Bush may be world’s oldest living thing. I had a hard time with this headline when I originally scanned it, associating to the pretzel-choker-in-chief for a moment… Scaramento Bee

Self-styled vampire reveals British link:

A 23-year-old Satanist jailed yesterday in Germany for a gruesome, ritual Satanic killing, said that she became a vampire in London.

In testimony which exposes the bizarre world of Britain’s underground occult groups, Manuela Ruda said that she swapped the “mortal” world for a life of blood-drinking and devil worship after working in a club in London which she said was frequented by “vampires and human beings”. Guardian UK

Fictional theory set to bite the dust

:

Vampires are fact not fiction and they could be living in a street near you.

Jon Downs, of the Exeter Strange Phenomena Group, believes that there are vampires living across the West Country.

‘There are vampiric entities in the South West, although they’re not the sort that Buffy the Vampire Slayer would recognise,’ he said.

Forget the tall, cloaked man with the swept-back hair, Jon believes that the vampires exist in various forms, possibly as animals.

This Is The West Country

Our galaxy – from the outside: “Astronomers obtained this perspective by analysing half a billion stars measured by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).

It features the Milky Way’s complete disc and its newly discovered central bar of stars.

The new map will help scientists confirm the existence of hitherto only suspected features in our galaxy.” BBC

Mountain ranges suffering severe degradation: “The Alps in Europe and the Himalaya-Karakorum-Hindu Kush mountain range, which spans northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan, are among ten ranges worldwide suffering severe ecosystem degradation, according to a major new report.

Climate change, tourism, deforestation, population growth and migration are causing floods, landslides and famine for people living on their slopes, says the report, which was commissioned by the United Nations University in Japan and written by Jack Ives, of Carleton University in Canada. These disasters are set to become more frequent – and many unique animals and plants will disappear, Ives says.” New Scientist

Scientists surprised at current effects of 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: “We did indeed find quite a lot more oil than we expected to see. Most of the subsurface oil was in the fresh oil category, and by fresh oil I mean chemically, compositionally; it hasn’t really changed very much since late in the summer of 1989.” Animal species are still being affected in Prince William Sound, suffering organ damage, declining birth rates and birth defects. Nando Times

Programme to eliminate leprosy “on target”: “The World Health Organization programme to eradicate leprosy worldwide by 2005 is on target, officials have announced. But leprosy charities say claims are highly optimistic.” New Scientist Especially if you’ve ever had any contact with people with Hanson’s Disease (a more ‘correct’ term, since ‘leper’ is so deeply stigmatizing) — I did, not in my medical training but in my travels in India, where 60% of the world’s leprosy occurs — you’ll know that the eradication of this disfiguring illness could be one of humanity’s more compassionate ministrations toward its afflicted. Who was it who said a society should be judged by how it cares for its most unfortunate? Now, how about third world HIV?

A webring of blogs “that rebel against normal topic, design or structure”:

• outré designs – psychedelic colors, odd artistic endeavours, over-colourful backgrounds, hellish table experiments, et cetera.

• outlaw mentality/topicality – themes centered around things like alternative sexual practises, unpopular politics, drugs, controversial lifestyles, you get the idea.

• unusual infrastructures – anything that causes the page to go beyond the typical “blog” style in some way, or that which subverts the “dominant blog paradigm” in some way. (For example, one blog on this ring has the dates of its entries all in hexadecimal.)

• dadaist tendencies – sheer, complete and utter nonsense babbled into blogform.

I’m not sure there’s any merit to garish color schemes or putting your dates in hexadecimal per se, but the outlaw mentality and the dada might have a certain cachet…

These are pages that Google thinks are “similar” or “related” to Follow Me Here. Some similarities to my own thinking, as you can see from the number of pages that also appear in my sidebar as daily reads (Rebecca, boing boing, BookNotes, UFO Breakfast, Synthetic Zero, etc.). Does anyone know anything about the algorithm they use to determine what’s “related” to what?

This Product Support Services page from Microsoft is going to help you to no end. [via blogjam]

So they just reviewed FmH in The Weblog Review. Very flattering, but am I really the place to get your daily news??

Al-Qaeda in talks with Hezbollah

The al-Qaeda terrorist organisation is trying to transfer its base of operations from Afghanistan to Lebanon, according to intelligence uncovered earlier this month.

A senior operative of Osama bin Laden’s network, a Yemeni national who has the alias of Salah Hajir, is believed to have arrived in Lebanon about two weeks ago and has held meetings in Beirut with leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist group. The Times of London

Iraq, Iran and North Korea dismiss Bush accusations. The countries in question reject Dubya’s idiotic “axis of evil” innuendo.

Iran, Iraq and North Korea on Wednesday rejected an accusation by U.S. President George W. Bush that they form an “axis of evil” developing weapons of mass destruction to threaten America and the world.

Iran said Bush’s remarks smacked of a desire for hegemony, Iraq suggested they presaged a U.S. attack on Baghdad and North Korea saw them as evidence of a “policy of aggression”.

Britain said the U.S. president had made a “powerful case for the coalition’s actions against global terrorism”. France questioned the merits of labelling nations as terrorist. Reuters

The Colder War: “Last week, the US government announced that it was building the biggest-ever war machine. Military spending will rise to $379billion, of which $50billion will pay for its ‘war on terrorism’.

There will be special funding for new, refined weapons of mass slaughter and for ‘military operations’ – invasions of other countries.

Of all the extraordinary news since September 11, this is the most alarming. It is time to break our silence.

That is to say, it is time for other governments to break their silence, especially the Blair government, whose complicity in the American rampage in Afghanistan has not denied its understanding of the Bush administration’s true plans and ambitions.”

U.S. Says Innocents Died in Raid: “U.S. military officials reversed themselves and now believe innocent people were among the estimated 15 killed and 27 captured in a commando raid in Afghanistan last week.” AP

Roiling Israel: ‘More than 100 Israeli Army reservists signed a statement published today saying they would refuse to continue serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because Israel’s policies there involved “dominating, expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people.” ‘ NY Times

Top Ten Things You Need to Know About Enron: “What follows is an imaginary conversation, intended as a kind of primer — not only ten things you might want to know about Enron, but ten things that bear repeating about Enron. Enron’s collapse is symptomatic of a deep-seated disease. All of our retirements are at stake.” AlterNet

George W. in the Garden of Gethsemane — unrelenting, well-deserved venom. Read the entire thing; this is just a sample:

The saddest part of this whole affair was the day the scandal was revealed — and you denied that you even knew your good friend, Kenneth Lay. “Ken who?” you said. Oh, he’s just some businessman from Texas. “Heck, he backed my opponent for governor, Ann Richards!” was your way of trying to deflect the truth that was hitting you like a Mack truck. You knew that he, in fact, endorsed YOU and gave you THREE times the money Ann Richards ever saw from him.

I hardly ever talk to the guy, you said. You were like Peter outside the walls of Herod after they grabbed J.C. from the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times he denied he knew Jesus, and three times the cock crowed. But Peter, unlike you, felt shame and wept, and then ran away. [thanks, David]

The Internet Grammar of English: “an academic grammar of English designed and written exclusively for the web.”

This is purportedly the website of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the group which may be responsible for the kidnapping — and perhaps murder — of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl.

Love Among the Races: ‘… why race continues to matter – usually to the disadvantage of blacks – despite the fact that race should no longer exist. Essentialist definitions of race have long been discredited; civil rights laws enshrine society’s commitment to equality of treatment and opportunity; the merest hint of overt racial prejudice is enough to destroy a politician’s career. But if race has had the scientific and political stuffing knocked out of it, it remains stubbornly persistent as a “social truth” that affects people’s behaviour and life chances.’ Times Literary Supplement

Altered images for brain damage patients

Imagine looking at a dog – and not recognising it as a dog. What if you looked at a sheep or a cow, and didn’t know what it was?

And what if you looked at the pictures above – and thought the “babex” and “bunnyphant” might be real?

That is the situation for some people with visual agnosia.

People with the condition can have trouble recognising animals, faces or objects.

Now a series of films entitled “Eye See” is being planned to allow everyone to see the world as visual aphasics see it. BBC