I've been trying to find these all day. They are the pictures snapped by the ISS as it approached Isabel that were featured on the cover of the NYT. Very impressive. Start with page 24, and check out 25 and 26... (U: Also in the archive, views of Austin, SF, Rome, London, and a few other places from space... as well as massive forrest fires in Canada.)

More kick ass Isabel pics

Well, CNN changed their image, so I give you Nasa's Isabel pics. They don't have a high res copy of the image the AP wire is carrying, but they do have a lot of other nice high res shots and animations. Multiple resolutions from 2km to 250m... Check out the Sept 12th pics... Beautiful...

NASA - Hurricane Isabel - Sept. 15, 2003

Oh great. They are postponing the California election so they can get computerized voting machines installed in time. If they think the old technology is bad, wait until they see this...

Yahoo! News - Appeals Court Delays Calif. Recall Vote

] The American Library Association (ALA) is investigating
] whether its relationship with law firm Jenner & Block is
] a conflict of interest, as the firm has represented the
] Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its
] recent efforts to gather the names of those suspected of
] illegal file-sharing. In a letter to ALA executive
] director Keith Fiels, Emily Sheketoff, executive director
] of ALA's Washington Office, said that the office has
] grown "very uncomfortable" with Jenner & Block's legal
] activities on behalf of the RIAA. ALA is seeking a letter
] from the firm setting forth how it would handle any
] potential conflict.

This is an odd newsbite in that it only appears in one journal and isn't very detailed. No formal statements on the ALA's website.

ALA might toss their lawyers...

] "Even now I still don't fully understand the
] charges against me. I don't even have a copy of the
] complaint, and don't have a lawyer that has
] explained the specific charges to me."

Here is the actual interview with Parsons. You can basically see someone who has a normal life, is about to start school, and is suddenly getting fucked up the ass by a country full of raving lunatics who are holding him responsible for Blaster and SoBig, neither of which he is actually responsible for. He doesn't get that large numbers of people are calling for him to go to prison for a decade. It just doesn't make any sense to him. It wouldn't to you either. It doesn't to me. But I won't be surprised if it happens.

This person did NOT write the blaster worm. He is NOT responsible for the damage caused by the blaster worm. And yet every major news story about him has waxed on for paragraphs about the damage caused by the blaster worm. This interviewer went further and told him that the American public thinks he is responsible for all the trouble they are having with their email! Sobig is even further removed and bears absolutely no relationship to what this person did whatsoever.

The fact is that this person may go to prison for a decade. That thousands are calling for exactly this. The media and the FBI have intentionally deceived the public into associating this person with Blaster in the same way that they deceived the public into associating Iraq with 911. And all of this so that the media companies can post more revenue for this quarter and so that Ashcroft can claim a political victory. That is 100,000 times more sinister then anything that this person is actually guilty of.

Parsons ought to be punished, but so should the press. He ought to file slander charges against all of the major media outlets.

Worm suspect: I'm not the one

] Power engineers, IEEE members, and
] the Spectrum reporters and editors
] who cover power and energy have been sounding the alarm
] about grid problems and potential
] cascading failures for nearly a
] decade. What follows is a compendium of feature articles,
] news reports, and essays that have
] appeared in IEEE Spectrum magazine
] about previous power outages, grid reliability and
] security, and electric power policy.

If you are interested in the grid failure, everything you need to know is here.

Special Report: IEEE says I told you so (re: the grid)

Welcome to the "Iraq budget."

Daily Kos: Already a record deficit, and year not over

Talking to young Iraqis, you sense how much they want to break the old mold — how much they want to be Arabs, with an Arab identity, but to build a modern state that actually focuses on tapping its people's talents and energies, rather than diverting them, and one that seeks to base their dignity on what they build, not on whom they fight.

Telling the Truth in Iraq

] Working with experts at the Lawrence Livermore National
] Laboratory, the FBI traced trails of a broader
] reconnaissance. A forensic summary of the investigation,
] prepared in the Defense Department, said the bureau found
] "multiple casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through
] telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia
] and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone
] systems, electrical generation and transmission, water
] storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas
] facilities.

] "We were underestimating the amount of attention [al
] Qaeda was] paying to the Internet," said Roger Cressey,
] a longtime counterterrorism official who became chief of
] staff of the President's Critical Infrastructure
] Protection Board in October. "Now we know they see it as
] a potential attack vehicle. Al Qaeda spent more time
] mapping our vulnerabilities in cyberspace than we
] previously thought. An attack is a question of when,
] not if."

] What they do know is that "Red Teams" of mock intruders
] from the Energy Department's four national laboratories
] have devised what one government document listed as
] "eight scenarios for SCADA attack on an electrical power
] grid" -- and all of them work. Eighteen such exercises
] have been conducted to date against large regional
] utilities, and Richard A. Clarke, Bush's cyber-security
] adviser, said the intruders "have always, always succeeded."

Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared (TechNews.com)

Dusk shot of the big apple with the lights off, from the New York Times Website.

Everyone in the world shares the same reference point to this moment in time.

Picture of New York City with no power