my own personal aggregation of stuff I like to read... in one spot, with one stop. I will be adding more URL's &c as the weeks pass, & hopefully leaning away from the political & towards the odd.

Update: Does not work. Has not worked for 2 weeks. Is, in fact a steaming pile of spam. Am therefore going to use kinja instead. There's some ads & some junk, but at least there's a page!!

"NEW YORK (AP) : With just 78 cents in his savings account and $44,000 owed to creditors, bankrupt parking garage attendant Juan Rodriguez plunked down $1 on a Mega Millions lottery ticket. Good thing, too. Rodriguez, 49, of Queens, bought his ticket about one month after filing for bankruptcy in federal court _ and cashed it in this past weekend after emerging as the lone winner of the $149 million lottery."

I'm sure the lottery company love this. It ought to keep all the low-income desperate gamblers on the hook for another year or two...

From MSN: "As I watch the limo creep down Dealey Plaza, I put my finger on the trigger and peer down my rifle's telescope. I can see my target in the cross hairs. It's Nov. 22, 1963. I'm trying to kill the president. The game I'm playing, JFK Reloaded, was released today by the Scottish company Traffic, on the 41st anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. Not surprisingly, it provoked a backlash before anyone ever played it. "It's despicable. There's really no further comment," said a spokesman for Ted Kennedy."

What the hell is next?

"NEW YORK (CNN) -- Longtime anchor Dan Rather will leave the "CBS Evening News" on March 9, the network said Tuesday, just months after Rather's use of questionable documents in a report critical of President Bush's National Guard service.
Rather, 73, said he will continue to work full time as a correspondent for the network's two "60 Minutes" programs as well as other assignments.
"I have always been and remain a 'hard news' investigative reporter at heart," Rather said in a statement. "I now look forward to pouring my heart into that kind of reporting full time.""

via Censoround: "TV writer Lee Goldberg has written an open letter to Kurt & Karen Krueger, the parents who tried to get The Perks of Being a Wallflower et al removed from the Arrowhead High School curriculum."

Asking intellectual property to be banned invites your children to be close minded and unprepared for life. Asking for a book to be removed from a school because it goes against your moral code and then impressing it upon other children not your own is dangerous and borders on the malicious.

via A Welsh View: Shizzolate your site with the Snoop Dogg Shizzolator.

a comprehensive rundown at the Irish Trojan's blog, via Instapundit: "How did American sports come to this? How did a fairly routine NBA altercation turn into the kind of riot we more often associate with minor league hockey? And where -- where -- was the security at The Palace of Auburn Hills when thugs disguised at fans tossed beer and cups at Artest? Where were they when Pacers players, led by Artest and Jackson, charged into the stands and engaged those clowns in a barroom brawl?"

Oh, & just for my 10c. Artest (who's season-long ban will probably get reduced on appeal) should be banned for life and sent to jail. We tell white collar crooks that they can't hold positions of corporate responsibility again. This thug shouldn't be allowed to return to his multi-million dollar job either. Sure, fans were at fault too, but 'til he stepped off the floor there was nothing to see.

or down the river, or across the river,... That's what I call environmental action.

The Columbia River Swim: The Columbia River Swim: the official web site for Christopher Swain's 1243 mile swim of the Columbia River's entire length.
Swim For Clean Water: The Official Web Site for Christopher Swain's 2004 Swims For Clean Water.Includes maps, schedules, media info, swim journal &c

replacing the "who has visited here" list, a "who links here" list. Excellent. No-one links to me, of course, but still..... See the bottom of the right-hand column for the link.

A Welsh View: A mighty-fine range of the technical, political, curious and crazy doings out there in the world. A definite new stop on my must-reads, and an addition to myfeedster. Excellent.

quite literally. It is the alias web puzzle meets the Da-Vinci code with these very strange ads that are on everyone's sidebar at the moment. David Corn spills the beans:

Apparently [the ad] ties into a TV ad campaign and www.moretosee.com for Sharp's new TV. I understand there's some huge puzzle buried amid the ad images
and sites with TVs as prizes. Though I'm not very skilled at unpuzzling,
some blogophiles are, hence this campaign. So the challenge is there: solve
Da Blog Ad Code and win a television. I could use a new television, but I barely
have time to watch TV, let alone solve this mystery.

Alright. Not especially productive, perhaps, but possibly more fun than politics. Let me know where you see the ads, & what they link to. It seems there's a set of fake blogs, for a start, run by Mike, Peter and Natalie, whoever they are. Well, let's see.

The blogs eventually let you get back to a forum for discussion, and the newbie FAQ, which suggests, of course, that I'm way behind the curve. I will say that these ads have been up for a while, & I haven't clicked on them 'til today.

The FAQ has the following puzzle related sites listed, as well as a number of blogs by puzzlers:

MoreToSee.com -- the main portal into the story and treasure hunt.
SteinitzPuzzlers.com -- contains background info on Dagobert Steinitz and The Legend of the Sacred Urns, and an interview with Peter Lindman, finder of the first of three hidden urns. It's also home to the hub for community interaction, the Steinitz Puzzlers Forum.
Natalie.MoreToSee.com
Mike.MoreToSee.com
Peter.MoreToSee.com--Narrative journals detailing the innermost thoughts of the story's three main characters.
SteinitzSkulls.com -- the homepage of Norman Dean Norman, a purveyor of Homo superus skulls.
SteinitzPress.com -- Publishers of an upcoming book about the Legend of the Sacred Urns.
SteinitzTowing.com -- The "Auto-Aquatic Extrication Experts"
SteinitzDDS.com -- The homepage of Steinitz Dental Partners, with more to see on Nov. 22.

Scroll down: "Anything to keep from seeing that banal yellow smiley face that sums up the 70s in a vacuous icon that makes Hello Kitty look like Munch's "Scream." Am I the only one who imagines a hole between the eyes and a red trickle? No? Then I’m among friends. Have a nice day."

Pat'll go mad!! "Plans to create a US soap based on the BBC's EastEnders have reportedly been drawn up by the Fox TV network. EastEnders' head writer Tony Jordan and music mogul Simon Fuller are involved in the project, according to reports in the Hollywood Reporter trade newspaper. It said scripts have been commissioned for a series about a community of working class people in of Chicago. "

if you listen carefully, you can hear the splash. From Engadget: "TiVo has quietly been cutting deals with advertisers to put banner ads up on screen when you fast-forward through commercials. Beginning in March when you try and fast-forward through a commercial you’ll see a small “billboard”; click the pop up and you’ll be automatically entered in a contest or get on a list to be sent more information about the product being advertised."

So I just e-mailed everyone in my department at work the link to the blog about book censorship.... before I noticed that he's also blogging about improper uses for vibrating children's toys. Hmmm. Lesson 1 - Read the whole thing. Lesson 2 - Invent recallable e-mail.

Another addition to my blogroll. This time a round-up of library challenges and censorship issues. "Censoround is a newsblog providing updates about book challenges and other free speech issues in the United States. It is edited by Chris Zammarelli, who writes the Banned Bookslut column for Bookslut."

only this time I mean it. The strange real-estate squatting ads are gone, & in their place once again the click to make them go away column ads. OK.

as Optimus Prime bursts forth from a Citroen. Via GME.jp

TPM: "Gonzales goes from White House Counsel to Attorney General; Rice goes from NSC to State; Spellings goes from Domestic Policy Advisor to Education Secretary.
Each of them defined mainly by their loyalty to President Bush.
As we wrote earlier, the shift is not toward right, left or center, but toward more direct White House control and the silencing of dissident voices in the civil service."

is not the title of the next Phil Collins album. It is, however, my response to this new site brought to my attention via TPM: "What is The Daou Report?
The Daou Report tracks blogs, message boards, online magazines, and independent websites from across the political spectrum - providing a quick overview of the latest news, views, and online buzz.
Which blogs and websites are surveyed for the report?
The Daou Report surveys approximately 300 leading blogs, forums, and political websites daily, and thousands more on a weekly basis. "
Where is the Daou Report?
Why http://www.daoureport.com/, of course.

See first post here. Now I really want one: Reuters: "LOS ANGELES - An unmanned experimental jet broke a world record for speed on Tuesday, cruising over the Pacific Ocean at just under 7,000 mph (11,000 kilometers per hour) in a NASA test of cutting-edge “scramjet” engine technology.
The X-43A aircraft flew at a speed of around Mach 9.6 — nearly 10 times the speed of sound — after a booster rocket took it to around 110,000 feet (33.5 kilometers) and then separated."

As my remarkable wife pointed out and demonstrated, there's a correlation between the Purple America image that I linked to last week

and this dark sky image that illustrates concentrations of population:

Lileks: "Witnessed a classic mom-son conversation with a modern twist; the kid was STEAMED that mom was so CLUELESS about things, specifically, the ability of the G5 iBook to run system X, JEEEZ, MOM, DUH, OF COURSE, whereupon Mom coldly informed him that she knew it would run X, the question was whether they should wait for a G5 Powerbook that would take full advantage of X, which you would have understood if you were listening. Cross-generational geek discord."

Atrios: "While the first Bush administration was run by the "competent grownups" who turned out to be incompetent, the second one will be run by their not so bright teenage nieces and nephews... Condi will be the closest thing to a "grownup" there is..."

From the comments at Kevin Drum: "I expect that everyone appointed will either be batshit crazy or a Bush loyalist -- probably both." This post does, however, compare the reshuffle w/ Clinton's and suggest that it isn't too out of the ordinary.

Well, not me. Maria Sharapova. In this discussion of her most recent advertising campaign I can agree with the notion that "there is something profoundly odd about the mindset of a certain ilk of conservative." But then, honestly, I'm not sure I needed a reaction to the Wimbledon Champ's teenaged-ness to support that. From Samizdata.

When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil. - James Carville

...for posting your freaking giant adverts all over my other website, and for fixing them to the page in a minimisable frame that screws up the display of my content. Cheers.

I know I'm freeloading the webspace, but please have some respect.

"This is a map which is population-corrected; with varying shades of purple representing proportional red/blue votes. Also, it should be noted that the large swaths of red on conventional maps are low-population, while the smaller-seeming blues are high-populations, and it's votes that count, not square feet."

Please be sure to click the link to the larger version, which turns our dogmatic divide into a relaxing and meditational image that looks like a wonderful stained glass window.

Gareth finds the coolest stuff online.... & maybe this blog should do the same instead of being so wrapped up in all the political junk. Anyway. There's a whole bunch of tunnels in New York that are potential venues for stories, games, and assorted cultural frolics. Ah, the abandoned subway.
First though, of course, is for Mornington Crescent. So what about London?

• One: Look through the window as you travel between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn on the Central Line and you'll see a station - where no passengers have alighted since 1932. This used to be British Museum station.
• Two: Photos of abandoned stations.
• Three: Slightly spoddy historical essay on the topic.
• Four: If they're not underground, what's the point?
• Five: H2G2
• Six: NYC again - The High Line

I'm doing it again, making a link list when Google will do it for you, & this site does it too.

So why is this interesting? Abandoned technology, social & urban transformation, hidden infrastructure, secret lives and histories and journeys, metropolitan evolution...... heck, the whole thing will be abandoned when we invent the teleporter!!!

Matthew Yglesias: "The thinking seems to be that the Defense Department will more-or-less stay as-is. Meanwhile, Powell and Armitage will leave the State Department. Widespread speculation has Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, John Bolton as Deputy Secretary, and John Danforth staying put as UN ambassador. If this is right, the key unknown is what happens at the NSC. The most likely candidates are Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley or mysterious realist svengali Robert Blackwill. Worst-case scenario as someone moving over from Dick Cheney's office to take the NSC over. It's a bit hard to say what the upshot of any of that would be."