The source of these vulnerabilities is insufficient s...

The atmosphere inside Aryanfest was that of a Renaissance Fair gone over to the dark side, with "Heils" in place of "Huzzahs." Costumed attendees wore Iron Cross medallions and black bomber jackets emblazoned with swastika patches instead of studded leather armor and princess dresses. A Nazi memorabilia dealer hawked SS patches and framed photographs of Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Rudolph Hess in the parking lot. Next to the stage was a picnic pagoda, serving as the Aryanfest day-care center, where little white children in skinhead clothes colored in white power coloring books. Directly next door to the pagoda was a tattoo booth, where the incessant high-pitched buzz of a tattoo gun sounded from behind a blue tarp curtain. Beside the Panzerfaust merchandise stand was the Women for Aryan Unity booth, which sold child-rearing guides and White Nationalist Baby magazines, including one containing a simplified biography of Hitler suitable for bedtime stories: "He was a lifelong lover of animals and children . . . He is invincible and victory shall one day be his."

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"If You Only Knew is a film portrait of the now famous jazz vocalist who was 'rediscovered' decades after he disappeared from the public eye. Born in Cleveland in 1925, Jimmy Scott's early years were filled with devastating hardships. At age 12, he was diagnosed with Kallmann's Syndrome, a rare hormonal condition that kept his body -- and his voice -- from developing beyond boyhood. Seven months after the diagnosis, his beloved mother, the sole guardian of Scott and his nine siblings, was killed in a car accident. Her children were separated and sent to live in foster homes.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

Link (Thanks, Tony!)

It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms.

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(via Making Light)

For the past several weeks, trolling-for-trash journalists have made repeated forays into the continuing mystery of George W. Bush's Air National Guard service (to catch up on developments, read Salon's "Bad news doesn't get better with age", The Decatur Daily's "Former Dannelly worker: Bush not AWOL", The Nation's "W's AWOL Spin Update!", and -- of particular interest -- The Memphis Flyer's "On Guard -- Or Awol?"). With just eight months left in the presidential campaign, GBT is hoping to speed the disclosure process along by offering a $10,000 reward to coax a witness to step forward and confirm President Bush's story, thereby putting the whole sordid mess behind us.

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The past year has witnessed the ris...

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

(this is my third link from Teresa Nielsen Hayden in one day, which has to be some kind of record)

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(via Making Light)

Mrs. Miller's album is definitely over the top, but I get the very sinister feeling from the liner notes that while Miller herself may have been completely serious about what she was doing, whoever coaxed her to make this album was laughing on the inside, and probably egging her on to be even more extreme. The sarcasm is very subtle, just enough to give the wink to record collectors like us while keeping poor Mrs. Miller in the dark. References to her "impeccible diction" and "scintillating delivery" abound, as well as the accolade "one of the most interesting voices extant... one that brings to mind the tonal qualities of a Florence Foster Jenkins or a Mrs. B. J. Fangman".

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(Thanks, miles!)

The mojitos at the Tokyo Trader Vic's come in a ~8" tall block of ice, bored out to make room for the drink, served with a fat-ass novelty straw (that's a dinner-plate, shown for scale). 20,000 Yen!

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(Thanks, Howard!)

Michael Bills thought he had a pretty good gig with the federal Transportation Security Administration. His job as a screener at Love Field was government work--good bennies, nice retirement package. An ex-Marine and former quality inspector for a company in Garland before he was laid off, Bills says he even turned down other potential employers to stick with the TSA, where he worked for about 12 months.

Then the TSA fired him last October; said he failed to pass his background security check. Even worse, the TSA called him a sex offender--and worse than that, a child molester.

Except he isn't. The TSA--remember, these are the people who are supposed to weed out the terrorists from the regular airline passengers--got the wrong man.

"What hurt me the most is they accused me of being a sex offender," Bills says. "To me, that's the worst thing you can do."

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Based on a study by Bill Yerazunis of CRM114, the average human is only 99.84% accurate. Both filters are reporting to have reached accuracy levels between 99.983% and 99.984% (1 misclassification in 6250 messages) using completely different approaches (CRM114 touts Markovan, while DSPAM implements a Dolby-type noise reduction algorithm called Dobly).

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We are aware of the so-called "Grey Tuesday" event, sponsored by http://www.downhillbattle.org and described on the http://www.greytuesday.org website as a "day of coordinated civil disobedience" in which participating sites will make the unlawful Grey Album available for downloading, distribution, and file-sharing in order to force "reforms to copyright law that can make sampling legal." Your site is listed among those that will engage in this openly unlawful conduct. Any unauthorized distribution, reproduction, public performance, and/or other exploitation of The Grey Album will constitute, among other things, common law copyright infringement/misappropriation, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment rendering you and anyone engaged with you in such acts liable for all of the remedies provided by relevant laws. These remedies include but are not limited to preliminary and permanent injunctive relief as well as monetary and punitive damages necessary to remedy your openly willful violation of Capitol's rights.

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(Thanks, Kevin!)

kottke.org is grey today because I believe that musical sampling without prior consent of the copyright holder should be legally allowed because it does our society more good than harm.

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