As some may know, Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was in the United States to participate in the UN General Assembly.

While he was in the US, he also took the time to lecture at Columbia University, where:

He said there were no homosexuals in Iran - not one - and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

The press, of course, has been having a field day with Ahmadinejad’s visit.

“Should a man like Ahmadinejad be denied the freedom of speech that he so brazenly and brutally denies others?”

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Imagine this… it’s 8am, you’ve just dropped your 8 year old off at school and picked up your 22 year old daughter for breakfast. While your daughter goes inside a restaurant to correct the breakfast order your wife, in the seat beside you, notices a woman waiving her arms as if in distress. So you roll down the window to see if she needs help and she leans her head into your car and offers her “services”.

Then, to add injury to insult, a few seconds later a bunch of cops rush your car, drag you out of it, and handcuff you for soliciting a prostitute. Meanwhile your wife is freaking out, and your daughter, returning to the car, screams!
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I bet everyone that reads this is going to start itching, and then check underneath your bed! Sorry, but that can’t be helped. You see it seems that bedbugs, also known as Cimex Lectularius (sounds even creepier doesn’t it), are making a comeback.

The bloodsucking bugs were virtually eradicated in the United States in the 1950s. But they are now showing up practically everywhere—nursing homes, jails, apartment buildings, dormitories (video: bedbugs plaguing hotels and houses). There has been a 500% increase in the last few years!

Experts blame the resurgence on increased international travel, immigration, changes in pest-control practices, and the bugs’ growing resistance to insecticides.

Bedbugs can live for a year without a blood meal, but once they start biting their victims may be plagued with multiple bites each night.
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I come across so many good articles online, but simply don’t have the time to share them all as regular posts. So I’m trying an experiment here.

I’m going to post a few links at the end of the week to other interesting articles. I may make it a fairly regular thing, but the jury is out at the moment. Feel free to give me feedback as to whether you’d like me to continue, or not bother.

• Dark Passage: Pirates of the Strait of Malacca
• This is Where We Live: A look at America by the numbers.
• Papers, Please! Arrested at Circuit City
• Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks
• Iowa court rules same-sex couples can marry
• Ambient: Clean the beach
• State Senator Ernie Chambers Sues God

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By Guest Star (and responsible Power-Digger): SuxMonkey of AllSux.com

Have you submitted great content to Digg and wondered why it didn’t make the Digg homepage? Are you just curious about how Digg, the most popular of social media sites, works? Did some content of yours make it to the front page, but you don’t know why it did or why other content of yours didn’t?

This article will start to address these questions, and refer you to further resources to help you on your way to understanding the social news powerhouse that is Digg.com. It will also provide advice for sharing news and information on Digg as well as how to promote your own content responsibly. Keep in mind that this article is about understanding how to build a better Digg community for everyone - not about gaming Digg for personal gain.
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Tasers were developed as a non-lethal option to bring dangerous situations under control. But law enforcement officials are now using them with wild abandon in cases where simple diplomacy or a little hard work would otherwise suffice.

In the past I’ve written about the police tasering of a UCLA student for refusing to show his school ID, as well as the time a cop tasered an 11 year old at school because the officer on hand apparently couldn’t physically restrain him?!? (Gee, what would they have done 10 years ago?)

Police have also used Tasers against peaceful protesters (NPR audio about tasering protesters), a pregnant woman (8 months) and an elderly man who called 911 to get medical attention for his diabetic seizure.

So who’s next? Maybe you.
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This story is simply heartbreaking. This beautiful, intelligent woman submitted to years of domestic abuse, all culminating in the day that her abusive husband forced her son to pick up a camcorder and video tape him beating her!

The husband’s goal was to document exactly why she was to blame, as if to preserve it for future posterity. All he managed to do was demonstrate that she was simply trying to make him a sandwich.
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This is way too cool. I mean that in both the literal and metaphysical sense.

So, getting back to the point at hand, there is a group of about 100 icebergs which were spotted not long ago off the coast of New Zealand, and just a few weeks ago were observed getting closer to shore.

So, a local news crew hopped in a rescue helicopter and did what any good conservative journalist would do. Land on it!
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Can someone please tell me why the Russians are taunting the British by flying bomber/reconnaissance planes to the border of British airspace?

With relations between Russia and Britain deteriorating, the number of incidents in which Russia’s submarines have been found close to British shores or in contact with Royal Navy warships has also risen, reports said yesterday. London’s Daily Telegraph said there was a suggestion Russia could be testing the West’s air detection systems and response times.

Diplomatic tensions between London and Moscow — already stretched by the murder in London of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko — intensified as the Bear bombers headed towards Britain. It was the first time Russian bombers had threatened to penetrate British airspace since President Vladimir Putin indicated, with no little chutzpah, that he had ordered his bomber force to resume long-range patrols around the world.

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I was inspired by a fantastic article published by the Sietch Blog called Bending Swords Into Wind Turbines, so I decided to bring together some data to share on the opportunity costs associated with the ongoing war in Iraq.

Just to be clear, I’m not espousing any political position. I’m only interested in coming to an understanding of what alternatives we are forgoing by spending money, effort and lives in Iraq as opposed to spending them on something else. We’re talking about a whole boatload of money here, so it’s nice to know what else we could be getting for our dollar.
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I wish this article was some sort of political commentary, but unfortunatly I’m just reporting the news, not referring to President Bush as a dictator or anything like that.

In addition to the illegal wiretapping and other abuses of freedom the Bush administration has undertaken, a political watchdog group called the Center for Research on Globalization has pointed out that the White House released a directive called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive on May 9th, 2007 in which George W. Bush declares that in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergency”,

“The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. “

The language would create a Presidential dictatorship in the case of such an emergency by placing the executive branch in control of the coordination of the legislative and judicial branches - branches which constitutionally are equally empowered to the President.
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I’ve been holding off on sharing this information, which is really mostly rumor and speculation, up to this point - but Google is supposedly readying the launch of a new cellular phone which will come GPS and have built in access to Google Maps, Gmail, Calendar and Docs.

Google previously bid for the FCC’s 700MHz wireless spectrum, one which could be used to operate a new Google cellular phone service, and as I previously reported they acquired GrandCentral (I handed out around 75 invites to the beta service), a unified messaging platform which provides “find-me, follow-me” service, voice mail, and other goodies.
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