Ivan G. Osorio writes on National Review Online that Venezuelan Fujimori-emulator* Hugo Chávez may have funneled money to al-Qaida via the Taliban, disguised as humanitarian aid.

I've blogged before on Hugo Chávez here; link from PejmanPundit.

* = I'm sidestepping the debate about whether or not Chávez is a dictator; he's definitely in the caudillo category, though.

The university computer network seems to be have been suffering from “return of students to their broadband connections”-itis this afternoon. But now, we're back and better than ever!

By the way, the flag at the top of the new title graphic is the Magnolia Flag, which was adopted as the first state flag in 1861, and continued to fly over the state until 1894 (until the current flag was first adopted). For a bit of history on Mississippi flags (up through 2000), see this article by noted Mississippi historian David Sansing.

David Sansing is not to be confused with noted Tennessee blogger Donald Sensing!.

Apple's new web browser, Safari, seems to do a pretty good job rendering websites; without comparing it side-by-side to Konqueror, the rendering seems better, although there are still some buglets in the CSS2 implementation. Notably, P:before renders differently than you'd expect; it treats it as a block-level element instead of inline, and text-transform doesn't seem to work right. However, that's better than IE6 does; it ignores them completely.

This paragraph is rendered with P:before (which I use for updates to existing entries in the blog). If you're using Opera 6 or 7, or any Gecko derivative (Mozilla, Phoenix, Chimera, K-Meleon), you'll see UPDATE: inset in the beginning of the paragraph. Internet Explorer (and the Windows HTML component it is based on) ignores it completely (I'm pretty sure Konqueror 2.2 and 3.0 does too). Safari renders it as a separate, blue paragraph like Update:.

The Washington Post has picked up the story of the Fairfax County bar raids for potential DUI offenders (via Glenn Reynolds). Notable for its absence: any evidence that the reporter contacted MADD for comment on whether they approved of these tactics. You'd think they'd be good for a quote or two; after all, it's their issue.

Meanwhile, Radley Balko decomposes statistics on “alcohol-related deaths” and finds that you're about four times more likely to die of accidental poisoning than be accidentally killed by a drunk driver if you're sober.

Fresh on the heels of their fare decrease, Amtrak is apparently having problems with passengers wielding polycarbonate knives. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Now you know why I'm driving to Charlotte next month.