BBC NEWS | Europe | Pakistani terror suspects held in Italy

"Italian police have arrested 28 Pakistani terror suspects and seized explosives in a raid in the southern city of Naples."

Salon.com News | U.S. may try to find haven for Saddam

"The United States would try to help find a haven for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his family and close aides if he would agree to leave Baghdad, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday."

Council adopts immigrants' rights ordinance

"The city of Seattle's job is to protect and serve its residents, not to enforce immigration laws or to join in anti-immigrant "hysteria," the City Council said yesterday as it adopted an ordinance that bars city workers from asking anyone their immigration status."

Thanks to my lovely wife for the link.

Hybrid Cars Are Catching On

"Earlier this month, at the North American International Auto Show here, G.M. — previously the industry's most vocal skeptic — publicly embraced the technology. The company said it would sell a hybrid version of its Saturn Vue sport utility vehicle in 2005 that would approach 40 miles a gallon in fuel economy, compared with mileage in the low 20's for current models."

The good news - less reliance on foreign oil; the bad news - we'll still have SUVs.

Continuing my trial by Launchcast, I've noticed that LaunchCast has odd weightings in terms of what they play. Today LaunchCast has played Sash! (a band I rate 1 out of 10) four time, presumably because people who like Radiohead also like Sash. I'm also burdened with an inordinate amount of Smiths (a band I rate 2 in 10, though a couple of their songs have higher ratings). Is this because I rate Portishead a 10? In addition, Mistle Thrush, an astonishingly great band that I rate a 10 has yet to appear in my play list. I give LaunchCast 1 more day to impress and then it's back to KEXP,

'Bad Herr Dye'

"In a stunning power play in Brussels, Germany and France moved to change the practice of having a rotating presidency of the European Council, which now gives smaller nations influence, to a system with a long-term president. This Franco-German czar of the European Union would dominate a toothless president of the European Commission, chosen by the European Parliament."

NYT Op-ed suggests that Germany is in cahoots with France to engineer Franco-German domination of the EU and to use Frances UN Veto (Germany has no such veto) as an engine of international diplomacy. Is this true? I have no freakin' idea. Time to start following EU politics a little more closely.

The Matrix Reloaded

The navigation of this site is purposefully difficult, but it's worth poking around. Check out the comics (some really top notch authors and artists in there) and the philosophy section. And of course the new trailer.

Amsterdam Real Time - Waag Society

This is SO cool. A group of people in Amsterdam are using GPS to create personalized maps of the city. They record their movements using GPS, then plot them as a graphic. The result is a map of the city as seen through the movements of its citizens. It makes me think of how cool it would be to map out the city of Seattle through the movements of my friends. There would be nodal points where people meet, for example, the meeting of east-siders and west-siders at our workplace, the meeting of my gaming group at my place, and of feng's group at his place.

HotWired: P O P | Event | Brian Eno

"There's nowhere to wander around, everywhere you go is a casino. One time I was looking at the mountains and a security guard led me back to the casino. You can really understand the existence of the Christian right when you go to Las Vegas. The reaction to that kind of decadence is a kind of moral puritanism. Get rid of Las Vegas and you get rid of the Christian right. "

Observations-Essays by Randy A. Riddle-Brian Eno and The Microsoft Sound

"The Sound was created by the eminent and well-known composer of aural wallpaper for airports and other bland spaces, Brian Eno."

Who can Save Superman Now?

"Copyright... fading! Can't... resist!"

Check out my LaunchCast station. It still needs some tweaking, so don't be too shocked if you get a Hank Williams song. Not that I'm slaggin' Hank, of course.

Lucky Segway winners are scooting into history

"Goza, a Microsoft employee, drives her transporter around the vast Redmond campus, which is so large that employees often drive their cars from one building to another to attend meetings. And she is even researching ways to take the Segway on a bus across the 520 bridge. On weekends, she hops on for trips that are 'too close to drive, but too far to walk,' like the dry cleaners."

Speakeasy's secret formula

"Apgar, who co-founded Speakeasy in 1994 as an Internet cafe, isn't sure how his company made it this far. After all, at a time when many high-speed Internet service providers are either out of business or struggling to stay alive, Speakeasy -- which grew by more than 25 percent last year -- continues to expand."

I can provide some reasons why Speakeasy might be doing well:

• Qwest sucks, Speakeasy doesn't
• Good customer services
• They gave me a free XBox for signing up

Charlotte Observer | 01/17/2003 | Glacial melt turns up treasure

"Then he saw it -- the biggest pile of animal droppings he had ever seen, 8 feet high and stretching over a half-mile of mountainside."

First Person: Care about people affected by Roe v. Wade

"If you want to derive one lesson from the white-hot issue of abortion, it is that the ideological shouting matches from both sides need to stop and give way to a culture that cares for women."

idleworm: games - gulf war 2

A game I am beta testing, Imperial Wars has been mentioned on Slashdot lately. Check it out.

linux.oreillynet.com: Jaakko Peltonen on Falcon's Eye [Jan. 16, 2003]

"I've received hundreds of emails regarding Falcon's Eye. Several people have said they started or restarted playing NetHack after finding Falcon's Eye. Many new players seem to use Falcon's Eye."

Link thanks to denormalize

Yahoo! News - Fifth 'Potter' Book Set for June Release

"Within hours of Wednesday's announcement that "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" would be in bookstores on June 21, the book hit No. 1 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. "

JENNIFER GOVERNMENT Preview  |  Chapter One

"Hack first heard about Jennifer Government at the water cooler."

VIA Technologies, Inc.

"This project was suggested by a buddy of mine - I'd been working on the Amiga 1000 project and wondered what to do next. He suggested the Atari 2600. Neither of us was sure you could fit a system inside - but it was worth investigating."

Voynich-o-rama!

cuboro
Hereby declard, by me, coolest idea ever.

Mystery Disks

"One of the news stories finding its way across the World Wide Web of late is about a team of Chinese scientists traveling to the remote western province of Qinghai to investigate reports of a mystery pyramid that local legend claims is an ancient launch tower left by aliens."

William Gibson remembers Timothy Leary

"Leary once told me that he thought that the best single piece of advice he could give to a writer was to either write stoned and edit sober, or vice versa. For me, functionally and organically, composition and revision are aspects of one process, territories on a continuum. The need to chemically define two individual states seems anything but a shortcut. The journey out from baseline and back seems a waste of time, when, if you accept that one cannot step twice into the same Heracletian river, simply waiting a while will have the same effect. The Heracletian “you” that returns to the task is not the “you” that put it down earlier. That, to me, is the easier shortcut. Of course, if one were really inducing that state only because one enjoyed it, and wished to repeat it, that would be something else."

Salon.com News | Pope: War in Iraq should be last resort

"'War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity,' the pope told Vatican-based diplomats in his annual speech on issues of concern to the Roman Catholic Church."

Dear Heidegger (h2so4)

"Dear Heidegger,
Why do people, driving in their cars, so often forget that their blinkers are on, and drive down the highway all blinking and shit, for miles and hours at a time? Why? Is it true that one must get out of one's brain before getting into one's car? —Felix"

All Consuming

What's the blogosphere reading today?

The disruptive Web

"Another blogger, Scott Reynan, reminded me that bookmarklets, which are JavaScript snippets embedded in HTML links, can be installed in browsers' toolbars. A bookmarklet, when clicked, could inspect the current page's URL (say, at Amazon.com), capture the ISBN, form a library search URL incorporating the ISBN, and invoke that search in a new window."

The Seattle Times: Local News: DNA leads to arrest in '93 death of local singer

"The man sitting in the Miami-Dade County jail, suspected in the 1993 rape and slaying of Seattle singer Mia Zapata, is a 48-year-old fisherman and laborer with a history of assaults on women and only a passing connection to Seattle."

One of Seattle's longest lasting unsolved mysteries may be nearing resolution.

Church put to DNA test

"His stand could make Murphy the first Mormon in church history to face excommunication for publishing conclusions on the basis of genetic research."

I, Cringely | The Pulpit

"It seemed like everyone was surprised to see so much new stuff from Apple. I know I was surprised. The economy is down, Apple is supposedly sitting on excess inventory, the most we were expecting was maybe another consumer gizmo like the iPod."

William Gibson's Weblog

"Today I am of the opinion, experientially, that the supposedly visionary aspects of any drug experience, regardless of how marvelous-seeming at the time (or how cocktail-lounge banal) represent no more than a tweaking of incoming stimuli. “But you’re drowning in the waters the mystics walked on,” said a saddened theologian to Leary and Alpert, early on, when they had explained the import of Dr. Hoffman’s benison. When I first read that, I assumed that this guy was just some sour-faced killjoy. In long retrospect, now, I think he may actually have been trying to tell them something."

Court backs holding citizens as enemy combatants

"A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the government can hold U.S. citizens as enemy combatants during wartime without the constitutional protections afforded Americans in criminal prosecutions."

Note that this suspension appears to only apply to enemy combatants... for now anwyay.

Edinburgh Evening News - Edinburgh - Hi-tech hope as chapel is searched in relic mystery

"One of the ornate columns, the Apprentice Pillar, is said to contain a lead casket which holds the legendary Holy Grail, a cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, which was also used to collect his blood."

CNN.com - Giant star ring found around Milky Way - Jan. 6, 2003

"Two scientific teams saw the ring slowly circling outside the Milky Way, with perhaps 100 million to half a billion stars distributed around it. One commentator said it appeared to have been part of a smaller galaxy that was ripped apart by our galaxy's gravitational force. "

'Special Ops' gets OK to initiate its own missions -- The Washington Times

"In a significant transformation of U.S. Special Operations Command, Mr. Rumsfeld said the command in Tampa, Fla., and its satellite units around the world, can now plan and execute their own hunt-and-destroy missions. The Washington Times first reported the changes in Monday's editions."

Patron Saints Index: Blessed Mary MacKillop

"Eldest child of poor Scottish emigrants Alexander and Flora MacKillop. Her father had studied for the priesthood, but was never ordained. Educated at private schools and by her father. To help support her family, she worked as a nursery governess and store clerk while still in her teens. Tutor in Melbourne. Teacher at Portland School #510 in 1862. Established a 'Seminary for Young Ladies' in her home. Known for her holiness, her constant work in the local church, and for turning to prayer before making decisions."

Bd. Mary MacKillop is, it turns out, distantly related to me by marriage through my sister-in-law.

military news about Korea

"But the South Koreans feel they could live with a Chinese style communist government in the north. The Chinese and Japanese agree on this. "

StrategyPage's take on North Korea is enlightening, though somewhat fragmented.

WTF?

Weirder than Hatte, more surreal than All your Base. And Japanese.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Central Asia pipeline deal signed

"An agreement has been signed in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, paving the way for construction of a gas pipeline from the Central Asian republic through Afghanistan to Pakistan."

Abandoned

"Future is waiting for us. With hollow skeletons or downsized ugly creatures with bulgy eyes - it|s not important. Important thing is that there will be a footprint left. Footprint of civilization. Cement, metal and dust not claimed by anyone. They are eternity."

Goodbye, Columbus!

"A retired navy man with white hair, Menzies still has a hint of red in the eyebrows that frame his ocean-blue eyes. Dressed in a handsome sports jacket and tie, he cheerfully invited me into his stately Georgian house in the Canonbury section of London. What he had to say, his publicists had warned me in breathless e-mail messages, would make 'every history book in print obsolete.'"

Jonathan Taylor Thomas Nude!

"This month, AngryWhiteGirl.com will have graced Ye Olde InterWebbe for one year. For everyone who has been here from the very beginning... who.. at this point I can probably count as being about 3 people (Hi David, Mackie, and Jessie), this site has changed a hell of a lot. I started out writing by myself and posting short entries every day, to taking on another writer and writing longer, more thoughtful entries possessing actual content. (lol)"

António Cidadão's Home-Page of Lunar and Planetary Observation and CCD Imaging

McAfee.com - Internet Connection Speedometer

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

"The investigation of the cybercafes, also known as 'PC bangs' or 'cybercafes,' came after a brawl erupted between rival groups playing in a tournament involving the online combat game 'Counter Strike.'"

Our streets are overrun with gangs, violence and drug use. Yeah, banning Internet Cafes ought to clear up the problem.

ITSF - Innovative Technologies From Science Fiction For Space Applications

"The European Space Agency (ESA) requested the Maison d'Ailleurs and the OURS
Foundation to conduct a study on technologies and concepts found in Science Fiction, in order to obtain imaginative and innovative ideas potentially viable for long-term development by the European space sector. The study was concluded in late 2001, but identification of enabling technologies as well as advanced technological concepts is still ongoing."

Ariel made her father a website for his poems for Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Jennifer Government: NationStates

"Jennifer Government: NationStates is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you."

This guy wrote a game based on his own novel.

Cringley's Calls for 2003

"And finally, with the continued (and to me totally inexplicable) rise of web logs, someone -- maybe Google -- will come up with an effective blog search engine to read all that junk for us and extract what we really care about."

www.gapingvoid.com : Hugh MacLeod

:::::___coin-operated.com___:::::

"StreamingMedia is an interactive data sculpture that employs a new Internet protocol (H20/IP) I developed that uses water to transmit information between computers. H20/IP functions in a similar way as TCP/IP but focuses on the inherent viscous properties of water that are not present in traditional packet networks. The StreamingMedia demonstration of H20/IP exists as an installation of two computers at different heights where one captures an image and transmits it to the second computer in the form of modulated water drops. The project attempts to show how digital information can be encoded and decoded into organic forms to create a physical network between digital devices. "

Wired 10.12: The Pope's Astrophysicist

"But what if we discover other intelligent beings? When NASA scientists announced they had evidence of life on Mars, commentators indulged in an orgy of speculation about the downfall of Christianity should E.T. ever pay us a call. Coyne is amused when I raise the subject. He points out that Catholic theologians considered this question as long ago as the 13th century and unanimously concluded that life in "other worlds" would cause no theological crisis. Since God was a god of plenitude, the great medieval thinkers believed, if other worlds existed they ought to be inhabited. "