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What the hell…is it Monday or something?

They’re trying to make a maniac outta me!

THE Conservatives will propose banning plasma screens and other energy-guzzling electrical goods in a report to be unveiled next week.

The proposals target white goods like fridges and freezers, as well as TVs, personal computers and DVD players that use too much energy or operate on stand-by.

The ideas come from a Conservative group set up by David Cameron to develop policies to protect the environment and although the measures to make household electrical appliances more energy efficient are not binding on Mr Cameron, they are thought likely to be warmly received by the Tory leader.

The group will also suggest scrapping Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of the nation’s success in favour of a model that measures people’s happiness drawn up up by Friends of the Earth.

I think my spleen just exploded.

September 10, 2007 — 2:47 pm
Comments: 13

Hmmm…

Latest Bin Laden Video Is a Forgery: All References to Current Events Are Made During Video Freeze

Osama Bin Laden’s widely publicized video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and 36 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary events and could have been (and likely were) made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The audio track does appear to be in the voice of a single speaker. What I suspect was done is that an older, unreleased video was dubbed over for this release, with the video frozen when the audio track departed from that of the original video.

Emphasis in the original. That’s the observation of a lefty blogger, by the way, but credit where credit is due…assuming it’s due. It would be a pretty amazing thing for the supposed armies of analysts to have missed, wouldn’t it?

Anybody sat through the actual tape? Is it true? I just read the transcript and I can’t do video from work. Excuse my obsession with this dirtbag. The British half of Team Weasel is in London at the moment and I don’t like it one bit.

Found via here which I found via here.

— 12:51 pm
Comments: 8

Behold, the power of a burnt out hippie chick

hippie cairns

Saturday, I visited Block Island, a green dab of land an hour’s ferry ride from the coast of Rhode Island. Never been there, but it’s been on my “before you move away” list forever. It was great.

We managed to pack five of us into a rented PT Cruiser. The Cruiser is apparently the rental car of choice on The Block; there were so many of them toodling around, the place looked like a midget undertaker’s convention. We drove the whole perimeter of the island, stopping at various nature trails and beauty spots and historical markers to hike and gawp and take pictures.

There’s something about a group of middle-aged persons on a day trip — a certain feckless, enthusiastic incompetence — that made me want to pin notes to everybody’s shirt and make sure I had phone numbers for all their moms.

Though I don’t know what I’m being so snarky about; I was the only one who came to grief. I snagged a toe in a tree root and did a spectacular flying faceplant-slash-bellyflop in the dust. I didn’t break anything but I bent a few of them pretty hard. At least it was the last hike of the day. How’s come I never make it home in clean pants?

And you’d think somebody would’ve mentioned I was getting sunburnt. All my upturned surfaces toasted a nice Coca-Cola logo red (which is, for those of you interested in graphic design, Pantone 485, the only true red in the Pantone Color Matching System). Today, my face is tighter than a gnat’s and redder than a baboon’s respective bottoms.

Anyhow, just before we quit for liquorses and scallopses at the ferry landing, we spotted this gigantic expanse of cairns by the side of the road. It seems unlikely that they were all stacked by that one hippie chick (they extend way down the beach in both directions), but she looked capable. She stacked rocks and took not the slightest notice of anyone.

And so ended a wonderful day in weirdness.

more hippie cairns

— 8:27 am
Comments: 12