Things I’ve Seen

According to the whitehouse:

Iraqi and coalition forces tracked down and killed Abu Azzam, the second most wanted al Qaeda leader in Iraq.

Second most wanted? Have I heard that before? MyDD did a little basic research:

…referring to nothing more than the CENTCOM press release announcing the warrant for Abu Azzam’s arrest, I checked out the rewards being offered for certain figures linked to Zarqawi. It would make sense that the more important someone is, the higher the reward for his capture would be.

Out of 29 wanted terrorists listed in the warrant, no one has a smaller reward offered for his capture than Abu Azzam. In fairness, he’s tied for last place with ten others. However, the $50,000 offered for Abu Azzam pales in comparison to the $25 million, $10 million, $1 million, and $200,000 offered for others. If he was “the second most wanted al Qaeda leader in Iraq,” as Bush referred to him, why such a small reward?

That CENTCOM press release is here.

In the words of Markos: “They just make shit up”.

Girtby.net appears not to appreciate being accused of nerdiness:

Recently I have heard some complaints from various quarters that girtby.net is too nerdy and incomprehensible to those that actually have a life, or at least interests beyond cataloging UI glitches or some other nonsense.
… I just find it too difficult to write when I’m frustrated and angry, and I’m not exactly Lord Byron at the best of times.

But he has a go, anyway…

What are the rules that allow anyone to commit terrible acts of abuse and torture? Weren’t we supposed to not do that? Wasn’t that one of our rules? What about the rule against invading another country based on a threat that was totally and unforgivably fabricated? Didn’t we used to criticise others for rounding up hundreds into make-it-up-as-you-go show trials? Didn’t we also used to like actually catching and punishing the real criminals? What happened to the rules that stop your country’s leaders from killing thousands of your fellow citizens through corruption, nepotism, negligence or incompetance? Lets not even count the bodies of the foreigners, whom we say we want to protect, but in reality we couldn’t care less about. It’s hard to know even where to start with this stuff. Then there’s out-and-out assault on science, civil liberties, the environment, and lots of other fundamental shit. Is there anything the Bush administration have done that even looks like it might be a good thing in the long term for more than a select bunch of cronies? Who threw the rule book out the window and allowed these fuckers to get away with all this? The people who voted for Bush, didn’t all this madness and death mean anything to them?

More like this, please.

Podcasting the Bible, one chapter each working day, starting with the gospel of John.

An extract from a SPAM email I received this weekend…

… if your daily life is so fast-paced and rushed, and you only can spend 10 to 15 minutes a day with God, I can show you breakthrough ways to set up your quiet times with Him to unleash a flood of supernatural blessings and favor into your life.

I’m talking about blessing spilling over into your finances, health, career, relationships, and more.

… First 4 issues are FREE !

Deep down, of course, I knew that we were living in a culture that demands instant results, that believes everything exists solely for our personal satisfaction, and that everything is for sale. I even knew that the faith founded by a man who said “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”, “If anyone would follow me, let him take up his cross daily”, “Do not build up for yourself treasures on earth” and “For I was sick, and you visited me, naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me” could be twisted into fifteen minutes a day and God will bless your finances.

I’m just depressed to see it so blatantly.

HBO’s “Late Night with Bill Maher”: an open letter to the President (via comment at Brad DeLong)

[George Bush] you govern like Billy Joel drives. You’ve performed so poorly I’m surprised that you haven’t given yourself a medal. You’re a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we’ve lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you’re just not lucky.

I’m not saying you don’t love this country. I’m just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you.

What he is saying is: “Take a hint.”

(*) No, Tell Us What You Really Think

I just checked my iTunes, and discovered that my music collection (rather, the ripped part thereof) is about 3GB. Of that, around 2.2GB is actually my music (the rest is kiddy stuff for Jeyanth and audiobooks).

So a 4GB iPod Nano would be perfect. Black, of course. And the free custom engraving that Apple Store offer is just the icing on the cake. Now, lets see if my employer decides to do bonuses this year…

Library Thing is a very cool idea (and very well done). You’ve seen social bookmarking, right? This is social library indexing. You enter the books you own (or, I suppose, like) and it looks them up for you in the Library of Congress (and Amazon). You tag them, then you can start playing around with what other people have entered. Who has the same book? What other books do they have? What other books have people tagged in the same way…

I’ve just entered a single book into our library to get started, but I think I might have a few happy evenings ahead of me playing with this.

CL at Human Bacon:

For a number of years I’ve worked at Christian schools under a thin guise of hypocrisy … But not this year! This year, I have a mission.

Instead of fighting religion, instead of avoiding it or denying it, hating it or complaining about it, I am going to use it. If I’m going to be raising Christian boys and girls, the least I can do is raise them to be liberal Christian boys and girls. I can raise them to be socially conscious, self-sacrificing, humanitarian, environmentally aware boys and girls. I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before.

…If these kids are going to be spouting Jesus babble in front of me, they’re damn well going to understand what it means. I’m not sure where in the Bible Jesus tells you to have a close personal relationship with him in your heart, but I can recall about a thousand references to feeding the hungry and loving your neighbor and being a peacemaker. Instead of posting the Ten Commandments I’m going to post the Beatitudes.

This is cool - an open source effort to produce audiobooks of public domain books from the Gutenberg project.

Legend has it that Steve Waugh told Herschelle Gibbs, after he had dropped a sitter in the 1999 World Cup, ”Son, you have just dropped the World Cup”.

Tonight Shane Warne dropped the Ashes.