According to an article from the Washington Post, the White House will begin allowing public tours again on September 16. Tourists will be required to request a reservation through their Senator or Representative (by supplying SSN, date of birth, and name) in advance. Tours were stopped after the September 11 …

For those interested in balancing their news input by reading everyone's stilted viewpoints, Al Jazeera is now back online in English. They have some glitches with the site, but it seems to be working well. Same basic viewpoint as before, but interesting to see an English version of some of …

Planet PDF is providing free PDF versions of many classic books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The War of the Worlds, The Prince, The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, and many others (a total of 44 right now). The books are in PDF format and can be downloaded in tagged …

In an amusing political twist, Howard Dean (D-VT, running for President in 2004) and his supporters now have a "Switcher" website styled after Apple's popular (but questionably effective) Switch ad campaign.

After a long and enjoyable trip to the Grand Canyon (lots of details and a new web site soon), I will be returning to the DC area today. Unfortunately, my Exchange server decided to have one of its required reboots while I was gone and it appears that about a …

The New York Times has an interesting article about the commemoration in Japan of the arrival of American Commodore Matthew Perry, who dragged Japan out of isolation by gun point in the 1850's. It's a piece of our joint American-Japanese history that is seldom pondered (or even remembered) by people …

The Washington Post is reporting this morning about a program started at Northwestern University a couple of years ago to put Supreme Court audio online. The site, Oyez.org, has been running for the past few years, but the effort began in the early 1980's when a bunch of Chicago …

It's not terribly common for a US soccer player to have the attention of Manchester United, but this story in the Washington Post tells of a 14-year old Potomac, MD player who has already signed a $1M contract with Nike and is being sought by all of the big players …

It may not seem like a record setter here in DC (and certainly not where I'm going to be starting on Tuesday), but 99.3°F is the highest temperature ever seen in the UK. According to an article from BBC News, the temperature was recorded yesterday at Heathrow. Predicted …

While searching for a clean copy of the US Constitution on an official site, I found a set of six amendments that have not been ratified by the states. A summary is here, including the pro-slavery amendment and the DC statehood amendment. The history is that two were proposed with …

According to an article from the Scotsman, British Boy Scouts may now qualify for an new IT Merit Badge. New skills include navigating the Internet, using PDAs, and doing page layout.

A story form the Washington Post this morning tells the sad tale of a group of teenagers who allegedly beat up another teenager because the victim had cooperated with a Secret Service investigation into a counterfeiting in Reston. What does this have to do with Dell? Apparently, the counterfeits were …

I found a pointer to the Stupid Security web site earlier this week, but hadn't had sufficient time to check it out. Now that I have, I'll recommend it as an interesting (and sometimes frightening) read. StupidSecurity is a site about all things silly related to security, but seems to …

A mailing list that I'm on had a link to the a web site today that uses census information to graphically show where people with particular surnames live. Neat toy.

A friend of mine from the old InterOp days has a great new cause. Frustrated with the call to remove sitting governor Gray Davis, D-CA, he has started Run-For-Governor.org aimed at taking the absurdity of the recall election to its logical conclusion, 1000 candidates! Check it out. If you …

With a big "hi" to Todd and Paula, now residing in Texas, we turn our heads once again to the state who's Democrats have made running from office a new pastime. According to an article in the Washington Post, this week's exodus was a rather elaborate affair involving private jets …

Considering the number of kidney transplants done in the US every year (13,000 in 2002, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients), it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that there are some interesting webs of connection between recipients. Here's an amusing one from Baltimore, courtesy of …

The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life has just released a report entitled Religion and Politics: Contention and Consensus. I have read a couple of articles about this survey, but being able to look at the raw questions is interesting. The survey covers a large number of issues in …

I read with interest a pretty rational article from the New York Times this morning. This is likely the first article to reasonably explain what has been seen since the invasion and what the intelligence services worldwide were seeing before it, but it still leaves room for debate. The basic …

The Belgian legislature has voted to change the controversial human rights prosecution law such the court now only has jurisdiction when Belgian citizens or property are involved. According to this article from BBC News, the only thing standing in the way of this bill becoming law is the formal signature …