The Moldovan Ministry of Defense throws a UFO artists convention

Bruce Sterling’s Moldovan is a whole lot better than mine, so I’ll use his description:

Imagine that you were artists from the well-nigh forgotten ex-Soviet Republic of Moldova. And imagine that you somehow got your hands on some funding from the Moldovan Ministry of Defense.

And imagine that your response was to throw an international UFO artists convention.

[via Bruce Sterling]

And the winner of the 2002 Bulwer-Lytton is…

EEURGH…

On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.

Though I like this one from the science fiction category:

The controls looked normal–the beeping thing was beeping, the humming thing was humming, the blue number display was displaying blue numbers, the yellow number display was displaying yellow numbers, everything seemed OK, but the redundancy of this interplanetary trip left Col. Mountain feeling troubled, troubled like a beeping thing not beeping, or a humming thing not humming, or a blue number display not displaying blue numbers, or a yellow number display not displaying yellow numbers; nothing felt right.

[via MetaFilter]

Peru mulls Free Software, Gates gives $550k to Peruvian president

Remember a couple of months ago when Peru was considering to mandate the use of open-source software in all government agencies?

Well, guess where Bill is at the moment? In Lima, where he presented Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo with a briefcase full of Microsoft petty cash – well, $550K worth of money, software, and consulting actually.

US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies

Next time you’re around a group of people, take a look around. Doesn’t matter if you’re at work, in class, at the grocery store, standing in line for a movie, at a party at someone’s house, or at a concert. Now imagine that one of people there is a snitch, recording your every move.

Feel safer?

The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.

The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report “suspicious activity”.

Civil liberties groups have already warned that, with the passage earlier this year of the Patriot Act, there is potential for abusive, large-scale investigations of US citizens.

…

Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network, TIPS volunteers are being recruited primarily from among those whose work provides access to homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter carriers, utility employees, truck drivers and train conductors are among those named as targeted recruits.

A pilot program, described on the government Web site www.citizencorps.gov, is scheduled to start next month in 10 cities, with 1 million informants participating in the first stage. Assuming the program is initiated in the 10 largest US cities, that will be 1 million informants for a total population of almost 24 million, or one in 24 people.

[via Ambiguous]

The Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports conspiracy site

My favorite High Weirdness site of the moment. All the hallmarks of primo-paranoia are here: gratuitous exclamation points, secret documents the government doesn’t want you to know about, oddly bolded and italicized text, trillions (TRILLIONS!) of unaccounted cash, the requisite product for sale, claims about the one-world government and how income taxes are unnecessary. Read now (if you can) before he gets disappeared by the Feds.