Cut through the BS about compouter security - Vmyths.com- Truth About Computer Virus Myths & Hoaxes seeks to stamp out misconceptions.

Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted!!!! - It's not up on the Avon Cinema website yet, but I just got their newsletter and Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted will be in Providence on June 15th and 16th for the midnight show. I know none of you actually live around here anymore, but if by some chance someone can make it to one of those midnight show, I'm planning to go to one or the other. Now, whether I ought to get a Spike's hot dog or go for Wings To Go... it's a conundrum.

Upsetting events in Bahrain - Things are heating up in Bahrain, and this worries me bacause I have family stationed there. But aside from that I wonder if this is a barometer of sentiment toward the US.
Early this week there was an incident in which a US Sailor and his Ethiopian bride were attacked and injured by a crowd of Bahraini civilians. Apparently, the incident started over a business transaction but quickly turned ugly. The brawl ignited an anti-US protest.

Now an official apology is being sought.

While the Americans there (there are thousands) report that the infrequent personal interactions between Americans and Bahraini citizens have not become strained, there are many indicators that, politically, anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment is growing.

Note:

• 'Islamic' cola benefits from boycott
  
• Meeting against normalisation with Israel
  
• Bahrain bans Al Jazeera TV (for percieved Zionist bias - i.e. they covered anti-US protests in Bahrain without permission)
  

It's all in the order you say it
Summer blockbuster:
Summer bust-blocker:

UPDATE on the previous story - The following was part of a CNN article on the issue:

Oliver "Buck" Revell, ex-associate director of the FBI, said critics can't have it both ways -- faulting the agency for not doing enough to thwart terrorist attacks, but complaining when the agency turns to more aggressive information-gathering techniques.

"Some of these activities will be chilling, there's no question of it," Revell said. "But if the public expects and if the Congress expects there to be prevention of terror activities, there's going to have to be the collection of information, and that collection at times will certainly be problematic to people's concerns."

I say: Bull. The point of the criticism is that they had the information. It's nice spin on their part, but they're missing the point entirely.

Can't shoot straight? Get a bigger gun. - Bush and Ashcroft have lifted domestic spying restrictions that limited the FBI's ability to investigate libraries, churches and the internet even when they are not on a specific case. Boston.com has the story.
If anyone picks up any detail on what, exactly, the changes were, let me know.
Why the gun analogy? Well, it seems to me that we should see some putting the intelligence community's house in order before going out and giving them more power to possibly abuse.

Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear weapons regardless of whether India uses them or not. They have no qualms about being the first to put them in action against conventional weapons.
Click this link if you need your day ruined.

Dick Armey and Ethnic Cleansing? - Guardian Unlimited : "When Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush's spokesman, was asked for the president's view on what appeared to be an argument for ethnic cleansing, he changed the subject."

Petit Bush's petit mal - " There is something bizarre about watching an Andover-, Yale- and Harvard-educated president, the grandson of an elegant Connecticut senator and the son of a gracious internationalist president, have a hissy fit because a reporter asks a legitimate question about European angst and talks to a Frenchman in French." Read Maureen Dowd's account in the NYT.