He’s superfreaky and joins the great funk band in the sky.

Another cool science quiz from the folks at the BBC. This one covers human senses.

The 8th President has a few things to say about the recent spate of pictures showing Thai boxing Orangutans.

When I glossed over a yahoo article this morning and deduced from my brief scan that Thailand was training an army of super-ape warriors I was shocked. … If there was ever a time for pre-emptive war, and there isn’t, this would be it.

Forbes magaine presents a by-the-numbers look at the last 10 presidents and the economics of their eras, and comes up with Clinton, LBJ and JFK at the top followed by Reagan and Ford.

To be sure, there is a sharp debate as to the ability of any president—or government—to control the economy. But that doesn’t prevent the heads of Wall Street firms such as Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER), Morgan Stanley (nyse: MWD) and Citigroup (nyse: C) from rooting for one candidate over another based on expectations of economic performance. Fairly or not, each president was judged by how much prosperity is delivered on his watch.

The Big Picture assembled this collection of polling data websites to simplify and clarify the latest election data.

Good stuff, that.

Thematically following a previous link, this site lets you pick a color combination and the color “cells” with the most votes continue to live and sometime cross-pollinate.

Trying a new format. I like the weekly update because it allows a little pre-post rumination and has more impact, but it does make it difficult to deal with individual topics.

In a couple stories this week, W’s folks were practicing racial profiling and accused of
ruining the career of an American Muslim officer: The DoHS hit up the Census Bureau for data only on people who identified themselves as being of Arab ancestry; W’s re-election campaign vetted a photographer for a Cheney event by asking what her race was; and the Muslim captain charged with aiding and abetting has had all the charges dropped against him, but will probably have to wait a long time for an apology for destroying his career.

Contracts from the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority were supposed to be used for Iraqi benefits and payment from Iraqi funds was supposed to go primarily to Iraqi compnaies. In a little financial shuffling, Halliburton Co. and other U.S. contractors are being paid at least $1.9 billion from Iraqi funds according to analysis and several audit reports released in recent weeks.

Several veterans against bush say ‘bad foreign policy’ and interference with 9/11 investigations are the reason they’re supporting Kerry in the next election. The president…“fought against the very formation of the commission and continues to the present moment to give it only grudging cooperation, no matter what he says,” [ Retired Gen. Tony McPeak ] said. “Why should we believe he will do anything to institute the needed change?”

In the paranoid rumor department, Drudge thinks Bush wants to eliminate the IRS (despite that this would be at the expense of poor people.) (If RR weren’t so busy trying to make management he’d probably bash me on this one.)

The re-elect camps have been working overtime this week to introduce quotes from Kerry taken out of context, while the GOP website continues playing the Nazi card (_so_hypocritical after trying to label the ad submitted to MoveOn.org as a DNC production when it was removed almost immediately from MoveOn’s site) and McCain steps in to defend Kerry’s service because Bush’s already discounted cronies started their war record smear ad.

While most of the world wants to reduce WMDs, especially anything with the word ‘new-kya-lur’ in it, Bush wants more WMDs.

The cycle of hypocriticaly unethical procedures continued in the House (this time by the Republicans) and was applied to block a revision of the Patriot Act that would have passed if the vote was closed when rules specified, but under threat from the White House the vote was held open while GOP members were badgered into keeping American’s freedom limited.

Finally, increased levels of mercury are showing up in lakes and streams around the country and the EPA is still unconcerned. (Is it any surprise that Texas is at the top of the list?) This precedes rumors that the EPA is about to atempt loosen restrictions on toxic waste storage.

Hostages? Not in our town

A tribal chief in the turbulent city of Fallujah said Wednesday he led a raid that freed four Jordanian hostages, while a militant group released two Turkish workers after Turkish truck drivers agreed to halt deliveries to U.S. forces here. … “I called upon my brothers and tribesmen to free the hostages, so we raided the house last night,” (the tribal chief) told The Associated Press. “I’m glad that those innocent Muslims were freed.”

And rebuilding a small town (Which hopefully will spawn an Iraqi with the freedom to write songs and openly rail against his government without the fear of he and his loved ones disappearing):

Capt. David Krzycki, 35, commands an infantry company. He is trained for that, and his men say he is good at it. He was not trained to teach civics to reluctant strangers in a farming village in Iraq — or to get them to put the principles into practice. … Maybe this was not what he was trained to do, not even what he was sent here to do. Maybe he had stepped on a few cultural sensitivities. But they were getting the point, Krzycki said. They were learning to do for themselves. When the Americans left, he concluded, they would leave Awynat a better place.