Domestic Wiretapping Prior to 9/11

This post is going to be rather sparse, and the main reason I'm putting it up is so I can easily find the WaPo link later on.

Main point: Everyone talking about providing retroactive Telco immunity in the upcoming FISA update argues that "Hey, it was after the 9/11 Terrorist attacks! They were trying to help the Gov't out in a very troubling time." However, as this article suggests, the domestic surveillance had started long before the Sept 11th attacks occurred.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.
(emphasis mine)

This information has been significantly absent in all discussions I've heard lately, so it may have been refuted. Still trying to find out the status on the validity of the claim. More to come...

Update: Here's an article where emptywheel examines the SSCI arguments in favor of retro immunity for the telcos.

Irrational Exuberance, Oct 2007-style

Hey, everybody! It's Saturday!

Let's review what I consider the most interesting stock market news from yesterday.

Troubled home lender Countrywide Financial reported 3Q results yesterday. Here are the highlights:

- Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC.N) posted a $1.2 billion third-quarter loss on Friday
- The quarterly net loss totaled $2.85 per share, or $1.20 more than Reuters Estimates said analysts on average expected
- Countrywide wrote down $1 billion related to capital market disruptions.
- It set aside $934.3 million for credit losses, up from $38 million a year earlier, as more borrowers fell behind on payments
- Countrywide said borrowers were delinquent on 29.08 percent of subprime loans it serviced as of September 30, up from 23.71 percent in June.

Truly some grim results. I can only imagine the market must have really pummeled their stock.

Countrywide shares rose $4.23 to $17.30 on the New York Stock Exchange

Huh. You don't say...

Makes you wonder what all those buyers were expecting CFC to report, no?

So, at this point, I'm convinced that the financial markets are just completely covering their ears and shouting "la-la-la...I can't hear you!" for about half of the economic news coming in. There can't be a recession, because I called bull market, no takebacks.

AP Editorial Slant on Oil Revenues

So I get that this article is from the business news section, but this might well be the most transparently biased lead line I've ever seen.

The oil industry is under assault globally by nations and even provinces who want companies ... to cough up more royalties they can use to address issues like poverty and education.

The oil industry is under assault? Oh dear! Who will look out for the interests of those defenseless multi-billion dollar megacorporations? Forget the freaking children, wont someone please think of Big Lovable Oil? Curse those greedy nations (and provinces, no less!) for depriving these businesses of their profits and then frittering them away on the greedy poor and uneducated.

So, either....Wow! That's an interesting take on the subject. Or else, I tip my hat to the most subversive sarcasm since "A Modest Proposal".

Ouch!

Okay, so I'm basically just going to copy (and link to) Mark's boingboing post, because he pretty much sums this one up as elegantly and succinctly as possible:

Nad Shot is a blog that posts comic book panels of violent punches and kicks to the groin.

Nad Shot. A blog posting pics of comic characters getting hit in the nuts. I suppose "brilliant" is not the right word, but maybe "awesome" is close.

10/19 Changed Everything

Uh oh...from MSNBC...

Plane hits building near Vancouver airport
Two elderly people aboard aircraft injured, Canadian media report

Let's see if Harper is going to prove his Conservative cred and declare a Global War on Elderly People.

Sarkozy elected President of France

Well, in what (I believe) NPR called the highest french voter turnout ever, voters have elected conservative Nicolas Sarkozy as President over Segolene Royal. He is expected to push for reforms that would push France towards a more US/UK-style of social and economic policies to help increase French growth and employment.

Kos luminary Jerome a Paris isn't completely convinced. Further, he again argues compellingly that, contrary to the standard line in most economic reporting, the economies of the US and UK aren't necessarily superior to that of France.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Van Johnson on the Future of Content Networking

This is already a bit old, but I was just alerted to it via slashdot.

Van Johnson, one of the people responsible for building computer networking as we know it today, gives a lecture at Google summarizing how we got to Web 2.0 and proposing where we need to go from here. His basic premise is that we're currently at a "Coppernican Revolution" moment in terms of content delivery, similar to where we were in the 60s and 70s when they were working on what would become the Intertubes as we know them today...and suggests that we need to change the way we think about networking.

He suggests that the biggest problem with networking as we have it today is that it is still fundamentally too "conversation-based", which worked fine for the pre-commercial academic/military/research networks for which it was designed, but in our emerging ubiquitous computing world, it needs to be more "data-centric".

For those who care it's well worth watching.

Huge in Korea

So my regular reader knows that I've been perplexed by my inexplicable traffic resulting from searches on "tiananmen square", we now have chapter 2 of the story. (Sidenote: I've still never managed to find this blog when searching on any of these terms, which is one of my key sources of perplexity)

The (apparently) Korean search engine naver.com seems to be sending a lot of traffic my way on searches for "Gorillaz".

To this I say: "Huttah!", and further... 환영, 나의 한국 친구

(This is likely one of those cases where babelfish totally screws up and that text manages to be some Korean insult.)

4/29truth.com - don't believe the hype

Unlike the situation on 9/11, we now know how to evaluate gas-fire-related structural collapses. As such, we now have a site devoted to debunking the "official story" on the so-called *accidental* collapse of the overpass leading to the Bay Bridge, only days after the actual event.

Was it Liberals? Or the Jews? Or perhaps George Soros, even?

I'm sure this site will get beyond the *official story* in no time.

Johnathan Coulton - First of May

exitramp's favorite musician, Johanathan Coulton, has new (?) a song appropriate for MayDay. He maintains and/or exceeds most favored musician status with this one.

Link. (Definitely NSFW.)

Ah, spring...

Viacom Takedown on Coulton/Mix-a-lot Mashup

I had planned to do a post on the phenomenal time-synched mashup of Jonathan Coulton's cover of "Baby Got Back" with the original video by Mix-a-Lot, but apparently Viacom issued a takedown, so it's no longer available.

Once again, I've missed the trolley.

To make up for it, here's a Coulton doing "B.G.B." live video from L.A. last year. Suck it, Viacom.

• Previous exitramp post about Coulton: (Re Your Brains, machinima video)


• Link to the took-down YouTube link: ("No such thing as bad publicity" link)

Is The Internets Be Making We Stupid?

For the last four or five days, I've been refusing to look something up on the Internet. Sometime last week, we heard a cover of "I Melt With You", and I realized I couldn't remember the name of the band who originally performed that song.

Please understand that I loved this song when it first came out   got "alternative" big, but before it was a popular song. At my parents' house, I have both albums on which this song was released. In summary, I used to be a fan.

As such, I was extremely pissed that I couldn't remember the band's name. I refused to look it up on the Internet or even try to find the CD. I've been using the Internet as a crutch for good memory for way too long, and I think my long-term memory is suffering as a result. Not wasting brain cells on the syntax for a given command is one thing...not being able to remember the name of a favorite band from back-in-the-day is a completely different situation.

Tonight, I finally remembered their name. (Modern English) I'm totally enthused about having remembered it without any crutches, and I think I'm going to try to avoid using the Internet as a memory-aid to try and avoid allowing my long-term memory to stagnate.

Yet Another Post

Dear Internets,

I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but...

I did just go through the archives here the other day and noticed that I've been really bad about posting for many months now.

Recently, I started a new job. This one will likely involve far less after-hours and weekend work, so hopefully I'll have more time to find clever things to say.

We should totally spend more time together starting....NOW

Sincerely,

mergenow

P.S. John Edwards is a total fag LOL!!!!

Suck It, Pandora

If you didn't know me in college, you may as well skip this post.

I personally enjoy pandora.com, as far as algorithm-based music-recommendation services go.

However, today, they pushed my music snobbery to the limit...

While following a link to get the full song title tonight, I was presented with a page that presented me with the following challenge via a banner ad:

"Huh!" my inner music snob screamed out, "My freaking ass other Pandora listeners like the same music I do!"

Instantly, an old college favorite came to mind:

A tense minute elapsed while the hourglass thingy clocked away....until finally:

Yeah. That's what I thought, punk.

Test of new blogger

Let's see how the new blogger format works....

Speed of a meme

This guy is attempting to measure the speed of a meme through The Tubes.

Since I'm sucker for such things, I am playing along. He would like you to do so as well.

Posting

Indeed, I've really been slacking on posting lately. I really can't blame anyone except for the failed policies of the Clinton Administration. Or maybe Denny Hastert's staff. Something like that.

To make up for it, here's Katie Melua's video for "Nine Million Bicycles."



She recently set a world record for performing the world's deepest underwater concert on a gas rig in the North Sea. (warning: annoying website that doesn't accomodate direct links)

**UPDATE Feb 27, 2007*** Youtube link updated

Carney and Biden @ Mid-Valley Rally

Curses!

I have not been checking the Chris Carney campaign website nearly often enough. Apparently, yesterday, I totally missed the "Mid-Valley Rally" @ Barrett's Pub in Archbald. He had Joe Biden along with him as well.

Well, whatever. I'm still waiting for the "Chili con Carney" Dinner/Rally.

Rendezvous + realtime (almost) google maps

Okay, so I know I haven't posted much lately, and whenever I do, it's been some link to a youtube video...but bear with me, okay?

If you haven't seen Rendezvous yet, it's a short film made in 1978 by French filmmaker Claude Lelouch, in which he mounted a camera to the bumper of a Ferrari and had an (unspecified) Formula-1 driver friend drive balls-out through the early morning streets of Paris. It's a mind-blowingly stupid exhibition of some severely badass driving.

This guy has made a googlemaps realtime (almost) mapping of the drive.

Enjoy.

Onthaal aan mijn lezers van de Lage Landen

For some reason that I have yet to figure out, I seem to be getting a lot of traffic from the Netherlands. Specifically, a lot of my Dutch Homies seem to be searching on images.google.nl for the searchword "tank" and wind up coming here. This site doesn't seem to be a significant search result on that word, as near as I can tell, and the word seems to mean the same thing in Dutch as it does in English. The search result situation seems to be in response to my posting about the Tiananmen Square tank guy a while back.

If there are any English-speaking Nederlanders out there who would care to clue me in on the significance of "tank" in the current Netherlands idiom, I'd appreciate it. The most likely result I can find seems to be a club in Australia.