July 2005

WashPost: The Pentagon plans to train thousands of African troops in battalions equipped for extended desert and border operations and to link the militaries of different countries with secure satellite communications. The initiative, with proposed funding of $500 million over seven years, covers Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia — with the U.S. military eager to add Libya if relations improve. . . . Green Berets are trained to navigate foreign cultures, but both teams lacked…

WashPost: [Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s antiterrorist branch] said the containers that held the explosives — 6.25-liter models made of clear plastic with white lids and bearing the brand name Delta — were imported from India and sold at 100 outlets. He urged any shopkeepers who sold five or more at the same time or to the same customer to contact police. Ok, I’m no anti-terrorism expert or anything, but is this really what we’ve come to? That we’re…

Because the the chowhounds seem to be down on the Gilroy Garlic Festival next weekend, someone also mentioned the Lamb Festival in Dixon, CA (towards Sacramento) on Saturday instead. It’s smaller, cheaper ($1/person), and closer (at least from Berkeley). Who’s interested?

Metafilter: A guest from a Daily Show joke piece was fired from the Broward Art Guild (which still lists her as the exec. director). The strange thing about this story is that in the original piece, the artists involved in a guild show were the source of controversy (for this (NSFW) and this), the director was simply subjected to a few goofball questions from Ed Helms. She was fired in a secret session because, I assume, from the bad press.

Contains spoilers for Season 1: Comprehensive List of What is Known About Lost

This 40 minute album has eight actual recorded pick-up scenes to learn from. You’ll hear exactly how to pick up a busty college girl in a library, a tall pretty blond street, a dark-haired sexy swinger in a single’s bar. Each pick-up is introduced by Eric Weber, the famous author of HOW TO PICK UP GIRLS! Eric explains exactly how and what to say for each different kind of pick up. Full MP3 here. This is pretty darned hilarious. via…

Wikipedia Entry on Lost: For a teaser of season two visit http://www.oceanic-air.com/seatingchart.htm and view the Oceanic Flight 815 seating chart. There click on the “numbers” 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 to preview a promo for season two. The site also contains a hidden message and piece of the Exodus pt. 2 script which seems to reveal the identity of the island’s monster. It can be read by going to http://www.oceanic-air.com/images/oa_front-letter1a.jpg

LA Times: Teacher: Han Il Nam, how do you spell the word “revolution”? Student A: R-e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n. Teacher: Very good, thank you. Sit down. Ri Chol Su. What’s the Korean for “revolution”? Student B: Hyekmyeng. Teacher: Fine, thank you. Have you any questions? Student C: No questions. Teacher: Well, Kim In Su, what do you learn English for? Student D: For our revolution. Teacher: That’s right. It’s true that we learn English for our revolution.

This is from my Columbia buddy Tom Randall who I saw last weekend in DC. He’s an intern at Bloomberg in DC for the summer and occasionally is on presidential press pool duty. i went to the state dinner with indian pm, george, laura, condi, don, dick, the whole gang. libby snuck in the back door. they kicked us out after toasts, but hey, i got to stand face to face with the pres for 5 minutes in matching tuxes.…

I was up at 5 am this morning to do an interview on WRVA about robots. It went well overall, except that it had three minor issues. The first was that I was mistakenly credited as being the “editor of Macworld magazine” (Jason, I’m really not trying to take your job, I swear!). The second was that my interview was cut short due to breaking news of the 2nd round of minor London bombings. The third was that I forgot…