Huh. This is really interesting; someone took a listen to the ABC live broadcast of Michael Moore’s Oscar speech and the CNN report on Michael Moore’s Oscar speech and you know what? CNN really has the boos miked way higher. There’s one guy yelling “Booo” really loudly in the CNN version who doesn’t show up at all in the ABC version. Listen for yourself. I didn’t think I’d hear a difference, but I did. I’m not gonna claim it’s foul play — it could just be a different set of mikes used by CNN — but it is really distinct. ...

There’s a new Safari beta out. I won’t be able to try it out until late tonight, but it includes tabbed browsing and autofill for forms. I’ve been using Camino lately because Safari was crashing on me a lot, but Camino’s pop-up blocking happens to block pop-ups on one’s bookmark bar. This includes the Movable Type bookmarklet. Total pain. Hopefully this Safari build will be a little less crashy. Hopefully the various bugfixes mentioned by Dave Hyatt are included, too. I am particularly hot for the cookie fix and I’m crossing my fingers for the title attribute fix.

I got my first piece of spam offering copies of the Iraqi Most Wanted (original) playing cards today. Some yobbo’s selling the PDF on Ebay. You can download it for free from the DoD, of course. Here’s someone who printed out the PDF onto card stock, and is selling the results for 16 bucks a pop; he’s also claiming that you can’t print from the PDFs others are selling. Just amazing.

Masanori Murakawa, better known as the Great Sasuke (original), won a seat in the Iwate Prefectural Assembly today (original). By special arrangement, he was permitted to run and will be permitted to take his seat masked; also, he was allowed to use his wrestling nom de plume on the ballots. Well, he’s not the first wrestler ever to be elected to a government, but he’s probably the first one to do so masked. Also probably the best of them all (sorry, Jesse). In fact, you could make a decent argument for him as the best athlete ever to reach elected office.

Popular right-wing comment of the week: “look what the left has been defending.” Well… OK. If we’re responsible for the horrors of Saddam’s rule, I’d like the reasonable sensible right wing bloggers to stand up and take responsibility for this: Osama is a pathetic little bitch. I swear, if I run into his sorry little ass in an alley somewhere, I’m gonna turn that turd into my own personal sex toy. And I’m not even gay. I’ll still get an orgasm just thinking about the humiliation I’m laying down on his murderous stinking ass. ...

Frontline ran an excellent piece on North Korea tonight. As usual, they stuck all the good stuff up on their Web site. Gotta love it. And, since (as we all know) PBS is hopelessly liberal and biased, they made sure to include an interview with the highest ranking North Korean ever to defect in which he praises Bush to the skies. Cunning, those liberals. My cynicism aside, I particularly liked the Ashton Carter interview. He has lots of good insights, and he takes a pretty rational appearing line on the implications of a war on the Korean peninsula. Also, he has the quote of the entire piece: ...

My brother’s tres hip internationally acclaimed (really!) design group, Release1 (warning: Flash site, but it’s cool, and it’s my family, so don’t complain), opened the McDonald’s Project tonight. I just got back. Awesome opening — the place was packed, quite literally. There was a line of people outside waiting for people to leave, cause the gallery was over capacity. It’s down at the Berwick Research Project, in Boston, and runs through next weekend. It’ll be in New York in August. ...

There’s wide-spread looting in Iraq today. Not very surprisingly, the social structure of the country is in chaos. Hospitals are being looted; suspected looters are being killed in the street. On the BBC this morning, a reporter talked about seeing a man beat to death in front of him. The killers said “He wasn’t from this neighborhood.” Was he a looter? Maybe, maybe not. But man, it’s getting rough out there. ...

I watched a couple of episodes of CSI over the weekend. Wow. Now, that’s what I call a cop show for the new millenium. It’s really one of the most overinflated things I’ve ever seen on television. Every single image is saturated with color, usually blues; the cast is shot so as to be both gritty and polished at the same time. It is, in fact, a pretty good embodiment of Vegas. The show doesn’t take place on the strip, but the design ethos is still very Vegasesque. ...

Philippe de Croy of the Volokh Conspiracy provides guidelines for conservative commentators who want to talk about Iraq’s chemical weapons. It’s a nice public service, really. (Or anyhow, I assume that’s what he means when he says “Talk a lot about things that ‘aren’t clear’ or that ‘remain to be seen.’ These sorts of assertions are good because they are hard to falsify.”) Sauce for the goose…