Thrashing Stinks » News and Politics

NY Times Op-Ed on the $2-3 Trillion Iraq “War”

Administrator — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:39:37 +0000

“For a fraction of the cost of this war,” said Mr. Stiglitz, “we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more.”

Full article at nytimes.com.

Flipstart PC : It lives

JB — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:19:41 +0000

After a solid 2 years of silence, Vulcan appears to be ready to release the Flipstart PC.

jkOnTheRun has a hands-on video with a pre-release version of the device.

Gizmodo gallery of images.

FRONTLINE: News War

JB — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:11:05 +0000

“Drawing on more than 80 interviews with key figures in the print, broadcast and electronic media, and with unequaled, behind-the-scenes access to some of today’s most important news organizations, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman examines the challenges facing the mainstream news media, and the media’s reaction, in News War, a special four-part series.”

I watched the first 3 parts at the site last night and can recommend it to anyone with a brain.

My Hero

JB — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:10:37 +0000

“The electronic sign on the side of Interstate 4 is supposed to warn motorists of an upcoming exit.

This weekend, someone reprogrammed it with a slightly different message: NASCAR sucks. Go home.

Florida Department of Transportation officials said a prankster with the right kind of keyboard and a password changed the sign this weekend as hundreds of thousands of race fans poured into the area.”

Christmas Gift Idea: The Darfur Wall

JB — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 15:47:23 +0000

Wouldn’t $30 be better spent at The Darfur Wall than on some material gift?

Click a square above to approach the wall and witness its 400,000 numbers, one for each person killed in the Darfur genocide. Donate one dollar or more to turn a number from dark gray to brilliant white and honor one lost life. 100% of the proceeds go to four Darfur relief organizations.

The 4 organizations are Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Save Darfur, Sudan Aid Fund / Eric Reeves. More information at the “about” page.

Found, sadly, only over at information aesthetics and not CNN or similar.

New York Health Board Bans Trans Fats in NY

JB — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:17:54 +0000

AP story on CNN’s website.

Truly mind-boggling.

Free Microsoft Accounting Express 2007

JB — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 17:31:17 +0000

Microsoft Account Express 2007 is available for free from Microsoft. Watch the product demo (link at bottom of page) if you’re curious. I’m all for free.

Election booth hacking is simplistic

JB — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:55:14 +0000

Like my friend Derek, I’ve not paid too much attention to all the hoo-haa about Diebold and the election system hacking news reported on various sites in the last few weeks. Curiosity (or boredom) got the best of him and he read Ars Technica’s article on the topic today.

Holy crap, folks. Go read it, even if you don’t understand 100% of it.

Right now, the only thing standing in the way of the kind of wholesale undetectable election theft that this article has outlined is the possibility that DREs were forced onto the public too rapidly for election thieves to really learn to exploit them in this cycle. There’s always a gap between when a security vulnerability is exposed and when it’s exploited, so let’s all hope and pray that November 7 falls within that time window.

Battle of the New Atheism

JB — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:36:16 +0000

Wired News has a good article up today.

The Power of Nightmares

JB — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 15:12:50 +0000

A fantastic BBC 3-part series on the neo-conservative fear agenda. It’s a disgusting shame that nothing like this airs “properly” in the US (a 3-part series during primetime on NBC, CBS, or CNN). Then again, I’m sure most of America would just complain that Dancing with the Stars or Football wasn’t on.

Part 1 of 3 (BBC description)

Part 2 of 3 (BBC description)

Part 3 of 3 (BBC description)