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Someone overlaid a map of the 2000 presidential election vote results by county in the state of Florida with the tracks of the last few hurricanes to pass over that state. The result of which seems more than a coincidence, as the author says "an unmistakable message from God."
Did Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) really give money to terrorists, when he has a long history of being behind peaceful causes, or is this another high-profile example of the United States no-fly list and the intelligence that is behind it being close to worthless?
What street do the Simpsons live on? Where Apu's is minimart? Now you can find them for yourself on the map of Springfield, USA (the TV world home of the Simpsons).
This is getting just a bit ridiculous. There are questions about the memos. The President says the truth should come out. (?!)
Well, there would not be any questions if the man who who is supposedly our commander in chief and leading upstanding citizen did something he was supposed do and just told us all the truth about what actually happened during that period of time - if anyone knows it should be him.
Is Bush not telling because he has developed a Teflon coating like former President Reagan?:
"When the late Ronald Reagan was president, students of US presidency had coined the term "Teflon presidency" to convey what then appeared as the invulnerability that Reagan had acquired against his critics, and even in terms of his ability to ride out major crises without losing popularity... Now the question is whether George W Bush has developed his own version of Teflon presidency. It is hard to come up with a definitive answer, but the current trends point to the possibility that he indeed has. Just look at one bit of evidence.
When the CBS network broke the story last week that young George Bush used his family connections to get special treatment while he was in the Air National Guard in the 1970s, that story itself became embroiled in the controversy related to whether the documents used in it were real or fake. The Bush White House has thus far managed to avoid getting bogged down with supplying answers to questions regarding the specifics of what Bush actually did as a young lieutenant during the Vietnam War."
Mayor Bloomberg finally worked out the long-term numbers then realized that recycling is cheaper then paying to try and ship New York City's garbage to various points along the Eastern seaboard. So now New York City will be recycling more (And here), the question is just when and how.
The Texas Transportation Institute has released the 2004 Urban Mobility Study that measures a range of congestion, travel time and traffic indicators in urban areas across the country. Not surprisingly, congestion is increasing everywhere. This year they have started measuring how mass transportation reduces congestion in various urban areas (Of the 85 very-large to small urban areas studied, removing public transit would cause an average increase of 29% in the "base travel delay"). An argument against adding singular mass transit lines in various places is that they will do little to reduce congestion, but this report shows that mass transit in most places has a significant overall effect in reducing congestion.
It's tragic how many people have died in the war in Iraq so far (also here). What's more tragic are some of the Military and administration quotes trying to play down the number of deaths.
"Taking the offense … of course has its cost, just as staying on defense has its cost," Rumsfeld said before the White House had announced the death toll. "And soon the American forces are likely to suffer the 1,000th casualty at the hands of terrorists and extremists in Iraq. When combined with U.S. losses in other theaters in the global war on terror, we have lost well more than 1,000 already."
He added: "If you think about the fact that we have thousands of patrols every day … if you take all of those patrols, and look at the number of incidents, they're relatively small." (LA Times)
Shahkar Binesh-Pajouh has a Ph.D. in urban planning but floats the rhymes on the mic in his home country of Iran to, like MCs everywhere, try and get the message of the people out.
I was looking at possibly changing my health insurance, always a fun task for the unemployed. The state of New York does actually have some useful information online. They have an interactive report on managed care plans and an HMO guide.