Nessie Captured on Video.

""The weather's getting warmer and necklines are dipping lower -- sometimes, too low.

From the beach to the mall to the office, women sebem to be showing off their cleavage more than ever before. Why? According to Elisabeth Squires, author of "Boobs: A Guide to Your Girls," American breasts are getting bigger while shirts are getting smaller.

We are seeing more cleavage these days for a few reasons. First, the fashion of the day is tight and skinny. At the same time, women are bigger than they were even 15 years ago. Bra fitters tell me that an E cup is the new C cup," Squires said on "Good Morning America."" (ABC News)

The US has it's official "Creation Museum" now. $27 million dollars spent on a musem presenting "scientific proof" of the Creation of planet Earth in 6 days about 6000 years ago.

The sad thing is that it will lead to a lot of people actually believing this as being the truth - after all it's presented in a "museum".

Here's their official website.
A lot of newspapers covered their recent opening quite critical.
Here's wikipedia on it.

Labels: creationism

"A British artist has eaten chunks of a Corgi dog, the breed favored by Queen Elizabeth II, live on radio to protest against the royal family's treatment of animals.

Mark McGowan, 37, said he ate "about three bites" of the dog meat, cooked with apples, onions and seasoning, to highlight what he called Prince Philip's mistreatment of a fox during a hunt by the Queen's husband in January.

"It was pretty disgusting," McGowan said of the meal, which he ate while appearing on a London radio station on Tuesday. Yoko Ono, another guest on the show, also tried the meat."

(AP)

Ok - forget the movie. But, do you remember the really cool computer screen where Tom Cruise moved things around, opened windows, shut others, played videos, etc. by simply manipulating objects on the screen...

Well, Microsoft's gone and done it...

Although I try to avoid posting or discussing online about my country's Presidency, their decisions and the country's Political, Legal and Economical reality, I can't just avoid blogging this note in Nomadlife, in order to give a different perspective and insight to our community into what is currently happening with my country's Freedom.
Last May 27th one of the oldest TV station in Venezuela (RCTV) was shut by President Chavez (Read more on BBC), their license was not renewed based on accusations that this TV station plotted against him and supported a coup attempt in 2002.
This particular TV station had been broadcasting since 1953 and it started as a Radio Station (Radio Caracas) moving later on into the TV sector. RCTV has had historically a very high (not to say blindly the highest) audience and they had many programs that commonly topped the national ratings
This has open a debate on Freedom of Speech in Venezuela (Read more on BBC) and has created many protests and strikes as Venezuelans look for ways to express their frustration with the regime's decision (Read more on BBC). And furthermore Chavez has already mentioned to Globovision that they should be careful or he will do whatever is needed. Globovision is a 24/7 news station which he called an enemy of the state because of the coverage of the protests against RCTV's closure, during that broadcast he also called Venezuelans to be alert of new unstabilizing plans and to be ready to defend the Revolution (Read more on BBC).

So where will this end? Will all the TV and Radio Stations that speak against the government be closed or silenced? Will the people continue to protests against the decision even if it does not seem to make any difference? Or will things just go on and people adjust to whatever decision is done by the regime?
I can only note that from the comments I received from the friends and family who still live in Venezuela, that already the other National TV stations are reserving themselves to broadcast any news against the government, and as a matter of fact during the last weekend only Globovision broadcasted any news about the demonstrations in Caracas (Read more on BBC), all the other National TV Stations only showed their scheduled programs.
So where will Venezuelans look for news in the near future? What will happen when the next TV station is also shut? Where will this end? Will he be able to continue his revolution bringing Venezuela towards the new Communism of the XXI century? Towards Cuba?
Only time will tell.

Labels: politics, Venezuela

Hey guys, there's a great photo sharing site that's trying to change the world. (Sound familiar?..)

It's called Zooomr and it's localized in more languages than anybody else, and has been adding some amazing new features this week. Like stock sales, amazing map searches and much more. Today after much hoopla it launched. It was fast, clean, crisp and is seriously going to shake up photo sharing.

Then it melted. But they're working on it.

Robert Scoble had a great idea. This would be an amazing opportunity for microsoft or google or dell to build some good will.

We're trying to get that idea dugg, so it can have some traction.

Care to help?

I've been nattering on about it on my blog, if you're interested.

Yes Zooomr shares some features with flickr. But it does a lot of things flickr doesn't. They both rock.

Labels: flickr, photo sharing, photography, robert scoble, tomorrow's pioneers, zoomr

"The finding that women who do not use condoms during sex are less depressed and less likely to attempt suicide than are women who have sex with condoms and women who are not sexually active, leads one researcher to conclude that semen contains powerful?and potentially addictive?mood-altering chemicals.

Study author Gordon G. Gallup, Ph.D., a psychologist at the State University of New York in Albany, also found that women who routinely had intercourse without condoms became increasingly depressed as more time elapsed since their last sexual encounter. There was no such correlation for women whose partners regularly used condoms." (Psychology Today)

"Earth's extended family is the only kind of life that we've observed, so far, in the universe. This pantheon of living organisms is about to get some newcomers?and we're not talking about extraterrestrials.
Scientists in the last couple of years have been trying to create novel forms of life from scratch. They've forged chemicals into synthetic DNA, the DNA into genes, genes into genomes, and built the molecular machinery of completely new organisms in the lab?organisms that are nothing like anything nature has produced." (Newsweek)

Miss Universe 2007 - RIYO MORI

UNITED NATIONS, May 25, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Former Macedonian Foreign Minister Srgjan Kerim has been elected president of the 62nd session of the UN General Assembly. His term begins in September.

Kerim says he will work to support the reform processes initiated by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan and continued by current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Kerim is well known within the UN system, where he served as Macedonia's ambassador from 2001 to 2003.

In his acceptance speech on May 24, Kerim said he views the United Nations not only as a political forum but as a place of "networking" for business, educational, and other purposes.

Summer is arriving in Cairo. Bloody hell. 41 degrees in 3 days.

(aconcagua)

" We made it to the top! Now all we have to do is get back down..."(Samantha Larson - blogging after reaching the summit of Mt. Everest.)

Frederick William Engdahl, an economist, long time columnist for the Asia Times and author of the book, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics, provides an alternative, unfettered analysis of the Darfur conflict. He attributes the current dismal situation in Chad and Sudan to the "undeclared" Cold War between China and the US over Africa's oil riches.

U.S. involvement

"The Pentagon has been busy training African military officers in the US, much as it has trained Latin American officers for decades. Its International Military Education and Training program has provided training to military officers from Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.

Much of the arms that have fueled the killing in Darfur and the south have been brought in via murky, protected private "merchants of death" such as the notorious former KGB operative, now with offices in the US, Victor Bout, who has been cited repeatedly in recent years for selling weapons across Africa. US government officials strangely leave his operations in Texas and Florida untouched despite the fact he is on the Interpol wanted list for money laundering.

US development aid for all Sub-Saharan Africa, including Chad, has been cut sharply in recent years while its military aid has risen. Oil and the scramble for strategic raw materials is the clear reason. The region of southern Sudan from the Upper Nile to the Chad border is rich in oil. Washington knew that long before the Sudanese government."

China's oil politics

" Beijing's China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) is Sudan's largest foreign investor, with some $5 billion in oil field development. Since 1999 China has invested at least $15 billion in Sudan. It owns 50% of an oil refinery near Khartoum with the Sudan government. The oil fields are concentrated in the south, site of a long-simmering civil war, partly financed covertly by the United States to break the south from the Islamic Khartoum-centered north.

CNPC built an oil pipeline from southern Sudan to a new terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where the oil is loaded on tankers bound for China. Eight percent of China's oil now comes from southern Sudan. China takes 65-80% of Sudan's 500,000 barrels/day production. Sudan last year was China's fourth-largest foreign oil source. "

My friend Tracy Goldsmith is biking from Prince Rupert, BC to Blaine, MN right now. I met Tracy when we were both working in Antarctica. We were having lunch one day when I asked her where she was from. Turns out we used to play sports against each other in high school as we were in the same conference and grew up an hour apart. We got to be friends and now she's coming to sell fireworks with me this summer. Small world!

I thought I would include a link to her weblog. It's very inspiring!

"Figures released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that South Korea?s suicide rate stood at 18.7 per 100,000 people in 2002 ? up from 10.2 in 1985. In 2002, Japan?s rate was the same as South Korea?s, but the rate in the United States was 10.2 per 100,000." (NY Times)

It's a pretty depressing statistic.

The Chinese goverment is so badass that it even represses the weather....

"CHINESE officials are preparing to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent rain marring the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympic Games next year.

Meteorologists will team with the military to fire rockets into the sky in an extreme form of climate control if rain looms."

I hate to think what they'll to to people that really piss them off...

Check out this Business Week special on Colombia, an up and coming emerging market.

Extreme Investing: Inside Colombia

Slide Show

Hopefully the world will start to see a more complete understanding of what is going on in Colombia right now.

Labels: Colombia, emeriging market

(image added by DG)

Here's a television programme that's fun for the whole family (cell?):

Tomorow's Pioneers

Labels: al-aqsa, farfur, palestine, tomorrow's pioneers

"Fierce clashes erupted between Lebanese Army troops and Islamic militants in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli today, in a daylong battle that left at least seven soldiers and four militants dead and set off a military campaign to root out the militants from their hiding places inside Lebanon?s Palestinian refugee camps." (NY Times)

So now we have Palestinians vs Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinians vs Lebanese. This makes the day of the PLO under Yasser Arafat looks like heaven.

"But I hope you don?t. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled." (BO - on becoming a man)

One would think that our Czech Prime Minister came to visit some exciting Formula 1 tournament that was organized in Islamabad... at the end it turned out to be a regular friendly visit of Czech government representatives to Pakistan...




It is good some already know the "Czech" spelling... but those that google "Check flag" instead probably get into trouble. :o))

Labels: absurdity of the day

"His reasoning is seductive. Most people labor through the best years of their lives in order to be able to travel someday, or spend time with their families, or pursue other hobbies. But life need not be lived in the ?slave, save, retire? order. A better approach is to figure out how much money you need to be able to live in the style you like, then figure out a way to earn that income in the minimal number of hours. Thanks to the Internet, outsourcing, virtual assistants and a host of other technological advances, building an automated, profitable business is more possible than ever before." (Laura)

(via Talkying)

It's called threading and it looks like a torture technique.

A powerful, autobiographical video report about a shocking statistic...

http://www.starcraft2.com/

help! i've booked last minute flights to madrid for me and my man next weekend, but now can't find a place to stay as it's bank holiday and everything is booked up! any suggestions on unusual hotels off the typical tourist radar, or friends who will be gone and willing to rent their place? thanks.

"Pop quiz! What factors help determine how wealthy you'll become in life? I initially guessed that education, intelligence, skills, and socioeconomic origin played a role.

Ohio State economics professor Jay Zagorsky suggests different factors: "Staying married, not getting divorced, thinking about savings." Wow." (Motley Fool)

Hi Nomaders,

I am travelling to Rome next week (if all papers come through), and after the official work i have secured time (24, 25 and 26 May) to see the city and country. Any nomaders in Rome during that time??

Also, i am looking for people who can host me or suggest cheap hostels. Any one has any friend who can be of help?

cheers,
Shashaank

P.S. I am Indian, Male and i am looking for a clean place to sleep in :)

This Indie movie receives 100% rating in RottenTomatoes.

Labels: movies

Click for large image version

Egitti writes the first comprehensive report from nomadfest Silk Road '07.

"The next day we headed towards Karakul Lake by Mustaga hill, close to the Kyrgyz border. The view was breathtaking: camels and yaks were roaming around on the endless fields right by the snowcapped mountains, peaking up as high as 7.500m! And the Karakul lake? French tourists ate up all the food in the only restaurant so our time kicked off oddly, even more so, when we realized we did not quite have a place to say."

Damn, it looks so awesome. Shoulda, coulda, ..

Labels: nomadfest

"?We are now on the endgame,? said Lyn Evans, of Cern, who has been in charge of the Large Hadron Collider, as it is called, since its inception. Call it the Hubble Telescope of Inner Space. Everything about the collider sounds, well, large ? from the 14 trillion electron volts of energy with which it will smash together protons, its cast of thousands and the $8 billion it cost to build, to the 128 tons of liquid helium needed to cool the superconducting magnets that keep the particles whizzing around their track and the three million DVDs worth of data it will spew forth every year." (NY Times)


I love these type of initiative - bold, daring and risky as hell. This project will also mark a significant shift the center of power of physics from the land of Creationism to Europe for long period of time especially since the Fermilab in Illinios is scheduled to close in 4 years.

In overall scheme of things, the 8 billion cost is amount to nothing especially for projects that are trying to uncover the deep misteries of the universe. That amount of money is probably the yearly amount money siphoned off by some corrupt officials in a resource rich country somewhere in Africa .

Yum.

Labels: links

"Zimbabwe has been elected to head the UN's commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) despite strong objections from Western diplomats....The country was chosen by other African nations. The CSD post rotates every year between the world's regions.

Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the UN, Boniface Chidyausiku, said before the vote that his country was entitled to hold the chairmanship. "It's our right. We're members of the United Nations and we're members of CSD, and the Africa group did make a decision and endorsed Zimbabwe," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme....

"When they tell the African group to change, it's an insult to our intelligence - that we Africans can't think," he said."

There obviously isn't much intelligence there to be insulted. I think this is a pretty good case of non-thinking on behalf of the Africans at the UN. This undermines sustainability, it undermines Africa, and ultimately, it undermines the UN.

The unglamorous truth about my experience as an adult entertainer is that I felt empowered -- as a woman, as a feminist, and as a human being -- by the money I made, not by the work I did. The performances I gave didn't change anyone's ideas about women. On the contrary, I was in the business of reinforcing the same old sexist misinformation you can see in any issue of Hustler or Girls Gone Wild DVD. I wasn't "owning" or "subverting" anything other than my own working-class status. Bending over to Warrant's "Cherry Pie" didn't make me a better feminist. It just made me a feminist who could afford her own rent.
AlterNet: Is stripping a feminist act?

"Hitchens is an old-fashioned village atheist, standing in the square trying to pick arguments with the good citizens on their way to church. The book is full of logical flourishes and conundrums, many of them entertaining to the nonbeliever. How could Christ have died for our sins, when supposedly he also did not die at all? Did the Jews not know that murder and adultery were wrong before they received the Ten Commandments, and if they did know, why was this such a wonderful gift? On a more somber note, how can the ?argument from design? (that only some kind of ?intelligence? could have designed anything as perfect as a human being) be reconciled with the religious practice of female genital mutilation, which posits that women, at least, as nature creates them, are not so perfect after all? Whether sallies like these give pause to the believer is a question I can?t answer." (NY Times book review)

XBOX 360 has been on sales 1 full year before Wii was launched.

"Freedom House provides the awesome service of issuing list after list of countries that suck. Sometimes it's countries that suck at freedom of the press, sometimes it countries that suck at human rights, but the general tenor of the their reports is: "Hey! These guys are really bad. Don't forget, OK?" Which, though I sound flip, is a very legitimate service. And if it serves no other purpose, it reminds readers to pay attention to the seemingly intractable once in awhile, while giving journalists something to write about on a slow news day." (reason)

Labels: top list

BRUSSELS, May 11 ? Vice President Dick Cheney used the deck of an American aircraft carrier just 150 miles off Iran?s coast as the backdrop today to warn the country that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting off oil routes or "gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region." (NYT)

It seems to me that this blog has been far too concerned with the serious mundane matters of life and world happenings recently. Whether it's a discussion of the deplorable start of World Cricket (and Indian Cricket in particular; sorry, I'm Sri Lankan/Australian (go Sri Lanka!) so I'm allowed to indulge in utterly random and uncalled for Indian-cricket-bashing :P) or the (I believe sad) imminent departure of Tony Blair from politics (those naysayers from Britain - consider that we in Australia have been ruled for many long years by someone who has supported the Bush Administration without restraint in its withdrawal from International law and its move back to a neo-conservative we'll-do-what-we-like attitude to International law while lacking the charisma and charm of that suave Mr. Blair; if you must systematically take away our rights and lock us in random American jails or allow the AFP to lock us away without allowing us a lawyer for many hours, then at least have the courtesy to brainwash me with your charisma and persuade me that it is the right thing to do!) or even the quality of the latest Spiderman movie (no comments here - I've not seen it yet).


SO I figured I'd break the flow and introduce you guys instead to the greatest National AIESEC Conference ever - the 2007 AIESEC Australia National Conference, to be held in the bright, shiny city of Melbourne (in Winter, so perhaps not so bright - but then, who can tell with Melbourne weather?). The pre-conference activities will be high quality (a Youth Impact Seminar on the theme of how you can make an impact through your careers on the issues of the Environment, Asia-Pacific Engagement and Entrepreneurship; a professional leadership event run by management organisations; a Global Village with stalls from local community and cultural groups, culinary, basic language and art/handicraft workshops, group performances from various cultural groups, an ethnic art exhibition, and forums on "Immigration Policies and Theories", and "Race and Culture in the Media"). There will be non-AIESEC local Melbournians at the pre-conference events for the first time ever. And we'd love for any AIESECers from other countries to join us (especially if you're Indian - I was joking before :))!

Tony Blair is set to resign on June 27. I don't think history will be kind to his legacy.

He should have been the grown-up around to help push Bush in a good direction, and one of the better justifications for his support of Iraq was that it would at least give the UK some leverage in influencing US policy, working with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict etc. As we all know, that didn't happen, and he will instead be remembered as the well-intentioned guy who allowed a Very Bad Thing to happen and then did nothing to make it better.

That's not to mention the development of an unbelievably intrusive surveillance based police/nanny state in the UK under his watch.

"I've been prime minister of this country for just over 10 years," Blair told party members in Trimdon in his northern England constituency.

"I think that's long enough, not only for me, but also for the country and sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down."

Is that not an incredibly pathetic thing for a Prime Minister of 10 years to say when resigning? Sounds more like Bilbo Baggins giving the ring to Frodo....

Would love to hear more nomad opinion on Tony (and Gordon Brown, his Prime Minister In-Waiting)...

Just read an interesting article regarding a discussion that took place between young Egyptians and Americans (from the Christian Science Monitor).

For those of you who might be interested, click here.

50 years ago, to the day, Helvetica - that classic corporate typeface - was created. (BBC)

Some may love it, some may hate it... (read the comments!!) but one thing's for sure... everyone's used it. Ironically, blogger doesn't support Helvetica, so this is in another sans-serif cousin... Arial.

After 4 years in University as well as in AIESEC (Madison in the USA), AliG and I are graduating. So of course, we are taking a trip and, of course, we would love to hang out with AIESECers along the way. Adam will be joining us for most of the time as well. Although the dates are not totally definite, a rough estimate of where we are going to be and when is:


So, if you will be in any of these places, have been in any of these places, or know someone in any of these places, let us know if you have any suggestions for us, want to get together when we get there, or have a piece of floor that we could sleep on =). Thanks!

Whats going on with our blogs?

Please feel free to replace this post with an instructive one.

(Tom G.) - Twitter is a web based service that basically creates the equivalent of mail lists - a big difference being that you can send (and recieve) messages to everyone on the list through SMS'es from your mobile phone.

All the messages sent to the group via SMS go online to the group webpage (twitter.com/nomadlife for us) and are available as a news feed, much like the rotating flickr images that we all tag for nomadlife. Dody has it set up now so that the latest message in the feed is shown at the top of the nomadlife page.

It basically means if we are all signed up and "friends" with the nomadlife account, we can send little mini headlines and updates to the nomadlife front page straight from our phones. Like Dody said, could be useful for breaking stories, nomads in trouble etc...Could also become a really annoying spammy piece of garbage, but it is all up to how we use it :)

Egyptian activists have been using similar services to live blog their protests, coordinating locations, documenting police actions etc.

(Dody G.)
A twitter message is limited to 140 characters. By default, all messages are displayed in grey color so that they blend with the white background except on the occasion you want your message to stand out. If you click on the@ sign, it will take you to the original message page on twitter.com so you can find out who wrote the message.

Nomadlife twitter feed supports a rich set of formatting tags that allow you to customize the look of your twitter message on this home page.

If you have the following word anywheref in your message;"girlie" or "alert" or "funky", your whole message will be formatted as bold pink or red or purple respectively.

It also supports a Markdown syntax.

For example:
*this is italic* will be displayed as this is italic.
**this is bold** will be displayed as this is bold.

You can make a list of item by putting a dash in every line.

- item 1
- item 2
- item 3

will be displayed as

• item 1
• item 2
• item 3

1. item 1
1. item 2
1. item 3

will be displayed as

1. item 1
2. item 2
3. item 3
   

Right now nomadlife home page display the top 15 messages randomly everytime you refresh. I can change this behaviour for a certain word. For example, it is possible to make the alert message to appear more frequently. It is possible for example to add 'haiku' as a keyword so that that your twitter haiku can be displayed nicely with zen looking background.

The son of an immigrant is now the President of France.

Labels: news

These aerial photos of Greensberg in Kansas, completely destroyed by a tornado, are frighening and sad and phenomenal all at one. It reminds me of those photo's of Hiroshima and Nagasaki post-Atomic-bomb - which makes the fact that the photographer's last name is Oppenheimer sadly ironic....

"Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades. Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise origin of the poison has never been determined. But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs.

Panama is the most recent victim. Last year, government officials there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine ? with devastating results. Families have reported 365 deaths from the poison, 100 of which have been confirmed so far. With the onset of the rainy season, investigators are racing to exhume as many potential victims as possible before bodies decompose even more." (NY Times)

Last month it was the poisoned pet food that created major uproar. Now this damning report about China's counterfeit drug operation won't help.

Time 100

This is one cool review by a senior citizen but it contains spoilers.

I found it as the better movie than the first two but I know a couple of people that hate it. It also premiers in Cairo at the same day as the US premier. That's pretty cool, eh?

Labels: movies

I was at an Antibalas concert last night when mid-way through the show Jordan McLean their trumpet player comes to the mic and asks the crowd "Whats up with the bees? Have you heard about the bees? This next one is for the bees." And so, promptly after stumbling home I decided to read up about the bees.

"U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies ? or about five times the normal winter losses ? because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons."- Discovery Channel

Twitter is currently the darling of the web 2.0 crowd because you can keep track of your friends and vice versa throughout the day using sms. I am putting the twitter badge here on nomadlife for a couple of days. Please sign up with twitter and add me as a friend. Your text should appear on the right hand side of the site.

"A missing pair of pants has led to one big suit.

A customer got so steamed when a dry cleaner lost his trousers that he sued for $65 million. Two years later, he is still pressing his suit.

The case has demoralized the South Korean immigrant owners of the mom-and-pop business and brought demands that the customer ? an administrative-law judge in Washington ? be disbarred and removed from office for pursuing a frivolous and abusive claim." (AP)

Labels: absurdity of the day

'World is walking 10% faster'
8.50, Wed May 2 2007

The pace at which city dwellers walk has increased by 10 per cent in the last decade, a new study has shown.

**Update** Forgot to mention that I caught this link from BoingBoing.net

Labels: fast, walking

This sucks.

For anybody who has been loving the wonderful, I-wanna-have-its-babies online music service Pandora - and who doesn't live in the US - say bye bye to sweet sweet Pandora.

Ridiculous new royalty fee laws for online music combined with a generally clueless music industry means that for now, the legality (and I suspect economics) of free online music services like Pandora is up in the air. I imagine they will slowly get it back up and running again in the UK, EU, Japan etc, but the effort and cost involved in getting them back online in the third world will probably take much longer. It sucks big time.

Watching the music industry slowly douse itself in gasoline and set itself on fire is kind of fun and horrifying at the same time. To doctor Churchill's WW2 phrase, never before have so many been so clueless about so much for so long.

Anyhow, adios for now Pandora. You were great while it lasted and I can't wait to see you again.

Listened to a debate on NPR on George Tenet, his new book and the talk show (60 minutes) he spoke at last Sunday.

Tenet claims that Bush and Rice discovered that the intelligence for the Iraq war was kind of thin. So instead of thinking over their policy, they ask him to come up with better intelligence to support their plan to go to Iraq and use him and the CIA to find a reason why they could.

He also tells the story of how he was blamed for not finding out about 9/11 in advance. So this whole thing might be to tell the public that he did that:

"By the summer of 2001, Tenet says he was so alarmed by intelligence that an attack was coming, he asked for an immediate meeting to brief then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. "Essentially, the briefing says, there are gonna be multiple spectacular attacks against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass casualties are a likelihood,"

But nothing happened that could have stopped the attacks on September 11th 2001.

One idea presented was: Tenet had to be thankful to keep his job after 9/11 and therefore pretty much did anything the administration asked him to do in terms of coming up with "evidence" for WMD in Iraq.

Tenet claims to have spoken with Pentagon Advisor Richard Perle shortly after 9/11 and remembers the following conversation.

"He [Perle] said to me, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.'

It?s September the 12th. I [Tenet] have got the manifest with me that tell me al Qaeda did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself, as I'm about to go brief the president, 'What the hell is he talking about?'" Tenet remembers.

"You said Iraq made no sense to you in that moment. Does it make any sense to you today?" Pelley asks.

"In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none," Tenet says. "It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period."

"The president, in October of 2002, quote: 'We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work.' Is that what you're telling the president?" Pelley asks.

"Well, we didn't believe al Qaeda was gonna do Saddam Hussein's dirty work," Tenet says. "

I'm surprised by the lack of public reaction to this. There is the former director of the CIA telling publicly how the whole Iraq setup was planned and nobody seems to care. I wish there was more of a debate on that. You can read more here.

Labels: iraq, war

Mr Tobias resigned last week shortly after US media told him Ms Palfrey had revealed he had made calls to her business.

He told ABC News that he "had some gals come over to the condo for a massage", but denied having sex with any of them.

Before he stepped down, Mr Tobias ran the Bush administration's programme to crack down on prostitution worldwide. (BBC)