Oddee.com has put together a list of the 10 most amazing ghost towns. Amazing is certainly the right word; the abandoned dwellings cover all sorts of terrain and socio-economic areas and the page is certainly worth a glance. There’s nothing going on quite like The World Without Us describes, though there are apparently a few trees growing in buildings.
In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Maliki embraced Obama’s plan, saying: “That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.” Maliki said he was not making an endorsement in the presidential race.
The endorsement of the Iraqi Prime Minister for a plan that calls for combat withdrawal - an effective end to the Iraq War - is enormous news. Ironically only the LA Times fronted the story, owing to pressure exerted from the White House for the Iraqi government to issue a retractment, which they (vaguely) did. When the New York Times ran the story they ran it as a story focused on the implications for al-Maliki given the disapproval his comments generated with senior White House and US military leaders. Even so, this offers the most real possibility of an actual conclusion to the Iraq War we’ve had since it began. The lead of Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki, effectively supports presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s 16-month time-table for withdrawal, and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has repeatedly stated that he would respect Iraq’s sovereignty on the issue of withdrawal (though his plan calls for no immediate withdrawal and indefinite military presence). It’s unlikely that McCain would actually advocate such a speedy withdrawal since it would be near political suicide, but this is the clearest hope the American public has had yet for an actual termination to the War. A full rundown with the official responses of the candidates is here.
Related: While the mainstream press was slow to run this story, The White House press corps inadvertantly emailed this story to their entire list (instead of the intended internal list) immediately after Der Speigel, the source of the Maliki interview, ran the story on the wire.
Google’s strength has always laid in their user experience: Fast load times and a dead-simple interface made for an irresistible search engine. But the need for growth has pushed them to compromise the very qualities that make them attractive in the first place. My search results now include rating and commenting components, two features that sound like they may be good additions. But instead, these new features are bad for 3 reasons.
Google has gained little with this adjustment, and given the feature release appears to be limited to select users right now, it’s unlikely the add-ons will make it to Google proper unadjusted.
Comedy has been no easier for the phalanx of late-night television hosts who depend on skewering political leaders for a healthy quotient of their nightly monologues. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and others have delivered a nightly stream of jokes about the Republican running for president — each one a variant on the same theme: John McCain is old.But there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique. And within a late-night landscape dominated by white hosts, white writers, and overwhelmingly white audiences, there has been almost none about his race….Despite audience resistance, Mr. Stewart contended, his show had been able to develop a distinctive angle on Mr. Obama.Noting that the senator seems to emphasize the historic nature of his quest, Mr. Stewart said, “So far, our take is that he’s positioning himself to be on a coin.”…Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the ABC late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” said of Mr. Obama, “There’s a weird reverse racism going on. You can’t joke about him because he’s half-white. It’s silly. I think it’s more a problem because he’s so polished, he doesn’t seem to have any flaws.”
Perhaps there’s a actual reticence comedians have to make fun of Obama. But McCain may just be an easier target. McCain revels in giving the press the sort of personal access that invariably exposes him to the risk of poorly-phrased quotes getting caught on camera. He offers that access because it results in more favorable press coverage, but the collateral cost may be ready-made comic materials. Obama, on the other hand, has run a very disciplined campaign that offers little casual press access. Less access results in less unscripted conversation, and less room for error.Again, it’s very possible that some jokes about Obama get discarded because of racial sensitivity or political ideology. But McCain’s offered a steady stream of pre-packaged jokes this campaign season and you can’t blame comedians from running with jokes that are practically prewritten.
President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.
As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
President Bush made the private joke in the summit’s closing session, senior sources said yesterday. His remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the President from Texas who is wedded to the oil industry. He had given some ground at the summit by saying he would “seriously consider” a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050.
For 2008 Mississippi has claimed the title of fattest state for the third consecutive year, while Colorado repeats as the leanest. Delaware rose the most places in the rankings over last year, while California dropped the most, according to a new analysis by CalorieLab, Inc.
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The only state to get slimmer this year is not actually a state: the District of Columbia’s three-year obesity rate dropped by 0.1 percent.
While Colorado deserves some accolades for having the fewest obese residents, still nearly 1 out of every 5 Colorado residents is obese. In fact, if you look at the percentage of residents obese or just overweight (as determined by BMI), every state including Colorado is more than 50% overweight or obese.
As alarming as that may seem, the rate of fattening is terrifying. In 1995, the first year the CDC lists national BMI stats, national statistics reveal 10% fewer obese people, and 10% more people neither overweight nor obese than 2008. In 1998, the CDC estimated the national cost of obesity was between $50b and $75b. That same year, there were 8% fewer obese people in America than today. So what’s the cost today? According to obesityinamerica.org the cost of obesity today is $122b annually. The CDC pegs half the total obesity costs as medical expenditures paid by Medicare and Medicaid. If that holds, then this year every man, woman and child is spending $200 on obesity.
The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.
What in the world is the Justice Department thinking? They ignored warning Bin Laden would attack the US with planes in April, 2001 then classify the congressional testimony related. They don’t investigate present cases filed against the government for fraud or criminal activity because of a backlog. They politicize the hirings of US attorneys, falsely prosecuting prominent democratic politicians to tilt elections toward Republicans.
In short they can’t legally fulfill their job as is, but plan to restore their reputation by racial profiling? Brilliant.
Can you judge a book by its cover? Well, how about a movie? It seems that every few years a trend develops where great posters strongly correlate to great film, but without fail a movie like Smokin Aces comes along with excellent visual design and proves to be terrible. Take a run down /film’s list of the best posters of 2007 and excepting Smokin Aces which was terrible and horror films which are always, well, horror-ble. The only poster missing is the brilliant work for Funny Games, perhaps 2007’s best movie poster.
Will this hold for 2008? Check Internet Movie Poster Awards’ list of 2008 posters and judge for yourself. But based on this rational, I’ll be first in line to see Choke and City of Ember when they hit theaters.
