IDF aircraft flattened a pair of Syrian radar sites today in response to a (believed to be) Syrian-backed Hezbollah mortar attack against Israeli farms in the north. An oddity? The Syrian radar positions were actually in Lebanon. Israel is calling on Lebanon to set troops on the border and keep the Syrians out of the area, but Lebanon is making all kinds of noises about Israel pulling out of the north. The UN is telling Lebanon to go to hell, that N. Israel isn't their concern (since it used to be Syrian land) but the Lebs and Syrians seem to be getting pretty damn cozy. And more fighting in the south with the Palestinians, a group of them attacked a group of Israeli soldiers and suffered 2 dead.

Odd question for the day: What are you shopping for in Akihabara? Gee, what CAN'T you buy in God's Ultimate Electronics Store? I wanna go. Must stop there next year.

Hmm, here's something I bet you didn't know. Japan supports the US decision to withdraw from the Kyoto accords. And did you know what else? Out of alllll 168 countries that signed the treaty and criticized the US for pulling out, saying look-how-bad-you-people-are...only ONE SINGLE COUNTRY ever actually ratified it. Romania. That means all the rest of Europe, Asia, and all the other countries - EVEN JAPAN, WHERE THE TREATY IS FROM - are hypocrites who don't want to abide by it themselves, yet don't have the balls politically to say stuff it. Yet they yell at us when we do publicly what they try to do in secret, from their high-and-mighty positions of We-Signed-It.

Next time you hear someone whine about Bush and the environment, and they mention the Kyoto accords, ask them how many other countries are following it and how many are just empty words.

And the Americans seem to have f*cked up again in Japan, literally. Another Japanese woman raped in Okinawa, supposedly - the police haven't outright said it and are on record of not yet being sure US troops even did it. The newspaper seems to think so, but we'll see what the future has to hold.

Yeah, it's been quiet here lately. *looks at this morning's post* Okay, it's been quiet tonight. But I've been chatting with Sacchan the Cool and discussing cosplay ideas. Or rather, Tomoyo's been talking cosplay with her. But I digress.

Hikaru Utada, famed Japanese pop-singer...teams up with PINO the robot for a new music video. He looks like a chubby Gort, of all things, and I am frightened. But again, yet more to the future of robotics.

Bird, got e-mail. ^^ Will need a day or two to reply. And being stuck in traffic on a bridge...SUCKS.

First off, shortly after I get to work, the phones go dead. Not only do the phones go dead, but all the computer networks are down, internally and externally. After a short spate of clapping and cheers we pretty much hang around for about an hour and a half, because the main power switch block going to the computer room physically burned out and had to be replaced. Nice long break during work, which was nice to enjoy.

Now, during this time, someone notices not just a couple ambulances and police cars at one of the facilities right across the street...but all the CRIME SCENE tape and the news trucks as well. Being a bunch of bored technical geeks, we quickly find out what happened.

Apparently, some couple (married or not, we don't know) left their six-month-old infant in the car.

For six hours.

And the weather outside? 108 degrees.

The kicker? The parents, forgetting their critical responsibility, somehow thought that they had already dropped off the infant at day care, and so they dropped off their four-year-old at the other kid's day care. And somehow just didn't take note of the infant child that minutes before they loaded into the car, nor did it occur to them at all for the rest of the ride to work, not even during 6 hours of work.

I'm damned glad I had a feeling to leave the Glock at home - or else I'd probably be in jail on homicide charges right now.

A moment of silence when you read this, please, for the young one who never got a chance, and for the four year old who came home to find themselves an only child.

Here's a question I'd like to see answered - WHY are guns being so demonized? Why are gun owners being portrayed as violence-loving barbarians who want to kill people? What is the entire point to stripping this nation of firearms, as the anti-gun left wants to do? It's not for safety - we've proven that already. At least, it's not for the PUBLIC'S safety...but whose then?

So thank you K-mart...after making a stand previously, and breaking away with Rosie "The Hypocrite From Hell" O'Donnell, you finally cave under. I know I'm not buying from them ever again, anywhere. Dustin Hoffman was right - "K-mart sucks."

Sakura: s'ok ^^;
Icchan: I can see it
Icchan: (oh my god! he's a young yuuto!)
Sakura: *SNOOOOOOOOOORT*
Icchan: (*looks at green-eyed sakura* *looks at Kotori*)
Sakura: you WISH he was HALF as smooth as Sir Pimpsalot
Sakura: but you know. :P
Sakura: ...
Sakura: uh
Sakura: Kotori? nah.
Icchan: (*looks at Tomoyo* *looks at Kanoe*)
Sakura: ...
Sakura: THAT WAS HERESY.
Icchan: Kamui! You took Sakura/Kotori away from me!
Sakura: OO;
Icchan: I will destroy tokyo and use your best friend to do it with!
Sakura: *inches away from Icchan*
Icchan: (or some extraordinarily cheesy concept like that)
Icchan: Instant anime crossover. Sakura 1999. :p
Sakura: .....................................
Sakura: *extremely tempted to bitch-slap SOMETHING*
Icchan: Sakura (Kotori) dumps Tomoyo (Kanoe) for good for Syaoran (Kamui). So Tomoyo gets Touya (Fuuma) to ally with her as a dragon of earth.
Sakura: -_-a
Icchan: after all, Sakura/Touya and Kotori/Fuuma ARE brother/sister.
Sakura: *goes into corner and starts cleaning blood off the Duckie Cleaver*
Icchan: it works.
Icchan: twistedly.
Icchan: XD
Sakura: *sharpens*

Ragabash, nothing availible for A.I. for Friday night. Latest showing is 11:20, and that's at Sam's Town. No times yet for Saturday, I'll post 'em when I see it.

Jack Lemmon, veteran hollywood actor and multiple Oscar winner, passed away last night at 76. You will be missed.

D.C. Court of Appeals reverses order that MS be broken up into two separate companies. They also questioned the judge, Thomas Jackson, and whether he was truly impartial or not. The Appeals Court did uphold the finding that Microsoft has a monopoly, though, and has remanded the case back to the District Court for further proceedings. So the Beast stays whole...

Slobodan Milosevic has been wrapped up with a bow and handed to the UN for trial on war crimes, unofficially. No solid word either way on this one, though it would be nice if it were. There's a lot of legal infighting in Yugoslavia on this, the Constitutional Court having rescinded its own deliver-Milosevic order and other parts of the government supporting the war-crimes tribunal. We'll see where he really is.

It's official, no driving with cell-phones in New York. Warnings start November 1, tickets start December 1.

The usual warnings about Fourth of July fireworks, especially since injuries for 2000 were over 11,000 compared to 8,500 for 1999. And consider half of those injured were kids under 15. Things To Remember:

Never allow children to play with fireworks.

Read and follow all fireworks warnings and instructions.

Be sure other people are out of range before lighting fireworks.

Never try to relight fireworks that haven't fully functioned.

Keep a bucket of water nearby in case of accident or fire.

Only light fireworks on a smooth, flat surface away from houses, dry leaves and flammable materials.

Jack Lemmon, veteran hollywood actor and multiple Oscar winner, passed away last night at 76. You will be missed.

D.C. Court of Appeals reverses order that MS be broken up into two separate companies. They also questioned the judge, Thomas Jackson, and whether he was truly impartial or not. The Appeals Court did uphold the finding that Microsoft has a monopoly, though, and has remanded the case back to the District Court for further proceedings. So the Beast stays whole...

Slobodan Milosevic has been wrapped up with a bow and handed to the UN for trial on war crimes, unofficially. No solid word either way on this one, though it would be nice if it were. There's a lot of legal infighting in Yugoslavia on this, the Constitutional Court having rescinded its own deliver-Milosevic order and other parts of the government supporting the war-crimes tribunal. We'll see where he really is.

It's official, no driving with cell-phones in New York. Warnings start November 1, tickets start December 1.

The usual warnings about Fourth of July fireworks, especially since injuries for 2000 were over 11,000 compared to 8,500 for 1999. And consider half of those injured were kids under 15. Things To Remember:

Never allow children to play with fireworks.

Read and follow all fireworks warnings and instructions.

Be sure other people are out of range before lighting fireworks.

Never try to relight fireworks that haven't fully functioned.

Keep a bucket of water nearby in case of accident or fire.

Only light fireworks on a smooth, flat surface away from houses, dry leaves and flammable materials.

Japanese tourists visit Korean colonial/wartime museum en masse, learning what the government is too damned arrogant to admit. I'm glad to see it - it means that the Japanese people are curious as to what happened, even if it is a harsh, terrible history. The Germans can sympathize, but their government admitted things freely and still tries to make reparations to the victims of an evil regime that bore the German name. It's nice to also see a curiosity for Korea from Japanese citizens, rather than just accepting the government's word on things and not caring.

Yankees spank Cleveland 15-5. Ow.

New Japanese vehicle that seats a lot and looks like a combination minivan/limousine. Eight wheels, and a 300-km range on a full lithium-ion electric charge. 580 horsepower, too, so it has a pretty darn good motor - and a LOT of batteries. Funky.

Japanese schools will be increasing defenses somewhat with the introduction of tear-gas units all throughout Chiba. I see the Japanese are interested in defending their own children - how about the Americans getting the idea? I mean, right now we send our kids to a completely wide-open zone that anyone can take over if they wanted to. Considering bringing a firearm within a thousand feet of a school is a Federal crime, well, that just means the sheepdogs are kept a long way away from the herd, and the herd's stuck in a box, waiting for the wolves. If you're going to stick my kid in a building for 8 hours a day, you're DAMN well going to prove to me you can keep him/her safe or else you may not HAVE my child. Tear gas ain't much, but the nihonjin are definitely on the right track.

HEY! Dumb@$$! Whoever you are, you have a 141 million dollar lottery ticket, go cash it in already!

Kristi, here's one for you - panel calls for reform of death penalty, providing 18 new ways to prevent execution of the innocent and other DNA evidence and such. Go take a read, maybe it'll be useful.

MS thinks it's going to spend a cool billion on advertising for Windows XP. Actually, it's a large consortium of companies that are getting together to spend the cash. Still...expect to be disgusted with the Windows Disgusting adverts...it's gonna be a BLITZ.

And look! Remember the army's new SUV I posted on a while back? Well, The Register found it too, and they seem to like it. There's more here regarding technical info too. TRB, think we can add any of this stuff to Goatzilla?

And the dolls will be made - the first one (Dilandau) is having the electronics built. Anyone got good pictures of his outfit, so I can work on it?

The future of ram chips - polymer? Opticom claims it can be made cheaper and easier with its polymer procedure, but we'll see what the future holds. It would be nice...

Tracing laptops over the internet - it can be done. Ever had your computer stolen? Now you can find it if it's ever hooked up to the internet. Just sign up for this company's service, and they'll be able to locate your less-legally liberated laptop from the paws of the perpetrator pretty punctually. Or maybe track you down? One can see the Big Brother aspect to this...

And for tonight's amusement, we provide Fun Pictures From Around The Country.

That's all for tonight, folks. I am the weakest link, goodbye!

Ragabash, kore da. It's $15, and shipping's $4.30. Thanks!

For the weird file, Assaulted 16-year-old schoolgirl turns out ot be 44. The discussion topic on this one's kinda amusing.

Apparently the Macedonia government forgot its lesson a few days ago and has begun shelling Albanian villages today, as police went through the recently-cleared village whose residents UN-controlled troops were assisting when fired upon. There's also travel warnings for US & UK citizens in the area. Generally not pleasant, though I still want to know what American troops are doing over there.

Radio report of a man supposedly armed with a submachinegun who hijacked a taxi. No online story anywhere, though I'd find it extremely interesting if it was a real SMG or just a semiauto pistol.

And sometimes, genetic testing and manipulation can be a good thing. The family who concieved a new baby in a petri dish is doing quite well, and the daughter they hoped to save is apparently going to make it.

Town in US bans the UN - to the point of banning all money that goes to the UN, banning the UN logo, banning any involuntary service with the UN, and forcing anyone who does work for the UN to put up a sign declaring such. Missed the name of it, but that was an amusing one.

And we have a list of the most dangerous intersections nationwide. Bird, heads up, two of those are in P'nix.

North Dakota state chamber of commerce puts forth a plan to change the name of the state to "Dakota" after examining commercial benefits of dropping the "North" off. Apparently the North part is what bothers a lot of people and makes them think it's a cold place, without a lot to do there.

It's not?

And the Mighty Mighty Maxtor blows its HD science out of the water, announcing a new interface standard that will allow a whopping 144 petabyte storage in future development. What's a petabyte? 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes - or 1024 terabytes. Over a million gigabytes.

Remember the Japanese pilot who fired off a quick burst at the car lot I mentioned? No mechanical difficulties were found in the F-4 that fired off the rounds. 188 rounds fired total, just under 2 seconds of actual fire. The pilot, who has over 2100 hours of flight time, swears up and down he didn't do it. All safety equipment in the aircraft appear to be enabled, so it's a good question as to just what happened - though I'd chalk it up to pilot error.<

And Alan, go rent Real Genius now. I can't believe you never saw that.

So if the HMO or the doctor f*cks up and there's a lawsuit, then the employer (which had nothing to do with any of the decisions) can get sued.

Think about it. How many employers are going to keep health insurance benefits when there's a risk of lawsuits for things the company doesn't do? This IS a lawyer-happy country nowadays, and if you give someone a chance to get cash, they'll take it.

Well, let's see. The Albanian rebels seem to have a lot of popular support - even enough to nearly start a popular revolution, and come very close to overthrowing the president and parliament. I'd say the Mace govt. had better rethink its actions against the rebels, or else it might not make it out next time. And what the hell are our troops doing over there, Mr. President?

New York votes to ban cell phones while driving, and it's expected Pataki will sign the bill. Fines of up to $100 for using the phones would kick in December 1, with warnings for the month beforehand. It seems to be another case of a few idiots ruining things for the rest of us...but then again, there is so much else you need to keep your mind on when you're driving (quite often other bad drivers), it's difficult to hold conversations.

British Telecom unveils a new design for DSL that is supposed to extend the effective range to 3 miles. BT does admit there is some loss of performance, though how much yet remains to be known.

IBM develops new transistor design capable of 200-gigahertz-plus speed. No actual processors availble yet, those will be a little more than two years away - but if that's true, then we've shattered Moore's Law once and for all - jumping from 2ghz chips today to 100ghz tomorrow is waaay beyond the curve of doubling every 18 months.

Battlecat! Nooooo!

You're going to burn in hell for that, you know that right?

Bush to follow through on campain promise increasing military spending 18 billion dollars. 4 billion is earmarked towards pay increases, and another 8 billion to spare parts and repairs for the hardware we have that's currently in severe disrepair. Were you aware that we have an entire 16-aircraft fighter wing that cannot fly because the unit can't afford to pay for parts that wear out? Or that the Coast Guard had to cut back activities 25% across the board because they couldn't afford the fuel and maintenance costs?

The Democrats like to say that there won't be enough money for all these expenditures and that other programs are going to get cut, especially after the tax cut. Well, to consider one thing...during the entire time of the tax cut, the United States Government is going to tax its citizens twenty-eight trillion dollars - that's 28,000,000,000,000 dollars. Coming out of your pocket and mine. With more money than any human can comprehend - 28 million suitcases each containing a million dollars - the government tries to tell you it CAN'T afford to pay for other programs?

Kennesaw State University cuts class detailing Nazi "culture" in face of lawsuits and donation losses. They do make the point that the Nazis need to be studied to understand why it happened and to keep it from happening again, rather like a political autopsy. No word yet on whether the class will come back or not. I say keep the class, as long as it's conducted in a "clinical" sense only and not a worship of the facist state.

Looking at a report on the latest crime statistics, it's a pretty interesting depiction of our own culture. I do point out evidence that should lead to the ban of knives nationwide - look at how many stab wounds there were compared to gunshot wounds - 84,870 vs. 27,700. So who's going to put forth the call for "knife control" since they cause three times the number of injuries/deaths that firearms do. And considering that there were a total of 11.6 million violent crimes in 1993, falling to 8.5 million violent crimes by 1998. Is it really that unreasonable to believe the data that 2.5 million people probably WERE saved by being armed when they were attacked, and protecting themselves?

Ragabash, what happened to your server? Can't get in.

Hmm, the yen's back down to 124:1 right now...

In a case of significant whoopsie, Japanese F-4 fighter strafes a parking lot, no injuries though an unknown number of vehicles were hit by the 20mm fire. Whoever the pilot was, he won't be in the air again for a long time, if ever. Didn't know they were still running Phantoms over there.

China promised the Philippines to keep its navy away from the Spratly islands, but apparently they've gone back on that promise. China claims that it has "indisputable sovereignty" over the resource-rich islands and has apparently already begun fortifying them with land-based facilities. The Chinese pattern for expansion is to send fishing vessels to an area, then warships, then build up. China in April promised the Phil govt. that it is not seeking to establish a military presence in the islands - however, now it HAS. Is this part of the wargames going on over there I mentioned before, or is this a slow prelude to a land and resource grab? If China does get the islands then the resources they have (namely oil) will lead to lesser reliance on foreign governments. If the Chinese push, it may also be a test to judge reactions from local countries - will they let the Chinese roll over them, or will they protest? How easy will expansion be?