"Three things you can count on in life: death, taxes, and screwing up. Don't feel badly, though. Everyone does it, including your favorites from the worlds of business, television, music, and film. And most likely, no one is looking up your photograph on the web to see how badly you messed up this time! You won't believe whom you'll find with one of those attractive letter boards with the name of the local lockup underneath his or her illustrious chin. Updated daily with at least 10 new Mugshots!"

Mildly entertaining

Mugshots

Mike the usurper wrote::
Way to celebrate WWII guys. Let's wave the swastika on Rosh Hashana. Am I the only one not surprised that this is the state that elected the shrub as governor?"

" The band will still perform the musical composition but it will only have the United States flag on display, he said."-- Nazi flag... US flag... What's the difference these days?

Yahoo! News - School Apologizes for Nazi Display by Band

(U: BTW, the section of this article that deals with prisons is worth the price of admission, but I'll focus on something else...)

] 4. Incandescent Light Bulbs
]
] In reality, these sad devices are heat bulbs.
] Supposedly a lighting technology, they produce nine times
] more raw heat than they do illumination. The light they
] do give, admittedly, is still prettier than the eerie
] glow of compact fluorescents and light-emitting diodes.
] But it's still a far cry from the glories of natural
] daylight.
]
] Plus there's the cost of light bulbs, their
] fragility, the replacement overhead, the vast waste of
] energy, glass, and tungsten, the goofy hassle of running
] air conditioners to do battle with the blazing heat of
] all these round little glass stoves let's face
] it, these gizmos deserve to vanish.
]
] They will be replaced by a superior technology, something
] cheap, cool, and precisely engineered, that emits visible
] wavelengths genuinely suited to a consumer's human
] eyeball. Our descendants will stare at those
] vacuum-shrouded wires as if they were whale-oil lanterns.

So, they are slowly replacing traffic lights with LED lights in atlanta. If LEDs are bright enough for this purpose, one must imagine that you could create a suitable light bulb replacement that:

A. Screws into a socket.
B. Essentially consists of a stick covered in white leds.
C. Has a translucent plastic filter covering it which only emits "lightbulb" wavelengths.

Why is this hard?

(U: Maybe the power transformer you'll need to convert your whopping 120 volts of AC power into 5VDC will create just as much waste heat as your lights did. As almost every device in your house now has an AC to DC power converter, maybe it makes sense to start talking about putting a centralized AC to DC converter in your house and running two circuits, an AC cicuit for major appliances, and a DC circuit for basically everything else. It would reduce a lot of costs, and improve the safety of most home wiring. Of course, cutting over to something like this would be a huge effort that would require widespread coordination from several industries. (For those of you who aren't electronics savvy, basically what I'm saying is that your house ought to have the "power supply" rather then your computer.)

Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die

"Battlefield sites are considered noble places in the landscape of American history. Gettysburg, Bunker Hill, and Normandy stand as monuments honoring the people who fought and died there. Massacre sites, no less a part of our history, are often hidden. Vaguely worded road signs might give some indication of the tragedy, but visitors are not greeted by museums as they are at battlefield sites, and there are no official cemeteries in which the victims lie. Because they are shameful episodes in our past, massacres are not commemorated and the innocent dead are not honored. The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, and Tulsa Race Riot do not usually come up in history class, but over 500 people were brutally killed in these events. Although they took place long ago, they exemplify the impact--emotional, legal, and political--that the past can have on our own society today."

For better or worse, archaeology is opening the lid on American massacres

"WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union today joined with members of Congress and civil rights groups in welcoming bi-partisan legislation aimed to correct some of the most contentious provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and other controversial measures adopted post 9/11. At a news conference today, Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX) unveiled their “Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act.” "

ACLU Welcomes Bi-partisan “True PATRIOT Act,” Measure Seeks to Restore Freedoms Lost Post 9/11

" Riddle me this: What would you get if you crossed a BlackBerry with an iPod? The answer: The future of the music business. Let me explain. Imagine, if you will, an iPod as a wireless digital ladle. It would dip into a nearly bottomless stream of continual music, scooping up any song you wanted, when you wanted, where you wanted. There would be no need for CDs, hard drives, or any other storage device. And trying to capture such music would be about as easy as trapping mist in a jar. Every song would contain a digital expiration date, so, over time, they would evaporate."

A Wireless iPod Can Torpedo the Pirates

"David Lee Roth has cancelled the rest of his US tour after injuring himself performing "a very fast, complicated 15th-century samurai move" during a recent performance.

The former Van Halen frontman, who is known for his athleticism, was performing a gig in Philadelphia when he cracked his face with a long piece of wood."

I hope somebody taped this.

Ananova: Ex-Van Halen frontman knocks himself out of tour

] Patriot Act II would give the government broad powers to
] seize documents and force testimony without a court
] order, expand use of the death penalty and make it harder
] to be released on bail. None of these tools are necessary
] to fight terrorism, and each threatens to infringe on the
] civil liberties of Americans.
]
] The most troubling part of the new plan is the call for
] expanding government access to private data, allowing
] federal agents to issue subpoenas for private medical,
] financial and other records, without a court order. The
] lack of judicial oversight removes an important check on
] government misconduct. Record holders would be required
] to comply, or face prison, and would be barred from
] telling anyone about the subpoena.

These people obviously did not understand the phrase "Give me liberty or give me death" On most days freedom, on occasion- Death, this is the thrill of freedom.

Patriot Act, Part II - Fucking Insane

] It's a go: Adbusters' Unbrand America TV Spot is poised
] to hit the airwaves. We've wrangled a 30-second chunk of
] national airtime. More than half a million tubes, all
] ours. Watch it- with everyone else tuned to CNN- Monday,
] September 22, around 4:30 EST.
]
]
] To get this far has been serious work. For months we've
] been stonewalled. Sure, we shopped our Black Spot to the
] usual suspects at NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX. We even tried MTV.
] "We don't deal in free speech," chorused the networks.
] Check out all the sorry details here.
]
]
] Sadly, the response was expected. In the land of the
] free, the business of censorship is booming.
]
]
] Well, Adbusters isn't buying in. Keep your eyes peeled
] over the next few months. Plans are in the works for a
] big pushback. The agenda: Media Democracy.

Unbrand America

" A computer program designed to talk like a human is preparing for its biggest test in its bid to be truly "intelligent".

Loebner Prize finalist Rollo Carpenter with his bot Jabberwacky
Rollo Carpenter has high hopes for Jabberwacky

Jabberwacky lives on a computer hard drive, tells jokes, uses slang, sometimes swears and can be quite a confrontational conversationalist. "

Chat rooms in the future will just be filled with these things selling porn to one another.

Chatbot bids to fool humans