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Archives
Green Eggs and Ham It's Dr. Seuss' birthday! Happy Birthday Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Hop on Pop...
Bad Hair Day
TUGBOAT thanks to Doc Searls
Hot New Computer How to fry an egg using an Athlon XP1500+
Someone with obviously too much time on their hands, and a gourmet bent, has worked out how you can fry an egg using an Athlon XP1500+ CPU. thanks to DANGEROUSMETA! Pictures...
Israel/Palestine Sharon has escalated, again, with the attacks on the refugee camps. He thinks this will root out the terrorists. He is only making more Palistinians realize that Israel doesn't want peace, which only means more retaliation by the Palistinians. Israeli resistance to Sharon's war is growing. New Raids Bring Palestinian Peace Supporter Full Circle Focus / 'Until it's over, or we're told to leave'
Gunmen impatient for Israeli withdrawal Seeds of Dissent Take Root in Israeli Army as Reservists Sign Protest Statement Disapproval of Sharon soars above 50%
Language Language memory 1: the mind's ear Part of working memory is what I call the "mind's ear." This is a staging area for words we will speak or write and a way of accumulating words we hear or read. The mind's ear uses the parts of the brain that control speaking muscles, but it does not activate those muscles until we want it to.
When we are getting ready to speak, we rehearse the words in the mind's ear--much faster than actual speech unless we slow it down to check features such as intonation and rhythm. When we hear someone speak, the words go into our mind's ear and hang around until they are dissolved into meaning (or not) and replaced by more words. thanks to MorfaBlog
Nuclear Madness
Cancer linked to cold war bomb tests A US government study says that the fallout from cold war nuclear tests carried out by the US, Britain, France and the Soviet Union has caused the death of an estimated 15,000 Americans. The study was conducted by the National Cancer Institute and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, but its publication has been delayed by the US government. However, excerpts of the report were obtained by Tom Harkin, Democratic senator for Iowa, and have been published on a website run by a watchdog group, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (www.ieer.org).
The study estimates that an estimated 80,000 people who lived or who were born in the US in the past 50 years have contracted or will contract cancer as a result of American nuclear tests conducted in Nevada and the Pacific ocean, Soviet tests in Kazakhstan and eastern Russia, French tests in the Pacific and British tests on Christmas Island. thanks to also not found in nature A PDF file of the report...
Style
Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?
My primary fashion rule is Never Change. That said, things change. While I like to think I'm beyond the reach of trends, I'm still susceptible to embarrassing, rashlike phases set in motion by sudden sparks of optimism. It's a dangerous sentiment for someone with my track record, and though I try my best to beat it down, it often gets the better of me. In hopes of avoiding needless future humiliation, I've arranged some of my more glaring mistakes into short lessons I try to review whenever buying anything new. thanks to Doc Searls
War Against Some Terrorists U.S. Broadens Terror Fight, Readying Troops for Yemen
President Bush has approved plans to send as many as 100 troops to Yemen to help train that nation's military to fight terrorists, senior administration officials said today. Asked what kind of equipment Yemen was seeking, the ambassador said: "We are asking the U.S. to assist us in any way they can. We're in need of everything, anything. You name it, we want it."
A senior administration official said the type of equipment being discussed included helicopters, night-vision goggles and other kinds of sensors, and small arms. Sounds more like a way to sell weapons for the defense industry. And then there is the oil thing...
U.S. presence in Georgia U.S. intervention in the former Soviet republic of Georgia is not so much to fight terrorists but to establish a "firm foothold" in the Caucasus region in order to protect its access to the vast oil reserves of the Caucasus and Central Asia, according to official Russian sources.
The action "may lead to unpredictable consequences" and "may involve costs both material and political," Moscow said, characterizing reports of the U.S. military presence in Georgia as "shocking news." thanks to American Samizdat J'ACCUSE ENCORE: BUSH'S DEATH SQUADS
Today, The Washington Post ran the fifth segment in its series on what transpired within the Bush Cabinet in the aftermath of September 11. Of particular interest is what CIA Director George Tenet brought to the table at Camp David last September 15. According to the article by Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, when Tenet produced a Top Secret "Worldwide Attack Matrix" that specified targets in 80 countries around the world, he sought unprecedented authority to simply assassinate foreign terrorists directly or though allied intelligence services. The CIA even prepared a "Memorandum of Notification" which would allow the agency to have virtual carte blanche to conduct political assasinations abroad. This Memorandum trumped previous mechanisms by which the President would authorize intelligence actions (but not assassinations) through individual Presidential Findings. The fail safe mechanisms established under the administrations of Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton were simply erased at the urging of Tenet. In light of these revelations, what was authorized by the President may have led to the assassinations of a number of human rights and ethnic leaders not connected in any way with Al Qaeda but did represent bothersome roadblocks to a number of U.S. military and corporate interests. thanks to American Samizdat
Elvis MorfaBlog continues to raise this question...
Environment Global Alarm Bells Ring as Signs of El Nino Mount Nations worldwide are bracing for climatic havoc again in 2002 just five years after a devastating El Nino weather pattern engulfed the globe, killing more than 20,000 people and wreaking some $34 billion in damage. In recent weeks, the world's top meteorological centers have said that the odds are shortening for a recurrence of El Nino, where unusual warming of Pacific waters off South America triggers far-flung drought, ice storms, floods and fires.
Forecasters at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) kicked off the new year saying El Nino would likely return in spring though its intensity was unclear. thanks to DANGEROUSMETA! According to my calculations, my work space occupies only a few square inches of office floor. You may find this implausible, but I'm using a well-accepted methodology. Well accepted, that is, among supporters of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Last week Interior Secretary Gale Norton repeated the standard response to concerns about extensive oil development in one of America's last wild places: "The impact will be limited to just 2,000 out of 1.9 million acres of the refuge." That number comes from the House version of the Bush-Cheney energy plan, which promises that "surface acreage covered by production and support facilities" will not exceed 2,000 acres. It's a reassuring picture: a tiny enclave of development, practically lost in the Arctic vastness. But that picture is a fraud. Development won't be limited to a small enclave: according to the U.S. Geological Survey, oil in ANWR is scattered in many separate pools, so drilling rigs would be spread all across the coastal plain. The roads linking those rigs aren't part of the 2,000 acres: they're not "production and support facilities." And "surface acreage covered" is very narrowly defined: if a pipeline snakes across the terrain on a series of posts, only the ground on which those posts rest counts; bare ground under the pipeline isn't considered "covered."
Now you see how I work in such a small space. By those definitions, my "impact" is limited to floor areas that literally have stuff resting on them: the bottoms of the legs on my desk and chair, and the soles of my shoes. The rest of my office floor is pristine wilderness. thanks to SmirkingChimp.com
Nuclear waste on your bumper
Putting the nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain is Nevada's problem. Getting it there is ours. There are 131 nuclear plants dotted around the nation, not to mention assorted military facilities, where the really, really bad stuff is stored. So we're taking a 131-plus-point problem and making it a several-hundred-thousand-point problem. They're going to put the really, really bad stuff into trucks and railroad cars, and send it all to Yucca -- so if you're anywhere between a nuclear power plant and Nevada, you have a problem.
Bush's "best science" campaign promise was pathetic, in retrospect. Yucca Mountain is in an earthquake zone and leaks. Among those who question its desirability as a repository site are the General Accounting Office, Bechtel, SAIC, the Department of Energy contractor on the site, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and Radioactive Waste Management Associates. (For details, see the website of the Safe Energy Communication Council.)
thanks to SmirkingChimp.com
Food
Fresh Wasabi is a highly prized culinary ingredient used mainly in elite restaurants and sushi bars in Japan. The demand for fresh Wasabi consistently exceeds the supply. So called 'Wasabi' paste is also popular in North American and Japanese restaurants and sushi bars, but what is distributed as Wasabi paste or powder is mostly an imitation product based on horseradish, Chinese mustard and food colouring.
The wasabi plant (Wasabia japonica, also incorrectly equated to Eutrema japonica), a member of the cruciferous family, is native to Japan and is traditionally found growing in or by cold mountain streams. The earliest cultivation of wasabi in Japan dates back to the 10th century. The grated 'rhizome' or above-ground root-like stem of this plant has a fiery hot flavor that quickly dissipates in the mouth, leaving a lingering sweet taste, with no burning sensation. thanks to follow me here... The heartbreak! I've been eating a pale imitation all this time. I need the *real* thing. But where?
Israel/Palestine
Israeli Forces Storm Into 2 Palestinian Refugee Camps Backed by tanks and helicopters, Israeli forces waged a major, risky assault on two Palestinian refugee camps Thursday, conducting house-to- house searches and battling gunmen who vowed to fight to the death.
The mission to break Palestinian militant strongholds marked the first time in years that Israel had invaded a refugee camp, and it triggered some of the fiercest combat yet in 17 months of conflict. Typical Sharon. As soon as the Palestinians and Arabs start talking peace, with an actual plan, Sharon escalates the violence to an even higher level. The Israelis complain that the schools in Palestine are teaching the children to hate Jews. The Israelis should clean up their own racism before complaining about others. Israeli Textbooks and Children’s Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and Arabs
Israeli school textbooks as well as children’s storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as “murderers,” “rioters,” “suspicious,” and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks. thanks to Shou?
Movie and Music Bloodsuckers
Intel backs consumers over Hollywood
Does the technology industry need Hollywood's permission to innovate? Hollywood says yes. The tech industry, at long last, is emphatically saying no -- and saying so where it counts, in the halls of power.
The Corporation's Government
Thomas White, the former Enron vice chairman appointed by George W. Bush to be Secretary of the Army, should resign immediately. The case against White is self- evident. Touted as "one of the most outstanding managers in corporate America" by Enron's favorite senator, Phil Gramm, he was named Army Secretary, promising to bring "sound business practices" to the Pentagon. But White's entire business experience was at Enron, where he participated directly in the lies and mismanagement that resulted in its bankruptcy and the betrayal of investors and employees. Enron's business practices generally, and White's in particular, are the last thing that should be inflicted upon the Department of the Army. thanks to Red Rock Eater Digest
THE GREAT FLORIDA EX-CON GAME
In November the U.S. media, lost in patriotic reverie, dressed up the Florida recount as a victory for President Bush. But however one reads the ballots, Bush's win would certainly have been jeopardized had not some Floridians been barred from casting ballots at all. Between May 1999 and Election Day 2000, two Florida secretaries of state - Sandra Mortham and Katherine Harris, both protégées of Governor Jeb Bush- ordered 57,700 "ex- felons," who are prohibited from voting by state law, to be removed from voter rolls. (In the thirty-five states where former felons can vote, roughly 90 percent vote Democratic.) A portion of the list, which was compiled for Florida by DBT Online, can be seen for the first time here; DBT, a company now owned by ChoicePoint of Atlanta, was paid $4.3 million for its work, replacing a firm that charged $5,700 per year for the same service. If the hope was that DBT would enable Florida to exclude more voters, then the state appears to have spent its money wisely. thanks to Red Rock Eater Digest
Bush backs pension privatization
President Bush yesterday restated his support for partly privatizing the Social Security system, despite concerns the stock market's fall and Enron's bankruptcy have raised about protecting retirement savings. thanks to SmirkingChimp.com
CLOSED DISINFORMATION AGENCY Following Tuesday's announcement that the Pentagon had closed the controversial Office of Strategic Influence, which allegedly was created to spread false information abroad, the agency said it has been unable to convince OSI employees to stop reporting for work. "We got ya, sir, we're 'closed'," said a winking Major Chad Brumley when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found him at his desk again today. "There is no one here spreading misinformation now, and certainly there won't be anyone here spreading misinformation daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sir."
"How was that?" the major added in a whisper.
The War Against Some Terrorists Strange Victory: A critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan war America's recent experiences on the battlefield may give it greater confidence in war. But there is more to be concerned about down this road than just Vietnam-style "quagmires". The experience of the First World War is suggestive. The interlocking military pacts, minor wars, colonial competitions, multiple interventions, and arms races that preceded the First World War constituted a different type of quagmire: a self-constituting or emergent one. This quagmire had no discernible boundary. It developed almost imperceptibly before reaching a catastrophe point and then suddenly engulfing its participants. The precipitating incident was an act of state-supported terrorism involving Serbia and Austria-Hungary that drew 15 more nations into war. The resulting disaster, which claimed 15 million lives, had been forty years in the making. And every step of the journey, except the last ones, seemed manageable to the nations that were taking them. Although they walked confidently, they could have no real appreciation of the cumulative interactive effects of their military initiatives.89 These were shrouded in uncertainty -- what might be called the "fog of peace".
The example of the First World War suggests that it is not enough that nations be careful where they walk in the world -- as the United States did following its Vietnam debacle. It is also necessary that nations take care how they walk in the world. This poses a daunting challenge to national leadership, which must practice restraint even when the field of action appears clear. And meeting this challenge will never be more difficult than when a nation finds itself in hot pursuit of the devil. thanks to Red Rock Eater Digest There is shorter version of this for you executives out there.
Mariners All games at 1:05 p.m., Mountain Standard Time, unless indicated FEB. 28 Padres at Mariners Let the games begin!
Art Soviet Children's Picture Books from the Twenties and Thirties
 thanks to Acme Books
 thanks to wood s lot Robby—Monday you were looking at the Saul Steinberg book and wondering if it was...
Black History Month the true story of Benjamin Banneker the first African-American inventor thanks to Dumbmonkey
Beyond Categorization Mr. Reg Mellor, the "king of ferret-legging," paced across his tiny Yorkshire miner's cottage as he explained the rules of the English sport that he has come to dominate rather late in life. "Ay lad," said the 72-year-old champion, "no jockstraps allowed. No underpants--nothin' whatever. And it's no good with tight trousers, mind ye. Little bahstards have to be able to move around inside there from ankle to ankle." Some 11 years ago I first heard of the strange pastime called ferret-legging, and for a decade since then I have sought a publication possessed of sufficient intelligence and vision to allow me to travel to northern England in search of the fabled players of the game.
Basically the contest involves the tying of a competitor's trousers at the ankles and the subsequent insertion into those trousers of a couple of peculiarly vicious fur-coated, footlong carnivores called ferrets. The brave contestant's belt is then pulled tight, and he proceeds to stand there in front of the judges as long as he can, while animals with claws like hypodermic needles and teeth like number 16 carpet tacks try their damndest to get out. thanks to Thumbmonkey
Cultural Icon thanks to DANGEROUSMETA! I saw Forbidden Planet when I was a kid and I thought Robby the Robot was so cool!
Music Music Fans Must Rebel Against Greedy Record Industry What happens when an industry mistreats its customers and its suppliers? When 8,999 of 9,000 audits show shoddy accounting practices? When a core business is bungled and the marketplace shrugs and moves on? When scandals and greed lead to massive layoffs and massive disgust?
I'm not talking about Enron. I'm talking about the record industry.
Prisons American Gulag: Petty criminals doing hard time
The United States has achieved the dubious honor of boasting the largest prison and jail population on Earth. It reached this zenith by surpassing cash- strapped Russia -- long its only rival as a society of mass imprisonment -- after Russia released thousands of inmates so as to save money.
Surviving Prison in Nevada
Living in a prison outside of Carson City for three years, Jimmy Lerner gradually learned to block out the whimpering cries of raped teenagers, the buckshot blasts of prison shotguns and the ever-present sense of danger behind bars--emanating from both fellow convicts and prison guards. both thanks to The Liberal Arts Mafia
Cymru / Wales Nick Davies, from MorfaBlog, sent me the following link to more information about Wales...er, Cymru. A century of political and social campaigning in Wales Also found at MorfaBlog: And don't miss the interview with Pete Fowler himself. Pete Fowler - arlunydd, bwystfilwr a rhyngwladwr
Meddyliwch, os wnewch chi, am soffa oren wedi ei osod yn anghydweddol ar y traeth ar anial o ynys. Mae palmwydd yn siglo yn addfwyn yn ar awel, mae cymylau gwlân cotwm pinc yn sgwlio drwy'r awyr clir, mae mab Radiator (hanner anifail, hanner CD player) yn dod â diodydd draw i ddyn tenau'n gwisgo het oren sy'n cysgodi'n hollol llygaid sydd eisioes wedi eu cuddio tu ôl sbectol, a merch gyda gwallt dy sy'n sigriblio nodiadau yn ddiwyd wrth i'r ddau siarad. Mae bwystfilod gyda llygad Cyclops a chwe coes yn ffwdanu yn y cefndir, o dro i dro yn blincio eu amrant fawr dros llygaid lliw castan. Nick isn't resposible for this link but what are we to think? Screen Legend's Origin Shocks Hollywood
His name is synonymous with the image of the rugged American man. He has become a cinema legend. He is quite simply, John Wayne. However following hours of painstaking research I can reveal that the image hides a quite shocking truth - John Wayne was Welsh.
Oh, yes—Nick said that "Morfa = seaplace. It's where I live."
War Against Some Terrorists
U.S. Begins Anti-Terror Assistance In Georgia
The Pentagon has begun providing combat helicopters to the former Soviet republic of Georgia and will soon begin training several Georgian battalions to counter what defense officials believe is a growing terrorist threat in the country's mountainous Pankisi Gorge region, senior U.S. officials said yesterday. thanks to dak.com I wonder how the Russians feel about our marching into part of the old USSR? Terror prisoners escape military tribunals AMERICA has failed to compile evidence identifying any of the 500 prisoners it is holding from the Afghanistan war as suitable candidates for a military tribunal, the Pentagon conceded yesterday. The admission is a major setback for the United States, which claimed that it had detained senior members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and the Taleban regime.
Despite holding the prisoners for weeks, and in some cases months, interrogators lack enough details to build a case against them that could be put before a specially-convened hearing, the officials said. If the Pentagon can't even get enough evidence to try these people in their kangaroo courts, why the hell are we keeping them? Sorry, I must be having a reality surge. Don't worry—it goes away after awhile.
War Against Frankenfoods
Saskatchewan organic growers make history History was being made on January 10 when two Saskatchewan organic farmers, Larry Hoffman and Dale Beaudoin, filed a class action against Monsanto and Aventis on behalf of all certified organic farmers in Saskatchewan. The class suit seeks compensation for damages caused by Monsanto and Aventis genetically engineered canola, and an injunction to prevent Monsanto from introducing GE Wheat in Saskatchewan.
In a charged press conference atmosphere organic farmer Arnold Taylor, President of the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate (SOD), who is supporting the class action suit, went through the claims against Monsanto and Aventis: GE canola has spread across the Prairies and contaminated conventional crops so extensively that most certified organic grain farmers no longer attempt to grow canola.
The Anti-Drudge thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Wales Saturday I asked the question: "What is it about the Welsh? The English conquered them in the 13th century and they still haven't given up." Nick Davies, at MorfaBlog, answered: "We've still got too much to lose, I suppose." I checked out MorfaBlog. It's in Welsh so I suppose Nick ought to know. I don't read Welsh but it isn't to hard to figure out what he's saying since most of his links are to articles written in English. All the following are MorfaBlog links. What is it about this little country that is 60 miles wide and 160 miles long. Or is it a country? Like I pointed out, the English conquered it in the 13th century. It never had a modern government other than the one in London. Or is it something other than governments and armys that make a country? How do the Welsh feel about Wales and England? Check out this little Flash map. Welcome to our Flash-tastic Interactive Map of South Wales! v1 I wonder what the deal is with Swansea? Here is an article that covers Wales' first steps to self-rule.
Ambivalent Autonomy An old joke about God and the first Welshmen has God saying, "I've got good news and bad news. I'm going to give you soaring mountains with thick green flanks, perfect for grazing sheep; I'll give you beaches and coves and gorse-grown headlands above a plentiful sea; I'll give you rolling hills and valleys beneath which you'll find rich minerals. Your land will be one of the most beautiful on earth." "Great!" the first Welshmen reply. "What's the bad news?"
"Wait until you see your neighbors." A couple of articles on Welsh musicians. I didn't know that John Cale, of the Velvet Underground, was Welsh. Yet both bands have found a way to incorporate their national heritage into their music; both have recorded in Welsh, and often return to the language as a badge of pride as well as willful display of stubborn eccentricity and obscurantism. In a sense, the music they make is as much a part of their particular location as the Velvet Underground were to their own. The isolation of Wales mirrors the isolation of New York’s outsider scene of the late ’60s, enabling artists to gleefully make music free from the constraints of expectation. Whether in his writing or in his music (like the Dylan Thomas tribute Words for the Dying), Cale regularly returns to Wales as a source of energy and inspiration. There must be, as the saying goes, something in the water.
One assumes that the Super Furry Animals and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci find their homeland as magical as Cale does. Paired together, the two groups represent the same extreme dualities that Cale brought to the Velvet Underground, teamed to create something fresh and exciting. Both bands wield the element of surprise like an instrument, and while it’s doubtful we’ll be listening to archival live sets from either outfit in 30 years, there’s no question that they make for an invigorating now.
A new book claims that Elvis Presley's roots lay not in the American Deep South but in the Welsh valleys. It seems that language is part of what makes Wales Welsh. Nick has several links to articles on language. Languages do predispose people to think in certain ways. A language like Welsh could be part what keeps the Welsh Welsh. Debate opens anew on language and its effect on cognition
At a major scientific conference in Boston opening today, a half-dozen specialists in the resurgent field will debate the role of language in shaping the way people think about basic concepts such as space and time. A growing body of research suggests simple quirks of language - such as the lack of a word for left or right - can fundamentally alter the way people perceive the world around them.
TALKING HEADS
Since the 1960s, it has been part of the popular lore that the left brain is cold, rational, and analytic, while the right brain is intuitive, impulsive, and holistic. Silly as such dichotomies might be, it does seem likely that the left hemisphere is the more expert and automatic when it comes to language–a probability that imbalanced bilinguals, condemned to talk out of the right side of their brain, can only rue. We can’t all be like George Steiner, who claims to experience English, French, and German as "perfectly equivalent centers of myself." Nor can we hope to emulate the great linguist and polyglot Roman Jakobson who, owing to his heavy accent, was reputed to speak seven languages, all of them Russian. Now, Welsh is not Japanese but this gives you an idea of how a different language creates different cultural values. Or as Marshal Macluhan said, "We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us." So You Want To Learn Japanese.
Japanese grammer is not for the faint of heart or weak of mind. What's more, the Japanese also do not have any words for "me", "them", "him, or "her" that anyone could use without being incredibly insulting (the Japanese word for "you", for example, when written in kanji, translates to"I hope a monkey scratches your face off"). Because of this, the sentence "He just killed her!" and "I just killed her!" sound exactly the same, meaning that most people in Japan have no idea what is going on around them at any given moment. You are supposed to figure these things out from the "context", which is a German word meaning "you're screwed". Or maybe is just a sense of place that makes Wales Wales. This last link is a RealAudio link from a regular Internet webcast that I do from my living room. The show we do is called TestingTesting. It is primarily a music show but we do have some spoken word on it. This piece is from one of our regulars—Barton Cole. He is reading a Dylan Thomas poem about Thomas' childhood in Wales.
I will be going back to MorfaBlog for more clues. I wonder what Morfa means?
Hiroshima The nuclear fire that destroyed Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, is still burning. A Japanese man named Tatsuo Yamamato collected embers from the wreckage after the United States dropped the atom bomb at the end of World War II. From those embers, the story goes, he and his grandmother fanned a flame and tended it for years in the family's Buddhist altar. In 1968, the fire was used to start the Peace Monument Flame in Hoshino, Japan.
Carried by peace activists in the 2002 Hiroshima Flame Interfaith Pilgrimage, a flame from that fire has crossed the Pacific and is now making a trek from Seattle to New York City, according to an Internet site dedicated to the pilgrimage. It will pass through Los Alamos and White Rock today and then on to local pueblos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque later this week. thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
War Against Some Terrorists The Intensification of Global Instability
With the outbreak of civil war in Colombia, another country has fallen deeper into the ranks of the unstable. This has been a week of destabilizations. Iran appears to be moving toward internal crisis, Venezuela's political problems are deepening and conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is entering a new era. This troubling spread of instability is rooted in the current structure of the international system. As the world's only superpower, the United States' inevitable obsession with al Qaeda has contributed to this process of destabilization. thanks to Cursor It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World thanks to MorfaBlog
CHENEY DENIES PUBLIC REEMERGENCE MEANS BUSH THINKS HE'S EXPENDABLE
Vice President Dick Cheney, kept in seclusion for nearly six months to ensure his safety, insisted today his emergence back into public view does not mean the administration thinks it's all right if he dies now.
Israel/Palestine Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has made a peace proposal that has everyone's attention. Even Sharon is paying lip service to it. Sharon's supporters on the right will never agree to it. It would mean dismantling the settlements which could bring about a civil war within Israel. There is a long way to go to get from Abdullah's plan to a peace agreement. Analysis / Abdullah's proposal takes everyone by surprise The peace initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has breathed new life into Middle Eastern diplomacy which has been dormant for the last year. Instead of another plan for a cease-fire and for security arrangements on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the plan places the issue of a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict back on the agenda.
Abdullah succeeded in surprising the key players in the diplomatic arena with his proposal, which he outlined to The New York Times correspondent Tom Friedman, and which includes recognition of Israel and full normalization of ties with the Arab world in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from the territories. Solana: Sharon willing to discuss peace proposal with Saudis European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Tuesday after talks with Ariel Sharon that the prime minister was interested in the Saudi peace initiative and was prepared to discuss it with Saudi officials.
Sharon "considers it an interesting idea and he would like to know more about the content and he would be ready to meet anybody from Saudi Arabia, formally, informally, publicly, discreetly, whatever, to get better information about this initiative," Solana told reporters. Analysis / Nice idea but not a plan The faster the initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah gathers momentum, so grow the doubts about the substantive questions that his proposal does not answer. On the positive side, the initiative opens a horizon that Israel has always sought: not only recognition of its existence and right to live in peace - as the Fahd plan proposed in 1981 - but full normalization. That is a strategic change in the Arab line and a new foundation in the official Arab position - if the initiative is approved by the Arab League summit in Beirut next month.
On the other hand, the initiative needs some more clarification, especially from other Arab countries. For example, it refers to Israel withdrawing from all the occupied territory, but makes no mention of the refugees. Without some form of solution to the refugee problem, Lebanon won't be able to accept the initiative because Beirut's main interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is how to get rid of 300,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. And if Lebanon doesn't accept the initiative, Syria will not be able to accept it, so it will have a hard time getting through a summit where unanimity is required.
War Against Some Drugs This Is American History On Drugs "The point isn't that if you buy a joint, you're automatically supporting terrorism," an ONDCP [Office of National Drug Control Policy] official told me. "The point is that you know where the money is going."
Well, okay. But I have a suspicion that if I buy a joint, my money will be going to a guy who scored some righteous bud a while back and now grows it using lamps in his basement. The illicit cash I give him will probably help fund sinister activities like paying rent (the one drug dealer I knew well in high school used his ill-gotten earnings to fuel a very ugly blue pickup truck) or buying mad stereo equipment. So although I don't know where my money goes, I have a decent idea. On the other hand, I really haven't a clue as to where most of my tax money goes, and if I decide to ask about some of its more interesting uses, my government's first inclination is usually to tell me to buzz off. But the world is full of people more persistent than me, and some of them have lawyers. As a result, I can now peruse a veritable bounty of declassified documents, and many of them indicate that a fair portion of my tax payment ends up with drug runners and terrorists. So I wouldn't be opposed at all if the ONDCP opened put a new web page called "Drugs and Your Government: A Blowback Story." The drug war is paralyzed by an absurd schizophrenia--the purpose of our domestic policy is the mitigation of our foreign one. thanks to wood s lot
Music thanks to MorfaBlog
TestingTesting Last night's show with Steve Jordan is archived with pictures. Enjoy.
TestingTesting That's about it for blogging today. In less than four hours (7pm (pacific)) I will be webcasting TestingTesting #124. It's a music show that I, with more than a little help form my friends, do from my living room. Tonight we have singer/songwriter Steve Jordan along with the TestingTesting House Band (Derek, Steve, and Joanne) and Barton Cole with his Commentary From The Wires. The web site and sound board are set up and ready to go. Now I need to clean up the living room. Click on in tonight for some great music. You can enter comments on our guest book, during the show, that I will read to the performers. Be part of the show.
Israel/Palestine The killing, on both sides, continues. The Israeli government is taking the approach that the reason that what they are doing isn't working is that they aren't doing it hard enough. The Arabs are the ones with a solution that looks like it might work. Background / Saudi plan impossible for Israel to ignore Reducing an ineffably complex conflict to one simple equation, a Saudi prince has managed what no one else has done, drawing the bottom line of Mideast strife, and in the process, forcing Israel to confront peace terms it has quietly feared for decades. Unclear if they are facing one more desert mirage, or alternatively a shockingly simple way out of the diplomatic wilderness, Israeli leaders have warily welcomed Crown Prince Abdullah's surprise peace initiative, whose wildfire resonance across the Arab world has made it impossible for the Jewish state to ignore.
To the discreet horror of rightists, the plan offers what Israel has historically most dearly sought, in exchange for what hawks have traditionally been most adamantly opposed to surrendering: full recognition and normalization of ties with the entire Arab world at the price of return to the bare-bones borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day war. Luckily, the plan is not feasible The settlers and their supporters, so terrified at the possibility that Ariel Sharon's security buffer plan would leave them outside the fence, have nothing to worry about. The extravagant plan, according to which dozens of kilometers of walls and fences would be built, electronic gizmos installed, mine fields laid, dogs positioned and battalions of soldiers and policemen stationed - will never be carried out. The public likes ideas that create the illusion that Palestinians are invisible. Yitzhak Rabin's popular 1992 election slogan was "To get Gaza out of Tel Aviv," and Ehud Barak's similar slogan was "We are here and they are there." The State of Israel has invested millions of shekels in the territories to create a separation between the settlers and the Arabs, building special roads just for Jews - which have now turned into death traps because they make it so easy for terrorists to zero in on Israeli cars.
Sharon's security buffer plan, like similar separation plans in the past, is more Israeli wishful thinking (especially because these programs do not involve the uprooting of the settlements) than anything else. The West Bank and Gaza Strip are not Lebanon, Egypt or Jordan. In the territories that were occupied in 1967, over 200,000 Jews live in the West Bank and Gaza and some 250,000 in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. And on the other side, a million or more Arabs live within sovereign Israel as citizens, while over 200,000 are non-citizens in East Jerusalem. These two national groups are intertwined, and while separation between them may be theoretically possible, hardly anyone in the country would be willing to pay the price. The reality is that the Israeli Right doesn't want peace. They want the Palestinians gone from Gaza and the West Bank by whatever means. That's the whole idea of the settlements. However, the Saudi plan is exactly what the Israeli left has wanted. The question is can Israel hold together with those extremes in it's society? Which will prevail?
Blogs There has been a lot of blogging about blogging lately. This is a good one except for a few right wing comments that can be overlooked.
A Blogger Manifesto thanks to Scripting News
Intellectual Property A long article on intellectual property and copyrights by Lessig. This is a must read if the subject interests you.
Control & Creativity Though I don’t (yet) believe this view of America Online, it is the most cynical image of Time Warner’s marriage to AOL: the forging of an estate of large-scale networks with power over users to an estate dedicated to almost perfect control over content, through intellectual property and other government-granted exclusive rights. The promise of many-to-many communication that defined the early Internet will be replaced by a reality of many, many ways to buy things and many, many ways to select among what is offered. What gets offered will be just what fits within the current model of the concentrated systems of distribution. Cable television on speed, addicting a much more manageable, malleable and sellable public.
The future that we could have is much harder to describe. It is harder because the very premise of the Internet is that no one can predict how it will develop. The architects who crafted the first protocols of the Net had no sense of a world where grandparents would use computers to keep in touch with their grandkids. They had no idea of a technology where every song imaginable is available within thirty seconds’ reach. The World Wide Web was the fantasy of a few MIT computer scientists. The perpetual tracking of preferences that allows a computer in Washington state to suggest an artist I might like because of a book I just purchased was an idea that no one had made famous before the Internet made it real. thanks to also not found in nature
War Against Some Drugs
Two countries took the drugs test. Who passed? On the busy road which skirts Hoog Catherijne, a vast indoor shopping mall, the Stationsplein centre in downtown Utrecht looks like some kind of clinic. The walls are tiled, the floor is bright linoleum. There's a neat reception area and, four days a week, a nurse. Stationsplein's main business happens in a row of glass-fronted rooms, equipped with benches and sinks. In one of them crack addicts suck vapours from makeshift pipes; in another, heroin smokers chase the dragon. A final space is reserved for injectors. It goes without saying that their state-provided needles are clean.
Last week in Britain, some commentators were endorsing calls from the newly ennobled former New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, to jail cannabis smokers , and vilifying Brian Paddick, police commander of Lambeth, for telling an internet forum that the drug laws need reform. To arrive in Holland's fourth largest city is to cross a cultural chasm. First there is the obvious: like most Dutch towns, Utrecht, population 300,000, has its coffee shops, 40 of them, each selling dozens of brands of cannabis to smoke at the tables or take away. In Holland, ideas considered dangerously radical in Britain attract little controversy. 'There is no war on drugs in the Netherlands,' says Machel Vewer, a senior police detective who has spent the past decade working with addicts. 'What's the point of making war on part of your own country? Drugs are here and they're always going to be. This is a social problem, not a criminal one, and the whole of society has to tackle it - not leave it to the police on their own. thanks to also not found in nature
Corporatism A couple of good links from also not found in nature. Monsanto Held Liable For PCB Dumping An Alabama jury yesterday found that Monsanto Co. engaged in "outrageous" behavior by releasing tons of PCBs into the city of Anniston and covering up its actions for decades, handing 3,500 local residents a huge victory in a landmark environmental lawsuit. The jury in Gadsden, Ala., a town 20 miles from Anniston, held Monsanto and its corporate successors liable on all six counts it considered: negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass and outrage. Under Alabama law, the rare claim of outrage typically requires conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society."
After a six-week trial on liability, the case now proceeds to a damages phase. Solutia Inc., the corporation formed when Monsanto spun off its chemical division in 1997, has already spent $83 million to settle two other PCB cases in Anniston as well as $40 million on cleanup costs. Shares in Solutia, the lead defendant in the case, plunged 34 percent, to $5.80, after yesterday's verdict. Overall, Solutia share prices have plummeted 59 percent from $14.02 since a Jan. 1 article in The Washington Post revealed Monsanto documents showing that the company routinely dumped PCBs in Anniston and covered up its behavior for more than 40 years. More efficient efforts for Corporate mind control... Penetrating the Mind by Metaphor
Family Breakfast One of those rare times when the entire family gets together at one time. Jenny's fiancé is here on leave from the US Army in Germany. Zoe and I took them, and Robyn, to Mike's Place in Langley for breakfast. We met Katie, Mikey, and Robby there.
 Good food, family, and laughter. It doesn't get much better.
Old Family Pics I spent the evening starting to redo my Family Stuff section and added a page of some old family pictures I've started scanning with my new Epson 2450. Some of the pages in the Family Stuff section go back to 1996 so the navigation is a little flaky in a lot of it. I'm starting to redo it. This is me in 1956.
New Blogs New links on left: American Samizdat, D r. M e n l o, Paul Andrews, Shou?, the bitter shack of resentment, THUMBMONKEY, This Modern World, and Waeguk is not a soup. Go forth and read.
In the Land Before Cineplexes Eulogy for the Northgate: It was where this critic fell in love with the movies
When the Northgate Theatre closed its doors forever after 50 years and five months of service to the North End, it was with a sad little whimper: no public announcement, no media lamentation, no outcries of angry preservationists. It was the prototype of a new kind of suburban movie house that would spring up everywhere in the '50s: not quite a movie palace, but built with a sleek modernistic opulence and on a scale that could accommodate the hordes that would be drawn to a large, outlying shopping mall. Opening its doors in September 1951, it had 1,500 seats (the equivalent of a downtown first-run house), the city's largest staff of ushers (wearing buckskin uniforms, to match the Northwest Indian decor) and what was reputed to be the nation's largest cry-room. I first saw the Northgate the next year. I was 7 years old and had just moved to Seattle from a small town in Arkansas. To get to the theater, my brother and I walked a bucolic trail through apple orchards where North Seattle Community College now stands.
I've never forgotten that amazing first visit. The dramatic Thunderbird logo on the entrance floor. The thrilling vastness of the auditorium. The military efficiency of the platoon of ushers. The movie was "Hans Christian Andersen," starring Danny Kaye.
Art
 thanks to MetaFilter
 thanks to Thumbmonkey
Corporatism Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel are University of Chicago law professors who believe that, when it comes to making profits, nothing -- not even the law -- should stand in the way. (For almost two decades, Easterbrook has also been a federal appeals court judge.) Twenty years ago, writing about antitrust crimes in the Michigan Law Review, Easterbrook and Fischel, then both professors at the University of Chicago, wrote that managers not only may, but should, violate the rules when it is profitable to do so. And it is clear that they believed that this rule should apply beyond just antitrust.
In a nutshell, this is the Chicago School view of corporate law that has taken hold over the past 20 years. thanks to also not found in nature Bush Proposing to Shift Burden of Toxic Cleanups to Taxpayers
Faced with dwindling reserves in the huge account that gave the Superfund waste cleanup program its name, the Bush administration has decided to designate fewer sites for restoration and to shift the bulk of the costs from industry to taxpayers. "The economic function of mass media is driven by advertising," he says. "It's to make sure products are sold and consumed. What happens when you stop looking at mass media as vehicles for the dissemination of ideas, and start looking at them as vehicles for capturing audience attention for advertisers?
"We are still blind to what mass media is really about. Media companies stay in business because they get their money from advertisers and they provide advertisers [with] audience attention." thanks to MetaFilter
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