The government released a report stating that terrorism in 2003 had reached a 34 year low. The report was blatantly and obviously flawed. The most obvious and blatant flaw: the 2003 Annual Report was released April 29, 2004 but the data was cut off on November 11, 2003.

When the report was released, the media questioned it little, and instead acted as a megaphone for the government (as Aaron Swartz put it so well). Then an eight page supplement was released explaining the errors. It turns out that when you do the math right (does this administration ever get the math right?), 2003 was one of the worst years ever.

Aaron Swartz has an excellent, media-focused dissection of how the news of the errors were communicated by a wide variety of media outlets. Best coverage he found? The Daily Show.

There's a good Krugman op-ed on the subject. Also: CNN articles after the original report and after the errors were discovered.

... was sweet. If you like weird movies, go see it.

This movie was great -- it's all about triumphant geekitude. Napoleon Dynamite is not subtly dorky or mildly eccentric, he's hardcore. He wears jeans tucked into moonboots, shirts with multi-colored, screenprinted unicorns and a fat, orange afro.

The whole thing was bizarre and I laughed my face off. My first thought? This guy is the country mouse to Max Fischer's city mouse. The Rushmore comparisons are unavoidable.

Full review from the Sundance screening.

I'm not lending any credence to the methodology or anything, but just for kicks, run a quick diagnostic on your life. I got a 60. Which puts me at some sort of "needs improvement" rating. I'm curious to see where people fall out. [ from Mark ]

If you're looking for a good, free e-mail client, I recommend Thunderbird. It's part of the Mozilla open source development project, and it's damn polished for a 0.7 release. I particularly like it for its junk mail controls and good use of hot keys (I'm a keyboard junkie -- the mouse is slow). The interface is also pretty crisp; I never feel like I'm fighting the layout.

Whether you're looking for a new browser or not, you should download Firefox. The web browser is one of those things so new that most people don't realize it can be done better. It seems like all the action is within the four borders of the browser windows and that the browser wouldn't matter, but the engine in Firefox is so sweet that it actually makes the whole web browsing experience better. Integrated search and tabbed browsing also show that Internet Explorer really is a dinosaur.

I had a dream last night that involved this website. I was being harrassed by all of you for not posting more often. I never, ever thought I would say, "I had a dream last night about UKAZU." That's just weird.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard something about Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, hitting theatres (at least some theatres) this Friday. It's getting all the attention he could hope for, and it really is getting the politically-minded set (left and right) all charged up.

There's a good article in the New York Times today that talks mostly about Moore's fact checking work, but also addresses the flaming he got after Bowling for Columbine and some of the early troubles he has had getting this film distributed.

The trailer is online, and it looks like Moore has assembled some really interesting film work.