Just got a 9 out of 10 on my Econ quiz. Not bad considering I didn’t read the whole chapter, and much better than last week’s six and above the class average of 7. Whew.

Aziz: Destroying missiles would be ‘unacceptable’

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in an interview with CNN on Saturday that it would be “unacceptable” for U.N. weapons inspectors to destroy Iraqi missiles found to violate U.N. limits and dismissed the idea of sending U.N. peacekeepers to Iraq.

A team of independent experts, commissioned by Hans Blix, chief of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), determined that during testing, Iraq’s Al Samoud 2 missiles traveled more than 93 miles (about 150 kilometers), the range limit allowed by previous U.N. resolutions restricting Iraq’s weapons capability.

Aziz said the missiles exceeded the range by less than six miles and only because they lacked guidance systems. He said they do not pose a threat that would warrant their destruction.

“They should not be destroyed because they are practically within the range we are allowed to have,” he said. “It would be quite unfair and unacceptable by any scientific and security standards … Destruction should be based on a reason, a reason linked with questions of security and peace.”

While on a trip to Rome to meet with Pope John Paul II, Aziz also dismissed a reported plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Iraq.

“Iraq is a sovereign state. It has provided all of the security needed to re-inspect us, and we don’t need United Nations troops to interfere or to be in our country,” he said.

French officials have confirmed that they have discussed with Germany and other U.N. Security Council members several proposals short of war that would increase pressure on Baghdad.

Okay, so, for starters we have them saying that it will be “unacceptable” for them to COMPLY with UN resolutions concerning their missiles because, hey, they’re only a little illegal. Welcome to the slippery slope. Then they say that Germany and France’s big proposal is unacceptable as well. You know, the proposal for a new resolution who’s sole intent is to keep Iraq free from war for at least a little longer? Yeah, that one. And they don’t want war?

Google buys Pyra Labs, the company that brings you Blogger

Weblogs are going Googling.

Google, which runs the Web’s premier search site, has purchased Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company that created some of the earliest technology for writing weblogs, the increasingly popular personal and opinion journals.

The buyout is a huge boost to an enormously diverse genre of online publishing that has begun to change the equations of online news and information. Weblogs are frequently updated, with items appearing in reverse chronological order (the most recent postings appear first). Typically they include links to other pages on the Internet, and the topics range from technology to politics to just about anything you can name. Many weblogs invite feedback through discussion postings, and weblogs often point to other weblogs in an ecosystem of news, opinions and ideas.

“I couldn’t be more excited about this,” said Evan Williams, founder of Pyra, a company that has had its share of struggles. He wouldn’t discuss terms of the deal, which he said was signed on Thursday, when we spoke Saturday. But he did say it gives Pyra the “resources to build on the vision I’ve been working on for years.”

Part of that vision, shared by other blogging pioneers, has been to help democratize the creation and flow of news in a world where giant companies control so much of what most people see, hear and read. Weblogs are also becoming a valuable communication tool for groups of people, and have begun to infiltrate the corporate, university and government spheres.

Just three and a half years old, Pyra’s Blogger software has 1.1 million registered users, Williams said. He estimated that about 200,000 of them are actively running weblogs. Pyra charges for some higher-capability services not available in the base configuration, but most of its registered users don’t pay.

Google is known best for its search capabilities, but the Pyra buyout isn’t the company’s first foray into creating or buying Internet content. Two years ago Google bought Deja.com, a company that had collected and continued to update Usenet “newsgroups,” Internet discussion forums. More recently, it created Google News, a site that gauges the collective thoughts of more than 4,000 news sites on the Net.

But now Google will surge to the forefront of what David Krane, the company’s director of corporate communications, called “a global self-publishing phenomenon that connects Internet users with dynamic, diverse points of view while also enabling comment and participation.”

“We’re thrilled about the many synergies and future opportunities between our two companies,” he said in a statement on Saturday. He didn’t elaborate further on what those synergies and opportunities might be, but said more details would emerge soon. Users of the Blogger software and hosting service won’t see any immediate changes, he added.

For Williams and his five co-workers, now Google employees, the immediate impact will be to put their blog-hosting service, called Blog*Spot, on the vast network of server computers Google operates. This will make the service more reliable and robust.

This is great, really. It give Blogger a more solid foundation (not that they didn’t have one before) financially and hardware wise and helps promote the service even more. Throw on top of that the fact that Google seems to be one of the decent, non-corporate internet businesses still out there, and you’ve got a good deal. Congrats to Evan and the Pyra folks.

Man Wraps Entire House In Plastic After Terror Warning

Warnings from the Department of Homeland Security to get duct tape and plastic prompted a Connecticut man to wrap his entire house in plastic, according to a Local 6 News report.

Paul West said that he’d rather be safe than sorry.

So he bought hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting, batten boards, stapleguns, and ladders, to seal up his Winsted home.

“I just have all this energy from tension and anxiety and I don’t know what to do with it,” West said.”Basically, I’m doing what the government says we should do. I may be doing it a little more energetically than some folks, but I’m trying to be pro-active rather than reactive.”

The materials for the project cost about $250.

“My wife’s not happy, but she puts up with it,” West said. “My kids think it’s a good thing to do.”

Okay, first over, YOU’RE IN FREAKIN’ CONNECTICUT!!!! What the hell are terrorists going to hit up there? Christ almighty, this country’s full of nutcases. Second of all, hell, the ONLY way you can keep out some chemicals or gasses in the event of an attack is to make the place air tight, so no air gets in OR out, and, well, that means you suffocate eventually, so good job! God, I’m embarrassed for him.

The terrorists have won, folks.

Thanks, Chewy.

Iraqi Official Snubs Israeli Journalist

Touching off hoots and boos, a top Iraqi official snubbed an Israeli journalist Friday, refusing to answer the correspondent’s question about whether Baghdad might attack Israel in a case of a U.S. military strike on Iraq.

Correspondent Menachem Gantz, based in Rome for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, asked Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at a news conference in the Italian capital: “Are you considering any kind of attack as a possibility against Israel in case of an American attack?”

Aziz, invited by the Foreign Press Association to give the news conference, responded: “When I came to this press conference it was not in my agenda to answer questions by the Israeli media. Sorry.”

Some journalists in the packed room of the association’s headquarters whistled and booed at that reply.

The association’s president, Eric Jozsef, a French journalist, urged Aziz to respond.

“No, I’m not going to answer,” the Iraqi official said.

The room was packed with about 100 journalists, with scores of others listening from another room. About 20 of the journalists, including Israeli and German correspondents, walked out, Gantz among them.

Later at the news conference, another journalist asked the same question and Aziz replied: “We don’t have the means to attack anyone outside our territory.”

Asshole.

Seems there was a protest in front of the French Embassy yesterday.

And counter demonstrations.

Duct tape makers swing into high gear

Duct tape manufacturers are quintupling production to meet demand from a skittish U.S. public intent on protecting homes from terrorists.

Consumers have snapped up the ubiquitous adhesive since Monday, when federal authorities listed it among key products that could provide protection against chemical or biological attack.

Manco, which supplies Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and Ace Hardware under the Duck brand, will boost production at its Hickory, N.C., factory this weekend, adding six shifts. Rival Nashua, which supplies Home Depot, Costco and Auto Zone, began shifting production from industrial tapes to consumer products at its Franklin, Ky., plant Thursday.

”Huge demand started on the East Coast Monday, and it has rolled across the rest of the country as the week wore on,” says Gary Holmes, spokesman for Nashua parent Tyco International.

And let me use this to lead into a rant.

Okay, I understand the government sent out warnings this week, but I really think the public wasn’t overreacting as much as the media played it up, at least, not at first. And then they hit the story and fed the panic. I don’t think it ever reached the levels the media made it seem to, but it did go a bit too far. And I blame the media.

And not the Government. No, I think the warning should have been sent out. The Department of Homeland Security is in a tough spot, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

If they send out a warning and everyone flips out but nothing happens, why did they do that?

If they don’t send out the warning and an attack does happen, why weren’t we warned?

I mean, the Administration and Intellegence agencies were hit hard after September 11th for not telling people something was up, so now we’re going to hear about every little thing.

We asked for it, so now we’re gonna get it.

Latvian PM says he is a mad Martian

Latvian Prime Minister Einars Repse, responding wryly to criticism of his performance, says he is a mad Martian who had come to live on Earth.

“You all know I am a caught-out Martian and clearly nuts,” Repse, a former central banker, told a news conference on Friday on his first 100 days in office.

O JASON UR SO B3FY1!1! WTF LOL

404 page - These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

Salon warns it may not survive beyond February

- Online magazine publisher Salon Media Group Inc. on Friday warned that it may not survive beyond this month if it can’t raise more money to pay its rent and other bills.

The San Francisco-based company painted a grim financial picture in a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Things are so bad, Salon said, it stopped paying rent for its San Francisco headquarters in December, prompting the landlord to issue a Jan. 29 demand for a $200,000 payment.

To raise money, the company said it may sell its rights to $5.6 million worth of advertising on a Cablevision Systems Corp. subsidiary for as little as $1 million.

Friday’s was the latest in a series of dire projections made by Salon. The company warned late last year it might go out of business, but then raised enough money to stay alive temporarily. Salon’s troubles caused its stock to be delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Market in November.

Although its news coverage and commentary have attracted a loyal audience, Salon hasn’t been able to make money. The company said it lost another $1.3 million during the final three months of 2002, bringing its cumulative deficit to $81 million.

Well, problem number one, you’re paying $200,000 a month in rent for offices in San Francisco! Move to a cheaper area!

Happy VD!

Oh, Dolly, we hardly knew ewe. Heh, get it? You - ewe? Ha ha? Nevermind.

‘Photograph shows cracks on shuttle’s wing’

The Israeli newspaper Maariv on Monday published a picture of the American space shuttle Columbia apparently showing two cracks on its left wing.

The picture was taken 11 days before the shuttle broke up on its way back to Earth on Saturday, killing all seven crew members.

The photograph was extracted from footage taken by a camera onboard the shuttle during a live satellite video conference between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Colonel Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli to travel to space.

During the 15-minute conversation with Sharon and other Israeli officials, Ramon offered to share his view of Earth from the shuttle.

The video caught part of the shuttle’s left wing, showing two “long” cracks, according to the newspaper.

The fissures could have been the cause of the technical problems experienced by the shuttle which led to its breakup over Texas, 16 minutes before it was due to land, the newspaper stated.

Really?

Man, I love Snopes.

I don’t know why I let myself get pulled into these moronic discussions. Did you know there are people who still insist that the attack on the Pentagon was not an airplane but a missile fired from an American jet? Yeah! Nevermind that every jackass that’s pushed this theory lives in Washington STATE or France or, at the very least, WAS NOT IN WASHINGTON OR NEW YORK THE DAY OF THE ATTACKS!!!! Nope, they think they know it all because, well, look at the pictures. You know, the ones that don’t show any wreckage. My, people really do piss me off sometimes.

The Muslum World The Average American View

11 key questions about the universe

A panel of US physicists and astronomers has identified a list of eleven fundamental questions about the nature of the universe that will require the combined skills of particle physicists and astrophysicists to answer. The questions are in “From quarks to the cosmos”, the first report from the committee on the physics of the universe set up by the National Academy of Sciences.

SBC enforcing all-encompassing Web patent

SBC Communications Inc is enforcing a patent it owns that, it claims, covers the use of frame-like user interfaces in web sites, it emerged this week Kevin Murphy writes. . If your web site uses a frames or a persistent user interface, then you could be in infringement.

Using SBC?s interpretation of its patent, hundreds of thousands of web sites, including those of many SBC?s own hosting customers, many of the web?s biggest sites, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office itself, could be in infringement.

“SBC Intellectual Property currently is working with several commercial web site owners regarding patent licensing agreements related to specific techniques for enabling consistent navigation features from different pages of a web site,” SBC said in a statement yesterday.

ScrewedCentral.com

When you care enough to send the very best.

Red squirrels evolving with global warming

Red squirrels are rapidly evolving in response to global warming - they are the first mammals in which such genetic changes have been seen. The discovery could bode well for other species struggling to adapt to new conditions, say researchers.

Andrew McAdam, at the University of Alberta, Canada, and colleagues monitored four generations of squirrels in the Yukon, Canada, over 10 years. They found that female squirrels now give birth on average 18 days earlier in the year than their great-grandmothers.

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s answer

One of the first agreements that was made between the groups organizing the Feb. 16 anti-war protest was that none of the coalitions would propose rally speakers who had publicly attacked or worked to discredit one of the coalition groups. When members of the Tikkun Community, who have actively participated in the organizing meetings for Feb. 16, suggested to Bay Area United for Peace and Justice, that it propose Michael Lerner as a speaker, it was explained by members of UFPJ that since he had publicly attacked A.N.S.W.E.R in both the New York Times and Tikkun community e-mail newsletters, his inclusion in the program would violate the agreement among the Feb. 16 organizing groups.

It was this issue — Michael Lerner’s public attacks against one of the anti-war coalitions - that resulted in his not being formally proposed as a speaker on Feb. 16; his views on Israel and Palestine had nothing to do with it. Within the anti-war movement, there is a wide spectrum of diverse and opposing views regarding Israel and Palestine, and those views will be heard on Feb. 16. On that day, two rabbis, David Cooper and Pam Frydman-Baugh, both of whose views are similar to those of Michael Lerner, will be speaking. To reiterate, the fact that Michael Lerner was not invited to speak on Feb. 16 was not the consequence of a veto by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. None of the coalitions have veto power over the Feb. 16 program.

We strongly abhor all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism. At the same time, we don’t believe that criticism of Israeli government policies should be labeled as anti-Semitism any more than criticism of U.S. government policy should be labeled as anti-American.

So, if you’ve criticized us, you’re obviously against us. Hey, wait, isn’t that the “you’re either with us or against us” line you all like to hate so much that came from, oh, I don’t know, THE PRESIDENT?

Instructions for Giving Your Cat a Pill Horribly accurate.

Man requests Jesus for legal help

A Missouri man is calling on a higher power for his legal representation.

Richard John Adams requested Jesus Christ as his trial attorney during a hearing Wednesday on tampering charges.

Adams, who described himself as a patriot and a Christian, says lawyers are “devils” who are trying to undermine the Constitution.

Ozark County Circuit Judge John Moody told Adams the only person who can speak for him in the courtroom is a lawful attorney.

Adams is charged with tampering with a judge for hostile comments made during an earlier traffic case.

He faces a maximum of 14 years in prison if convicted of both counts.

And if he does get Jesus to defend him, what jury would convict him? Would YOU want that hanging over you come judgment time?

Chew’s Place had this stuff first, go visit and tell her hello.

The Biggest Threat To Peace Which country really poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003? TIME asks for readers’ views And, of course, being an internet survey, it is completely accurate. Christ, why do people do online polls anymore?

Cross-Blog Debate on the War With Iraq

Round Two of The Truth Laid Bear and Pro-War Bloggers versus Stand Down and Anti-War Bloggers. I’d jump in, but I don’t really fit in either side well enough. I might hit on it later, though.

State Can Make Inmate Sane Enough to Execute

he federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled yesterday that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute. Without the drugs, the prisoner, Charles Laverne Singleton, could not be put to death under a United States Supreme Court decision that prohibits the execution of the insane.

Yesterday’s 6-to-5 decision is the first by a federal appeals court to allow such an execution.

“Singleton presents the court with a choice between involuntary medication followed by an execution and no medication followed by psychosis and imprisonment,” Judge Roger L. Wollman wrote for the majority in ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Judge Wollman said the first choice was the better one, at least when the drugs were generally beneficial to the prisoner. He said courts did not need to consider the ultimate result of medicating the prisoner.

“Eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication,” he wrote.

So that begs the question, if he is not sane enough to execute without the drugs, was he sane enough when he committed the crime in order to be convicted and sentenced to death? I mean, they say his mental health deteriorated in 1987, well after he was convicted in 1981 for the 1979 crime, but is that really when they first manifested themselves or when they were finally diagnosed?

The American Medical Association’s ethical guidelines prohibit giving medical treatment that would make people competent to be executed, said Dr. Howard Zonana, who teaches psychiatry and law at Yale.

“You can’t treat someone for the purpose of executing them,” he said.

Kinda defeats the Hippocratic Oath, eh?