this one is perfect, if a bit 'spensive.

The World's Most Versatile Wine. Riesling keeps its balance. Riesling is the world's most versatile wine. Its riveting acidity cuts through spicy Asian cuisine as easily as it balances meaty olives, cheese, and anchovies in this pasta salad. Riesling gets a bad rap because consumers think it is a sweet wine. Many, especially from Germany, are a touch sweet, but even with those wines, their sweetness is balanced by … [Boston Globe -- Living / Arts News] [The Mediaburn Radio Weblog]

Remind Us Why We Invaded Iraq?.

Here's a powerful video/animation compiling the lies of Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld. Watch the whole thing.

[The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates]

[A blog doesn't need a clever name]

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in case people forgot….. they lied, and then they lied some more, then you started to believe them, and then they lied more.

Ted Koppel Predicts US Will Be Under Martial Law. Over at the Poynter Foundation, they have the transcribed text of Ted Koppel’s address to UC Berkeley grads (you have to page down a bit to get to it). It is riveting, especially this part, in which Koppel predicts the US will be hit with a WMD terrorist attack “in the next few years” which will “more than likely” lead to the imposition of martial law. Koppel warns, “For how long and under what circumstances it would be lifted again has not, to the best of my knowledge, ever been publicly addressed” and he calls for an urgent debate about “What we will do after the next terrorist attack”. [Note: The Poynter web site seems to be set up to redirect internal links to Romenesko’s Misc. Forum to their front page. If this happens to you, to find the Koppel speech, click here; you’ll still have to page down to find it, but (for now at least) that’s the right page. Or you can just read the extended quote below.]… [Discourse.net]

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I tend to agree with Ted Koppel on this one. I think the u.s. government is still working in the control by fear mode, they will only extend that in the future.

Corliss Sourcebooks. Database of Anomalies [Cool Tools]

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owning a full set of these is probably why the patriot act was created….

Internet papers at ICA-2004. The annual conference of the International Communications Association has just finished in New Orleans. Many papers about the Internet were presented, and some are already online – or at least the titles and abstracts are: Here are links to some… [InternetPolicy.net]

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Sandra Braman's paper looks interesting as does Jay Kesan and Rajiv Shaw's.

NetReliefKit. This doesn't have much to do with policy but it's a very cool tool: On InterLink, Brian King tells about a recent workshop on disaster relief communications and he mentions that “Nethope is developing a suitcase-sized NetReliefKit in a collaborative… [InternetPolicy.net]

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this is an interesting idea, well worth pursuing further.

LambdaRail Fiber-Optic Network Gains 6 New Members, Enough to Go
National. National LambdaRail, a consortium of research universities, now has enough members to extend its planned network to most of the country. The project initially will operate four separate national computer networks, each with a capacity equal to Internet2's Abilene network. (The Chronicle of Higher Education) [Chronicle.com - The Wired Campus]

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mmmm speed is what you need, though this is an experimental network… or so i was told a while back.

Will There Be A Draft? What Can You Do About It?. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drag on year after year, military tours of duty and reserve call-ups are extended, and enlistment declines, more and more people are beginning to wonder how soon the Pentagon will run out of “volunteers”, and turn to a draft. I'll be leading a… [The Practical Nomad]

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well, if there is a draft, that will change politics a fair amount, i'd say…. it might get the reaganites out of the military advising business for a while. my logic there is that if people with reasonable ideological stances go into the military, then you will have less necessity to get advice from those who went off the deep end a long time ago.