To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Another camera-based security triumph in Great Britain: Peeping tom CCTV workers jailed:
Two council CCTV camera operators have been jailed for spying on a naked woman in her own home.
Mark Summerton and Kevin Judge, from Sefton Council, Merseyside, trained a street camera into the woman’s flat.
Good on the bobbies for ensuring the boobies were natural and not semtex implants.
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Lohan, Moss’ pole dance at topless bar:
New B.F.F.’s Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss shook things up at New York’s Scores strip club in the wee hours of yesterday morning putting on a bump-and-grind pole-dancing session for the club’s 400 shocked patrons, reports the New York Post’s gossip column ‘Page Six.’
Lohan, Moss and a few of their female friends descended upon the topless club just before 3:00 a.m. and went directly into the club’s famous Champagne Room, where the group downed a number of vodka shots, raspberry Kamikazes and beer and were treated to plenty of lapdances from the strippers that surrounded their table.
As other Savvis investors remember, this is where Rob McCormick spent $240,000, prompting his ouster as the CEO of the plucky little ISP that couldn’t quite.
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Mexico Demands U.S. Allow More Immigration:
Diplomats from Mexico and Central America on Monday demanded guest worker programs and the legalization of undocumented migrants in the United States, while criticizing a U.S. proposal for tougher border enforcement.
Meeting in Mexico’s capital, the regional officials pledged to do more to fight migrant trafficking, but indirectly condemned a U.S. bill that would make illegal entry a felony and extend border walls.
“Migrants, regardless of their migratory status, should not be treated like criminals,” they said.
No doubt, the undocumented workers and migrants within our country would elect you to be our leaders. Too bad we’re a soveriegn country whose actual citizens get to elect our own feckless leaders.
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Muslim bashing seemingly in vogue:
What in the world do dietary supplements have to do with turbans and terrorism?
That political head-scratcher confronted at least some vitamin buyers around the nation who found a flier with their mail-order nutrients carrying the bold headline, “Get a Turban for Durbin!”
An image shows Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, wearing the headwrap, common in parts of the Middle East and south Asia and sacred religious garb in some faiths, including the entire Sikh religion.
The flier’s kicker: “Keep Congressional Terrorists At Bay.” The flier was distributed last month by a pro-vitamin and supplement group.
Critics say the flier is yet another example of Muslim bashing. The designer of the flier, who has since pulled it, admits that it was over the line but said he put it out to draw attention to what he thinks is improper action by Durbin.
Got that, America? According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a cheap mimeographed flier from some unnamed vitamin and dietary supplier represents trend-setting political and social thought.
When it’s convenient for driving “news” articles into the well-traveled, predetermined concourses of thought.
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Judge Alito, assuming that your wife were raped by Satan and impregnated, would you not then support abortion? Indeed, would you not, for the betterment of mankind and service to God, use a spoon and a penlight yourself to rid this world of the demon spawn, even if your wife were in her third trimester?
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Owen of Boots and Sabers wants the government to do business behind closed doors.
Face it, someone was going to call him a hypocrite. I just wanted to do it gently, and from a homie.
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for this story: Republicans say they have fixed economy if the legislature or government had been in the hands of Democrats?
Oh, yeah, it would be stacked with numbers and facts about how the economy had improved, instead of merely quotes from Republicans claiming the economy had improved.
But numbers are hard, and aspersively parroting is easy.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s headline identifies whose side it comes down on: Casino’s parking is hijacked:
How much is too much to pay to park a car in downtown St. Louis?
At the very least, it’s a bit less than $25, according to the President Casino on the Admiral.
In an apparent power play over control of the much-disputed “Cherrick” parking lot, its owner has jacked up more than tenfold the price the President pays for customers to use the lot.
So it’s the owner hijacking its own property. Well, sort of. As I read the article, the owner wants to squeeze the government-subsidized entertainment venue (the President Casino) into buying the parking garage before the new government-subsidized entertainment venue (the new casino and go-kart track) seizes the property for a “fair” price. Somewhere in there I got confused about the blighted area infighting for the same profitable resource and stopped paying attention.
Which is probably just what they wanted. All the better to rule me.
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Pete Townshend Warns IPod Users:
Guitarist Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don’t turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones.
Surely, it was the headphones, not playing guitar in front of large stacks of amps and monitors for decades.
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After a post last night (take that, you Johnny-come-latelies like Instapundit and Ace–what am I, chopped liver?), Jack Abramoff dresses differently.
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Rest assured: somewhere, somehow, a crack team of expert conspiracy theorists tonight are finding a way to blame Ariel Sharon’s stroke on the Jews.
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Jack Abramoff makes the black trenchcoat and fedora look bad.
Note to self: Continue belt cinched around expanding belly abstinence. Also, don’t bribe congressional representatives.
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U.S. Toll for Year in Iraq Nears ’04 Mark:
Bombings and shootings killed at least 20 people across Iraq on the final day of the year Saturday, while U.S. troops shivered in the cold during a performance by an “American Idol” singer as part of New Year’s Eve celebrations. The U.S. military also reported the death of an American soldier from wounds, bringing its death toll in Iraq for 2005 near last year’s record level.
I would say, “Give me a break,” but Associated Press is not doing us any favors. Let’s recap the timeline:
2003: The United States invades in late March and faces an enemy that largely surrenders. US faces 9 months of combat and occupancy.
2004: The first full year of occupation, and the year which the “record” was set.
2005: The second full year of occupation, and the year in which the record is almost matched.
There you have it; a record of long-standing. Well, we Americans are told that we’re always hungering for the bigger and better things all the time, with baseball players chasing home run records every year and whatnot. I guess Associated Press is just trying to feed our interest in meeting or exceeding records every year, even if it has to manufacture those records out of whole cloth.
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Researcher: iPod earbuds could damage hearing:
The ever-popular earbuds used with many iPods and other MP3 players may be more stylish than the bigger and bulkier earmuff-type headphones, but they may also be more damaging to one’s hearing, according to a Northwestern professor.
“No one really knows for sure” the levels at which iPod users listen to music, but “what we do know is that young people like their music loud and seldom worry about any decline in hearing ability,” Dean Garstecki, chairman of Northwestern’s communication sciences and disorders department, told Reuters.
We don’t know, but we know it’s bad.
If only we had some metaphor by which we could grasp the danger so we could better clamor for government regulation, such as warning labels or a mandatory cap on the volume these things could produce.
The earbuds commonly used by iPod listeners are placed directly into the ear and can boost the audio signal by as many as nine decibels — comparable to the difference in sound intensity between an alarm clock and a lawn mower, Garstecki said.
Reuters and the researcher are partying like it’s 1979, though, because we’ve heard this particular chorus since the introduction of the Walkman, which replaced the practice of carrying a portable tape deck with the speaker pressed against one’s ear.
Or we would have heard the particular chorus, if we weren’t deaf. Instead, we’ve had to read it on the Internet.
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As a QA dude who understands cookies, I officially call this a non-story: Despite federal ban, NSA Web site places ‘cookies’ on visitors’ computers to track Web surfing:
The National Security Agency’s Internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.
The government apparently bans permanent cookies, but allows session cookies. The NSA explains the brief presence of permanent cookies this way:
Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on.
“After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies,” he said.
Completely believeable, especially if the NSA site uses third party components which probably use cookies independently of the official site policy. Granted, a little QA probably would have caught this, but who can afford the time or money for testing and adherence to standards?
So I agree with Jeff Jarvis that anyone trying to make hay out of this is simply happy to continue yipping the letters NSA. Kevin Aylward notes that the DNC Web site uses cookies set to expire in 28 years (the expiration date of the cookie served as “evidence” of the insidious nature of the plot).
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Anti-Christian Jeans Are a Trend in Sweden:
Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.
Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he’s not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.
“It is an active statement against Christianity,” Atldax told The Associated Press. “I’m not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion.”
Active statements against religions whose adherents regularly stab those who make active statements against it or whose adherents routinely blow up innocent commuters remain strangely absent.
(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)
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In Clayton, it’s:
“We remain convinced that the project to keep Centene’s headquarters in Clayton and generate 800 new jobs is in the best interests of the people of Clayton and the entire region,” [Clayton Mayor Mike] Schoedel said.
You, citizen, might see successful businesses in attractive locations in downtown Clayton, but that’s why you’re not a visionary civic leader ready to strip that land from its owner and award it to a more powerful local corporation. So shut up, and suffer your betters’ whims.
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Pope Benedict says:
“The loving eyes of God look on the human being, considered full and complete at its beginning,” Benedict said in his weekly address to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
Ergo, who are we to oppress those little complete human beings and deny them all the rights of full and complete human beings, including the right to vote and to hold drivers’ licenses?
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Well, that’s what I take away from this story, with the following quote from Toronto mayor David Miller:
“The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto,” he said.
Well, you export what’s in demand, don’t you?
(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)
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The helpful city of St. Louis wants to relocate a corporate citizen:
After a raging fire destroyed the Praxair Inc. plant on Chouteau Avenue in June, St. Louis officials pledged to help the firm find a new location.
Pledge to help, of course, is a synonym for not renewing permits and, through regulatory rigamarole, preventing the corporation from repairing and reopening the facility in its present location. Because of an industrial accident that scared people, but ultimately didn’t hurt or kill anyone.
Fortunately, though, the city had some choice property on its hands that it could unload offer to the ungrateful company:
On Wednesday, the company said thanks, but no thanks. It said the site proposed is contaminated by remnants of the Manhattan Project.
“Praxair is not interested in building a new facility on a floodplain within a Superfund site where, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has indicated, there may be risks of radiological exposure,” Praxair Distribution President Wayne Yakich said in a statement.
So, as a result of this helpful assistance from the city of St. Louis, it will drive a private business from its municipality along with the employment and tax revenue that come from private businesses employing people. As a result, the city of St. Louis will break ground on another entertainment destination with a half life of 18 months to provide, briefly, low-paying service jobs or the city of St. Louis will offer tax breaks, incentives, and other regulatory foolery to draw some other business which has not caught fire recently to the city.
All in a day’s work for your city officials, who get a headline two-fer for driving out the evil, stand-alone corporations and bringing in the parasitic crony capitalist corporations.
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