the CIA’s self-image descends to the surrealistic cartoonish. [via Dave Farber]

Spam Haiku: “I was looking at my SPAM mailbox the other day. As I was reading the countless subject lines, I started hearing Haiku in my head (this could be a sign that I’m losing it). I thought it would be neat to put together a script that would write Haiku out of my SPAM subject lines. What you see below are the results of this experiment.

I generate a new SpamKu every 15 minutes. That is what you see below. If you would like to see them, I keep an archive of old SpamKu.” Letters From Exile

Fast Cash Advance

A Better Option Than Bankruptcy

Cash In A Flash 8

“a place for the veneration of images of our Dear Leader.” [thanks, Adam]

[scroll down]: Wolfowitz v. Perle? After an Iraq war, if Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz moves to try to force Israel to curtail its settlements in the occupied territories — as he’s suggested he’ll do — how long do you think it will take his fellow neocon Bush adviser Richard Perle to turn on him? Not very long, I’d guess. .. Slate

Should genetic factors be cited as mitigating factors in criminal proceedings just as social factors already are?

In 1995, lawyers in America acting on behalf of the convicted murderer Stephen Mobley attempted to have his death sentence reduced to life imprisonment by claiming that there was a pattern of aggression (and, bizarrely, business success) in Mobley’s ancestry which suggested a relevant genetic aetiology underlying his criminal behaviour.

Even by the standards of the TV series Ally McBeal such an approach may strike one as desperate (the jury were clearly unimpressed; they rejected Mobley’s case and he remains on death row to this day) but the publication in September of a report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics suggests that in the future such an approach may become far more widespread. The Philosophers’ Magazine

Children who bite their fingernails may be damaging their IQ, a study suggests.

This is because lead can gather under their nails simply by playing in dusty conditions, both indoors and outdoors. BBC