campaign tip

to the tune of: Light Up My Room by Barenaked Ladies

If you're going to cite a Website and ask people to go there, you might want to look at that webpage first.

Dick Cheney said this during last night's VP debate:

Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com (sic), an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

Just for kicks, take his suggestion and go to factcheck.com. Somehow not quite what Cheney envisioned.

What he meant to say, probably, was factcheck.org, an independent analysis site run by the Annenberg Foundation. Only trouble is, they're not exactly backing him up either:

Cheney got our domain name wrong -- calling us "FactCheck.com" -- and wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton.

In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right.

Oops...now if he had only created the Internet, maybe he wouldn't have this problem.

Ahh, Japan. Apparently it's customary for women to flush the toilet several times while they're using it to cover up any audible evidence that they're actually using it. So the solution, in true Japanese fashion, is to invent an electronic gadget to play flushing sounds. This Oto-Hime (Sound Princess) isn't exactly news (since it's been out for 16 years) but I guess it was a slow news day in Japan...