Apparently the TV show CSI isn’t realistic about the tedious job of forensic science, and real-life criminalists aren’t usually as hot. I, for one, am very surprised by this news. Next thing they’ll be telling us the X-Files wasn’t a true-to-life account of everyday work in the FBI.
So I keep reading an undue amount of US anti-EU articles, harping on about the fact that the EU denied the Turkish request for membership. I think in the frequency and stridency of these articles I detect a little US defensiveness because under the same criteria, the EU would have to deny any US membership application: support for the death penalty, and endorsement of torture in the service of the state. Of course, the fact that Turkey is also still at war with an EU member country, Greece, also bollixes up the situation somewhat. Not for NATO apparently though, which as a US-dominated organisation is bound to go along with the party line.
So two years or so into Bush-Occupied America, it’s always bothered me that I’ve never met any of the large minority who voted for Bush, thereby giving him the opportunity to stage his Supreme Court-assisted putsch. Then I read this NYT article, about how the rural US has become a hotbed of welfare-dependent “farmers”, crack whores and speed-crazed psychotics. It makes a lot more sense to me now.
So I was looking for some 3D models of sweat — oh the perks of working with video games — and I found this scary device that electrocutes and cauterizes your sweat glands, shocking them into shutting down for several weeks. Not just for amputees, apparently people can use it to mutilate their hands and feet so as not to sweat. Couldn’t these lazy people just try washing and deodourizing?
Yes it reads like an Onion headline but David pointed out the rather incredible third paragraph of this story:
Deputy Russian Ambassador Gennady Gatilov said the United States had taken the council’s lone copy to Washington where it would make duplicates for distribution to the four other powerful council members.
What the hell? Are there no photocopying machines in the UN? I heard there was a budget crisis but this seems a little extreme.
This is a good article, examining the veracity of the Israeli Army’s claim that they “mistakenly” shot the British UN official, Iain Hook, in the back because he was holding a cellphone. Apparently, the sniper was 25m away, with a telescopic sight, and so this excuse seems quite farfetched. Meanwhile, I note that two UN schoolteachers were among the 10 people killed by the Israeli Army during a punishment raid into the Gaza ghetto.
Earlier here.
One for Joseph… Nurses Eager To Learn.
Sometimes I don’t understand how this internet economy woprks. I mean, I’ve gotten used to basically free CDRs and disposables like this, but when Amazon is giving away $50 dictation software packages for free then I know they can’t be making money. Or am I missing something?
Unionized strippers picketing in San Francisco. Excellent!
So I was indeed puzzled a few weeks ago to read that the video game killers in the CIA had killed suspected Al Qaida operatives with a remote control robot plane, and that one of these was a US citizen. I mean, I’d known that due process was being denied to non-US citizens, but I did think that US citizens still enjoyed this privilege. Now I stand corrected – Bush has given the CIA permission to kill US citizens if it suspects them of subversive or terrorist activities. No trial, no judicial oversight, terminal sanction following guilt by association. I’m glad they cleared that up for me. Watch the skies.
