February 2005 Archives

Apparently Vladimir Putin thinks that US chicken producers are in league to supply Russia with substandard chicken products. From Time,

At a past summit, according to Administration aides, Putin asked Bush whether it was true that chicken producers split their production into plants that serve the U.S. and lower-quality ones that process substandard chicken for Russia.

This man is the leader os one of the largest countries in the world. He has nukes people. I’m a little concerned for the Russian people.

This new film from Tim Burton (who is CRAZY) looks really good, although the title, The Corpse Bride, might scare away anyone younger than 12. Maybe that’s the idea.

Burton has a thing for Johnny Depp apparently.

I spent a very pleasant weekend in Boston with my friend John and his boyfriend Daniel, this being the second time in as many weeks I have done so. It was John’s birthday on Saturday and we spent the evening playing drinking games because the bowling alley wanted us to wait two hours for a lane and in the interim to pay outrageous prices for G&Ts. Um, not when Johnny got a bottle of Bombay Sapphire from Laura not an hour before. Daniel graciously offered to lend us his apartment for the festivities. I am fair sure he regrets that now. But it was fun, nonetheless.

P.S. Please don’t hate me that my blog has turned in to an update about my daily existence. Although, I dare say many of you are happy to be saved my ranting.

Katie getting her groove on with Lane at my Birthday Extravaganza, February 2005.

The State Department will begin issuing new passports with radio frequency id tags in them. these tags will contain all the information on the data page, but the information will not be encrypted. This basically means that when you carry your passport around you are broadcasting your personal information to all the world.

The department doesn’t care.

[via Wired]

This past weekend my friend John, whom I have known since high school, came with his boyfriend to stay with me and to go to my wonderful birthday party, which I am now realizing as I type I have not posted about AT ALL.

Yesterday I told John that I was offended that he didn’t post anything about me on his blog. He very graciously admitted his oversight and wrote a lovely post about his visit. He did fail to mention a few things in between making fun of my roommate and bitterly regretting introducing me to Daniel. I list them here for the sake of completeness:

1. I am more popular than him, as evinced by the huge turnout at my birthday extravaganza (it can be described as nothing less, I think)
2. Daniel was bored out of his gorde, but was too polite to say anything (he just left instead)
3. My bathroom was sparkling clean and almost perfect, save for the broken topilet seat lid (which I want to throw out the window)
4. I no longer than that Daniel is an “asshat”, I now think John is one for so grossly misrepresenting Daniel to the rest of the world in an effort to get us to feel sorry for him

This weekend is John’s Birthday, so I am going up to Boston to observe him in his natural habitat. Daniel can keep me company among all the crazy John-friend type people.

Well, it looks like I have let it go too long and now there is nothing on my blog for you to read. I hate it when that happens. Clearly my job is taking up entirely too much of my free time during the day thus making it difficult to post stuff to entertain you.

I will try harder. For now, that is all I have to say.

Read this Slate article about the Byebee Memo, its an interesting description of the insidious way the current administration has limited the definition of torture to apparently exclude just about everything besides killing someone or exploding his or her liver.

I am a bit shocked that even more hasn’t been made of the kind of torture that we found out was happening in Abu Ghraib and we are now finding out was or is happening on behalf of the US in Egypt, Pakistan, and by the US at Gitmo.

read the authorizing memos on the New Yorker website

Legend has it that the Archangel Michael instructed a 8th century bishop to build Mont-St-Michel (above). His acolyte, Bishop Aubert (later St. Aubert) ignored Michael several times, until the angel burned a hole is his skull with a finger. Message: don’t mess with the God’s handmaiden or he’ll mess you up.

The Abbey was later used as a prison.

Bloomberg is reporting on a new strain of HIV that is “resistant to three of the four types of anti-viral drugs that combat the disease, and progresses from infection to full-blown AIDS in two or three months.” Doctors in New York City are reporting seeing this new strain.

Great photographs of the London Underground, of which funnily enough, a large portion is not.

London Station

For no other reason that I love her and she deserves more publicity. For those of you who are interested, this picture was taken in Prague, Spring of 2003. Katie is sitting on her bed.

This kid is smart and persistent. I predict good things in his future — or complete disaster. I hope it’s the former.

After losing his video games as a punishment, 4-year-old Adrian Cole woke in the middle of the night, determined to replace them.

He dressed, put on his winter coat and boots and climbed on a lounge chair to reach keys on the wall and unlock the dead-bolt.

Then Adrian got into his mother’s 1990 Geo Prizm and drove to Home Video, a quarter-mile up Northland Drive, the main drag through Sand Lake. It was closed at 1:30 a.m. Friday, so he started back home.

That’s when Sand Lake police officers Bill Bogner and Jay Osga spotted the slow-moving car, without lights on, weaving over curbs and plowing through snow banks. They figured the driver was drunk, or suffering a medical problem, as they followed the car to an apartment complex. They blocked in the car before the driver put it in reverse and hit the gas, crashing into the police cruiser.

[thanks to Steve, via mLive]

Ouch! An overzealous rugby fan from Wales will be kicking himself next week when he realizes what he has done.

Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday’s match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, “If Wales win I’ll cut my balls off”, the paper said on Tuesday.

When Wales won, he promptly did.

[thanks to Steve for this one]

A woman is Romania has given birth to twins two months apart. Apparently she has two wombs and got pregnant in each at the same time.

Conversation with my co-worker Erin:

Me: A woman is Romania had twins… two months apart.
Erin: How does she have two wombs? What is she, a cow?
Me: …

[via ThisisLondon]

President Bush is the first one since Martin Van Buren to go through an entire term without vetoing a bill. In case you were wondering, Martin van Buren was our 8th president, and it has been 164 years since van Buren was the president. To some this may indicate that Bush has just been lucky. He has. But it seems like the relationship between congress and the president is too cozy these days. How is it possible that he hasn’t gotten a single bill that he just didn’t agree with? There is much to disagree on lately and he does a lot of it, but somehow those disagreements never make it to his desk in the form of potential legislation.

I for one like the relations between my branches of government to involve more firm stand-taking and political chicken. It should not be the case that every bill that goes before the president is neatly packaged and delivered with a little bow. Where is the rancor, people?

Here’s an interesting idea — if a municipality uses taxpayer dollars to fund a large public work, esp. a park or public art installation, should that site be copyrighted. In other words, should I be able to take pictures of a piece of art in a public park for which I helped pay? Evidently, the answer is no — at least in Chicago.

The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist.

From a Slate article:

Former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, experienced the existential horror of being governed by secret laws last month while attempting to board a United Airlines flight from Boise to Reno. When pulled aside by security guards from the Transportation Security Administration for additional screening, including a physical pat-down, Chenoweth-Hage requested a copy of the federal regulation authorizing such searches. Her request was denied.

A reporter asked the TSA director for that airport why the TSA would not show Rep. Chenoweth-Hage the statue authorizing the extended screening. He replied, “Because we don’t have to.”

Nice, I have to obey laws that I don’t even know about and which, in this case, my elected representatives in Congress didn’t even write. These “laws” are actually written by Executive Order, i.e. by the President of the United States. These “laws” are based on something called “sensitive security information.”

A May 2004 Federal Register notice spelled out 16 categories of information that may now be designated as SSI. These include not only airport security plans (as before) and threat assessments, but also records of security inspections and investigations, names of security personnel, and training materials. More problematically, “security directives” such as the one that Chenoweth-Hage requested are exempt. And for good measure, the 16th category is a catch-all exemption for “other information” that TSA may at its discretion determine should be withheld.