The ugly American, even in diplomatic service?

Via a post on RASSF:
U.S. embassy owes a million pounds congestion charge

19 October 2006

LONDON: The U.S. Embassy in London owes more than a million pounds for the congestion charge in the capital, the mayor’s office said on Wednesday.

London authorities say the charge on driving in the centre of the city is a road toll and diplomats have to pay it like anyone else. Washington says it is a tax and diplomats are exempt.

The U.S. embassy has refused to pay the charge since July 2005. Several other embassies have also refused but London says the U.S. embassy is the worst offender by far.

Weirdness roundup: the “Panda Menace” part II.

Darn pandas! Back in the news again…

Panda Bites Off Part of Woman’s Thumb

A panda cub bit off part of the thumb of an American visitor who was feeding it at a reserve in southwest China, state media said Thursday.

The 50-year-old woman, identified only as Lisa, had registered in the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Sichuan province as a volunteer, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

She was wearing gloves and feeding the panda bamboo on Tuesday morning when “suddenly, the panda bit into her thumb,” Xinhua said.

And then we get weirdness from The Register, citing some guy whosays that H.G. Wells was right on the money

Bad news for believers in the “singularity”. Instead of accelerating us into a race of cosmic superbeings, our reliance on technology will turn humans into a species of domesticated pets: docile and anti-social.

So says Oliver Curry, a sociobiologist attached to the London School of Economics. A technology-dependent human race of the future will be obese, have weak immune systems, and be incapable of socializing, empathizing or performing team work, suggests Curry. A bit like the “Web 2.0 blogger” of today.

He also predicted that the human race will split into two species, resembling the future inhabitants of earth in HG Wells’ Time Machine. There’ll be an underclass of ugly, dim-witted goblins (the Morlocks), and a eugenically-pure species of intelligent, 7-foot tall beauties (Wells’s Elois) – each one doubtless capable of landing a tenured post at the London School of Economics – or making baseless evolutionary predictions at the drop of a commercial sponsor’s shilling.

And there’s more, showing that IT publications aren’t always dull: People more drunk at weekends, researchers discover (21 April 2006) … for which I’ll spare you the blurb.

Yes, I know things are getting a little long in the tooth here for the promised “reboot” or even just posting more often. Sorry. It’s coming soon, I hope.

I’m simultaneously appalled and amused…

MSNBC has a section on “Animal Peculiarity“.
I found “Man bites panda in Beijing zoo as retribution” via their front page, which in turn led to that section. (I’m resisting the urge to file this under “morons” – my point is on the section, not on the Chinese fellow who wanted to pet a panda.)

It also features such wonderful headlines as: “He done her chicken wrong … allegedly” and “Never hug a Swiss cow, hikers told”

Alrighty-then.

In other potentially tasty but equally trivial news, McDonald’s considers selling breakfast all day. I for one would quite enjoy being able to get a Big Breakfast (eggs, sausage patty, and biscuit) for lunch.

In Today’s News: Thailand?

Plenty of news out of Thailand, none of what is making it to the states agreeing with each other about what is exactly happening. There is a state of emergency, and rumors of a possible coup attempt.

The web sites for Bangkok’s two English-language papers, the Bangkok Post and the Nation have been nearly uselessly slow this morning.

Interesting times!

In Today’s News: On the Lighter Side

World’s first hypo-allergenic cat

Sept. 18 – There’s a new solution for cat lovers allergic to cats.

San Diego based company Allerca says it has successfully produced the world’s first hypoallergenic cat, something that could allow allergic pet lovers to enjoy cats again.

Paivthra George reports.

SOUNDBITE: Stephen May, Allerca Spokesperson

Bush vs. the Bill of Rights

In an article on MSNBC, Senate committee rejects Bush anti-terror plan

The president’s measure would go further than the Senate package in allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials, using coerced testimony and protecting U.S. interrogators against prosecution for using methods that violate the Geneva Conventions.

Lovely. Does anyone yet doubt Bush is a fascist at heart?

“Salon sums it up.”

Via Troy, on DBA:

How bad is he?

Bush ran as a moderate, tacked right and governed ineffectually — before 9/11. Since then he’s become the most radical American president in history — and arguably the worst.

Editor’s note: Following is the introduction to Sidney Blumenthal’s new book, “How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime,” recently published by the Princeton University Press.

By Sidney Blumenthal

No one predicted just how radical a president George W. Bush would be. Neither his opponents, nor the reporters covering him, nor his closest campaign aides suggested that he would be the most willfully radical president in American history.

In his 2000 campaign, Bush permitted himself few hints of radicalism. On the contrary he made ready promises of moderation, judiciously offering himself as a “compassionate conservative,” an identity carefully crafted to contrast with the discredited Republican radicals of the House of Representatives. After capturing the Congress in 1994 and proclaiming a “revolution,” they had twice shut down the government over the budget and staged an impeachment trial that resulted in the acquittal of President Clinton. Seeking to distance himself from the congressional Republicans, Bush declared that he was not hostile to government. He would, he said, “change the tone in Washington.” He would be more reasonable than the House Republicans and more moral than Clinton. Governor Bush went out of his way to point to his record of bipartisan cooperation with Democrats in Texas, stressing that he would be “a uniter, not a divider.”

The article non-free but visible behind the ad at Salon’s site and is well worth a read.

Andy’s back!

Via MyDD:

Electoral-Vote.com which preoccupied many of us during the 2004 campaign, has now released their 2006 Senate page. I know I will be checking in a couple of times every day.

It certainly was one of my favorite sites in the run-up to the 2004 election, and it’s run by a well-known computer science professor.

Side note: more content coming, I promise.

Two interesting things today…

For lack of a better place to write about them:

1) As I was scootering on Hillsdale between Edgewater and El Camino a helicopter went coverhead. This, in itself is not that unusual; we get traffic, police and occasionally executive helicopters a lot – Hillsdale is between (probably roughly halfway, in fact) between SFO and the San Carlos airport.

What WAS unusual is this was VERY obviously not a civilian helicopter. It went by quickly, but it was the narror profile and shape (especially the front and back cockpit) of an attack helicopter. I’m pretty sure it was some sort of Cobra, not an Apache, as it was not angular enough for the latter – though this much is on looking at photos online and not an instant recognition.

Interesting. I’d have needed a much better camera than the one in my phone to get it.

2) We had a fire alarm malfunction at work today. They were supposed to be doing some kind of checking on the sprinkler system, and apparantly they set it off. Annoying.