Hello, World.

I... live..... AGAIN!

Or, more accurately, my computer survived the trip and has network access once more. Now I just need to make a few creative edits to the router settings to get myself a static IP again, and I will have all the comforts of home in my new home.

That being said, I will now quote jsbowden, and sing.

Deck the halls with wads of tissue
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Tis the season of health issues
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Quaff we now our medication
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la
Kill the virus infestation
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la

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Further proving that ignorant religious lunatics should not be allowed to make policy, FCC receives less than 350 "indecency" complaints in 2000 and 2001. Receives 14000 in 2002, receives 240000 in 2003 - 99.8% of which come from the PTC.

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Researchers invent cap that allows people to control a computer by thinking about it.

"The results show that people can learn to use scalp-recorded electroencephalogram rhythms to control rapid and accurate movement of a cursor in two directions," said Jonathan Wolpaw and Dennis McFarlane.

The research team, from New York State Department of Health and State University of New York in Albany, said the research was another step towards people controlling wheelchairs or other electronic devices by thought.

The four people faced a large video screen wearing a special cap which meant no surgery or implantation was needed

Brain activity produces electrical signals that can be read by electrodes. Complex algorithms then translate those signals into instructions to direct the computer.

Such brain activity does not require the use of any nerves or muscles, so people with stroke or spinal cord injuries could use the cap effectively.

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American company sells "Go Canadian" package - everything an American tourist needs to pretend to be a Canadian abroad, and hence not get mocked having voted in a chimpanzee.

It's not meant as a slight against the United States or Canada," explained T-shirtKing.com President Bill Broadbent. "It was meant as something Republicans could give their Democrat friends to say 'C'est la vie.' ... But maybe not c'est la vie because that's a French word."

Sylvia Dawson's boyfriend has been joking that she needed to find him a Canadian flag for an upcoming trip to Spain. That's after his daughter, who is studying there, warned that he might be questioned about politics when he comes to visit.

So she bought a package.

"I said, 'What are you going to do if someone asks you about the prime minister of Canada?' And he said, 'I'll study up,"' Dawson said.

Such questions are the reason for the package's quick reference guide, which offers tips in case an American in disguise gets quizzed on Canada.

When it comes to sports, the guide suggests: "This is easy to remember. There is only one real sport in Canada and it is called hockey. Regardless of any trivia question, the answer is 'Wayne Gretzky."'

If a Canadian says he had to "deke out of a meeting," it means he avoided the meeting. If someone is headed to "Hogtown," that's Canadian for Toronto. A trip to "Cowtown" means the person is going to Calgary.
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Of course, it's wrong - Toronto is known colloquially as "T.O,", "T-dot", or "The Centre Of The Universe", not "Hogtown", and "Cowtown" is Columbus, OH. Winnipeg is "Winterpeg, Manisnowba", and the NWT, Yukon, and Nunavut are collectively known as "The Frozen Bits"

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QUACK!

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The Pennsylvania attorney general's office Monday sued an online university for allegedly selling bogus academic degrees - including an MBA awarded to a cat.

Trinity Southern University in Texas, a cellular company and the two brothers who ran them are accused of misappropriating Internet addresses of the state Senate and more than 60 Pennsylvania businesses to sell fake degrees and prescription drugs by spam e-mail, according to the lawsuit.

Investigators paid $299 for a bachelor's degree for Colby Nolan - a deputy attorney general's 6-year-old black cat - claiming he had experience including baby-sitting and retail management.

The school, which offers no classes, allegedly determined Colby Nolan's resume entitled him to a master of business administration degree; a transcript listed the cat's course work and 3.5 grade-point average.

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The World Trade Center leaseholder has won a court victory over his insurers as he attempts to rebuild the site.

A New York jury has decided that the 11 September 2001 attack on the two towers constituted two separate events.

The US District Court ruling means Larry Silverstein could now get an extra $1.1bn (£0.56bn) from nine insurers to finance reconstruction.

He has been fighting the insurance companies, arguing he was owed $7bn (£3.6bn) - double his $3.5bn policy.

The firms had argued at the District Court for the Southern District of New York that the twin strikes on the trade centre were part of a single, continuous, planned attack.

Stealing from twistedchick

Stealing, in fact, wholesale, from this post:

How does being "a close supporter of Bush and Cheney" make Bernard Kerik qualified to lead Homeland Security? Here's some of his past experience: undercover narc, prison warden, and personal security for the Saudi Royal Family. Does that qualify him to run the biggest agency in town?

Let's take a closer look:
--A very brief bio and more details here.

--Kerik's life is not an open book. No college degree, though that was a requirement for anyone in the NYPD above captain. Conflict of interest concerns, croneyism, and leaving his job of training the Iraqi national police early without explanation. And he's a board member of Taser International, which makes stun guns, which are used by police nearly everywhere.

--This view of him from New Jersey sees Kerik as an ambitious Republican: He considered running for governor before learning that the New Jersey state Constitution has a seven-year residency requirement. But there is no such limit for U.S. senators....But, if Kerik's luck holds, he'll be able to dole out national security pork for the next year (or three, if he wants to wait for 2008); then head home to Jersey with a pocketful of IOUs. That's the last thing the Democrats need: a Republican working-class superhero with red-hot ambitions in a state that's supposed to be true-blue.

--This Philly Inquirer story points at Kerik's weak resume.

--Peace, Earth and Justice News calls Kerik 'front man for a police state' and an 'unconditional loyalist.' This article goes into detail on many of the matters alluded to in the above items.

--Reuters says the HSA job may put Kerik into an awkward position when Taser seeks more government contracts -- since Kerik is still serving on Taser's board of directors. Well, yes, you could say that. "Awkward" is a good description. So is "conflict of interest."

--Kerik blocked the promotion of a qualified jail supervisor because the man had reprimanded a corrections officer whom Kerik was dating, according to this Newsday article.

--From TruthNews, a right-wing religious site, here's what is probably the official Republican view of Kerik's background and nomination for the job. Notice what's smoothed over in comparison to the other coverage, and notice what's not even mentioned.

--The Gotham Gazette, on Kerik in NYC and his 'three priorities'.

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larabeaton provided me with this one:

The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11

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In a sworn affidavit Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

RAW STORY acquired the affidavit from The Brad Blog, which has been in contact with the programmer in Washington.

While working for Yang Enterprises in Florida, the 46-year-old programmer says he was instructed by then-Republican state representative Tom Feeney to "develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in the election and be undetectable."

Feeney, a former failed running mate of Gov. Jeb Bush, now represents Florida’s 24th district in the House of Representatives. At the time, he was serving both as general counsel and lobbyist for Yang Enterprises and the Florida state congressman....


Affidavit available here

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The Creation Museum!


"T. rex - the real king of the beasts. That's the terror that Adam's sin unleashed! You'll run into this monster lurking near Adam and Eve."



Dinosaurs entering Noah's Ark! As seen from the museum's vast multimedia theatre!

I love this site.

"Answers in Genesis disputes evolution believing instead that God created all animals, including dinosaurs, on the sixth day of Genesis. Ham calls dinosaurs "missionary lizards." He believes they were on Noah's Ark alongside other animals and were probably around at the same time as Jesus. And he wants to use them to spread God's word.

No really, he's serious."

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Donald Rumsfeld isn't signing the KIA letters - he's got a machine to stamp his signature on them.

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"Mother of the Matrix" article (posted here previously) just *slightly* misleading.

Apparently, despite this article's assertions, the decision was to *allow the lawsuit to go through*, not an actual result of a lawsuit.

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Fundraiser blows the whistle on animal shelter in Brooklyn.

Warning: This is not happy story, and there are pictures. Not gruesome, just unsanitary.

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Lawrence Trant sees himself as a righteous crusader who put muscle behind his boiling outrage against pedophiles.

The state of New Hampshire sees Trant differently. He is serving a 10- to 30-year sentence in New Hampshire State Prison after pleading guilty to attempting to murder two convicted sex offenders whose names and addresses he found on an Internet registry posted by the state.

"I don't want people to steal the souls of little kids," Trant, 57, said in an interview in prison last week.

But prosecutor John Weld says Trant is one of the most cold-blooded criminals he has encountered. If Trant had not been arrested, Weld said, the native of Cambridge, Mass., probably would have killed someone.

The case has become more complicated than a simple question of right and wrong. The sordid histories of Trant's victims, his impassioned testimony on the witness stand, and his use of an Internet list to track down his targets have infused the case with controversy and conflicting senses of justice.

He is not considered the hero he thought he would become in April 2003, when he stabbed one man and lit fires at two buildings where at least seven convicted sex offenders lived. But he was able to persuade a Superior Court jury not to convict him of attempted murder in his trial on the stabbing charge, even after he took the witness stand and admitted he used a kitchen knife to assault Lawrence Sheridan, who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a child in 1999.

Three of the 12 Superior Court jurors refused to convict him of attempted murder. The judge declared a mistrial on that charge; the same panel of jurors eventually agreed that Trant had committed first-degree assault.

Prosecutors realized they would face a problem trying to convict Trant of attempted murder in the other cases: He had targeted a class of victims for whom a jury of his peers had no sympathy.
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So, let's get this straight. A guy who can be best described as a sociopath, who attacks people because he likes to hurt them, has been acquitted on attempted murder charges a couple of times because he's chosen victims who Bob Q Public doesn't like?

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Man throws molotov cocktails into girlfriend's house, attempts to escape police pursuit on ride-on lawnmower - then claims it wasn't him to the cop who'd been following him from the house, while he's wearing rubber gloves, carrying matches, and has a beer bottle full of gasoline in his pocket.

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Rosa Parks no longer has to pay rent - her apartment building says she can live there, free, for the rest of her life.

Parks' doctors say the 91-year-old civil rights pioneer has dementia and is in poor health. Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit had been paying Parks' rent, which had been as high as $1,800 a month, since August 2003, the Rev. Charles Adams said.

"We did not want her set out in the street," Adams said. "We didn't want to make a big noise out of it. ... It was a simple act of kindness."

Parks was 42 when she refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Thai goverment airdrops millions of origami cranes on troubled southern region. Responses include arson and murder.

Encouraged by the government, Thais across the country - Cabinet ministers, office workers, schoolchildren and even convicts - folded more than 130 million birds to promote peace in the south. Approximately 30 million will be delivered by land.

While meant as a morale-boosting measure for victims of violence, Sunday's origami airdrop resembled a festive treasure hunt with prizes offered for some specially marked birds. People who collected large quantities could trade them in for items ranging from cartons of milk to bicycles.

Especially coveted was one bird folded and signed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, which offered a scholarship if found by a child, or a job for an adult.

Thaksin said Sunday the paper bird airdrop showed residents of the three southern provinces that they are part of Thai society, and that their countrymen care for them.

Hours after Thaksin spoke, the owner of a tea shop in Pattani was slain by gunmen, grenades were thrown at the homes of two policemen in the same province, and arsonists set fire to a state school in Yala and a teacher's house in Narathiwat.

The bombings, shootings and arson attacks came hours after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said the airdrop Sunday of nearly 100 million Japanese-style origami cranes over the predominantly Muslim region had achieved an "enormous, positive psychological effect'' toward peace

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A man accused of murdering two children and attacking their mother has asked a judge to let him plead guilty and to sentence him to death.

"I only wish the judge to sentence me to death so no one can feel responsible for another's death, including mine," Marco Chapman wrote in a letter to Circuit Judge Tony Frohlich read in court in October. Chapman, 32, is due back in court Tuesday, when a doctor is expected to testify about his mental state and whether he understands what a guilty plea and death sentence would mean.

Neither lawyers nor death penalty activists and researchers could provide statistics on how often someone pleads guilty to a capital crime and seeks a death sentence. But lawyers and activists agree it is rare.

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Washington, D.C. - The Department of Commerce announced today that the Government of Canada has purchased worldwide intellectual property rights to the motto "The Land of the Free" for an undisclosed sum.

The well-known phrase is from the closing bars of the American national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key. The announcement was made to coincide with President George W. Bush's visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia, this week. President Bush is making his first state visit to Canada since he took office.

"At Kellogg's, one of our core strengths has been the skillful management of brand assets," explained Secretary of Commerce nominee and former Kellogg's CEO Carlos Gutierrez. "A brand identity is a group of values and feelings that is most valuable when it faithfully speaks for the ideals or products of an organization. When a brand no longer reflects an organization's ideals, the best course of action is to extract as much equity from it as possible. After November 2nd, this became the most profitable choice for the American people."

"If a Kleenex no longer cleans your nose, then what's the point of calling it that?" said President Bush. "Freedom comes at a high price," he added soberly. "It would be unfortunate and unwise not to get something for it."

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Dog gets wedding jitters, runs away and hides instead of giving away the bride.

A champagne-coloured guide dog was to have given away his bride boss with a bark, but nerves got the better of him.

Tennessee just let out a soft growl when he was asked to "speak" before his owner, 27-year-old Talita Marais, tied the knot with Peet Nagel, 31.

The confused Labrador then took refuge under one of the benches in the packed chapel in Irene, far away from the flashing cameras.

When the giggling had subsided pastor Edmund Huggett got down to the serious business of marrying the couple.

The guests did not find the wedding too unusual, because Talita's life has been rather unusual.

She started to lose her sight gradually from the age of 16 due to macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary blindness that causes tunnel vision.

She was completely blind by her 21st birthday. She has since regained 16% of her sight, which was just enough to appreciate her wedding dress.

Her guide dog has been at her side for a good couple of years.

The couple decided last year, after the death of the father of the bride that her guide dog should give her away at the pulpit.

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Putting corporate clout, infinite funding, and hordes of litigators to *good* use:

Microsoft sues seven spammers.

Courtesy of the Weekly World News!

The Mandinka tribe of Gambia, Africa, adheres to a religious practice completely unique to its people -- they worship actress Salma Hayek's breasts!

While most primitive societies tend to pray to animal or ancestral spirits, or to stars and planets as the Mandinkans once did, that all changed in 1995.

Mandinkan farmer Danjuma Kianga remembers, through an interpreter, the moment it happened.

"As a special treat, Chief Tuamanguluka arranged for a movie to be shown here for the first time ever. The movie was Desperado, starring the blessed Salma Hayek as Carolina, a beautiful woman who works for the local drug lord."

When Hayek first appeared on screen, the Mandinkans were blown away by the sight of the 36C-25-37 actress. "Everyone gasped -- men, women, and children," recalls Kianga. "Salma was breathtakingly exquisite. She gave off a force, a light, an energy that came right through the screen and entered our very souls."

After that screening, all any of the Mandinkans could talk about was Salma Hayek -- her looks, her spirit, her energy.

In the years since, the tribe has arranged screenings of every one of her films. The Mandinkans found themselves especially affected by the sight of Hayek's breasts, which are often on full display in her movies.

"Salma's chest globes are magnificent forces of nature," gushes Kianga.
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This one beats out "Hackers can turn you computer INTO A BOMB", but doesn't quite match "Pembroke Man Weds Bigfoot"

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Giant African rats used to detect land mines.

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Telemarketer for scam charity send threats to woman who hung up on him.

Remember this guy? A Virginia man who admitted Monday to coating his motel room with the contents of 14 jars of petroleum jelly in May will have to pay $3,886 for damages to the motel. - but he slips out of jail time and manages to wriggle out of a felony conviction.

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U.S. Troops threaten DIA personnel who witnessed the troops torturing Iraqi civilians

"The U.S. military says prisoners are treated according to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment."

The fact that they continue to say this tells you outright that the problem is not stopping, or even slowing down.