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For those that don't want to drop their IP at a Defense Department site, but are still curious to see, we have made the infamous playing card set from the DoD available as a download here in a single file PDF.
It is vector art, so it will enlarge without loosing resolution and it will print nicely.

The Deck of Doom

Apparently there's a website out there that lets people design their own barcodes (including whatever price you want) that can be placed over the real barcodes of products in stores (not legally, of course). The site, itself, Re-code.com is a pretty brilliantly done piece of satire. Wal-Mart however, doesn't get the humor, and says it's an "incitement to theft and fraud." The question at the heart of this are whether or not the 10-digit barcodes numbers are intellectual property? Clearly, actually replacing the prices in stores breaks the law. However, is setting up a site that lets you create the barcodes guilty of the same? The (anonymous) person behind the site points out: "If the argument is that we're facilitating theft, then they should be going after the people who invented the barcode, which is the thing that's making it easier to steal."

Interestingly, if you simply go to re-code.com you are greeted with a cease and desist letter from Wal-Mart with some free speech posters you can print out. I'm wondering if this is an attempt to fool Wal-Mart's lawyers into thinking that the site is down when it really isn't. Probably not but it wouldn't surprise me. The real question here is...HOW LONG WILL THEY LAST!? - | Via TechDirt

Rock and roll burlesque troupe The Gun Street Girls! With names like Bella Beretta, Hangman Lola, and Candy Whiplash, these gals will knock the eyeballs outta your head and leave you begging for more.

"If you took 2 ounces of the glitter and glamour of a 1940's burlesque spectacle and shook it with a healthy shot of CBGB'S circa 1977 and served it over an icy chill of vintage pulp fiction and all out violence you would have the Molotov cocktail of double barrel bombshells known as The Gun Street Girls Burlesque."

Although nowhere near complete.

New Section added:
Why the attacks occurred on September 11th: '9- 11 Drills'

• On 9/11, CIA Was Running Simulation of a Plane Crashing into a Building
• Agency was to simulate plane crash on 9-11 (AirDisaster.com, Google cache)
• Aviation Week Space Technology (NORAD Drill, Google cache)
• The U.S. Government, Not the Hijackers, 'Chose' the Date of the 9-11 Attacks

Fantastic Mexican painter Jesus Helguera...
"Helguera's calendars gave Mexican Americans something to be proud of, a rich Mexican culture and history. They reminded us that we are not the foreigners, but descendants of natives. Jesus Helguera's art has for decades been adopted as Chicano art. It is prevalent and yet not intrusive. It is powerful yet blends into the background. His images were imitated and copied. These cultural calendars can still be found in countless tienditas, bakeries, liquor stores, mercados and Mexican homes. This style of art contains beautiful cultural heritage scenes."

One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors, conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored. | Via YAWN

Esteemed comic book author, Surrealist writer, and self-professed "Manchurian Candidate" with eerie links to the JFK assassination, T Casey Brennan is, in the words of David Ferrie, "a riddle, wrapped in a question, locked inside an enigma."

I'm T. Casey Brennan, Warren comics writer from the 1970s, listed in the 1998 Who's Who in America. In 1996, I wrote Conjurella, which I'm not sure is a dream or a repressed memory. You can read Conjurella, and appending notes at the T. Casey Brennan Archives
Conjurella is about a hypnotist I knew as a little boy. Dr. E of Hopeville in the account is actually J.H. Earnshaw, D.O., of Port Hope, Michigan. "Conjurella" is actually my late aunt, Bonnie Goodrich. "Kathy Malarkey" is actually Katherine Schlorke. Conjurella alleges that I was kidnapped by Dr. Earnshaw and David Ferrie, and forced to initiate the shooting from the Texas School Book Depository Building.

Recently, I wrote Conjurella Fever, Transcending Time and MK-ULTRA, which is not a dream or a repressed memory at all. It deals primarily with my life at a Berkeley commune in the mid-1980s, when one of their members attempted to kill Charles Manson in prison.

Also see: Earlanella: Composed While Washing Dishes at the Earle.

Doomsday Bus

Ashes into ashes and dust to dust
Our hate begets hate and lust begets lust
Kindness makes kindness and trust creates trust
But right now it looks like
A doomsday bus.
~T. Casey Brennan

more about T. Casey Brennan

"As real-life experience is increasingly replaced by the mediated 'experience' of television-viewing, it becomes easy for politicians and market-researchers of all sorts to rely on a base of mediated mass experience that can be evoked by appropriate triggers. The TV 'world' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the mass mind takes shape, its participants acting according to media-derived impulses and believing them to be their own personal volition arising out of their own desires and needs. In such a situation, whoever controls the screen controls the future, the past, and the present." | Via Mousemusings

Information leaks, bid-rigging, pumping and dumping. Just another day inside the secret network that will make or break you in Hollywood.
I've been tipped to the network of semisecret cyberhallways, called tracking boards, that are open only to the most elite power players in the industry. In simplest terms, these boards are sophisticated chat rooms and BBSes where high-level executives at various studios trade information about potential projects.

Gee...what a shocker...

Apparent lobbying by American art dealers to dismantle Iraq's strict export laws has heightened fears about the looting of the country's antiquities as order breaks down in the last stages of the war.

After the last gulf war a lot of treasures disappeared onto the black market and archaeologists in Britain and the US are concerned this will be repeated on a much larger scale in the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam Hussein, as happened in Afghanistan. For poor Iraqis the temptation to sell stolen antiquities will be greatly increased if it is known there is a ready market in the west.

Via Art's Journal

The virus of atypical pneumonia has been created artificially, possibly as a bacteriological weapon, believes Sergei Kolesnikov, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

He expressed this opinion at a news conference in Irkutsk (Siberia) on Thursday.

According to him, the virus of atypical pneumonia is a synthesis of two viruses (of measles and infectious parotiditis or mumps), the natural compound of which is impossible. This can be done only in a laboratory, the academician is convinced. He also said that in creating bacteriological weapons a protective anti-viral vaccine is, as a rule, worked out at the same time. Therefore, the scientist believes, a medicine for atypical pneumonia may soon appear. He does not exclude that the spread of the virus could have begun accidentally, as a result of "an unsanctioned leakage" from a laboratory. | Via The HIVE

WORMS contaminated by radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident have started having sex with each other instead of on their own. According to Ukrainian scientists, they may have changed their sexual behaviour to increase their chances of survival. It's one of the first pieces of direct evidence on how wildlife is affected by radioactive pollution. | What is the worm equivalent of Barry White music? In the comic books when humans are accidentally irradiated they become super-heroes. When worms become accidentally irradiated in real life, they become...SUPERFLY? When a worm uses a condom...well, think about that one...!

GM electric cars pulled off market
The celebrated ride of the car that spawned the nation's toughest emissions regulation ends at a parking lot in Southern California, where a growing fleet of General Motors' EV1 electric cars awaits an uncertain fate.

Dozens of the autos are lined up behind a chain-link fence at the edge of a freight rail line, a sure sign the world's largest automaker has pulled the plug on a vehicle it heralded as recently as two years ago as "the car of the future."

As California retreats from its strict pollution regulation, GM is taking the cars off the road when leases expire because it can no longer supply parts to repair them, GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss said.

The GM spokesman attributed the demise of the EV1 to several fundamental issues: limited range between rechargings, typically less than 100 miles; the length of time to recharge; and the fact that statewide recharging systems in Arizona or California never materialized.

The automaker is shipping the cars to museums and universities for preservation, sending them to a research lab in New York, "cannibalizing" them for parts for the few still on the road or scrapping them.

Scientists have for the first time created a healthy clone of an endangered species, offering powerful evidence that cloning technology can play a role in preserving and even reconstituting threatened and endangered species.

Get yer Toy Catholic School Play Set here, right on good old Ebay.

One day about a year ago I was sitting at work eating a turkey sandwich and my mind began wandering. I started thinking about time travel. I was thinking about the possibility of it ONE DAY being a reality. Would it happen in my lifetime? Technology always moves WAAAY faster than anyone ever thinks it will. Maybe it will be possible in my lifetime.

And then the idea hit me like a cement truck.
If time travel will be possible in my lifetime, then there is a VERY GOOD chance that I can force it to happen on ANY day, at any minute I desire. It is possible to TRICK TIME into making it occur long before it ever should.

Here's how it will work: I will get a tattoo on my arm that reads, "EMPIRE STATE BUILDING / 4PM / AUGUST 3, 2003"

I will then COMMITT to myself the following: If I EVER have access to time travel in my lifetime, I will choose to travel to the date, time, and place I have tattoed into my arm. At this point, all I need to do is stand in front of the Empire State Building on august 3rd, and there is a CHANCE that I will appear from the future. | This is just fucking brilliant in it's simplicity...

The Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle has had an amazing amount of animal births this year- including two brand new baby tigers (awww...) that they are holding a contest to name. (My suggestion of "Heckle and Jeckle" was strangely ignored)
In the ol' Nocturnal House we recently had two twin pygmy slow lorises born and just had two baby galagoes (aka Bushbabies-see pic) born. CAN YOU STAND THE CUTENESS?!

Need to slack off at work? You can look at this nice gallery of horrible tattoos. Tres amusant! Laugh at other's self inflicted misfortunes!

Or, revel in the horror of Bad Art! The Museum of Bad Art exhibits some of the Salvation Army's greatest hits on canvas. Long live the Senior's Painting Class down at the Y!

BBC News

Airport security guards who mistook a bottle of perfume for a chemical weapon have become one of the winners of a competition to find the world's most stupid security measure. Some of the contents of the bottle were accidentally sprayed on security staff during a routine check of a Saudi Arabian student's baggage. This caused airport authorities to summon hazardous materials specialists, FBI and police officers for help. The workers sprayed with the perfume were quarantined for three hours until the cologne was identified as cologne.

The informal competition was run by civil liberties group Privacy International and attracted more than 5,000 nominations from 35 countries.

Also see:   Winners List

Junko Mizumo is a Japanese artist who paints really bizarre and wonderful girls and creatures. Her work is reminicent of the art you'd find on Trapper Keepers in the 70's (remember THOSE?)- all bubbly and rainbow-y- yet Junko's work is sexy, mildly violent, disturbing and delightful. She has a killer book out called "Hellbabies"- complete with barbie flesh pink plastic cover embossed with puffy letters and lots of glitter!

Sony is attempting to trademark the term "Shock and Awe" for a computer game, having scored a hit with its original PlayStation game, Conflict: Desert Storm. It is among a swarm of companies scrambling to commercially exploit the war in Iraq.
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
This op-ed piece in The New York Times (free reg req'd) follows the path of money into who is getting what now that the reconstruction phase is about to begin. | Via MeFi

FIRST, everybody gets a project.

Join one or start one, but the project has to be directed toward making things better. That's what's called a "positive vector".

SECOND, everybody talks with everybody else about their projects.

That's "talks with", not just "talks to" or "talks at". This sets up a "field of communication", with information flowing in all directions. It's very important to the process, and we now have the tools (the Internet and the phone system) to make communication available without much hierarchy.

THIRD, be prepared to change your project based upon what you learn by communicating about it.

This is also very important. It "closes the feedback loop" by making the communication consequential, and, with everyone's good sense, sets up a "converging system" in the general direction of the vector.

That's it. Act, especially in concert with others, communicate and re-evaluate. Repeat as often as possible. Oh, yes - keep records of what you try and what happened , both good and bad. The system needs an element of memory to function. | Via Weblogsky

The NovaDreamer, only $300, gives you unlimited lucid dreaming. This could be the end of nightmares as we know them | Via Cup of Chicha

Cuba defended the quick trials and heavy sentences given to 75 dissidents this week, saying increased hostility from Washington forced it to protect itself from a U.S.-backed opposition working to undermine the island's socialist system.

Perez Roque also denied criticism the crackdown was timed so the world's attention would be focused on the Iraq war.

The dissidents were not charged with criticizing the government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S. diplomats.

Disinformation Used To Sell Assault on the Constitution

...This is a classic example of disinformation, or flatout lies, used to justify this assault on the Constitution and the legal rights of all Americans. The Patriot Act is just the first step, and now congress members themselves are trying to gut congressional oversight, thus making the checks and balances of the 3 branches of government into a joke.

Evidently Orrin Hatch, Charles Schumer, Jon Kyl, et. all think that nobody will bother to check out the facts. Moussaoui was not a "lone suspect." The FBI did link him to Al-Qaeda. The problem in pursuing the investigation was the branch of Al Qaeda, which the FBI discovered that Moussaoui belonged to.

Lisa Petrucci is a favorite artist of mine. She paints foxy pin up chicks mixed with Liddle Kiddles (tiny girl dolls from the 60's), big eyed kitties, and other assorted retro kitsch on old wooden plaques- like the kind you find in thriftshops with images of the Lord's Prayer or Yellowstone Park on them. She then shellacs the heck outta them so they are super glossy and candy like. They are little cartoony jewels- utterly beguiling.

Rudolf Hausner was a painter belonging to the Vienesse School Of Fantastic Realism. His work is striking, rich, and futuristic...If Leonardo Da Vinci and the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" had a baby and subjected it to mass psychotherapy, it would look like Hausner's art....

Thanks for the warm welcome! Thanks to Dr. Menlo for suggesting me to the powers that be. By the way-that is not actually a lemur on my shoulder, but rather my obviously satanic cat named..uh..Monkey.

Let's get down to business shall we? Excellent.

Sam Easterson is a video artist who's current project, "Animal, Vegetable, Video" mounts cameras on the backs of assorted wildlife in order to capture a vision of what thier world is like, from thier point of view. He's "cammed" everything from buffalo to tarantulas!
(If you were a buffalo with a camera walking behind another buffalo- you'd see this:)

Saddam Hussein's secret archives could already be in Moscow despite American Central Intelligence Agency's bid to block their evacuation by firing at the Russian diplomatic convoy near Baghdad on Sunday, media reported on Wednesday.

Quoting intelligence sources Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Wednesday reported that Sunday's attack by the US rangers on the Russian ambassador's convoy near Baghdad was a 'direct clash between Russian's Foreign Intelligence Service SVR and CIA.

Moscow had asked the US for safe passage from Baghdad to Syria for its ambassador's convoy and a "Predator" drone was hovering over it all along the way from the embassy in Baghdad transmitting live video pictures, the daily said ruling out any case of mistaken identity by the US troops which fired at it.

"CIA was under the impression that SVR was evacuating Saddam's secret archives under the diplomatic cover of ambassador's convoy... this also explains why at several occasions after the firing the American troops had tried to search Russian vehicles," Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote. | Via William Gibson

The CIA connection to the Progressive / Left establishment and the marginalization of conspiracy research

Journalist Bob Feldman follows the money trail to "Left" media orgainizations that have sought out funding from the big establishment foundations.

As some of you may or may not know, STARE is a team effort and a time crunch convergence among the members has finally happened.

JM is off writing a new book, as well as doing some upcoming projects with Mag/Tif, Roberto, HyperSpaceGirl, and a few others. Jason is busy with his successful new Ezine, New World Disorder, as well as the NWD blog. Monkeyprime is in NYC becoming the next big Matrix editor/videographer. Rex, Pale and Sinn are off on a New Jersey Pine Barrens trek (no kidding!), Motard and Dissadent are MIA since the auto accident (again, don't ask), Whitey is neck deep getting ready for his pitch season, doing stand-up at spots like the Improv, etc. and kick-starting his improv troupe. Ingrates, each and every one of them!

Not to fear! Dr. Menlo, Valis, Mutant, DW, Cyndy, Pagan, S..., Ozric and the rest of the lunatics are still around.

We needed a guest uber-editor to come on board, fill in the gaps and keep the space monkeys in line. Who better than one trained in Monkey-Fu?

Kirsten Anderson! Come on down!

Kirsten produces the weblog, Thumbmonkey (another fine Dr. Menlo production) as well as Roq La Rue. She rox. She roars. She's large and in charge! Well, I mean large in a figurative sense. Most of all, she knows how to crack some Monkey heads when the cracking needs to..uh...when the going gets cracking the crackheads get...no, that's not right either...ok, I'll shut up now and let her tell you about herself.

"I was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in 1969. After stints in Macon, Georgia and Halifax, Nova Scotia I settled in Seattle, Wa and eventually started Roq La Rue Gallery- an art gallery devoted to " Fine Pop Surrealism and Bad Ass Lowbrow". I was raised with a healthy appreciation for anything arcane and/or funny. I am also a biology fanboy, particularly interested in animal weirdness. Aside from running my art empire I volunteer at the Nocturnal House at the Woodland Park Zoo where I cavort with Tamanduas, Dourocolis, Coendus, and scrape bat poop off windows. I'm currently working on a extensive book about the Lowbrow art movement, as well as compiling a small horrible Christmas book of mall photos of small frightened children sitting rigid in fear on laps of drunk, flea-ridden, hobo Santas."

Yeah. Give her a big STARE welcome, will ya? C'mon! Give it up!

Enjoy, and if you don't behave she'll hit you with a rabid Lemur! Whadaya think that thing is starin' at ya from her shoulder? HUH? HUH?! Watchew lookin' at?

Press Release
Open Source Entrepreneur Offers to Promote Book Dubbed "Worst Novel" by Washington Post
Dubbed "the worst novel ever published in the English language" by the Washington Post, "The Great American Parade," by retired University of Wisconsin professor Robert Burrows, has nonetheless found a readership via the magic of the Internet. Contributing to the book's growing momentum, online content marketplace Lulu.com has made the book available in both printed and online versions. Lulu is the latest project of entrepreneur Bob Young, an open-source enthusiast known for flouting convention.

The book, mocked at length by a Washington Post writer in a February interview with the author, is a political satire on economic themes. It posits a fictional conflict between an America controlled by wealthy politicians and an idealistic group of college students. The reviewer, Gene Weingarten, unabashedly declared Burrow's novel to be a "wretchedly terrible product that shames the American publishing industry." | Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oops! Sorry about that...

Nanoscale materials and components, including some of the tiniest products ever manufactured, have already found their way into communications systems and weapons being used in the war with Iraq. But the role of nanotechnology is still so limited that the Iraq war will more likely be remembered as the last to be fought without its benefits than the first that fully deployed it.

Bullet Time was just the beginning. F/x guru John Gaeta reinvents cinematography with The Matrix Reloaded.
The Matrix raised the bar for action films by introducing new levels of realism into stunt work and visual effects. For Reloaded and Revolutions, the Wachowskis dreamed up action sequences that were so over-the-top they would require their special-effects supervisor, John Gaeta, to reinvent cinematography itself.

Jon does such a good job explaining, we'll just ask you to read it for yourself.

A group of British engineers and scientists unveiled their first manned space capsule today, the latest accomplishment in a global competition to loft a privately developed craft on a suborbital hop.

Starchaser Industries, one of 24 teams racing to win the X-Prize space tourism competition, debuted the Nova II capsule during a presentation at the Village Hotel and Leisure Club in Hyde, England. The one-seater module is about 10 feet (3 meters) long, weighs 536 pounds (200 kilograms) and will serve as a testbed for Starchaser's final X-Prize entry.

Liberties ebbed and flowed in America's past. Leaders curbed liberties, with the public's often ignorant endorsement, in times of crisis. But the rights tended to come back when the crises ended.

The fabled pendulum of liberty may not swing back this time. Why?

The missing link between the Contras and al Qaeda.
It may come as a shock that Vice Admiral John Poindexter has popped up as a visionary cyberguru for Darpa. Until recently, the former national security adviser was best known as a convicted conspirator in the late-'80s Iran-Contra scandal. Poindexter's career move makes sense, though, when you consider the astonishing prescience of his scheme to fund covert operations in Central America. The visionary spirit of Iran-Contra never died, and today it's alive and well and fueling the War on Terror.

There are over 600 active volcanoes located around the world. Most of them are located around the Pacific Rim. Most of these are deep below the oceans. Worldwide, volcanic eruptions are very common, but are usually unobservered because they occur in the ocean.
The volcanoes located on the continents are usually fed by subduction zones that melt rock deep below the surface. The Cascade Volcanoes are aligned along the subduction zone where the oceanic crust from the Pacific Ocean dives beneath the continental crust of the Western United States.

There have been several eruptions from major volcanoes around the world in the last few decades.

Members of both the House and Senate are attempting to pervert proper legislative processes by appending two unrelated provisions to the popular Amber Alert measure. One of the two provisions would target raves -- a social event that mixes electronic music, light shows and dancing; the other provision would seek to limit the discretion of federal judges.

The rave provision would make building owners liable for their tenants' and customers' activities. For example, even if they instituted excellent security precautions, restaurant, bar, nightclub, dance and music venue owners could all be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and forced into bankruptcy if a customer sneaked in drugs. No matter how much security is put in place, they could be held responsible for the actions of just one customer.

The federal sentencing provision would require the Justice Department to report to Congress every time federal judges use their discretion to impose a lower sentence than recommended under federal sentencing guidelines. This would intimidate judges and prevent them from using their judgement when handing down sentences.

In New World Order, players meet Agent John Dobbs, one of the best military operatives in the world and GAT’s (Global Assault Team) newest recruit. Formed by some of the world’s most powerful nations, the GAT is a top-secret organization that has been brought together to stop The Syndicate, a group of militant separatists and terrorists who have set out to fill the world with fear, chaos and destruction…unless Agent Dobbs and his team get to them first.

New World Order serves up over 15 real life weapons including the M-16, Desert Eagle and AK-5 in 5 different game modes: team deathmatch, hostage rescue, plant the bomb, team escape and fallout. Players can also take on the AI-opposition together in cooperative gameplay. | Via Libertythink

Newest Ozric dispatch, fringecult. As always, newest to the right.

Homeland Insecurity: The Board Game. Requires Flash | Via Low Grade Panic

Politically active artists have been shaken by the alleged visit of military investigators to the family of an outspoken San Francisco hip-hop band member, calling it one in a series of moves aimed at silencing dissenting musicians and actors.

The incident surfaced a week ago when Michael Franti, the front man for the band Spearhead, told Pacifica Radio network's "Democracy Now" that military investigators visited the mother of an unnamed band member in Boston. The woman also has a daughter stationed with U.S. military forces in the Middle East.

The mother, whom Franti also declined to name for her safety, said plainclothes investigators appeared at her door on March 16, showing pictures of the band performing at an anti-war demonstration the previous day in San Francisco, Franti said. They questioned her about entries made in her son's checking account, his travel records for the past several months, and his general whereabouts, Franti said.

Iraqwar.ru : news and analysis on the American invasion of Iraq from Russian journalists and military experts. See also: aeronautics.ru for more on the Russian perspective.

Thanks to Philip Shropshire and his Changesurfer Radio interview for the nods.

Rather than a public health emergency, the "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome," generally called SARS, is best diagnosed as a "Sickening and Repulsive Scam." This article argues that this unprecedented viral attack is, alternatively, an ingenious social experiment featuring institutionalized bioterrorism for widespread psycho-social control. The outcome of this experiment, whether it leads to population reduction or not, depends on you. | Via mouse musings

Well, Andre, you stumbled onto an illegal surveillance operation.

In the U.S., 434 megacycles is ILLEGAL to use for surveillance. That frequency is an amateur radio (ham radio) frequency, legal ONLY for hobby operation.

No local, state or federal agency can use it for surveillance.

\

The "fog of war" obscures more than just news from the battlefield. It also provides cover for radical domestic legislation, especially ill-considered liberty-for-security swaps, which have been historically popular at the onset of major conflicts.

The last time allied bombs fell over a foreign capital, the Bush Administration rammed through the USA PATRIOT Act, a clever acronym for maximum with-us-or-against-us leverage (the full name is "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism").

Remarkably, this 342-page law was written, passed (by a 98-1 vote in the U.S. Senate) and signed into law within seven weeks of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. As a result, the government gained new power to wiretap phones, confiscate property of suspected terrorists, spy on its own citizens without judicial review, conduct secret searches, snoop on the reading habits of library users, and so General John Ashcroft wants to finish the job. On Jan. 10, 2003, he sent around a draft of PATRIOT II; this time, called "The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003." The more than 100 new provisions, Justice Department spokesperson Mark Corallo told the Village Voice recently, "will be filling in the holes" of PATRIOT I, "refining things that will enable us to do our job."

As the military embraces electronic games as a training tool, a growing number of soldiers are fighting in a virtual Iraq war even as they remain stateside. For many soldiers, the increasingly realistic simulations often seem like the closest thing to being in combat.

Recent recruits who grew up on popular commercial games like Half-Life, Counterstrike and Quake 3 have a natural affinity for the training games, many of which are adapted by the military from the retail versions. Some military officials are enthusiastic about the benefits of running troops through the exercises at minimal expense.

But as video war games gain popularity throughout the armed forces, some military trainers worry that the more the games seem like war, the more war may start to seem like a game. As the technology gets better, they say, it becomes a more powerful tool and a more dangerous one.

Famous moments in history as they would have appeared if Fox News would have reported them

Via FARK