“President Bush will tell Americans on Thursday evening that the major fighting in Iraq is over and the threat to the United States has ended, a Bush administration spokesman said.” No, really, that’s what he said. The threat is gone. What threat was that again? Cause as so elegantly espoused here (original), we didn’t find any threat. We found no weapons of mass destruction. No evidence that Saddam had a viable nuclear program. Saddam didn’t use the hypothetical weapons of mass destruction as a last gasp. We didn’t find any of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the terrorist base in Northern Iraq. ...

I got unexpected gift tickets to the Red Sox game (original) tonight. Happy times! Red Sox win, despite an in the park home run by the evil KC Royals. It turns out that if your group decides “Hey, let’s pick up beers for everyone” whenever anyone goes to the bathroom, you wind up with a lot of beer. It’s kind of a positive feedback cycle.

When I get spam that says “Copy Anything!!!!”, I kind of expect to be able to buy a product that will copy anything. I mean, what good is a universal copier if you can’t use it to produce more Winona Ryders? Apparently they were talking about CDs and DVDs. Feh.

Not surprising but rather important: the US military presence in Saudi Arabia is ending. This had been coming for a while — the Saudis didn’t let us use those bases for Gulf War II, for example. It’s also a smart move, since those troops have been the source of a lot of tension. Bin Laden will tout it as a victory, which is a minor PR coup for him, but without them there some of his support will also fade. ...

Hey! Why aren’t Democrats winning the culture wars? Because conservatives are supporting college Republicans like this (original) while liberals support college Democrats like this. Note in particular the differences between the Conservative Student Conference schedule and the Young Democrats Association schedule (original). On the one hand, you have a reception and a tour to Niagara Falls. On the other hand, you have lessons (or, if you like, indoctrination) on criticizing “liberal textbook bias” and becoming “a more effective advocate for your beliefs.” Also, one’s in Buffalo and one is in Washington, DC. Which city is more apropos if you want to encourage new blood to participate in the political process? ...

It’s kind of a frothy story, but the friar who invented cappucino was just beatified. Not for his caffeine-related efforts, mind you. However, cappucino is indeed named after the Capuchin order to which he belonged. You learn something every day.

All Apple news sites are frantically clogged right now. Not a surprise. MacInTouch: Mac news, information and analysis (original) has some news on the Apple announcement, and I’ve pieced together some more stuff from here and there. Three new things: New iPods. Yay, 30 GB iPod. Some kind of a docking station, too, which seems unnecessary but whatever. I actually like my Firewire cable that doubles as a power cable when I go mobile so a docking station might be a step back. New iTunes. Supports AAC, which is I guess MPEG-4 audio. Five bucks says that change was so that Jobs could tell the music people that his new online music thingie wouldn’t support evil MP3s. The new iTunes supports Rendezvous for auto-discovery of other iTunes users on your network. I don’t know what that means either — auto-discovery is cool but what does iTunes do with it? Shared music libraries? ...

Patricia Hearst, post-sentencing. (Thumbnail: follow the link for a full-sized picture.)

Pro wrestling’s seen a lot of unusual venues — Pyongyang comes to mind. But I never thought I’d hear about a lucha libre match held at the Tate Gallery. That’s surreal above and beyond the call of duty. The wrestlers are the real deal, too; could be a fun little match. The artist, Carlos Amorales, apparently uses a lot of lucha libre in his work. I found a few scraps (original) of info (Quicktime video) on him (original). Pomopro wrestling.

“We expected to see a lot of meat slapping here tonight.” I’d like to introduce the above quote as the most convincing evidence yet that the first round of the NBA playoffs should not have gone to seven games. The announcers are starting to get just a little punchy.