Petrichor

“I don’t think it’s necessary for us to challenge the police,” Occupier Ryan Mosgrove said. “I don’t think it’s even necessary to get arrested in this situation to get our point across.”

“I was just happy to see the demonstration,” said Mosgrove, 22. “Just all the people coming out there for one specific goal that we need jobs, we don’t need cuts. That we need to rebuild the Charlestown Bridge.”

Boston police Superintendent-In-Chief Daniel Linskey, who along with several bicycle and motorcycle police officers blocked traffic along the route, said union organizers coordinated with police in planning the march, and contained unruly elements inside of it.

“The anarchists tried to take it over, but the union organizers wouldn’t let them,” Linskey said, referring to a small group that he said attempted to challenge cops at the bridge. “They actually stopped them before they reached the (police line).”

derp

...that Victoria Jackson is the dumbest person in the world?

Even the utterly astoundingly stupid people around her can't seem to believe how stupid Victoria Jackson is. They can barely believe how stupid everyone else there is, but Jackson - who sounds an awful lot like a caffeinated 8 year old trying to get all the adults' attention by shouting-out random half-remembered sentences from Free Republic comments - generally just leaves them stunned.

But, I learned some things.

1. Snopes.com is owned by George Soros.
2. The separation of church and state allows Muslim men to beat their wives.
3. America has a culture of death!
4. Liberals are dumb because they like gays and Muslims and Muslims want to murder all the gays and so liberals are dumb and want to Islamize America because they hate Christians and Christians are forbidden from being Christian and Muslims say "Allah Akbar" before slaughtering an animal which the same thing they say before slaughtering a Christian therefore... I forgot how to make sentences

The Last.fm API

Pharyngula

Benetton Sucks

Have you noticed that prices for hard drives have tripled in the last few weeks? Know why?

This past August, rain started falling in northern Thailand. The rains were heavy and didn’t stop for weeks. By Oct. 12, the town of Ayutthaya was under water, but with the help of 1,000 Thai troops, the dikes around the industrial estate were holding. Then, on Oct. 14, after days of relentless runoff, the dikes ruptured and water poured into the industrial estate.

A few companies with relatively light production equipment had the presence of mind to move out of the estate — or onto the upper floors of their buildings. Unfortunately, Western Digital was not one of them; its extremely heavy hard-drive manufacturing equipment was firmly anchored to the ground floor. By Oct. 15, that floor was swimming in four feet of water, sludge, chemicals, and sewage.

That was catastrophic. Western Digital makes about 30 percent of all hard drives in the world, and 60 percent of its drive-manufacturing capacity was now under water. (According to news reports, the main Western Digital plant in Bang Pa-in made mostly 2.5-inch hard drives — primarily for laptops.)

Western Digital was not alone. Toshiba makes more than 10 percent of the world’s hard drives, and the flood shut down half of its total manufacturing capacity. The flood had now taken down roughly 25 percent of the world’s hard-drive production.

Public Policy Polling:

The Occupy Wall Street movement is not wearing well with voters across the country. Only 33% now say that they are supportive of its goals, compared to 45% who say they oppose them. That represents an 11 point shift in the wrong direction for the movement's support compared to a month ago when 35% of voters said they supported it and 36% were opposed. Most notably independents have gone from supporting Occupy Wall Street's goals 39/34, to opposing them 34/42.

I don't think any of that has changed - what the downturn in Occupy Wall Street's image suggests is that voters are seeing the movement as more about the 'Occupy' than the 'Wall Street.' The controversy over the protests is starting to drown out the actual message.

Exactly.

Here's yesterday's "A Call To Occupy" from OccupyWallSt.org:

We are a global movement that is reclaiming our humanity and our future. We have stepped into a revitalizing civic process, realizing that we cannot fix our crises isolated from one another. We need collective action, and we need civic space. We are creating that civic space.

To occupy is to embody the spirit of liberation that we wish to manifest in our society. It is to exercise our freedom to assemble. We are creating space for community, values, ideas, and a level of meaningful dialogue that is absent in the present discourse.

Liberated space is breaking free of isolation, breaking down the walls that literally and figuratively separate us from one another. It is a new focus on community, trust, love and hope. We occupy to create a vision of equality, liberty and social justice onto the blank paving stones of public parks, in the silent hallways of abandoned schools, banks, and beyond. Public space plays a crucial role in this civic process and encourages open, transparent organizing in our movement. As we have seen in Liberty Square, outdoor space invites people to listen, speak, share, learn, and act.
...
We move forward in the grand tradition of the transformative social movements that have defined American history. We stand on the shoulders of those who have struggled before us, and we pick up where others have left off. We are creating a better society for us all.

Occupy Wall Street has renewed a sense of hope. It has revived a belief in community and awakened a revolutionary spirit too long silenced. Join us as we liberate space and build a movement. 9 a.m. Tuesday morning at Sixth Avenue and Canal we continue.

I snipped out a couple of paragraphs complaining about NYC Mayor Bloomberg.

See anything in there about economics? I don't. They've gone completely meta: occupation itself is the goal.

Update: fairness requires that I point out that subsequent posts there have steered back to the economic message. I approve. Which is awesome, since I'm sure they hunger for my approval.

Even Newt Gingrich A Little Depressed By Prospect Of Him Running For President