From the "We Really Love Science" department:
Bionic eyes restores partial vision to test subjects previously blinded by disease.

From the "Now the Left Finally Has Universal Heath Care" department:
.. all you have to do is show up at any airport, cough or wheeze until you have the undivided attention of a friendly TSA agent newly trained in medical diagnosis, then explain your symptoms in detail. A public health official will be summoned to give you a medical evaluation. No charge. Happy?

From the "Update on Online Profiling" department:
Well, according to this, deep profiles tracking web users habits and coupling them tightly to individual demographic information is back in vogue. (sigh).

You folks realize how well ad-blockers and cookie-blockers work, right? And how easy it is to kill cookies and strip web bugs using Mozilla, right?

Okay, so they're counting on a non-technical or unknowing audience, or folks using IE (wait).. Granted, the Windows cookie folders can be wiped and folder attributes changed to 'read only', which then causes the system to create a new content folder under the Windows/Temp folder with all of that content (sneaky); but that's easy to delete every day. (and with all of the security vulnerabilities in MS products in general, and IE specifically, people should know better than to use IE for anything anyway.)

Blah blah. Okay -- last time. People don't want to be categorized, numbered, tracked, have identifiers placed on their systems, or be surreptitiously observed in any way. It's creepy. Knock it off.

From the "..Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch.." department:
According to this story, Saddam is purported to be alive and is distributing audio tapes through third-party lackeys to the media requesting common folk to kick out the infidels... No word from the RIAA on investigations of copyright violations in the tape exchange, but perhaps Saddam is actually Osama Bin Laden in a giant puffy Saddam suit after all?

Yeah, that 'kick out the infidels' thing worked really well for Osama, didn't it? His entire rationale for the 9-11 attacks was to encourage the Americans to remove their small band of soldiers from Saudi Arabia and the gulf region. Um. That kinda didn't go as planned, eh? Let's see.. The military force on the ground and in the air has multiplied exponentially since then, and two governments have fallen in the region so far. How do you spell 'backfire'? Dumbass.

Meanwhile other reports have been streaming in about the pre-war 'liberation' of about a billion dollars from Iraq's central bank by Saddam and Qusay.. "The amount of money - some $900 million in U.S. $100 bills and $100 million in euros - was so large it had to be taken from the bank in three tractor trailers, according to the Times article." No word on the effectiveness of exploding Iraqi dye packs... but that's a nice addition to the war chest for Saddam's 'new friends' in Al Qaida regardless. If there wasn't a connection before, there probably will be very soon. Our prediction.

Self fulfilling prophesies... And a nice replacement of the cold war, tuned for our reality-tv generation; all but ensuring that Bush will have more than enough conflict to ride out the economic cycle, maintaining high poll numbers and ensuring the dynasty another 4 years. (sigh). But who knows. If Al Gore had come out on the winning side of the count, we'd probably still be installing a slightly less fundamentalist police state here, talking about sanctions against Afghanistan, and there'd be maybe one or two court proceedings against the few 'conspirators' we'd have been able to apprehend through 'international cooperation'.

Might just be having a sliding doors moment here, but neither path seems particularly 'optimal'.

From the "French Fry?" department:
From the Washington Times: "...intelligence sources reported that France's government secretly provided fleeing Iraqi officials with European Union travel documents in Syria that allowed them to escape to other countries, said U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity."