Just for laughs, I took a look at the schedule for the "Web Two Dot Oh Expo" that's invading my fair city next week. Oh, the Humanity.

• "Intro to Blogs & Social Media Marketing 101."
• "What's your enterprise mashup strategy?"
• "Strategic Domain Name Selection for Increasing Traffic and Conversion Rates."
  -- I think they mean "typo-squatting".
• "How to take your search engine optimization skillset to the next level, even if you're already a savvy search marketer."
  -- I'm 99.9% certain this is code for "how to MAKE.MONEY.FAST with a fake spam-blog."

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy her one (or a hundred) of those wheelchairs that can climb stairs?

Where else but San Francisco City Hall could a 10-foot-long wheelchair ramp wind up costing $1 million?

Thanks to a maze of bureaucratic indecision and historic restrictions, taxpayers may shell out $100,000 per foot to make the Board of Supervisors president's perch in the historic chambers accessible to the disabled.

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick [...] asked that the board take some more time to come up with an alternative, like maybe just getting rid of the president's elevated seat.

The root of the problem dates back to when City Hall got a $300 million makeover in the 1990s that made just about every hallway, bathroom and office accessible to the disabled. The exception was the board president's podium, which is reachable only for someone who can climb the five steps from the chamber floor.

The understanding was that the room would eventually be made fully accessible. But no one worried about the podium until 2004 when Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, who uses a wheelchair, joined the board. [...]

Even if the board gives its final blessing, however, construction of the ramp won't be completed before the end of the year - midway through Alioto-Pier's second and final term.

"I deserve equal access to every part of the chamber," Alioto-Pier told her colleagues, adding that ending discrimination is worth the $1 million.

Chafee remains contemptuous of Democrats who helped Bush to gin up this unnecessary invasion:

That includes New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom Chafee says put her presidential ambitions above standing up to Mr. Bush and the rush to war in Iraq.

"I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president," writes Chafee...

"They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment."

If you can't guess where lilmissnever works from this post, you're just not trying.

White House Missing Emails Were "Recycled"

Last night, in a midnight filing, the Bush adminstration admitted that it did not properly archive emails. But, that's not all --- they also admit to taping over the back-up tapes containing the email records. [...]

So, there was a system in place to archive emails, and the Bush administration simply stopped using it. Is there really any doubt that this is deliberately criminal activity? Those emails contain the details of the invasion of Iraq, the outing of Valerie Plame and the endangerement of our vital intelligence network, and the scheme to fire competent US Attorneys who refused to do their dirty work. [...]

And what about all of those RNC accounts the Bush officials were using? Remember those other "missing" emails? By Dana Perino's own admission there were at least 5 million missing.

Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan

The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism. They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness." Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.

"Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," he said. "Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist."

The Vatican is particularly concerned that young people are being exposed to the influence of Satanic sects through rock music and the Internet.

Deaf demand right to designer deaf children

Deaf parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID).

Ballard's stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations, including the British Deaf Association (BDA), which is campaigning to amend government legislation to allow the creation of babies with disabilities.

A clause in the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is passing through the House of Lords, would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to choose an embryo with an abnormality if healthy embryos exist. [...] Disability charities say this makes the proposed legislation discriminatory, because it gives parents the right to create "designer babies" free from genetic conditions while banning couples from deliberately creating a baby with a disability.

This is awesome -- I always assumed that any kind of space bombardment would be in the "nuclear holocaust" range, you know, instant flaming death from above. I didn't expect to hear about mammoths with uncomfortably-warm space acne.

Great beasts peppered from space

Eight tusks dating to some 35,000 years ago all show signs of having being peppered with meteorite fragments. The ancient remains come from Alaska, but researchers also have a Siberian bison skull with the same pockmarks.

The scientists released details of the discovery at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, US. They painted a picture of a calamitous event over North America that may have severely knocked back the populations of some species.

"We think that there was probably an impact which exploded in the air that sent these particles flying into the animals," said Richard Firestone from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "In the case of the bison, we know that it survived the impact because there's new bone growth around these marks."

And geoscience consultant Allen West added: "If the particles had gone through the skin, they may not have made it through to vital organs; but this material could certainly have blinded the animals and severely injured them."

Raised, burnt surface rings trace the point of entry of high-velocity projectiles; and the punctures are on only one side, consistent with a blast coming from a single direction.

The ratios of different types of atoms in the fragments meant it was most unlikely they had originated on Earth, the team told the AGU meeting.

The researchers reported the discovery of sediment at more than 20 sites across North America that contained exotic materials: tiny spheres of glass and carbon, ultra-small specks of diamond and amounts of the rare element iridium that were too high to be terrestrial. The scientists also found a black layer which, they argued, was the charcoal deposited by wildfires that swept the continent after the space object smashed into the Earth's atmosphere.

FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here

The FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn't last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI's criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous -- and possibly illegal.

A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails.

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14

"It is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have. It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."

Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if "the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found."

In "automatic mode," the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of 35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine. [...]

But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position. By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.

'Howl' too hot to hear

Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem "Howl" was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines.

Another irony: WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation station in New York that plans to post "Howl" online, is the same station that took on the FCC more than 30 years ago over the right to air George Carlin's comedy routine featuring the "seven dirty words." The challenge led to a 1978 Supreme Court decision governing what naughty words can be broadcast and when.

WBAI won't broadcast "Howl," even between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., the hours the FCC has cordoned off for rougher language. WBAI program director Bernard White fears that the FCC will fine the station $325,000 for every one of Ginsberg's dirty-word bombs. If each Pacifica station that aired the poem - and possibly repeated it - were to be fined for airing "Howl," it could mean millions of dollars in fines.

The show they wouldn't air is on their web site.

Update: I've turned off comments on this because I honestly don't give a shit about the opinions of the drooling morons who feel the need to explain to me how this is all perfectly ok, or how "radio" or "speech" or "non-satellite radio" are somehow less deserving of First Amendment protection than is "print", or how it wasn't "really" censorship because the radio station decided not to broadcast it and get fined out of existence. You certainly have a right to these opinions (isn't democracy ironic?) but I still think you're a moron and don't want to waste any more of my time arguing with you, so fuck off.

Blackwater to guard FBI team probing it

When a team of FBI agents lands in Baghdad this week to probe Blackwater security contractors for murder, it will be protected by bodyguards from the very same firm.

Half a dozen FBI criminal investigators based in Washington are scheduled to travel to Iraq to gather evidence and interview witnesses about a Sept. 16 shooting spree that left at least 11 Iraqi civilians dead.

"It makes absolutely no sense that the FBI will be protected by the very people they are investigating," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan). "But given how the administration runs this war, it's hardly surprising."

In the past, FBI SWAT or hostage rescue team members protected other agents in the war zone. But the hostage rescue team force has been shrinking under the strain of bodyguard duty, leaving the FBI to rely increasingly on Blackwater when military escorts aren't available, sources said.