This is a taste of the rebuilding that will soon occur in New Orleans.

Flights: Song Sale: $119 Coast to Coast: "

Missed this earlier, but Delta's Song subline is offering $119 one-way transcontinental fares betwixt Boston, Hartford, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. Book by September 29 and complete travel by January 31, 2006. Check the sale page for blackout dates and other restrictions. No idea how Delta's Chapter 11 filing will affect this or other sales, so get while the gettin's good.

Delta's $119 o/w transcons- still time for 10K bonus promo [landspeednyc]
Coast to coast sale fares [Song]
Delta Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy [Yahoo!]

"

(Via Gridskipper.)

Brian Williams reports that lights were turned on across New Orleans only for publicity purposes as Bush's motorcade went through the city, and then turned off when the motorcade left.

From fark:

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approves ".cat", defers on ".xxx". Kittens win and win some more

AP Story folks...

Holy crap: "

From AP:

A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.


The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.


Weldon declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as '2.5 terabytes' — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added....


Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.


Two military officers, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have come forward to support Weldon's claims.

"

(Via AMERICAblog.)

The tech from Liebert who was going...: "The tech from Liebert who was going to perform maintenance on our UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) for the data center was turned away since the President is here in the city today. Now I ask you, which is more important: a speech or the telecommunications infrastructure of New Orleans post Katrina?"

(Via The Interdictor.)

Translation: We might, might have Americans on the moon again by the time I am 40, just short of half a century since the last Apollo landing on the moon in 1972. Forgive me for not holding my breath.

NASA to Unveil Plans to Send 4 Astronauts to Moon in 2018: "WASHINGTON - NASA briefed senior White House officials Wednesday on its plan to spend $100 billion and the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans back on the Moon by 2018."

(Via SPACE.com.)

The real issue of course is that any NASA plan that extends more than two presidencies away is meaningless. This is part of a long line of plans to go to the moon or Mars, extending back over the past forty years, which have gone nowhere due to budget cuts.


My favorite slashdot response:

The Plan (Score:5, Funny)

by halcyon1234 (834388)Alter Relationship
on Thursday September 15, @02:10PM (#13568576)

"to put humans back on the Moon by 2018."

... where they will be greeted by the Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Russians, Canadians, and every college student with a "Build Yourself An Interplanetary Space Craft" kit ordered from craigslist.

Wanda Sykes On Bush: "

Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno (hey, I'll watch anything) was very funny about Katrina.


Jay: 'But President Bush took responsibility.'


Wanda: 'I don't think the President should have taken responsibility.... I don't blame the President. I blame the American people. Y'all knew the man was slow when you voted him in. You can't blame the blind man for wrecking your car when you're the one who gave him the keys.'

"

(Via AMERICAblog.)

From my new favorite blog:

FRIDAY PRESS REVIEW: Would it be OxBlog if it did...: "FRIDAY PRESS REVIEW: Would it be OxBlog if it didn't have (a) Britain, (b) the press, and (c) bad jokes? Obviously not. These clippings come by way of James Addicott.

1) Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, 'We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It's possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.' (The Daily Telegraph)

2) Police reveal that a woman arrested for shoplifting had a whole salami in her underwear. When asked why, she said it was because she was missing her Italian boyfriend. (The Manchester Evening News)

3) Irish police are being handicapped in a search for a stolen van, because they cannot issue a description. It's a Special Branch vehicle and they don't want the public to know what it looks like. (The Guardian)

4) A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast guard spokesman commented, 'This sort of thing is all too common'. (The Times)

5) At the height of the gale, the harbourmaster radioed a coastguard and asked him to estimate the wind speed. He replied he was sorry, but he didn't have a gauge. However, if it was any help, the wind had just blown his Land Rover off the cliff. (Aberdeen Evening Express)

6) Mrs. Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue, Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she recalled. 'He'd always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out 'Heil Hitler.'' (Bournemouth Evening Echo)

And for extra credit, a non-exhaustive list of announcements London Tube train drivers have made to their passengers...


1) 'Ladies and Gentlemen, I do apologize for the delay to your service. I know you're all dying to get home, unless, of course, you happen to be married to my ex-wife, in which case you'll want to cross over to the Westbound and go in the opposite direction.'

2) 'Your delay this evening is caused by the line controller suffering from E & B syndrome: not knowing his elbow from his backside. I'll let you know any further information as soon as I'm given any.'

3) 'Do you want the good news first or the bad news? The good news is that last Friday was my birthday and I hit the town and had a great time. The bad news is that there is a points failure somewhere between Stratford and East Ham, which means we probably won't reach our destination.'

4) 'Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay, but there is a security alert at Victoria station and we are therefore stuck here for the foreseeable future, so let's take our minds off it and pass some time together. All together now.... 'Ten green bottles, hanging on a wall.....'.'

5) 'We are now travelling through Baker Street... As you can see, Baker Street is closed. It would have been nice if they had actually told me, so I could tell you earlier, but no, they don't think about things like that'.

6) 'Beggars are operating on this train. Please do NOT encourage these professional beggars. If you have any spare change, please give it to a registered charity. Failing that, give it to me.'

7) During an extremely hot rush hour on the Central Line, the driver announced in a West Indian drawl: 'Step right this way for the sauna, ladies and gentleman... unfortunately, towels are not provided.'

8) 'Let the passengers off the train FIRST!'(Pause .) 'Oh go on then, stuff yourselves in like sardines, see if I care - I'm going home....'

9) 'Please allow the doors to close. Try not to confuse this with 'Please hold the doors open.' The two are distinct and separate instructions.'

10) 'Please note that the beeping noise coming from the doors means that the doors are about to close. It does not mean throw yourself or your bags into the doors.'

11) 'We can't move off because some idiot has their hand stuck in the door.'

12) 'To the gentleman wearing the long grey coat trying to get on the second carriage - what part of 'stand clear of the doors' don't you understand?'

13) 'Please move all baggage away from the doors.' (Pause..) 'Please move ALL belongings away from the doors.' (Pause...) 'This is a personal message to the man in the brown suit wearing glasses at the rear of the train: Put the pie down, Four-eyes, and move your bl**dy golf clubs away from the door before I come down there and shove them up your a**e sideways!'

14) 'May I remind all passengers that there is strictly no smoking allowed on any part of the Underground. However, if you are smoking a joint, it's only fair that you pass it round the rest of the carriage.'"

(Via OxBlog.)

#1314: Hi-Fi Hi-Jack: ""

(Via Diesel Sweeties by R Stevens.)

So I took my new iPod nano into work and somebody promptly adored it and put it in her mouth.

I know I know...

You ask, where do I work?

Katrina hits, and Cheney immediately makes two calls on August 30th & August 31st to make sure that the electric company's highest priority is restoring power to the pumps for the pipelines supplying oil to the NorthEast.

And it came down to a decision between spending time restoring power to hospitals or restoring power to the pipelines.

[ Line foreman Matt ] Ready said the crew members did not learn they were restoring power to pipelines until after the job was done.

How did they feel about that?

"Is this on the record?" Ready asked. "Well, then, we are all glad we were able to help out."

Compton said he was happy to support the national effort. But he said it was a difficult decision to make because of the potential impact in the region had the plan not worked and the area's power restoration was set back days.

Now let us not quibble over whether this was an appropriate use of federal power as the hurricane was rolling through or whether this was the right thing to do.

Why did Cheney make the call instead of leaving this to FEMA?

The Office of the Vice-President didn't (doesn't?) trust FEMA to handle the hurricane response.

Maybe this was a national security issue?

Ten points to whichever house can tell me where the Vice President sits in the Chain of Command.

(Trick Question: What happens to the Chain of Command when the President is either on Vacation or in the middle of a Photo Op, say reading to children)?

Dave & I went to go see Christopher Hitchens debate George Galloway tonight at Baruch.

Need I say who was the rocker and who was the rockee?

I miss Prime Minister's Questions...

This is what Hitchens said on slate a day before the, shall we say meeting:

Galloway's preferred style is that of vulgar ad hominem insult, usually uttered while a rather gaunt crew of minders stands around him. I have a thick skin and a broad back and no bodyguards. He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a "popinjay" (true enough, since its original Webster's definition means a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest). In a recent interview he made opprobrious remarks about the state of my midriff, which I will confess has—as P.G. Wodehouse himself once phrased it—"slipped down to the mezzanine floor." In reply I do not wish to stoop. Those of us who revere the vagina are committed to defend it against the very idea that it is a mouth or has teeth. Study the photographs of Galloway from Syrian state television, however, and you will see how unwise and incautious it is for such a hideous person to resort to personal remarks. Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs.

This could prove to be very very useful...

Especially where firewalls prevent IM traffic.

;-)

Ajax-based IM, Meebo: "

As Ajax spreads it wings, folks are using it to come up with cool new apps. Writely, was one. Latest - Meebo, a web-based IM client. Through Ajax, the folks at meebo were able to create a virtual application-like experience within a single web browsing window. meebo integrates a user’s accounts from AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and ICQ into a single buddy list that is automatically populated upon signing into the meebo web site. Sort of like Trillian/Adium, but in a browser window. The interface is so simple and elegant. It is still alpha so be kind. It as a few issues, so be kinder. But this is slowly turning browser into more than just a browser. Like Writely, Meebo is a three-person start-up. Elaine Wherry – the Ajax guru; Sandy Jen - Server side programming; and Seth Sternberg - jack of everything else.

"

(Via Om Malik on Broadband.)

High Concept: "

You may have noticed that there are a whole bunch of 'celebrity poker' shows on television these days, where a group of famous people sit around playing cards and being snarky at each other, and they film the whole thing. I can't imagine too many things more boring than watching someone else play cards, but I guess fishing has a rich TV history too... Anyway, I have an idea, and hopefully one of my many readers in the entertainment industry will make it a reality:

Celebrity Dungeons and Dragons.

I want to see a TV show where the flying camera crane zips around the table where Wil Wheaton, Puff Daddy, Michael Madsen, and Lindsay Lohan play D&D. I would totally watch that.

'Yo, I'm-a gonna get all up in that orc's face with my Magic Missile. Jack you up, orc!' Then then announcers banter, 'oh, Magic Missle! A bold choice, he might need that later. Here comes the roll...'

It would be GLORIOUS."

(Via jwz.)

Update: Wil's response here ( as mentioned on BoingBoing ).

Between that, Pictures of Wil wrestling Barney, and Patrick Stewart's fantastic voice acting on both American Dad & The Family Guy last Sunday (btw between which and the late Gargoyles series means that everybody from STNG has now done cartoon voice acting), I think I'm officially scarred for life.

Speaking of Patrick Stewart, Bambi II ?

Also, The Picard Song.

[Correction: Thanks to Mr. Stuart for pointing out that Wil has done a bunch of voice acting, from "Secret of Nimh" to "Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!"

Only an intelligent designer could be this cruel.

Tongue-eating bug found in fish: "

Tongue-eating bug found in fish

A gross creature which gobbles up a fish's tongue and then replaces it with its own body has been found in Britain for the first time.

The bug - which has the scientific name cymothoa exigua - was discovered inside the mouth of a red snapper bought from a London fishmonger. The 3.5cm creature had grabbed onto the fish's tongue and slowly ate away at it until only a stub was left. It then latched onto the stub and became the fish's 'replacement tongue'.

"

(Via jwz.)

Planned Parenthood Turns Protestors Into Profit Generators: "

Planned Parenthood, in Philadelphia over in the USA, have had a brilliant idea:

Every time protesters gather outside of our Locust Street health center, our patients face verbal attacks from them. They see graphic signs meant to confuse and intimidate. They are sometimes blocked from entering the building and occasionally they are videotaped. They are offered anti-choice propaganda and free rides to the closest ‘crisis pregnancy

center.’

Staff and volunteers are also seen as targets. We are all called murderers, are lectured to about committing sins, and are told we will pay the ‘ultimate price’ for our actions.

You can stand with others in the community against these acts of intimidation and harassment.

Here’s how it works: You decide on the amount you would like to pledge for each

protester (minimum 10 cents). When protesters show up on our sidewalks, Planned

Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania will count and record their number each day from October 1 through November 30, 2005. We will place a sign outside the health center that tracks pledges and makes protesters fully aware that their actions are benefiting PPSP. At the end of the two-month campaign, we will send you an update on protest activities and a pledge reminder.

Example: If you pledge 30 cents per protester, and PPSP has 100 protesters in October and 160

protesters in November, your donation would be 78 dollars for the entire two-month campaign…

Go to the link to get involved. Tell people about it.

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Planned Parenthood Turns Protestors Into Profit Generators: "

Planned Parenthood, in Philadelphia over in the USA, have had a brilliant idea:

Every time protesters gather outside of our Locust Street health center, our patients face verbal attacks from them. They see graphic signs meant to confuse and intimidate. They are sometimes blocked from entering the building and occasionally they are videotaped. They are offered anti-choice propaganda and free rides to the closest ‘crisis pregnancy

center.’

Staff and volunteers are also seen as targets. We are all called murderers, are lectured to about committing sins, and are told we will pay the ‘ultimate price’ for our actions.

You can stand with others in the community against these acts of intimidation and harassment.

Here’s how it works: You decide on the amount you would like to pledge for each

protester (minimum 10 cents). When protesters show up on our sidewalks, Planned

Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania will count and record their number each day from October 1 through November 30, 2005. We will place a sign outside the health center that tracks pledges and makes protesters fully aware that their actions are benefiting PPSP. At the end of the two-month campaign, we will send you an update on protest activities and a pledge reminder.

Example: If you pledge 30 cents per protester, and PPSP has 100 protesters in October and 160

protesters in November, your donation would be 78 dollars for the entire two-month campaign…

Go to the link to get involved. Tell people about it.

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Accountabilty Moment: "

Garance Franke-Ruta asks an important question:

WHAT DOES ACCOUNTABILITY LOOK LIKE? I was intrigued by a question raised in Paul Krugman?s column Friday. Krugman wrote:

Why did the administration make the same mistakes twice? Because it paid no political price the first time.

Can the administration escape accountability again? Some of the tactics it has used to obscure its failure in Iraq won't be available this time. The reality of the catastrophe was right there on our TV's, although FEMA is now trying to prevent the media from showing pictures of the dead. And people who ask hard questions can't be accused of undermining the troops.

But the other factors that allowed the administration to evade responsibility for the mess in Iraq are still in place. The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts. The effort to shift blame to state and local officials is under way. Smear campaigns against critics will start soon, if they haven't already. And raw political power will be used to block any independent investigation.

Will this be enough to let the administration get away with another failure? Let's hope not: if the administration isn't held accountable for what just happened, it will keep repeating its mistakes.

I hear so many people saying the same basic thing as Krugman -- Bush must be held accountable -- that I thought maybe it would be good to get a discussion going and unpack this. Because it's not at all clear to me what holding him accountable would mean (or look like), given that he's term-limited and his party controls Congress.

What one thing has to occur in order for it to be clear that Bush has been held accountable by voters or the opposition party?

Here's my response:

First, I'm tired of the overused word 'accountability.' As specific and tough as the word sounds, it has become a vague and loose term, one of the great weasel words of modern discourse. Consider, for example, that every politician who talks about education invokes the phrase 'teacher accountability,' which can mean almost anything.

Back to the administration, or the administration+congressional leadership: I think their attitude, and tactically it's a brilliant insight, is that only a few things count: winning presidential elections, keeping absolute control of Congress -- which means not just a Republican majority but a malleable one -- and winning on the few things that matter to their cash constituents -- tax cuts, tort reform, tax cuts, energy bill subsidies, tax cuts, bankruptcy changes, and eliminating Social Security. The war was also important, for a lot of reasons, but not least because it established the president's authority to act without any check, domestic or external and gave Bush the advantages of a 'wartime president.' Everything else is means to those ends. The president's popularity dipped into the low 40s, and they passed the energy bill anyway -- what more proof do you need that the president's poll numbers hardly matter, if you control the instutions? Before Katrina, they were on the verge of permanent repeal of the estate tax plus another tax cut in reconciliation, even with Bush's numbers in the toilet!

That's why I didn't fully accept Garance's argument last week that they aren't really PR geniuses because of the poll numbers -- they don't need the poll numbers until they need the poll numbers, and when they need them, they figure they can find a way to push them up a bit and/or push the relevant Democrats down. (Or, another way to put it, is that they may not be PR geniuses, but they actually know that the exercise of power does not depend entirely on PR.)

I think of Rove as looking at past presidencies and seeing them as weakened because they worried too much about consequences that didn't really matter, such as the judgment of history or short-term popularity. Bush 41 thought that he had to do something about the deficit, or there would be consequences. So he got drawn into the Andrews Air Force Base budget summit, which earned him a fight within his own party. But Rove recognizes that there's a lot you can get away with if you just act like you can get away with it, especially if you raise the stakes, and as a result he moves with much greater freedom. It seems to me that part of their genius is they've gotten rid of much of the 'you just can't do that' mentality of politics, and stripped everything down to the bare essence of what they can get away with.

One of my biggest worries is that that's a genie that will be very hard to put back in the bottle. Politics, like much of civilization, depends on the existence of some unquestioned, 'it just isn't done' customs. An example that I've mentioned a couple times is the explicity theory, proven once again in the CAFTA vote, that you want to pass a bill with as narrow a margin as possible, because every vote over 218 in the House is wasted and might represent a compromise. That's not something that legislative strategists ever thought before -- they wanted to go into votes with the most comfortable margin, and to win with enough to have a clear endorsement against future challenges. And I'm convinced that Bush/Rove brought that same mindset to the presidential campaign. Most incumbents would want to have a nice Reagan-in-1984-type landslide in order to feel a clear mandate. But Rove/Bush thought that of every vote above 51% as a wasted concession; they knew that all Bush had to do was win, and he could declare the mandate.

So 'accountability' means understanding one of the two or three things that they do care about, and beating them on those things. We must start beating tax cuts, ideally with Republican votes. Win back the House or Senate this fall, if only so that Democrats have subpoena power somewhere, something they can't tolerate. But if it's not one of the things that they care about -- if it's just one of their means, not their ends -- then while it may give us some satisfaction, it doesn't fundamentally break down their racket. (Bad poll #s, indictment on Plame, exposure of Medicare scam, etc.)

Judgment of history doesn't really matter to them and shouldn't really matter to us (how is it possible to doubt what that judgment will be?) but there is so much that we will have to undo once this era ends that it will be politically useful for anything associated with the W years to be automatically suspect and unpopular. I want to get to the point where, when the Republicans attack us for repealing some horrible tax cut, we can just say, 'You people want to take us back to the George W. Bush era!' and they just slither away.

"

(Via The Decembrist.)

#1311: Ypsilanti Dreamin': ""

(Via Diesel Sweeties by R Stevens.)

The NYT magazine pointed out today that it has been four years since September 11, 2001, and that four years from the bombings at Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941, America had decisively won World War II.

Terminally ill NOLA hospital patients who could not be evacuated were euthanized.

A little puzzle: "Dear lazyweb,

I have a square with side length 3 - x. The sides are labelled A, B, C, and D, going around clockwise. There's a point p on A and a point q on B, such that the distance between p and q is 2. We label the intersection of C and D as r. There is a point on pq which we label s, such that rs is perpendicular to pq. The distance between r and s is x + 1. If the angle between rs and D is a, solve for x in terms of a. Bonus points if you convert from polar to cartesian coordinates.

Yes, there's a real motivation for this problem. I'm having trouble solving it though, I've always sucked at geometry."

(Via bramcohen.)

Thank the gods I didn't grow up in a red state.

CULTURE: Honor Students Suspended Over Hair Dye: "Three honor students who'd never before been in trouble at school were booted from their Oklahoma high school for showing up with red, purple, and blue hair.

Lyndsay Burton, Jherika Bryant and Amanda Boese were dismissed from school by Principal Janet Blocker not long after they arrived Thursday morning, with purple, blue and red hair, respectively.



The girls -- all freshmen and all straight-A students -- said they were not warned before being told they would not be allowed back in class until they changed their hair color. The absence is considered unexcused, according to a discipline report given to the students, which means they will not be allowed to make up any tests or assignments they missed, they said.



Burton was dismissed at about 8:20 a.m., traveled to Enid, colored her hair and was back to class by lunch, but not before missing a test. Boese and Bryant were planning on changing their hair and going back to school today. Besides their honor student status, Boese is president and Bryant is vice president of their freshman class.

So let me get this straight: Honor roll students who were involved in student government were temporarily kicked out of a public high school and had their grades and academic records put in jeopardy for dying their hair? What decade are we in, now?



(Hat Tip: Fark)

(Written by: Shalome)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Mr. Dickerson & Dave

Mr. Dickerson & Dave
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Allen's dad & Dave, at Eyal's 26th bday party.

I frakking hate camera flashes.

If there isn't enough light to take a picture, you need a better camera.

Don't interrupt my life with your bad camera crutch.

Fark on 9/11.

I woke up, tried to get through to CNN, got nothing. Tried to get through to NYT, got nothing. I then tried Fark...


Has it really been four years?