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Back to current entries
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June 19, 2003
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Today is Juneteenth. On the left, behold -- the flag of
this Afro-American holiday. On the right, the
(well, a) Flag of Mars. This design abides
by the Martian Rule of Three (and it's
reminiscent of their eyes, in the
movie). Click the flags for more info.
Yesterday, I met Laurie Anderson! She was being given a
tour of the base, and just after the Division Chief
finished a briefing on our systems, on the way out,
by careful maneuvering, eye contact was made and I
got an autograph. (She augmented her scrawl with two
'X's and a waving hand.) Since then, been
berating myself, thinking up all the witty things I
should have said, or interesting questions
asked, but at the crucial moment I was tongue-tied,
star-struck, couldn't quite restrain my urge to babble
on like a fanboy. And hardly anybody else even knew who
she was!
Definitely cherry season now -- rejoice! Fresh, ripe
peaches soon.
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June 17, 2003
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Welcome
to the Future! -- of the Air Car, a vehicle which
runs on compressed air. Hmmm... in our troubled present,
the latest thing in transport is the electric Segway --
you probably saw the photos, now read
about
the shrub's spill -- he apparently hadn't powered
up yet, so the internal gyros weren't spinning to
provide stability. That is a reverse from what we
intuitively know -- the driver gets into/mounts his
car/airplane/motorcycle and then turns the key.
History
of Camp David has a sidebar menu with links to
detail pages of each administration's activities
there. Didn't realize it was originally called
Shangri-La -- hit that link to learn about a
bit of FDR disinformation concerning Jimmy
Doolittle's Tokyo raid.
Two Photoshop how-to links:
Sharpening 101
and
How
to Photoshop the Matrix code.
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June 14, 2003
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On the Car guys' website, the top ten
Ultimate
Gay Cars.
In Esquire,
What
I've Learned, by Arthur Miller. I was hoping
for something about Marilyn, but no. Still, a
good listing.
Now, some clarifications; let's discuss a few disparate
terms from current events. In the news, we hear about:
Poland joining the EU, terrorist strikes in Israel by
Hamas, troubles with Fannie Mae (or was it
Freddie Mac) -- what is all this? I
have trouble telling the difference between:
- Medicare and Medicaid
- The Motley Fool says
Medicare is the retiree medical insurance program with
which most people are familiar. For retirees, Medicare
kicks in at age 65, and it has two parts, Part A and Part B.
Part A covers hospitalization and Part B covers doctor
visits and various other medical services. For almost
all Medicare recipients, Part A is free. Part B, though,
has a monthly premium that changes each year.
[Note: no mention of perscription drugs.]
Medicaid is a medical
welfare program funded jointly by the federal
and state governments and administered solely by each
state under general legal guidelines.
So... Medicaid is for the poor folks, whereas you're
eigible for Medicare if you're collecting Social Security?
- Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
- The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp (Freddie Mac) and the Federal
National Mortgage Corp (Fannie Mae) are public/private entities,
Government sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), and Slate's
wonderful "Explainer" just posted the enlightening
What Exactly Does
Freddie Mac Do? where I finally achieved some comprehension.
The Home
Ownership Alliance FAQ has more info; they also discuss
Ginnie Mae (the Government National Mortgage Association)
which is part of HUD.
- Hamas and Mossad
- Something alliterative about these
two make them hard for me to distinguish. According to
this,
'Mossad' (the Israeli espionage agency) is Hebrew for
"institution." Elsewhere, I learn that 'Hamas' is both
a word meaning courage, bravery and/or zeal; and an
Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement -- it's
a radical organization which became active in the
early stages of the Intifada.
And finally... it used to be the Common Market, then
the EC, or European Community, now it's the European
Union -- so, who's a member? To keep tabs I put
together a little chart
comparing EU members with NATO; plus, for travellers,
€ territory as well as those countries abiding
by the Schengen agreement (the open borders thing).
Euro (€) holdouts are Scandinavia and the UK
(the latter just reaffirmed that they'd rather not give
up the £ yet).
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June 11, 2003
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Air
Brush Hirayama is all in Japanese,
but don't let that deter you. Scroll
down -- it's a page of links to
picture-pages, some of them, him
airbrushing, but mostly of the most
outlandish, tricked-out trucks, at a
meet or something.
David Sedaris has a new story in
the New Yorker, set at the
beach in North Carolina --
Our
Perfect Summer.
About
the battle for fotolog.net's soul, in
Wired -- just as in other online
communities, with growth comes problems
with newbies.
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June 10, 2003
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Nice comic:
Harvest
Gypsy, one of those keep-scrolling-right deals. (A new
word is needed for that format -- it's not a comic strip,
since future frames are hidden until the user manipulates
the scroll controls. Comic Scroll? Graphic Scroll?) Also,
this
week's "Cat and Girl" is pretty good.
Remember "Fargo"? I didn't much care for, but it was
memorable -- didja hear about the Japanese tourist who
supposedly went there in hopes of finding the ransom
money? And was found, dead, with a crude map? This was
in the news a year'n a half ago. Paul Berczeller was
intrigued, did some research, and made a documentary
about Takako Konishi -- read about them in the Guardian,
Death
in the snow. Seems the movie wasn't a factor.
From a worthwhile
interview
with Terry Tempest Williams, environmental writer and poet:
I'm also thinking of the whole idea of shadow. Whether
we like it or not, George Bush is our shadow: arrogance,
impatience, entitlement, greed capitalism; we are all
complicit in that.
More
about the 'shadow' (an intriguing concept of Jungian
Psychology).
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June 8, 2003
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Long-time readers here may recall Susan, the Computer
Store Woman. She's been through some changes, and is
now rambling around Arizona or somewhere, and has just
begun documenting her travels online at
custer180.com.
Before she left town she handed-me-down her old
camera, and urged me to add more images to these pages
with, so here goes -- some local color, photos snapped
today (thumbnails). (It's an Olympus D-600L, my
first SLR and my first digital, henceforth
referred to as the Digicam -- clunky,
not nearly as compact as
theGirl's
Canon, but I've learned to love it.)
It's June, when my favorite blooming native
tree comes out, adding a delicate purple wash
to the landscape in SoCal -- up here, the
lavender-shaded Jacaranda (also seen spelled
with a 'q') is not so common, but they're all
over downtown San Jose.
There's a big Vietnamese grocery store down there called
Dai Thanh which I enjoy browsing -- they have a whole wall
of interesting religious articles, like these Buddhas.
Susan also sent along this
scary
link about Auto-ID, ePC and RFID -- the near
future of inventory control.
How
to Make Business Card Cubes -- origami to utilize all
those leftovers.
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June 6, 2003
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People are getting upset as they realize they were lied to about
the reason for the invasion -- the situation is
mushrooming.
Or perhaps not -- seems to me we're all jaded and/or oblivious. The
Follow
Me Here weblog guy, Eliot Gelwan, laments --
Why does nobody, outside the progressive political commentators
(who preach only to the converted) and the weblogging community
(which only talks to itself) care? Is it the credulity or the
apathy of the audience, or the increasing skill of the propagandists?
Perhaps most of the public is just averse to living with the necessity
of such constant rage at our leaders (which, after all, dates back to
the Big Lies of Vietnam and the worldwide Communist conspiracy),
whereas some of us, because of our own character pathology, thrive
on ragefulness instead...If the outcry mounts (which is an open
question in my mind, since the American public seem to be rolling
over on this one as much as they have on Bush's theft of the
election two years ago), I predict the dysadministration will
conduct some sort of token witchhunt for "intelligence failures"
to divert attention from the reality of the baldfaced lies at
the policy level.
As may be, but I remain hopeful. Sister Joan is asking
all the right questions:
Is
there anything left that matters?
Finally, they told us that we were invading Iraq to destroy
their weapons of mass destruction. Now they say those weapons
probably don't exist. Maybe never existed. Apparently that
doesn't matter either.
Except that it does matter. I know we're not supposed to say
that. I know it's called "unpatriotic." But it's also called
honesty. And dishonesty matters.
And from the same source (the National Catholic Reporter),
details
and analysis of the Chris Hedges commencement speech
mentioned here, ten days ago.
Tyranny
of the Rich by Michael Kinsley explains how
the old relation between
democracy’s political majority and capitalism’s
affluent minority has broken down.
The latest example is this dividend tax cut -- obvious
class warfare.
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June 3, 2003
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Not only do they have a lot of them -- seems to me,
they're the default here in California: sliding
glass shower curtains in the bathroom. Since we're
living in a seismic zone, this makes little
sense -- broken glasss is the last thing I want to
be around when I'm wet and naked. Antipixel posted
this
entry describing an earthquake experience while
bathing, during the temblor they felt
last week in Tokyo.
The
California
Coast Project is neat even though 'Babs' objects,
doesn't like it since you can bring up photos of her
estate north of Malibu. It's the work of a husband-and-wife
team of aerial photographers who're documenting the entire
coast -- and because of the controversy, they've placed
their photo of the Streisand property at the top of the
page.
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June 1, 2003
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Dvorak looks up and
announces --
Blogs:
The Next Big Thing!
Cinema:
The word from Cannes
(and Cleveland):
"A morose funk has settled on this year's festival, in which each
film is more despairing than the last, and the overall message is:
Life is hell, and then you die," wrote film critic Roger Ebert. But,
he continued, "There are films here I've loved. The Sundance winner
'American Splendor,' about the blue-collar comic book author Harvey
Pekar, is one of them, but it's out of competition."
Among the screenings available at Cannes, I'd find "American
Splendor" irresistable (after all, I have every issue Harvey's
ever published) -- but I'm much more curious about
The
Brown Bunny.
(reaction)
Health:
There's a new malady out there,
Night
Eating Syndrome, or NES; and I think I
have a mild case.
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May 29, 2003
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Two or three unique cars: explorer Richard Byrd took along the enormous
Antarctic
Snow Cruiser on his 1939 expedition -- says it was last
accounted for down there in the 1960s. On television around
that time, you might have caught the
Supermarionation
of Lady Penelope motoring about in her pink Rolls-Royce.
Her show (The Thunderbirds) is being remade into a live-action
movie, and according to
this
(which has pictures of both old and new) her vehicle will
still be pink, but instead of a futuristic Rolls, it'll be
a Ford T-Bird concept car.
The current issue of Smithsonian features
Doo Wop
by the Sea, an article about Wildwood, New Jersey. I
looked around that place two years ago, during my second
business trip to the Atlantic City area -- I remember
a sign for the "Hawaiian Rumble Pancake House"(!) and how
a lot of the motels' swimming pools were fringed with obviously
fake palm trees.
Another worthwhile transcript:
Gore
Vidal on the "United States of Amnesia" -- interview
from a couple weeks ago.
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May 26, 2003
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A nineteenth-century visit to the
steam-powered drum machine at the Museum of Techno.
Charlotte Observer story, from last Monday --
Luke's
in the news -- Marianne, diamonds, Russia.
The
Swimmer -- fan shrine to the 1968 Burt Lancaster
flick. I just caught this, on video. Always thought
it must've been set in LA, but Connecticut,
actually -- John Cheever territory. Any good?
Well...
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May 22, 2003
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Chris Hedges, author of the new War Is a
Force That Gives Us Meaning, gave a
graduation speech at Rockford College,
Illimois, where he was booed.
(transcript)
For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal
of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians,
and of idealists by cynics.
We have lost touch with the essence of war. Following our
defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled,
even humiliated. We asked questions about ourselves we had not
asked before. We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us,
and the sight was not always a pretty one. We were forced to
confront our own capacity for atrocity -- for evil -- and
in this we understood not only war but more about ourselves.
But that humility is gone.
Another recent
speech,
this one more interesting, perhaps; by William Gibson
(at the Directors Guild, in LA).
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May 19, 2003
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Calvin
Pees -- all about those little stickers.
Where do they come from? I’ve never seen one in an auto
parts store, although I’ve only looked a couple of times. As far as
I can tell, the biggest source seems to be guys at carnivals with a
computer and vinyl cutter. They set up shop with about a hundred tacky
decals of witty sayings like "Shit Happens" and ripped off cartoon
characters. By far the most popular variation is Calvin peeing on
something.
I recall seeing them for sale in the mid-90s -- little
piles were up by the cash register in
this
emporium at the NC state line on the way
to the beach. In their version, Calvin's stream
was directed at the President's name.
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May 14, 2003
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Short Wired
column by David Weinberger articulates what
I've frequently tried to get law'norder types to see:
We all understand that before the law there's leeway -- the
true bedrock of human relationships. Sure, we rely on rules
to decide the hard cases, but the rest of the time we cut one
another a whole lot of slack. We have to. That's the only way
we humans can manage to share a world.
The Zompist has posted another refreshing
Rant,
this time concerning the ever-offensive William Bennett
(the Book of Virtues blowhard who pissed away
$8M in Atlantic City casinos). Somewhere else I read the
suggestion, that since he finds illegal drug use to be
such a problem, how come he didn't donate some percentage
of that cash to drug treatment programs? Then he'da felt
truly virtuous (and it would've been tax deductable, as
well).
Glad I saw the preview yesterday, 'cause the
review's
in (from a reviewer I trust), and I ain't goin' --
The grim news is that "The Matrix Reloaded" is as messy and
flat-footed as its predecessor was nimble and shapely. It's
an ugly, bloated, repetitive movie that builds to a punch line
that should have come an hour earlier (at least).
Please, save your money. Resist the hype. Life's too
short to waste it being bludgeoned by bad Hollywood
movies. There's so much good cinema out there -- for
example, catch "Le Cercle Rouge" before it gets away!
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May 13, 2003
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While in Fry's today I passed a big flat-screen
desktop monitor which began a "Matrix: Reloaded"
preview just at that moment. Looked fascinating,
naturally; but I'm suspicious of all sequels and
wondered if I was seeing all the good parts. Reading
a few of these
50
Reasons to reject "The Matrix: Reloaded" dampened
my anticpation somewhat; and avoid the link if you
don't want to encounter any spoilers! The weblog I got
it from (FmH)
suggested the whole thing was a troll, but this reason
sounds more like Ignatious:
I had attended a showing of "The Matrix" in May of 1999
with a lady friend, because we are both big Morgan Freeman
fans. An hour into the film, as I observed what dreck we
were wading in, I walked up and stood before the screen
and tried to explain to the audience that this vomitus
was below their dignity. I was greeted by some of the
most vulgar insults imaginable, until some began throwing
objects and one man even knocked my pipe from my
hand. Do you wish to be associated with a group of
such character?
In hindsight, I consider my own reaction to the
original a pretty good entry -- it's
here, if
you're curious.
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May 12, 2003
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Quite beautiful, extraordinary, really -- at work, I
tweaked the big image a bit, and set it as my PC's
desktop-background. The
Deepest Photo Ever Taken is a Sky and Telescope article
about a 3½ hour Space Telescope exposure made with the Hubble's
Wide Field and Planetary Camera, pointed towards the neighborhood
of the Andromeda galaxy.
Australian news
article describes India's planed moon shot
(unmanned).
Martin Sieff, Senior UPI News Analyst:
Probing
Columbia's Fiery Fate -- he compares it with
the Titanic.
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May 5, 2003
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I'm in a heads-down phase of staying late at the office
for the next couple weeks; don't expect much in the way
of updates here until this thing blows over.
Somewhere recently in Scalzi's
Whatever he
said that It's
been noted that Man can do anything, so long as it's not
the thing he's supposed to be doing at the
moment.
Sam Smith's great new essay is
Coalition
of the Shilling -- not in the sense of the British
coin, but as in those "... who pose as satisfied
customers to dupe bystanders into participating
in a swindle."
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May 3, 2003
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David Corn's latest "Capitol Gains" column in The
Nation on the shrub's
"Top
Gun" Photo-Op summarizes his spotty service
record. More details on that in this Washington Post
fourth
of seven articles.
Another little animation-video from the Space
Station -- High
Tea -- with chopsticks!
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May 1, 2003
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Here's something new -- available in Europe now, a
true
3D monitor -- it's like a crystal ball. Not the
annoying, so-called '3D' which tricks normal eyes (but
not my own; that effect seldom works for me) but the
real thing, like in Star Wars -- you know, "Help us
Obi-Wan Kenobi -- you're our only hope."
The monitor consists of a transparent volumous bulb in
which a high-speed spinning "plate" revolves, displaying
images from pixel points on its surface.
Moonset
from low earth orbit -- animations from the Space Station
show how the lunar disc flattens, its image distorted by the
Earth's atmosphere.
Everybody's linking to
this
today, the Montana time capsule --
In 1952, a Roundup grocery store closed their
doors because of a death in the family and was never
opened until a few months ago.
Now the contents are being auctioned off -- lots of
intriguing thumbnails, photos of the inventory.
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April 30, 2003
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Weird, appaling
"Fresh
Air" yesterday, about how agents of both the Left and
the Right have managed to get references to anything
which certain groups consider objectionable eliminated,
from school textbooks and standardized tests. The interview
was with Diane
Ravitch, who wrote the recently published
Language
Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What
Students Learn. Another segment of the show was
a repeat of Geoff Nunberg's
Politics
of Polysyndeton -- it's a rhetorical device
used by columnists of both persuasions.
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April 27, 2003
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Hinky -- I've been asked, what does it mean?
Often my answer is, that's what Tommy
Lee Jones said, when he heard an underling use this
adjective in the "The Fugitive" movie. (And since his
explanatory response was unsatisfactory, I'm giving it
a go, here.) Sometimes its been observed spelled with
a 't' (hincty) (but if that's the correct spelling, the
't' is silent -- pronunciation: rhymes with "stinky").
Means Something silly, juvenile, nerdy, childish, unmanly;
something you're supposed to do, or used to do, or be
into, but don't anymore because the cool guys would never.
(Ideally, you've outgrown it on your own, rather than
abandoning the thing via peer pressure.) Example from
my own experience: Although "Lost in Space" was still
in the prime-time schedule, winding down in its final
seasons; as the clearly superior "Star Trek" was running
its first season, "Lost in Space" had become hincky by
1967 (although it was quite cool when it first began).
Maybe that's a definition of hincky -- the opposite of
"cool." But it's not that simple. Another example -- flipping
through the latest issue of
Giant
Robot I saw this URL:
www.hinkyfluff.com -- perhaps
there's more clues at that site.
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April 26, 2003
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A Deck of Cards
for US regime change.
Andy
helped me get into James Burke a decade ago, loaning me
his videotapes of "Connections" and "The Day The Universe
Changed" -- a few years later, he let me catch up with
the forgetable "Connections 2" which appeared on The
Learning Channel, rather than PBS. Now I'm watching
"Connections 3" (which was also screened on TLC) courtesy
the ever-wonderful Los Altos Library's video section,
and I find it as good as the original -- unfortunately,
they only have that series' first three programs. For
more information, (naturally) turn to the Internet,
where Tony Palmer has put together the
James
Burke Fan Companion -- follow its links to Ambrose
Video (which sells them) for individual episode
descriptions.
Memorable SARS photo (which reminds me of those pictures
from the 1950s, taken inside 3D movie theaters) -- audience at a
Hong
Kong SARS symposium.
All
about "Wipe Out", the Surfaris' instrumental (whose
drumming rhythms we loved to imitate on any handy
surface, in 1967) and the many phonies who claim to
have been in the band, including a chairman of Nevada's
Republican Party -- in fact, a slacker I had to
surpervise, while I was living in LA, told me his
father was the band's bass player (but his name
wasn't Connolly).
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April 24, 2003
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About Slats,
an amusing robot recently observed on the
streets of Berkeley (although the report
was published in Modesto).
The 'most astounding web page of the week':
The
Secret Arsenal of the Jewish state -- pinpoints
locations of their "WMD." (It's buried in the
MS-NBC site; more info in this
explanation.)
Also, in the interest of balance, they have another
article,
about North Korea, with a similar map (scroll down).
The latter has way more little icons, and both require
Flash.
Does "Orange Alert" affect you, at all? Does me -- Security
cranks up their degree of employee harrassement (ie, random
vehicle searches) at the gate, going in to work. Well, now
that the alert's back to "Yellow," all's back to the 'normal' --
Presto!
In other personal news, I just returned from a quick
Easter jaunt East, where I picked up a cold. Aye, seems
to be my burdon of late, getting ill annually, in the
Spring. Adding to my misery, the pain in my right arm
I've developed this past month was diagnosed yesterday
as a malady related to computing all day -- no, not
Carpal Tunnel, but Tennis Elbow -- and I don't play
tennis! (Although I do find some interest watching
women play, but only if they're garbed in the sport's
traditional livery.)
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April 23, 2003
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Today marks the traditional feast day of the
Green Prophet,
Khizr,
or Elijah -- Islam's patron saint of cannabis.
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April 22, 2003
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Recently I've noticed a couple instances of people
collecting the pull-tabs from aluminum beverage cans,
for charity -- don't they realize it's an urban
legend? Not exactly -- naturally,
the
snopes crew has compiled the low-down -- these metal
bits are, in fact, collected; but
It needs be stressed yet again that pull-tabs
are far from "found money" -- even Ronald McDonald
House gets only 40 cents a pound for them
($474 per million tabs, according to their
web page). You'd still do far more good organizing
a local soda can recycling program and donating the
proceeds of same to Ronald McDonald House (or indeed
any other charity).
Another good Scalzi post:
The
Terror of Bad Chocolate -- thought it would
describe an encounter with a Palmer product (this
being Easter'n'all) but no, something even worse, I
suppose... but since the redemptive denouement
involves a Cadbury product, his standing as a
discerning chocolate gourmand is dubious.
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April 21, 2003
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Excellent -- A
Chill Wind is Blowing in Our Nation -- Tim Robbins
speaking at the National Press Club. (He was in "Bull
Durham"? Thought that was a Kevin Costner picture -- I
didn't see it, although I did catch "Field of
Dreams" -- that one had a refreshing 'victory over
the town censors' sub-plot, which I gather is now
forgotten. How come Kevin wasn't involved in this
Cooperstown fracas? My memory of the Hall of Fame:
sitting out in the car, reading, while the rest of
my family took way too much time absorbing the 'wonders'
inside. I believe this was when I was twelve years old.)
Anyway, Scalzi's reaction to Robbins' speech is also useful:
"Free"
Speech and its Enemies.
Debunking
the Beaver -- exposing
the cracks in Mayfield's picture
windows.
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April 16, 2003
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Howard Zinn sure gets it right in
A
Kinder, Gentler Patriotism --
As a patriot, contemplating the dead GIs, should
I comfort myself (as, understandably, their families
do) with the thought: "They died for their country?"
But I would be lying to myself. Those who die in this
war will not die for their country. They will die for
their government. The distinction between dying for our
country and dying for your government is crucial in
understanding what I believe to be the definition of
patriotism in a democracy.
Me, too, brother. I think that distinction is lost
on those who instinctively trust the government, a
trust I can't share -- after Vietnam, Watergate, and
Iran/Contra, how can any administration be
trusted? Especially Republican, especially this
one, installed in such a dubious, sinister manner.
Like the bumper sticker says, I Love My Country
(but fear its government).
Norwegian Cruise Lines bought the United
States! (press
release) Speaking of ocean liners
and cruise ships, check this
news
photo from Long Beach.
The
Seattle
Windshield Pitting Epidemic of 1954 was an
example of what the Music Man called 'massteria.'
City
of Tomorrow is a compendium of lots of
familiar stuff, but still worthwhile.
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April 15, 2003
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Another tragic report out of the anarchy in Iraq:
Yahoo!News
on the looting and burning of the National
Library in Baghdad, as US troops stood by,
doing nothing. Somebody compared this loss
to the Alexandria
Library fire.
Michael
Wolff's story -- his reputation is now
wise-ass war reporter, the Yossarian of journalists,
as he dared ask
"Why are we here?" instead of
"General, is the war going well, or is the war going
extremely well?"
The question it turned out, spoke powerfully to people
who think this whole thing (not just the news conference,
but, in some sense, the entire war) is phony, a set-up,
a fabrication, in which just about everything is in
service to unseen purposes and agendas. But it seemed
to speak even more dramatically to people who think the
whole thing is real, pure, linear, uncomplicated,
elemental. For the former I'd addressed something like
the existential issue of our own purposelessness, but
for the latter, I seem to have, heretically, raised
the very issue of meaning itself.
Searchable
Time
magazine cover archive.
Followup on subway/bus fares in NYC: World New York discusses
the
best MetroCard options. For this weekend
visitor (who's been absent from the Apple for
almost a decade, alas) the $7 Unlimited 1-Day Fun
Pass sounds like the only way to go. Another followup,
on Astro Boy's birthday:
Japan
Times reports on the Tokyo parade, in his honor.
Gross --
how
to do Neti yoga (illustrated). It's all about forcing
water up your nose, a rite of purification. On this one, I'm with
Lindsay
(from whom I got the link): "I cannot stand having water
in my nose" -- myself, I refuse any medication involving
a nasal spray delivery system. Reminds of the weird stuff
coke and meth fiends do, like snorting some saline, or
even a few drops of wine, when things get too dry up in
there -- yuckah!
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April 13, 2003
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Latest SARS updates -- at
Yahoo!News: Cathay
Pacific losing $3M/day, 3 more deaths in Canada;
in-Depth, at
Forbes
magazine: mysteries, "supershedders." Personally, I
believe we're all going to get this disease, in a month
or two we'll all be sick. Hopefully I'll not be close to
any fatalities, that Americans' robust health will see us
all through.
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April 12, 2003
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From the
null device weblog:
You've seen the historical images of the newly-liberated
people of Iraq toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in
Baghdad? Well, claims have emerged that
the whole
thing was staged. Apparently
the square was sealed off by
US Marines, with the newly-liberated Iraqi people kept well
away from the scene. The statue was pulled down by a US military
vehicle. The celebrating Iraqis seen in the square were members
of the militia of Ahmed Chalabi, Washington's favourite for Leader
of Free Iraq. The whole thing was staged for the benefit of the
media as a propaganda exercise. Mind you, people have said similar
things about the moon landing.
The link's to an annotated long shot of the event, located at the
Information
Clearinghouse, which I've placed on my links page as a news source.
Snapshots of the chaos:
Looters
Ransack Baghdad's Antiquities Museum (from Yahoo!News). More details:
The
state of Iraq by Brendan O'Neill --
As a consequence of America and Britain's intervention, Iraq
is spinning out of control, its tensions and divisions rising
to the fore. The routing of the old regime has already triggered
battles for power, as small, armed and opportunistic groups move
into the vacuum left by the war.
The Bush administration has always been more interested in Iraq
as a platform for itself, than as a state with problems
that need resolving. For Bush officials, Iraq was useful as a
focal point for Washington's post-9/11 attempts to reassert a sense
of mission on the world stage. They weren't interested in Iraq as
a nation state with its own tensions and divisions.
Speaking of the shrub, a
second
opinion confirms the psychopath diagnosis -- but rather than
dwell on the iniquities of the present, let's turn our attention
instead to one of the founding fathers, the great Thomas Jefferson,
who got that incredible deal on the Louisiana purchase, from
Napolean -- did you know that
he
was into karate?
(Thanks, Jeff!)
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April 10, 2003
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George McGovern:
The
Reason Why, in The Nation. He was the first presidential
candidate I voted for, in the '72 election, when
Nixon
was reelected, by a landslide.
Jon Carroll
describes Hi, a magazine about American
culture to be distributed in Arabian lands.
I've traveled in Egypt and Dubai and Oman and Muslim
northern Nigeria, and they just weren't "hi" kinds of
places. They were "you are very welcome in my home"
kinds of places, and "you must pay the double
because-it-is-Wednesday fee" kinds of places, and even
"once again you have misunderstood everything, but
please have some flat bread" kinds of places.
But not "Hi!"
Doesn't
sound like the publication will be a profitable
enterprise.
"Vertigo" San Francsico,
Then
and Now.
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April 9, 2003
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About the new Organic LEDs:
two articles, from
zdnet,
and Business
Week -- the latter describes how
Ching Tang invented the technology, and that
green and blue came first, as opposed to the
development of regular LEDs.
Wow: Farewell,
subway token -- NY Times article
says tokens will be sold for the last time
this Saturday. Turnstiles won't take 'em
after midnight, although theyll still be
good on the bus through calendar 2003.
From now on, the MetroCard, which I've
yet to handle. (Of course I'm familiar
with the concept, introduced via the
DC Metro Farecard -- I've got a couple
of its brother BART farecards in my wallet
right now.) And let's see -- hmmm. I have a
pair of the early 80s solid tokens, a pair of the
late 80s/early 90s bi-metallics, and one
1979 75th anniversary commemorative (with the
diamond cutout). Therefore, I'd trade the extra
of each of my doubles for a Y-cutout, and a
pentagon cutout -- anybody interested?
All of today's links came from the
Girlhacker's
Random Log.
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April 7, 2003
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Today is the day Astro Boy (AKA
Tetsuwan
Atomu, or 'Mighty Atom') was born, in Takadanobaba
(or 'Baba,' as I've heard it's called -- one of the few
Tokyo bookstores I know of with good English selections is
there). Although
the guys I was in Boy Scouts with in the early 1960s
taught me how "Made In Japan" meant flimsy, and about Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, I like to believe my first actual exposures
to things Japanese came with origami (for which I
showed an aptitude; my parents encouraged it by putting me into
a weekend crafts class offered at a local school) and -- "Astro
Boy" cartoons! (Mmmm, origami... I still recall the Dewey
Decimal code for where you can find books on it, at
the library: 745.54 .) Anyway, this is the actual day
Tezuka
Osamu tagged as the date Dr. Tenma brought his creation
to 'life' -- a
Yomiuri
Shinbun article describes the festivities planned
in Japan, to celebrate. Myself, I've begun reading the
original
manga, translated by Frederik Schodt -- really
great stuff!
The latest from Noam Chomsky, a March 21 interview:
Iraq
Is A Trial Run --
This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference.
Pre-emptive war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if
planes are flying across the Atlantic to bomb the United States,
the United States is permitted to shoot them down even before
they bomb and may be permitted to attack the air bases from
which they came. Pre-emptive war is a response to ongoing or
imminent attack.
The doctrine of preventive war is totally different; it holds
that the United States -- alone, since nobody else has this
right -- has the right to attack any country that it claims
to be a potential challenge to it. So if the United States
claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may sometime threaten
it, then it can attack them.
The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the
National Strategy Report last September. It sent shudders around
the world, including through the US establishment, where, I
might say, opposition to the war is unusually high. The National
Strategy Report said, in effect, that the US will rule the world
by force, which is the dimension -- the only dimension -- in
which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for the indefinite
future, because if any potential challenge arises to US domination,
the US will destroy it before it becomes a challenge.
For some reason this reminds me of Quadberry's message,
issued just before he flew off to 'Nam in Barry Hannah's
"Testimony of Pilot" story: "I am a dragon, America the
Beautiful, like you will never know."
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April 4, 2003
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Somewhere in today's Salon, this lament:
Isn't it possible to critique the president without
giving aid and comfort to the enemy?
Indeed it is -- of course we all 'support the
troops' -- that emphasis is just authoritarian
rhetoric meant to derail dissent --
Brooke
explains why it's a red herring. In the Baltimore
City Paper, Brian Morton provides confirmation:
This
Is America --
In case you haven't gotten it yet, here it is in a nutshell.
Criticizing the president is not the same thing as criticizing
the troops. Criticizing the president is not the same as
criticizing America. And criticizing the president is not
"giving aid and comfort to the enemy," which is the classic
definition of treason, a federal crime that earns felons the
death penalty.
And David Greenberg at
Slate
agrees --
In short, the claim that by protesting dissenters are
showing insufficient 'support' for the troops is
specious.
Love that word -- it has its own debate-terminating
attributes. Also in Slate, the ever-useful
Explainer tackles the ubiquitous
cakewalk --
it's a black thing!
Two unrelated music-artist sites which might
be of interest (they are to me) --
Link Wray's Net
Shack; and a comprehensive, enlightening review of
the Four
Tops' recordings.
Also,
Hempen
Culture in Japan -- long, historical.
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April 3, 2003
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The National 9-11 Commission had its first
hearings Monday and Tuesday
(transcript
links, listed by witness). Mindy Kleinberg, whose
husband was a WTC victim, really had her testimony
together. Read it, and wonder... on the other hand,
Abraham D. Sofaer's makes me rather hawkish, of a
sudden.
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April 2, 2003
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Analysis
of yesterday's USA Today concerned shrub-stroke,
with excerpts -- that detail about the sweets turned my head;
Jose
recognized what it signifies. (And don't miss the
Wayne Madsen should-happen he links to.)
Wonderfully sarcastic, refreshing
essay
by Arundhati Roy (winner of the Booker Prize, a major
literature award) -- she's anti, naturally:
It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as
utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly
dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism,
install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most
entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers".
Simple, graphic and appalling
representation
of the costs associated with the invasion.
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March 31, 2003
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A former CIA analyst writes how the
US
was 'conned' into war. Also, Robert Cuttner on
How
war distracts from outlandish Bush policies --
This administration's slogan might as well be,
"Sacrifice is for suckers." While young men and
women risk their lives in a war whose rationale
remains to be proven, the larger Bush program diverts
money from services to ordinary Americans, even our
homeland security -- to give tax breaks to
multimillionaires.
Margaret Atwood, Canadian author of The
Handmaid's Tale, has written an open
Letter
to America.
SARS:
A scene from
Amoy
Gardens in Hong Kong, the apartment complex where
authorities have quarantined 214 residents for ten days
after 92 new cases of the deadly virus were reported
there. Santana
has joined Moby and
the
Rolling Stones in cancelling Honkg Kong tour dates.
(Those previous three links are to Yahoo!News stories --
for more information about the disease check the
SARS inDepth
Backgrounder.)
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March 26, 2003
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Why
Nerds are Unpopular, by Paul Graham -- the social
hierarchy and tribes of American secondary
schools -- long, but worthwhile.
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March 25, 2003
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What's to say? I'm numbed
by the war, can't write -- for
more reading, some links...
1
2
3
4
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