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Thursday, February 12, 2004 |
Three Wednesday Links.
Jon Stewart was characteristically brilliant in his coverage of Bush’s
Meet the Press interview. (Link is to a very big Quicktime file.) Hat
tip to Making Light. How oh how I wish Comcast offered a limited cable
service where... [Polytropos]
9:37:16 PM Permalink
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Elvis Wanted to be a Rock Critic
According to Neal Pollack, in the last years of his life, Elvis wished he'd become a rock critc:
"Yes, I want to be a rock critic. I've
often read the music press with awe and wonder. No matter what I've
achieved in my life, I don't feel that I've gained true artistic
perfection. Alone above all the arts, rock criticism stands. At its
best, criticism topples music, because, at its best, it's music
combined with literature. How I long to make people read, to make them
understand. Would that I could discard my fame for a humble, yet
consistent, byline! ... The true critic must stand above and seek the
unkown bands that do not car about fame. He must go beyond. And he can
make music himself, but it has to be godawful."
Ha!
3:06:42 PM Permalink
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Stewardess ID's Hijackers
This amazing piece by Gail Sheehy shows that a stewardess on Flight 11
phoned in the names and seat numbers of the hijackers on that flight
before it crashed into the World Trade Tower. It's incredible reading:
"Amy, this is Michael Woodward." The
American Airlines flight service manager had been friends with Sweeney
for a decade, so he didn’t have to waste any time verifying that this
wasn’t a hoax. "Michael, this plane has been hijacked," Ms. Sweeney
repeated. Calmly, she gave him the seat locations of three of the
hijackers: 9D, 9G and 10B. She said they were all of Middle Eastern
descent, and one spoke English very well.
Mr. Woodward ordered a colleague to punch up those seat locations on
the computer. At least 20 minutes before the plane crashed, the airline
had the names, addresses, phone numbers and credit cards of three of
the five hijackers. They knew that 9G was Abdulaziz al-Omari, 10B was
Satam al-Suqami, and 9D was Mohamed Atta—the ringleader of the 9/11
terrorists.
"The nightmare began before the first plane crashed," said Mike
Sweeney, "because once my wife gave the seat numbers of the hijackers
and Michael Woodward pulled up the passenger information, Mohamed
Atta’s name was out there. They had to know what they were up against."
...At 8:46 a.m., Mr. Woodward lost contact with Amy Sweeney—the moment
of metamorphosis, when her plane became a missile guided into the tower
holding thousands of unsuspecting civilians. "So sometime between 8:30
and 8:46, American must have known that the hijacking was connected to
Al Qaeda," said Mike Sweeney. That would be 16 to 32 minutes before the
second plane perforated the south tower.
Read the entire story. This is a big scandal. The Bush Administration
is hiding key facts about what happened, and the committee
investigating this, which Bush opposed and dragged his feet about
starting, is not hearing key evidence.
But what are we going to hear more about? This, or the supposed Kerry infidelities?
11:08:14 AM Permalink
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Drudge Claims Kerry Scandal Brewing. Matt Drudge claims there is a "frantic behind-the-scenes drama" unfolding around Sen. John Kerry. "Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry. A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Kerry has been underway at Time magazine, ABC... [Taegan Goddard's Political Wire]
Sounds like Karl Rove has been busy. In a way, it's good for any dirt like this to come out now, if it's there to come out. Let the nasty stuff from the Republicans hit while there's time, if necessary, to come up with another candidate.
10:46:18 AM Permalink
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PHP 5.0 Beta 4 released!. PHP 5.0 Beta 4 has been released. This fourth beta of PHP 5 is also scheduled to be the last one (barring unexpected surprises, that did occur with beta 3). This beta incorporates dozens of bug fixes since Beta 3, rewritten exceptions support, improved interfaces support, new experimental SOAP support, as well as lots of other improvements, some of which are documented in the ChangeLog. Some of the key features of PHP 5 include: PHP 5 features the Zend Engine 2. XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library (http://www.xmlsoft.org/). SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite, please visit their website. A new SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension and vice-versa. Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams. [PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor]
10:38:46 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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