Shane MacGowan gets the drinks in. A sort of a God in Dublin, a paradigm of debauchery, he’s portrayed on the occasion of the publication of a sort of a memoir, A Drink with Shane MacGowan. Bono: ‘Shane is more together than people imagine,’ as the author of this interview goes to great pains to establish as well, to the great relief of all of us who expect more great things of him… The Guardian [via Robot Wisdom‘s ‘must-read’ category]

Taliban Kills Buddha: ‘…the fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas is a matter of who may control our notions of permanence; of who
will have the power that goes with defining the sacred…. The demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas is a flashpoint between two warring notions of permanence, two
irreconcilable considerations of the sacred. What we are witnessing now in Afghanistan is a charismatic
moment, one that does not give a damn for the permanence or the sacredness we find in the “world’s cultural
heritage.” ‘ But the joke is that it’s a textbook illustration of the central Buddhist truth of the impermanence of all things. Killing the Buddha

boing boing points to this hilarious offer of deity action figures at Jesus Christ Superstore.

Courtesy of Lake Effect, a magnificent image of space shuttle Columbia being ferried from California to Florida piggyback on its 747 carrier; and another one.

Aimster Pig Encoder: “As of Sunday March 4, 2001, at midnight, Napster began monitoring the file names that its
users put into the Napster database, for the purpose of blocking certain file names. This is a
serious invasion of your privacy as a Napster user. The file names on your hard drive are
your personal property and should not be monitored by anyone without your permission.
The Aimster Pig Encoder makes it more difficult for anyone to monitor the file names on
your computer. The Aimster Pig Encoder is very simple but effective. It takes each of the file names of the
mp3 files in your Napster directory and encodes the file names so that the name cannot be
easily monitored.”

90% of people don’t believe what they read on
the Web, but read the article anyway. The Register

“If you build it, they will come”?? Prodigy founder buys former Aryan Nations compound at Hayden lake, Idaho, plans to turn it into an anti-racism center. “Greg Carr has stepped in to rid Idaho of white supremacists.” The Register

The Debated Mind : Evolutionary Psychology Versus Ethnography ed. by Harvey Whitehouse. “This collection of articles questions how the human mind influences the content
and organization of culture. It pitches the arguments for innatism (proposed by
evolutionary psychologists) against ethnographic perspectives which question
the theories of evolutionary biology and cognitive science.”

The National Security Archive: “. . . combines a unique range of functions in one non governmental, non-profit institution.
The Archive is simultaneously a research institute on international affairs, a library and
archive of declassified U.S. documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, a
public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information
through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents in books, microfiche, and
electronic formats. The Archive’s approximately $1.8 million yearly budget comes from
publication revenues and from private philanthropists such as the Carnegie Corporation, the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. As a matter of
policy, the Archive receives no government funding.

The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars
who had obtained documentation from the U.S. government under the Freedom of
Information Act and sought a centralized repository for these materials. Over the past
decade, the Archive has become the world’s largest non governmental library of declassified
documents. “

Foxwatch Ireland , not designed to please fans of the hunt.

“…this place,

if I could describe this
place, portray it, I’ve tried, I feel no
place, no place around me, there’s
no end to me, I don’t know what it
is, it isn’t flesh, it doesn’t end, it’s
like air…”

The Sunday Times of London profiles “Big Time” Cheney. ‘Bush, not realising a microphone was live, called a liberal reporter
a “major-league asshole”. Cheney agreed. “Big time,” he affirmed.
“Big Time” is now Bush’s private nickname for Cheney.

Participants in Oval Office meetings say Cheney is deferential to
Bush, but Big Time speaks for itself. Apart from selling the budget,
masterminding foreign policy and ensuring that old chums such as
Rumsfeld are back in the administration, Cheney, as Senate
president, will also cast tie-breaking votes in a chamber divided
50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. The late-night
television jokes are now about “President Cheney”. ‘

Pluto: Comet or Planet? It’s nothing recently learned about the object as much as what’s been recently learned about its neighborhood at the outer edge of the solar system that tempts some to downgrade its status. National Geographic

Spectacular Bodies: the art of anatomy: “Spanning 500 years of anatomical representation, the book examines the paintings, sculpture, diagrams, and
medical illustrations found at the intersection of art and science. From
Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp to 19th-century studies of
musculature to the grisly and gristly work of contemporary British artists, the
human figure has always been central to both fields.” Brill’s Content

Newspaper: Gore Might Have Won A ballot design that confused voters into chosing two
candidates cost Democrat Al Gore 6,607 votes in Palm Beach County,
The Palm Beach Post reported in its Sunday editions.

The newspaper counted more than 19,000 overvotes, or ballots on which more than one
vote was recorded for a presidential candidate. It concluded the net gain of votes for
Gore would have been 10 times more than he needed to erase Republican George W.
Bush’s slim margin of 537 votes in the state. AP [But we knew that already, didn’t we?]

Man Gets 99 Years for Killing Over Song.

A Texas man was sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing a musician who did
not know the song he requested, a prosecutor says.

Ramon Cabrera, 48, became angry with David Saenz, 57, because Saenz could not play “El Guajolote,” or “The
Turkey,” so he shot him in the head with a .38 caliber pistol, Assistant Nueces County District Attorney Mark Skurka
told Reuters on Friday.

“As a prosecutor, I’ve seen a lot of senseless killings, but this one — there’s just no way” to explain it, he said.

Shepherd Shot Dead, Sheep Blamed: “An Egyptian Bedouin shepherd was shot in the chest and killed on Thursday
when one of his flock jogged his loaded shotgun as he slept, police said.”

Remember the old wives’ tale about masturbation and blindness? Here’s the modern version. Reuters

Salad Psychology: “Are you shy? Think you’re smart? How you eat your
salad may give you away.”

Unlocking the brain’s potential Researchers may have identified a part of
the brain, which if switched off, can stimulate
“artistic genius”. The left anterior temporal lobe is damaged in demented patients who develop artistic talent and in savants with artistic abilities. When transcranial magnetic stimulation was used in normal volunteers to ‘turn off’ that brain region, a number of them temporarily developed ‘savant skills.’ Researchers speculate that a normally functioning left anterior temporal region suppresses access to more ‘primitive’ areas that do more unmediated processing of sensory data and numbers. BBC

Salad Psychology: “Are you shy? Think you’re smart? How you eat your
salad may give you away.”