Listening to: Bobby Friction and Nihal - BBC World

This creature slinked
into Wellington 30 mins ago… just breath taking (from where I’m sitting the mast
juts above an 11 story building).

WANT!

UPDATE: I went down and snagged some photos:

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

My brother forwarded me this link.
It contains three shots of atomic blasts in the very first microseconds:

See the BoingBoing
story for a little more info.

Listening to Crosses - Jose Gonzales

This gives me a very
very bad feeling:

Tens of thousands of people have staged protests across Iraq after a bomb attack
heavily damaged one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.

Dozens of Sunni mosques are reported to have been targeted and six Sunnis killed
after a gang blew up the dome of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra.

You can feel the storm growing to a fever pitch… and it blows the ‘if we leave they
will fall into civil war’ argument out of the water. If it walks like a duck and quacks
like a duck… it’s probably already a civil war.

Listening to: Welcome to the Jungle - Guns and Roses

The Washington Note is very
excited about the latest Al Jazeera doco ‘Triangle of Anger. For good reason…
the documentary talks to some of the key figures associated with the policy:

Former CIA official Michael Scheuer is one of the primary backbones of the film.
Scheuer helped construct the contemporary rendition program and applie it to al Qaeda
operatives. On the film, he openly and self-critically questions the utility of the
rendition program, which he thinks has done more harm than good to the perception
of America in the world, and has not contributed much to American safety that could
not otherwise be achieved by existing laws.

One thing I did not realize and learned from Fouda’s and Giles Trendle’s treatment
on rendition history is that the founding fathers of the policy were President Bill
Clinton, then National Security Council official Richard Clarke, and National Security
Advisory Sandy Berger. Scheuer gave the program its practical legs and application,
but these other three conceptualized and authored the program.

George W. Bush’s team ratcheted up the use and broad application of extraordinary
rendition as a key part of their actions against targeted terrorists and collaborators.

On a related note… from
the BBC:

Five European countries have not given information about allegations of covert
CIA prison transport flights, Europe’s human rights watchdog has said.

Belgium, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Italy, San Marino and Georgia were all in breach
of European human rights law, according to the Council of Europe.

Listening to: Dimension - Wolfmother

The downside to increased popularity I guess… more
flaws are coming to light. Only in the labs at present - but just a matter of
time before we get one in the wild. 

Listening to: You Are Fading - Editors

I think I will enjoy this
movie:

Listening to: Aish Tamid - Matisyahu

Hey! Hey! Now
we’re talking:

The Antwerp-based daily De Tijd will soon become the world’s first
newspaper to publish a digital version on so-called ‘electronic paper’.

Instead
of buying your daily paper, from April 2006, 200 subscribers will be able to start
the day by connecting a portable electronic device supplied by De Tijd to the internet
and start downloading their daily paper. Updates will be automatic during the day,
if subscribers have access to wireless technology…

…De
Tijd will appear on several screens. ‘One shows the complete page as in the printed
paper, the second lists only the headlines and the third displays the single article,’
Bruynseels said.

The display is the size of two laptops,
but needs 100 times less energy than a normal laptop screen. Based on an average use
of three hours a day, the battery runs for more than a week.

A
storage space of 244 mega bytes is sufficient for filing one month of newspapers,
plus 30 books, as well as office documents in different formats.

src: MAKE:Blog

Listening to: A Pain That I’m Used to - Depeche Mode

There is something about mechanical watches that causes every one of my propellers
to whir (well nearly every one)… Ron
DeCorte’s Notebook is a feast for the eyes.

I normally have an allergic reaction to complexity (ok… I just get confused easily)…
but that’s beautiful.

src: MAKE:Blog

Listening to: Two More Years - Bloc Party

David Letterman has a very
amusing segment on Mr Cheney.

Listening to: Lifetime Piling Up - Talking Heads

From All
About Symbian:

The S60 Skype application was a complete implementation supporting
Skype text chat, Skype voice calls (both to PCs and to other S60 handsets), and Skype
Out dialing. Running the application over 3G results in latency of up to about a second.

I love it! When you consider that the licensing costs for the Symbian platform have
recently been
reduced and the latest version of the OS will handle single
chip platforms … someone, somewhere, is getting a head ache.