Things I’ve Seen

Having failed to keep up with watching West Wing season 5 here in Australia, I’m very pleased to see this…

Warner Home Video have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of The West Wing: The Complete Fifth Season for 25th April 2005

2004 Koufax Award Winners have been announced. I was please to see this one, since I’ve just started reading Mouse Words…

While those three each attracted a lot of votes, the 2004 Koufax Award for Best New Blog goes to Amanda Marcotte of Mouse Words.

When Mouse Words made the finals, she asked for votes promising:

Earlier, I promised that if I win, I will make a massive ass out myself, with drunken speechifying and boobies. I stand by that promise, even as I realize that I may be closer to winning than I initially thought.

You were closer than you thought. We want video. Congratulations to Mouse Words.

1: How to open up your iPod shuffle
Don’t!
Apple did not make it to be opened. The featured on this page did not live to tell it’s story itself…

Now I can resist the temptation (which, I admit, I never felt) to take my one day old iPod shuffle apart. Chipmunk have done it for us.
[Thanks to Alastair for the pointer…]

So, after pledging in the election campaign that Australia would not send more troops to Iraq, Howard backflips

Prime Minister John Howard has conceded the Federal Government has reversed an earlier decision to not send additional troops to Iraq…

I’m not running away from the fact that I had previously said I did not contemplate a major increase and that was a fair statement of the Government’s state of the mind at the time I made that. But in these situations a government have a capacity, if circumstances alter, and it is judged to be not only in our own interests, but also in the broader interests of democracy in the Middle East, that we make those changes

So, before the election the Government did not contemplate an increase, but now they are acting on it. What circumstances have changed in Iraq that would make this move contemplatable? Elections? Sure - but we already knew they were going to happen. Internal violence? Again, no great suprise there.
All the information that the government is acting on now was available when Howard said they weren’t contemplating sending extra troops. But sadly, as Mr Howard knows full well, the only election promise that the swing voters of Australians really cared about was the promise to keep interest rates down. And that’s always been his definition of a core promise.

It’s very rare that I find myself in agreement with so-called ‘far-right’ groups. But today I do

Germany has marked the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden
…But there were also protests by far-right parties, who say the bombing should be seen as a war crime.

There’s a limit to my agreement, of course - I’ve heard some claim that Dresden was as serious an offense as the holocaust - not even close - and had I been in Dresden today I would have identified with the commemerations, not the protesters.

But the fire bombing of Dresden was a war crime - a deliberate attack on the civilian population, designed to cause massive non-military death and destruction. The fact that the allies were (generally speaking) in the right in the second world war - and the fact that they won - does not change the fact that some things are wrong, even in war. Firebombing a city is one. Torture is another. Killing the families of combatants as a punishment is a third.

Until we can ‘revise’ our history to admit that crimes were committed - in our name - in the past, I fear we will continue to accept the crimes committed - in our name - in the present.

Is this being reported in the US?

No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration

Condoleezza Rice, The Washington Post, March 22, 2004

We urgently need such a principals-level review on the al-Qaeda network

Richard Clarke, Memo to Ms Rice, January 25, 2001

Here’s an image of the memo, courtesy of Kos:

Which File Extension are You?

British couple take a shower

Stealing toiletries and even bathrobes from hotels is one thing, but a British couple have taken pilfering to new heights after liking their hotel shower so much they took it home with them.

…Devon and Cornwall Police Sergeant Alan Mobbs said the theft was considered unusual, “particularly when you consider the efforts needed to physically take a shower from the wall”.

Indeed.

Kevin Drum points out some interesting survey results from the Washington Post:

49% of the country thinks foreign aid is one of our two biggest programs. No wonder they’re convinced their tax dollars are being frittered away. This is no surprise, though, since it fits with this earlier poll result showing that Americans think 24% of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid. (Real number: about 1%.) [Actually, I think it’s even less than that - Chris]

As Kevin goes on to say, this goes a long way to explain why Americans (as a stereotypical group!) have a ‘why don’t they like us more’ attitude.

But this prompted me to wonder how accurate we are at estimating our personal spending patterns - and especially, our generousity. Could you accurately estimate the proportion of your total budget that goes to charitable causes?

This comment from Steve deserves to be highlighted…

I rigged my answers to give the most ecologically sound answers possible (i.e. I lied) and was told that the world could shrink 17% and still support me.

But when I changed the number of people living in my house (and I had claimed the smallest sized house) to one the number of worlds required jumped to 1.34 - so if we never eat meat or dairy and never travel anywhere we still cannot live alone!

The calculator is here.