The Muslim "Janet Jackson Breast-gate." We're getting so close to a puritan theocracy here that we're making even the Turks look good by comparision.

The Turkish press council has thrown out a complaint by a woman reporter over a newspaper picture showing her unwittingly revealing part of her underwear, on the grounds she that had violated press ethics.

Burcu Goksuzoglu, a reporter for the SkyTurk news channel, unintentionally revealed part of her underwear -- a g-string -- when she bent over to ask a question of a participant at a conference in Istanbul in December, the mass-circulation Sabah newspaper reported Friday.

She was shocked the next day to see a picture of herself in the revealing posture in Hurriyet, one of the largest selling newspapers in the country.

She got a second shock when the press council threw out her complaint, saying she broke press ethics because "a journalist on duty must refrain from methods and acts which might overshadow the respectability of her title".

Several women reporters condemned the decision.

See Also: Ashcroft cracking down on newspaper comics.

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Journalists: cowards and biased when it came to the war. File this under the "obvious to everyone expect Republicans and middle America."

The journalists on the panels at the University of California at Berkeley this week blamed the Bush administration for leaking faulty information, but said the media also has itself to blame for not being more skeptical about the case for war.

"The press did not do their job," said Michael Massing, who wrote an article in the New York Review of Books that found The New York Times and The Washington Post particularly at fault.

Journalists fear they will be seen as unpatriotic if they challenge White House statements, said Robert Sheer, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

"There is no doubt that there is an atmosphere of fear in the media of being out of sync with the punitive government," Sheer said.

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Static cling can kill you! Don't believe me? Watch this video clip. After she's done rearranging her sweater, her left hand is chock full of static electricity. Mix that with gas fumes and hilarity ensues. requires divx

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This is just slightly surreal. Airdog John trying not to crater in front of the cameras in a cruiser run, dude.

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Amazing origami using currency. Its not in english, but just click on the links and you'll see some very creative, if not, freaky origami. via boingboing.net

Dont miss this cat/mouse thing.

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Getting off foriegn oil, helping the environment, getting out of the middle east, etc. Its possible, but people like this aren't helping:

a new survey found that two-thirds of consumers wouldn't buy more fuel-efficient vehicles even if prices passed $3 a gallon.

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"People who want seating for seven or eight people, have kids, maybe need to tow a boat or trailer, and like the big SUV versatility aren't trading down to a more fuel-efficient minivan for the sake of $15 or $16 per tankful," says Tom Collier, sales manager of Courtesy Chevrolet Center in San Diego.

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Stem cell researcher fired for doing stem cell research. Now she's a celebrity of sorts. There's just something seriously wrong when the government goes after peole working to cure cancer. Ironically, now that Nancy Reagan has seen what Alzheimers is first-hard, she now supports stem cell research. Does evey righty have to go through this life lesson to gain the common sense to support a medical breakthrough that could save millions of lives and improve the lives of seniors?

Blackburn's Feb. 27 dismissal came little more than a week after the left-leaning Union of Concerned Scientists accused the Bush administration of distorting scientific findings and manipulating experts' advice to avoid information that runs counter to its political beliefs.

In its wake, some 170 researchers have signed an open letter to President Bush (news - web sites) protesting Blackburn's treatment. The American Society for Cell Biology, which represents 11,000 scientists worldwide, complained that it reflects a pattern of politics trumping science in the White House.

"This is not just a decent scientist, not just someone who has made some contribution that was abruptly dismissed," said Nobel laureate Tom Cech, a leading cancer researcher and president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "This a very smart and successful scientist working at the very highest level. She's one of the top biomedical researchers in the world."

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Today is give money to John Kerry day over at Atrios. So far Atrios and his readers have raised 70K! Think of all the time you spent complaining about Bush. Isn't giving Kerry's campaign $25 (or more) worth getting rid of Bush and at the same time showing Washington that ordinary people can make a difference when organized, in this case via Atrios' popular blog?

Update: Atrios's site managed to get $19810 for John Kerry in 24 hours. Amazing.

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Terrorists endorse Bush. Why not? He's giving them the "holy war" they want and instead of focusing on terrorism he's off in Iraq and trying his best to bend America to the will of theocrats. The terrorists want a Christian v. Islam fight and Bush fell into their trap long ago. I found this excellent comment at the dailykos.com

Who else has given them so much of what they wanted:

Al Qaeda wanted Saddam removed from power, Bush removes Saddam from power. Al Qaeda wanted US military out of the Saudi peninsula, Bush removes US military from Saudi peninsula. Al Qaeda wanted to be treated seriously as a world class player locked in a fundamental clash of nations (for recruiting purposes) as opposed to rogue criminals, Bush declares them world class players locked in a fundamental clash of nations and refuses to view this as a law enforcement action. Al Qaeda wanted a chemical weapons lab at Kirma, the pentagon wanted to destroy it, repeatedly requested to destroy it; Bush refuses to allow it. Al Qaeda wanted the US to restrict freedoms on it's citizens, the Bush administration restricted freedoms on citizens. Al Qaeda wanted the population to be afraid, Bush tells the population to be afraid.

It's almost as if Bush was trying to earn their endorsement.

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TimeWarner now wiretap compliant. Note to self: use more encryption. A good encryption infrastructure could not only provide safe communications but could eliminate spam. If every person generated a public key or certificate then you could authenticate them as real people, while spam emails go into the junk bin.

See Also: Iowa says goodbye to privacy violating MATRIX database.

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AI entrapment? Yes, we are all against child abuse (of course some people turn a blind eye when priests are involved but that's besides the point), but producing 'chatbot' software that acts like a kid stinks of entrapment and false positives. To some people's chagrin, there simply is not a technological solution to every social problem. This article and the ones based on it make no mention of the legalities involved. I'm very curious to know the statistics of how many pedophiles get worked up online only to go out to the real world and abuse a real child after having a 'hot' conversation with a bot or an adult impersonating a child. These chatbot people could be doing far more wrong than right.

"Your honor, I'd like to call the chat program to the witness stand."

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The pepper spray ring. Its good for salads too.

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Canada bans therapuetic cloning under 'human cloning' umbrella. The difference is pretty obvious and I really don't know if this is malice or ignorance, but most people alive today may well suffer from a curable disease in their lifetime because of this. Imagine if people acted this way in the early day of vaccines. Some did, especially the Christian Scientists and other nutjobs, but the results spoke for themselves. Sadly, we can't even get to the point where the results get a chance to get discovered. In the end, the US and Canada's bans means Asia will reap the profits of stem cell research.

"While it is commendable that Canada will ban reproductive cloning, they are off-base in prohibiting therapeutic cloning," said Bernard Siegel, president of the Genetics Policy Institute. "Some of their brightest scientists will be compelled to find labs elsewhere. Canada loses the opportunity to advance the potentially greatest medical advance of our time, one that promises understanding of mankind's worst afflictions and the regeneration of tissue without rejection."

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The searchable Iraq database by Rep Waxman. Of course this should be the media's job, but hey this is America. Cowardly journalists rule the airwaves like lumbering dinosaurs. I'm waiting for the meteor to hit.

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BBC Making fun of puritanical America/FCC. Someone should really put this to music.

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The Bush administration now making infomercials. You know the kind where bad actors put on a pretend talk show? Now the White House is putting on pretend news. Where the hell is the outrage? This has to be illegal.

Two of the videos end with the voice of a woman who says: “In Washington, I’m Karen Ryan reporting.”

The production company, Home Front Communications, said “Karen Ryan” was hired to read a script prepared by the Government.

Scripts were pre-written for news anchors.

In one script the news reader is prompted to say: “In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare.

“Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities.

“Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details.” “Karen Ryan” then explains the benefits of the new law.

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P2P under fire. Again.

It is widely recognized that P2P file-sharing software currently is used almost exclusively to disseminate pornography, and to illegally trade copyrighted music, movies, software and video games.

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Kerrys and Bushs RSS feeds side by side.

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Is the middle-class an economic fiction? Interesting essay on how deregulation/lassiez faire will destroy the middle-class. In the US, 90% of all the wealth is owned by the top 10%.

But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.

Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)

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The memory hole now has a blog!

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Stem cells might lead to baldness cure. Oh man, just watch all the convulated bullshit 'ethics' 'arguments' fade away as mid-life crisis baby boomers realize stem cells can help them get laid. Suddenly, Jeebus ain't so important.

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Great Cat and Girl today. Those who give up essential liberty for security deserve jigsaws.

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DARPA grand challenge ends. No one finished, but two teams managed to drive autonomously for seven miles.

Yahoo slideshow here.

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Does America really want to bring up Vietnam this election cycle? I can't imagine how opening any of these old wounds would benefit either party.

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Al Jazeera cameraman's tale of capture by American troops. Freedom of press anyone?

Once inside the sprawling prison, Hassan says, he was greeted by US soldiers who sang "Happy Birthday" to him through his tight plastic hood, stripped him naked and addressed him only as "Al Jazeera," "boy" or "bitch." He was forced to stand hooded, bound and naked for eleven hours in the bitter autumn night air; when he fell, soldiers kicked his legs to get him up again. In the morning, Hassan says, he was made to wear a dirty red jumpsuit that was covered with someone else's fresh vomit and interrogated by two Americans in civilian clothes. They made the usual accusations that Hassan and Al Jazeera were in cahoots with "terrorists."

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Toyota aiming for commercial robot by 2010. Seems all the japanese car makers have some vanity robot project. We're this much closer to real life transformers. Maybe my next car will turn into a giant robot, walk around, and park itself. Perhaps on the weekends it'll fight crime and teach life lessons to kids named Spike.

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Expert: It had to be Al'Qaeda. Looks like the chickens are coming to roost and a certain Spanish president may very well lose in a landslide tomorrow. Beware who you follow to war and always be critical of their motives.

See Also: Here come the protests.

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"All the cool kids are doing it!" Exhibit A from The People v. Marketing.

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Howard Stern: angry liberal. Fire a man for his speech, and he will become your political enemy. Its really that simple. Look at how much Bill Maher has changed since he lost Politically Incorrect because of his 9/11 comments. I think Stern has adopted the mentality that if he's going down he's taking Bush with him. Conversely, check out how much more of a success Dennis "GOP Cheerleader" Miller has become since he switched sides. Football and now his own show. Amazing what kissing a lot of conservative ass can do for your career.

Check out Stern's Required Reading list from his site.

See Also: New liberal talk radio starting up on March 31st.

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Surprise, the Republicans have more than 3x maxxed out donors than the Dems. Under the new campaign finance laws a person or group can only give 25,000 dollars total. The Republicans so have have at least 700 maxxed donors, the dems chime in at 300. Sure, they're all beholden to their donors, but the GOP is almost 4x more owned.

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The first picture of Earth ever made from the surface of another planet. pic

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Holy crap, a trumpet playing robot. I guess Toyota heard about the QRIO robot conducting a small symphony (posted here yesterday) and launched its offensive. As far as I can tell that's a real trumpet. Amazing.

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Linux: the third-party candidate. Mandrake 10.0 Community version just came out and the features do look very promosing, but lets face facts here: Linux is years behind Windows and even farther behind OSX. I was very excited to see Kontact listed as a feature as it supposed to be groupware (you know, those meetings you make with outlook) yet according to the Kontact homepage there is only one server that can use Kontact and its groupware support is disabled until the future. That means its isn't groupware at all, just potentially groupware. I guess the bottleneck here is finding a server or modifying a mail server to work with Kontact's groupware protocol, but its really, really late in the game as MS's Exchange has been doing this for years. [more inside]

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Tenet: a man trying to keep his job. I just love this article. It cavalierly mentions a special unauthorized "spy group" that George Tenet claims ignorance about that had the Vice President's ear. On top if it all Tenet himself says he doesn't think the war rhetoric was exaggerated. Then just tell me why we didn't find stockpiles of WMDs, especially with Blix and his people telling us that they doubt they'll find anything and that they need more time to be certain. This is an old fashioned whitewash. Where the buck stop, nobody knows.

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Ohio and its theocrats. Man, how much better are we than Iran or other oppressive theorcracies? Evolution cannot even be taught in parts of this country without the religious wingnuts trying to shut it down and push their bullshit religious assumptions like "intelligent design" down the throats of students looking forward to getting the hell out of Ohio's school system and into colleges that don't censor science or try to appease local theocrats.

I love how desperate the "intelligent design" crowd is. My appendix and wisdom teeth are part of Jesus's bigger plan eh?

These people need a first amendment smack-down, and quick. You would think their tax-free church property and sunday rituals would be enough. Sadly, these people don't know how good they have it compared to other faiths and non-faith.

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