's been drinking again."

Really though, it's like his other programs. He announces it, but only throws a token bone to fund it. He expects others down the line (as yet unknown how) to fund it, but he wants to take the credit early on. Smart politicing in a campaign year. The 1 billion a year extra for Bush's mars initiative is great if you are going to build the rocket out of paper mache' and not much else.

Incidentally, his father announced the exact same thing when he was president, so this is nothing new either. Look where that went.

Also, any number NASA gives you to accomplish something, multiply it by three to come up with the actual cost, as they never are able to keep a program on budget.

The only reason to go to mars would be because it's "neat" to go. But the reality many people decline to admit is that it would bankrupt this nation if we were to throw all the money at NASA that they would need to do it.

I say that we need to "make do" with "neat" robots.

And as congressman Barney Franks smartly noted "If they want romance, let them buy Danielle Steel books. It's much cheaper than going to Mars."

The question is were people stupid, or where they diehard Democrats who have never voted for a Republican in their life and weren't about to start now? (The only canidates in the race were Republicans.) To this end a 'None of the above option' is going to be added for future elections. There's another story about the matter in the Miami Herald today.

There was an article that ran in the Miami Herald a week ago, about a local contestant for the job. Not sure how far he's gotten since, though.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment /7630288.htm

Dave Barry Gift Guide

In the War on Terrorism, security personnel at Chicago's O'Hare airport wrestle would-be passenger Merline A. Grelpner, 91, to the ground after an alert screener notices that she is carrying an object that is later confirmed, by the FBI, using spectrographic analysis, to be a pretzel. The Department of Homeland Insecurity places the nation on a Code Magenta Alert (''A Tad Higher Than Relatively High, But Not Totally High.'')

On the domestic terrorism front, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, tightening up its procedures, quietly reverses its decision to grant a student visa to Osama bin Laden. This decisive action enables the Department of Homeland Insecurity to ratchet the nation's Color Code Security Status all the way down to Mauve (''Calm, But Tense'').

In other film news, al Qaeda, apparently seeking to disprove reports that its leader is dead, releases its latest video, The Osama bin Laden Fugitive Workout. The Department of Homeland Insecurity decides to ratchet the nation's Color Code Security Status up a notch to Key Lime (''Partly Cloudy'').

On June 14 a giant asteroid, discovered only three days earlier, passes within 75,000 miles of the Earth. Congress immediately holds hearings, with the Democrats charging that the Bush administration should have known about it sooner, and the Republicans noting that the asteroid had been heading this way during all eight years of the Clinton administration. The CIA acknowledges, under questioning, that at one point it was tracking the asteroid, but lost the file. In the end, all parties agree that airport security needs to be tightened.

The nation's Color Code Security Status is quickly raised to Maroon (''Dark Brownish Red'').

On the history front, divers seeking to recover the gun turret of the USS Monitor on the ocean floor off the coast of North Carolina discover surprising evidence that the Civil War gunship was sunk by . . . Iraq. The nation's Color Code Security Status is raised to Peach (''Viewer Discretion Advised'').

U.S. news organizations observe the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with investigative reports about the nation's continued vulnerability to terrorism. First, the New York Daily News reports that two of its reporters carried box cutters, razor knives and pepper spray on 14 commercial flights without getting caught. Then ABC News reports that it smuggled 15 pounds of uranium into New York City. Then Fox News reports that it flew Osama bin Laden to Washington, D.C., and videotaped him touring the White House. The nation's Color Code Security Status is ratcheted up to its third-highest level, Burnt Umber (''Medium Rare'').

the scariest news comes from North Korea, which announces that, in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States, it is developing nuclear weapons. An angry President Bush responds by pointing out that ''if you spell Korea backward, you get Aerok, which sounds a heck of a lot like . . . Iraq.'' Reacting quickly, the Department of Homeland Insecurity produces, in mere hours, a new National Security Color Code: Tangerine (''UH-oh'').

In an ominous development, SEC agents confirm reports that Martha Stewart recently contracted with a leading New York architectural firm to design her a cave. The National Security Color Code is quickly bumped up to Jalapeno (''Everyone DOWN!'').

the news is not so good from a remote, forbidding mountain region near Westport, Conn., where SEC agents prepare to attack a 24,500-square-foot, centrally heated, country-French-style cave containing Martha Stewart, only to discover that their worst-case nightmare scenario has become a reality: The fugitive taste goddess has gotten hold of a nuclear food processor. ''If she presses the power button,'' states one official, ''New England is radioactive cole slaw.'' In response, the National Security Color Code is ratcheted up to its highest level, Traffic Cone Orange (''Yipes'').

How about a gift from Dave Barry's Gift Guide? I see he even listed an item from Think Geek!

How about a gift from Dave Barry's Gift Guide? I see he even listed an item from Think Geek!