ambivalent bits

The Mac Is A Harsh Mistress:
Microsoft ... is a cheap whore. ... Apple is a lover. ... She is beautiful and elegant in ways that the layers of paint on the Microsoft street-walker can only desperately try to imitate.

Bush Keeps Saddam Gun at White House
"He really liked showing it off," Time quoted a visitor as saying. "He was really proud of it." Sick and wrong. [link via Famous P]

Cheney Office "Coordinated" Halliburton Deal:
A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney's office "coordinated" a multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract awarded to his former employer Halliburton, Time magazine reported on Sunday.

Nat'l Parks fast falling into disrepair
According to the General Accounting Office, the backlog of deferred maintenance at national parks has grown to something between $4 billion and $6.8 billion.

1 In 75 U.S. men in prison:
The nation's incarceration rate tops the world, according to The Sentencing Project, another group that promotes alternatives to prison. That compares with a rate of 169 per 100,000 residents in Mexico, 116 in Canada and 143 for England and Wales.

Al-Qaida, alive and well:
Thanks to unfinished business in Afghanistan and an unnecessary war in Iraq that was not originally about direct threats of terrorism, but is now, al-Qaida is alive, well-funded, widely-dispersed and frighteningly invisible.

De Novo Blogger Survivor:
[W]e want to revolutionize the blogosphere with the world's first (please don't tell us if we're not) elimination-style blog-contributor search and competition.

Lawyers seek to drop Lynndie England confession:
One of England's civilian lawyers, Rose Mary Zapor, said Army agents had violated England's rights by questioning her after she had asked for an attorney.

Redefeat Bush Theatre:
Bush: "Tax cuts can't be the answer to everything!" That's right, Mr. President!

Feeling Lucky in Ecto:
"would be really useful if I could just highlight a few words and then auto-replace that text with a link to the first result from Google." If you use Ecto, this is now no problem!

Worst failure:
Here's how historians finished the sentence "Bush's presidency is the worst failure since ____" and how they came to their conclusion.

Ask John Kerry to Go Big:
Let Bush own September 11th and the politics of fear. You should own September 12th -- the spirit of generosity and community that poured forth in the aftermath of the attacks -- and the politics of hope.

Implausible Denial:
Cambone's subsequent comments were in a similar vein, and lead one to conclude that either this particular under secretary was willfully obfuscating, or that he was providing yet another glaring example of the old adage that "military intelligence" is a contradiction in terms.

PulpFiction:
The new RSS reader from Freshly Squeezed Software. "It's bright. It's orange. It's news."

U provides free blogs for students, staff:
Popular blogging tools such as LiveJournal and Blogger require multiple-step processes to create a blog. UThink, which is based on the Movable Type blogging system, requires one step to create a blog, after the user logs in to the system.

Pioneers Fill War Chest, Then Capitalize:
For achieving their fundraising goals, Pioneers receive a relatively modest token, the right to buy a set of silver cuff links with an engraved Lone Star of Texas (Rangers can buy a more expensive belt buckle set). Their real reward is entree to the White House and the upper levels of the administration. See also Spheres of Influence.

Bush Approval Hits New Low:
A Newsweek poll released Saturday put Bush's overall job approval at 42 percent, the lowest yet in that poll. Other recent survey have rated Bush in the mid-40s.

Designs on the White House:
We’re calling on every American with a conscience, a mouse, and a good idea to send in your designs for a better John Kerry 2004 Presidential Campaign T-shirt.

Rumsfeld Approved Iraq Interrogation Plan:
The rules governing the secret operation were "grab whom you must. Do what you want," the unidentified former intelligence official told the New Yorker.

802.11b wireless flaw identified
"Any organization that continues to use the standard wireless technology (IEEE 802.11b) to operate critical infrastructure could be considered negligent," Professor Looi said.

Pynchon Mention:
"He has done such a great job of hiding in the city that no one would recognize him anyway." [link via Legal Underground]

Mail to the Future:
" The purpose of this site is to allow you to send mail to yourself or others at a specified date and time.. in the future!"

Incredible Inhofe:
"As I watch this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners . . . I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment." — Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.)

Great Blogger Relaunch:
A new look and new features (including new templates and built-in comments, thank goodness!), but it still doesn't generate RSS feeds for aggregators.

Are Law Profs Dilettantes?
Dilettantes rule! (Even if they do happen to be law professors.)

Market Solution for Gay Marriage in Wyoming?
"Gay marriage supporters need to establish voting credentials (typically citizenship and residence) in a low-population state where their votes will carry the most weight. Which brings us to Wyoming."

Limbaugh: Prisoner abuse "brilliant":
"Sounds pretty effective to me if you look at us in the right context."

States with higher IQ vote Democrat:
15 of the top 16 states with highest average IQ voted for Gore in 2000. (The data does not appear scientific, or at least it hasn't been confirmed.)

Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty:
"She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero."

Pentagon Refused Lawyer as Prison Adviser:
"It's always good to have a lawyer around so you've got a conscience for the command and an opportunity to vet questions," Unfortunately, I'm not sure "conscience" is the first thing people think of when they hear "lawyer."

Laptops Beyond Grade 8?
Maine still considering whether high school students should get laptops. But what about the dentures?

The Yes Men:
"Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else."

Troops abusing Iraqis for a Year:
An Amnesty International report "indicates that the abuses began when US-led coalition forces gained control of Iraq in April last year and took place throughout the country."

Chris Cooper, American Candidate:
The show goes on, and who could possibly make a better American Candidate than Dean Democrat Chris Cooper?

The Coziest Office Yet:
"Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is clearly superior to its PC counterpart for most users."

What is Letterboxing?
Sounds like a little like Geocaching, but minus the GPS?

Media Matters for America:
" Welcome to Media Matters for America, a new Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

Steve Jobs advises Kerry:
Jobs knows economic issues? Maybe. But I fear even Jobs won't be able to save Kerry from himself. Wait, did I just say that?

XP Users Cop a Feel of OS X:
More on the thousands of XP users who are "skinning" their OS to make it look just like Mac OS X. Wonder why we don't see Mac users skinning their machines to look like Win XP...

CubicHell:
"PC load letter"? What the $%&# does that mean? Wielding the red Swingline with pride!

Bob Edwards Signs Off "Morning Edition:
"Edwards, 57, didn't hide his disappointment at the reassignment, saying he had been looking forward to celebrating the show's 25th anniversary this fall. NPR said it made the change because it was trying to refresh the network's broadcasts."

Dean preps for talkshow:
"He'd look at things like, What happens if you lose a sibling? What about when you're victimized by not having health care?" Lyttle said, arguing that Dean has the perfect persona for the small screen. This can't be true. It would be so wrong!

Treadathalon:
Yesterday Christopher Bergland ran 154 miles in 24 hours. Wow. Congratulations on a new world record!