"We all felt like we needed to put on 'hard hats'! The sky was absolutely full of meteors," recalls astronomer Jim Young of JPL's Table Mountain Observatory. Earth had just plunged into a debris stream trailing comet Tempel-Tuttle; the resulting meteor storm, the 1966 Leonids, was literally dazzling.

This weekend it could happen again.

On March 1, 2003, around 2154 universal time (UT), our planet will encounter a stream of dusty comet debris "only 12,000 km from Earth. That's as close as the Leonid debris stream was in 1966," says Bill Cooke of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's Space Environments Team.

Earth is approaching a cometary debris stream that might trigger an unusual Antarctic meteor shower this weekend | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

] A journalist attends the World Economic Forum and writes
] her friends an email about the experience. Two weeks
] later, that email is on the Web, people she's never met
] are correcting her spelling, and the journalist is vowing
] to go back to longhand.
]
] Welcome to the world of accidental privacy spills.
] Compared with the problem of keeping personal email
] private, copyright and spam are easy. Full essay inside .
] . . .

LawMeme: Legal Bricolage for a Technological Age - Accidental Privacy Spills: Musings on Privacy, Democracy, and the Internet

] I was in a dinner with heads of Saudi and German FBI,
] plus the foreign minister of Afghanistan. They all said
] that at its peak Al Qaeda had 70,000 members. Only 10% of them
] were trained in terrorism -- the rest were military recruits.
] Of that 7000, they say all but about 200 are dead or in jail.

Supposedly this is from a compromised private Email, from a Newsday reporter at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. There's a thread on slashdot about how the Email was compromised, and the various privacy implications, etc. etc. But I have to say, now that it's public, I still found the Email fascinating!

Slashdot thread here:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/28/1823256.shtml?tid=158

Newsday Reporter's 'Spilled' Email

] A frightening scene occurred Thursday afternoon at an
] Inglewood grocery store. Shoppers called police after
] witnessing a bizarre incident on the parking lot.
]
] "I was pulling up to go to the store, [when] this
] gray car pulled up, trunk popped up, guy jumped out with
] handcuffs on. A boy and girl chased him around, threw him
] back in the car, then took off down Gallatin Road,"
] said Tim Wright, eyewitness.
]
] Tim Wright was not the only one who saw it -- others
] told officers the same story. Police are asking others
] who may have information to come forward.

Wasn't there a case a few weeks ago in cali where something similar happened and it turned out to be some sex game? Watch.. Its the new hot sex fetish trend.. Public abduction bondage.. There a news group for that yet?

Either that, or its just more evidence of the fact that all the time really horrible things are happening that you will never hear about.

Shoppers witness strange incident

Friday, February 28, 2003 Posted: 5:06 PM EST (2206 GMT)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Police Chief Earl Sanders and nine other policemen have been indicted in connection with an off-duty fight outside a bar and an alleged attempt to cover it up.

Those indicted Thursday included an assistant chief, his police officer son, and a deputy chief. It was not immediately clear whether Sanders and the others would turn themselves in, or be arrested.

The indictments stem from a November incident in which three off-duty officers allegedly beat two men in front of a bar just after closing time, and from the alleged cover-up that followed.

Sanders and six others each face one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice in the alleged cover-up. The three officers allegedly involved in the brawl face felony assault and battery charges.

CNN.com - San Francisco police chief, others indicted in connection with fight - Feb. 28, 2003

Transcript of Bill Moyers interview/expose on Patriot II from PBS's show "NOW"..

quoted:
===

MOYERS: The Patriot Act was passed six weeks after 9/11. We know now that it greatly changed the balance between liberty and security in this nation's framework. What do you think — what's the significance of this new document, called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003?

LEWIS: I think the significance is it just deepens and broadens, further extends the first Patriot Act. That act in 2001, they had six weeks, which was not a lot of time to throw something together. Now there's been 18 months of all kinds of things that have happened and court decisions that have tried to roll back some of the Patriot Act.

NOW: Bill Moyers interviews Chuck Lewis (ed- re: patriot act II)| PBS

] Flavia Carvalho recalls unlocking the door to her
] computer software store here Tuesday when she noticed how
] utterly alone she was on a commercial block that is
] usually bustling by 10 a.m. Everything was closed: the
] shoe boutique, the art gallery, the colossal supermarket
] on the corner.
]
] Then, with a tap on the shoulder, a young man appeared,
] seemingly from nowhere, with a message all the more
] chilling for its casual delivery: Shut down your shop for
] the day, or else.
]
] "I thought: Oh, no, not again," Carvalho said. "Another
] day without business. But what could I do? He told me
] that anyone who opened would be shot or burned."

As Carnaval Opens, Violence Rocks Rio

] That pocketknife you surrendered to airport security
] screeners might now be tucked away in someone else's
] pocket -- someone who bought it on EBay.

Bureaucrats get EBay fever / State sells penknives confiscated at airports at online auction

] IN A TYPICALLY DEFIANT move by the warez scene, no sooner
] does the US Department of Justice manage to shut down a
] site, it simply pops up somewhere else. Isonews had its
] collar felt yesterday with the DoJ promising to use the
] site to preach an anti-piracy message. The site simply
] upped and moved to the ironically named StoleMy.Com

The War on Technology rages on...

Black markets are nearly impossible to truly take down. Whether its drugs, warez, or information, they heal fast. Its going to be interesting to see how the DOJ reacts to this. If they go on a spree taking down web sites, its going to get nasty. It will just wind up being another technology arms race. Especially in regard to the warez scene. Those folks pride themselves on their ability to make information flow, and flow under the radar of anyone looking. If it comes down to the warez folks against the DOJ, the warez folks will win consistantally. They understand the network and how to use it. Both the data network, and the social network of people that make it all happen. I've always been fairly suprised by the organization inherent in that community. It may not wind up being "a search engine query away", but it will be available, and the people who use it regularly will know right where to find it.

Xbox pirate site torpedoed by DoJ is back online

]] If you're in a contaminated building with no exits
]] whatsoever, at least book it to the opposite corner.
]
] I simply cannot get enough of the ready.gov parodies.

Yes. I agree. I love these. We need to start lobbying Ridge to get us more of those little graphics.

Infact, I'm willing to bet that if you could measure hit for hit, ready.gov's traffic vs everyone who is parodying them.. The cynics would be coming out way ahead..

Unready.net - Be Amused - Chemical Threat - Visual Guide