rare bird

Yahoo! News - Blasts Kill Five in Baghdad's Green Zone BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents penetrated Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and set off bombs at a market and a popular cafe Thursday, killing five people, including three Americans, the U.S. military said, in a bold attack on the compound housing the U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters.

frontline: coming soon: the choice 2004 | PBS 8 pm on TPT tonight. Watch it tonight; comment it tomorrow.

Willamette Week Online | News | POLITICS | SHUT UP and VOTE! My new Election Day mantra: "Today is a good day to die. Ramming speed!" Klingons on Kerry: "He has shown prowess in battle." On Bush: "He fled the field of battle like a coward." link credit: knightopia

Tell-A-Friend: God is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat.

John Sutherland: America's Fundagelicals I'd never heard of this before. Link credit: knightopia (hey, Steve, where do you find all this great stuff?)

(Editor's note: "B&E" are my parents". My Dad retired two years ago, they moved to Mesquite, Nevada, Mom developed a variety of medical ailments, and let's just say nothing's ever been the same since.) Just got another call from Mom verifying that they're flying in to Minneapolis/St. Paul on Thursday. I told her we have tennis lessons at 7:30, and she said they might get here before then but then again they might not. Go figure.

Shockwave required.

Kerry's debate performance last night was more solid than anything Gore ever did. If he loses the election, it won't be because he didn't do his best. It will be because the country is too ... [--REDACTED--] ... because the country has changed to the point where it no longer accepts democratic leadership. If Kerry loses, it is because in our current fear, we accept only republican leadership..

I was thinking, it would be fun to eat like the candidates before the debate. Problem is, I eat like Bush all the time. WWKE (What Would Kerry Eat?) Would I have to find some incredible clam chowder or something?

(Note: I didn't come up with the following, but thought I should pass it on - Bird) Unlike most shareware, America's democratic program requires registration. With 15 to 30 days left to register, you civic-minded procrastinators are running out of time. Print out the PDF Voter Registration Form and register by mail.

I actually was quite impressed by the debate last night. It had substance, they talked about the issues, and it was as serious as the foreign policy challenges facing the next president are. If you watched the whole debate, and came away agreeing with the positions and arguments of Bush or Kerry, you can make a decision right here, right now, whom to vote for. In fact, that is what you should do, because the chief responsibility of the president is foreign policy, war, and peace. Let Congress handle the domestic policy issues primarily. The president is diplomat-in-chief and commands the world's most powerful military, as well as the world's most powerful weapons. For the still-undecided: If you agree with Kerry's foreign policy, but can't make yourself vote for him for some other reason - you think he's a tax-raising wacko, out-of-control liberal - vote for Michael Badnarik. Please don't vote for Bush. We'll all live to regret it if you do. If you thi...

Current Weather conditions : 43, light rain. Windchill 35 degrees. That's three degrees away from freezing, folks. Welcome to Minnesota. When I went outside for lunch today I was shocked, shocked to discover there was cold weather going on in this state. Gee, I wonder if the presidential candidates will be "swinging" through here again? I hereby declare this the most miserable day of 2004! (So far). Reader wonders - why did you post this? Answer: I always wanted to "hereby declare" something. Plus, we Minnesotans are always looking for an excuse to blog about the weather.

Space news from slashdot: knovis writes "The Ansari X Prize is being attempted at this moment: 9:30am EST. Bert Rutan and Paul Allen's Scaled Composites is preparing to make the first of 2 launches necessary. For the uninitiated, the X-Prize is a $10M prize available to the first entirely privately funded organization that creates a vehicle that travels to 100km above the earth's surface (low earth orbit) twice within 2 weeks. IIRC, SpaceShipOne is planning 3 flights for that 2 week period, for safety. Best of luck to Private Spaceflight. Did anyone else notice that Virgin Galactic has just been launched?" Project Zen writes "MSNBC has an article about how the seats won't be filled with people but mementos of the crew ." Several readers sent links to CNN's story on the flight , and space.com's continuing coverage , including by webcam; NASA TV also has an eye on the launch . (Watch this space for updates.) Update: 09/29 15:57 GMT ...

I just changed the publishing settings to display 99 posts at a time (ergo, every post I've written so far). If you're new to rare bird be sure to check out the older posts! Why 99 posts? 9 is too few, and 999 is too many (at least right now).

I just saw my boss surfing the web, even though he's told me many times not to. Now I don't feel quite so guilty about catching up on the latest at slashdot . While I'm at work. I do still feel guilty though. Darn that calvinism! What do you think?

There's a local jazz organist playing tonight and tommorow night at the Artists' Quarter in St. Paul. Name is Billy Holloman. He's been playing Tuesday nights for over 10 years, and this is his first CD. 'Sounds' good! The website has a link to his CD and how to get to the AQ. www.billyholloman.com

Firefox, the open-source, commercial-grade browser from Mozilla is already overtaking IE's market share. Listen to Walt Mossberg, and obey: “I suggest dumping Microsoft's Internet Explorer , which has a history of security breaches. I recommend instead using Mozilla Firefox . It’s not only more secure but also more modern and advanced, with tabbed browsing and a better pop-up ad blocker.” — Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal, Sept 16

Maybe they should have called it Icarus! This story is about Genesis, the space probe sent to collect solar data. It crashed in the desert instead of being "caught" by a plane as was NASA's plan. In other space news, two new planets have been discovered that are not gas giant like Jupiter, but resemble icy, rocky planets like Neptune. As our telescopic prowess increases, our ability to detect Earth-size planets becomes possible: September 2, 2004: The race to find distant new “Earths” heated up considerably yesterday with the detection of two of the smallest planets ever detected outside the Solar System. Whereas previous extrasolar planets discovered were almost exclusively gas giants, similar in Jupiter and Saturn and between 100 and 300 times the mass of the Earth, the newly found planets are much smaller – only 15 to 20 Earth masses. This places them in the mass range of Uranus and Neptune, somewhere between the gas gia...

This is the link to Alan Parsons' official site. Pretty cool, it has an introductory video (he's gotten older, but is still shy), plenty of features, and links to the new album and the fan club site (which I referenced earlier). It looks like he went online for the first time recently.

Senator Kerry calls this a "tragic milestone," and the most catastrophic of the administration's mistakes made so far. Regardless of his mistakenly voting for the war at the time, he's right. For him to turn against the Iraq war is a flip-flop I would be happy with. Hopefully he has an exit strategy, even though he's not telling us about it at the moment. This is why Bush must be defeated in November. I realize the economy is an important issue, but compared to 1000++ dead soldiers? Come on. Not to mention 7,000++ wounded, and the 11,000++ estimated by the Iraq Body Count . This is a slam dunk, as George Tenet would say. Prediction: if Bush is [re]elected, the U.S. will engage in pre-emptive war against Iran and/or North Korea. Is that really what we want?