NetGrrl: Zeitgeist

With hundreds of thousands forced from homes battered by Hurricane Katrina, the federal government cut red tape to rush $2,000 checks and debit cards to help victims pay for clothes, food, transportation and a place to live. More…

WASHINGTON — Antibacterial soaps and washes aren’t any better than plain, old soap and water for fighting illness in the household, says a panel of federal health advisers. More…

Capitol police declined to release the names of the men or say whether the package had posed a danger. They said the rental car the men were using was registered in Florida.

Police closed several streets near the Capitol building and cleared a nearby commercial office building during the incident. The Capitol and congressional office buildings were not evacuated.

“The two individuals approached our officers and advised them that they believed they had a suspicious package in their vehicle,” police spokeswoman Jessica Gissubel told reporters.

“There is a package in the vehicle which is why we put in place the street closures,” she said before police destroyed the package.

Police destroyed the package as a precaution to ensure it would not explode. A hazardous materials response team was on the scene along with other emergency vehicles.

Web, and Some
Blame Google

By DAVID KESMODEL
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 19, 2005 Page B1

‘Splogs’ Roil
Web, and Some
Blame Google
By DAVID KESMODEL
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 19, 2005; Page B1

Spam, long the scourge of email users, rapidly has become the bane of bloggers too.

Spammers have created millions of Web logs to promote everything from gambling Web sites to pornography. The spam blogs — known as “splogs” — often contain gibberish, and are full of links to other Web sites spammers are trying to promote. Because search engines like those of Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. base their rankings of Web sites, in part, on how many other Web sites link to them, the splogs can help artificially inflate a site’s popularity. Some of the phony blogs also carry advertisements, which generate a few cents for the splog’s owner each time they are clicked on. More…

“I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.”
- Ray Bradbury

Forget borrowing somebody’s notes or looking at the prof’s PowerPoint slides on the Internet, now college students can just subscribe to the podcast if they don’t want to go to class. Cue the inevitable backlash from people calling this the downfall of higher education, but it seems like a pretty good use of technology, really. If a student wants to go over a lecture again, they can, and somebody that tries to replace actually showing up for class with a podcast probably wasn’t that interested (and probably wasn’t going to do very well) anyway. But I guess Duke’s finally found a use for all those iPods they gave out.

The TOP-TEN reasons Pumpkin Carving is like sex:
10. It’s somehow connected to all the little brats running around the neighborhood.
9. You have to spend a lot of money before you can take a nice pumpkin home.
8. The pictures you’ve seen always look better than anything you can achieve.
7. The neighbors have more on their front porch than you do in your whole house.
6. Other people seem to use fancier techniques.
5. Getting the top to come off can be very difficult.
4. The Pumpkin never moves.
3. Your hands do most of the work.
2. During the whole process you’re wishing you had a bigger tool.

And the most important similarity between pumpkin carving and sex is–
1. It only happens once a year!

The TOP-TEN reasons Pumpkin Carving is better than sex:
10. You don’t have to support last year’s pumpkin.
9. If the tool breaks you just grab anouther out of the drawer.
8. The pictures you take won’t land you in jail.
7. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing if the kids walk in.
6. You can display your pumpkin carving skills on the front porch.
5. You don’t have to hide your battery-powered pumpkin carver.
4. When you’re done you light up a candle instead of a cigarette.
3. You can carve several pumpkins in one evening
— and still walk in the morning.
2. Your wife lets you do it on the kitchen table.
1. It takes longer and requires many more strokes.

Science News Article | Reuters.com: “MANAQUIRI, Brazil (Reuters) - The worst drought in more than 40 years is damaging the world’s biggest rainforest, plaguing the Amazon basin with wildfires, sickening river dwellers with tainted drinking water, and killing fish by the millions as streams dry up.”

CNN.com - Katrina swept away Mississippi history - Oct 10, 2005: “BILOXI, Mississippi (AP) — The beachfront cottage where Jefferson Davis wrote his memoirs stood for a century and a half in the shade of towering oak trees, but Hurricane Katrina reduced it to rubble in just a few hours.”

Yahoo! Podcasts
Yahoo has a new podcast tool! Looks good!