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This Episode’s Topics:

• Ziff-Davis files for Chapter 11
• User feedback, high tech tea abominations
• Adam’s liason with UK Govt. (The Tax Man)
• This hour has 22 minutes
• Wooden shoes? Nope. Hookers and dope.
• Interlude: 1942 music by Sammy Kaye from “Iceland”
• Interlude II: 2008 version with Google and DoubleClick
• Internet advertising, Google issues and other annoyances
• Would the world be different without Google?
• The BRIC countries
• John’s secret elevator codes!
• Will AOL and Yahoo get together?

Running time: Approximately 65 mins.

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Voters in two Vermont towns have approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for “crimes against our Constitution.”

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to “extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them…”

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

It might be interesting to see Bush wander away from secure and friendly public sound bites into a town willing to throw his patronizing butt in jail.

New York police officers with the bomb squad unit

tampabay.com

NEW YORK (AP) — A small bomb caused minor damage to a landmark military recruiting station in the heart of Times Square before dawn Thursday, and police were searching for a hooded bicyclist seen on a surveillance video pedaling away.

The video shows the bicyclist getting off a bike at 3:40 a.m. Thursday and walking toward the building. A minute or so later, the person returned to the bike and rode away. A brief flash and a cloud of white smoke follows.

A bike, believed used in the crime, was later found in the trash on West 38th Street, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The blast left a gaping hole in the front window and shattered a glass door, twisting and blackening its metal frame. No one was hurt, but Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the device, though unsophisticated, could have caused “injury and even death.”

See video here.

Update: washingtonpost.com

Federal authorities said today there is no apparent link between the bombing of a Manhattan military recruiting station and a man who mailed rambling letters to Congress that featured the building.

The timing amounts to “an amazing coincidence,” one law enforcement official said.

About 100 congressional Democrats received identical antiwar letters in recent days that declared: “We did it,” and included photos of a man standing in front of the U.S. military’s iconic recruiting center in the middle of New York’s Times Square, officials said. That same center was the target of a crude bomb that authorities believe was placed by a person riding a bicycle early yesterday morning.

Central Florida News 13

ORANGE COUNTY — Orange County deputies said the mother caught on a surveillance tape power-washing her 2-year-old child at a car wash turned herself into authorities Thursday afternoon. Authorities have not released the woman’s name. Deputies said the woman, who is 5-months pregnant, used the pressure washer to calm the child down after the she had a temper tantrum. “She did indicate to us this was the first time this ever happened. That, she typically uses time-outs. She has used a spray bottle in the past to calm the child,” said Sgt. John Allen from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office Child Abuse Unit. The child is being evaluated by a doctor, but does not appear to be injured. So far, no charges have been filed. However, deputies said they will make decisions based on the doctor’s analysis.

I had a shipmate in the military with an aversion to bathing. The crew took him to the car wash. Good Times.

See video here: tampabays10.com

Williams told authorities he was born Don LaRose and that in the mid-1970s, he was a preacher in Indiana. He said he was abducted and brainwashed into forgetting all about his life as Don LaRose. It was a double-life he had never acknowledged, Williams said, because he didn’t even realize it existed until he had recently taken a truth-serum injection.

As Williams regained his memory, he said, he realized that he had a wife and two kids but that he had decided to leave and take on a new identity to protect them. “I had no choice. The choice was to watch my family killed before my eyes or go with these people, and I chose instead to run,” Williams said. He wouldn’t explain from who he was running, saying only that he had been brainwashed. “I had multiple shock treatments,” Williams said. “It took five years to get my memory back.” “What happened in 1980 — whether it was right or wrong — I did it under the threat of my family and for my own survival,” he said. The information went public, Williams said, because he runs a Web site about Don LaRose and his disappearance. LaRose’s former family found the Web site and started inquiring about its author. They found the site registered to a Ken Williams and went from there. Also, his resignation was signed with two names, he said.

Ah, yeah. Heres a link to his website, it seems its been abducted by Satanists also.

Eve

This is the moving story of one family’s fight to save their desperately ill loved one.

Chris and Elaine Denny are planning to travel hundreds of miles and spend thousands of pounds in an effort to get pioneering cancer treatment for one-legged Eve.

And this is no ordinary tale of devotion, for Eve is a hen. Yes, that’s right, a chicken.

She will be treated for cancer in her one remaining limb at one of Britain’s top veterinary practices.

Your pet is a companion. Does species overrule?

Thanks, K B. I think.

Reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding enterprise in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe in recent months, as word spreads of India’s combination of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices…

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some European countries and subject to a wide spectrum of regulation in U.S. states, was legalized in India in 2002…

Rudy Rupak, co-founder and president of PlanetHospital, a U.S. medical tourism agency, said he expects to send at least 100 couples to India this year for surrogacy, up from 25 in 2007, the first year he offered the service.

“Every time there is a success story, hundreds of inquiries follow,” he said…

For many, like Lisa Switzer, a 40-year-old medical technician from Texas whose twin babies are being carried by a surrogate mother from the clinic, the overwhelming attraction is the price.

“Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us – the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries – we can’t. Unless we go to India,” she said.

Detailed article. The kind of piece the IHT does well. Even when it ain’t an easy topic.

Exchange support in the iPhone has been rumored almost as long as the iPhone itself was rumored to exist. Much as the iPhone turned out to be real, so has ActiveSync on the iPhone. Microsoft released an interview with Terry Myerson, corporate vice president for Exchange, which includes a very interesting tidbit. Mr. Myserson says that Apple and Microsoft were in talks about licensing ActiveSync before the iPhone was announced.

Furthermore, he was in daily contact with Apple VP Phil Schiller (when Schiller wasn’t making up Apple rumors, of course) for two weeks while they set the details of the agreement between the two tech giants.

This isn’t a revelation, since it stands to reason that a company in the business of selling a smart phone and another company in the business of selling technology for smart phones would work together but it is interesting nonetheless.

Everyone was so busy preparing whines about Apple secrecy, they didn’t snoop Microsoft about what was coming down the pike.

Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of hypocrisy. You can fight for the our Constitution, including religious freedoms, but how dare you expect to actually make use of it.

Atheist Soldier Says Army Punished Him

A soldier claimed Wednesday that his promotion was blocked because he had claimed in a lawsuit that the Army was violating his right to be an atheist.

Attorneys for Spc. Jeremy Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation refiled the federal lawsuit Wednesday in Kansas City, Kan., and added a complaint alleging that the blocked promotion was in response to the legal action.
[…]
The lawsuit alleges that Gates permits a military culture in which officers are encouraged to pressure soldiers to adopt and espouse fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and in which activities by Christian organizations are sanctioned.

Hall’s attorneys say Fort Riley has permitted a culture promoting Christianity and anti-Islamic sentiment, including posters quoting conservative columnist Ann Coulter and sale of a book, “A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam,” at the post exchange.

About a year ago, when Jamie Leventhal was trying to convince big chain stores to stock his new line of shaving gels for young men, a buyer for Target asked a crucial question: How much would he spend on advertising?

“I told him we would not spend a single dollar,” Mr. Leventhal said.

The buyer was stunned until Mr. Leventhal pulled a prototype out of his briefcase. The product, called NXT, is sold in an arresting triangular container that lights up from the bottom, illuminating air bubbles suspended in the clear gel. The plastic is tinted blue, and when the AAA batteries in its base are lighted, the whole thing looks like a miniature lava lamp or a tiny fishless aquarium…

To call attention to themselves, the products, which are aimed at 18- to 24-year-old men, will glow on the shelves, inviting customers to pick them up. Every 15 seconds, a light-emitting diode (LED) in the bottom of the container flares on, stays lighted for a few seconds, then fades out.

I’d rather have a miniature lava lamp.