Construction is fun!

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The building I work in on the Microsoft campus (123) is flanked on the south and east by two buildings that used to belong to another company, but were purchased by Microsoft sometime in the past year. Until yesterday, the buildings had sat unused for the past few months. However, yesterday barricades went up blocking off the parking lot for the two buildings, and today signs declaring ‘DANGER: CONSTRUCTION AREA’ went up. Looks like there is going to be renovation work on the two buildings, plus the addition of a four-story parking garage (I’m guess that that’s going to replace the parking lot, but I’m not terribly sure on that). The barricades are up, workmen are starting to clear out some of the landscaping, and trucks are starting to fill the parking lot.

Talking about this with one of my co-workers, I found out that there’s also a rumor that our building might be slated for work, too. This one’s purely in the rumor stage, so who knows how accurate it is, but still.

I just can’t seem to escape construction these days. If it’s not my apartment building, it’s my job. What fun!

Hostages

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We’re now taking hostages…

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

…in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, Protocol 1, Section III, Chapter 1, Article 75, Paragraph 2:

The following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by civilian or by military agents: (a) violence to the life, health, or physical or mental well-being of persons, in particular: (i) murder; (ii) torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental; (iii) corporal punishment; and (iv) mutilation; (b) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, enforced prostitution and any form or indecent assault; (c) the taking of hostages; (d) collective punishments; and (e) threats to commit any of the foregoing acts.

(via Atrios)

Bush/Cheney vs. Dean

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This is flat-out amazing.

Last Friday, it was announced that tomorow, Monday the 28^th^, there would be a special fundraising dinner in Columbia, South Carolina to benefit the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign. This dinner is a \$2000 per plate fundraiser, expected to raise \$250,000 (from 125 people).

The good folks over at the Dean campaign decided to turn this into a challenge, and “brought back the bat“. Their goal was to see if in three days — this weekend, from Saturday through Monday at midnight — they could match that \$250,000 goal through their grassroots fundraising efforts.

Today, just before 11pm eastern time, with a full 24 hours left before the Monday midnight deadline, they hit the \$250,000 mark.

As of 11 pm EDT, 4,629 Americans have contributed \$250,733.20 to the Dean Team vs. Bush-Cheney Challenge.

We know that many of you have waited to contribute until tomorrow, the day of Cheney’s fundraiser.

You’ll notice the second bat doesn’t have a goal. It will be up to you and thousands of other Americans to fill that bat up to whatever amount you can by midnight, tomorrow. We’ve matched the Bush-Cheney fundraising machine. Tomorrow, let’s see by how much we can surpass them.

And wait til you see what we plan on doing with the additional money you help raise tomorrow. It’s top secret, but we can tell you this — it will surprise everyone.

We’ll be giving you half hour updates all day tomorrow, beginning at 8 am.

This is what it’s all about. Not \$2000 a head dinners so the fat cats can buy their “special interests” by keeping the status quo, but by people all across the country giving what they can, because they believe in a candidate, and because they want to make a change for the better.

Koosay, Eebay, and Ooday

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You’ve probably noticed that there are many different spellings of Arabic names depending on which news source you are reading. The truth is that there is no consensus how to write Arabic words in English. If we are going to investigate Arabic names we must therefore use phonetic spellings. Saddam’s sons then become Koosay, Eebay, and Ooday.

Now if we translate those names from Pig Latin back into English we have Skoo Bee Doo. Is this a veiled reference to the cartoon dog from the 1970s, Scooby Doo? Can it be anything but that?

Well consider this. Scooby Doo’s final year of first-run shows was 1977. It was also in 1977 that Saddam Hussein came to power in the ruling Baath Party.

Coincidence? You decide.

— Bernard Slattery

(via Glenn)

Metabetablog

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Here’s an interesting project: metabetablog.

Metabetablog is a graphical representation of the TypePad beta testing experience, a compression of data generated in this evolving blogging environment. Each entry contains a dense chunk of sample content from the top ten most recently-updated blogs from the TypePad Devlog, gathered just before posting. The posts can be read as generative poetry, as text-snapshots, as sand through the hourglass…

I mention this because my last post got incorporated into the latest creation. Made me laugh.