Conspiracy is not a theory. It is a crime.

The United States Mint, concerned that rising metal prices could lead to widespread recycling of pennies and nickels, has banned melting or exporting them.

According to calculations by the Mint, the metal value of pennies, which are made of copper-coated zinc, is now more than one cent. The metal value of 5-cent coins, made from a copper-nickel blend, is up to 7 cents. Adding in the costs of manufacturing means the Mint now spends 1.73 cents for every penny and 8.74 cents for every nickel it makes.

Until 1982, pennies were made of 95 percent copper. The commodity metal value of one of those coins, which still make up a large percentage of the pennies in circulation, is 2.13 cents, according to the Mint.

The funny thing is, a guy name Darrin I used to work with was doing exactly this. He was collecting large quantities of coins because the metal in them was worth more than monetary value of the coin. Of course "large quantities" is relative, he had collected a few hundred dollars worth of coins.

Melting pennies for fun and profit

Militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive as Iraqi soldiers stood by

Things are going so well in Iraq, we can only lose if we... Who is the administration trying to kid? Is the idea that we're the ones who dropped the crate of eggs so we have to be the ones to put them back together? Into something we can stick back under the chickens to hatch? Welcome to impossible, and the only ones left who don't get that are the ones who make the policy.

Shiites burn 6 Sunni worshippers alive

"It's never been a stay-the-course strategy," Bartlett said.

And yet President Bush has said...

And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation's interest. April 2004, [whitehouse.gov]

We're not going to lose in Iraq. As a matter of fact, we will win in Iraq so long as we stay the course. July 2006, [whitehouse.gov]

Stay the course also means don't leave before the job is done. And that's -- we're going to get the job done in Iraq. October 2006, [whitehouse.gov]

Barlett, you and the no talent ass clown you work for have no credibility. Sit down and shut the fuck up.

Bush adviser: 'stay the course' is not our strategy

A North Korean official warned that the Communist state could test-fire a nuclear missile unless the U.S. acts to resolve its standoff with Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday.

"We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes," the unnamed official said Monday

"We hope the situtation in the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us conquering all of Europe comes" the unnamed Nazi offical said, Monday March 7, 1938.

North Korean official warns U.S. actions could prompt missile attack

A guy from Thailand was in my microeconomics class this morning and told me the real story behind all this coup stuff. Apparently, the PM was a satelite communications mogul who bought them from the gov't and didn't pay any taxes on them. He's the 4th richest person in Thailand, and his approval rating in the city is only about 20%. In the country its much higher, however that's more than likely because he bribes the peasants to vote for him. His main goal in life? To be the 1st richest person in Thailand.

I doubted my classmate until he concluded that his mom lives over there and says there hasn't been an ounce of rioting. Of course there's no rioting when it's what the people want.

Fuck our call to "return to democracy"...these guys seem to be making their own stew just fine.

-janelane, please someone glue Bush's mouth shut

Thailand's king gives blessing to coup

A very good interview with Gen John Abizaid on tonight's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Gen Abizaid is the commander of the Central Command, which includes all U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The General talked a lot of why he feels the situation in Iraq is improving. And by, "situation in Iraq" he really means "in the areas where we've applied military forces. The overall numbers show a slight decrease [in violence]; I wouldn't say [the decrease in violence is] substantial."

... ... well that sure is good to know. He did discuss trying to turn over more and more responsiblity to the Iraqi's, though he ducked a question about how many resources the US is spending on training new Iraqi solders to kill the new insurgents as opposed to cutting out the middle man and doing that ourselves.

There was one thing that certainly shocked me, especially that such a high ranking general made such a point calling our attention to it.

And then the final thing I'd say is it's hugely important for us to keep in mind that the flow of oil and the flow of natural resources through the Straits of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb, and the Suez Canal have got to continue. And that falls to the United States Armed Forces, which is why we currently have about 215,000 Americans serving in my region.

I'm not such a crazy lefty that I don't realize that Oil is a strategic resource and we want to protect our resources (especially when "our" resources are in other country's borders), but when the General in charge of all military operations in the Middle East says that safe guarding the flow of oil is "why" we have almost a 1/4 million troops there is a little shocking.

NewsHour: Interview with Gen. John Abizaid

A scuffle broke out Thursday between saffron-robed monks and anti-war demonstrators at peace rally in Sri Lankan capital.

About six or seven monks from a right-wing Buddhist faction had stormed the stage during a peace rally attended by about 1,000 people in the capital, Colombo, shouting pro-war slogans, an AP reporter at the scene said.

... how does that work? "Fight this war now or we burn ourselves alive?

Maybe Jello, being in India, knows a little more about the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Pro-war Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka?

-How to ride a motorcycle
-How to take your hand off the throttle *before* shifting gears
-How to do a wheelie, for about half a second, when the bike's transmission jerks it upward
-How to properly bandage road rash
-How not to ride a motorcycle

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UPDATE 11.30 PM GMT

We are receiving 17,000 more defaced websites in these minutes. We will account them in this news but we are not sure we will ever be able to handle such a huge amount of notifications as to mirror all of them we should possess a distributed platform such the one Google is having on Akamai. The latest notified defacements seems to belong to the ISP secureserver.com

We have not examined the source code to the asp file in detail or done more than superficial research on this mass defacement, but this does not appear to be a vulnerability in IIS. This appears to be a problem with poor script coding and / or failing to properly validate user form input. I would guess that the hacker is able to inject their own code into the asp or php script being used to send mail."

Holy Shit! I was just handed something fun to look at for work.

Basically, this guy found 0day in the godaddy administration pages for every godaddy account. The count is 22,000+ and rising!

The biggest hacking incident in the web-hosting history!