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Matter of Scale Number of people in Washington, D.C. who were murdered by anthrax poisoning between September 11 and November 9... 2 Number of people murdered by other means in the same city during the same period ... 53 Number of U.S. residents who died of anthrax between October 1 and November 1... 4 Approximate number of U.S. residents who died, during the same month, as a result of having smoked cigaretts... 33,000 thanks to Worldwatch
Bird Buddies I have been doing a series of posts on the birds that I see out of my windows. I now have a link on my navigation bar that is for the Birds.
Game of the Day thanks to weblog wannabe
Books
Above Jack London Square's Bed Bath & Beyond, where you can buy a floral photo album for $9.99, a small band of dedicated book-lovers works to preserve some of the most valuable volumes in existence. Octavo Corp. and its staff of eight have revolutionized the conservation and accessibility of rare books, using technology in the service of history. This month they're starting work on the most famous book in the U.S., the Library of Congress' pristine copy of the Gutenberg Bible. thanks to DANGEROUSMETA! This is a site found, forgotten, and found again. What Octavo is doing with some of these most important books is incredibly cool.
Is J.K. Rowling propping up the book biz? What if publishing phenom J.K. Rowling announced that she was going to publish her popular cycle's breathlessly anticipated fifth book, provisionally titled "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," exclusively as a downloadable e-book?
The snorfling sound that would result would be every soul in the book business swallowing his gum in abject, cowering terror. Rowling has thus far signed no final contract for "Order of the Phoenix" - - still tentatively scheduled for this fall -- with either her usual publisher, Scholastic, or anyone else. So the question only naturally arises: What if? thanks to AcmeBook News
The Absolute Elsewhere: This is a bibliography of visionary, occult, new age, fringe science, strange and even crackpot works published between 1945 and 1988. Added to the mix are some other works which may relate to them, or at least give a sense of the spirit of the times. The main emphasis is upon works produced between 1960 and 1980, as the subtitle suggests. I lost some time on this site. Books that I remember seeing in book stores, books that I once owned and have lost, books that I still have, and books that I still need to read. I always did wonder what happened to Pheobe Zeit-Geist.
Microsoft
SURPRISE SETTLEMENT EVENLY SPLITS MICROSOFT; In a surprise settlement today with nine U.S. states, Microsoft agreed to be split into two independent companies — one that will continue to make Microsoft operating systems, browsers, and server software, and another, potentially larger company that will make patches for Microsoft operating systems, browsers, and server software.
Critics immediately charged that the settlement — which overrides a previous agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice — does nothing to diminish Microsoft's standing as the world's most powerful software company. But industry analysts argued that providing patches for security holes in Microsoft programs is a major, untapped growth industry, and applauded the states for not allowing Redmond to control it.
Israel/Palestine After a month and a half of relative quiet (0 Israeli civilians killed, 18 Palestinians killed), Israel bulldozes houses and assassinates a Palestinian leader. The expected response happened. Six killed in Hadera terror attack 6 Israelis killed, many others injured. Israel clamps down more.
Israeli Tanks Surround Arafat's Compound
Israeli missiles raze Arafat police HQ No exit.
Happy Birthday Cameron Last night Robby and I rode over to Kirkland for a suprise birthday for my nephew Cameron. He turned 16 yesterday. The night before I was up late getting songs together, with Zoe's help, to burn on a CD for Cameron. Some music to expand his horizons. They ranged from Louis Armstong (West End Blues) to Ani diFranco, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Violent Femmes, Tom Waits, Bob Marley (Redemption Song), Van Morrison, and, of course, Kermit the Frog singing Rainbow Connection. I'm expecting the Music Swat Team to break down my doors any time now.
Red Tailed Hawk This morning I was looking at the lake when I noticed a large raptor sitting on my neighbor's deck railing.
 He was big and stocky. At first I thought it might be an immature eagle but a good look through the binoculars and a quick check of the bird book confirmed it as a Red-tailed Hawk. He sat there for 5 to 10 minutes, flew to a branch on a tree, then flew off. When he flew it was easy to see the characteristic red tail. He was a big sucker. (That's technical birding talk.) Red-tailed hawks are common around here but you don't see them all that much. The last time I saw one, it was just a flash as it few across the road into the trees followed by that red tail. I've never seen one just hanging out for that long.
Its flight is firm, protracted, and at times performed at a great height. It sails across the whole of a large plantation, on a level with the tops of the forest trees which surround it, without a single flap of its wings, and is then seen moving its head sidewise to inspect the objects below. This flight is generally accompanied by a prolonged mournful cry, which may be heard at a considerable distance, and consists of a single sound resembling the monosyllable Kae, several times repeated, for three or four minutes, without any apparent inflection or difference of intensity. It would seem as if uttered for the purpose of giving notice to the living objects below that he is passing, and of thus inducing them to bestir themselves and retreat to a hiding-place, before they attain which he may have an opportunity of pouncing upon one of them. When he spies an animal, while he is thus sailing over a field, I have observed him give a slight check to his flight, as if to mark a certain spot with accuracy, and immediately afterwards alight on the nearest tree. He would then instantly face about, look intently on the object that had attracted his attention, soon after descend towards it with wings almost close to his body, and dart upon it with such accuracy and rapidity as seldom to fail in securing it. Pictures and text by John James Audubon. What did I learn today? When is a bird an eagle, a hawk, or a falcon? They are all hawks! The Red Tailed Hawk is in the order Falconiformes. As one of the links below reports: Falconiformes includes all hawks, and accipiter means hawk in Latin, as does buteo (well, an eagle is a hawk and a falcon is a hawk...). Jamaicensis refers to the site of the first discovery and identification of the Red-tail. I'm confused. They have also been called buzzards. Audubon referred to this bird as the Red-tailed Buzzard as well as a Red-tailed Hawk. If Audubon can be confused, I guess I can be too.
Red-tailed Hawk
Let the game begin thanks to weblog wannabe
The War Against Some Drugs
America's Other War Heats Up
It looks like the war is about to turn a lot uglier. No, I'm not talking about Afghanistan. I'm talking about America's Other War -- the Drug War -- and the way it's playing out down in Colombia, where a simmering civil war is wired to explode.
Enron
Phil Gramm’s Enron Favor The one person in the Enron scandal whom congress is not likely to subpoena is its own revered Phil Gramm, the retiring Republican Senator from Texas. Gramm and his wife, Wendy, have tight links to Enron, Wendy being a director and Gramm the pusher of legislation that assisted the company during its troubles last year. In December, his press secretary denied the latter charge, saying, "Senator Gramm took no role, had no say, and did not vote on the energy futures provisions."
That's not the story presented by the D.C. watchdog Public Citizen, whose tale goes like this: Evans talked on Sunday about the beauties of capitalism and the way everything worked just fine. Judging from the Enron case, the system's rightful fruit must be that executives get out unscathed, the little guys get screwed, and competition gets ditched in favor of a mega- monopoly on a scale not seen in America since John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust.
For his part, O'Neill sang the same carefree tune. "Companies come and go," O'Neill told the Associated Press this weekend. "That's the genius of capitalism." I don't have time to follow Enron in detail so here is another site that is doing that quite well.
 thanks to wood s lot
Yesterday was a work day. Work, work, work, work, work. Then, late evening, I started a CD burning project I can't elaborate on yet. Later. Israel/Palestine
State-building in reverse
Military assault, economic deprivation and political implosion from within and the slow, attritional destruction of Mr Arafat and his Palestinian Authority are, or so Palestinians insist, Mr Sharon’s way of banishing the dream that Israel’s 34-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza will end. “I don’t know if Israel is deliberately destroying the potential for Palestinian statehood,” said one UN diplomat involved in trying to get some sort of political process back in place. “But I do know that any viable state needs to control its borders and police, and meet its people’s most basic economic needs. By damaging precisely these institutions and capacities, Israel is in effect preventing the Palestinians from managing their own affairs. It is like a kind of state-building in reverse.” The recurring stupidity is the government spitting in its own face. It has happened time and again, just when it appears that the Israeli case is relatively strong. The West's attention is directed to Arafat's frauds and then the security forces send a senior Palestinian to kingdom come for what he had done in his rich career. A relative calm threatens to send Sharon back to the jaws of the political track, and wham - children in Gaza are killed by a land mine, dozens of families are thrown out of their homes into a rainy night, and another Fatah official, this time one Raed Karmi, is gathered into the bosom of his forefathers in Tul Karm.
How can such serial stupidity take place with such impressive pinpoint precision? Only because it's intentional. And what does it intend? To disrupt even the slightest possibility, no matter how far-fetched, that a steep decline in the number of Israeli casualties after Yasser Arafat's speech a month ago would lead - heaven forbid - to talks with the Palestinian leadership. Want Security? End the Occupation
Israel's assassination of Fatah activist Raed Karmi on Monday was predictable. Despite Israel's having killed more than 18 Palestinians since President Yasser Arafat's call for a cease-fire on Dec. 18, there have been no Israeli civilian casualties during that time. That, according to world governments and the international press, constituted a "lull in the violence." But a lull in the violence is exactly what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cannot afford. He was elected in a time of crisis and knows that his rule is sustainable only in a time of crisis. For his own political survival, he will do whatever it takes, and look for any excuse, to stoke the flames of unrest and avoid a return to peace negotiations.
The only way for Israelis to have security is, quite simply, to end the 35-year- old Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time, that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master. The lack of Israeli security is born of the lack of Palestinian freedom. Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before. I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated -- the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else.
This principle may well lead to my assassination. So let my position be clear in order that my death not be lightly dismissed by the world as just one more statistic in Israel's "war on terrorism." For six years I languished as a political prisoner in an Israeli jail, where I was tortured, where I hung blindfolded as an Israeli beat my genitals with a stick. But since 1994, when I believed Israel was serious about ending its occupation, I have been a tireless advocate of a peace based on fairness and equality. I led delegations of Palestinians in meetings with Israeli parliamentarians to promote mutual understanding and cooperation. I still seek peaceful coexistence between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine based on full withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and a just resolution to the plight of Palestinian refugees pursuant to U.N. resolutions. I do not seek to destroy Israel but only to end its occupation of my country.
If paint is outlawed, only outlaws will have paint I discovered this in 1996 and then lost it. Now it is found again.
 thanks to MetaFilter
Huey Freeman Lives! On Thanksgiving Day 2001, with the United States in the midst of what polls identify as one of the most popular wars in history and with President Bush's approval ratings hovering around 90 percent, more than 20 million American households opened their daily newspapers to see a little black kid named Huey Freeman leading the pre-turkey prayer. "Ahem," began the unsmiling youth. "In this time of war against Osama bin Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR leader isn't the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties. Amen." In the whole of American media that day, Huey's was certainly the most pointed and, no doubt, the most effective dissent from the patriotism that dare not speak its mind. And it was not the only day when the self-proclaimed "radical scholar" skewered George W. Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Defense Department, dithering Democrats, frenzied flag-wavers and scaremongering television anchors in what since September 11 has been the most biting and consistent critique of the war and its discontents in the nation's mass media.
The creation of 27-year-old cartoonist Aaron McGruder, Huey Freeman appears daily in The Boondocks, a comic strip featured in 250 of America's largest newspapers, including the Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer. "There are a lot of newspapers where Aaron's comic strip probably is the only consistent voice of dissent," says Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Joel Pett, whose editorial-page cartoons for the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald-Leader have raised tough questions about the suffering of Afghan civilians and the role the United States has played in spreading terror. "I think that not only is he doing good stuff, the fact that he is on those comics pages makes it important in a way that none of the rest of us could accomplish. He's hooking a whole group of people. He's getting ideas out to people who don't always read the opinion pages. And he's influencing a lot of young people about how it's OK to question their government and the media. When you think about it, what he has done since September 11 has just been incredible." You can go to Ucomics to follow The Boondocks.
 thanks to also not found in nature
Israel/Palestine Assassination of Fatah activist, demolition of Arab homes focus spotlight on Israeli policy
Israel leapt from the frying pan of international scorn into the fire of threatened escalation Monday, as Jerusalem municipality bulldozers rumbled into the Holy City's largely Palestinian eastern half to knock down nine Arab-owned homes, and a wanted Fatah Tanzim leader who had boasted of immunity to assassination met sudden death in a West Bank blast. Security brass foresee further escalation in territories Two killed in separate terror attacks What the army hides from the public Arafat, as we know, is no angel. He is a liar, a political wimp and a man who never sticks to an agreement. Prof. Bernard Lewis is right in saying it was a mistake to bring him to this country. Those who say that the Oslo accords were amateurish and a terrible mistake are right, too. But to Arafat's credit, let it be said that his political objective is clear: He wants a state corresponding with the pre-1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital, and withdrawal from all the settlements. No one, on the other hand, really knows what Sharon's political objective is, and how he expects to bring peace and security. As prime minister, he rarely speaks to the people or outlines any lofty political vision.
The reason is obvious and represented faithfully by ministers Landau and Lieberman. Sharon doesn't want to reach the point of face-to-face negotiations on the surrender of territories, much less the evacuation of settlements: That could mean the end of his government and his replacement by Netanyahu. One suspects he's in no hurry to adopt the Mitchell plan either, because that would also force him to declare a freeze on settlement activity.
Weapons of the weak
The raucous noise of the road, the motors running and the frequent honking was overwhelmed by the sounds of shooting. On a small hill stood two soldiers. One of them fired into the air. He fired off four or five shots and stopped. I was attacked by hysterical fear. The young men directing the traffic continued with their task and did not look to see where the shooting was coming from. The two soldiers continued firing into the air and then they fired in the direction of the roadblock. The cars stood stock still. The soldiers looked in my direction. One of them aimed his rifle and fired one shot. He hit the car that had stopped in front of me and then he fired another shot and hit the rear window of another car that was also ahead of me. He kept on firing over our heads.
Emerging alternatives in Palestine
America the Hypocrite
The land of the free becomes the home of the hypocrite In last year's report, for example, the State Department gravely commented on the difficulties in getting a fair trial in Iraq where there are "special security courts" which "hear cases in secret" and, worse, "many cases appear to end in summary execution, although defendants may appeal to the President for clemency". That president would be Saddam Hussein, a man second only to Osama bin Laden in contemporary America's pantheon of evil. What will the department say this year, now that the Bush Administration has responded to the September 11 terrorist attacks by setting up military tribunals where suspected terrorists can be tried secretly, after which they can be put to death with their only avenue of appeal being the president or defence secretary?
We await with interest. thanks to Progressive Review
How about some beautiful photos? The photographs of Yann Arthus-Bertrand : aerial photography Some beautiful photographs of the earth taken from the air.
 thanks to MetaFilter
Enron The Bushies seem to be running scared on this. It's getting bigger by the hour. Oliver Willis is keeping this page on all Enron links. thanks to wood s lot Your tar and feathers ready? Mine are. thanks to BuzzFlash
Compassionately Conserving Enron thanks to wood s lot
Cow Ascii Art This is a real a real COWlector's Item! thanks to weblog wannabe
Israel/Palestine Israel is still retaliating for the attack on an Israeli outpost which resulted in the death of four Israeli soldiers. That, and the capture of the Karine A which Israel alledges was smuggling arms to the Palestinians. I'm not sure why it is terrible for the Palestinians to bring in a small ship load of weapons to use against Israelis if it's OK for Israel to spend over a billion dollars of American money a year on armaments such as F-16s, Blackhawk gunships, and tanks to use against the Palestinians. Secondly, the attack on the Israeli outpost was, by most definitions, not a terrorist act. It was an attack on an military occupying force and not on civilians. But Israel defines any action by Palestinians as terrorism while their attacks on Palestinian civilians is "self-defense". IDF razes Rafah homes in retaliation
A massive demolition operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early yesterday morning destroyed dozens of civilian homes, rendering at least 520 people, including some 300 children, homeless, according to data released by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East. The operation was carried out in retaliation for the Hamas attack on an IDF post near Kibbutz Kerem Shalom early Wednesday morning, in which four IDF soldiers were killed. IDF commandos hit PA naval base in Gaza, destroy two ships
Israeli military sources said a larger patrol boat, the Jandala, was destroyed with explosives planted by divers. Reporters touring the harbor after daybreak Saturday saw a large hole punched into the hull of the Jandala, which was taking on water. The Jandala was targeted because the captain and machinist of the weapons ship, the Karine A., had once sailed on the Jandala, the military said. The Israeli paper Ha'aretz feels that the Sharon, the Israeli government, and the IDF have committed war crimes in carrying out their revenge. Ha'aretz is usually pretty critical of Sharon but todays editorials are off the meter. The razing of homes is one of the most severe punitive and preventive actions utilized by the IDF and the security forces over the years in the brutal confrontation with terrorists. Many instances come to mind in which it was decided to destroy the home of an individual who took part in deadly terrorism. In and of itself it is a controversial action, even in the harsh reality of the confrontation.
However, this time we are dealing with a case of destruction on a systematic, collective and indiscriminate level, against Palestinians - including the elderly, women and children - whoever they may be. As far as is known, the only sin of most of them - perhaps even all of them - was the place where they lived.
Through this action, the IDF could lose the support of the broader Israeli public that wants peace, but understands the need to employ controversial means as part of the effort to prevent and minimize attacks against Israeli citizens during the months of the uprising. No Israeli can agree to such blind cruelty. The punitive action executed by Israel at the weekend in the Gaza Strip, and in particular the mass demolition of homes in Rafah on Thursday morning, constitute a war crime. There is no other way to describe and define the collective punishment of hundreds of innocent civilians who have been left utterly destitute. Under the cover of the media blackout in Israel - it is very difficult to get to the southern Gaza Strip - bulldozers of the Israel Defense Forces turned "homes into a wasteland," as M., a Rafah resident, said by phone. If there was a time when at least part of Israeli public opinion was in an uproar over the demolition of the home of a terrorist's family, and there was a public debate over the justice of the act, now Israel is demolishing the homes of hundreds of residents who don't even have a family connection to terrorism - and hardly anyone says a word in protest.
Can we, the Israelis, even begin to imagine what it feels like to have bulldozers suddenly appear in the middle of the night and plow under everything a family has, as they and their children watch? Did the decision makers take into account the hatred they are sowing in the hearts of the children who witnessed the destruction of their homes? And what will become of these wretched people now, people who even before their homes were razed were doomed to a sordid life in one of the poorest of the refugee camps? Where are they going to spend the bitterly cold nights? Israel will have to explain the difference between the violence it is perpetrating and the violence perpetrated by the other side - and, horrifically, it is hard to believe that the Palestinians will succeed in preventing mass terrorist acts in this state of affairs. The next suicide bomber may well emerge from the ruins of the homes in Rafah.
The officers and soldiers who take part in contemptible operations of this kind will no longer be able to wash their hands of guilt and claim they are only following orders. What do they tell their families on the day on which they demolished dozens of tin huts, and what will they tell their children in the future? Analysis / A shameful chapter in Israel's history But the events at a refugee camp near Rafah, where the IDF demolished the home of 58 Palestinian families and left hundreds without a roof over their heads, is destruction itself, an action that reflects shamefully on the IDF and us all. It was an act of undisguised ruthlessness, a military act devoid of humanitarian and diplomatic logic, based on simplistic and overgeneralized operational considerations.
In this dispute, Israel wants to prove to the Palestinians that we will not be subdued by violence. But our actions in Rafah are nothing more than superfluous violence against civilians, among them children and the elderly, which will only serve to encourage revenge attacks by desperate people.
The soldiers killed at the outpost, from the Bedouin desert patrol battalion, were surprised in the attack, but fought bravely and fell fighting. Members of their families made a graveside call for Israel not to respond to the deaths of their sons, and to avoid further bloodshed. But the IDF's feelings of anger and insult were too great to be overcome. The day after the demolition of civilian dwelling places in Rafah, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer hosted the heads of the three coalition parties making up the Japanese government. At the end of the visit, the minister's office issued a statement, which included the following sentence: "The Defense Minister pointed out [to his guests] that `we must do everything to ease the suffering of the wider Palestinian population.'"
This is a slogan that is bandied about by all and sundry. After the demolitions in Rafah, in which hundreds of unarmed civilians were turned into victims, that particular slogan sounds like nothing more than a cynical joke.
Great Blue Heron A couple of days ago I was sitting at my table in front of one of the large windows that look out onto Honeymoon Lake. I was reading William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties when one of these big graceful birds flew across the lake to alight on a tree that had been felled by a beaver some time ago. He hung out for over 30 minutes before flying off.
The State of Louisiana has always been my favourite portion of the Union, although Kentucky and some other States have divided my affections; but as we are on the banks of the fair Ohio, let us pause awhile, good reader, and watch the Heron. In my estimation, few of our waders are more interesting than the birds of this family. Their contours and movements are always graceful, if not elegant. Look on the one that stands near the margin of the pure stream:--see his reflection dipping as it were into the smooth water, the bottom of which it might reach had it not to contend with the numerous boughs of those magnificent trees. How calm, how silent, how grand is the scene! The tread of the tall bird himself no one hears, so carefully does he place his foot on the moist ground, cautiously suspending it for awhile at each step of his progress. Now his golden eye glances over the surrounding objects, in surveying which he takes advantage of the full stretch of his graceful neck. Satisfied that no danger is near, he lays his head on his shoulders, allows the feathers of his breast to droop, and patiently awaits the approach of his finned prey. You might imagine what you see to be the statue of a bird, so motionless is it. But now, he moves; he has taken a silent step, and with great care be advances; slowly does he raise his head from his shoulders, and now, what a sudden start! his formidable bill has transfixed a perch, which he beats to death on the ground. See with what difficulty be gulps it down his capacious throat! and now his broad wings open, and away be slowly flies to another station, or perhaps to avoid his unwelcome observers. Picture and text by John James Audubon There are a number of these birds on Whidbey Island and we seem to have a pair nearby. They are about four feet high with a five foot wingspan. They only weigh about five pounds. They will fly across the lake, flapping and gliding, only about three feet off the water. Beautiful!
Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias
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