Posts from — January 2004

Ban on Women Singers on TV. AlertNet | Afghan Supreme Court Reinstates Ban A few days after the ban on women singing on TV was lifted in Afghanistan, it has been reimposed after protests by the Supreme Court. The Court says that women singing is against… [Flailing in the Surf]

Athena

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

You are Kermit the Frog.

Cuffs Linked To Karma.

I picked up a pair of 'tech' cufflinks the other week and I quite like them. They're smaller than real-life size, little metal keyboard keys, one says 'Insert', the other 'Delete'. Cute in a suity-geeky kinda way.

The newspapers leave no doubt: from now on whoever wants to go to the United States with a visa will be put on file and will have to leave their fingerprints when they enter the country. Personally, I have no intention of submitting myself to such procedures and that's why I didn't wait to cancel the course I was supposed to teach at New York University in March.

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i think he is response to the self-incarceration of the united states by its own government.

“Robot Scientist” Said to Equal Humans at Some Tasks. A team of British scientists have created a “robot” that can formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and interpret results on par with the best of their human counterparts. [Gyre.org]

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this sort of brings new light to the questions surronding the occupation of 'scientist'

83.7 % …..

… of the total gross national debt of the USA was created during two periods of  Republican Presidency:

1981 – 1992            Ronald Reagan and George Bush I

2001 – present         George Bush II

No doubt much of it was in service of Gulf War I, and now Gulf War II.

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There is more on Wirarchy but i cut it. i just find it interesting that the republicans are the debt creators here when they seem to have hold on the opposite rhetoric….

CBS – Content Banishment Syndicate. Advertising Age writes: Anti-Bush Ad Contest Submits Super Bowl Commercial. A spokesman for CBS said the Viacom-owned network has received the request from MoveOn to run the ad in the Super Bowl, but added that the ad has to go through standards and practices before CBS will say if it can run an advocacy ad during the game. The spokesman said he didn't think it was likely that the spot would pass standards and practices. Have you seen the ad, the one that won MoveOn.org's contest? What possible standard or practice does it violate? Is our country stronger because… [Joho the Blog]

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if it doesn't pass it should be run on fox, they'll run nearly anything and given their apparent bias, it would be even more powerful.

Spend it like Bush.

National Debt. More on the U.S. national debt, from Al Martin Raw, the article “Scoreboard 2003″. Seems to be in the member area, but somebody sent me an e-mail copy.

The total national debt of the United States on a fully realized basis, inclusive of federal, state, county and local debt stood at a record $20.613 trillion (83.73% of said debt having been created from 1981-92 and from 2001 to present.) The total public and private indebtedness of the United States ended the year 2003 at $39.384 trillion. The total public and private assets of the United States ended the year 2003 at $26.134 trillion. Thus, the United States by the end of 2003 has a negative net worth of approximately $13 trillion. The total debt service of the United States ended the year 2003 at 309.4% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). These are numbers never before seen. This is a higher debt to gross domestic product ratio than any other country on earth, which still services its debt.

Doesn't sound good. I'd like to see some other sources on that, of course. The periods he's mentioning, 81-92 and 2001 to the present, where 83.73% of the debt were generated is when Reagan and the two Bushes have been presidents. [Ming the Mechanic]

Caveat Lector: Uninformed commentary follows…

If these figures are anywhere near true then we should all be worried. Worse still American spending is going to be painfully hard to decrease with President Bush continuing to borrowing to fund his pet projects like The Global War on Terror.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

News Classification System. From the creators of the OpenDirectory Project comes their new effort: a classifying news crawler : Topix.net. They've got some cool text processing that allows them to classify each story in terms of content and geographic location. Very cool ideas in agreggation! [MetaFilter]

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great stuff