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15159 ª February 28 10:26 AM. Absolutely the crummiest website ever made. I’m sure this may be a much-maligned type of front page post. I know many of us are web developers and it’s easy to get snotty and to think that every site under the sun is horribly designed and to poke fun at the blink tag users and frontpage developers of the world. But this is just unbelievable. Sue me. [MetaFilter]

Argh!!!!! It really is awful. Everything on the page moves for absolutely no reason. Try to click on the entertainment link and it runs away from you. Letters & words keep flowing around the page. The designer should be fired.

If you want to go directly to the page, here it is. Warning: take a motion sickness pill before you do.

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15151 ª February 28 7:10 AM. Sigh. In case all this talk of foreign crazies was stealing the spotlight from our homegrown malcontents. [MetaFilter]

I always believed our own wackos are just as dangerous as any middle eastern terrorists. Thankfully most of them are too stupid to do any harm

Somehow I missed Nat Hentoff's

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Somehow I missed Nat Hentoff’s second piece about the Patriot Act, the one that discussed libraries. Big John Wants Your Reading List outlines the slippery slope librarians have been warning against.

“As I often do when Americans’ freedom to read is imperiled, I called Judith Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association. I’ve covered, as a reporter, many cases of library censorship, and almost invariably, the beleaguered librarians have already been on the phone to Judy Krug. She is the very incarnation of the author of the First Amendment, James Madison.

As she has often said, “How can anyone involved with libraries stand up and say, ‘We are going to solve problems by withholding information’?”

I called to talk with her about the FBI’s new power to force libraries to disclose the titles of books that certain people are reading÷and she, of course, knew all about this part of the USA Patriot Act. And the rest of it, for that matter.

Accordingly, the press ought to awaken the citizenry not only to the FBI’s harvesting lists of what “suspect” Americans read, but also to the judicial silencing of bookstores and libraries that are being compelled to betray the privacy and First Amendment rights of readers.”

Judith continues to fight the good fight – more power to her. Thanks to Library Juice for pointing this one out.

[The Shifted Librarian]

Kristallnacht for the Pepsi Generation?.

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Kristallnacht for the Pepsi Generation?. Over the past few months, there has been a great deal of discussion in the American, European, and Israeli conservative press about an alarming group of events taking place in Europe. These events — seeming anti-Semitic* language from Europe’s “chattering classes” and anti-Semitic attacks from the shadows of Europe’s Muslim community — hearken back to the shattered glass and yellow stars of blackest days of the 20th Century: Nazi Germany. The mainstream media has slowly picked up on disturbing reports of still-smoldering synagogues and of sniper fire, however there are many who suggest that these events have more to do with anger over Israel’s policies than they do with Jews themselves. Are the events a natural response to Israeli treatment of Palestinians, or are they a symptom of something deeper brewing within Europe? [kuro5hin.org]

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15083 ª February 25 6:21 PM. We’re exporting toxic technologies to third world countries. We all know computer components contain lots of chemical badness, and it seems that as much as 80 percent of US electronics trash is sent to developing countries, where it is becoming a major health hazard. [MetaFilter]

Youssou N’dour wrote about this in the song “Toxiques” in 1990:

Rich countries make toxic waste. Why should they send it to us?

Poor countries know toxic waste. Why should they accept it?

How come people are suddenly waking up to it?

I have spent the last

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I have spent the last week upgrading six machines to Windows XP. On average it takes me eight to ten hours to complete. One took me around sixteen.

I actually like XP, it loads faster, runs faster, and seems much more stable. But the cost of getting there is horrendous. Of the six machines, only one installation went cleanly.

Jim, buddy, (Jim Allchin), this sucks. Your team had a lot more work to do.

[Craig Burton: logs, links, life, and lexicon]

Upgrading to Mac OS X usually takes me 1 hour or less

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15077 ª February 25 2:30 PM. Drug War roundup. The US will end drug-related sanctions against Afghanistan and Haiti. Neither country stopped producing drugs, they need loans sanctions stop them from receiving. A British journalist compares the drug policies of Holland to Britain. Noteworthy: despite heroin being half the price, there are 25% fewer Dutch addicts. The FARC and Columbia are openly warring again. So far, only civilians have been killed. The California Medical Association voted to lobby the state government to raise the smoking age from 18 to 21. [MetaFilter]