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Baby, but smack it.
This has become ever more appropriate since when it was originally broadcast.
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Grind House
A trailer for Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino’s new baby Grind House
Looks like insane, violent and gory. I can’t wait. 
The bit for the fake trailer of Machete starring Danny Trejo as the eponymous character looked fucking awesome as well. I’d watch an entire feature film of it based on the seconds of footage I saw herein.
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goodthinkful
I think Bruce Schneier’s right on the money when he calls this Opinion Monitoring Software Orwellian.
It’s like the sort of thing you can imagine a nascent Ministry of Truth using to separate the goodthinkers from the crimethinkers.
It starts out well enough and sounds like a useful tool to track world opinion on the US and its government’s policies and as result make the US a more responsible player on the world stage.
A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.
Such a “sentiment analysis” is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.
But like any tool there is scope for misuse of the technology should the research into it actually bear fruit in this case.
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Is there any nudity in this post?
I’ve noticed recently on the forums at Tv.com and IMDB the prevalence of questions asking if there is any nudity in the show or movie. Although a Google search for the phrase “Is there any nudity in this” only brings up only 985 hits.
With the easy accesibility of porn on the internet it is likely all parents or puritans rather than omolagnics that are asking. For example Dohfull on the Entourage forum.
I need to know if it’s appropriate for a 14 year old to watch. I know about the cursing.
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Iraqis hate al-Qaeda
A concise history of the British safe and safe-cracking. [via]
I went through a period of my life as a kid wanting to grow up to be a safe cracker. I’m still pretty fascinated by the tales of the ongoing technological battle between safemakers and safebreakers that are presented on the site.
19 Year Old Diebold Technician Wins U.S. Presidency [via]
President-elect Pustule said he was still working on his platform, but that he had “a lot of ideas about making acne medication cheaper and also making thongs required in more places”.
I, for one, welcome our new acne-faced overlord.
Prime minister Tony Blair in his valedictory speech to the Labour party conference declared
I don’t want to live in a police state, or a Big Brother society or put any of our essential freedoms in jeopardy. But because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy.
Those freedoms are in jeopardy from him and his government that are pushing through legislation that will create a Big Brother society. He went on to say
We can only protect liberty by making it relevant to the modern world.
That is why Identity Cards using biometric technology are not a breach of our basic rights, they are an essential part of responding to the reality of modern migration and protecting us against identity fraud.
I remember when I introduced the DNA database. On it go all those who are arrested. We were told it was a monstrous breach of liberty.
But it is now matching 3,000 offences a month including last year several hundred murders, and thousands of rapes and other violent offences.
The Identity Card system that the government wants to introduce really is the foundation of the Big Brother state that Blair says he doesn’t want to live in. I can only surmise that he intends to leave the UK once it has been implemented.
The BBC reports that the Home Secretary John Reid was heckled by a couple of protesters during a speech he was giving to Muslims about combating extremists in their communities.
He was interrupted by Abu Izzadeen, an individual who it is believed is the leader of the banned group al-Ghurabaa, calling Reid an enemy of Islam.
The home secretary said “our fight is not with Muslims generally”.
Instead, he said, there was a “struggle against extremism”.
And, warning that terrorist fanatics sought to influence youngsters, he said: “There is no nice way of saying this.
“These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings, grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others.”
Does anyone still believe this to be true that there are fanatics grooming young people to become suicide bombers?
What we know of the perpetrators of two of the most significant recent terrorist plots, the 7/7 bombers and the plotters of the failed plot of 21st July 2005, would refute that theory.
These men had become radicalized but there was no indication that they had fallen under the sway of a fanatic who had been a radicalizing force. Meetings with members of al Qaeda occurred after they had already decided to carry out attacks as a response to what they saw as the murdering of their Muslim brothers in the war in Iraq.
Far from these extremist bogeymen that John Reid would have us believe in the thing that is most radicalizing young Muslim men is the actions of the British and American governments overseas and at home. That’s not to say that the ultimate ends of the government’s policies are without worth but the means to those ends were clearly going to have negative consequences.
A free and democratic Iraq is a laudable goal but it is one that was never going to be simple to attain and the incredibly stupid idea of linking it in to the War on Terror gave the Islamic extremists the jihad they were looking for. Furthermore the incompetent manner in which the post-war operations have been carried out have resulted in thousands of innocent Iraqi lives being lost which furthers the extremists propaganda that the West has declared war on Islam.
Regardless of whether you believe that the War in Iraq was right or wrong only a blind fool could truly believe that it hasn’t resulted in an increase in acts of terrorism. How much longer can British ministers continue to perpetuate myths and avoid the stark truth that is obvious to the rest of us?
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote that The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
Recent history may yet prove him right as it is the blood of innocents that is being spilled at the moment and the tree of liberty is far from refreshed.