it may seem like justice, but its a dangerous precedent...

Austria doesn't have freedom of speech as we do.  Yesterday, they jailed David Irving, for openly denying that the holocaust ever happened.

This is wrong.  Liars should be exposed as liars, emperors without clothes revealed, so that they have no credibility and can just spout their crap in the corner where no-one would want to listen to them.  Liars should not be jailed just for lying. 

Now, if they committed fraud (meaning, to me, they  made money on their lies outside of publishing fees and public speaking, which are both part of freedom of speech), that would be different.  But just publishing a work or making a statement and getting jailed for it puts that European country as not much better than the extreme Islamic world that condemns Denmark.

yeah, that's a good way to put it...

JERRY JUHL on Jim Henson at his first meeting:

This guy was like a sailor who had studied the compass and found that there was a fifth direction in which one could sail.

btw

My parents today hit their 36th anniversary.  go fig.

for the third time today...

...some jackass's car alarm has decided to go off.

"beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep" "beep"

i'm not amused.

I'm a little skeptical that there aren't side-effects, but still...

Which Cut Is Older? (It's a Trick Question) - New York Times:

If some of the meat in supermarkets is looking rosier than it used to, the reason is that a growing number of markets are selling it in airtight packages treated with a touch of carbon monoxide to help the product stay red for weeks.

the "Dubai Ports World" thing is not as bad as congress is making it out to be...

I heard a bit of counter-criticism on the radio (WTOP, not some far-right punditacracy) about the U.A.E. owned Dubai Ports World company getting the contracts to manage parts of several ports in the U.S.:

• This company would not be running "security" -- border patrol, immigration, customs, and the coast guard (all in DHS) will still be, 100%, in charge of port security at these locations as they are now.
• The company would only be managing the actual loading and unloading of cargo.  They would not be in charge of screening, nor would they be in charge of deciding which packages get randomly selected for more intense screening.
• In reality, only about 5% of all ship cargo is actually screened (up from 2% pre-9/11).  In fact, the shipping industry would go into a standstill if it got much above that, either in time taken to do it, or in manpower costing the government too much to do it in a time-efficient manner. [scroll to bottom of the linked article].
• The complaint that 2 of the 9/11 hijackers were from UAE is
• mostly irrelevant as they should not be considered typical of the population
• mostly irrelevant since just because Dubai owns it doesn't mean they'll be giving the jobs to immigrants or using their position to smuggle people and stuff into the country
  
• mostly irrelevant because this company would not be handling port security
• mostly irrelevant because the 2 hijackers had no relationship with Dubai at all, and
  
• a bad statistic in that the majority of the other 17 came from Saudi Arabia and yet we remain even more strongly "friends" with that government and its corporations (like their oil suppliers)
  

So really, there's just a lot of smoke-blowing with very little in the way of fact, and a lot in the way of unnecessary fear, from the nay-sayers.  Congress needs to back down on this, as its just making them look stupid, in both the international community, and to President Bush who will win any fight with them on this matter (they won't be able to override a veto, I think).

Now the real flaw in all of this is why the American company (P & O) is in such a sorry state that this foreign company's buyout is (to their minds) necessary (and that the Brits were in such a state to go through the same takeover earlier).  Of course, there's a degree of hypocracy in that sentiment, given how much we tend to encourage American ownership/leadership of foreign companies where-ever relevant and possible...

Correction: P&O was a London based company, so our port management has already not been in American hands for quite some time.

oh, the irony (olympics spoiler warning)

( cut for olympic spoiler )