One little flash drive, 3.5 million little bills, 300 million lives in the balance:

“IT,” or the letters “I” and “T,” pronounced like the word “It,” are the initials of the title of an illustrated digital document stored on the micro flash drive pictured above and below. The 202-page, single-spaced report presents a collection of fact-based verifiable research that details the evidence for a major newly discovered national political-religious controversy in the United States. As an established author, instead of giving this discovery away for free, I have decided to offer the news story rights and all other rights to any interested global news organization, media company, religious organization, institutional collector of religious material, or private collector of religious material. Besides the general public, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam would have an interest in this information.

…

because politics and religion are involved; specifically, the discovered placement of hidden irreverent religious information on a very serious scale, the possible loss of religious-based political supporters in the U.S. in the millions for those responsible is another matter that would be the subject of national discussion in the United States. I also need to state that if it were to be claimed or argued that what has been discovered is not an intentionally hidden religious “inside joke” for the amusement of and originated by the hands of a small number of American political men of the same party, then millions of believers in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam around the world would consider this discovery carefully as a possible miracle. These are the three choices: political-religious inside joke, super-extraordinary set of coincidences (unlikely), or miracle.

Why $3.5 million?

do understand that US $3.5 million is subject to over 35% in income and related taxes. If this discovery had already been made public, the resulting controversy would have been discussed in every newspaper, news magazine, and news radio and television news program in America and most of the rest of the world. As for the concept of selling a news story, I did some research and here is a quote I found online by American journalist-author Bill O’Reilly that appeared in the July/August 1994 issue of Columbia Journalism Review in an article titled “Buying News,” in which he commented about the daily syndicated television news series, Inside Edition, that he was host of at the time, sometimes paying for stories:

“The networks are making millions off news programs. Why shouldn’t the common man participate in that? It’s capitalism at its finest.”

Well, sure. But the “common man” needs to give someone a bit more than a potential conspiracy theory tract to cash in on that.

Granted, this is the same guy that wrote the “Model-Actor’s Dictionary”. Though, I believe it should be “Actor/Model” because then the Slashie would mean more. Just ask Fabio. A “Supergirl” screenplay, telekinesis research, gosh, this guy looks like a modern day renaissance man!

Call me a skeptic, but I just can’t buy into this. Or maybe it’s just because I’m broke. Hopefully some eccentric billionare with a taste for the crazy buys it so we can all get off the edge of our seats and find out the fate of the world.

(h/t Boing Boing which also has worthwhile comments from John Parman)

Though if anyone knows where I can find a copy of Hefner’s album I’d be their best friend. I’m having to rely on a skipping burn from a friend.

This time it’s Cartnoon Network’s General Manager and Vice President Jim Staples:

In an e-mail to company employees Samples said “I deeply regret the negative publicity and expense caused to our company as a result of this campaign.”

“I feel compelled to step down in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch.”

Unfortunate, really. But I guess Turner Broadcasting has to find some head to roll.

VCU beat GMU 63-49 last night, but more importantly:

The Rams, whose 11 consecutive victories at the start of league play tied the CAA record, swept the season series from last season’s Final Four team, and clinched a first-round bye in next month’s conference tournament at Richmond Coliseum.

The Rams enjoy a two game lead over Hofstra and ODU and have only three conference games left in the season (and two more non-conference). The last big barrier for them will be ODU tomorrow, at ODU. Best of luck to the Rams on what continues to be a great season.

WotBN.net has a tip that there’s some work being done at the old Ritz on the corner of Sheppard and Park:

I was surprised today to see, as I passed by the familiar intersection of Park and Sheppard, a large green dumpster parked next to the long deserted bar formerly known as the Ritz. What more there was a fence adorned with a series of NO TRESPASSING SIGNS. Two notices were posted to the door.

Is this the beginnings of a new addition to the Devil’s Triangle barscene? Or perhaps competition for the Black Hand Coffee Shop?

Let’s hope its not Starbucks.

Agreed on the hopes that it’s not another Starbucks but, really, anything in there would be nice. I go past this place at least twice a day (biking from one end of Park to the other as I do) and I’ve always wondered when someone was going to do something with the place. Perhaps whatever goes in there can shed the ghosts of The Ritz. Or live up to them. Either way, it’s something…

Some really great shots of North Korea by Philippe Chancel:

This feature is an extraordinary event : it not only shows a country which has been hidden from us for more than half a century but reveals a regime that has « staged » its political identity in a way that never ceases to bewilder. We are about to discover a place not frozen in time, but outside of time, a place, litteraly, like no other on earth.

No country, no regime, past or present, has ever conceived such an environnement of ubiquitous propaganda, not even those who instigated or experienced the marxist-leninists revolutions of the last century. Not even Nazi Germany.

Add these photos of North Korea and you’ve got a good collection to really help visualize the country today.

(A translation of the second site is available here and was originally linked to back in June.)

Google “nobel nominees 2007″ (without the quotes) and J’s Notes is number one.

Booyah.

Thanks to John’s photos of downtown Fredericksburg.

I found out about PostSecret a few months back after stumbling across their first book in a Borders. The idea is that people send anonymous postcards with a secret on them and then this person posts them. There are some interesting cards up and it’s well worth a perusal.

Yay SUV rollovers! Sounds good to me…

And assorted school books…

But what I’d really like to discuss is hairstyles of the 1970s…

UPDATE:

Aqua Teen Bomber Force

On a more serious note:

The charges against Sean Stevens, 28, and Peter Berdovsky, 27, according to the attorney general’s press release stem from a state law making it a crime to place a hoax device in public.

But a closer read of the Massachusetts statute shows that it actually uses the term “infernal machine.” (We are not making this up.)

For the hapless duo to be convicted under this statute, prosecutors must prove each of four things: (1) Stevens and Berdovsky were the ones who placed the Aqua Teen Hunger Force devices (2) “with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort.” (3) A person must “reasonably” believe that it’s (4) a “device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion.”

Boston will probably come up with something to get these guys on and they’ll probably go for community service and “justice will be served”. And maybe I’d feel differently about this if I still commuted to DC and this happened up there one day, thus making the horrible commute downright evil, but I really think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out, but I doubt these guys will be doing any hard time.

2.5.07 UPDATE: al-mooninites

Al Gore and Rush Limbaugh?

Horrible song. Ah well.