another friday link farm

Ok, let's try this again. A few days ago, I started yet another pile-o-links post and never got around to hitting 'publish', primarily because it would've been like the third or fourth in a row, and it just felt wrong somehow. Now it's been a few days, and Firefox is full of tabs I can't quite bring myself to close, so I figure, what the heck.

So to start out, here's the original list, followed by a list of new items.

• If you like cute echidnas as much as I do, and I realize you probably don't, here are four more echidna photos for your enjoyment, or at least for mine.
  
• This is a very, very fat squirrel.
  
• The development community seems to have fixed its great flaming eye directly on the Hawthorne area. Here's the latest about the stupid parking meter thing that they just refuse to drop.
  
• A bit about the recent John Kerry / beer bong photo. I sure do miss Democrats running the show.
  
• A new multi-year low for SCO: $1.66 per share, closing at $1.69. Awesome.
  
• A ligher shade of umbra
  
• Eek! Jesus Camp! Run away!
  

Today's link farm:

• Another cute echidna. Seems there's no shortage.
  
• Music from a French electronica act known as Echidna (also see here.)
  
• Our Glorious Leader, as translated by Little Richard. It all makes sense now.
  
• The latest snarkiness on the Pacific Northwest Food Scene (TM). Everyone said they loved that Hebberoy guy until his restaurant empire imploded. Now the knives are out. Ah, fickle fate...
  
• An Oktoberfest update from The Brew Site.
  
• The Bad Astronomer posts about a new lobbying group called Scientists & Engineers for America, set up primarily to oppose the Bushies' ideological meddling.
  
• I wouldn't be so fast to join up, though, if I were you; very soon, Dubya's going to have even more draconian powers to drag people off the street and imprison them without trial, purely on vague national security grounds.
  
• Another piece on the same issue. How did we get to a point where everyone knows the bill is a disaster, everyone knows it's un-American, undemocratic, and uncivilized, and yet nobody can stop it. The only people with the power to do so (Congress) all believe it's political suicide to oppose Bush on any issue, at any time. Even now, after everything that's happened over the last half-decade.
  
• Here's a cabbie from Uganda who's probably on George's evildoer list now, too. Read what he has to say about Idi Amin back in the 70's. Eerie, isn't it?
  
• And as usual, there's nothing on Earth more completely freakin' useless than the "Democrats" in Congress. All they do is keep on keepin' the powder dry, and going along with whatever the R's want with barely a whimper. Pathetic.
  
• The next war: Kazakhstan? Well, maybe not, but still, everyone says this Sacha Baron Cohen guy is the ultimate comic genius, brain the size of a planet and all that, but do we really need to go around spreading even more ignorant stereotypes about Muslim countries? What makes that such an ultra-smart idea, exactly?
  
• See, that last bit was a half-joke, because everyone knows the next war is with Iran. Maybe I'm cynical, or paranoid, or just pessimistic, but to me it's felt like a done deal for a long, long time now.
  
• After 95O+ sols of driving on Mars, the Opportunity rover's arrived at Victoria Crater, sending back some fairly dramatic photos. The folks over at UnmannedSpaceflight.com are completely geeking out over it -- and I mean that in a good way.
  
• And here's the first hi-res image from the newly-aerobraked Mars Reconaissance Orbiter. Coolness.
  
• Maybe, just maybe, the city isn't selling off chunks of Mt. Tabor Park after all. Or at least they backed down very quickly. Probably the latter, in which case I'd like to take full credit for the about-face. You're welcome.
  
• Excerpts from yet another hardline Bush speech. He's not quite using the 't' word yet, but it looks like he's edging ever closer.
  
• In Bob Woodward's new book, we learn a couple of things we knew already: Rummy is Clueless and Bush is Increasingly Removed from Reality. Still, the new book may go a small way to redeem Woodward after his last two books fawning over Dubya. I'm sure it must've seemed like a good idea, or at least a lucrative idea, at the time...
  
• So these days we've got a handle on the incompetence side of the Iraq equation. And here's another bit about the corruption side of things.
  
• I hate to end on a down note, so here are some cute cats on Flickr.
  

Updated: Ok, ending with cute cats after all the political nastiness just isn't working. Here are three more pieces about echidnas:

a closeup photo of echidna spines

"Free the Echidnas!"

"You can't pull an echidna backward through a cardigan."