Dodge Viper SRT 2008 (not mine)

Bonne annee 2009

Angry Iraqi throws shoes at President Bush in Baghdad

Americans Drive Less Even With Cheap Gas

Gas prices declined in October, but Americans continued to drive less than ever — 9 billion fewer miles than last October, in fact.
The decline points to a fundamental change in driving habits that began this summer during the gas-price spike but has continued even as prices have fallen. Since November 2007, Americans have driven 100 billion fewer miles compared to the same time span the year before that, which makes this the largest continuous decline in driving ever recorded.
The data, gathered by the Federal Highway Administration, doesn't stop there. Public transportation across the country has seen record increases, including Amtrak, which this fiscal year made the most money it's ever seen in its 37 years of operation. Car accident fatalities are also down 10% so far in 2008.
On the flipside, the Federal Highway Trust Fund continues to come up chronically short on funds because it relies on the gasoline tax. Congress already had to inject $8 billion into it earlier this year to keep important projects operating.
It doesn't take a Harvard economist to figure out that the economic sinkhole we've fallen into is largely responsible for the continued driving decline. Even if rising gas prices started the trend, tightening budgets and layoffs have continued it. Looking to cut expenses, Americans are taking fewer trips and telecommuting for work more frequently.
We're Driving Less Even as Gasoline Prices Drop (USA Today)

World's oldest blogger makes final post

Olive had posted more than 70 entries on her blog, or as she jokingly labelled it, her "blob", since February last year.
The ardent Sydney Swans AFL fan shared her day-to-day musings and her life's experiences raising three children on her own, living through two world wars and the Depression, her work as a station cook in rural Queensland and as an egg sorter and barmaid in Sydney.
In her final post, dated June 26, an increasingly frail Olive noted she couldn't "shake off that bad cough".
She also: "read a whole swag of email messages and comments from my internet friends today, and I was so pleased to hear from you. Thank you, one and all."
Olive's musing live on at http://www.allaboutolive.com.au and more recently at http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com.
She was born in 1899, and would have turned 109 on October 20.
"She enjoyed the notoriety - it kept her mind fresh," Mr Stone said.
"What kept her going was the memories she had, and being able to recall those memories so strongly."
Olive's funeral will be held at Palmdale Cemetery, on the NSW Central Coast, late this week.oast, late this week.

Bound, tortured, stabbed and burned: 'horrific' mystery of bedsit murders

French students were promising biochemists · Pathologist found 243 injuries to bodies of pair
Matthew Taylor and Lizzy Davies in Paris
The Guardian,
Friday July 4, 2008
Article history
Two gifted French students found stabbed to death after a fire at a London flat were bound and tortured in what detectives yesterday described as one of the most horrific attacks they had ever seen.
The bodies of Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were found in a ground-floor flat in south-east London on Sunday night. They were stabbed more than 200 times in an apparently motiveless attack before the flat was set alight. The pair were promising research students who had been working on a DNA research project at Imperial College, London.
Ferez's sister Hélène, 19, described the moment she was told of his death as "the worst experience of my life."
"Nothing can change what's happened, but I want to know who did this, and why. I will do absolutely anything to find the person or persons who did it," she told the Guardian in a Facebook message yesterday. "He was an exceptional boy who would have done anything for anyone. He was incredibly intelligent, proud and enormously capable. He didn't deserve this and neither did Laurent."
Scotland Yard said the flat had been broken into six days earlier, when a laptop was stolen. It is understood that the thief was disturbed by one of the students. Detective chief inspector Mick Duthie, who is leading the inquiry, said police were investigating the possibility that the theft was linked to the killings. Another theory being examined by the police is that the pair were victims of mistaken identity.
Police said the attack did not appear to be the work of professionals. "I would say it was a frenzied, horrible, horrific attack.
I imagine it would take some considerable amount of time to inflict the nature of the injuries," Duthie said.
Police said there was no evidence of forced entry, and a set of keys may have been used, enabling the attacker to surprise his victims.
In tributes, those in France who knew the men expressed incredulity that two model students with such unblemished records and glittering futures ahead of them should have died in such a seemingly senseless and violent attack. "They were brilliant students, the ones you know will go on to great things," said Claude-Gilles Dussap, director of the Ecole Polytechnique de Clermont Ferrand. "They were well-known and well-liked."
Both men were several weeks into internships at Imperial College that would have finished at the end of this month. The three-month laboratory placements were part of their second year of biochemistry at Clermont Ferrand, one of France's most prestigious scientific institutions.
Dr David Leak, a senior lecturer in the faculty of natural sciences at Imperial, described Ferez as a "polymath" who had accepted an offer to do a chemistry master's course.
Before arriving in Britain this year, both men had entered enthusiastically into the spirit of university life at Clermont Ferrand. Bonomo, from the village of Velaux near Aix-en-Provence, had been the elected student president and was described by friends yesterday as sociable, kind and funny. He had been engaged to marry his long-term girlfriend.
Ferez, too, was a popular face around campus. The talented student, from a tiny village called Prouzel in the north-east of France, was a member of the arts society and had worked during his holidays as a technician at the local hospital. His former headmaster at the Louis Thuillier secondary school in Amiens said he had been "stunned" to hear of his death. "He was a very calm young man, a very good student, who excelled in maths and chemistry. He never got into trouble," said Guy le Blanche.
Laurent's fiancée, Mary Bertez, wrote on his Facebook page: "My love, we were always together, but I was not there with you that night. I think of you constantly with every single second. I had 10 months of happiness with you, happiness I had never known before. Now that you are gone I will try to be the person you always wanted me to be. I will give all the information I can to help the investigation, so that you will be avenged."
At Clermont Ferrand, where classes have ended but exams continue, a support service has been put in place for students who need it, the French minister for higher education, Valérie Pécresse, said.
The pair were killed at Bonomo's bedsit in a quiet cul-de-sac in New Cross, south-east London. Both were bound and stabbed in the head, back, torso and neck. The flat was then doused in petrol and set alight. Detectives said the men were dead before the fire started. A pathologist later documented 243 separate injuries to their badly burned bodies.
Neighbours described hearing several loud bangs before seeing flames coming from the windows of the ground-floor flat. "I went outside to see what was going on and there were other residents banging on the door and shouting to see if anyone was in," said a 32-year-old man who lived above the bedsit. "People were throwing water through the windows to try to put the fire out. Because there was no answer we thought there was no one in."
Another neighbour, Christina Ramirez, 32, from Brazil, said she arrived home five minutes after the fire started. She said she and her Spanish friend and neighbour saw two men banging on the window of the flat prior to a "very strong sound", which she took for an explosion of some kind. Police say one witness reported a white man running away from the scene soon after the blaze broke out.
The men's parents were in London yesterday to identify the bodies before returning to France last night. Duthie said that telling the parents about the details of the "gruesome attack" had been the "hardest thing he had ever done". "The level of violence used on these two victims was excessive - it was horrendous. Everyone working on this case has been deeply shocked by what we have seen."
Stephen Matthews, a professor at Imperial College, said he was mystified as to why Bonomo had been so brutally murdered. "He was likeable, intelligent, hard working. I can't imagine him being involved in anything untoward. I can't see how anything could come to this. His death was absolutely not linked to the research at Imperial."
Matthews said Bonomo had fitted in quickly during the six weeks he had spent in Britain. "He interacted well with other members of the group and we quickly found out he was an accomplished chess player. We played as a group and I don't think he lost very often. I also think he was involved in online tournaments."

Lost in the cyberspace Google's censorship against Uruknet

June 19, 2008Google must really have a thing against Uruknet. After Google News’ censorship now Uruknet disappears even on Google’s search engine.Google stopped indexing Uruknet the middle of May. After Uruknet wrote (again!) many e-mails to Google (and again! we didn’t receive any reply) Google restarted indexing some (not all!) Uruknet’s article on June 17. However, it seems that these articles have a short life on Google since they keep disappearing immediately after they are indexed. For instance this is a Google’s page saved today, June 19, at 3pm Rome time and this is the same search Google page, the same day at 10 pm Rome time - While the first page at 3pm shows the Uruknet’s article indexed by Google, in the second page’s results the article disappeared and Google left simply the Uruknet’s homepage. Moreover Uruknet’s articles indexed by Google before the middle of May are being disappearing as if someone is manually deleting them. As odd it may seem, it’s as if someone inside Google deleted the indexed article. Google has already stopped indexing Uruknet from Google News, justifying it with lies and preposterous excuses. Now it seems Google is deleting even those Uruknet’s articles that had already been automatically indexed by the search engine. Furthermore Google search engine shows Uruknet’s results at the very last position, if at all. Google’s censorship becomes very clear if one contrasts and compares the search of the word "uruknet" on Google and Yahoo. Searching the word "uruknet" on Google this evening the results were 194,000. On Yahoo the same word shows 1,550,000 results.We don’t ask anymore our readers to write to Google since we lost even our last hopes in their fairness and good faith, but we would be grateful if our readers could post and distribute this article over the Internet; this affair goes far beyond Uruknet and Internet censorship is a real threat and is happening now. Of course we reserve the right to take legal action against Google.

Ben Laden has been found

BinLaden_ is BinLaden@americas.most.wanted.man.is.still.bin-laden.biz * BinLadenBinLaden_ on #Iraq #Iran @#YouTube @#EeePC #Afghanistan @#Uefa #DC-Spam #DC BinLaden_ using irc.wh.verio.net ooh omnipotence. mm yes gotta get me some of that.BinLaden_ actually using host 212.224.67.35BinLaden_ End of /WHOIS list

Oh I forgot to tell you guys we found this nickname on IRC :P