The Center for American Progress has launched a new database called Claim vs Fact that compares and contrasts political rhetoric (i.e. lies) made by Bush administration officials and others with substantiated factual truth.
What a great idea!
This is good — an organisation called counterconvention.org is organising a “blog-blast” to try to be the top-ranked result on searches for “republican national convention.” Apparently the next RNC is taking place in New York City, just before the next election.
The idea’s pretty simple; get lots of website and blog owners to link the phrase republican national convention to the counter convention website instead of the official website, so that it comes up first in search engine listings.
I seem to have participated!
Now that I have some more web server space with my broadband account, I’ve decided to move my blog off blogspot and back onto a server that I can access directly. This will get rid of the irritating banner ads and allow me to backup the archive files more easily.
Check the URL for this page. If it says either of the following, you’re in the right place:
http://home.earthlink.net/~tonygill99/blog/index.html
http://www2.tonygill.com/blog/index.html
However, if it says the following, you’re at the OLD home of my blog, and should click one of the links above to get to the newer site:
Well I’m back in New York, after a fun trip to Europe that took me to the CIDOC CRM “Practice of Knowledge Sharing” Symposium at ICS-FORTH just outside Heraklion in Crete, plus two weekend layovers in London on either side of the meeting to visit friends and family.
A couple of political rants for today…
First of all, even more evidence has surfaced today that Bush decided to use 9/11 as a stick to beat Saddam Hussain with on the basis of, er, NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER, according to today’s edition of “The Daily Mis-Lead,” Moveon.org’s excellent daily e-mail newsletter.
I also found out last night from a friend that the so-called “contractors” that were killed and whose corpses were brutally mutilated in Fallujah recently were employees of Gary Jackson’s Blackwater USA, a shadowy and frightening private army made up of ex Navy seals and other highly trained and dangerous nutters. As their website proudly says, “Blackwater EXECUTES WITH SPEED and EFFICIENCY.” I feel safer already. What happened to them was still horrible of course, but to pass these mercenaries off as “security guards” is more than a little disingenuous. Securicor they ain’t.
I had my follow-up visit with the oral & maxillofacial surgeon this last week, following the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (see blogs passim, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and Broken Face).
It turns out that I don’t need to have surgery on my jaw to correct my occluded bite after all (although I could still have it for cosmetic reasons for $8,500!), which is a relief, although I do still need some more bite correction (i.e. sanding my teeth down) and possibly some orthodontic work (braces! At my age!).
So, it’s back to the dentist.
Thought I’d post a few random links — there’s no common theme between them, except that I came across them all recently.
Florida Election Fraud — lest we forget what happened in Florida in the last U.S. Presidential election, here’s a powerful warning about what can go wrong for the MTV generation (680kb Flash movie, broadband recommended).
“Electronic Ink” eBook reader — this new gadget has a display resolution that’s as good as newsprint, which will make it just as easy to read electronic text as the printed word, plus it’s static, so it only needs power when the display needs to be updated. This technology will revolutionize ebook readers and, when a colour version is eventually developed, all digital displays.
Lego World Builder — I spent more late night hours than I care to admit playing this addictive Shockwave game last week (I always loved Lego as a kid). Fortunately you can turn the awful music off (broadband recommended).