Week 73

03.31.03

Three hundred thousand people in the USA had their identities stolen in the past three years? If I wasn't familiar with the rubbery nature of hacker-crime stats, that would be a real jaw-dropper.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30000.html

Who did you say you were, exactly?

04.01.03

Don't go into a Weapon of Mass Destruction incident without your "Cobra Response Kit." Actually, that looks pretty much exactly like the stuff I myself carry just to do a little reporting on the road.

http://www.defensegroupinc.com/
cobraproduct_responsekit.cfm

This doubtless could be a bestseller under the right circumstances.

http://www.defensegroupinc.com/
cobraproduct_textbook.cfm

04.02.03

In 1911, before the Great War put out the lamps all over Europe, people really knew how to publish encyclopedias.

http://96.1911encyclopedia.org/

For instance, here's a really clear and remarkably frank discussion of a religious cult whose divine love could scarcely speak its name, by 1911 standards. You could be like, 12 years old in 1911, and by reading this you could really get a grown-up education.

http://5.1911encyclopedia.org/S/SK/SKOPTSI.htm

04.03.03

Milosevic's mentor, Ivan Stambolic the former President of Serbia, ended up with two bullets in him, and was buried in a lime pit in a forest. Slobodan is in jail now, while his wife Mira "the Red Witch" is on the lam in Russia. Investigators just dug up the victim's lime-eaten remains. Because they were investigating the death of another guy entirely.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/serbia
/article/0,2479,925947,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/
from_our_own_correspondent/1823207.stm

Stambolic was the best man at their wedding, and they had him iced and buried in a lime pit. Even with ol' Slobo in the dock for war crimes, they still had enough oomph to have Zoran Djindjic shot as well. Figuring that, you know, they'd get re-elected after that.

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml
?type=worldNews&storyID=2473868

I've really learned a lot about the nature of human evil by studying these heroic war criminals. That, and Shakespeare: Lady Macbeth and Richard III. They love them in Serbia, you know. They can't let them go no matter how much blood they drink or whose it is. I think I could even *explain* to you why it's so great that your First Lady has the best man at her wedding buried in a lime pit. But this is just a blog, and not a multivolume exegesis.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/
newsdesk/L21556779.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/
europe/1279877.stm

http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/
markovic010711.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/
0,3858,4213998,00.html

This may be the crowning touch right here: when they mopped up the assassins, every junkie in Belgrade started jonesing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/serbia/
article/0,2479,924249,00.html

04.05.03

It's good to know that somebody out there is searching for "weird life."

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030402/04

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ssb/initial_proposal_weirdlife.html

Kinda makes you wonder if there's some weird life happening on Earth right now and we just don't know that it's here.

Bruce Sterling writes books like Darwin watched animals. Find out more about him, and read tattered electronic copies of Cheap Truth, at the Bruce Sterling Online Index. He lives with his wife Nancy and their two daughters in Austin, Texas.