LarsonsWorld | just another persons waste of time

watercooler

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:29:34 -0600

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail - NY Times

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

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Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law: Why it's a lot worse than you think. - Slate

Sometime today, the Senate is likely to approve the most comprehensive overhaul of American surveillance law since the Watergate era. Unless you're a government lawyer, a legal scholar, a masochist, or an insomniac, chances are you haven't read the 114-page bill. Don't beat yourself up: Neither have most of the 293 House members who voted for it last week. Ditto the mainstream press, who seem to have relied chiefly on summaries provided by the same lawmakers who hadn't read it.

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Be quiet: the surveillance cameras might hear you - Ars Techinica

Although crime statistics point to the fact that law-and-order issues are actually less of a problem now than in the past, the general public's perception remains one convinced that muggery and buggery hides behind every street corner. Politicans and the media stoke these fears, and we get hastily made laws and policies enacted as a result. Over in the UK, the trend over the past two decades has been to abrogate day-to-day policing of the streets to an army of CCTV cameras. Soon, if scientists have their way, the cameras will be able to train their focus on suspicious sounds automatically with new AI technology.

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red rocks 08 #1

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:21:14 -0600

Just returned from seeing Mark Knopfler at Red Rocks. Man does he and his band put on a good show. This year we had much better seats, row 29, as apposed to, lets see 2-3 years ago, that we where way up there. The sound was impeccable

Highlights for me where excellent renditions of Telegraph Road and Brothers in Arms. There where quite a few songs I didn't know off hand but where excellent. The forum on markknopfler.com does have the set list yet, but once it does I'll know what songs to look for.

BTW, viewed a full rainbow on the way up to the upper parking lot. Sweet!

oh, so true!

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:28:10 -0600

I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.

- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

just what they have been waiting for

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:15:25 -0600

Jim Morin - 21 June 2008

Mike Luckovich - 21 June 2008

watercooler

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:50:15 -0600

Nice Guys Finish Last: Why do we expect presidential candidates to be kind? - Slate

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but in the past few days I feel I've been overwhelmed by a tsunami of commentary, all of which purports to prove the fundamental nastiness of Barack Obama or, alternatively, the deep unlikability of John McCain. You thought our presidential candidates were nice guys, regular guys, guys who you'd like to sit down and have a beer with? Guess what, lots of people are now telling me: They aren't!

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Nation's Spies: Climate Change Could Spark War - Wired

Environmental groups have been warning for years that global climate change could make already-tense parts of the world even worse, and even spark whole new conflicts. Now, the nation's spies are saying pretty much the same thing.

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watercooler

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:32:34 -0600

Congress pats itself on back as it caves on telecom immunity - Ars Techinca

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," Rep Trent Franks (R-AZ) intoned on the floor of the House of Representatives, purporting to invoke the authority of Thomas Jefferson on behalf of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which passed the House by a 293–129 vote yesterday.

If we wanted to pick nits, we could note that this is a misquotation, that Jefferson didn't write it, and that the "eternal vigilance" alluded to in that hoary aphorism is most assuredly not the government's unfettered power to eavesdrop on Americans' international communications without a warrant. But forget it, he's rolling. Why spoil such a rare bipartisan lovefest with quibbling over details?

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respect

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:08:49 -0600

I'm watching the NBA playoffs, with Boston just winning. The camera and interviewer are talking with Kevin Garnett. He is on top of the world. I could say he is going over the top. He walks away and there is Bill Russell. There is a big hug and Kevin says "I hope I made you proud, I hope I made you proud"

To me, that gave Kevin credentials. To me, that was sweet!

Oh, by the way, Boston won by a 39-point margin giving them the NBA record for largest margin of victory in a championship game. The previous record - Celtics victory over the Lakers, game 5, the 1965 NBA finals.

watercooler

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:25:15 -0600

Gallery: 10 Best Apocalyptic Vehicles - Wired

Global warming. Faltering economies. Dwindling resources. Mankind has finally set in motion environmental, political and social policies that will surely destroy the world as we know it.

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watercooler

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:53:07 -0600

The Enemy Within - Who are we more afraid of: enemy combatants or federal courts? - Slate

The Supreme Court's decision Thursday in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States is - as all the big enemy-combatant cases have been - both enormously important and relatively insignificant. This is, after all, the third stinging setback and blistering rebuke the court has handed the Bush administration with respect to prisoner rights at Guantanamo. Yet you may have noticed that all of these setbacks and rebukes have mostly meant more hot days in orange jumpsuits, more solitary confinement, and ever more plus ça change for the detainees there. At his pretrial hearing in April, one of the detainees "lucky" enough to actually face a trial, Salim Hamdan, pointed out to the presiding judge that winning his own appeal at the Supreme Court in 2006 got him precisely nothing.

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merging headlines

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:32:53 -0600

Dana Summers - 12 June 2008

watercooler

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:35:14 -0600

Cable: deregulation good for consumers; Ars: like heck it is- Ars Techinca

If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it's that the cable industry in the US is focused on openness, innovation, and customer satisfaction; but if we can't keep the government's knuckleheaded regulators out of our cable lines and off our Internet, cable's nearly absurd level of innovation will be throttled down more effectively than BitTorrent uploads on Comcast's network. Well, so says the cable industry, at least.

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bikejacker

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:32:08 -0600

Mike Luckovich - 10 June 2008

watercooler

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:48:37 -0600

The Skinny on Fat: You're Not Always What You Eat - Scientific American

Ever wondered why some people seem able to gobble down anything and still stay slim? New research shows that the answer may lie in serotonin, a neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger produced by nerve cells. Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, (U.C.S.F.) report in the journal Cell Metabolism that the nerve messenger, a known appetite suppressant, not only controls whether and how much you eat but, independent of that, also plays a role in what the body does with the calories once they're consumed.

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Daily cell phone tracking confirms we’re creatures of habit - Ars Technica

Where does a human's typical day take it? It seems like a simple and somewhat uninteresting question, but neither of these are actually the case. The dynamic movement of human populations has implications for everything from urban planning to epidemic control. Due to ethical and privacy concerns, we actually know more about animal movements than we do about those of people, leaving human daily activity a bit of a black box. A study that will be published in today's issue of Nature opens that box by following the daily travels of cell phone users in Europe for a period of six months. The study finds that, in general, we humans are creatures of habit.

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flow

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:36:19 -0600

Flow with whatever may happen
and let your mind be free;
Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing.
This is the ultimate.

Chuang Tsu

more living in america

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:35:48 -0600

Tom Briscoe - 03 June 2008