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Archives
Tom Waits Tom Waits: A Poet of Outcasts Who's Come Inside Sunlight wouldn't seem to be Tom Waits's element. His songs tend to take place in rainy nocturnal realms filled with outcasts and freaks, where his slurred gargle of a voice and his junkyard assortment of sounds won't upset passers-by. Yet there Mr. Waits was on a bucolic northern California afternoon a few weeks ago, lunching on minestrone soup in a small-town restaurant near his home, and talking affably about how he has created and maintained his own peculiar zone — more like a back room or a bunker full of debris — in American music.
"I just try to walk my own path," he said. "You have to believe in yourself and you have to ride out the seasons. Everybody wants it to be summer all the time, in relationships and with their career. And when the weather starts to turn, they think they better get out. So it takes a certain amount of persistence." thanks to random walks ---------- Both Blood Money and Alice are available at Emusic for download as MP3s — for subscribers. They also have Mule Variations.
Masami Teraoka
 Watercolor on canvas. 108" x 81" (274.3cm x 205.7 cm). The social and cultural dramas of today's society motivate me to create paintings. My earlier work focused on my life experiences in America and Japan. More recently I have been inspired to create paintings based on worldwide issues such as sexuality, nudity, erotica, media, religion, privacy, confession, politics, gender, AIDS, race, violence, war, and environmental issues, among other things. My paintings are sometimes humorous or lighthearted, and other times very intense. The saving grace is aesthetic concern--beauty transcends the issues.
Think of my paintings as individual scenes from a drama, play or movie. If my paintings were movies, they might be rated everywhere from G or PG to R to X. Like going to a play, you'll have to decide for yourself if you want to see what is showing. I hope with that in mind, that you will enjoy my art theatre. Thanks for visiting, you are welcome anytime.
Bush Knows Best Bush's Hit List At the United Nations
Quietly, and without the fanfare that accompanies the campaign in the mountains of Afghanistan, the administration has begun a long march through multilateral institutions. At the UN and elsewhere, the U.S. has mounted a campaign to purge international civil servants judged to be out of step with Washington in the war on terrorism and its insistence that the U.S. have the last word in all global governance issues. ----------
Exporting Democracy: The Business Of America Is Getting Into Your Business
Israel/Palestine Don't expect objectivity from me. You see, for the last few weeks I have not had the benefit of the mainstream media to give me a balanced picture of the situation in Palestine. Instead, I have been living in the middle of the events in Bethlehem, witnessing army brutality and civilian misery. While staying at the Al-Azzeh camp, I obviously missed all the terrorists, the anti-Semites and the fanatics that the Israeli army and the BBC see as infesting the refugee camps. It doesn't take a genius to be suspicious of the capitalist media -- anyone who's been on a political action is used to being misrepresented and smeared. But the campaign of lies waged against the people of Palestine beggars belief. Resting on old colonial prejudices and modern Islamophobia and racism, it has the objective of blaming the victims in this conflict; presenting Israel as a democratic state under attack from unreasonable semi-humans. I am not even going to talk about Jenin. I am too angry(...)
It was with recognition of these underlying factors that the Palestinian- led International Solidarity Movement has organised groups of international volunteers. Following on from the December 2001 campaign, this Easter was to see similar work replanting olive trees and dismantling roadblocks -- aiming, in fact, to use non-violent methods of direct action to give the Palestinians a chance to be non-violent themselves. Unfortunately, the Israeli army decided otherwise. Having only pulled out of the Bethlehem area two weeks previously, the APCs (Armoured Personnel Carriers) and tanks rolled in again. In our affinity groups, we decided that our places was to act as observers in the nearby refugee camps, home of the radical and dispossessed, thus a favourite target for Israeli army repression, arrests and random shelling. Sitting in the neatly kept, poverty-stricken, living room of our host family, with the Apache helicopters and robot drones flying overhead, I experienced for a few days the terror that these people live through. Sitting drinking endless cup of tea with young men who know they could be dragged out and shot; staying up all night because sleep is impossible. Times like these were almost enough to turn me from an anarchist into a liberal national reformist. ----------
The solution is the problem No one can seriously doubt that the US role will continue to be decisive. It is crucial to understand what that role has been, and how it is internally perceived. The version of the doves is presented by the editors of the New York Times, praising President Bush's "path-breaking speech" and the "emerging vision" he articulated. Its first element is "ending Palestinian terrorism" immediately. Some time later comes "freezing, then rolling back, Jewish settlements and negotiating new borders" to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. If Palestinian terror ends, Israelis will be encouraged to "take the Arab League's historic offer of full peace and recognition in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal more seriously". But first Palestinian leaders must demonstrate that they are "legitimate diplomatic partners".
The real world has little resemblance to this self-serving portrayal - virtually copied from the 1980s, when the US and Israel were desperately seeking to evade PLO offers of negotiation and political settlement. In the real world, the primary barrier to the "emerging vision" has been, and remains, unilateral US rejectionism. There is little new in the current "Arab League's historic offer". ----------
Our Vichy Congress In March, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma took the Senate floor and said the September 11 attacks were punishment by God in response to U.S. policy toward Israel. Asserting that Israel is "entitled" to the West Bank, he also criticized his fellow citizens who counselled the Israelis to use restraint, in effect blaming them for the terrorist attacks of September 11: "One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them." According to this Tornado-Belt St. Augustine, God in effect allowed airliners to be flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because U.S. actions towards Israel offended the Almighty. In other words, the United States was punished because the Bush administration had been insufficiently worshipful towards Israel (the $3 billion annually that Congress squeezes out of the taxpayer as tribute to the Jewish State is apparently not sufficient in the opinion of this self-styled "fiscal conservative"--and in the opinion of the Almighty Himself, Whose inscrutable will Inhofe claims to be able to interpret). Like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, Inhofe believes America suffered divinely-ordained punishment; but the Senator adds a new twist: those 3,000 innocent Americans died, he believes, because their government demonstrated insufficient obeisance to a foreign country. For sheer treacherous Quislingism, Inhofe's statement is hard to top.
But top it we can.
I have to leave soon but will be back. Richard Evans is on the way to pick me up to be an extra in his movie. One of the reasons I love South Whidbey is the number of artists and eccentrics that are attracted to this island. Richard is one of them. He is a retired actor (he was a regular in the TV Peyton Place as well as being in many movies) and playwright. He has done several off the wall original plays here on the Island. He is now shooting, with video, one of them as a movie — Crime X 2 or A Cheap Dime Novel (Seeing Double). I did a couple of web sites promoting his plays: He is many things but dull is not one of them. Gotta go.
be kind to your local nazi
A Czech anti-racism campaign succeeds with a risky approach: “Be kind to your local Nazi.”
 Visitors to Prague at the end of last year-- especially those who don’t understand Czech--had to be puzzled by the ubiquitous posters showing two skinheads in combat boots, standing in the middle of a bright, green backyard. Using their hands, extended in “heil Hitler” salutes, the young men were holding up a clothesline for an older woman, who was calmly hanging up her wet laundry to dry. “Be kind to your local Nazi,” read the poster, in English, followed by a mysterious message in Czech, which translated, meant: “Do not ignore. Help your local Nazi to find some nice hobby. Show him the way to go before he gets wild.”
Check out the German television commercial that inspired this. It's over 11mb but worth it! thanks to random walks
Mark Twain
When most people imagine Mark Twain they think of a shaggy-maned, white-suited humorist-sage, a picture of him that is popularized even in his childhood home of Hannibal, Missouri. But Mark Twain didn't begin to wear that famous white flannel suit in winter until December 1906, less than four years before he died. What did Sam Clemens the steamboat pilot look like? Or Mark Twain as he was writing Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn?
Self Love Proud proud proud I am to be doing my part on National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Which is today, by the way. Which no one really expected you to remember. Which is just fine because they aren't exactly having a parade or serving drinks or bringing in strippers or anything. Which of course they should. But that's another column. I am doing my part. I have very graciously agreed not to impregnate any teens for the entire week, so far as I know. Not only that, I have officially chosen to serve this worthy cause by sponsoring, on a per-minute basis, some very munificent and warm-hearted "athletes" who are generously donating their time and energy and moist towelettes for a very special marathon, the Masturbate-A-Thon, in celebration of National Masturbation Month.
Oh stop it. You read correctly. I am not making this up. It really is National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and it really is National Masturbation Month and just because the former is a dryly official completely unsexy government thing and the latter is a brilliant annual pro-sex PR event sponsored by Good Vibrations, which donates all the money from the Masturbate-A-Thon to women's health clinics, doesn't mean they aren't beautifully compatible. thanks to wood s lot
Why Things Change
The Tipping Point
It's not that there is any shortage of explanations, then, for what has happened in New York City. It's that there is a puzzling gap between the scale of the demographic and policing changes that are supposed to have affected places like the Seven-Five and, on the other hand, the scale of the decrease in crime there. The size of that gap suggests that violent crime doesn't behave the way we expect it to behave. It suggests that we need a new way of thinking about crime, which is why it may be time to turn to an idea that has begun to attract serious attention in the social sciences: the idea that social problems behave like infectious agents. It may sound odd to talk about the things people do as analogous to the diseases they catch. And yet the idea has all kinds of fascinating implications. What if homicide, which we often casually refer to as an epidemic, actually is an epidemic, and moves through populations the way the flu bug does? Would that explain the rise and sudden decline of homicide in Brooklyn North? thanks to rebecca's pocket This 1996 essay grew into the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, which has been added to my Amazon wish list, which only seems to be getting larger.
 It was a beautiful day today. The picture is this evening after the sun had gone behind the hill. I finally finished cutting up the tree by the lake, Wednesday, that the beaver took down this winter. The grass had been growing up around it. Thursday the lawn mower guy (I traded a web site for lawn mowing) came and mowed everything. This evening two deer walked across the yard from the neighbor's on the right to the empty lot on the left. I hadn't seen them on my lawn before. The walked and paused and walked and paused their way across the lawn. I hadn't realized what big ears deer have. ("The better to hear you with, my dear.") The quail were out this afternoon and there was a red-winged blackbird with that flashy flash of red as he flies. The swallows were out this evening darting around on their nervous hunt for insects. They would fly low over the water and then quickly make a splash and dart up and away. It was a pleasant day in the neighborhood.
Chip Art
Looking inside, Chipworks has found creative expressions on many of the chips that we have examined. Our combined facilities house six (6) optical microscopes that provide us with the magnification required to do our analysis work, as well as to discover the hidden art on some chips.
Japanese wood blocks I am familiar with 19th century Japanese wood block prints but I was unaware of the 20th century wood block artists. Plep has a couple of links to Shin Hanga. The ShinHanga.net site has this article of making wood block prints that blew me away. There was much more to it than I imagined. (There usually is.) "Process of Wood-Cut Printing Explained"
Block 7 But wait! There's more! The above article linked to...
 There are detailed pictures of several prints being made and printed.
Israel/Palestine IDF massing troops near Gaza ahead of retaliatory strike The IDF began massing forces on the border with the Gaza Strip late Wednesday night, in preparation for a retaliatory operation following the suicide bomb attack in Rishon Letzion which killed 15 people.
The army was also reportedly preparing to issue additional emergency call-up orders to reservists. ----------
Witness to Devastation 05/02/02 For the past 19 days, each and every resident of this town and of its twin city of El-Bireh has been under a strict, around-the- clock curfew. This means that anyone moving outdoors who is not an Israeli soldier can and will be shot on sight. Just four (or was it five?) days ago, a young Palestinian woman was shot dead by an Israeli sniper as she went out to hang the laundry-on her balcony. About a week earlier, a woman in her mid-50s was similarly killed the moment she emerged from Ramallah Hospital, where she had a cast removed from her leg. The siege and curfew means there are no busy pupils testing patient teachers in our schools, no pushy customers trying friendly tellers in our stores, no bored employees being harassed by greedy managers in our offices, no frustrated citizens yelling at arrogant bureaucrats in our government buildings, no silent lovers or cackling teenagers in any of our pubs, restaurants or theaters. Life as you and I know it has simply ceased to exist; the city might as well have been hit by a neutron bomb and has been reduced to a ghost town.
Speaking of schools, stores, offices and government buildings and, for that matter, of human-rights organizations, cultural and commercial centers, and private homes-there are substantially fewer of them today than several weeks ago. Some have simply been reduced to rubble by air-to-ground missiles, tank shells, anti-aircraft guns pointed directly at buildings, heavy-caliber machine guns and plastic explosives. Others have only been damaged. Virtually all of them have been plundered and vandalized, their archives and equipment carted off or destroyed. thanks to Dr. Menlo at American Samizdat ----------
The toll of Palestinian children 15 and younger is 151. That's a lot of Little League teams. Many of these children were shot through the head by Israeli snipers who, 200 yards away in armored vests and helmets, apparently feared a rock thrown by a 12-year-old that landed many yards short. I can easily imagine killing people. After all, I was in the Army. I cannot imagine lining up a child's head in the scope of my rifle and squeezing the trigger. But I have a question: If Israel has killed three times as many Palestinians, the bulk of them unarmed civilians and the rest police officers with pistols and rifles, how can it be that Israel is fighting "for its survival"? The prime minister says it is. A lot of cheap American politicians are saying it is. What I want to know is how a few despairing teen-agers with homemade bombs can threaten the survival of a nation that has the strongest military force in the Middle East. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation in a recent story, Israel has the following assets: 134,000 army troops, 32,000 air force, 7,000 navy and 8,000 border police. The reserves are 400,000 for the army, 20,000 for the air force and 5,000 for the navy. In addition, Israel has 440 combat aircraft, 3,900 main battle tanks, 130 helicopters, 9,600 artillery tubes and 100 or more nuclear bombs.
Since the Palestinians have no army, no air force, no navy, no aircraft, no tanks, no helicopters and no nukes, one has to wonder indeed how these defenseless civilians can threaten Israel's existence. Gosh, you don't suppose Israeli and American politicians are lying, do you? Perish the thought. thanks to Cursor ----------
Educating the Palestinians Long before it became popular in the United States and Israel to demand "democratization and changes in the structure of the Palestinian Authority," many Palestinians, from all walks of life, were demanding it, whether in public and private discussions or at demonstrations. Minor Fatah officials, not only well-known critics like Dr. Haider Abed Shafi, have been heard saying that the Israeli occupation cannot be blamed for every domestic wrong. The Palestinians are more frustrated than anyone else that their critical discourse has yet to yield changes in the political system and in the style of government and public administration. Ultimately, they are the ones who experience the universal phenomenon of the over-privileged in government and business doing everything they can to not lose those privileges.
Both in Israel and the United States, people like to forget that domestic Palestinian demands for democracy and transparency were part-and-parcel of domestic Palestinian criticism of the manner of negotiations for a political settlement, and, from the Palestinian perspective, the despairing results of those negotiations. Many Palestinians believe that it was a non-democratic Palestinian government that made it easy for Israel to shape the Oslo process into something different from what the Palestinian public perceived as fulfillment of its national rights. The main focus of that critique is on the expansion of settlements, with the number of settlers nearly doubling during the decade of political negotiations. ---------- Robert Fisk: There is a solution to this filthy war - foreign occupation Ariel Sharon's "peace" plan presented to President Bush in Washington last night – get rid of Arafat, devise a more obedient Palestinian Authority and keep building settlements for Jews and Jews only on Palestinian land – is fantasy. That the Americans should smooth his way by claiming that Arafat's need to reform his authority is more important than a halt to settlement-building – the gormless contribution of Condoleezza Rice, the US National Security Adviser, to this sterile debate – shows just how out of touch the Bush administration is.
Sharon's hopeless attempts to suppress a vicious anti- colonial war are accompanied by all the usual psychological weapons: dishonest attempts to label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, fraudulent assertions that the Israeli army behaves with restraint, mass rallies and continued attempts to portray Palestinians as beast- like, suicidal animals. ---------- Israel's so-called Book of Terror – designed to prove that Yasser Arafat is a master of terror involved in suicide attacks on Israel – is riddled with errors, omissions and deliberate misinformation. The dossier, which was presented to President George Bush by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, characterises Mr Arafat as an evil, scheming warlord funded by Iran and Saudi Arabia. But in some cases, translations of Palestinian documents allegedly seized by Israeli troops in the West Bank have been doctored to "prove" Arafat's responsibility for anti-Israeli attacks. At least one "translation" of a Palestinian document posted on the Israeli army's website is a palpable falsehood.
In reality the documents portray Mr Arafat's military impotence. The papers the Israeli intelligence service have so far produced – assuming that most of them are genuine – paint a vivid, pathetic picture of his loss of power within the Palestinian community over the past 12 months, the suborning of his lieutenants and the gradual recruitment of his men by Hamas and Islamic Jihad opponents.
Hot Tubs
In a Japanese bath, an extra-deep tub is filled to the top with very hot water, in which you sit submerged up to the neck. Most people spend about half an hour in the bath every night. Most children take their baths with their father or mother until they are in the upper grades of elementary school. The family tub is an important place for parent-child communication. thanks to consumptive.org My family lived in Japan in the late 50s courtesy of the US Air Force. I was 12 when we went over and 16 when we moved back to the States and Seattle. Our first house in Japan was off-base. It was there that I was introduced to the Japanese hot tub — the ofuro. The American hot tub is not the same. The ofuro is for bathing — not swimming. Would you take a shower with your swimming suit on? I didn't think so. And I hate all that water swirling around with the noise of the pumps and violent water. I just like to sit there, soaking in still hot water. I would be nice to be looking out on a nice garden too. Peaceful, relaxing.
Off to meetings in Langley this morning. Have you noticed that making coffee in the morning is a bit like operating heavy machinery under the influence of drugs (so I've read)? There is an important sequence of activities that needs to take place and the makers of these coffee machines expect you to do this before achieving full awareness — which takes coffee. I made myself a nice pot of hot water this morning. At least I remembered the water.
Muddle America
Remember how hard New York's elected representatives had to fight to get $20 billion in aid for the stricken city — aid that had already been promised? Well, recently Congress agreed to give farmers $180 billion in subsidies over the next decade. By the way, the population of New York City is about twice as large as America's total farm population. thanks to Ethel the Blog
Steam We take for granted the compact size of our modern engines. Low horsepower engines used to be *much* larger. Steam Engines of the Eighteenth Century
In 1974 I started a project which was to occupy all my spare time for the following 26 years. I have researched and constructed in miniature all the important steam engines which were built in the 18th century. thanks to plep
Urban Skills
The main reason we use locks everywhere is that they provide us with a sense of security. But in movies and on television, spies, detectives and burglars can open a lock very easily, sometimes using only a couple of paper clips. This is a sobering thought, to say the least: Is it really possible for someone to open a lock so easily? thanks to plep
White House
Attention American Citizens! You stand hereby directed to prove your patriotism by printing out hundreds of the wartime morale posters below, and distributing them widely throughout your community! thanks to Ethel the Blog This is from the ever amazing White House, which I need to read more.
Operation Infinite Purity
TestingTesting I have the archive of Monday's TestingTesting up. Good show!
TestingTesting Tonight is TestingTesting, which is the Internet webcast that I do from my living room. The day of the show is spent getting ready so not much in the way of links today but I thought I would leave you with a couple of snaps. It was raining this morning and then I noticed it suddenly seemed brighter. I went out on my porch and saw this:
 This is taken looking in the same direction at a different time.
 Have a good time and click on into TestingTesting tonight.
Graphic Arts
Here are some examples of the type of posters, adverts and cartoons that plastered Britain during the Second World War at the time that 'Goodnight Sweetheart' was set. thanks to reenhead.com
Israel/Palestine
Letter From Israel "Precisely a year ago, President Moshe Katzav suggested building a separation fence to stop suicide bombers. The Prime Minister ignored him. In December 2001, the Head of the Shin Bet warned: 'a physical barrier is a security must.' The Prime Minister ignored him. Ever since, 205 Israeli citizens have been killed and 1.666 injured in terrorist attacks inside the Green Line. The Prime Minister ignored it." A subtitle reads: "The Prime Minister's Office admits: the fence is not built because of 'political aspects'." And the former Chief of Israeli Police, Asaf Chefetz, spells it out: "Separation will destroy the concept Sharon has been employing all his life. He cannot set a fence after he spread the settlements in a way that makes it impossible to separate them from the rest of the country."
Yedioth Achronot also quotes experts estimating the costs of a fence along the 263 km of the Green Line. The most expensive version, with a double fence, a wide patrol road, projectors, electronic detection equipment and cameras, should cost about one hundred million dollars. The direct military costs of "Operation Defence Shield" have already exceeded six times this amount. Not counting indirect economic damage, not counting human lives lost on both sides, not counting the millions of damage inflicted on the Palestinians, not counting future hatred. ----------
A mission too far Dear Ben Eliezer
I must put in writing the reasons that have led me to one of the most difficult decisions of my life - to refuse the call for reserve duty in the areas of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and the Gaza Strip. ---------- The danger of seeing Netzarim as Tel Aviv
This is a most difficult period for the state of Israel and its supporters. While Israel is trying to do its best to preserve its international stature, an unprecedented and extraordinarily efficient campaign of delegitimization is being conducted against the state. Furthermore, it is being conducted by spokespeople for the Israeli right, from the prime minister down to the last settler.
sculpture
Welcome to Sand Castle Central - your on-line source for all things sand sculpture, including free tips for beginners, information on the best sand carving tools, updated contest and master sculptor information, related links and lots of photos. thanks to reenhead.com
Environment Dry High Plains Are Blowing Away, Again
The soil is on the move again in the High Plains, drifting over a swath of the American midsection calcified by drought. For some, it is reviving memories of a time when the world seemed to blow away. There have been serious droughts here before, some as fierce as the dry spells of the 1930's. But this drought is among the worst, and in some counties, particularly in the northern plains, it is the most devastating in more than a century.
Baseball M's sweep Yankees with 10-6 win I don't need to say anymore.
Let the destruction begin My old 100mm lens has a bad shutter and isn't worth rebuilding but the ring that mounts to the camera can be used to mount a pin hole. I started to unscrew things to see if I could take it apart and get the mounting ring off.
 Success! There it is leaning up against the lens.
 Here it is on my Super 23 body. Now I need to make a circular plate to fit inside the ring and mount a pinhole in the middle of it and I will have a pinhole camera with 6 x 9 and Polaroid backs. At this point I was on a roll. Why stop here?
 I've been wanting to turn the Super 23 into a flat top like the example above (minus the extra hand grip.) The top my Super 23 is pretty rough and the range finder is broken. I plan on using it as a mini semi view camera (it has a bellows back), a pinhole camera, and wide angle camera when I get some wide angle lenses. None of these functions uses the range finder.
 I have the range finder cover off as well as all the leatherette.
 Three screws removed and the range finder assembly is off. There a couple of pieces on the rangefinder I will be able to use on my Universal.
 You are looking at the front of the camera now. I removed the front panel to be able to remove the lens mounting assembly (I don't want any chips to get into it when the top is milled off) and to get at the rest of the range finder mechanism that goes through the body.
 Here is the front of the body with everything removed and ready to to have the top milled off. Bags of parts in the back and the tools used for this destruction in the front. Yes, the kitchen knife and vise-grips came in handy.
 Here is the body with the front panel in place. Now I need to get hold of Blaine to see if he can do the milling
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