Okay it’s a little Darwinian, or maybe a lot Darwinian, but I have this vision similar to the sequence in the Godfather where all of the enemies of the Corleones are wiped out with admirable if bloody efficiency: Saddam (if he is alive), Osama (if he is alive and we …

They’ve been talking about this for 20 years, but now real time translation is “good enough“: Most Americans likely have difficulty understanding the broadcasts of Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, but several government agencies now can watch it while simultaneously receiving an English translation of the programming. Virage Inc., …

Declan McCullagh on the Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) conference: At the 13th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) conference, attendees fretted about shrinking privacy, growing online censorship, and their reduced ability to make “fair use” of music, video and software girded with anticopying technologies. Events included panels with titles …

Nice little bio of Cat Power in NY Times Magazine – she has a new CD reviewed here by our Jim Carruthers. like most every other song on Cat Power’s new album, ”You Are Free,” is about inquietude, balkiness, dread. Since its release in late February, ”You Are Free” has …

Ismail Hussain was an Iraqi pop star – Uday Hussein made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: In the 1990’s, you were a pop star in Iraq, and you were known as Uday Hussein’s favorite performer. How did you get involved with Saddam’s oldest son, who is known for his …

Steyn called this one two weeks ago, if he does say so himself: This war is over. The only question now is whether a new provisional government is installed before the BBC and The New York Times have finished running their exhaustive series on What Went Wrong with the Pentagon’s …

In today’s NY Times, David Edelstein acclaims Three Kings a great movie, and unambiguously anti-war: I agree with the former point. Obviously, the director David O. Russell meant it to be anti-war, but I came away from the film sickened not by the Gulf War – though I am disgusted …

Been watching the war on TV this afternoon – CNN (left-center), MSNBC (center-center except when that idiot Savage is on), FoxNews (triumphalist-right) – and the pictures are remarkable, driving with troops down the highway right through the middle of Baghdad, the shit-for-brains Iraqi Dis-Information Minister claiming the footage of Americans …

Pearl Jam speaks out on the impale-Bush-mask-at-concert incident: There were close to 12,000 people at the April 1st Denver show. It’s possible two dozen left during encore but it was not noticeable amongst the 11,976 who were loudly applauding and enjoying the evening’s music. It just made a better headline …

Additional wireless access in Manhattan parks: downtown business improvement district is planning to establish free high-speed wireless Internet access in six parks and public spaces in Lower Manhattan next month, significantly expanding the availability downtown of wireless connections to the Internet. Officials of the Alliance for Downtown New York, the …