WASHINGTON (AP) — A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

Did I miss the bit in the news where the FBI decided that the anthrax scare back 2001was not the result of terrorist activity and it was actually some nutter working for the government?  I’ve asked around a little bit.  I didn’t just have my head up my ass.  No one seemed to know.  I think that kind of information is kind of important.  I think its kind of important to know whether or not the people that are trying to kill us have biochemical weapons or not.

Or maybe whether they have weapons of mass destruction or not.

Additional:  Ok, a few people I talked to had heard about it.  I still think it was under reported.

CORSICANA, Texas - A tour bus carrying hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg was pulled over and two people were arrested on marijuana possession charges Thursday a few hours before a concert in Dallas, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

<sarcasm> How dare MSNBC try to sully the good name of a nationally respected musician as this.  Does any one really expect to believe this attempt to drag the names man through the mud by accusing him and his associates of the possestion of illegal substances.   For shame MSNBC,  for shame! </sarcasm>

Was shooting fish in a barrel proving too challeging for the Texas State Troopers that pulled his bus over?

It was revealed in court that a hacker that was hired by the MPAA to spy on various bittorrent tracking sites was also asked to spy on the infamous Pirate-Bay.  The hacker, Robert Anderson, was paid by the MPAA $15,000 to find out not only who was responsible for running the site, but where the location they resided.  Thats $15,000 to discover what the one of the Pirate Bay’s administrators,  Fredrik Neij, admits can be found with a simple google search.  Seriously.  I tried it.  It’s in the third result for The Pirate Bay’s Wikipedia entry.  First two are just the website itself.

Got the original story here.

<!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>

I caught the midnight showing of the Dark Knight.  Here are my thoughts:

A downfall of the movie going geek is they go into a screening lofty expectations about any comic book film. I can’t say I’ve ever gone and seen a movie and had it meet every preconceived notions I planned on harshly and unfairly judging it by. That is until I saw the Dark Knight.

First lets address the 800lb gorilla of the film. Everything you’ve heard is correct. Heath Ledger perfected the joker in a way no one has ever been able to before. He’s not just the slap-sticky counterpoint to Batman’s deadly serious persona. He is a villain in the truest sense of the word. A frightening anarchist that is at the same time random and calculated.

Harvey Dent was constructed as an admirable character. Aaron Eckhart performed it adequately. Though once he made his fall towards Two-Face, I really couldn’t shake his good guy demeanor. However it was unnecessary. Its often a mistake to rely on special effects instead of proper character acting. To see the walking dead look they came up with I’m convinced you could’ve taken a blind/deaf/mute, spun him around, and pushed him in the direction of the camera, I would’ve believed he was Two-Face.

Watching the film I kept thinking back to Batman: The Animated Series. Considered by some in fandom to be the definitive motion picture Batman, it was TV’s first good serious take on the character since the campy 60’s edition. Some of the most satisfying parts of the Dark Knight had the exact same feel as the cartoon, with the following exceptions: 1) It was of course live action. 2) They didn’t plan on it being watched by an audience that just got back from school and doing homework.

If you were going to twist my arm and make me pick something bad about the movie, I can only think of two technological impossibilities that, as a geek, bothered me. One being that Batman, with his infinite technological resources managed to pull a fingerprint off a bullet shot into a concrete wall. I’m pretty sure that physics would say “No!”. A bullet nearly liquefies when being fired and I don’t see any conceivable way a fingerprint would stay intact.

The second unbelievable techno nitpick of mine is when Batman creates a uses the cellphone network to have a real-time view of Gotham City in its entirety. Though the real function of this system is simply to point out the moral ambiguities of how Batman operates. And both of the points I’ve mentioned here really just served as plot devices to move the film along. Movies have been breaking the laws of physics in far worse and inconceivable ways before the Dark Knight came along. So I’ll forgive and forget.

Incidentally the one gadget I was worried that was going to bother me in the film was the “batpod”. I expected that this goofy looking was going to somehow carry the film with its gadgetry coolness. Not really the case. The batpod is really nothing more than a functional mode of alternate transportation after a mishap with the batmobile.

All in all, the movie focused on plot and story, not additions to the Sharper Image catalog. I couldn’t have been more pleased. Good luck on the next film. They’ll be a victim of their own success with the expectations I’m going to have for part three.

WASHINGTON, DC - The nation’s terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government’s own reported numbers for the size of the list.

When a list of suspected terrorist names is starting to rival Santa Clause’s naughty/nice list,  I think its effectiveness is probably just as much a fairy tale.  Either this list is  being maintained by a trained parakeet pulling names out of a hat, or we have one million terrorist encamped in the country.  Both are a pretty good indication that the list isn’t doing a damn thing, and if we truly were to have an army within our midst we are essentially screwed already.

Stress runs down the body’s immune system, which is why people with high-stress jobs or events in their lives are vulnerable to illness. Now a researcher at UCLA has discovered the link between emotional stress and physical damage — and she’s going to develop a pill that will allow you to endure stress without the nasty side-effects. And there may also be one good side-effect: Extreme longevity.

A pill that will make me forget my problems and grant me immortality?  And here I thought the boner pill was the apex of medicine.

Laser beam technology is being rushed into service to combat the threat of insurgent missiles and mortars raining down on British and American military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In just 18 months the American defence firm Raytheon has turned a laser used in the car manufacturing industry into a weapon that can hit incoming rounds at the speed of light, melting the outer casing and detonating the explosive inside.

Energy beams have also been developed that can fire a laser with pinpoint accuracy to drive away potential suicide bombers, rioters or hostage takers.

Lasers are awesome, thats a given.  And I can’t wait to see the looks on the opposition’s face when their shit starts blowing up as their missiles take off from the landing pads.

The one thing thats got me a bit nervous is the article is boasting how they can put lasers on commercial airliners to ward off terrorist attacks.  Neat idea, but if scarry guys hijack one of these commerical airliners equiped with a laser,  won’t they essentially have a flying deathray at thier disposal?  Just a thought.

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — A 10-year-old boy attending an academic enrichment camp at Hagerstown Community College was injured when he stuck a paper clip into a live electrical socket.

Not reported in the story was that the boy awoke 3 hours later, stood up, and said “TAH-DAH!”

Broadcasting music without payment is akin to piracy, the industry says.

“It’s a form of piracy, if you will, but not in the classic sense as we think of it,” said Martin Machowsky, a musicFirst spokesman. “Today we gifted them a can of herring, about their argument that they provide promotional value. We think that’s a red herring. Nobody listens to the radio for the commercials.”

The argument boils down to this: Radio is making billions off the backs of recording artists and their labels; and the recording artists gain invaluable exposure because they’re on the radio, so royalties should not have to be paid.

At this point I can only figure the music industry doesn’t actually want music to be listened too.  They just want to lock tapes up in giant vaults.  And if you pay them a bazillion-gazillion dollars, they let you come in and sniff the folded insert. But only the one time and only through an approved respirator.  And then you can’t breath that breath back out on anyone else with out express written consent from the record label.  But never actually listen to the music itself.  That would violate their intellectual property.

Alachua County Sheriff’s deputies arrested a 17-year-old for threatening another girl with a gun Tuesday night.

The pair fought over an accusation the younger girl had sent text messages and made phone calls that angered the teenager.

The weapon, which belongs to a person at the teen’s home, is an AR-15, Maynard said.

What does a 12 year-old girl say to a 17 year-old that warrants a machine gun being pointed in your face?  Again, shoddy journalism fails to report the content of the text message.  They never covers the facts that I’m actually interested in.  Are my priorities slightly out of alignment?

Though I do support the right to bear arms,  It generally takes one bullet to stop a prowler from entering your home.  Maybe a couple more if its dark and you have lousy aim.  I think 800 rounds/min is a bit excessive for self defense.  Definitely overkill for putting little girls in their place, though.