connecting*the*dots

Greensboro’s Child is now iPod friendly… and it’s free. If the holiday season has already influenced your proclivity to purchase, Andy is still accepting donations and selling copies of the DVD for $10.

It seems as though the Iraqi insurgency is operating on a self-sustaining budget of $70 to $200 million a year and causing complete havoc. Meanwhile, we’re spending $8 billion dollars per month to accomplish missions that amount to not much more than killing/maiming people and being killed/maimed ourselves.

Odiyya: “The producers of An Inconvenient Truth have offered to supply American classrooms with 50,000 copies of the movie free of charge. That offer has been rejected by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the nation’s leading science education teachers group, citing a risk to funding from key financial supporters.” […]

“We have to deal with greenhouse gases,” John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., said in a recent speech at the National Press Club. “From Shell’s point of view, the debate is over. When 98 percent of scientists agree, who is Shell to say, ‘Let’s debate the science’?”

Gringo In Venezuela: […] “These days the U.S. has a new arch nemesis; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Surely Washington would be delighted to get rid of him in the same fashion as all the rest. But there is one small problem; Hugo Chavez is no Slobodan Milosevic. He is immensely popular among the masses in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. Pro-Chavez parties have continued to win democratic elections over the last 8 years, and will most certainly win again in the December 3rd presidential contest. This time U.S. forces have their work cut out for them. They know that it is basically impossible to beat Chavez at the ballot box; he’s too popular. It looks like they will have to go to plan B: a coup d’etat.” […]

Launch.com was one the first “2.0″ type services I ever used, way back in 2000. What made it 2.0? Well for starters, I could easily subscribe to people who had a similar taste in music as myself. It was last.fm before last.fm was ever conceived. I loved the service. Then it was bought by Yahoo! and transformed into Yahoo! Music. Innovation and basic enhancements immediately ceased. For instance: I just tried to fire up my station as background music while I put my office together, but Firefox and Safari on the Mac still aren’t supported. I’m with Doc — Yahoo! had better leave flickr the fuck alone.

It was inevitable: the folks at ytmnd have posted a kkkramer rap (NSFW). It’s foul, but well made.

Deborah Scranton’s innovative and moving documentary, The War Tapes, is on the 2007 Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary. If you’ve seen the film or simply appreciate the humanity of our soldiers as much as myself, please make some noise and show some link love for Deb and her crew. I can’t express how proud I am that Deb considers me to be a friend.