They don't actually do the deed, or even attempt it, but the book is - according to early snippets - replete with deep-seated anger and elegantly nasty epithets hurled at both the President and his cabinet. Mr Baker's publisher, Alfred Knopf, plans to release the book on 24 August, on the eve of the Republican National Convention in New York. To call it a provocation would be an understatement. The author and publishers have no intention of giving anybody ideas - to do so would be a criminal offence - but they are certainly playing very close to the edge in a United States that, in the wake of the 11 September attacks, has shown no compunction about locking people up and asking questions later.

There was no immediate official reaction yesterday after extracts from Checkpoint were published in The Washington Post. A spokesman for the Secret Service, the uniformed outfit charged with protecting the President and other officials, told the Post merely that "without seeing the work, a determination can't be made at this time".

Update: BoingBoing reader Michael Reeve says, "John Walkenbach maintains a Nicholson Baker fan site - and in this blog entry, he comments on the amount of hate mail he's received as a result of the novel based around an attempt on the President's life."

"Recognition of tactile information will be very important for future generations of robots," says Takao Someya at the University of Tokyo who developed the skin. A sense of touch would help them to identify objects, carry out delicate tasks and avoid collisions. But while a lot of effort has gone into vision and voice recognition for robots, touch sensitivity is still fairly rudimentary.

Our own skin contains a battery of touch receptors that produce nerve signals when pressed. For gentle pressures, the main sensors are tiny bulbs of layered tissue called Meissner's corpuscles. Their behaviour is mimicked in plastics such as polyvinylidene fluoride, which generate an electric field when squeezed and are used to make pressure-sensitive pads for computer keyboards and other touch-triggered devices.

The Boston Globe: Referred to the expletive as a “vulgar directive” and provided no other clues.

Calgary Sun: “(Bleep) off” or “Go (bleep) yourself.”

Daily News (New York): “Go f— yourself.”

"While a scale model of the Da Vinci-mobile has been observed... to move, change direction, start and stop - thus proving that the design works - the full-size model weighing hundreds of pounds is seen, even by its own builders, as too hazardous to set loose on an unsuspecting public."

# Neck bolt!
# All 3 entries.
# Tanned skin, natural lips, brown eyes.
# I am the only owner
# Doll has no odors.

"There is little doubt that counter-measures will be developed to foil our detection schemes," says Farid. "Our hope, however, is that as more authentication tools are developed it will become increasingly more difficult to create convincing digital forgeries."

I didn't think Kageyama wasn't harsh enough about the hideous proprietary locked format the Librie uses for books. He wrote, "I'm not wild about buying books that self-destruct after 60 days." This self-destruct feature is sickening. Who would buy a Librie with this deadly defect built in? (Sony is making a similar mistake with its music players.) I hope somebody with a sensible DRM policy starts using these great display screens. Link

Paul Saffo, research director at The Institute for the Future, a technology research firm, compared the concern about the Coke cans to when the Central Intelligence Agency banned Furbies, the stuffed toys that could repeat phrases. "There's things generals should stay up late at night worrying about," he said. "A talking Coke can isn't one of them."

Consider the progress of just the past 15 years. There are now robots that can get around on two legs, participate in simple conversations, and manipulate objects in rudimentary ways. Of course, we don't yet have a bot that can navigate downtown Manhattan, tie its shoelaces, or even tell a chair from a desk. MIT's Cynthia Breazeal holds out hope that within five years, robots will cross a critical threshold, becoming partners rather than tools - in other words, we'll have friends, not appliances. And while there are a number of extremely complex problems to solve before we can make something as advanced as Sonny, the star of I, Robot, we're getting there, one piece at a time. To find out where the state of the art lies, Wired surveyed the projects that might one day add up to an android just like the rest of us.

BoingBoing reader Jean-Luc adds, "The official Tour de France website will have a photoblog, an official newsblog -- le journal du tour, and also 4 blogs (called "les chroniques") that will inform people on the official website. There is a non-official blog about Tour de France there (in english)."

Update: Frankenbana-not? BoingBoing reader Matt Grommes says, "According to a few stories about this announcement like this one, Chiquita is denying that the bananas will be genetically engineered. Whether that's to get out from under the GM stigma early or the truth, who knows." And BoingBoing reader Simon Fodden believes the real story's even bigger. "It's about the very survival of the yellow fellow -- The Beeb says 'Edible bananas may disappear within a decade if urgent action is not taken to develop new varieties resistant to blight.' (Link)" Nevermind, BoingBoing reader Joe Sislow says, "I can't believe the BBC picked that one up. Snopes has the scoop -- the parasite (Sigatoka) does exist, but the imminent threat is more hype than fact."

Fleshbot: They quote Alec Baldwin as saying he never met you.
DB: Oh God, of course he would say that. But it happened, trust me. I still have the vibrator. Maybe I can scrape off the evidence and get a DNA sample or something?
Fleshbot: But not the Hershey bar, right?
DB: No, he ate that (laughs).

"Your imagination is the only limiting factor with the NailJet Pro! No matter your taste or lifestyle, the NailJet Pro offers selections for everyone, in millions of colors and virtually any design you can dream of. From mild to wild, crazy to conservative, the NailJet Pro will decorate your nails in vivid color and photographic clarity. You can even add your own artwork or digital photographs!"

"At this stage the chain does not actually do anything useful. 'But it's an important proof of principle,' says Lieber. He says that by applying a more elaborate mask to a woven network of silicon nanowires it should be possible to create complex circuits in one go.

To prove his point, he hopes to make a much more sophisticated structure that can perform complex calculations. 'We're trying to make a programmable series of literally thousands of these transistors.'

Update: Boing Boing reader Brian Hewitt says, "Sony unveiled a totally new Digital Player today that's supposed to be better than iPod. Due for release by mid-August in the States."

The reasons I volunteered were hardly simple. When are our motivations ever straightforward? I wanted to prove my own theories of gender and identity, solve one of those big riddles of the universe — are men and women really from different planets? is it nature or nurture? — but there was also the simple element of curiosity. No one had ever acquired both the body and the brain of the opposite sex. And I admit, being the first had a strong attraction for me, doing something that would earn me a place in the history books, put me next to Doreen Kimura and Sigmund Freud.

Professor Terry Davidson and associate professor Susan Swithers, both in the Department of Psychological Sciences, found that artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body's natural ability to "count" calories based on foods' sweetness. This finding may explain why increasing numbers of people in the United States lack the natural ability to regulate food intake and body weight. The researchers also found that thick liquids aren't as satisfying – calorie for calorie – as are more solid foods.

NARRATOR: Sooner or later this special relationship with a regime that Amnesty International condemns as a wide-spread human rights violator (cut to video of public beheading) would come back to haunt the Bushes. Now, after 9/11, it was an embarrassment and they preferred that no one ask any questions.

CAROL ASHLEY: The investigation should have begun on September 12th; there's no reason why it shouldn't have. Three thousand people were dead, it was a murder, and it should have gotten started immediately.

NARRATOR: First, Bush tried to stop Congress from setting up its own 9/11 investigation.

PRESIDENT BUSH: It's important for us to not reveal how we collect information; that's what the enemy wants. And we're fighting an enemy.

1. Acacia Technologies' digital media transmission patent, which the company defines as covering "the transmission and receipt of digital content via the Internet, cable, satellite and other means." The EFF is worried that Acacia, which has already sued several large communications companies, is unfairly targeting small audio- and video-streaming websites.

2. Clear Channel's Instant Live patent, which covers technology used to produce instant recordings of live concerts. The media giant recently bought the patent and is now going after artists who choose to give fans CDs of their shows.

3. Acceris Communication's voice over IP technology patent. Schultz said Acceris is targeting smaller VOIP players. "They're sending (the) patents to investors," said Schultz, "trying to intimidate the investors."

After the [training] session in Little Rock, two newly initiated Highway Watch members sat down for the catered barbecue lunch. The truckers, who haul hazardous material across 48 states, explained how easy it is to spot "Islamics" on the road: just look for their turbans. Quite a few of them are truck drivers, says William Westfall of Van Buren, Ark. "I'll be honest. They know they're not welcome at truck stops. There's still a lot of animosity toward Islamics." Eddie Dean of Fort Smith, Ark., also has little doubt about his ability to identify Muslims: "You can tell where they're from. You can hear their accents. They're not real clean people."

That kind of prejudice is hard to undo, but it's a shame Beatty's slide show did not mention that in the U.S., it's almost always Sikhs who wear turbans, not Muslims. Last year a Sikh truck driver who was wearing a turban was shot twice while standing near his tractor trailer in Phoenix, Ariz. He survived the attack, which police are investigating as a hate crime.

As you probably know, Thomas Kinkade, the famous "Painter of Light," has made millions of dollars with his customized prints of day-glo cottages against backdrops of enchanted forests. He has a team of "Kinkade-trained Master Highlighters" who go over reproductions of his work with oil paint. For this show, artists Jim Blanchard, Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley, Robert Hardgrave, Claire Johnson, Charles Krafft, Pat Moriarity, Erin Norlin, Marion Peck, Benton Peugh, Robert Rini, Bonni Reid, Mark Ryden and Kipling West have highlighted pages from the Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light with Scripture: 2004 Deluxe Wall Calendar, in their own distinct styles.

And Jack T. Chick is the famous artist-publisher of a series of incendiary 3" x 5", 24-page religious comic book tracts. Loaded with scare tactics and jabs at "enemies" of Christianity, Chick's comics vividly depict the horrors of Hell for anyone who neglects to convert to Christianity. Since 1961 Chick has created 175 proselytizing tracts, which have had more than 500,000,000 copies published in over 100 languages worldwide. Artists Tom Bagley, David R. Drake, Jed Dunkerly, Nathan Eyring, Rod Filbrandt, Cliff Hare, David Lasky, Deborah F Lawrence, Eric Reynolds, Johnny Ryan and Kamilla White have each created work inspired by Chick. In contrast to the Kinkade artists, they worked with no specific assignment, and came up with equally diverse outcomes: David R. Drake reduced an entire tract to its minimum visual information, creating 23 individual tiles still closely correlated with the original, Eric Reynolds has painted an original portrait of the reclusive Jack T. Chick, and David Lasky will display the original art for an entire tract written by Jim Woodring intended to be traded for unwanted religious pamphlets.

No link, but you can find out more about Roq la Rue here.

"The new method records through multiple microphones (eight for voice, 16 for music) spaced around a head-sized ball or cylinder. The sound is played back through headphones with a small tracking device attached to the top to follow head movements. As you turn your head while listening, the system mixes sound from different microphones, reproducing what you would hear if you were in the room."

In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the court ruled that although ISPs provide the hardware and technology, they aren't responsible for what people download. The court ruled that companies providing wide access to the web are "intermediaries" who are not bound by federal copyright legislation.

In Tokyo alone, the number of shops registered to rent out pets grew to 115 as of March, up from 17 just three years earlier.

Each person who rents a dog by the hour is given a leash, some tissues and a plastic bag - in case the pooch has to answer the call of nature. They also get strict instructions not to let the dogs run free, to keep them in the shade on hot summer days and refrain from giving them snacks.

The area has undergone something of a makeover recently with posters and figures of animated beautiful girls plastered all over the place and the emergence of cafes and restaurants devoted to "cosplay," featuring girls dressed as animated heroes, maids, etc. Even a public area, such as the floor space of JR Akihabara station, has got into the act, with a 3-meter-round poster of the face of a beautiful girl appearing in an animation video. Kiichiro Morikawa, a professor at the Kuwasawa Design Research Institute, said, "An increasing number of animation goods and game shops have opened their doors and changed the area into an 'otaku' (geek) Mecca." Psychologists say these "otaku" or geeks are regressive, have poor social ability, and have never fully matured as adults. "Therefore, they are not good at communicating with others, cannot date real human beings, and instead adore an imaginary character," said one.

[S]oldiers aren't the only ones in danger. Civilian employees of Kellog. Brown and Root -- which provide many of the civilian services on base -- are also at risk. Many of the food service employees, mostly foreign workers from poor nations like the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh; say theyre very frightened by the mortars. One says he sleeps on the ground pulling sandbags around him, but while the mortars haven't got him yet, the sand fleas have. He shows me the red bites on arms.

Four Philippine workers were killed at the largest Army supply base in Iraq last April when insurgent rockets hit their living quarters at Camp Anaconda. But those inside the camp aren't completely surrounded by hostility. At dusk in Guard Tower 7, soldiers watch Iraqi boys play soccer not more than a hundred yards away. Some Iraqi civilians even live in shacks right next to the massive walls surrounding the base.

"Hi Nora," one of the soldiers says, waving to a shy ten year old Iraqi girl popping her head out from behind a sheet that covers the opening to the mud and clapboard shack. "Hi Michael," she says in a high-pitched voice, waving then quickly ducking back inside.

The game he created is about fighting cancer, and it reflects Ben's own battle with leukemia. It takes place inside the body, on a playfield of mutating cells. The hero, a boy on a hovering skateboard, uses high-tech weapons to destroy these cells by collecting the seven shields that protect against common side effects of chemotherapy.

It's not easy to get the shields -- they're in the hands of monsters that have to be zapped. FireMonster guards the fever shield and hurls molten lava. VampMonster guards the bleeding shield and sends out vampire bats. Robarf guards the vomit shield "with big smelly green globs." And QBall, guardian of the hair-loss shield, shoots out billiard balls.

The SENT exhibition takes place in the "Brunette" Meeting Room on the fourth floor of the Standard Hotel Downtown LA, 550 South Flower Street. SENT will debut for public viewing at a reception from 7-10 pm on Saturday, July 10. The exhibit will be open for public viewing from Sunday, July 11 through Saturday July 17 from 12pm to 5pm daily. Admission is free of charge, and the project is sponsored in part by Motorola. Oh! and did I mention that the Downtown Standard now offers free WiFi throughout the hotel? Come all ye bloggers.

Details here. At left, two phonecam photos submitted by anonymous public participants.

Coleman is a mainstream European journalist who has conducted interviews with top officials from a number of countries - her January interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell was apparently solid enough to merit posting on the State Department's Web site.

Unfortunately, it appears that Coleman failed to receive the memo informing reporters that they are supposed to treat this president with kid gloves. Instead, she confronted him as any serious journalist would a world leader.

She asked tough questions about the mounting death toll in Iraq, the failure of U.S. planning, and European opposition to the invasion and occupation. And when the president offered the sort of empty and listless "answers" that satisfy the White House press corps - at one point, he mumbled, "My job is to do my job" - she tried to get him focused by asking precise follow-up questions.

The president complained five times during the course of the interview about the pointed nature of Coleman's questions and follow-ups - "Please, please, please, for a minute, OK?" the hapless Bush pleaded at one point, as he demanded his questioner go easy on him.

The interview is also available as an MP3.

Fast Company permits links to the Fastcompany.com Web site. However, Fast Company reserves the right to withdraw permission for any link and requests that you not link for any impermissible purpose or in a manner that suggests that Fast Company promotes or endorses your Web site.

Fastcompany.com does not allow framing of its Web site content.

That permission-free world made the economy that Fast Company services possible. It is dangerous and irresponsible for Fast Company's lawyers to tell the lie to Fast Company's readers that there is a legitimate basis for asserting the right to control who may link to your website (you don't need a policy to tell people that links that create the fraudulent impression of an endorsement are illegal -- fraud is illegal even if you're not on notice about it).

This is a step in the right direction, but only a small one. The faxed-permission-form was ridiculous, but the real evil in it wasn't the ridiculousness, it was this damaging lie about permission being required for links.

I really hope that Fast Company acts like the heroes I know they can be here, changing their linking policy to something like:

The Web exists because no one has the right to grant or withhold permission for links. Fast Company exists because of the Web. Accordingly, we neither grant nor deny permission to link to our site, and urge you to do the same.

Link to Beak of Putrefaction MP3. Buy a clear vinyl 7" for $5 postage paid at this Link. (Thanks for hosting, Leonard Lin! And special thanks to Chris -- founder of Reptilian Records and manager of HATEBEAK's feathered frontman Waldo.)

The high court divided 5-to-4 over a law passed in 1998, signed by then-President Clinton and now backed by the Bush administration. The majority said a lower court was correct to block the law from taking effect because it likely violates the First Amendment. The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics of the law said that it would restrict far too much material that adults may legally see and buy, the court said. "Today's ruling from the court demonstrates that there are many less restrictive ways to protect children without sacrificing communication intended for adults," said ACLU associate litigation director Ann Beeson in a statement. Beeson argued the case before the court in 2001 and again last March.

Now suppose a big spammer wanted to poison a particular word, so that messages containing that word would be (mis)classified as spam. The spammer could sprinkle the target word throughout the word salad in his outgoing spam messages. When users classified those messages as spam, the targeted word would develop a negative score in the users' Bayesian spam filters. Later, messages with the targeted word would likely be mistaken for spam.

This attack could even be carried out against a particular targeted user. By feeding that user a steady diet of spam (or pseudo-spam) containing the target word, a malicious person could build up a highly negative score for that word in the targeted user's filter.

Imagine being able to view and listen -- and even download and own -- extracts from the world's largest television and radio archive.

53% of internet users download content for their own compilations 55. For the first time, the BBC will open up its treasure chest of programmes to the public who own it and make its contents available to individuals and to families for learning, for creativity and for pleasure. Two-thirds of current and prospective broadband users say they are interested in the Creative Archive service.

The BBC Creative Archive will establish a pool of high-quality content which can be legally drawn on by collectors, enthusiasts, artists, musicians, students, teachers and many others, who can search and use this material non-commercially. And where exciting new works and products are made using this material, we will showcase them on BBC services.

Initially we will release factual material, beginning with extracts from natural history programmes. As demand grows, we are committed to extending the Creative Archive across all areas of our output.

Update: Check out this quote from new BBC Director General Mark Thompson, from today's press conference: "We want to builld a digital world based on universal access, open standards and unencryption [sic?]. Encryption, subscription and other forms of digital exclusion lead to widespread welfare losses. They may have a role within the total broadcasting ecology, but the idea that they can successfully replace free-to-air public service broadcasting flies in the face both of economic theory and real-world experience." (Thanks, Adam!)

While the money behind IBM's advertising machine makes their take on FOSS particularly visible, they hold no monopoly on the interpretation of FOSS's meaning and importance. This is evidenced by the extensive use of FOSS as an iconic tactic by leftist activists around the world. Also bearing a three letter acronym, the Independent Media Centers (IMC) are a socio-political project whose mission and spirit are completely contrary to the goals of a large corporation like IBM.

Some of the Disneyland items he's made...

- Invented/installed the fireflys in Pirates of the Carribean

- Came up with putting the green-eyed rats at the end of Pirates as you go up back to ground level. We have a bunch of them at home and put them in windows and under the Christmas tree

- Invented the light flicker-ers that have been used at Dland for almost 30 years to make plain lightbulbs in opaque houseings look like they are flame

- Real-time population counter for Disneyland. Even went to the president's office and installed the LED display on his desk (prior to the popularization of "computer networks")

For instance, most of our default templates display archive links in a list. But really, the archive tags simply provide the names and URLs of all the archive files, and we can do whatever we want with them. Do you know how to make a pull-down menu in HTML? Think that might be a more efficient format for your three years of daily archives? Great! Move the archive tags out of the list and into a menu.

The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.

"Go ahead and shop for birthday presents on the family Mac. No information about where you visit on the Web, personal information you enter or pages you visit are saved or cached."

The record and movies industries are pressuring Congress to pass a bill this week that will threaten the iPod and peer-to-peer networks. I just sent free faxes urging my reps in Congress to stop the INDUCE Act. Convincing even a single Senator will force a real debate on the bill. The site contains more info about the INDUCE Act and a form to fax your Senators and Representative.

As liberals and Democrats fervently seek new voters and supporters through events, fund-raisers, direct mail and every other form of communication available, they achieve results minuscule in comparison to the loss of voters they suffer from their own abortion policies. It is a grim irony lost on them, for which they will pay dearly in elections to come.

David sez: [The WSJ's editorial] is so full of bad reasoning and misuse of numbers, it's pretty meaningless. Lots of official-looking numbers and tables do not sound logic make. Here's the [Church of Critical Thinking's] analysis.

Note: the book, The Playmakers, has a long chapter about Marvin Glass.

First, there is the potential of needing less power. Antenna ST5-3-10 achieves high gain (2-4dB) across a wider range of elevation angles. This allows a broader range of angles over which maximum data throughput can be achieved. Also, less power from the solar array and batteries may be required.

Second, the evolved antenna does not require a matching network nor a phasing circuit, removing two steps in design and fabrication of the antenna. A trivial transmission line may be used for the match on the flight antenna, but simulation results suggest that one is not required.

Third, the evolved antenna has more uniform coverage in that it has a uniform pattern with small ripples in the elevations of greatest interest (between 40 and 80 degrees). This allows for reliable performance as elevation angle relative to the ground changes.

[At Bilbo's 111th Birthday]
Merry: "Omg, I pwn"
Pippin: "Sif, I pwn"
**Rocket goes off
Gandalf: "Pwned!"

Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan, has a different perspective on the INDUCE Act. Of course, there must be something wrong with his translation, as Dr. Lenz believes the Act is named the "Intentionally Stopping Advances of the Nation's Economy," or INSANE Act. Anyway, he is not nearly as opposed to it as many commentators here in the US:

First of all, while it might be true that this legislation will help to make America a technological backwater, with iPods and the Internet being illegal under this legislation, depending on your perspective, that is actually a good thing. It helps Europe and Japan in the global competition with America to have strange American laws strangling research and development there, so from an international point of vie w, I can only say "go ahead".

Lenz notes that the law could use some improvements, and if these improvements were made, then, "it might be better than the Japanese approach of just arresting creators and sort out later if it was actually illegal what they did."

4. CONFIDENTIALITY. During the term of this Agreement, you may have access to some of ABC News's nonpublic technical or product information ("Proprietary Information"). Such Proprietary Information shall belong solely to ABC News. You shall not, except as expressly authorized by this Agreement, use or disclose Proprietary Information without the prior written consent of ABC News unless such Proprietary Information becomes part of the public domain through no fault of yours. You agree (i) not to disclose any Proprietary Information to any third parties, (ii) not to use any Proprietary Information for any purposes except carrying out your rights and responsibilities under this Agreement, and (iii) to keep the Proprietary Information confidential using the same degree of care you use to protect your own confidential information, as long as you use at least reasonable care. You acknowledge and agree that due to the unique nature of ABC News's Proprietary Information, there can be no adequate remedy at law for any breach of its obligations hereunder, that any such breach may allow you or third parties to unfairly compete with ABC News resulting in irreparable harm to ABC News, and therefore, that upon any such breach or threat thereof, ABC News shall be entitled to injunctions and other appropriate equitable relief in addition to whatever remedies it may have at law.

5. PUBLICITY. ABC News may use your name in releases, customer lists, marketing and other materials. Unless otherwise expressly permitted by ABC News, you may not create, publish, or distribute any items that reference ABC News without first submitting those items to ABC News and receiving ABC News's written consent.

Luckily, I didn't agree to any of that. I deleted everything in the text field containing the agreement, substituted some rude text of my own and found myself a nice list of all of ABC's XML feeds. If you'd like to directly subscribe to ABC's RSS without selling your soul by clicking through their one-sided adhesion contract, here are the direct URLs:

World Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/world_rss20.xml
US Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/us_rss20.xml
Politics Headines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/politics_rss20.xml
MONEYScope Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/business_rss20.xml
Scitech Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/scitech_rss20.xml
Health Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/health_rss20.xml
Entertainment Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/entertainment_rss20.xml
Travel Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/travel_rss20.xml
Relationships Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/relationships_rss20.xml
WNT Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/wnt_rss20.xml
20/20 Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/2020_rss20.xml
Primetime Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/primetime_rss20.xml
Nightline Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/nightline_rss20.xml
This Week Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/thisweek_rss20.xml
GMA Headlines: http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/gma_rss20.xml

1 plenipotentiary
2 gobbledegook
3 serendipity
4 poppycock
5 googly
6 Spam
7 whimsy
8 bumf
9 chuffed
10 kitsch

He decided to commercialize the process and tagged Smirnoff ads in Leeds, and that's where he got into trouble: he's been ordered to "remove" the clean patch of wall and get rid of the ad. Link (via /.)

As you know I'm politically concerned... I've been trying to figure out how, in my pseudo-lofty position of DJ dude, I can make some difference. After much thought, I've come up with an idea.

I've collaborated with my friend Laurin Fedora to come up with a t-shirt design -- basically the word "VOTE!" in a replicated stencil. I'm having a number of these shirts made in different color combinations and then will wear one at each of my US DJ gigs from August until the election. I will also have photos of myself wearing a shirt on my web site (along with a concept explanation) and in any pictures that are used for magazines/flyers/etc.

The idea is this: I know that the age demographic that I am mainly playing to (people in their 20's) are traditionally the ones that do not vote. This is a shame as the actions of the current administration will resonate strongly in their futures. I don't know if wearing a t-shirt with this design at my gigs will inspire any of these potential voters, but I can hope and have some optimism. Perhaps seeing a DJ in the supposedly apolitical world of dance music caring enough to send a message will inspire a few people.... I wanted to keep the message non-partisan... the simple message of 'VOTE!' also states my feelings accurately: if more of us voted, then maybe we will find more candidates who truly represent us.

I'm wondering if you'd like a piece of the action. Laurin is offering to make more of these shirts. Would you like one (or more than one in different colors)? (...) Laurin has donated his time to help me with this. I'm paying for the materials for the shirts that he's making for me. If you'd like a shirt or shirts, I would need you to pay for the cost of the materials as well. It's not much ... just the price of the shirt and an extra buck for the ink and screening. Let me know as soon as possible if you'd be interested in this as Laurin wants to screen a bunch in the next day or two.

"The horrendous situation in Iraq highlights the thorny challenge of liberation by a superpower: The liberated don't necessarily buy into the program...In this concept, autonomous surveillance systems watch foreign news broadcasts for any foment of anti-American sentiment to identify areas in need of intervention. The geographical coordinates are beamed to airplanes carrying the smart bombs; the bombs explode and shower, not explosives, but small, flower-like packages containing assorted bits of Americana."

Reader Bill says, "If you're talking coffee, you should check out this website, from a tiny California company that supports do-it-yourselfers that roast their own beans. While there are some hazards - like smoking the place out, you can use 1970's air popcorn poppers, woks, or actual home roasters. Apparently, coffee goes stale in 4-6 days, so most of us have been drinking stale coffee without even knowing it." Link

And reader Simon Fodden in Canada says, "For those closer to the middle of the landmass, the Merchants of Green Coffee offer similar products, plus (oh, the forbidden fruit!) really good coffee from Cuba."

Link to full-size jpeg image (about 500k)