Twinkie, Twinkie, Little Star

Forget Mars Bars, Twinkies Now the Deep-fried Treat

“Move over, Krispy Kreme doughnuts. A new artery-clogging, belt-busting obsession is sweeping the United States: Deep-fried Twinkies….

‘We sold 26,000 Twinkies in 18 days. People drove for hours just to taste our Twinkie,’ said Rocky Mullen, who sells the deep-fried, cream-filled treats for $3 (U.S.) each at the Payallup Fair, 50 kilometres south of Seattle.

As if Twinkies are not sweet enough already, vendors such as Mr. Mullen add chocolate or berry sauce and sprinkle powdered sugar on top….  Via The Shifted Librarian

This follows cigar smoking, deep fat fried Snickers bars, and stretch Hummers in the What Dumb Thing Can We Do Today sweepstakes.

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The Borg wants to control your computer

From respected InfoWorld Windows columnist, Brian Livingston comes the unsettling news that new versions of Windows 2000 and XP can disable software on your system without asking.  It can snoop around on your system looking for, say, for audio files that don’t have the proper copyright, then disable the program you use to listen to them with. Without your knowledge or consent.

One thing you can’t get around, however — and a big reason for the latest fears — is Microsoft’s DRM (digital rights management) scheme. This built-in XP feature silently downloads and installs “revocation lists.” These lists prevent “revoked” programs from playing DRM-encoded content.

The idea of giving any outside company the ability to remotely turn off something that previously worked on your computer strikes many as lunacy.

Aside from fair-use issues, users fear silent upgrades because Microsoft has pumped out many buggy patches that themselves needed patching. Just this June, Microsoft shipped the Nimda worm in its Korean edition of Visual Studio.Net.

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Terry Jones, of Monty Python, on Iraq

The audacious courage of Mr Blair

Despite bitter opposition,Tony Blair has demonstrated that he will push ahead stalwartly with whatever the US intends to do. Even though the majority of his fellow countrymen are against the war (despite last week’s propaganda campaign in the media), Mr Blair has shown not the slightest sign of wavering from his determination to do whatever Mr Bush wants.

It is true that he has regrettably had to cave in over the question of debating the issue in Parliament, but he has fearlessly shown his contempt for the process by not allowing a vote. Mr Blair realises that he needs all the nerve he can command to resist demands for democratic discussion, if Mr Bush is to have any opportunity of dropping bombs on Iraq before the mid-term elections.

I would like to say a special word about another side of Tony Blair’s courage - his moral courage. Tony Blair has the guts to stand on platform after platform repeating the words of the President of the United States even though he must be well aware that in so doing he makes himself a laughing stock to the rest of the world. Tony Blair has the balls not to be influenced by the knowledge that people imagine he is the US President’s parrot and that his knee jerks only when George W. pulls the strings. It must take a very special kind of stamina to withstand that sort of daily humiliation. It is time we gave Mr Blair credit for it.

Tony Blair’s dedication to carrying out the policies of the White House proves time and again that he has the courage of their convictions. He is prepared to back Mr Bush’s arguments to the hilt even when they are palpably nonsensical.

When Mr Bush cites Saddam Hussein’s contempt for UN Security Council resolutions as the justification for his own determination to do the same, Tony Blair urges the President’s case, for all the world as if he couldn’t see the ridiculousness of it. When Mr Bush cites Iraq’s failure to comply with UN Security Council resolutions as the reason for going to war, Mr Blair backs him up, boldly ignoring the fact that Turkey and Israel have got away with ignoring UN resolutions for years.

more

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Nasdaq hits 6-Year Low as economic data rattles market

There’s no bubble left, we’re back to 1996..

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More sleaze from Enron

A court-appointed attorney has determined that many of Enron Corp.’s transactions with special partnerships dating back to 1997 appeared to be little more than loans disguised to look like revenue-boosting sales, according to USA Today and New York Times reports.

The findings could provide additional ammunition to the numerous claimants currently attempting to assign blame for the Enron debacle and to extract damages from Enron’s bankers and other third parties.

In other words, Enron was cooking the books as far back as 1997, which means they always were a fraud and their rise was based on deception and lies - not on anything to do with actual business.

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Destabilization

The avowed goal of Bush for the U.S. to be the unquestioned ruler of the world doesn’t appear to be working.  Germany and Japan are clearly going their own way and Tony Blair, PM of England, may be the first casualty of the Iraq War.

Germany remains opposed to any Iraq War, UN ok or not

Among the loudest voices on the world stage expressing opposition to war against Iraq has been Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and he can thank that strong stance for his narrow re-election last weekend.

Suddenly, Japan cuts the cord to U.S. policy

“The Japanese people just don’t want to be dictated to by Big Brother any more, even though the support for our alliance with the United States is broader than in the Cold War,” said Yoichi Funabashi, a columnist with The Asahi Shimbun, a liberal newspaper. “Settling the missing persons issue helps us recover our national manhood. We have realized that wealth and mercantilism aren’t the only concerns for us in the world.”

British Labor Party support drops on Iraq Fears

The popularity of Britain’s ruling Labor Party is plumbing new lows as fears grow over a possible military move against Iraq, according to a poll in the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.

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How hot was it today in L.A.?

It was so hot the termites were crawling out of the wood in a warehouse owned by a client.  I am NOT making this up!  And this was in a cooler part of town, Culver City, where it was a mere 95. 

Driving back to the beautiful San Fernando Valley, the exterior thermometer on my car showed 113.

Thanks so much for sharing, Summer, now go away…! 

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The Soul of Democracy is Dying!

Bill Moyer speaks: ‘Something is deeply wrong with politics today,’ I told anyone who would listen. And I wasn’t referring to the partisan mudslinging, or the negative TV ads, the excessive polling or the empty campaigns. I was talking about something deeper, something troubling at the core of politics. The soul of democracy-the essence of the word itself-is government of, by, and for the people. And the soul of democracy has been dying, drowning in a rising tide of big money contributed by a narrow, unrepresentative elite that has betrayed the faith of citizens in self-government.

This wasn’t something I came to casually, by the way. It’s the big political story of the last quarter century, and I started reporting it as a journalist in the late 70s with the first television documentary about political action committees. More recently, at the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, working with my colleague and son, John Moyers, we saw how environmental causes were being overwhelmed by the private funding of elections that gives big donors unequal and undeserved political influence.

That’s why over the past five years the Schumann brothers-Robert and Ford and our board have poured both income and principle into political reform through the Clean Money Initiative-the public funding of elections. I intended to talk about this-about the soul of democracy-and then connect it to my television efforts and your environmental work. That was my intention. That’s the speech I was working on six weeks ago. But I’m not the same man I was six weeks ago. And you’re not the same audience for whom I was preparing those remarks.  Via Synergic Earth News

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Google news has a new look

The still-in-beta Google News just launched with a totally new look and feel, more information, and a more readable layout.

It pulls news from 4,000 sources and features a truly smart and useful news search.

In a nice touch, and in true Google style, at the bottom of the page it says

This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors.
No humans were harmed or even used in the creation of this page.

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Ah, summer in the San Fernando Valley

Summer you say?  It’s late September, how could it still be summer?  Well, here in the Valley, September can be the hottest month.

That said, it was one hundred and freakin’ eight degrees Sunday, and that’s a lit-tle bit too toasty for me.  Today, Monday, it’ll be a mere 102.  I better get out the parka.

Ah well, in a few weeks we’ll be getting El Nino deluges, and local news will be, uh, awash with live on-the-scene reports watching homes slide down hillsides.

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Priorities

Israel is reducing the PLO headquarters to rubble, the prospect of war in Iraq draws closer, so what is national TV news leading with?  The mom who beat her kid.  Maybe we all need to watch the video again, in case we didn’t quite understand it the first five hundred viewings.

This is not responsible news coverage, this is cheap easy “news” that requires no mental work on the part of the media to cover.  No-brainer news.  Best to steer clear of in depth pieces on Iraq - that might involve heavy mental lifting.

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New idea for free advertising

Stray dogs used as mobile billboards in Russian city

Stray dogs are being used as mobile billboards by rival shops in a Russian city.  Shopworkers grab the dogs in the city of Penza after luring them with cutlets or sausages.

They then spray-paint their shop logo on the animal, reports the Molodoy Leninets newspaper.  Logos include not only the name of the shop but also the goods they stock, including Sony and Camel.

The newspaper says workers of rival stores often catch each other’s dogs and repaint them in their own colours. via the Black Flag mailing list

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