Reuters: US Appears to Tone Down Rhetoric Toward Syria, Iran

The United States toned down its rhetoric toward Syria on Tuesday by saying it had no “war plan” to attack despite its belief Damascus is pursuing weapons of mass destruction and harboring Iraqi officials.

Masked Wrestler Wins Japan Assembly Seat

A professional wrestler who fought his way to victory in local assembly elections under his ring name and wearing his trademark mask has vowed the mask will not leave his face even after he enters the staid halls of Japanese politics.

“This is my face,” the wrestler — known as “The Great Sasuke” — was quoted by the Nikkan Sports newspaper as saying of his black and white full-face mask with bright scarlet streaks and golden wings by the eye holes.

“I won support from voters with this face, and to take it off would be breaking promises,” the 33-year-old wrestler, whose real name is Masanori Murakawa, said of his victory in conservative Iwate prefecture, some 460 km (290 miles) north of Tokyo.

Did CNN Turn Up The Boos During Michael Moore’s Speech? Wow, listen to it for yourself, that’s amazing. It sounds like CNN didn’t just tweak the audio, but added their own ‘booing’ track.

Tristan has audio analysis, additional discussion @ on lisa rein’s radar.

OS X’s software update can be triggered from the cmdline:

sudo softwareupdate "SafariUpdate-1.0 Beta 2 (v73)"

Also, some funny comments (this one by an AC, even):

With browsers this quick, Apple’s going to have a hard time selling faster machines

That’s ok, they don’t have any 😉

Update on the Honda Cog ad, looks like it’s (almost) all real [606 takes].

Related: The Way Things Go – we watched this in Basic Sculpture class, also I believe this was playing again at Sterling’s SXSW party this year.

Next!

“We believe there are chemical weapons in Syria,” Mr Bush said without elaborating.

Jan 2003 SciAm: Rebuilding the Food Pyramid:

Can we show that our pyramid is healthier than the USDA’s? We created a new Healthy Eating Index that measured how closely a person’s diet followed our recommendations. Applying this revised index to our epidemiological studies, we found that men and women who were eating in accordance with the new pyramid had a lower risk of major chronic disease. This benefit resulted almost entirely from significant reductions in the risk of cardiovascular disease–up to 30 percent for women and 40 percent for men. Following the new pyramid’s guidelines did not, however, lower the risk of cancer. Weight control and physical activity, rather than specific food choices, are associated with a reduced risk of many cancers.

See also: Glycemic Index On-line

George Ziemann on The Music Piracy Myth. From his RIAA’s Statistics Don’t Add Up to Piracy article:

So the record industry cut their inventory (and artist investment) by 25 percent and sales only dropped 4.1 percent, even though the economy is at rock bottom. There were almost 12,000 fewer new releases for the consumer to choose from in 2001 than 1999. The record companies are making more money per release than ever.

From the “holy synchronicity” department, /. mentions the Core Sound PDAudio project.

The centerpiece of the system is PDAudio-CF, a Type I (extended) Compact Flash S/PDIF interface with optical and coaxial inputs. PDAudio-CF can be mounted in PDA hosts that run Windows CE/Pocket PC 2002 or Linux (such as HP/Compaq’s iPAQ), or used with laptop and desktop computers running Linux, Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Of course, since it requires carrying around a PocketPC and an A/D preamp, well, it’s not ideal, but unfortunately, there’s not a lot of solid state recording gear options available.

ittousai has gone and done a Japanes translation of Lessig’s Free Culture (and submitted it to slashdot.jp [translation]).

I like the translations of moderation ratings. I’m assuming ‘splendid discernment’ is insightful. Also, it looks like the whole Flash/Open Source issue gets raised. It’s funnier when read through machine translation (interestingly, the grammar is about the same as on regular /.)