Just another WordPress site
Andy Baio of waxy.org has created InfocomBot for AOL Instant Messenger, which allows you to play some classic Infocom text games via IM, including: Deadline, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Lurking Horror, Planetfall, Shade, Wishbringer, and of course, Zork 1-3. Very cool…
Ever get confused by three-letter airport codes? Some of them make sense, but others are a bit more arcane. The site Airport Codes: The ABC’s: A History and Explanation does a nice job of explaining some of the more popular codes and the history behind them. A quick Google search for a more comprehensive list resulted in a site entitled World Airport Codes. This is a very thorough site, allowing you to search not only by airport code, country, and airport, but also each airport entry contains a summary of very useful data, including runway length, longtitude and latitude, and elevation. Pretty cool stuff for us aviation geeks…
Reuters reports that Virgin Atlantic Airways “scrapped plans to install bright-red urinals shaped like women’s open lips at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, saying it had received complaints they were offensive.” Well, duh; the urinal design’s name, “Kisses,” wasn’t fooling anybody…
In perhaps the most high profiled “tell-all” from one of Dubya’s former aides, The Washington Post is reporting on details of a new book by Richard A. Clarke. Clarke was Bush’s counterterrorism coordinator and tells tales of Dubya’s Iraq paranoia preceding and in the wake of 9/11/2001. Clarke is a long time White House fixture and served as a senior aide for more than 10 years under Bush 41 and Clinton as well. The Washington Post takes great pains to say that they have corroborated one of the more damning stories of Dubya’s obsession. I can’t really do justice to this information so please take a look at the link. The Washington Post has really done their homework this time and I hope I hope the fake news outlets give this story the same gusto.
-ABB 2004
Follow-up [by driko]: I came upon an interesting link today that serves as a pretty good follow-up to Shaft’s post. Congressman Henry Waxman had a report drafted entitled “Iraq On The Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements On Iraq” (Adobe Acrobat .pdf link) that is “a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq,” basically resulting in a database of “misleading” statements the administration has made about Iraq. It’s definitely very one-sided, but the report leaves little doubt as to the misguided agenda W has been pursuing since 9/11.
In a recent interview on Face The Nation, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was questioned about the administration’s assertion that Iraq posed an “immediate threat” to the United States, which has been cited as the primary reason for invasion. In this video excerpt of the interview (links to page with embedded Windows Media Video), Rumsfeld denies that anyone in the administration made that claim. However, when the interviewers provide several incontrovertible “citations” (at Rumsfeld’s request) demonstrating otherwise, he futilely tries to backpedal, although it’s obvious he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I know that this is just a typically revisionist political tactic, but in this case the implications of these assertions are way too serious to just wish away. I’m getting sick and tired of this administration’s political maneuvering at the expense of what is left of our foreign policy, to say nothing of domestic issues.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad that Saddam Hussein has been deposed and Iraq has been liberated. That should have been taken care of over ten years ago in the First Gulf War. However, W squandered the international outpouring of support generated by the tragedy of 9-11. He wasted a golden opportunity to bolster old alliances and forge new ones, spurning the entire world community in his unilateral pursuit of vengeance and focusing the enmity of almost the entire world on the United States. History will show what W has wrought, as the effects of his incompetent administration will reverberate for generations to come.
This is sort of old news, but it’s still pretty cool. In an effort to capitalize on the success of the Lord Of The Rings movies and promote tourism to New Zealand, Air New Zealand has declared itself the “Airline to Middle-Earth.” To this end, it has emblazoned much of its fleet with characters from the movie and scenic views of the New Zealand locations where it was filmed. Very nice, but it’s no Simpsons plane… 😉
Last week, Kentucky Republican Congressman Ron Lewis introduced House bill HR 3920, “The Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004,” which proposes to “let Congress, by a two-thirds vote of each house, override any Supreme Court decision that presumes to review the constitutionality of an act of Congress.” Lewis’ asinine proposal is apparently a response to “the shenanigans of ‘activist judges,’ such as those on Massachusetts’ Supreme Court—who recently ruled that it’s discriminatory to prohibit gay marriages.” The audacity of trying to change one of the basic tenets of the Constitution, that the three branches of government have equal power to check and balance one another, just boggles my mind. I sincerely hope that everyone realizes what a crock of shit this is, and that it’s just a ploy to get Lewis’ name in print (it worked, didn’t it?), because no one can be that stupid, can they? Maybe I shouldn’t ask…
MTV reports that J.J. Jackson, one of MTV’s first VJs, died yesterday at the age of 62 of a heart attack. Unfortunately, I never had cable TV in the ‘80s, so I didn’t really get the full experience of MTV and its original VJs. Still, I’m saddened by this news… 🙁
