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Waitohi, New Zealand, 31 March, 1903, Richard Pearse

http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.htm l
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/22/richa rd_pearse/
http://www.auckland-airport.co.nz/NewsHistory/avia tors.php?pearse

I wish I knew his ID on /. I'd add him to my friends... he is quite an extraordinary fellow.

Global Warming is a bunch of hot air! http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/09/10/bush/ index_np.html/

Basically, skip the sitepass ad every day.

If you want to support the site, feel free to keep paying, but I know how much /. loves free.

Headline at Salon:

Just like a woman
Thousands of men are shelling out $6,500 for hyper-realistic dolls that answer all their needs -- and don't talk back.

With this image.

Certainly does qualify as NSFW in some places.

I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I think that by doing the bulk of my reading on the net, I'm losing something. I think it's because most of the writing on the net is for 12 year olds and under. There are, of course some exceptions. It's the same as watching too much TV as opposed to reading. My spelling is turning to shit as a result too.

That's my $0.25 opppinion.

On the other hand, if a site has a lot of obnoxious shoot-the-monkey type ads or audio ads, I'll likely never return to it.

Additionally, I am very happy to pay a couple of bucks a month to sites like Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/ to have a streamlined and ad-free experience (in the case of Salon, I also want to support strong independent journalism).

I'll tell you what worries me, though: people (or, worse yet, applications by default) blocking text ads. IMHO that's pretty self-defeating long-term; if text ads cease to be significantly more effective than graphical and/or annoying pop-up ads, then companies will either revert back to more flashy ads (yuck!) or they'll start putting content behind subscription walls (bad for searching, bad for wallets), or -- worse yet -- may just decide to stop sharing or creating content at all.

It turns out there are extensive rules about this known as ETOPS. There's more information available in FAQ at the very cool Great Circle Mapper.

for those born yesterday, slashdot was sold for $10-12M
or so to andover.net, originally, according to:

http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/09/17/slashdot/

andover (after IPO as symbol ANDN) went to valinux (LNUX) for $800M-$900M
(in stock, mostly, when LNUX was $128), including at least $60M in real money.

now slashdot parent LNUX has a market cap of $95M, so you
too, can own a piece of your own blogging for less than 3X sales,
including the other .org/.com businesses ...

When Moon's coronation is complete the SCOTUS will turn over permanent presidency to him and the Bilderberger overlords.

I have real links:
 

• • http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=131
    
  • http://www.iapprovethismessiah.com/2004/06/this-re ally-happened-at-senate-office.html
    
  • http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/21/moon/ index_np.html
    
  • http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A619 32-2004Jun22.html
    
  • http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19- 2004Jul20.html
    

You see, Scientology or "PSI-entology", is a front for the "one world government" plans that Moon is a key agent for. The Tom Cruise movies they use to warp American values are secret PSI weapons that are devised by Moon's PSI research arm, the "Church" of PSI-entology. Oprah and Dr. Phil are two operatives working against middle America, which is why they performed oral-sex on Schwarzenegger on live TV - at the orders of Moon himself.

"I do not know" say the Great Bells of Bow
"Here comes a Candle to light you to Bed
Here comes a Chopper to Chop off your Head
Chip chop chip chop - the Last Man's Dead."

Have you Voted NO yet?

True As Stated. That said, a few changes, despite the expense of making them, should have been made a hell of a long time ago.
Currently, domestic flights in the USA all use AM radio for communication, both air-to-air and air-to-ground by default. I seem to recall it being noted in Salon.com's Ask the Pilot at one point in time that Single Side Band (SSB) radio is now being used for some international flights, but for the most part everything is still plain old AM. This is the case despite the fact that the worst ever On-the-ground (and at the airport, to be clear--as if I should need to) airplane accident ever was caused by a well-known radio-system related problem that has been with us since the beginning.
The problem (for those too lazy to read): if two or more people try to talk at once all speakers are drowned out by interference (when both have equal or near-equal signal strength at the recieving antenna). SSB radio does not suffer quite so strongly from this problem (but it is not completely immune), and it is not notably expensive. In fact, any aircraft set up for international travel already has the correct radio equipment to make the change from AM to SSB.
So, if you really must fix something, this should be it. If only it didn't require lots of human changes (things like rules and assigned airport tower frequencies) to put in place this would likely have been done a good long time ago. Again, the cost is not in the airplane, but it is in the society that wants air travel at the lowest cost (and without having to know anything about why it should cost a little bit more--just to be safe).

True As Stated. That said, a few changes, despite the expense of making them, should have been made a hell of a long time ago.
Currently, domestic flights in the USA all use AM radio for communication, both air-to-air and air-to-ground by default. I seem to recall it being noted in Salon.com's Ask the Pilot at one point in time that Single Side Band (SSB) radio is now being used for some international flights, but for the most part everything is still plain old AM. This is the case despite the fact that the worst ever On-the-ground (and at the airport, to be clear--as if I should need to) airplane accident ever was caused by a well-known radio-system related problem that has been with us since the beginning.
The problem (for those too lazy to read): if two or more people try to talk at once all speakers are drowned out by interference (when both have equal or near-equal signal strength at the recieving antenna). SSB radio does not suffer quite so strongly from this problem (but it is not completely immune), and it is not notably expensive. In fact, any aircraft set up for international travel already has the correct radio equipment to make the change from AM to SSB.
So, if you really must fix something, this should be it. If only it didn't require lots of human changes (things like rules and assigned airport tower frequencies) to put in place this would likely have been done a good long time ago. Again, the cost is not in the airplane, but it is in the society that wants air travel at the lowest cost (and without having to know anything about why it should cost a little bit more--just to be safe).

True As Stated. That said, a few changes, despite the expense of making them, should have been made a hell of a long time ago.
Currently, domestic flights in the USA all use AM radio for communication, both air-to-air and air-to-ground by default. I seem to recall it being noted in Salon.com's Ask the Pilot at one point in time that Single Side Band (SSB) radio is now being used for some international flights, but for the most part everything is still plain old AM. This is the case despite the fact that the worst ever On-the-ground (and at the airport, to be clear--as if I should need to) airplane accident ever was caused by a well-known radio-system related problem that has been with us since the beginning.
The problem (for those too lazy to read): if two or more people try to talk at once all speakers are drowned out by interference (when both have equal or near-equal signal strength at the recieving antenna). SSB radio does not suffer quite so strongly from this problem (but it is not completely immune), and it is not notably expensive. In fact, any aircraft set up for international travel already has the correct radio equipment to make the change from AM to SSB.
So, if you really must fix something, this should be it. If only it didn't require lots of human changes (things like rules and assigned airport tower frequencies) to put in place this would likely have been done a good long time ago. Again, the cost is not in the airplane, but it is in the society that wants air travel at the lowest cost (and without having to know anything about why it should cost a little bit more--just to be safe).

There is a louse named after Gary Larson.

I pitty the species that gets named after SCO Group.

Reality check:

The recording industry has been repeatedly and consistently been involved in crime, including bribery, theft from artists, and murder.

The recording industry has a long history of involvement with organized crime. Example: Morris Levy, a longtime Genovese crime-family associate and recording industry "legend."

The recording industry has been repeatedly accused itself of corrupting the values of youth, and even inciting violence. But in those cases, it claims the protection of freedom of expression -- a freedom they have worked hard to deny to programers and consumers through outragous legislation and restrictive technologies.

With this record, without even getting into the lies they have spread, accusations from the recording industry have little credibilty as far as I am concerned.

What can we do? Support the EFF and the FSF.

Your points considered and rejected.

Are people so addicted to government now...

On Addiction:

Consider major government spending projects:

Columbus' discovery of America (Spanish Monarchy)
U.S. Involvement in WWII
Internet (via DARPA) and important comp-sci projects (Berkeley Unix, MIT AI lab).
Space program
Interstate highways

So, Mr. Geeste, free yourself from addiction! All you have to do is

not use GNU tools (remember Stallman was at MIT AI lab)
the internet
return Europe to the Nazis
not live in the U.S. (government funding discovered the new world, after all!)
not use Cell phones or any satellite-based technology
stay off of government funded interstate highways

The fact is that there are some projects (including the ones above) that are either too large, too basic or too far reaching political scope that only the government can and should fund and run them.

Surely, reasonable people can see a big difference between "not funding" and "actively impeding".

Yes, there is a difference. However, why not lower funding for all medical research? By selectively prohibiting Federal funding on stem-cell research (as opposed to other medical research), the Bush Administration effectively has hamstrung national research on stem-cell reasearch.

Whatever happened to the days of actually convincing people to voluntarily spend their money on your schemes?

Fine - here are some government programs that I would like to be convinced on:

A billion dollar bridge to nowhere
A missle defense boondoggle

If you support thses programs, please tell me why these deserve Federal funding so much more than stem-cell research that may lead to tremendous medical advances.

Oh, and I don't need to hear the "corporations are short-sighted" argument either. You're short-sighted too in that you spend money consuming things you don't really need rather than saving it or investing it in new technology.)

Translated into a syllogism:

Premise #1: Corporations are short-sighted when it comes to basic research
Premise #2: People are short-sighted about stem-cell research
Conclusion: The government shouldn't fund stem-cell research

Now tell me again how the conclusion follows? Because I sure don't see it.

Go ahead and mod me down

This is an attempt at reverse psychology, and a pathetic show of egocentric defensiveness. Please refrain from using this Slashdot cliche. Either stand up for your ideas or refrain from posting.

2003 Salon Article on Dan/i Bunten, (creator of M.U.L.E.) with some commentary by Mr. Meier. (via wikipedia article on mule)

--Robert

-AT

Parent: Just call them the proper term--copyright infringers. Not "thieves," not "pirates," just copyright infringers. That way the term doesn't reflect the emotions of the corporations, and reflects on the actual acts that the infringers are doing.

Yeah this was my point. I'm glad we agree. Words have meaning; words also have the power we attach to them. Using nigger or pirate is a way to change the balance of power -- a rhetorical device that appeals to fear and blinds the true debate/discussion (by triggering feelings associated with prejudice, whether for racial oppression or mortal peril).

There's a great book about this particular debate. Here's a review:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/01/22/kenn edy/

Either way, calling copyright infringers pirates is a slur, as much as any other. The fact that anyone is desensitized to the point where they throw it around all the time is as much a victory for the copyright cartel as the rampant use of 'nigger' was for the old-south. I know the comparison of the plantation system with the intellectual-monopoly system is a bit unfair, but I think the damage to culture is just as real (possibly with both wider [spatially] and further-reaching [chronologically] effects).

Additionally --
Parent: (Just to clarify things, I am black, too).

Maybe I was unclear. In the interests of being totally honest, I am not. I was only asking if it would alter your perception if I were (and did it?). I stick to the claim that America is still racist because I have an "interracial" marriage (whatever that means) and as a result prejudice crops up now and again in social settings (haha, like in hurricane preparedness and relief). It's only funny because it's real ;). I enjoy the 'net because for the most part it is colorblind (meritocracies usually are, hacker's manifesto and all).

This

message is to every musician speaking out against file sharing:
get your facts straight, and stop regurgitating everything the major label tells you.
Anyone still clinging to the cage-format for music is either a middleman or lazy. Squidnecks

You major label suckers make me laugh
Do you really think your label would come out and say, "Hey we cut your paycheck in half because you've got to help pay for the 250 billion copies we give away. Have they mentioned when they cut new releases by 25% sales dropped 4.1% and they blamed it on P2P? Have they mentioned that they responded to that drop by raising the cost of your CD $1 every year? Does that seem like a good business move to you? Or does that smell like fear?
Ask yourself what kind of business would cut research and development first? I'll tell you: the business that's about to make it's bed up in a mother fuckin hearse.
While Hilary Rosen and the RIAA are trying to convince you that free listeners are a bad thing, those same five labels that pay them are charging you $500,000 to buy you spins
While you're negotiating whether or not the latest Napster pays you 1/3 of a cent per download, Comcast and AOL are turning the information highway into a toll road.
you know the end is near when Britney Spears is calling it a moral issue
they've positioned you right between their wallets and your fans
they can't really expect to turn the tide with a few pathetic lawsuits
So you gotta ask yourself how does one stop a flood? You build a damn.
IT'S THE ISPs, IT'S THE ISPs!
Comcast will have every last consumer on their knees
starting with 5.3 million subscribers to cable access high speed
they own the wires, so they can discriminate with bandwidth and queuing fees
guaranteed monopoly by the FCC so

We're standing on the verge of an artistic cleansing of biblical proportions I say bring it
when the wickedness of big business is great in the earth
and it will even try to sell the waters that it's drowning in
marching two rappers
two rockers
two composers
two programmers
onto a pirate ship
in a free-market flood
until businessmen are businessmen
and art is art again. Rock

this is not an issue of children not recognizing value in art
this is an issue of children recognizing value-less art
getting artists paid doesn't even play a part
The truth is
for the first time since it's creat

And this one by Courtney Love (who'd have thunk it?) does even better: http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2000/06/14 /love/index.xml

...You get the money, and you LOSE the control. Simple as that.

(bold emphasis mine) Except we all know that's not actually the truth. Sony still gets the money, and the copyright. Cue the href to the now-five-years-old Courtney Love article for more information.

Sadly, unless you're Fugazi, you're not likely to be heard by many people unless you sell out. Something about the world just not being a fair place or some such...

3.) I doubt you've ever even asked a real, signed band how this all works or how they feel about their "evil" record contract that they willingly signed.

Well, IANARIG (I Am Not A Record Industry Guy), and she might not be the _best_ example, but here's what Courtney Love has to say about that:
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2000/06/14 /love/index.xml.

I'd have to say that like her music or not, she's fairly successful in her field.

Estimated cost of Afghan and (purportedly related) Iraqi wars if things go _well_:

Where is your estimate of the lives lost if the Taliban had continued to murder its way to power throughout the area? Where is your estimate of the lives that would have been lost if Saddam had, unchecked, been able to invade another Kuwait, or slug it out (to the tune of a million lives) with another Iran?

Where is your estimate of the misery in which people (mostly women) would live if the retro-minded, extremist, medeivalist theocratic thugs striving for a pan-Arab caliphate get their way? You know, like the regular Monday-morning executions in what used to be soccer fields by the "Department of Vice and Virtue"? Not pursuing democracy and open, educated economies in that oil-rich, reason-deprived part of the world is a recipe for long-term mayhem on an enormous scale. All the worse when oil gets more scarce decades from now, and other energy sources are further marginalizing the current power structures in those cultures. You talk about ROI, but you're not looking at the big picture.

No kidding - did you see the usability report on Apple's Quicktime player on its entry into The Interface Hall Of Shame ? - he murdered it !:

    http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/09/30/quick time/print.html

Apple got their mouse wrong, their OS wrong (MacOS) and their processor wrong (PowerPC) and all they have left is their eye candy for users who don't know better than to pay more for less, but who will learn...

R.

I am struck by the utter lack of facts in the second article. It is highly emotionally charged and relies on self-evident truths that are less than self-evident.

Pretenders such as these cannot extricate us from a debilitating war, nor can they rebuild the nation they destroyed; they have no idea how to allocate resources against terrorism, nor how to prepare for the disasters that will surely come. What the Republicans in power can do is set up photo ops, repeat spin points, concoct hollow slogans about "compassionate conservatism," and sidestep responsibility by whining about "the blame game."

Is there any evidence to support this? One would suppose so, but is left wanting after reading this article.

In his pathetic insufficiency, Brown evidently was not alone at FEMA. The deputies and acting deputies and various other high-ranking pork-choppers -- many of whom had landed at the agency from positions with the Bush-Cheney campaign -- showed up with no experience in the hard work of saving lives and restoring communities.

This is an adhominem attack, again with no supporting facts. It would be nice to see a few examples of these "pork-choppers" in action. It would be nice to get some factual evidence, but there is no such requirement for the type of arguments that frequently appear on the Salon. Compare these blurbs to a similar one from the original post:


It is also perhaps inconvenient to point out that major flood control projects that could have been completed by now were in fact cut-by the Clinton administration. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1995 (isn't the Internet fun?): "The Clinton administration is holding back a Corps of Engineers report recommending that the $120 million project proceed. .Without the improvements - a flood gate in the Harvey Canal and raised levees along the Intercostals Waterway - a tidal surge produced by a hurricane 'could result in the catastrophic loss of life and property damage,' corps officials reported." Not that the Bush administration stepped in to do more since, but given the time these projects take - one item of ACOE funding that the Bush Administration cut was for a study about upgrading the levees, and the study wouldn't have been completed until, I believe, 2008. (As a side note, the Internet also lets us discover that the New York Times, now on its Olympian high horse condemning the irresponsibility of the Bush administration's funding cuts for the ACOE, in fact, last April bitterly condemned the very same legislation as an expensive boondoggle. The paper thundered that "the bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects - this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs." Ah well, no one ever expects to hold them accountable for anything.)

Note how different the tone of this blurb--and indeed the entire article--is from the second article. It may lack the energy and shrillness of the second article, but it seems to go much further in actually proving a point. The second article is the typical chest beating, blame Bush attitude that has paralyzed the "liberals" and the democratic party ever since Clinton left office (and arguably before he came to office as well). This sort of lack of focus on facts or reality is exactly what has driven democrats from the white house, the house of representatives, the senate, the state governerships, and now from the courts.

Microsoft, Gates, and Ballmer are big Republican contributors. http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=143 Buyblue says Microsoft has a 44% "light red" rating, giving $1,142K in 2003-2004. Gates & Ballmer each gave the personal maximum of $2,000 to Bush. Gate's own personal donations are also light red.

Apple has a 99% dark blue rating from BuyBlue.org, giving $65K in 2003-2004. The individual donors at the top of the company are also "dark blue." http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=99 Sun is light blue with a 57% rating, giving $89K in 2003-2004. http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=145

[conspiracy on] So the artists, designers, and the "design-aware" that use Apple computers can't file a claim online. The thrifty, the independent, and the tech-minded who use Unix or for that matter even just Mozilla can't file a claim. Even folks who have older versions of IE have to upgrade, call in the middle of the night, or go without.

The Gates Foundation has pledged about $10M to The Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute is evidently researching transportation when it is not promoting "Intelligent Design." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/26/gates foundation/

[outright_paranoia on]
And why do you need to have javascript enabled? For FEMA spyware?
[outright_paranoia off]
[conspiracy off]

We don't need to knock down FEMA's doors this week with this topic, but we must oust a government that puts corporations before the people.

Bush suggested a evac order be issued on the Saturday (possibly even as early as Friday)prior to the storm, an order that Blanco agreed with and requested Mayor Nagins to initiate (it's actually part of both the LA and NO emergency plans but for some reason neither the Mayor or Governor seemed to be following those).

There are many reasons to suggest Blanco and Nagin fucked certain aspects of the disaster up, and that the President is being unfairly criticised for certain issues he had no control over, but your's is a lousy defense.

I'm hoping Mr.Stan Lee will take a few moments and read this recent article at Salon entitled:
How to make a superhero movie that doesn't suck

I particularly agree with rule #1: Find the right director. When I heard Sam Raimi was doing Spider-Man, I knew he was the right guy for the job. He should also get the Dr. Strange film if he's not too busy with S-M#3. However, Raimi would not be right for, say, Captain America. I would give that project to Wes Craven since it seems he's stretching out into action/suspense territory.

Ah... I could go on for days on this one. Any suggestions anyone?

Btw, the "Parroty" website of MYST which marketed the mini-game of PYST is also long gone and the domain is now held by a cybersquatter. The same company also did Microshaft Winblows 98. :)

Salon.com tells us Fox News perspective of the desaster.

You need to press "Get Pass" to view this article for free.

Just like Myst isn't actually an adventure game (it's a puzzle game with a plot), Star Wars isn't actually science fiction. It's classical mythology set in a sci-fi style environment. Read this to understand why that isn't a good thing.

http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1997/11/cov_ 06riven.html Read a couple paragraphs down. As of the release of Riven, the first sequel to Myst, the game had sold 3.1 million copies, more than twice the number of copies as Doom 2, the distant second-place best-selling game.

A year ago after Hurricane Charley, the president was accused of responding too quickly, allegedly to curry favor with Florida voters.

Ten months after the election, however, with no more elections for him to win, he plays the guitar, makes a few (non-relevent) speeches, and acts, essentially, as if nothing's happening. At some point on Tuesday afternoon, after the floods have started, and 36 hours after the hurricane actually hit, he announces he's cutting short his vacation. But he didn't actually get back to work until Wednesday afternoon.

And remember, while the floods may have only started on Tuesday morning, the Hurricane itself did immense damage, leaving hundreds of thousands of people across three states without power, in seriously damaged, often to the point of uninhabitability, homes. The hurricane itself - not its rains that caused the levies to break - caused astonishing amounts of distruction on Monday, more so than anything that hit Florida (and I live in Florida, in Stuart as it happens, where two of last year's hurricanes hit) - that's all been kind of pushed aside as we concentrate on looking at New Orleans.

And, you'll forgive me, but at least on Wednesday, the feeling I got from the White House was that gas prices were the primary concern of everyone there.

I'm sorry if this sounds like partisan bitching to you, but, well, call it constructive criticism if it hurts.

Well...This guy says it's not global warming.

He said in a Salon article: "When we looked at the historical record, we found that the frequency of storms globally hasn't really changed at all," Emanuel said. "It's about 90 per year, plus or minus 10. The frequency globally appears to be steady."

He's also arguing that over development in these areas is the culprit of so much destruction. I.e. There is more stuff that gets damaged.

The whole article:

Aug. 30, 2005 - Hurricane Katrina has turned New Orleans into "a wilderness," said one public health official, who begged evacuated residents not to return to the city for at least a week. Rife with poisonous water moccasins and fire ants, downed trees and power lines, without fresh drinking water, power, gas or sewage, the storm has made the battered and flooded city uninhabitable.

Katrina is just the latest in a rash of powerful hurricanes that have been pummeling the Atlantic in recent years, including a record-breaking 33 between 1995 and 1999. It's made many wonder if global warming is bringing the wrath of the planet down upon all our heads. Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied historical records of hurricanes around the globe, said the answer is yes and no.

In a recent paper, "Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones Over the Past 30 Years," published in the science journal Nature, Emanuel found that as sea temperatures rise, the duration and intensity of hurricanes are going up, too.

The reason for the correlation is pretty straightforward: "Hurricanes derive their energy from the evaporation of sea water," Emanuel explained in a phone interview. "When you evaporate water from the ocean you actually transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. A similar effect happens when you come out of the shower in the morning. You feel cold because water is evaporating from your skin, and taking heat from your body. That heat energy doesn't disappear." Instead, it fuels the intensity of hurricanes.

So, as global warming increases, expect hurricanes to get stronger. However, that doesn't mean, as some perceive, that there are actually more of them lately. "When we looked at the historical record, we found that the frequency of storms globally hasn't really changed at all," Emanuel said. "It's about 90 per year, plus or minus 10. The frequency globally appears to be steady."

The recent hurricanes in the Atlantic, Emanuel explained, represent a natural fluctuation. Every 20 to 30 years, since records started being kept in the 19th century, there have been big shifts in the frequency of hurricanes in the Atlantic. "For example, in the 1940s and '50s, there were very busy years, whereas the 1970s and '80s were very quiet years," he said. "And we've had a big upswing in the Atlantic beginning in about 1995. That's all natural."

The reason violent Atlantic hurricanes like Katrina may strike people as unnatural, and cause them to blame the CO2 pouring out of their neighbors' Hummers, is not because of their frequency but their destruction to people and places.

"This natural fluctuation occurs in a social environment where there is a huge shift in demographic trends, and this makes a big difference in people's perception," Emanuel said. "In the 1940s and '50s, there were lots of hurricanes in Florida, but there weren't lots of people there. So now that we're having this upswing again, it's being perceived very differently" -- for the simple fact that there is a lot more stuff to be ruined.

Meteorologists performed admirably in alerting public officials to Katrina's rising destruction, allowing them to evacuate New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities in plenty of time. But Emanuel said that other warnings by meteorologists have gone unheeded in past decades

The Battle of New Orleans

The battle of New Orleans
Long before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was in a precarious state -- caught in an ongoing war with the mighty Mississippi River.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John McPhee

Aug. 30, 2005 | For those watching the near-cataclysmic results of Hurricane Katrina, and wondering how New Orleans ever fell into such a precariously vulnerable position, John McPhee's great 1989 book "The Control of Nature" offers concrete answers. Each of the three parts of the book deals with a different region where man has been at war with nature: in Los Angeles, Iceland and, most important at this moment, the lower Mississippi River. Katrina is, of course, a case of nature waging war on man. But its damage and devastation may be felt all the more in places like New Orleans, where sturdy and deeply rooted men and women have faced off with the great river we call the Mississippi again and again. In this excerpt from "Atchafalaya," the first chapter from "The Control of Nature," McPhee draws affectionate portraits of the men of the Army Corps of Engineers and others who toil on behalf of "progress." Yet, it's clear which side he comes down on in these fights. His work reminds us that there are things more powerful than we are, and that nature, however hard we try to control it, will run its course.

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Something like half of New Orleans is now below sea level -- as much as fifteen feet. New Orleans, surrounded by levees, is emplaced between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi like a broad shallow bowl. Nowhere is New Orleans higher than the river's natural bank. Underprivileged people live in the lower elevations, and always have. The rich -- by the river -- occupy the highest ground. In New Orleans, income and elevation can be correlated on a literally sliding scale: the Garden District on the highest level, Stanley Kowalski in the swamp. The Garden District and its environs are locally known as uptown.

Torrential rains fall on New Orleans -- enough to cause flash floods inside the municipal walls. The water has nowhere to go. Left on its own, it would form a lake, rising inexorably from one level of the economy to the next. So it has to be pumped out. Every drop of rain that falls on New Orleans evaporates or is pumped out. Its removal lowers the water table and accelerates the city's subsidence. Where marshes have been drained to create tracts for new housing, ground will shrink, too. People buy landfill to keep up with the Joneses. In the words of Bob Fairless, of the New Orleans District engineers, "It's almost an annual spring ritual to get a load of dirt and fill in the low spots on your lawn." A child jumping up and down on such a lawn can cause the earth to move under another child, on the far side of the lawn.

Many houses are built on slabs that firmly rest on pilings. As the turf around a house gradually subsides, the slab seems to rise. Where the driveway was once flush with the foor of the carport, a bump appears. The front walk sags like a hammock. The sidewalk sags. The bump up to the carport, growing, becomes high enough to knock the front wheels out of alignment. Sakrete appears, like putty beside a windowpane, to ease the bump. The property sinks another foot. The house stays where it is, on its slab and pilings. A ramp is built to get the car into the carport. The ramp rises three feet. But the yard, before long, has subsided four. The carport becomes a porch, with hanging plants and steep wooden steps. A carport that is not firmly anchored may dangle from the side of a house like a third of a drop-leaf table. Under the house, daylight appears. You can see under the slab and out the other side. More landfill or more concrete is packed around the edges to hide the ugly scene. A gas main, broken by the settling earth, leaks below the slab. The sealed cavity fills with gas. The house blows sky high.

"The people cannot have w

Really? Why? http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/gore _internet/index.html

Of course it's still in development, and has had a hard time finding support. But then, the post asked how tech can help...

How about that "Wow!" Olestra chip? "Now with more anal leakage!!"

I also contacted a Microsoft representative to ask about the curious advice they were giving to users. And that's when Rob Bennett, the senior director of MSN Entertainment, responded in an e-mail that the whole thing was something of a mistake. "I'm reviewing the language on the preview site now," he wrote. "We absolutely don't want to encourage people to circumvent the usage rights for music downloads. It is unfortunate that Apple still disables Windows Media support in the iPod (the firmware they license from PortalPlayer actually supports WMA but they turn it off), restricting their customers' choice of where they download music. Our approach is very different, encouraging broad choice of many music services and many portable audio devices with the Windows Media format."

Oh yeah, because it is Apple...

Tolerate the day pass to read this article at Salon:

"Finally, after increasingly aggressive phone calls to the site's outside publicity firm, here we were, talking at last. It was hard to believe that we would have many of [eHarmony.com founder Neil Clark] Warren's 29 dimensions of compatibility to work with. I am a pagan, single 30-year-old feminist with strong suspicions about the ever-creeping tentacles of the religious right. Warren is a married psychologist grandpa with a divinity degree, a Californian by way of rural Iowa; he has three daughters, nine grandchildren and strong suspicions about the liberal press. But we wound up talking for two hours straight."

If you don't feel like wading through the entire thing, skip ahead to page 3. There, the whole "refusing atheists" urban myth is explained:

"It's not that eHarmony was 'restricted' in the country club sense of the word. But it was definitely self-selected."

I have no idea either way, but I've certainly seen a lot of total BS eagerly repeated as truth.

On the other hand, the site gets most of its business from the "committed Christian" community and initially focused its marketing there, so the rumor has a smidge of plausibility to it.

While Warner crows about the word-of-mouth success of Penguins, they're sitting on another fantastic G-rated movie for kids and won't let it out:

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2005/08/04/ duma/index_np.html
(yeah, yeah, just skip the ad, it won't kill ya)

The film is so good that Ebert convinced Warner to give the movie one more try, and do a set of test screenings here in Chicago over the weekend. Yet, somehow, Warner still hasn't gotten the message. Very sad.

When does Wedding Crashers 2 get funded? Oh wait, it probably has.

Salon magazine reprinted a fairly balanced Der Spiegel (a German magazine) article about the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

It is easy to get on a high horse, feel morally superior, and use limited hindsight to condemn Truman. The article in contrast makes the point that even with the benefit of hindsight the decision to drop the bomb is a lot more defensible than what people think, since the A-bomb put an end to global wars.

I don't see anything wrong with restricting certain places from demonstration for security reasons

A Salon feature from earlier this year offers some more information on the practice, and a tentative answer to the question posed in this summary:

"...radio playlists are unlikely to improve anytime soon. While [promoters] are often seen as dubious, they did have a knack for getting new acts their break on FM radio...station programmers may soon become even less adventurous in choosing which songs get tapped for rotation on FM stations' heavily guarded playlists.

The indie promotion fallout could be especially tough on smaller, independently owned record labels...The short-term effect is not good for independent music."

Because defense spending is a necessary and Constitutionally-justified federal espense. Space exploration is not.

Think of space exploration as far-sighted defense spending. Otherwise, think of how the world would be today if, in the 1940's and 1950's, the US did no ballistic missile research at all, and let the Soviets take LEO, Geosynchronous Orbit, the Moon, and everything else.

Every dollar invested into the space program, public education, interstate highways, power grids, even welfare and medicaid, is a dollar well-spent towards shoring up national defense. Just not in as direct a way as you'd like.

What is money POORLY invested in defense or national security, is $200 Billion to invade a country, destabilize it's govenrment so it can be taken over by Iran. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/07/21/iran/ index_np.html

With Firefox, Greasemonkey and a few scripts, you don't have to sit through the ads.

Heck, before I even installed Greasemonkey I got past the ads by simply using http://www.salon.com/news/cookie.html as my bookmark to the main page.

This article "A blank check for Microsoft" more or less confirms the changes to spam policy I have observed while using Hotmail over the past few months:
http://blogs.salon.com/0003364/stories/2005/02/01/ aBlankCheckForMicrosoft.html