General

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” — John F. Kennedy [angiemckaig .com – brain lint]

Zing! You all knew there was more beneath the surface – another message that wasn’t televised. Now bear witness to what has got to be the most exhilarating piece of audible truth from the white house thus far. There was one of these posted last year, and this one has successfully one-upped the previous one without skipping a beat. I don’t know about you, but I’m not all that shocked by what is said here… [metafilter.com]

There is a conspiracy theory that has been making the rounds on the net for quite
some time now. In it, the actor Elijah Wood (Frodo) and Dominic Monaghan (Merry)
are a gay couple that have been together since the filming of The Lord of the Rings.
And they want to come out…but contracts and a whole lot of money at stake are keeping
them in. So what do they do? Start testing the waters by infiltrating a gay gossip site
called Data Lounge. Test the waters. Get media attention brought to them so they can out
themselves as smoothly as possible and not get in trouble. Going on for some time now,
the saga is up to thread 14 and shows no sign of slowing down. There are cryptic posts,
shoutouts through clothing, PR beardings, interviews, sheep, photographs, insiders and trolls. And
the strangest thing of all is that some of the proof is strangely compelling. Examples of all this
and the “proofs” can be found here.

So after looking at many of the “facts”, do you think it possible that two young actors might be
trying to test the waters to come out in a novel fashion? And more importantly this all raises
the question; do you think mainstream America (and the world in general) is ready to accept
young openly gay men in cinema as leading men? Or is it career suicide? [metafilter.com]

When I first read this, I thought it must surely be satire, but it seems to be true: a kid has killed himself on his webcam to show his friends how truly hardcore he is… [Morons Dot Org]

This is really sad. I read this a few days ago in someone else’s blog.

[dive into mark]

I can relate. last night at 10PM I was getting email from the other programmer I work telling me that he finished merging the source code into VSS.

I’m in Florida but I end up working on West Coast time. I’d like to move to Vancouver and work at the main office instead of working at home. When I work at home it means I’m on the job at all times.

From MacObserver:

An interesting report from Pravda, of all places, concerning Microsoft caught our eye today. The newspaper, which was the U.S.S.R.’s flagship state-owned propaganda newspaper back in the day, reported today that Microsoft donated money to a charity that the FBI has since linked to al-Qaeda. From Pravda’s English edition (including the poor translation):

Corporation Microsoft and its president Bill Gates are still haunted with troubles. This time the troubles don’t concern accusations of monopolization of the operating systems market. As it turned out, the corporation sponsored bin Laden.

Microsoft is not the only company blamed for financing terrorists, even popular PC producer Compaq sponsored terrorists as well. It is clear that both companies didn’t even suspect that money transferred to the charitable organization Benevolence International Foundation is spent on training of al-Qaeda terrorists. The companies transferred not very large sums of money, Microsoft’s transfer made up 20 thousand dollars. But as is known, many hands make light work.

Activity of the charitable foundation was organized on a wide scale. It’s enough to say that when activity of the foundation and its chairman Arnaout was investigated by the FBI, it turned out that within the four first months of 2002 Benevolence International Foundation transferred 685 thousand dollars to bank accounts in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia and Russia allegedly for support of Chechen refugees. But in fact the money was sent to terrorists.

Though Pravda means “Truth” in Russian, we did contact Microsoft to find out if this particular story was true. A Microsoft spokesperson told The Mac Observer (TMO) that Microsoft had indeed donated to Benevolence International Foundation as part of an employee matching program. That program matches employee donations to what the spokesperson said is a “broad range of organizations” designated as 501c3 non-profit organizations in amounts up to US$12,000.

From a prepared statement given to TMO:

Microsoft matches employee contributions up to US$12,000 — allowing employees to contribute those funds to non-profits organizations of their choice as long as those organizations are legitimate 501c3 organizations.

Upon learning of the organization’s suspicious activity in December 2001, Microsoft immediately suspended all donations to this organization.

This time, at least, Pravda had the truth of it, if not the full truth. There is more in the full article from Pravda on the overall investigation into Benevolence International Foundation.

DaveNet: Meet The Peking Duck. [Scripting News]

President Bush’s State of the Union address was confirmation that the Left must now face their worst fears. This past Sunday the New York Times pouted that George W. Bush’s presidency suspiciously resembles a Reagan redux: The third term that the Gipper never had. [Roelands.Org]