dre in the morning

Former Texas congressman Charlie Wilson dies aged 76
Charlie Wilson, the architect of the US support for anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan and subject of the Hollywood movie Charlie Wilson’s War, died today. He was 76. (guardian)

Australia cyber attacks could last ‘months’
The group, Anonymous, blocked the main government website www.australia.gov.au and www.aph.gov.au, the Australian parliament’s homepage, for a second day running in protest over controversial plans to filter the Internet. (afp)

The U.S. is Now a Police State
Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties. (counterpunch)

Millions of people ‘waste their time by jogging’
Around 20 per cent of the population do not get any significant aerobic fitness benefit from regular exercise, according to an international study led by scientists at the University of London. (telegraph)

Picturing the Blizzard
Readers are sharing their best photographs from the snowstorm that hit the East Coast Wednesday. (nytimes)

Mayer apologizes for ‘Playboy’ interview
In it, he calls former girlfriend Jessica Simpson “sexual napalm” and says Jennifer Aniston is a technophobe who wishes she could go back to her career prime in 1998. He also uses the N-word. (usatoday)

‘Deadliest Catch’ captain Phil Harris dies after recent stroke
Harris, who was based out of Seattle, suffered the stroke during an offload of crab. He was found unconscious in a stateroom, was airlifted to Anchorage for 12 hours of surgery, then placed in a medically induced coma. He’d shown signs of improvement last week, squeezing hands and even telling his doctors and nurses, in his signature gruff style, to not screw things up. (latimes)

Hackers target PM’s website in protest
The government’s Cyber Security Operations Centre discovered the attack was coming on February 5 but was unable to stop the parliament house website going offline and Prime Minister Rudd’s site becoming home to “Operation Titstorm”. (smh)

14 Miserable Facts About St Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day traces its roots to an ancient pagan holiday called Lupercalia, in which men stripped naked, grabbed whips, and spanked young women in hopes of increasing their fertility. (listverse)

What Is Google Buzz?
So what exactly is Google Buzz? Used on a PC or mobile, Buzz reminds us of an RSS combined with all of your social networking—all within the existing Gmail and Google.com infrastructure. (gizmodo)

Mystery visitor to Poe’s grave is a no-show
It is what Edgar Allan Poe might have called “a mystery all insoluble”: Every year for the past six decades, a shadowy visitor would leave roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on Poe’s grave on the anniversary of the writer’s birth. This year, no one showed. (yahoo)

Poe Toaster Might Be Dead Performer
A mysterious visitor who left roses and cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe each year on the writer’s birthday failed to show early Tuesday, breaking with a ritual that began more than 60 years ago. (wbal)

Mystery novelist Robert Parker dies at 77
Mr. Parker’s marquee character became a TV series, “Spenser for Hire,” starring Robert Urich. “Jesse Stone” became a TV vehicle for Tom Selleck, and “Appaloosa,” his 2005 Western, was made into a 2008 movie directed by and starring Ed Harris. (boston.com)

Folk singer Kate McGarrigle dies
She is the mother of musicians Rufus and Martha Wainwright through her previous marriage with American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, a beloved folk icon in Canada. (cbc)

Dennis Hopper rushes to divorce wife as he lies on death bed
A longtime family confidant told The Post that Hopper is angry that wife Victoria Duffy is trying to bleed him for every last nickel — although he’s given her a ranch, museum-quality art works and a wardrobe of couture dresses. (nypost)

Diamond oceans possible on Uranus and Neptune
By melting and resolidifying diamond, scientists explain how such liquid diamond oceans may be possible. (discovery)

Apple iTablet, iSlate, or iPad: Are you excited? –Here is all you need to know
When Apple officially announced that they will be going to have their special event on January 27th speculations and rumors are just like an airborne disease spreading in the tech community. And yes we already knew that the Apple tablet is said to be a “Kindle Killer” that’s why HarperCollins is said to be negotiating for an e-Book deal. Besides that media pad is also considered to be a gaming-pad, so the gaming industry is invited in the media event. However, as if we don’t know that the said media event will focus on iTablet or iSlate or iPad, we can also wait for iLife 2010 and iPhone OS 4.0. (techgeeze)

10 Manly Movies Women Secretly Love
Indiana Jones at the top of the list? You had me at hello. (stylecaster)

Quentin Tarantino Reference Manual
“Sure, Kill Bill’s a violent movie. But its a Tarantino movie. You don’t go to see Metallica and tell the fuckers to turn the music down.” (madatoms)

Journalists Out of Work, But Bono Still Has N.Y. Times Column
Leave it to a disgruntled Gen Y blogger who regularly complains about the lack of opportunities for young journalists to break through in mainstream outlets to be pissed about Bono’s place on the New York Times op-ed page. (trueslant)

Casey Johnson DEAD: Tila Tequila’s Girlfriend, Johnson & Johnson Heiress Dies At 30
ohnson’s death may have been from natural causes since a preliminary death investigation didn’t turn up any signs of foul play. (huffington post)

Former mayor admits to breaking into women’s homes to steal underwear
Ian Stafford, 59, resigned as Mayor of Preesall in Lancashire when he was arrested in connection with the missing garments. (mailonline)

Just add water – students invent alcohol powder
“Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16,” said project member Martyn van Nierop. (reuters)

Dating site for beautiful people expels ‘fatties’ after holiday weight gain
“Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.” (cnn)

4chan Presents: YouTube Porn Day
It looks like 4chan has found its first major target of 2010. In a message sent to what is presumably a huge amount of undisclosed receipients, 4chan is announcing that this coming Wednesday, January 6, is going to be a very special event: YouTube Porn Day. (techcrunch)

Apple to Buy Quattro Wireless for $275 Million
Google recently forked over an astonishing $750 million for Silicon Valley’s AdMob, a Quattro competitor, which Apple had also made a bid to acquire. Both innovative start-ups are aimed squarely at the fast-growing market to advertise on smartphones, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices. (allthingsdigital)

The Things
This is way cool. (clarkesworld via metafilter)

Bearianna Huffington Begs for Oral Sex and Purrs in that Weird Arianna Accent
Arianna Huffington: So powerful she will insist on being taken seriously even after we hear her sexy bear voice in The Cleveland Show, and read a blog about her sleep patterns and dream life. (gawker)

Rest in peace Vic.

Reports: U.S. scraps missile defense shield plans
The Wall Street Journal reported overnight that the White House will shelve plans to build the system in both Poland and the Czech Republic, according to people familiar with the matter. (cnn)

Skype founders sue eBay, investors
The lawsuit brought by Joltid Ltd, a Swedish firm owned by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, says Skype used its technology without authorization. It comes on the heels of a legal dispute between Joltid and Skype in Britain over software rights. (reuters)

Masters of illusion: The great management consultancy swindle
The most important of the all-too-human functions of consultants is to sanctify and communicate opinion. Like ministers of information, consultants condense the message, smooth out the dissonances, unify the rhetoric, and then repeat and amplify it ad nauseam through the client’s rank and file. The chief message to be communicated is that you will be expected to work much harder than you ever have before and your chances of losing your job are infinitely greater than you ever imagined. (theindependent)

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72
The cause was complications from chemotherapy associated with a bone-marrow transplant she had several years ago after developing leukemia. (nyt)

‘Laugh-In’ original Henry Gibson dies
Henry Gibson, a wry comic character actor whose career included “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” “Nashville” and “Boston Legal,” died Monday at his home in Malibu after a brief battle with cancer. He was 73. (hollywoodreporter)

Burt Reynolds In Rehab, Reportedly Found Lying In Pool Of Blood
The houseman found Burt lying in a pool of blood. He’d fallen and was badly cut. The houseman drove him to the hospital. But this time, Burt was behaving strangely, and doctors were so concerned about his state of mind that they sent him to the county mental health facility in West Palm Beach. (huffingtonpost)

CBS Turns Out ‘Guiding Light’
CBS announced Wednesday the cancellation of the longest-running scripted program in broadcasting history, the soap opera “Guiding Light.” The show has been on radio and television for 72 years, beginning on NBC radio in 1937 and moving to CBS television in 1952. (nyt)

Who are the Oldest Actors Playing High-Schoolers on TV?
It’s a time-honored tradition for high school dramas to be populated with actors well out of their teens. Here, then, is a tribute of sorts, assembled by examining each big teen show on the air, then isolating its oldest cast member. Their characters may flirt at parties to the sounds of Lady Gaga and dance at the high school prom to Taylor Swift, but in real life, some of these actors haven’t been in school since Kurt Cobain was alive. Who are they? (movieline)

The Ten Greatest Films of Steven Soderbergh
With Steven Soderbergh’s latest slice of cinematic greatness hitting theaters this week in The Informant!, we thought we’d take a look back at the amazing career of one of the most important filmmakers of the last two decades. (movieretriever)

Raiders of the Lost Ark as a 1951 adventure movie
This trailer for a notional 1951 version of Raiders of the Lost Ark has my head nigh-exploding with recursive delight: a retro movie that hearkens to 1950s adventure serials remade as a 1950s adventure serial! (boingboing)

President Barack Obama fencing with lightsaber
I get those kinda looks from my wife, too. (timeswampland)

The 50 best things to eat in the world, and where to eat them
From cake, steak and tapas, to oysters, chicken and burgers, Killian Fox roamed the world to find the 50 best things to eat and the best places to eat them in, with a little help from professionals like Raymond Blanc, Michel Roux, Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray. (guardian)

The distinctive smell of Crayons comes from pig fat
Crayons smell like pig bone fat. I don’t think I’ll use crayons ever again without thinking of that little factoid. (kottke)

Florida woman bags 11-foot alligator with a crossbow
Arianne Prevost of Satellite Beach was in the right place at the right time, and with the right people on Tuesday night during her first-ever gator hunt, as she used a crossbow to bag an 11-footer weighing perhaps 450 pounds. (latimes)

kittehcrimescene
I heard a commotion in the early morning, lots of meowing and a loud crash. I fell back asleep. When I entered my office in the late morning I found it exactly like this. (violetblue)

Patrick Swayze danced into hearts, then broke them
Patrick Swayze – who for a run in the late 1980s and early 1990s was among the biggest movie stars in the world – died Monday after an almost two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57. (sfgate)

N.Y. Homes Raided in Terror Probe
Federal and city counterterrorism agents raided homes in New York City early Monday after a man under surveillance for suspected ties to al-Qaeda met with people in Queens, federal officials said. (washingtonpost)

Celebrity chef Keith Floyd dies
From Faringdon in Oxfordshire, Floyd shot to fame in the 1980s in ground-breaking cookery shows, fronted with huge enthusiasm and wineglass in hand. (bbc)

‘Norma Rae’ Dead at 68 After Struggle With Her Insurance Company to Get Chemo
It’s the death of an American icon, a working-class woman who stood up for her rights and unionized her workplace. And wouldn’t you know it? She fought the mills, but she couldn’t make her insurance company do the decent thing until it was too late. (crooksandliars)

World map showing number of prisoners per 100,000 citizens. Guess who is Number 1?
(wikipedia)

Nothing’s lost on Dan Brown as long-awaited ‘Symbol’ arrives
The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s thriller to be released Tuesday — his first since 2003′s The Da Vinci Code— includes a scene that Brown says came from his own life. (usatoday)

‘Megan Fox is dumb as a rock,’ claim Transformers film crew
Transformers star Megan Fox has been branded ‘dumb’, ‘ungracious’, rude and an ‘unbearable’ actress and by crew members from the multi-million pound films. The star was blasted as ‘trailer trash’ better suited to a porn career by three crew members after she claimed Transformers director Michael Bay was ‘like Hitler’ in an interview. (dailymail)

Can’t Kanye West, Joe Wilson and Serena Williams all just shut up?
Kanye West seemed truly sorry Monday night on Jay Leno’s opening show for bogarting Taylor Swift’s moment in the MTV moonlight. (nydaily)

Google Fast Flip
Newsstand 2.0 (google)

Whitney Houston’s Crack Den
In Whitney’s disgusting bathroom a crack pipe and rocks of crack sit out in the open. (radaronline)

Everything You Wanted to Know About iPhone 3.1 But Were Afraid to Ask
Amid the flurry of announcements Apple made Wednesday, the company quietly released the latest version of its iPhone operating system. And as is often the case with iPhone updates, Steve Jobs giveth some new features and Steve Jobs taketh away others. (wired)

Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message
We analyzed over 500,000 first contacts on our dating site, OkCupid. Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online. (okcupid)

Burning Man 2009
Photos by Rick Egan (adobewebgallery)

William Gibson’s Bridge City in “Virtual Light” Could Become Real
San Francisco’s Bay Bridge is getting a makeover that will leave a large portion of the old bridge unused, but still standing strong. Now two architects are proposing that the city build a neighborhood on it. (io9)

Stormtroopers’ 9/11
Where were you when the Death Star fell? (collegehumor)