Mm, Mikaela made penne rigate yesterday, with left-over tomatoe sauce I made for the pizza. It was soo nice. I love pasta that's al dente. And how hard is it to make your own tomatoe sauce? It takes roughly five minutes to prepare and one hour of waiting, as it cooks in a pot. You stir some, add flavours and taste it no effing problem. Now for the busload of links of the day.
I've missed Pandora, an online radio service that picks musical tips for you after you've typed the name of an artist you fancy. Quite interesting, and you can give your opinion on the tracks you hear, by saying it should or should not be there.
I just got a beta invitation to Newsvine. So what's Newsvine? I'll quote this article from mikeindustries:
Newsvine is a large-scale news media site which gives you almost all the same stories you read on sites like MSNBC and CNN but presents them in a much more attractive package. [...] You just read an Associated Press story about the fiery riots in France on a major news site. Why shouldn't you be able to comment on it like you would on a blog entry? At Newsvine you can. Why shouldn't you be able to chat about it with whoever else happens to be reading the story at the same time? At Newsvine you can“¦ right within the story itself.
Yeah, I know, and I'm aware that CNN and MSNBC aren't my cup of tea, either, but it's interesting to be part of this site from a technical aspect, as well as a political one. I won't go into the technical side (but I'll say I've yet to find a story that involves users chatting; I stepped into a chat for the top news article yesterday, and was the only user there for an hour - go figure) as you can read up on that at mikeindustries, but the political side is interesting. I just commented an article on the recent 13 deaths of Iraqi soldiers, writing a stump and posting the link to a site that displays statistics for the number of dead American soldiers during the most recent American invasion of Iraq (i.e. the current one). Somebody commented that, saying we shouldn't concentrate on the number of dead soldiers, but on how good things have become. I then quoted Chomsky:
If civilians managed to flee Falluja, they were allowed out -- except for men. Men of roughly military age were turned back. That's what happened in Srebrenica in 1995. The only difference is that the United States bombed the Iraqis out of the city, they didn't truck them out. Women and children were allowed to leave; men were stopped, if they were found, and sent back. They were supposed to be killed. That's universally called genocide, when the Serbs do it. When we do it, it's liberation.
It's a live discussion. Anyway, if you want an invite, comment this post and motivate why, and I'll probably send it to you. Oh, I love sounding like gawd. My Newsvine page is here, by the way.
By the way, Chomsky has recently written this eye-opening article on how the American invasion on Iraq is developing:
Elections, if taken seriously, mean you pay some attention to the will of the population. The crucial question for an invading army is: “Do they want us to be here?“
There is no lack of information about the answer. One important source is a poll for the British Ministry of Defence this past August, carried out by Iraqi university researchers and leaked to the British Press. It found that 82 per cent are “strongly opposed“ to the presence of coalition troops and less than 1 per cent believe they are responsible for any improvement in security.
“¦
There's a good reason why the United States cannot tolerate a sovereign, more or less democratic Iraq. The issue can scarcely be raised because it conflicts with firmly established doctrine: We're supposed to believe that the United States would have invaded Iraq if it was an island in the Indian Ocean and its main export was pickles, not petroleum.
Speaking of Chomsky, I'm very interested in this book on anarchism. Hm.
And from Chomsky to Pete Doherty; Caroline Butler writes this interesting article on him, as seen through her rock manager-eyes.
Did Fiddy not get hit nine times, but three? Part of me is laughing at Fiddy, part of me laughs at the people who take their time looking this zany stuff up.
You'll find a list of the top 50 music videos of the year, according to DoCopenhagen, right here.