I’ll say up front that I don’t have great sourcing or attribution for this item; in fact, it’s little more than a personal ancedote. Moreover, I’m not going to take the time to go dig up a linkable source, because, well, I’ve got more important things to do, like work, and pack, and play with the child process. That said, if anybody finds supporting info, please drop a link in the comments.

Anyway, here’s the story: On the way home from some after-dinner chow, I was listening to a local area news station (WTOP, for the DCers). They do a CBS News report periodically, and I happened to catch it. One of the main stories was about the lowering of the threat warning back to the ‘yellow’ level. This is a big deal for me; getting to work the past couple weeks has been a nightmare, because of the crazy security stuff they do when we’re at level ‘orange’, so I actually started to pay careful attention to the story. Earlier, I had seen online (somewhere or another) that the reason it was being lowered was because the Hajj was coming to an end, but what I heard in this news story — and what pissed me off — was an un-named “administration official” being quoted as saying that the reason the level was being lowered was so that it could be raised back to ‘orange’ when we invade Iraq in a few weeks, and that leaving the level elevated for too long “encouraged public complacency”.

Grrr. Grrrr.

Ethel the Blog returned from the dead recently, and I’m happy to say that Mr Baum is back in full fettle, kicking ass, taking names, and all that jazz.

Fred “Mr.” Rodgers dead at 74.

New Scientist reports that health care workers are too busy preparing for a smallpox attack to be able to tell whether we’re experiencing a smallpox attack. Interesting bit in the article is the extremely low number of health care workers that are getting the smallpox vaccination — I expected it to somewhat less than 100%, but not as low as it apparently is.

A while back, I was bitching about Dvorak support in the Mac OS X X11 beta Apple put out. I ended up corresponding with a reader (hey, Wheat) about the problem, talking about fixing things the traditional “xmodmap and spit” way. But then Apple went and released a second beta and X11 respects the Keyboard setting now.

Just in case you were wondering.

Something other than the Forthcoming War of Iraqi Liberation and/or American Imperialist Aggression, that is.

This site would have you believe that the recent “hoard food and have emergency contact plans” announcements from the FedGov have less to do with terrorism, and more to do with a hail of cometary debris coming down to smash our asses. Basically, the idea as that during the recent solar flyby of comet NEAR, a solar flare hit the comet, breaking it into piceces, some of which are going to hit the earth. Featuring lots of slightly frantic writing and various graphics that look sort of like bad modern art. (They’re actually pictures from the SOHO satelite, I think.)

Anyway, if you mailbomb your office mates with this, there’s a good chance you can stop all work this morning.

Lots and lots of naked people for peace. (A few clothed ones, too.)

Link via Flutterby

Some Rose pictures, in response to the overwhelming demands of her public…

The long-promised pictures of the interior of the new house. With extra bonus painting action pictures! w00t.

Extremely belated pictures from our recent snowfall: