FOR SALE, AGE 3. A little slice-of-life in a former United Nations refugee camp outside Montenegro's capital of Podgorica. Might want to contact the British-based evangelical charity Smile International and ask them if they know what's going on in this camp, which receives donations from them.

EFF.org: Tell your rep to oppose the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (DCIMA, H.R. 3261). This legislation would extend broad copyright-like protection to collections of factual data, even though the Supreme Court has twice ruled that these collections are not copyrightable.

From TheTime-Space Continua - an Open Forum:

"Most physicists believe that in any final theory of quantum gravity, space-time itself will be quantised and grainy in nature. Quantum mechanics implies that there is a tiniest measurable scale, called the Planck length, which is 10^-33 centimetres. Likewise, the Planck time is 10^-43 seconds. So the smallest possible volume in four-dimensional space-time, the Planck volume, is 10^-142 cubic centimetre seconds. If we assume that each of these volumes counts a single space-time quantum, this provides a direct quantification of bulk: a space-time volume of one cubic centimetre that lasts for one second is composed of 10^142 space-time elements. This number is large enough to make space-time appear smooth at all scales that we can currently probe experimentally. "

From Spacetime at the Planck Scale: The Quantum Computer View, by Paola Zizzi:

"In our model, quantum spacetime is discrete, quantised in Planck units, and each pixel of Planckian area, encodes a qubit (qubitisation of quantum spacetime). This is a quantum memory register. To process the quantum information stored in the memory, it is necessary to dispose of a network of quantum logic gates (which are unitary operators). The network must be part of quantum spacetime itself, as it describes its dynamical evolution. The quantum memory plus the quantum network form a quantum computer."

Tell your senators to defeat the Bush-Cheney energy bill

Microsoft seeks XML-related patents

Bush helps CBS, CBS helps Bush

iabolish.com: Don't Turn a Blind Eye to Sudan's Slaves

Gay Marriage Poll Gets Annulled -- an update from Wired News on the American Family Association's poll on homosexual marriage, which hasn't turned out the way the AFA expected. Current results:

• I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and "civil unions": 31.91% (273620 votes)
• I favor legalization of homosexual marriage: 60.21% (516252 votes)
• I favor a "civil union" with the full benefits of marriage except for the name: 7.89% (67613 votes)

ActForChange: Tell your senators that the Senate Intelligence Committee should hold open hearings and ask straightforward questions of White House officials under oath as to whether they had bad information or they themselves misled the American people.

From HoustonChronicle.com - Uproar grows on moving jobs overseas:

The threat of unemployment was serious enough for Steve Ward, a computer programmer in Philadelphia, to take a day off from work, drive two hours to Manhattan and picket outside the Times Square hotel where the conference [on offshore outsourcing] is being held.

'The consulting firm I work for is sending jobs to India,' said Ward, who came to the protest with a former co-worker who was laid off last year.

Ward, holding a sign — 'Will Code For Food' — dismissed the notion that everyone benefits from the corporate savings generated by offshore outsourcing. 'Companies are predatory institutions, and they have to be controlled,' he said."

Tired: lie detectors
Wired: Love Detector for Pocket PC from the makers of Lie Detector Eyeglasses

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, from Democratic Underground (Moonbase Dubya Edition)

The White House is blocking e-mail comments on this issue, so send a free fax telling President Bush to withdraw his proposal to cut workers’ overtime pay.

See also:

• AFL-CIO: Senate Democrats Protect Workers from Bush’s Attack on Overtime Pay Protections
• Act For Change: Fix the Omnibus Spending Bill

They Are Lying About Your Food -- A Worker from the Mad Cow Meat Plant Speaks Out, by Dave Louthan, formerly with Vern's Moses Lake Meats

ACLU: Oppose Taxpayer Subsidies for Religious Schools

MIT Technology Review Blog: Become a Terrorist Today!

Looking for the perfect pair of Vampire Eyes to go with your prosthetic Vampire Fangs?

From Some US tactics in Iraq are war crimes, [Human Rights Watch] alleges:

The group also accused the US military of kidnapping in two cases in which American soldiers arrested civilians who happened to be related to guerrilla suspects.

In one case, the Army detained the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top lieutenant of Saddam Hussein and now the most wanted man in Iraq. The two women remain in US custody more than six weeks after they were arrested without charge.

[Military spokesman Colonel William] Darley declined to discuss Douri's wife and daughter, saying there were 'special circumstances' surrounding their case.

Take action: Urge Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to Stop Acts of Collective Punishment in Iraq

"A Modest Proposal", by David Podvin

"Butching up for Victory", by Richard Goldstein is an, uh, penetrating analysis of the psycho-sexual undercurrents of Presidential politics, that suggests that Howard Dean might be able to defeat Bush if he can present himself as "a man women admire, blacks find credible and white guys bond with".

Oppose the new airline passenger profiling system. Of course, doing so will probably rate you as at least a yellow-level threat.

EFF Defends Right to Own "Smart Card" Technology. Boycott DirectTV!

From James Burke's Knowledge Web Project > News and Events:

Beta launch event, early 2004. K-Web beta launch party in the team's virtual reality headquarters in Showcase world (access instructions) [for EcollegE in the Active Worlds Eduverse]

Must watch: Lost in Space - The Complete First Season (1965). Ah, to visit, once more, the lost world of my vanished youth -- oh, the pain, the pain...

The Bush-Hitler Thing: A Survivor Speaks Out

Your tax dollars at work: U.S. Department of Labor offers tips to employers on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible this year. Whacha gonna do? Tell your senators to stop President Bush's attack on overtime pay.

Taking the "fossil" out of "fossil fuels": The Origin of Methane (and Oil) in the Crust of the Earth presents the case for a non-biological origin of hydrocarbons. Are there vast amounts of oil and natural gas lurking in the Earth's mantle? If so, and if they can be found and extracted, what will that do greenhouse gas emissions?

Silicon Valley falls to Bangalore

Tech firms defend moving jobs overseas

Spending too much time in meatspace these days? You need to get a Second Life! TIME Magazine calls it "The Matrix minus the evil machines". All you need is a broadband internet connection, a fast graphics card, 256 Mb of RAM, 18 Mb of disk space, Windows XP or 2000, and $9.95!

Create your own FOAF ("Friend Of A Friend") file with FOAF-a-matic. Here's mine. I've also added myself to the FOAF Bulletin Board and AnRdfHarvesterStartingPoint.