"I don't really care about this autistic situation, really. It's just the way I am. The advice I'd give to autistic people is just keep working, just keep dreaming, you'll get your chance and you'll do it."

"I'm not really that different," he said. "I don't really care about this autistic situation, really. It's just the way I am. The advice I'd give to autistic people is just keep working, just keep dreaming, you'll get your chance and you'll do it." (AP via L.A. Times)

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

In light of the negative remarks aimed at Kobe Bryant this week, this quote by Albert Einstein may encourage him:

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

DAVID WALDOWSKI, Alta Loma(L.A. Times letters)

"Somebody does something exceptional, people are looking for ways to denigrate them."

"This goes along with who we are as a society," Coach Phil Jackson said. "Somebody does something exceptional, people are looking for ways to denigrate them."
(L.A. Times)

Schwarzenegger said, "If I was to make another Terminator movie, I would tell Terminator to travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have another special election."

Asked if there was anything he would do differently, Schwarzenegger said, "If I was to make another Terminator movie, I would tell Terminator to travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have another special election."(AP via Yahoo)

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association...

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island....

....Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."(New York Times)

Driven to madness

In Brockton, Mass., earlier this month, an angry driver shot a man in the head several times, leaving the victim's 10-month-old girl covered in blood. The suspect, a former security guard, told police he'd exchanged words with the victim over a traffic dispute. (Los Angeles Times)

People take drugs because drugs make them feel better. And some people have a deeper need to feel better than others.

Here is something people who don't take drugs often forget: No one takes drugs because he wants to break the law, or end his marriage, or wind up crusty and homeless, or accidentally break into someone's house and fall asleep there because it looks sort of familiar. People take drugs because drugs make them feel better. And some people have a deeper need to feel better than others. (Los Angeles Times)

A 28-year-old South Korean man died of exhaustion in an Internet cafe after playing computer games non-stop for 49 hours

A 28-year-old South Korean man died of exhaustion in an Internet cafe after playing computer games non-stop for 49 hours, South Korean police said Wednesday.

Lee, a resident in the southern city of Taegu who was identified only by his last name, collapsed Friday after having eaten minimally and not sleeping, refusing to leave his keyboard while he played the battle simulation game Starcraft.

Lee was quickly moved to a hospital but died after a few hours, due to what doctors are presuming was a heart attack, police said.

Lee had been fired from his job last month because he kept missing work to play computer games, police said.(AP via Washington Post)

a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined.

One day a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined.

"I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. (Washington Post)

There is a problem in society, I thought, and it's me. Or people like me, those who always take the easy option, who always want more ...'

I was fat, greedy, a drunk, a drug-taker, a heavy consumer of everything I could find. I was 42 and I thought that I had messed my life up at every available opportunity. There is a problem in society, I thought, and it's me. Or people like me, those who always take the easy option, who always want more ...'(Observer)

what Rove's leak and Novak's column really exposed was the depravity of the administration's deliberate use of a false WMD threat and its willingness to go after anyone willing to tell the truth about it.

In the end, though, what Rove's leak and Novak's column really exposed was the depravity of the administration's deliberate use of a false WMD threat and its willingness to go after anyone willing to tell the truth about it.
(Los Angeles Times)

The Senate Intelligence Committee appears to have dropped a second stage of its own investigation that was to have focused on the administration's use of intelligence.

In the run-up to war, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top administration officials sometimes overlooked warnings about the reliability of the intelligence and divisions among intelligence agencies, overstated what the intelligence said and used information from sources that some officials suspected - and in several cases knew - weren't trustworthy.

"We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs. ... We have low confidence in our ability to assess when Saddam would use WMD," the nation's intelligence agencies concluded in a National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002.

In another caveat that was delivered to the president and his top advisers in the same document, State Department intelligence officials disagreed with the conclusion that Iraq had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa.

Bush nevertheless repeated that assertion in his State of the Union speech a few months later. The White House later retracted the allegation.

Cheney was even more definitive in his accusations against Saddam.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," the vice president said in August 2002.

Silberman said the commission had no authority to consider how policy-makers used intelligence that was sent to them during the buildup to war. When pressed, he suggested that the president was misled by a steady stream of information that exaggerated the threat.

"We looked at the flow, or the stream of intelligence that came to the White House. ... If anything, it was even more alarmist," he said.

The issue may never be aired fully. The Senate Intelligence Committee appears to have dropped a second stage of its own investigation that was to have focused on the administration's use of intelligence. (Knight-Ridder)

The prosecutor has been investigating charges that the Bush administration leaked (a CIA operative's) name to several journalists...

The prosecutor has been investigating charges that the Bush administration leaked Plame's name to several journalists in retaliation for an article that her husband, former envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, wrote in the New York Times that accused the administration of using faulty intelligence in deciding to wage war in Iraq....
....Over the weekend, a lawyer for Karl Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff, acknowledged that Rove had spoken with (reporter Matthew Cooper) in the days before the Novak article appeared, but denied that Rove had identified Plame or broken the law.
(Los Angeles Times)

Bush Is Serving Up the Cold War Warmed Over

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," said Eisenhower, a Republican, in 1961. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." (L.A. Times)

"We in the news business are not doing a very good job of showing our readers what has really happened over there,"

A review of six prominent U.S. newspapers and the nation's two most popular newsmagazines during a recent six-month period found almost no pictures from the war zone of Americans killed in action. During that time, 559 Americans and Western allies died. The same publications ran 44 photos from Iraq to represent the thousands of Westerners wounded during that same time.

Many photographers and editors believe they are delivering Americans an incomplete portrait of the violence that has killed 1,797 U.S. service members and their Western allies and wounded 12,516 Americans.

Journalists attribute the relatively bloodless portrayal of the war to a variety of causes — some in their control, others in the hands of the U.S. military, and the most important related to the far-flung nature of the conflict and the way American news outlets perceive their role.

"We in the news business are not doing a very good job of showing our readers what has really happened over there," said Pim Van Hemmen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.

"Writing in a headline that 1,500 Americans have died doesn't give you nearly the impact of showing one serviceman who is dead," Van Hemmen said. "It's the power of visuals."

Publishing such photos grabs readers' attention, but not always in ways that news executives like. When the Star-Ledger and several other papers ran the Babbitt photo in November, their editors were lashed by some readers — who called them cruel, insensitive, even unpatriotic.

Deirdre Sargent, whose husband was deployed to Iraq, e-mailed editors of the News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash., that the photo left her "shaking and in tears for hours." She added: "It was tacky, unprofessional and completely unnecessary."

Babbitt's mother, Kathy Hernandez, expressed ambivalent sentiments. "That is not an image you want to see like that," said Hernandez, still shedding tears of fury and sadness six months after her son's death. "Your kid is lying like that and there is no way you can get there to help them."

Hernandez — who lives in Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles west of San Antonio — wishes the newspapers at least had waited until after her son's funeral to run the photo. But she has no doubt why they wanted to print it.

"I do think it's an important thing, for people to see what goes on over there," Hernandez said in a phone interview. "It throws reality more in your face. And sometimes we can't help reality." (Los Angeles Times)

"Obviously, my drug use is exaggerated or I would be long since dead," he told a USA Today reporter in 1990.

"Obviously, my drug use is exaggerated or I would be long since dead," he told a USA Today reporter in 1990.(Denver Post)

(Hunter S. Thompson) was a little more complex than most of us, so maybe some of those demons surfaced and he didn't like what he saw."

"We all have demons," Ortega said. "Who knows, man? You sit down, have a few cocktails or maybe nothing--maybe you have a cup of green tea--and maybe nothing seems right. He was a little more complex than most of us, so maybe some of those demons surfaced and he didn't like what he saw."

Hunter Stockton Thompson was born July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Ky. His father, Jack, was an insurance agent.
(L.A. Times)

``television-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by the government."

``television-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by the government. We concluded that those prepackaged news stories violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition.'' (AP)

what some have called "the greatest scientific instrument since the invention of the very first telescope" will be left to decay and fail.

Hubble's remarkable pictures will be with us for as long as we care to look at them - the telescope itself will not.

The US space agency (Nasa) has made it clear it will not service the observatory again and what some have called "the greatest scientific instrument since the invention of the very first telescope" will be left to decay and fail. (BBC)

Anderson had every move scripted before the shoot even began.

One of the things that is regularly said about Anderson is that he has great persuasive powers and picks his collaborators with great skill. He wrote The Royal Tenenbaums specifically for the notoriously private Gene Hackman. Hackman at first found the script too detached: "I am generally better at emotion," he said later. And too specific: he didn't like the fact that Anderson had every move scripted before the shoot even began. He was persuaded when Anderson convinced him that he would not make the movie without him. "I've seen it already in my head." (Guardian)

"But it's great that I can finally switch my brain off and relax in the company of others which I've really missed."

Mountainous seas, icebergs and gale force winds have threatened to capsize her boat - and she narrowly missed a collision with a whale on day 63. (BBC)