U.S. President Barack Obama has now been in office for 167 days, and it’s time for a look back. Why 167 days? Why not – it’s just as arbitrary a number as the usual “100 days”. In that time, President Obama has contended with stimulating the U.S. economy, reshaping U.S. policy abroad, and starting work on domestic issues such as health care reform. As he and his family arrive in Moscow today for an official visit, find here a look back at some of the first 167 days of the Obama administration. (38 photos total)

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President Barack Obama tours the pyramids outside Cairo, Thursday, June 4, 2009. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) #

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President Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) #

Afghanistan’s only known pig trotted out of quarantine, two months after he was locked away because of swine flu fears, to bask again in the mud at the Kabul Zoo.

The pig, a curiosity in Muslim Afghanistan where pork and pig products are illegal because they are considered irreligious, was quarantined because visitors to the zoo were worried it could spread the new H1N1 flu strain, commonly known as swine flu.

“Our people did not understand that the disease only passes from person to person and felt that the swine influenza might even be spread from the zoo because we have a pig here,” zoo manager Aziz Gul Saqib said.

“Other zoos abroad told us not to worry … when people began to realise the disease doesn’t come from the pig itself we decided to release the pig,” he said.

A 1922 political cartoon on the British invasion of Iraq.

Microsoft write their code to fit people’s expectations of what the specification says rather than what it actually says.

It’s actually a bit worse. Microsoft writes their code to what they think the expectations are instead of what the expectations really are.

More than 800 surviving pages and fragments from the The Codex Sinaiticus, which was written in Greek on parchment leaves in the fourth century, have been reunited.

Last year The British Library put The Book of Psalms and St Mark’s Gospel online, and now the remaining pages have been made free for public use for the first time.

Along with the Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Sinaiticus is considered the oldest known Bible in the world. Originally more than 1,460 pages long and measuring 16in by 14in, it was written by a number of hands around the time of Constantine the Great.

It offers different versions of the Scriptures from later editions of the Bible, notably in St Mark’s Gospel which ends 12 verses before later versions, omitting the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

Makes you wonder when exactly they actually made up that part of the story.

GADSDEN, AL—The seven deadly sins—avarice, sloth, envy, lust, gluttony, pride, and wrath—were all committed Sunday during the twice-annual bake sale at St. Mary’s of the Immaculate Conception Church.

In total, 347 individual acts of sin were committed at the bake sale, with nearly every attendee committing at least one of the seven deadly sins as outlined by Gregory the Great in the Fifth Century.

“My cookies, cakes, and brownies are always the highlight of our church bake sales, and everyone says so,” said parishioner Connie Barrett, 49, openly committing the sin of pride. “Sometimes, even I’m amazed by how well my goodies turn out.”

Fellow parishioner Betty Wicks agreed.

“Every time I go past Connie’s table, I just have to buy something,” said the 245-pound Wicks, who commits the sin of gluttony at every St. Mary’s bake sale, as well as most Friday nights at Old Country Buffet. “I simply can’t help myself—it’s all so delicious.”

In late 2008 a new version of the U.S. citizenship test was introduced by immigration authorities. Could you pass it? The questions are usually selected from a list of 100 samples that prospective citizens can look at ahead of the interview.

Crap, I missed two and only got 90%….

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Fuck you, Fox. Let’s debunk this nonsense in order:

“Anything goes culture” I think it is important to try to qualify this statement. If this phrase is meant to indicate that the Netherlands is a lawless place full of crime I feel it is important to note that, according to recent date, the US ranks 24th overall in criminality per capita whereas the Netherlands ranks 51st. Of particularly striking interest is the fact that the US murder rate is far and away more disturbing than that of the Netherlands. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita. Fuck you, Fox.

“Drug happy stonners enjoy legalized hashish”. Yes, many drugs that are illegal here in the US are legal in the Netherlands. What is more important to examine, though, is the question of which country has the bigger drug problem. The lifetime prevalence of marijuana use is double in the US when compared to the Netherlands. For exact numbers on that, and some other fun facts, visit http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/67. Of further interest is the fact that America is the world’s largest consumer of cocaine as well as various types of heroin and marijuana (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/US.html – select the country, then go to transnational issues) Fuck you, Fox.

“Shopping for sex” I think it is prudent to first highlight the fact that any number of our own politicians aren’t caught with prostitutes every year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobertBauman, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Giordano, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer) as to underscore the fact that we are not without our own sex trade problems. Further, it is perfectly legal to engage in business with prositiutes in two states here in the US, most notably this Nevada, so let’s also not be hypocrites. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutionin_Nevada) Fuck you, Fox.

“Marriages with more than two people” The case they are referring to, based on the images they briefly show, refers to Victor de Bruijn, a situation which has nothing to do with marriage. Three people got dressed up as if they were getting married and, instead, signed a “samenlevingscontract” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samenlevingscontract) which is nothing more than a cohabitation contract that anyone can enter into with anyone else and with as many people as they would like. Check out the Netherland’s marriage law, summarized here http://www.helplinelaw.com/law/netherlands/marriage/marriage.php. Let me know where it says they condone such a thing. Fuck you, Fox.

“Netherlands was a Christian nation” Well, if we want to get technical about it, the Netherlands was predominately inhabited by Celtic polytheists until Christians invaded and forced conversion around the 6th century. Even after this missionaries like Boniface continued to crusade the land and force further conversion, killing many who refused. Fuck you, Fox.

“Militantly secularist…mocking the religious…hiding faith” As opposed to the Christian right in the United states who attack abortion clinics (http://edition.cnn.com/2000/US/09/30/axewielding.priest/), shoot their doctors while at church (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html), protest the funerals of people they deem unholy (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/06/btsc.lavandrera.funerals/), and fight to have their religion’s symbols mounted in public places (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0302/p01s02-usju.html)? Fuck you, Fox.

“It’s no surprise the Netherlands are on the forefront of the euthanansia/infanticide movement”. Really? First off, there are two states right here in our own union that support a person’s right to die. If you want to die, especially if your life has become nothing but constant pain and suffering, that’s your choice. And where is this infanticide nonsense coming from? You say infanticide and the average viewer is going to think everyone in the Netherlands is running around roasting babies on spikes. If this is aimed at their right to abortion then let me point out that American’s also have a right to abortions AND, at last check (http://www.netherlandsembassy.hu/en/files/9538905590.pdf) the US had a 4 times higher abortion rate per capita than the Netherlands. If that comment was aimed at a parents right to chose if their child lives and dies I would like to point out that any number of Christian parents across this land have watched their children die because they believed prayer was better medicine than chemo or insulin (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341574,00.html) Fuck you, Fox.

“What’s next? A suicide pill?” Yea, guess what? There is a suicide cocktail already right here in the US. And on what bases are you extrapolating that they would create it so people who are “bored with life” can kill themselves…wait, better question: who cares?! If someone wants to kill themselves that is their right!

Fuck you, Fox.

Palin’s attorney, Thomas Van Flein, has also sent out a letter rejecting claims that Palin’s resignation is tied to investigations of the Wasilla Sports Complex, during Palin’s tenure as mayor, or their house on Lake Lucille. In the letter Van Flein also threatens defamation suits against Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, Huffpo, Washington Post, the NY Times and MSNBC for discussing these claims.

And the press release then goes on detailing all the claims, so they’ll presumably sue the newspapers who quote the press release, or something.

For embarrassed Washington Post executives — reeling from what the paper’s own ombudsman called a public relations “disaster” over a flier promoting a “salon” for lobbyists to mingle with prominent newsmakers — there must be a sense of “Why us?”

The fact is the Post’s clumsy effort to make money on its brand name and market its access to the powerful was a belated effort to follow in the steps of at least two other prominent news organizations: The Wall Street Journal and the Economist magazine.

The Journal, for instance, is charging a $7,500 for its two-day CEO Council in November, an elite gathering that will include the paper’s top editors and high-profile speakers like Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. And for a few thousand dollars, The Economist can open the door to intimate off-the-record meet-and-greets with world leaders.

Gov. Mark Sanford and his publisher have parted ways.

“Sentinel has agreed to release Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina from his contract to write a book about fiscal conservatism, which was to be called WITHIN OUR MEANS and was scheduled for publication in March 2010,” said Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Sentinel, in a statement released Thursday. “This is a mutual decision. We wish Governor Sanford the best.”

As far as my Google-fu can tell, this is a news story about it.

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NEW YORK—Wikipedia, the online, reader-edited encyclopedia, honored the 750th anniversary of American independence on July 25 with a special featured section on its main page Tuesday.

“It would have been a major oversight to ignore this portentous anniversary,” said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, whose site now boasts over 4,300,000 articles in multiple languages, over one-quarter of which are in English, including 11,000 concerning popular toys of the 1980s alone. “At 750 years, the U.S. is by far the world’s oldest surviving democracy, and is certainly deserving of our recognition,” Wales said. “According to our database, that’s 212 years older than the Eiffel Tower, 347 years older than the earliest-known woolly-mammoth fossil, and a full 493 years older than the microwave oven.”

No, seriously – try to make it through the press conference (I’m sorry for directly linking to the press conference itself, but I can’t find an English translation right now). If you can stand the batshit insanity long enough to make it through to the 3 minute mark, there’s one moment when the rambling dies down a little – and it’s at the statement “the world needs more Trigs” – perhaps she’s pregnant again….

[Quote:]

“Homeopathic A&E,” a sketch from the British comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look invites us to imagine an emergency room (A&E is British for Accidents and Emergencies, the UK equivalent of ER), as run by newage woo woos.

Here’s another clip from the same folks:

Earlier this year, the unpopular president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, introduced a referendum as a first step toward drafting a new constitution. Opposition to the referendum was strong, with the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military all declaring it illegal. Zelaya fired the head of the military for not providing support for the referendum – but was thwarted by the Supreme Court, who deemed the firing illegal, and reinstated General Romeo Velasquez to his post. On Sunday, June 28th, the Honduran Army, under orders from the Supreme Court, stormed the presidential residence, arrested president Zelaya and put him on a plane to Costa Rica, then took possession of the residence. The head of Congress, Roberto Micheletti, then assumed the role of Interim President of Honduras. Internally split, Hondurans have taken to the streets both in support of Zelaya and in opposition to his return. International reactions have been unanimously negative, the action condemned as a coup by the UN, the Organization of American States, the U.S. and every other country in Latin America. Efforts are underway now to resolve the issue, with great international pressure on Honduras. (35 photos total)

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Soldiers react during clashes with supporters of ousted Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya after violence broke out near the presidential residencce in Tegucigalpa, Monday, June 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) #

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Honduran soldiers surround a small group of supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya after violence broke out near the presidential residence in Tegucigalpa on Monday June 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) #

“Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it;
geniuses remove it.”

– Alan Perlis

In this political environment, the poor might get empathy, but Wall Street gets money, and lots of it. Even when the issue is global warming Wall Street has its hand out. The fees on trading carbon permits could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars in coming decades. A simple carbon tax would have been far more efficient, but efficiency is not the most important value when it comes to making Wall Street richer.

This is why it was so encouraging to see congressman Peter DeFazio’s proposal to tax trades in oil options and futures. DeFazio proposed a tax of 0.02% on trades in oil futures and options as a way to make up a shortfall in the federal government’s highway trust fund. This tax could raise billions of dollars each year in revenue and make speculation in the oil market a more dangerous affair.

The logic is very simple. For someone using these markets to hedge, the tax will be inconsequential. For example, a farmer that hedges a $400,000 wheat crop will pay $80 when selling a future. Similarly, airlines that hedge by buying oil futures will barely notice the higher cost. In fact, because trading costs have fallen so much in recent decades, a tax at this level would just be raising costs back to their levels of two decades ago, a point at which there was already a very vibrant futures and options market.

[..]

This tax can best be thought of as a tax on gambling. Gambling is heavily taxed in every state that allows it. DeFazio’s bill is effectively a tax on gambling in the oil markets. It will not stop it, but it would discourage it, and in the process raise a huge amount of money that could go to productive purposes.

The bill faces an enormous uphill struggle in Congress. As Durbin said, the banks own the place, and they are not going to just step aside and let Congress impose a tax on such a lucrative business. But, it is important that people know about the DeFazio bill. First, DeFazio deserves a place on the honour roll for standing up to Wall Street.

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.

~ Bradley Millar

The Washington Post’s publisher abruptly canceled a series of policy dinners Thursday that were to have been underwritten by lobbyists or corporations willing to pay thousands of dollars to be in the same room as journalists and lawmakers, saying the marketing department had misrepresented the newspaper’s intent.

Lawmakers who had been invited said they were not told the events would make money for the newspaper. But the Post had separately sent fliers seeking sponsors who would pay $25,000 for a single “salon” or $250,000 for 11 events.

The concept raised questions about journalistic ethics.

Quite. It’s bad enough that politics is as corrupt as it is, but when the folks who are supposed to expose said corruption join in, it does more than just “raise questions”.

Judah does this as well when he’s running – I don’t know if he has more grip as a polydactyl, but it’s fun to watch!

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned its first images from the Moon! Woohoo!

Check. It. Out!

This image, taken in the Mare Nubium region of the Moon, shows a heavily cratered area. The scale here is amazing: the whole image is 1400 meters across, or just under a mile. That’s like looking out your airplane window… if you were over the frakking Moon!

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the LRO camera has a page where you can see the raw images, and zoom in — WAY in — on the image strips. They have 73 cm resolution, folks. Yikes.

Apparently, puking about porn was too much for Microsoft’s delicate sensibilities on Internet Explorer 8.

Microsoft has distanced itself from an ad fronted by TV’s ex-Superman Dean Cain that featured a woman vomiting over her partner after she discovered the porn stash hidden in his browser history.

The ad has been pulled form Microsoft’s official Better Browser web site and its IE 8 channel on YouTube. You can still catch the ad on the rest of YouTube here or below.

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as “a zealot” and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from “fanatic” leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a “security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region.”

[..]

At one point, Hussein dismissed as a fantasy the many intelligence reports that said he used a body double to elude assassination. “This is movie magic, not reality,” he said with a laugh. Instead, he said, he had used a phone only twice since 1990 and rarely slept in the same location two days in a row.

Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. Iran and Iraq had fought a grinding eight-year war in the 1980s, and Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq — which is largely Shiite. “Hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from an attack from Iran,” Piro recounted in his summary of a June 11, 2004, conversation.

“The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,” Piro wrote. “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”