answered at last.  Create your own truth here.

How cool is this?  Amazon.com now searches the full text of books.  Over the past spring and summer, Amazon created a digital archive of more than 120,000 books by scanning every page.  They eventually plan to add most of Amazon’s multimillion-title catalog.  It went online Oct. 23, and every page is searchable and viewable.

If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, Wired talks about it for four pages.

The Daily Show pointed out that Bush got his $87.5 billion for Iraq yesterday when it was passed by voice vote. The show played the voting soundtrack and the senate sounded empty. Host Jon Stewart explained that the reason for that was that there were only six senators attending the vote.

The news media isn’t saying much about this. A NY Times article put it like this: “The voice vote took place late this afternoon, with only a few senators in the chamber.”

Many articles stated, “The voice vote enabled lawmakers to sidestep the process that requires they attach their name to support for the bill and underscored the political struggles taking place on Capitol Hill and among lawmakers trying to appease their constituents.”

The lone ‘no’ voter has been identified in many news articles, but the names (or even the actual count) of the ‘yes’ votes is not being reported. Perhaps that is because it would point out that nobody was there.  However, reporting that there was a single negative vote implies strong support for the bill.

Nice spin. And a nice sidestep to go with it.

Update 11/6:

I found a link in the mainstream news to the number of voters in the NY Times:

The Senate’s action came on a voice vote with only six members present, meaning that the decisions of individual members on the administration’s vision for Iraq were not recorded. Not voting on the record appealed to both Republicans nervous about explaining the amount to their constituents, and Democrats who did not want their patriotism questioned for opposing the bill.

I always like to have a ‘reliable’ news source.

I just watched “Rock the Vote”, where eight of the Democrats running out Bush where asked questions by the audience.  Four admitted to having smoked marijuana.  (Technically, Braun, one of the last to be asked, refused to answer with a laugh that implied that she had but to keep it to ourselves.)  I’m sure there will be lots of commentary on the news tomorrow.

It seems that ??? (from the previous post, so read the section below this first) was an experiment created by someone that won Europe’s “Top Talent Award“.

I’m guessing that the ??? link is a copy of the original Samorost.  It was fun, nice and short.  But in researching what it was, I found TimeHunt.

There goes the rest of the day.  No, it’s even worse: they say it takes a year to solve it.

Terry sent a bunch of links that I finally got around to checking out.  The fun one was was the Reaction Timer (flash required).

The others, well, you be the judge:  http://www.shotglasschess.com/customer/home.php, http://www.belch.com/, http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com/, http://www.pottypager.com/different.htm, and last but not least http://daimaoh.kir.jp/ho/menssom.htm.

I don’t even want to know how he found some of them.  But that begs the questions, how did I find this:  ???, and what is it?  (Don’t forget to click after you go there.)

On November 23rd, after an absence of almost ten years, Opus returns to the nation’s Sunday comic pages.  No word about Bill the Cat.

Here are some clues, if you need them:  Bloom County.  Outland.  Ack.

The mojo article is from CNN.  I had assumed, without looking, that it was from The Onion.  No, what follows is from The Onion.  The text is copied here because Onion stuff goes away fairly quickly.