OnlineJournalist.org

Blogger sucks

2006-04-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

For no good reason, despite multiple requests to reverse the arbitrary move, Blogger locked this blog for a week, preventing me from updating it.

So, I won't be updating this blog any more. I've moved to http://onlinejournalist.typepad.com. Please update your bookmarks.

I'll gradually move some of the content from this site to the new one, and who knows, maybe I'll get inspired and create some new stuff, but no promises.

Thanks.

alligator piano

2006-03-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Giorgio's of Palm Beach offers one at $950,000, says here in the Wall Street Journal today. Upholstered with no fewer than 70 gator bellies, this concert grand. Doesn't say here whether or not the alligator piano has ivory keys, seems a natural for this endangered species consumptionist orgy.

nothing's like a book

2006-03-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

PW Daily:

E.L. Doctorow, whose Civil War novel The March (Random House), has already won the PEN Faulkner award, been an NBA finalist and is tipped for the Pulitzer, won in Fiction. He said he often wondered whether awards were good for novelists, but found "I tend to accept them." A book "written in silence and read in silence goes from heart to heart and soul to soul as nothing else can," he declared.

headline of the day:

2006-03-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

Consciousness Continues To Baffle Psychoanalysts

....And that doesn't surprise me a bit. Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain why my psychoanalyst baffles me.

"Red State Spex!"

2006-02-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

Why does Bush continue to occupy the White House instead of a jail cell? Tom Tomorrow knows why.

Don Knotts, R.I.P.

2006-02-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

Thanks for all the laughs.

What next?

out of the past

2006-02-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

....a voice reminds me of youthful intensity, paths not taken & other mid-life truths & platitudes. In a good way, I hasten to add, lots of good memories to enjoy, along with the woulda, coulda, shoulda, might-have-beens, the mind-boggling branching ramification of envisoned-potentialities-now-reduced-to-certainties.

brother dan (a.k.a. "Mr. Willison") in the pipeline

2006-02-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

...from NewsCentralAsia:

Trans-Afghan Pipe Meet Ends in Turkmenistan, Implementation Stage in Sight
Date: Wednesday, February 15 @ 13:40:55 PST

Ashgabat, 16 February 2006 (nCa) --- Ninth meeting of the steering committee of Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP) project concluded Wednesday in Ashgabat. President Niyazov assured the heads of delegations from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and ADB that Turkmenistan remains firmly committed to TAP. The pipe planners took some important decisions, indicating that the implementation stage may not be far off if the tempo gained in the present meeting can be maintained by all sides.

Here are the important steps taken during the meeting:

* A protocol was signed with consensus. The protocol would be attached to the initial agreement signed between Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2002 for construction of gas and oil pipelines. If will be in force for 3 years.

* A working group has been formed to deal with technical and legal issues. The working group would meet every alternate month and more often if required. First meeting of the working group would take place in March 2006 in Ashgabat.

* Preliminary understanding has been reached on gas volumes. The sides agreed to start working out the details of future contracts.

* India’s participation in the project was formally confirmed.

* Turkmenistan provided gas audit certification documents for Daulatabat gas field. The audit was carried out by De Golyer & MacNaughton.

* ADB presented project structures and investment scenario that would be offered to potential financiers and investors.

* Afghanistan outlined security measures for the pipeline.

* Next meeting of the steering committee would be held in April 2006 in Islamabad.

Amanullah Jadoon, minister for petroleum and natural resources of Pakistan, Mir Mohammad Sediq, minister for mines and industries of Afghanistan, Dinsha Patel, Indian state minister for oil and gas, and Dan Millison of Asian Development Bank had a meeting Wednesday morning with President Niyazov.

President Niyazov assured the delegates that Turkmenistan was ready to share its energy resources for strengthening of peace and stability in the region and promotion of common objectives.

He expressed satisfaction on the fact that India had agreed to joint he project.

The delegation heads told Niyazov that the visit to the infrastructure facilities at Daulatabat field had strengthened their belief in the viability of the project.

All sides agreed that TAP would bring harmony and prosperity to the region.

After their meeting with President Niyazov, the delegation heads spoke to Turkmen TV.

Here is the transcript of their remarks:

Amanullah Khan Djadoon, minister for petroleum and natural resources, Pakistan
We discussed different issues, international, bilateral, and the particular emphasis was on the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan to India.

It was very detailed and very comprehensive discussion and we have with us among the delegates Mr. Willison who represents Asian Development Bank and we got some very good and positive points from the president.

We are very hopeful that this project is going to come through very soon.

Mir Mokhamad Sediq, minister for mines and industries, Afghanistan
We have just received His Excellency’s confirmation and support for the project.

We have also received confirmation from the president and prime minister of India, and presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Personally I am very happy that the president [Niyazov] has lot of information about this particular project that shows his interest in the programme.

So, we have requested the president that as he has put all the pressure and support for development in Ashgabat, likewise to support this programme. And he has supported our request. If you compare Ashgabat with a couple of years ago, the development is fantastic; it looks like a new country.

Dinsha Patel, Minister of state for oil and gas, India
(Speaking in Hindi) There have been very good talks about the pipeline for the past couple of days. Today we talked to president [Niyazov] also and he gave very positive comments.

Ministers of Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan were also together [with us] and they have also contributed positive remarks.

India is of the opinion that the gas demand in India for development, industry and domestic consumers . .. this pipeline would bring lots of benefits to India also, and would benefit Pakistan and Afghanistan also. And, it would also be helpful for development of Turkmenistan.

India considers that the [TAP] pipeline project should start as soon as possible and technical problems should be solved quickly and investment questions should also be resolved swiftly. We should think [of the ways] how we can do all this as quickly as possible.

I am very happy with the positive attitude of the president [Niyazov] and I congratulate him.

Dan Millison, Asian Development Bank
This is a fairly complicated . . . complex project. Outside of Western Europe I don’t know of any other gas pipeline that involves three or four countries. This is a complex project and projects of this nature take a long time to develop. The project of this nature requires strong political support from the member countries as well as from host countries of investors that would actually provide massive financing. If we can structure a project that is commercially attractive and find viable and credible investors the ADB would provide whatever support is necessary to arrange the financing.

We have had very frank and open discussion during our meetings and I am optimistic that we will make progress and we are looking forward to have a good deal, good commercial prospects, and we are confident that we can find some credible investors and ADB will continue to support the project.

This article comes from

The URL for this story is:

2006-02-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

....family fun, non-stop,literally, in the juiciest part of the Big Apple...

E = MC Mozart

2006-01-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

Worth-reading article about Einstein and his beloved composer in today's New York Times:

He also empathized with Mozart's ability to continue to compose magnificent music even in very difficult and impoverished conditions. In 1905, the year he discovered relativity, Einstein was living in a cramped apartment and dealing with a difficult marriage and money troubles.

"a curse on your own nation"

2006-01-30T21:11:00.000-08:00

Says the perceptive - regarding our President, in this particular quote, at least - Ayman al-Zawahiri:

"Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure," he said, speaking of Mr. Bush. "You are a curse on your own nation and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies."

what a life can be

2006-01-30T06:51:00.000-08:00

We were lucky to get to know Jean Siri last year, when she shared the house next door with our neighbor, Virginia. R.I.P., Jean.

In honor of her contributions to regional parks, "All flags throughout the [East Bay Regional Park] District headquarters, facilities and 65 parklands will remain a half staff until February 11." The San Francisco Chronicle's obituary captures some of her spirit:

Jean Siri -- activist, former El Cerrito mayor
- Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006

In the end, after a lifetime of dashing passionately from cause to cause as one of the "Wild Women of Contra Costa County," social issues activist and former El Cerrito Mayor Jean Siri died the way she probably would have wanted to.

She suffered a heart attack sitting in her car outside her home Friday morning -- with the engine running and her hand on the shift lever, apparently about to push it into drive.

She was 85 years old, but she had the energy, drive and restless spirit of someone half her age, friends and family recalled.

"She died fast, independent and getting ready to go somewhere," said her daughter, Lynn Siri Kimsey, managing a chuckle even as she struggled with the blow of her mother's death. "It was a perfect way to go.

"And she certainly had a full enough life."

That, Ms. Siri's many friends and admirers said, could be an understatement.

At the time of her death, Ms. Siri was a member of the East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors, a position she held for 14 years. When asked in 2004, just before her last election, whether she might think of stepping aside for younger candidates, she harrumphed: "Only if I have a dead body would I stop running, and it's not quite dead yet."

The comment was typical of her irreverent, bluntly honest wit. That characteristic, coupled with her high-octane vigor, propelled her into dozens of political and organizational posts throughout Contra Costa County over the past half-century, from two stints as mayor in the 1980s to co-founder of the influential environmental groups Save the Bay and the California Native Plant Society.

Together with homeless activist Susan Prather and their late friend Fancheon Christner, Ms. Siri fought so fiercely with county and city governments on behalf of the elderly, homeless and ecological causes that the three were nicknamed the "Wild Women of Contra Costa County" in the early 1980s by the local press. The three were instrumental in keeping homeless shelters and senior centers open in Richmond and Concord and in protecting access to the bay for the public by opposing industrial expansion plans all along the East Bay shoreline.

"She was the mother I should have had," said Prather, 55-year-old director of the Fresh Start homeless aid center in Walnut Creek. "We both went pretty far in getting into people's faces, I guess, but we sure had fun doing it."

Ms. Siri was born Jean Brandenberg near Bismarck, N.D. After earning a bachelor's degree in biology at Jamestown College in North Dakota, she enlisted in 1943 in the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and ran a cryptology unit in Klamath Falls, Ore.

Upon her honorable discharge, she took a job managing the animal lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There she met her husband, biophysicist William Siri, who helped create the atomic bomb as a member of the Manhattan Project. The two married in 1949 and were a perfect fit in their verve and temperament, daughter Lynn Siri Kimsey recalled.

"She and my dad both made it clear that you can't just sit back and wait for someone to do the right thing," said Siri Kimsey, an entomology professor at UC Davis. "You have to get out there and do it yourself."

Ms. Siri quit her lab job in 1952 to raise their two daughters at home in El Cerrito, but she quickly added more ways to fill her time. As her husband pursued a storied interest in mountain climbing -- he co-led the first American expedition up Mount Everest -- and became president of the national Sierra Club, Ms. Siri began protesting on behalf of civil rights and environmental causes.

When her children left high school, she entered local politics, getting elected chairwoman of the Stege Sanitary District from 1975 to 1979. In 1980, she won a seat on the El Cerrito City Council, and served until 1991, except for a break from 1985 to 1987. She took the rotating post of mayor in 1982-83 and 1988-89.

Along the way, she also was active in the Gray Panthers senior citizens advocacy group and served on a plethora of local and countywide commissions, including the West County Toxics Coalition and the county Homeless Committee.

"Will and I have had a pretty good time stirring things up," Ms. Siri told The Chronicle in August 2004 for an obituary about her husband, who had just died of complications due to Alzheimer's. "Hell, someone has to. Why not us?"

"Any one of her experiences would have been a career for anyone else," said park district General Manager Pat O'Brien, who ordered district flags flown at half-staff. "She reminded me of an eight-cylinder car. Everyone else is down to four cylinders, so to speak, and can be kind of subtle, but she was full bore. When she stepped on the gas, you heard it."

Mayor Tom Bates, who with Ms. Siri and others helped create the Eastshore State Park, was shocked to hear that the energetic woman he had fought alongside -- and even with, sometimes -- for many years was silenced.

"Jean was a great advocate to have on your side," he said. "She always told you exactly where you stood, what she believed in. What a great fighter she was."

Ms. Siri is survived by her daughters, Lynn Siri Kimsey of Davis and Anne Siri of Philo (Mendocino County), and two grandchildren.

Donations in her name can be made to Fresh Start in Walnut Creek, (925) 935-8446, or to the East Bay Regional Park District, (510) 635-0135. Services are pending.

Page B - 4
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/21/BAGKHGQS4F1.DTL
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

fiction, schmiction: it's all true AND it's all fiction

2006-01-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

The all-too-predictable controversy about James Frey's memoir reminds me that my favorite UC Berkeley professor, Todd Willy, assigned Yukio Mishima's memoir Sun and Steel (a beautiful and powerful book, well worth reading; poor guy never had a chance, the War ended before he could become one of the kamikaze that, as an impressionable youth, he adored) to be read as a novel, in his "Rhetoric of the Novel" course. Realizing the impossibility of somehow capturing objective reality (whatever that might be) in words, and the role of re-imagining and revision in every act of story-telling (whether intended as fiction or not), I agree with my old editor John Sterlicchi who said, "Never let the facts get in the way of the story." Deeper truths dominate whatever set of facts the story-teller manages to assemble; the effective story-teller manipulates story elements to evoke the profound realities that even the simplest stories reflect.

hope....

2006-01-26T12:51:00.000-08:00

All it's cracked up to be, and more.
Second only to....

....anticipation....

Thanks to everybody who helps.

"support our troops"

2006-01-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

News that Halliburton delivered contaminated water to U.S. troops in Iraq shocks, but comes as no surprise. By now it should be obvious how poorly prepared the U.S. military has been for Bush's war - sending troops into combat with inadequate armor and other supplies is just the start. Before the war started, I predicted this, and was contradicted by a close friend who works as a journalist for a major metro newspaper: they've got their act together now in the all-volunteer military, compared to the way things were when I was drafted and served (longer ago than I care to recall), he argued. As a motor pool parts clerk just south of the DMZ in Korea, I knew that half of our mechanized infantry battallion's jeeps, trucks, and armored personnel carriers wouldn't run due to lack of needed repair parts, and I saw first-hand the way the troops suffered when the mess hall manager sold our fresh food on the black market (only the most egregious example of how we were cheated by our leaders). Apparently, not much as changed. Profiteers profit, while troops in the field do without or get second-best. So much for "Support Our Troops" - bring 'em home now, out of harm's way...whether that harm comes from Us or The Enemy, if that's a meaningful distinction.

why isn't Turd Blossom in jail yet?

2006-01-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

Bush facing impeachment? Rumsfeld and his bullies in the dock for crimes against humanity? & etc.

Comes with Republican Party control of all branches of government and a majority of voters who, apparently, want things this way, at least they voted in this gang.

everybody shares the dream...right?

2006-01-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

triskdekaphobic?

2006-01-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

There have to be at least 13 reasons not to be, I'm afraid.

blue sky thursday...

2006-01-12T14:07:00.000-08:00

...and it's just as pretty as a picture postcard, as my old Daddy used to say. They say it's going to rain tomorrow, but that's difficult to believe looking at the sky right now.

"He Rode The Fast Lane On The Road To Nowhere"

2006-01-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

UPDATE [Weds, 11.01.06]: From blame to insight and compassion, not a bad move. Sustainable?

10.01.06: Woke up with this phrase, the promotional tagline for Five Easy Pieces, one of my favorite movies (in part because of the oil rig setting and Jack's roughneck character, and my own experience with same), on my mind, seeing in a new light the film's ending, which I have interpreted in a very different way all these years. Finallly liberated from his worst fears and guilt feelings and nearing the end of his earthly existence, the Father mutely expresses his realization – enigmatic because he cannot speak and thus verbalize his feelings – that the Son has managed to find his way and become his own person despite the father's mistakes, the miracle is that Father has, in fact, passed something along to Son, but it's life-affirming, positive, an essential strength, that has helped the Son survive and thrive, not the "infection" of fear and weakness that he feels he received from his own father and that he was certain he had transmitted to his son. In an earlier interpretation, the Father's silence in the face of Son's confession condemns the Son for disobedience, for wasting the gift of his musical talent, renders impossible reconciliation and forgiveness, Father and Son remain trapped (together and separately) within a labyrinth of frustration and pain, bound by the past and their limited conceptions of themselves and each other. Maybe being able to see the movie in a different way indicates some positive shift in my ability to understand and accept my own life? That would be nice. Or, maybe this is just wishful thinking, seeking to let myself off the hook for my shortcomings and mistakes. How would I continue the movie, what does Nicholson's character go on to do after this encounter with the ineffable (nothing to do with the F-word, or does it?) Father?

the stars never lie

2006-01-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

My favorite astrologer says 2006 is going to be a great year, and that sounds just fine to me.

huge war crime happening as we watch, apparently impotent

2006-01-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

How many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as the result of the U.S. invasion?

mo' 'bout bro'

2006-01-07T17:05:00.000-08:00

Daily Times Saturday, January 07, 2006

EDITORIAL: Will Iran pipeline go ahead despite US opposition?

Even as Iran, Pakistan and India prepare to close a tripartite $7 billion 2,600-kilometre gas pipeline deal that would take Iranian gas to India through Pakistan, a senior State Department official has said that the United States is unequivocally against the deal. “The US government supports multiple pipelines from that [Caspian] region but remains absolutely opposed to pipelines involving Iran,” Steven Mann, a senior official from the US State Department, said last Wednesday.

Interestingly, the Asian Development Bank has assessed that the deal is feasible. At the same meeting, Dan Millison, ADB’s senior energy specialist, said that the ADB’s assessment was based purely on economic grounds and the rising demand for energy from India and Pakistan. The US position, however, is not linked to the economic side of the deal. It is driven by strategic politics, by Washington’s Iran policy. The United States, which has had adversarial relations with Iran since the 1979 revolution ousted the monarchy, has been accusing Iran for some years of cherishing nuclear-weapon ambitions. Since 2004, when Iran conceded that it had tried to enrich uranium beyond the limit prescribed by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it (Iran) is a signatory, the US has been pushing for isolating Iran and taking it to the United Nations Security Council for sanctions under Chapter VII of the UNSC.

Washington has voiced its opposition to the IPI pipeline as part of that strategy. The US fears that the deal will be a blow to its (US) efforts to isolate Iran. Since the deal also involves Pakistan and India, two countries that are squarely in the US camp and friendly with Washington, the Bush administration has been trying to pressure both to back off from the deal. India has come under greater pressure because New Delhi and Washington are steadily getting closer. The two sides have also signed a deal which bestows on India’s nuclear capability a legitimacy that has not come the way of any other state outside the NPT. But part of the quid pro quo is that India should get out of the Iran pipeline deal. Last September, India was forced to give a positive vote on a Britain-sponsored, US-backed resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling for sanctions against Iran. While India and Iran managed to tide over that incident, it is clear that the US is not about to let the matter of the pipeline rest.

Indian officials have so far played down the opposition from the US. Even after India cast its anti-Iran vote at the IAEA, the Indian petroleum minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, was reported as saying that everything was on track as far as the IPI deal was concerned. Indeed, during his visit to Pakistan last year to work out the details of the deal, Mr Aiyar, a strong advocate of the pipeline, had said that there was no official pressure on New Delhi from Washington. We now know that that is not the case. In fact, just after the Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, signed the July 17 deal in Washington, he made some unfavourable comments on the IPI deal, remarking that given the US opposition he did not see how any bank or financial institution would underwrite the deal. His statement created uproar among his allies in the Indian government and he had to retract it. But the fact is that he did make those comments as they were reported; the fact also is that Mr Singh knew the exact nature and extent of the US opposition to the deal and seemed to have sent out a warning signal to the financiers.

The US opposition to the deal, therefore, is no more a secret. The issue really is: Will the deal still go through? In other words, will India and Pakistan ignore US pressure and keep the deal on schedule? Opinion is divided on this. There is greater headache in this for India than Pakistan because India has much more to gain from the USA if it opts out and much more to lose if it doesn’t. So far it has tried to play both sides — voting against Iran at the IAEA but continuing to remain close to Iran on the economic agreements it has with that country. But that option may not be available to New Delhi for very long. On the domestic front, the Indian government has elements within the coalition that are opposed to India’s unbridled alliance with the US and New Delhi’s qualified approach to Iran because of its (India’s) strategic partnership with the US. If Dr Singh takes a decision to throw in his lot completely with the US, he will have to face these elements. Technically speaking, India does have the option of telling the US to take a hike. But whether it will do so is another matter.

This is the key to the issue. India’s decision will likely depend on a cost-benefit analysis. What is more important: its energy-starved economy and regional relations with Iran or its geo-strategic deals with the US? This calculation is not very easy. India desperately needs heavy doses of energy. It has already cut a deal with Iran for liquefied natural gas. It is about to enter another deal through the IPI. Its economic ties with Iran have been on the rise since the last 15 years. If Iran is convinced that India has opted for the US camp, Tehran could simply go ahead with Pakistan. On the other hand, India needs the US for a host of reasons, not least the fact that its strategic partnership with the US may be its only route to big power status. The relations also involve foreign direct investment, investment in India by US companies, the US interest in enhancing India’s military capability and so on.

Is the clock ticking on India’s decision? It may be premature to conclude thus. There is a long way to go in terms of the homework that needs to be done and the terms and conditions that need to be clinched among the three pipeline countries before the project can be irrevocably inaugurated. Until then, they can all hope that a solution to the US-Iran problem can be found that removes the US hurdles in the way of the pipeline.

latest back-burner project & another first novel I probably wouldn't get around to reading:

2006-01-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

“That’s Mister Loud-Mouth to you, punk!”

Episde No. 555
in the never-ending family saga

SHOPPING WITH DAD

DougDay: pay-for-pay-pundit still doesn't get it

2006-01-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

Sorry, right-wing-pay-for-play-pundit Doug, you did in fact create a conflict of interest, not the appearance of same: you were clearly speaking for Abramhoff's lobbying interests when you accepted money to advocate their views in print. Bottom line: you still don't get it, concealing the fact that you're being paid to advocate certain views and not revealing same in public statements is unethical and dishonest.

[cross-posted from DougDay.org, "where every Doug has his day"

you go, bro!

2006-01-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

US ‘absolutely opposes’ Iran-India gas line

‘New Delhi can oppose but might not want to sacrifice its ties with Washington’

Agence France Presse

Washington, january 5 The US said it was ‘‘absolutely opposed’’ to a natural gas pipeline project linking Iran with Pakistan and India, even though it was seen as feasible by an Asian Development Bank (ADB) expert.

The 2,600-km pipeline is estimated to cost more than $7 billion. ‘‘The US government supports multiple pipelines from the Caspian region but remains absolutely opposed to pipelines involving Iran,’’ senior State Department official Steven Mann told a forum in Washington on Wednesday night.

The US accuses Iran of trying to build a nuclear bomb and being a state sponsor of terror.

Mann, the special negotiator for Eurasian conflicts in the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs, spoke after ADB expert Dan Millison told the forum that the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline and another planned pipeline project linking Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan were both feasible. Millison said at the meeting organised by John Hopkins University that his assessment was based purely on economic grounds and demand from energy-guzzling India and Pakistan.

India, Pakistan and Iran, which has the world’s second-biggest natural gas reserves, have said they hope to conclude a deal by June 2006 despite US opposition. They plan to hold further talks in February in Tehran. India has said construction of the pipeline should start in 2007 and be operational by 2011.

Millison said although the 1,680-km trans-Afghan gas pipeline was shorter and less costly, as of last month India and Pakistan were ‘‘moving forward’’ with the project with Iran.

A multilateral institution official, who attended the Washington meeting and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a key question was whether India and Pakistan were prepared to go ahead with the trilateral project despite US opposition.

He thought India particularly had the ‘‘capacity’’ to forge ahead with the project but a US official beside him said New Delhi might not sacrifice its ‘‘long term interest’’ with Washington.

The US regards Pakistan as a key ally in its war on terror and has provided much aid to the country. It has also pledged to go out of the way to provide civilian nuclear technology to meet India’s energy needs.

URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=85365

© 2005: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.

behind the carefully-crafted movie image, hippos are really badasses

2006-01-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

Cute as the dickens they may be, as sentimentalized by Tubal nature documentaries and Fantasia, but I didn't know that hippos can run 30 mph and "kill more people each year than lions, elephants, leopards, buffaloes and rhinos combined," until I read Paul Raffaele's article, in Hippo Haven, in this month's Smithsonian magazine.

in yr face, amerikanpuritan fear-based consciousness!

2006-01-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

Rhode Island Legalizes Medical Marijuana

....after The Supremes bring the hammer down, Fall '05 C.A.M.P. fires still smoking, in the midst of an ongoing Federal war on medical cannabis dispensaries and associated grower networks.…

"Death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people!"

What's next? Smoking taxpayer-supported pot at taxpayer-supported same-sex weddings/abortion clinics/jihadkinder?

Yeah, baby.

is this the best we can do? mercy killings for whales?

2006-01-01T17:50:00.000-08:00

Sad start for the new year. So much for rainydaydreaming, of the sweet variety at least (see left margin).

I still believe in fairies, however.

Stranded whales shot dead in NZ

we are all hungover & envious consumptionists-in-training

2006-01-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

Long-time friend and ace journo Tom Abate starts '06 off with a worth-reading look at media immersion and what it might mean when we spend more hours consuming media than sleeping:

University of Michigan communications Professor Susan Douglas said advertising -- which is the bread, butter, jam and mother's milk of media -- has afflicted Americans with a perpetual unease that can be appeased but never quite satisfied with new purchases. "Advertising is designed to sell us envy, and the person we envy is the future self we become if we use the product,'' said Douglas, who believes media have come to "colonize our minds." Young people, she said, are most susceptible to the "extreme narcissism" fostered by media. "They live in a much more saturated media environment. They are the most heavily marketed-to generation ever," Douglas said, adding, "I'm not suggesting young people are dupes. A lot of them are talking back."

Might we be better off if we spent all those hours sleeping, with the hope of illuminating dreams, instead of consuming media which reinforce all our worst fears and foolish hopes?

pynchonoid: God calling, timed-release, pay no attention to that man behind the curtains

2005-12-30T22:04:00.000-08:00

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510102, via Godlorica:

Physics, abstract
physics/0510102

From: Stephen D. H. Hsu [view email]
Date (v1): Tue, 11 Oct 2005 20:15:52 GMT (5kb)
Date (revised v2): Tue, 6 Dec 2005 06:20:04 GMT (7kb)

Message in the Sky

Authors: S. Hsu, A. Zee
Comments: 3 pages, revtex
Subj-class: Popular Physics

We argue that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a stupendous opportunity for the Creator of universe our (assuming one exists) to have sent a message to its occupants, using known physics. Our work does not support the Intelligent Design movement in any way whatsoever, but asks, and attempts to answer, the entirely scientific question of what the medium and message might be IF there was actually a message. The medium for the message is unique. We elaborate on this obervation, noting that it requires only careful adjustment of the fundamental Lagrangian, but no direct intervention in the subsequent evolution of the universe.

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Gravity's Rainbow 4:

"You didn't really believe you'd be saved. Come, we all know who we are by now. No one was ever going to take the trouble to save you, old fellow.... "

[cross-posted from pynchonoid: "everything connects"]

DougDay: payola-popping pundit good for contrast, perhaps

2005-12-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

Caught pearl-diving in the Bush Administration cesspool, payola-popping pundit Doug makes the rest of us Doug's look good, thanks!

[cross-posted from DougDay, "where every Doug has his day"]

ROK: azalea for the beloved; "saucepan" temperament

2005-12-29T10:50:00.000-08:00

In the Republic of Korea, "the azalea is the flower traditionally reserved for the beloved," reports Suki Kim in "Hwang, Drawn and Quartered," Wall Street Journal, 29 December 2005.

Another nugget from this article: "South Koreans often describe their national spirit as 'saucepan,' suggesting a temperament that boils fast and cools even faster."

TO THE EDITOR: cali Grapes beat Bears, badly

2005-12-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

Bears as 'wine country casualties'

Editor,

I was appalled after reading Peter Fimrite's article, "Wine country casualties" (Dec. 26). It describes the slaughter of bears and deer because they damage wine grapes in Napa County.

There are thousands of acres of open, forested land in California's northern counties that would make a suitable habitat for these animals. Wouldn't relocating them to these areas be a more humane solution to the problem?

If there is a reasonable argument against relocation that I haven't thought of, I'd really like to hear it.

RICH FOLEY
Sausalito

Editor,

I was saddened but not surprised by the article about the plight of our native bears and even cougars being targeted for death by vintners.

As humans further encroach on these majestic animals, of course sightings and "incidents" increase. We have driven many animals to extinction, and most others have been exterminated from their normal ranges by human "development."

It is sad that human greed and shortsightedness keep pushing these original inhabitants of "our" lands ever further into retreat and decline. Ideally, we could set up a grassroots-driven "Wildlife Conservation Act" akin to the original Coastal Conservation Act. But the state proposition process has been so co-opted by powerful industry lobbyists that it is likely impossible to achieve anything meaningful by that route. Still, it is worth a try.

In the meantime vintners and ranchers should be required to set up stronger, and electrified, fences before any "depredation" (execution) permits are approved. Vintners and others wishing to destroy our wildlife should be required to try to trap and relocate animals several times first.

We California citizens also need to wrest the "depredation" permitting process away from the feds. If Californians aren't willing to curtail further intrusive "development" into wildlife's last safe places, we must take steps to ensure our native fauna's dignity, safety and right to survive and even thrive.

DAVID SHEFIK
Berkeley

Editor,

Seems to me that we've got a lot more vineyards in the coastal mountains than we have bears. I'd rather see the bears.

ERIC JEWETT
Los Gatos

[cross-posted from To the Editor, must-read letters to the editor]

impeach W

2005-12-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

Finally, the drum begins to beat:

Published on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by The Nation

The I-Word is Gaining Ground
by Katrina vanden Heuvel

In 1998, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: "This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system." That arbiter of moral politics was incensed about the possibility of Bill Clinton escaping unpunished for his "crimes."

Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in the entire Bush Administration has been fired or indicted, not to mention impeached, for the shedding of American blood in Iraq or for the shredding of our Constitution at home. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter put it--hours after the New York Times reported that Bush had authorized NSA wiretapping of US citizens without judicial warrants--this President has committed a real transgression that "goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power."

In the last months, several organizations, including AfterDowningStreet, Impeach Central and ImpeachPAC.org, have formed to urge Bush's impeachment. But until very recently, their views were virtually absent in the so-called "liberal" MSM, and could only be found on the Internet and in street protests.

But the times they are a' changin'. The I-word has moved from the marginal to the mainstream--although columnists like Charles "torture-is-fine-by-me" Krauthammer would like us to believe that "only the most brazen and reckless and partisan" could support the idea. In fact, as Michelle Goldberg reports in Salon, "in the past few days, impeachment "has become a topic of considered discussion among constitutional scholars and experts (including a few Republicans), former intelligence officers, and even a few politicians." Even a moderately liberal columnist like Newsweek's Alter sounds like The Nation, observing: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator."

As Editor & Publisher recently reported, the idea of impeaching Bush has entered the mainstream media's circulatory system--with each day producing more op-eds and articles on the subject. Joining the chorus on Christmas Eve, conservative business magazine Barron's published a lengthy editorial excoriating the president for committing a potentially impeachable offense. "If we don't discuss the program and lack of authority of it," wrote Barron's editorial page editor Thomas Donlan, "we are meeting the enemy--in the mirror."

Public opinion is also growing more comfortable with the idea of impeaching this president. A Zogby International poll conducted this summer found that 42 percent of Americans felt that impeaching Bush would be justified if it was shown that he had manipulated intelligence in going to war in Iraq. (John Zogby admitted that "it was much higher than I expected.") By November, the number of those who favored impeaching Bush stood at 53 percent--if it was in fact proven that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq. (And these polls were taken before the revelations of Bush's domestic spying.)

For those interested in some of the most compelling charges against the president, I offer a brief summary:

* Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean argued in his aptly-named book Worse than Watergate that Bush's false statements about WMDs in Iraq--used to drum up support for an invasion--deceived the American people and Congress. This constituted "an impeachable offense," Dean told PBS' Bill Moyers in 2004. "I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people." Bush's actions were actually far worse than Watergate, Dean contends, because "no one died for Nixon's so-called Watergate abuses."

Lending credence to Dean's arguments, the Downing Street Memo revealed that Britain's MI-6 Director Richard Dearlove had told Tony Blair that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush Administration. John Bonifaz, a Boston-based attorney and constitutional law expert, said that Bush seemingly "concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated," and "must certainly be punished for giving false information to the Senate." Bush deceived "the American people as to the basis for taking the nation into war against Iraq," Bonifaz argued--an impeachable offense.

* Rep. John Conyers argued as well that the president committed impeachable offenses" because he and senior administration officials "countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq" at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, including Guantanamo Bay and the now-notorious "black sites" around the world.

* The most compelling evidence of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors is the revelation that he repeatedly authorized NSA spying on US citizens without obtaining the required warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Constitutional experts, politicians and ex-intelligence experts agree that Bush "committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans." Rep. John Lewis--"the first major House figure to suggest impeaching Bush," said the AP--argued that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the wiretapping. Lewis added: "He is not King, he is president."

Meanwhile, Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University School of Law--a specialist in surveillance law--told Knight Ridder that Bush's actions "violated federal law" and raised "serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors." It is worth remembering that an abuse of power similar to Bush's NSA wiretapping decision was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. [This comparison was brought home in the ACLU's powerful full page ad in the NYT of December 22nd.]

There are many reasons why it is crucial that the Democrats regain control of Congress in '06, but consider this one: If they do, there may be articles of impeachment introduced and the estimable John Conyers, who has led the fight to defend our constitution, would become Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Wouldn't that be a truly just response to the real high crimes and misdemeanors that this lawbreaking president has so clearly committed?

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor of The Nation.

"We went into mountains beyond the curvature of earth, into land where nobody else had been"

2005-12-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

Ignorant re the contemporary scene of extreme macho (gender aisde) adventuring and exploration, "because it's there" go-for-it-ness, except for the occasional corporate-branded CEO-led reality-Tube exploit (ballooning, mostly, exotic powered aircraft, and other high-tech ventures)) I wonder who today could be compared, from the New York Times:

Norman Dane Vaughan, Dies at 100; Went to Antarctica With Byrd

Norman Vaughan, a legendary Alaskan explorer and dog sled racer, and the last surviving member of Adm. Richard E. Byrd's expedition to Antarctica in 1928-30, died Friday at a hospital in Anchorage. He was 100....To mark his 89th birthday, in 1994, Mr. Vaughan climbed an icy 10,302-feet peak about 250 miles short of the South Pole that Byrd had named Mount Vaughan in his honor. His wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, who was 52 at the time, accompanied him on the eight-day climb....In 1997, at age 92, he founded what became the 800-mile Norman Vaughan Serum Run 25, a memorial to the winter of 1925, when diphtheria struck the town of Nome. Relay teams of mushers raced nonstop from Nenana in central Alaska to Nome on the Seward Peninsula with the serum that fought the deadly outbreak...."I put foot on rock that had never been seen or touched before by humans," he told The New York Times Magazine in 1999. "We went into mountains beyond the curvature of earth, into land where nobody else had been. When we got home, Admiral Byrd named a mountain in the Antarctic after me. I told him that one day I would go back to climb it, and he said, 'Norman, I think you will.' "

more miracles! the stars never lie....

2005-12-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

Monday, 26th December 2005

ARIES
(Mar 21 - Apr 20)

'Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.' I have picked this quote from Confucius because Saturn is currently making you feel tense and uncomfortable. It may be the festive season but you are not entirely inclined to celebrate. There is something you wish you could change. You keep wondering whether you could have played things differently. Be easier on yourself and everyone else around you. No matter what has happened, what is about to happen next will make sense of it all. Miracles can happen between now and New Year.

....predicts Jonathan Cainer.

the miracle, again this year:

2005-12-25T23:03:00.000-08:00

Geography overcome (physcially, virtually, & otherwise), we gather in love, gratitude, reconciliation, reflecting each other and the Light. This past year especially, I couldn't have made it through without support from family and friends, all I can do is try to return the love, strength, and kindness you shared. Thank you all for all your gifts, especially when I didn't recognize them, because those gifts remain waiting for me to unwrap.

ho! ho! ho! ho!

2005-12-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

Today's Joseph and Mary would face 15 checkpoints, reports Times Online.

[photo: NEWSgrist]

headline of the day:

2005-12-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

2 more rings spotted around Uranus

....Well! Ex-cu-u-u-se me.

Another publication almost but not quite said:

Mooning reveals the chaotic world of Uranus

bad santa still has a few days to sleep it off

2005-12-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

in London, by Arofish

impeach President Bush now!

2005-12-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

Doug Ireland:

....A Zogby poll released November 4 showed that, when asked if they agreed that, "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment," Americans answered Yes by 53% to 42%. It is therefore not simply an extremist raving to suggest that impeachment of George Bush should be put on the table.

Remember that, in the impeachment of Richard Nixon, Article 2 of the three Articles of Impeachment dealt with illegal wiretapping of Americans. It said that Nixon committed a crime “by directing or authorizing [intelligence] agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office.”

There was no national security justification for Bush’s illegal NSA wiretaps -- which could easily have been instituted by following the FISA law’s provisions -- and, instead of being related to “enforcement of laws,” Bush’s eavesdropping was indisputably in contravention of the law of the land.

And when a president commits a crime in violation of his oath of office swearing to uphold the law, it is the time to impeach.

why is Barbie so popular?

2005-12-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

In part, perhaps, because kids love to torture the ubiquitous totem of phony, unattainable female beauty. The Times of London reports:

....The methods of mutilation are varied and creative, ranging from scalping to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving, according to academics from the University of Bath.

The findings were revealed as part of an in-depth look by psychologists and management academics into the role of brands among 7 to 11-year-old schoolchildren.

The researchers had not intended to focus on Barbie, but they were taken aback by the rejection, hatred and violence she provoked when they asked the children about their feelings for the doll.

Violence and torture against Barbie were repeatedly reported across age, school and gender. No other toy or brand name provoked such a negative response....

Chew on that while shopping for the girls on your list this year.

welcome, lord of darkness, to your realm of chaos, destruction, suffering & death

2005-12-18T22:59:00.000-08:00

Guardian:

The vice-president flew around the Baghdad area in a pack of heavily armed Blackhawk helicopters.

beating the odds: geneticists find a 1 in 3 billion chance for the genetic defect that causes "white" skin

2005-12-16T16:52:00.000-08:00

....must have been strange to grow up as the first and only "white" kid in the wide world. What a story: emergence of "race" and racism, and initial incorporation of the Alien Other nightmare:

Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; A01

Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.

The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races.

Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against interpreting the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a vaguely defined biological, social and political concept, they noted, and skin color is only part of what race is -- and is not.

In fact, several scientists said, the new work shows just how small a biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions for making a human being.

"It's a major finding in a very sensitive area," said Stephen Oppenheimer, an expert in anthropological genetics at Oxford University, who was not involved in the work. "Almost all the differences used to differentiate populations from around the world really are skin deep."

The work raises a raft of new questions -- not least of which is why white skin caught on so thoroughly in northern climes once it arose. Some scientists suggest that lighter skin offered a strong survival advantage for people who migrated out of Africa by boosting their levels of bone-strengthening vitamin D; others have posited that its novelty and showiness simply made it more attractive to those seeking mates.

The work also reveals for the first time that Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations. That means that light skin arose independently at least twice in human evolution, in each case affecting populations with the facial and other traits that today are commonly regarded as the hallmarks of Caucasian and Asian races.

Several sociologists and others said they feared that such revelations might wrongly overshadow the prevailing finding of genetics over the past 10 years: that the number of DNA differences between races is tiny compared with the range of genetic diversity found within any single racial group.

Even study leader Keith Cheng said he was at first uncomfortable talking about the new work, fearing that the finding of such a clear genetic difference between people of African and European ancestries might reawaken discredited assertions of other purported inborn differences between races -- the most long-standing and inflammatory of those being intelligence.

"I think human beings are extremely insecure and look to visual cues of sameness to feel better, and people will do bad things to people who look different," Cheng said.

The discovery, described in today's issue of the journal Science, was an unexpected outgrowth of studies Cheng and his colleagues were conducting on inch-long zebra fish, which are popular research tools for geneticists and developmental biologists. Having identified a gene that, when mutated, interferes with its ability to make its characteristic black stripes, the team scanned human DNA databases to see if a similar gene resides in people.

To their surprise, they found virtually identical pigment-building genes in humans, chickens, dogs, cows and many others species, an indication of its biological value.

They got a bigger surprise when they looked in a new database comparing the genomes of four of the world's major racial groups. That showed that whites with northern and western European ancestry have a mutated version of the gene.

Skin color is a reflection of the amount and distribution of the pigment melanin, which in humans protects against damaging ultraviolet rays but in other species is also used for camouflage or other purposes. The mutation that deprives zebra fish of their stripes blocks the creation of a protein whose job is to move charged atoms across cell membranes, an obscure process that is crucial to the accumulation of melanin inside cells.

Humans of European descent, Cheng's team found, bear a slightly different mutation that hobbles the same protein with similar effect. The defect does not affect melanin deposition in other parts of the body, including the hair and eyes, whose tints are under the control of other genes.

A few genes have previously been associated with human pigment disorders -- most notably those that, when mutated, lead to albinism, an extreme form of pigment loss. But the newly found glitch is the first found to play a role in the formation of "normal" white skin. The Penn State team calculates that the gene, known as slc24a5, is responsible for about one-third of the pigment loss that made black skin white. A few other as-yet-unidentified mutated genes apparently account for the rest.

Although precise dating is impossible, several scientists speculated on the basis of its spread and variation that the mutation arose between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago. That would be consistent with research showing that a wave of ancestral humans migrated northward and eastward out of Africa about 50,000 years ago.

Unlike most mutations, this one quickly overwhelmed its ancestral version, at least in Europe, suggesting it had a real benefit. Many scientists suspect that benefit has to do with vitamin D, made in the body with the help of sunlight and critical to proper bone development.

Sun intensity is great enough in equatorial regions that the vitamin can still be made in dark-skinned people despite the ultraviolet shielding effects of melanin. In the north, where sunlight is less intense and cold weather demands that more clothing be worn, melanin's ultraviolet shielding became a liability, the thinking goes.

Today that solar requirement is largely irrelevant because many foods are supplemented with vitamin D.

Some scientists said they suspect that white skin's rapid rise to genetic dominance may also be the product of "sexual selection," a phenomenon of evolutionary biology in which almost any new and showy trait in a healthy individual can become highly prized by those seeking mates, perhaps because it provides evidence of genetic innovativeness.

Cheng and co-worker Victor A. Canfield said their discovery could have practical spinoffs. A gene so crucial to the buildup of melanin in the skin might be a good target for new drugs against melanoma, for example, a cancer of melanin cells in which slc24a5 works overtime.

But they and others agreed that, for better or worse, the finding's most immediate impact may be an escalating debate about the meaning of race.

Recent revelations that all people are more than 99.9 percent genetically identical has proved that race has almost no biological validity. Yet geneticists' claims that race is a phony construct have not rung true to many nonscientists -- and understandably so, said Vivian Ota Wang of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda.

"You may tell people that race isn't real and doesn't matter, but they can't catch a cab," Ota Wang said. "So unless we take that into account it makes us sound crazy."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

NYT lets Bush Administration censor news

2005-12-16T10:48:00.000-08:00

From Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

....and I thought I couldn't lose any more confidence in the newspapers. You never know, it seems, what they may be holding back or otherwise disguising.

mercy wants empathy

2005-12-16T10:12:00.000-08:00

"When you divide people into the good and the evil, mercy, which requires empathy of tremendous force, becomes virtually impossible. Good, as any English teacher will tell you, cannot empathize with Evil. Only people can empathize with other people."

...from: CNN's Goddess of Vengeance: What's Not to Love About Nancy Grace?, by Tom Kerr, Counterpunch, 16 December 2005

Happy Birthday, Beethoven!

2005-12-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.
–Ludwig Van Beethoven

[P.S. BBC Radio 3 today begins streaming all of J.S. Bach's works, though Christmas Day at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/]

it's torture to consider how low Bush can go

2005-12-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

Is the McCain-Bush standoff/compromise on torture just PR and Constitutional lip service? Or, a case of a principled Congress forcing a degenerate President to back down...and can only accomplish that now after Bush has run his credibility completely into the ground with his never-ending lies. I tend to believe it's PR, and will until it's clear that Bush and his surrogates have discontinued torture and degrading treatment of prisoners in US prisons (in the US Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, anywhere) and by US proxies. Just stop those cold-hearted mo-fo's.

Happy Birthday, Dan!

2005-12-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

philip roth re the paradoxes of writing & criticism

2005-12-15T08:40:00.000-08:00

Philip Roth to a Danish interviewer in today's Guardian:

I tell him that interviewing him can be extremely difficult - like climbing an iceberg without clothes on.

"Well, I wasn't put on this earth to make your life easy. Ha!" His laughter is like a proclamation - no smile, just "Ha!"

"Maybe we shouldn't be talking about literature at all," I say.

"Ha, ha," he says. "Now you're talking! I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk. Fairytale talk. As soon as you generalise, you are in a completely different universe than that of literature, and there's no bridge between the two."

Roth understands well the paradox of the writer's life:

"It was the interests in life and the attempt to get life down on the pages which made me a writer - and then I discovered that, in many ways, I am standing on the outside of life".

Mae West's "Wild Christmas"

2005-12-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

Her '66 album, downloadable:
http://www.danacountryman.com/mae/west.html

Please listen and let me know I'm not hallucinating.

"Santa, come up and see me, bring your reindeer, too!"

Don't know how long I want to think about that scene.

"air, now free of poison"

2005-12-13T20:36:00.000-08:00

...from: Unusual Technical Images of Equipment Used in World War II

headline of the day:

2005-12-13T17:48:00.000-08:00

Autopsy reveals subject was
still alive when autopsy began

...in the current Onion.

i'm no bubble boy, Bush insists

2005-12-13T08:33:00.000-08:00

"I feel like I'm getting some really good advice from very capable people and that people from all walks of life inform me and inform those who advise me," he said. "I feel very comfortable that I'm very aware of what's going on."

...read it all: Bush denies he lives in a 'bubble', Agence France Press

honeybees extract sweet, edible essence de Paris

2005-12-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

Paris is buzzing: Honeybees are busy phantoms of the opera, balconies, rooftops, and even a bank headquarters
by Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor, 12 December 2005

hello, nancy!

2005-12-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

Greetings & welcome!

(If you're not Nancy, don't worry about it.)

the chip off Osama's block

2005-12-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

From a worth-reading profile in this week's New Yorker:

[....] Abdullah bin Laden, Osama’s son, today lives in Jedda and enjoys good health, according to several people who know him. (He did not respond to requests for an interview.) In a story published in a London-based Saudi-owned newspaper in 2001, Abdullah said that he left his father’s household in the mid-nineties, when Osama was preparing to leave Sudan, where he had been living in exile, for a new and uncertain exile in Afghanistan. Not wishing to endure such hardship any longer, Abdullah sought and received his father’s permission to return to Saudi Arabia, where he has since taken up a career in advertising and public relations.

Abdullah runs his own firm, called Fame Advertising, which has offices near a Starbucks in a two-story strip mall on Palestine Street, one of Jedda’s busiest commercial thoroughfares. “Fame . . . Is Your Fame” is the company’s slogan, according to its marketing brochures. Among the firm’s advertised specialties is “event management,” which refers to the staging of attention-grabbing corporate galas and launch parties for new products or stores. The firm makes this promise: “Fame Advertising events are novel, planned meticulously, and executed with efficiency.” On the back of this brochure is printed a single word: “Different.” [....]

what's up with the Trashiyangtse chortens?

2005-12-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

News from Bhutan reads like a science-fiction/fantasy saga with made-up names and places for an invented world, so little do I know about that country and its culture:

Villagers in the eastern dzongkhag of Trashiyangtse are being encouraged to do night patrolling as in the past with more than eight chortens in the district robbed and vandalised in the past three months.

...and, sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar

2005-12-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

Reuters photo, 1 December 05, and caption:

The Obelisk of Buenos Aires is covered with a giant condom to commemorate World AIDS Day December 1, 2005. According to a report issued by ONUSIDA (UN AIDS), the number of people infected with the HIV virus in Latin America had risen over the last year from 1.6 to 1.8 million. REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian

passion of Christ

2005-12-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

The Passion of Christ
Originally uploaded by Kirja-addikti.

...bringing Lent to Advent, correctio for commercial frenzy....

chemistry professor CEO honks like a goose to win a crumb from Gates' pie

2005-12-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

"The only scientist to emit a goose honk during his presentation was Robert E. Sievers, who was illustrating inexpensive straws with useful vibrations."

...read it all in today's New York Times: Better Bananas, Nicer Mosquitoes

new cat pops up

2005-12-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

[BBC photo]

Strange new, red-haired, tree-climbing cat discovered in Borneo.

wanted: good christian dino hunters

2005-12-04T13:45:00.000-08:00

Hoax? It's worth reading nonetheless: Project Pterosaur

[....] I have also contacted "Johnny" Kimbuso, my African guide from my last expedition, to see if he would be willing to help. It was he who managed to take the picture of the apatosaur we uncovered. Hopefully, I can convince him to join me again on another Creation Science adventure, although he still suffers trauma from his close encounter with the charging dinosaur.

[....] Besides supplies that are common to all animal capture expeditions, we have determined that we need the following special equipment:

* Metallic pterosaur effigies based on Biblical designs (for herding into traps.)
* Frankincense smoker (to disorientate the animals for capture.)
* Nets, including large butterfly-style nets for use on smaller rhamphorhynchi.
* Calming hoods (designed based on Deluge-era pterosaur skull remains.)
* Reinforced bird cages.
* Climate controlled egg transport containers. [....]

What Are Pterosaurs?

Pterosaurs (ter’ə·sôrs) are flying reptiles with leathery or membranous wings attached to the sides of their bodies and supported by an elongated fourth digit on their forelimbs. They were created by the Lord on the fifth day of His Creation Week (Genesis 1:20-22) and were a constant presence in the skies over Eden, where they peacefully ate fruit and plants. After the Fall, many of their descendants degenerated to a carnivorous diet and became feared by man, although non-wicked specimens preserved on the Ark helped to temper this degenerative tendency after the Flood. Various Pterosaur kinds were common throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa up until the early Middle Ages and interacted extensively with Man. Today, although Evolutionists falsely insist that they are extinct, pterosaurs can still be found, hidden away in the unexplored wilds of our world.

There are two main baramins of pterosaurs: rhamphorhynchoid and pterodactyloid. Rhamphorhynchoid kinds are small to medium sized (usually no larger than a sea gull) with long tails, short heads and necks, and teeth. Pterodactyloid kinds are medium to very large (in fact, they include the largest flying animals that ever lived) with short tails, longer necks and limbs, often crested heads, and usually lack teeth. It's still debated whether these groups are monobaraminic or holobaraminic, and it is one of Project Pterosaur's science goals to answer this question (if we find specimens of both groups, we can determine baraminicity by using Intelligent Design Theory to measure their specified complexity and apply the Dembski-Shannon equation to extrapolate the amount of relative informational loss due to genetic degradation from their perfect Creation.) [....]

Pterosaurs, including the ancestors of pterodactyls (middle left) and rhamphorhynchi (middle right), lived peacefully with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. (Artistic reconstruction by Peggy Miller.)

china democracy struggle continues

2005-12-04T10:07:00.000-08:00

BBC: Thousands march for HK democracy

rainy days & Rachmaninoff

2005-12-01T10:28:00.000-08:00

Rain, gusting winds, cranes like long-stemmed musical notes scribbled faintly against a stormy horizon at the Port of Oakland, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 on the (Internet) radio. A day, and music, that remind me of working at Northside Books in Berkeley a quarter of a century ago, store empty as the storm raged, in comes a beggar wet and stinking, filthy. Just as my moral fiber sagged (expecting my boss any time now) I began to wonder if I should kick him or her out into the rain, a lightbulb clicked on above the beggar's head. "Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony?" with an index finger twirling vaguely towards the ceiling. Yes, I nodded, impressed. "Ahh, don't you just love it, the train chugging across the steppes...." the beggar continued, raspy voice trailing off as the music swelled in a crescendo. Together, cozy, surrounded by books indoors, we listened to the rest of the symphony as the rain poured down outside.

victory...

2005-11-30T15:26:00.000-08:00

...a hollow concept at best, if not meaningless doubletalk. What can Bush's "victory" mean for the people caught in the crossfire between bad guys fighting for power, control, wealth, the innocents who suffer and die, whose lives are torn apart by the war, however Bush defines our exit? We should leave Iraq as soon as practical and, once we've stopped fighting, together with the international community help establish peace, justice, and reconciliation where we have so far sown death, destruction, and hatred.

driving off a cliff

2005-11-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

Must read: this week's This Modern World cartoon strip.

"Art is too serious a matter to limit it to the concept of enjoyment"

2005-11-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

Contemporary composer Arik (Arie) Shapiro in a Haaretz interview:

"Enjoyment is a historical experience. People enjoy Mozart, Dvorak, Berlioz. If I want to enjoy a melody, I go to Schubert. This is a cultural experience. But of a work that was written the day before yesterday, I am critical. The enjoyment is only a part of my listening, a niche. Art is too serious a matter to limit it to the concept of enjoyment. That's primitive. When a work appeals to taste, it is appealing to a low level: This is the same taste that chooses the color of a car, or upholstery, or a table. This is the same taste that chooses what ice cream to lick. Taste is base artistic judgment."

Cheney: crooked, cruel & crazy

2005-11-28T21:19:00.001-08:00

Editorial from the Madison Capitol Times, reprinted at Common Dreams:

Cheney Threatens America

There is something reassuring about the battering that Vice President Dick Cheney has taken in recent weeks. Finally, it appears, the Washington intelligentsia is waking up to the reality that has been obvious for years to thinking Americans: The most powerful vice president in American history is a deeply dishonest and an even more deeply dangerous man.

Cheney has been taking hits from all sides ever since his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted for lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury. Lewis has been linked to a scheme to destroy the reputation of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, the man who exposed the lies on which the Bush-Cheney administration based its "case" for invading Iraq.

The indictment of Libby mentioned Cheney's name repeatedly and in the most compromising of circumstances: as one of the first people to mention to Libby that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative and as a participant with Libby in sessions where schemes were hatched to "respond" to Wilson.

Even before the smoke had cleared from the Libby indictment, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who had served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, charged that Cheney and his allies had hijacked U.S. foreign policy - often without the knowledge or consent of President Bush. Recalling his service during the Bush administration's first term, Wilkerson charged: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Using an approach that Wilkerson described as "not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy," the colonel argued that Cheney's cabal had "produced a series of disastrous decisions" - policymaking - with disastrous consequences for America.

Then, as if to confirm Wilkerson's observation, Cheney was exposed as the federal government's primary proponent of the use of torture. In an attempt to counter a congressional move led by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, Cheney pressed lawmakers to exempt the CIA from the new standard.

Amid revelations that Cheney's office had long been the administration's chief advocate for the use of torture, former CIA Director Stansfield Turner has labeled Cheney America's "vice president for torture." Declaring that "I just don't understand how a man in that position can take such a stance," Turner labeled Cheney "reprehensible."

The vice president lived up to the description after U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Cheney immediately suggested that the old soldier had lost his "backbone."

But Murtha wasn't giving Cheney any ground. Recalling the vice president's determined efforts to avoid serving in Vietnam, the congressman said, "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and (have) never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

Cheney lost that round, as he has most rounds in recent months.

If this keeps up, President Bush might yet come to recognize what most Americans already well understand: Dick Cheney is too crooked, too cruel and too crazy to be allowed to continue warping this country's policies. And if Bush doesn't recognize the need to get rid of Cheney, Congress should.

© 2005 The Capital Times

headline of the day:

2005-11-28T10:32:00.000-08:00

It's official: Romance lasts just a year, Italian scientists say

The brain chemicals involved apparently surge then return to normal levels after a while.

So much for poetry; chemical analysis may provide the better gauge for romantic love.

the long march of Dick Cheney

2005-11-27T21:54:00.000-08:00

...is the title of a good survey of Cheney's rise to power:

The Long March of Dick Cheney
by Sidney Blumenthal, History News Network, 28 November 2005

2005-11-27T13:41:00.000-08:00

I made this using a free new tool, Cool Text.

"i'd rather be smashing imperialism"

2005-11-25T22:11:00.000-08:00

The only banner ad that made me laugh today:

Actions Speak Louder Than BumperStickers

attitude of gratitude

2005-11-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

...unless you're a turkey.

Wilber sells out

2005-11-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

I was hoping Ken Wilber wouldn't go into the guru biz, but that's what it looks like, according to this email today:

Shambhala, in partnership with Sounds True, is offering a new audio program from Ken Wilber. With this program, streamlined into a concise, accessible form, Ken has finally created the ideal tool for sparking an immediate revolution of mind and spirit—The Integral Operating System. With this multi-modal "platform for the soul," users will learn how to see the world with a whole new level of understanding and philosophical sophistication.

Can't wait for the informercial.

I still recommend Wilber's big Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, as a passionately argued polemic, if not the "consensus" distillation that Wilber claims he's writing.

mildly depressed people more perceptive than others

2005-11-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

I could have told them that and spared them the research expense. Pay close attention to what's going on with the people around you and see if you can avoid feeling depressed.

Queen's University reports:

KINGSTON, Ont. – Surprisingly, people with mild depression are actually more tuned into the feelings of others than those who aren’t depressed, a team of Queen’s psychologists has discovered.

“This was quite unexpected because we tend to think that the opposite is true,” says lead researcher Kate Harkness. “For example, people with depression are more likely to have problems in a number of social areas.”

The researchers were so taken aback by the findings, they decided to replicate the study with another group of participants. The second study produced the same results: People with mild symptoms of depression pay more attention to details of their social environment than those who are not depressed.

Their report on what is known as “mental state decoding” – or identifying other people’s emotional states from social cues such as eye expressions – is published today in the international journal, Cognition and Emotion.

Also on the research team from the Queen’s Psychology Department are Professors Mark Sabbagh and Jill Jacobson, and students Neeta Chowdrey and Tina Chen. Drs. Roumen Milev and Michela David at Providence Continuing Care Centre, Mental Health Services, collaborated on the study as well.

Previous related research by the Queen’s investigators has been conducted on people diagnosed with clinical depression. In this case, the clinically depressed participants performed much worse on tests of mental state decoding than people who weren’t depressed.

To explain the apparent discrepancy between those with mild and clinical depression, the researchers suggest that becoming mildly depressed (dysphoric) can heighten concern about your surroundings. “People with mild levels of depression may initially experience feelings of helplessness, and a desire to regain control of their social world,” says Dr. Harkness. “They might be specially motivated to scan their environment in a very detailed way, to find subtle social cues indicating what others are thinking and feeling.”

The idea that mild depression differs from clinical depression is a controversial one, the psychologist adds. Although it is often viewed as a continuum, she believes that depression may also contain thresholds such as the one identified in this study. “Once you pass the threshold, you’re into something very different,” she says.

Funding for this study comes from a New Opportunities Grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

PLEASE NOTE: PDF copies of the study are available upon request.

To learn more about Research at Queen’s ...

Contacts:

Nancy Dorrance, Queen’s News & Media Services, 613.533.2869

Therese Greenwood, Queen’s News & Media Services, 613.533.6907

Attention broadcasters: Queen’s has facilities to provide broadcast quality audio and video feeds. For television interviews, we can provide a live, real-time double ender from Kingston fibre optic cable. Please call for details.

mobile phone monkeys

2005-11-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Only a Japanese phenomenon?

Mobile phones making a monkey out of Japanese
Sapio, 10 November 2005

Going bananas over mobile phones for so many years is turning Japanese into monkeys, according to Sapio (11/23).

Nobuo Masataka, a professor at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute and author of the monster best seller Keitai wo Motta Saru (Monkeys With Mobile Phones), argues that the proliferation of mobile phones has got young Japanese making monkeys of themselves, aping the behavior patterns of chimpanzees.

He says that young Japanese have lost the ability to discern between public and private space. He adds that they have formed what he calls the dearuki-zoku (out and about tribe).

"There's been a dramatic increase in the dearuki-zoku. They don't eat meals at home with family members and you can clearly see with your own eyes the large increase in young people who hang about on the streets together with the same old friends," Masataka tells Sapio. "They make places like Shibuya their territory and rarely head even to places like (nearby entertainment and shopping districts) Shinjuku or Harajuku. They get tired going to new places or meeting new people. If they get hungry while they're strolling around, they simply get food by going into a convenience store, buying something and sitting down outside on the curb to eat it. If not that, then they just hang around for hours in fast food joints."

The primate specialist says the actions of the dearuki-zoku closely resemble behavior patterns in chimpanzees, which tend to travel in groups, walking around for a long time without going to any specific place, then eating and disposing of their wastes in the same place before bedding down on piles of grass whenever and wherever the inclination takes them.

"This ability to loiter on the streets exists only because of the proliferation of mobile phones. Parents let their kids go out because they think they're only a phone call away. And even if the kid doesn't come home, parents don't call them because they believe the child's mobile phone offers them an unbreakable link," Masataka tells Sapio. "Behind this imagined ease of mind, though, lies a breakdown in communications among the family members. Mobile phones have made it possible to connect to family members or other parts of society 24 hours a day, drastically changing the nature of relationships that humans have created through their evolution."

The problem is, Masataka notes, despite having this communication device, there's little real communication going on with parents or children rarely calling each other.

Masataka adds that a tendency for the young to lash out in wild, unprovoked attacks also draws on primate instincts drawn out by over-use of mobile phones that have stopped people from speaking in favor of sending text messages and thus made them more emotional and unable to express their feelings in words.

"Apes will suddenly strike out at people for looking at them. Naturally, apes can't talk and they're expressing their emotions in the only way they can. People prone to rage are doing exactly the same thing," the primatologist says.

Masataka claims that mobile phones have deprived people of brainpower because memory functions now eliminate the need to try and remember phone numbers and GPS functions mean people have no need to learn about their surroundings.

"Mobile phones are now performing tasks that minds once did, such as think and talk. If this continues, people will continue losing their ability to think. Information Technology may have liberated us from a whole series of daily burdens, but IT has also dragged us down. Incidentally, the only people so caught up with mobile phones and use them to send so much mail are the Japanese," Masataka tells Sapio. "Some may criticize me for likening the behavior of humans with monkeys, but having studied primates for so long, I can clearly say that it's a fact the proliferation of IT has made human behavior closely resemble that of apes." (By Ryann Connell)

Copyright 2004-2005 THE MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS. All rights reserved.

lashes, prison for HS chemistry teacher

2005-11-18T19:02:00.000-08:00

"A Saudi high-school chemistry teacher accused of discussing religion with his students has been sentenced to 750 lashes and 40 months in prison for blasphemy, officials said Thursday," the Associated Press reported today.

Where were these guys when I was struggling with high school chemistry?

read between the lines

2005-11-18T08:33:00.000-08:00

Judith Miller at the New York Times, Bob Woodward at the Washington Post: turns out that reporters and editors at the two major Establishment newspapers were in bed with the government, witholding facts and disseminating disinformation regarding issues of war and peace, life and death...more than ever, the need to search for facts and analysis in a broad spectrum of publications, and to hold publishers to the highest editorial standards.

fund investigative journalism now!

2005-11-18T08:18:00.000-08:00

Re the next round of layoffs, Editor & Publisher asks,
Investigative Journalism: Will It Survive?

I suggest that people of means who care about an informed democracy immediately, if not sooner, fund a massive, collaborative, investigative journalism project to investigate government, business & etc. at local, regional, state, federal, hemispheric, global levels, with a multi-tier editorial team consisting of professionals and citizen-journalists. Offer meaningful incentives ($$ cash or cash-value coupons, redeemables, licensed merchandise, etc.) at every level of participation, including generous retainer contracts for independent journalists. Firebrands in action, adapted as necessary to work for the public good (instead of aiming to line the pockets of investors and shareholders). Create blogs & other web publications, books, comix, magazines, films, TV, radio, billboards, events, and so on. I humbly offer my services as an Editor in such an endeavor. Minding Everybody's Business (and its underlying business and editorial development plan) represents a test-bed for the concept of collaborative investigative journalism with a particular focus on business and corporations.

my way or the highway

2005-11-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

"My Way" by Frank Sinatra is the most popular funeral song in Britain, reports the Guardian.

pit bulls on pot?

2005-11-16T08:09:00.000-08:00

Urban legend in the making.

stating the obvious: lying Bush is rewriting history, not war critics

2005-11-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

... opines the New York Times today. Choice:

Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.... Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers.... Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.

Jimmy Carter rings warning bell

2005-11-14T22:58:00.000-08:00

This Isn't The Real America
by Jimmy Carter
[published 14 November 2005 by the Los Angeles Times]

In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.

Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need. It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years.

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States.

impeach Bush

2005-11-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

Liar, torturer, killer, cheat, placed in the White House first by Supreme Court right-wingers and a second time as a result of lying (Libby's) and fraud.

diplomatic foreplay

2005-11-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

just say No to pardons for Bush & his gang

2005-11-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

Alexander Cockburn in CounterPunch today:

Fitzgerald should say that anyone seriously urging pardons may risk indictment for conspiracy to obstruct justice. Such pardons go hand in hand with the lying which Fitzgerald denounced. If officials violating the law and then lying about it knows with certainty that they are going to escape legal sanction, then we no longer have a government. We have a sequence of criminal conspiracies. There have been scandalous pardons down the decades, but as with lying the Reagan years raised the bar.. It should become a major political issue. A model here could be Jonathan Pollard, sentenced to life in 1987 for spying for Israel. Bush Sr and Clinton were under huge pressure to pardon him but declined to buckle because the Armed Services simply said No, we won't stand for it. To the prospect of any pardon for Libby and others the popular message should be the same. Otherwise Fitzgerald will be wasting his time and the people's money.

we already knew it took a crime to re-elect Bush

2005-11-10T19:02:00.000-08:00

So, when one asks why Libby lied, what motivated him to make up his cock and bull story, the likely answers do not seem so hard to fathom. Libby was covering up for Cheney, may well have been covering up for Bush too (whose small inner circle he was a part of), and very likely was saving the election for Bush, Cheney and company. These were stakes worth the candle. One should note, moreover, that if Libby lied in order to ward off a Kerry victory, this would mean that Bush was elected the first time by the Supreme Court and the second time because of lies and perjury. This would not speak well for our system, would it?

... read it all: Why Did Libby Lie?, CounterPunch

mainstreaming medical marijuana

2005-11-09T23:21:00.000-08:00

You know something is going on when Ferndale, Michigan voters decriminalize medical cannabis....And the news is full of reports that a cannabis-based medicine ("CBM") provides relief for people who suffer with rheumatoid arthritis. Then there's this announcement from the ACLU:

SANTA CRUZ, CA – The nation’s first-ever government office tasked with providing medical marijuana directly to patients will likely be established today by the Santa Cruz City Council, the American Civil Liberties Union said. The action is designed to test states’ constitutional right to opt out of enforcing the federal government’s medical marijuana prohibition scheme.

“This ordinance represents our city’s sincere attempt to responsibly implement state medical marijuana laws,” said Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin, a co-sponsor of the ordinance. “We want to help medical marijuana patients obtain their medicine while also protecting them from the undesirable consequences of an unregulated black market.”....

nurses, other true heroes kick Little Dictator's butt

2005-11-09T08:39:00.000-08:00

At The Huffington Post, Jamie Court writes:

Schwarzenegger's fall from grace and his disgrace in yesterday's extra California election could be a rallying cry for progressives across the nation to seize on the populist anger at the arrogance of power that Arnold initially exploited for his own ends. If progressives look closely at last night's Schwarzenegger slaying, they could topple Goliaths of all kinds that threaten their mores, their money, their planet, and sometimes their lives. Arnold rose and fell based on the power of populism he stold from progressives who have been happier in their arm chairs than putting their ideas on ballots for the people to vote on. The nurses, cops, teachers, and firefighters beat Arnold by displaying their humanity. By showing they were the true action heroes that protected the public and they had the right to organize for unity through unions, to stop Schwarzenegger's budget power grabs for the rich and wealthy, and to be represented by a system of checks and balances not merely a celebrity with a grudge and 70 million in corporate cash. And they could only do it by putting aside their grudges and working togther. Sure they spent a lot of money on tv, but they proved once and for all the public doesn't buy Schwarzenegger's notion that working people are special interests.

why doesn't this happen in the US?

2005-11-08T23:51:00.000-08:00

Lord knows we have plenty to be upset about.

it's the President, stupid

2005-11-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

...sez the New York Times in a searing editorial today.

At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall writes:

What we have here is an administration under the sway of men with lawless and authoritarian tendencies. Betraying one of the county's own spies to cover up revelations about dishonest actions in leading the country to war, attempts to squelch the press to hide government policy of supporting torture. These actions are all cut from the same cloth: cover-ups and secrecy to hide lies and dishonorable acts, all backed by force and disregard for the law.

Now it seems Sen. Lott is telling reporters he thinks the leaks came from Republicans, which is at least one more sign that there are a growing number of Republicans more interested in their country's honor than in the Cheney gang's governance by violence and lies.

Let them investigate Republicans, Democrats; let them take it before judges. Whatever. Lies beget coverups which beget more law breaking into a spiralling cycle. The executive is in corrupt hands. Nothing will change till that does

Sign posted up the hill at Kensington Circle this morning (first time I saw it, at least):

Let's start removing the criminals
from our government.

Sounds prissy enough for Kensington. No need to be overly polite.

Throw the lying bums out.

one inner manifestation of depression

2005-11-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

Bush's blood money bonanza

2005-11-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

It is blood-for-oil after all, reports Steve Parry.

the little engine that could

2005-11-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

Reflecting on personal values offers protection from effects of stress, UCLA psychologists report

Reflecting on meaningful values provides biological and psychological protection from the adverse effects of stress, UCLA psychologists report in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science.

"Our study shows that reflection on personal values can buffer people from the effects of stress, but the implications are broader than that," said Shelley E. Taylor, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology, and an expert in the field of stress and health. "Any positive self-affirmation can act as a buffer against stressful events; that can include values, personal relationships and qualities that are a source of pride."

In the study, 80 UCLA undergraduates completed stressful tasks. They delivered five-minute speeches about their qualifications for an office job in front of "speech evaluators" trained to be non expressive, who would coldly tell them during pauses, "You still have time remaining. Please continue." After a short break, they were instructed to subtract 13 from 2,083 under harassing conditions. They were told to go faster and at each mistake, they were told, "That is incorrect. Please start over from 2,083."

Prior to these stress tests, one group of students (a randomly assigned "value affirmation" group) reflected on values they had identified in advance as especially meaningful to them, answering 10 written questions. These could have been religious values, in which case they were asked a series of questions about their religion, the Bible and God. In other cases, they reflected on meaningful secular values -- such as their political beliefs or social values -- answering questions about, for example, Abraham Lincoln or community service work.

The other students were randomly assigned to a control group where they answered questions before the stress test about values they had identified as unimportant to them.

Those who reflected on values they consider meaningful, regardless of what those values were, had significantly lower cortisol levels. Cortisol is a hormone released during stressful events; when stimulated excessively over time, cortisol can lead to cognitive impairments and increased risk for physical disease.

Eighty-two percent of the control subjects had an increase in cortisol after the stress task, compared with only 51 percent of the value-affirmation participants, said David Creswell, an advanced UCLA psychology graduate student and the study's lead author.

"It's remarkable that such a brief, subtle value affirmation has the ability to mute cortisol responses and serve as a buffer against stress," Creswell said. "This is the first finding showing that reflecting on one's personal values reduces cortisol responses to stress. The implication is that value affirmation may make a stressful experience less so and, over time, this could potentially benefit one's cognitive functioning and physical health."

Forty-five minutes after the stress test, the researchers still saw differences in cortisol levels between the two groups. The two groups had the same levels before the stress test.

The researchers measured the students' responses to stress, including cortisol levels, heart rate and blood pressure.

"This study provides evidence for a novel, but effective method to combat stress, showing that thinking or potentially writing about important values can be stress-reducing and health enhancing," Creswell said.

"Stress-management interventions may benefit by incorporating value-affirming activities in the arsenal of weapons to combat stress, potentially in combination with other techniques," he added.

Can affirming values also help with chronic stress, such as that experienced by people coping with a serious illness, the death of a loved one or a difficult divorce?

Creswell's preliminary answer is that value-affirmation will produce beneficial health effects in those cases, and he said that is an important question for future research.

"Self-affirmations can be a very good stress-combater, especially under conditions of chronic stress," Taylor said. "It's helpful to remind yourself you're a good person with talents, and remind yourself what is important to you; that can be hard to do when you're going through something that's really awful."

The research team is conducting a follow-up study with people who have chronic illnesses, to assess how reflecting on personal values affects health. Preliminary evidence suggests that these patients do benefit, Taylor said.

###

The research in Psychological Science was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and a Positive Psychology Microgrant. Psychological Science, published by the American Psychological Society, is one of the leading psychology journals in the United States.

Other members of the research team included William Welch, David Sherman (now at University of California, Santa Barbara), Tara Gruenewald and Traci Mann.

Contact: Stuart Wolpert
stuartw@college.ucla.edu
310-206-0511
University of California - Los Angeles

the sky IS falling

2005-11-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

New York Daily News:

A Times Square movie theater laid an egg at a showing of "Chicken Little" last night.

Adults and kids expecting to watch Disney's G-rated animated flick at the AMC Empire 25 theater on 42nd St. were instead presented with a foreign film that opened with a young man committing suicide.

"It's pandemonium," Joshua Gallo, 30, told the Daily News as he rushed out of the theater with his 5-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. "The kids are crying. The mothers are screaming for the managers to stop the film."

Terrified children didn't know what to do as they watched a young boy hang himself from a tree at the 8:45 p.m. screening.

After five minutes, "Andrea," a Spanish drama opening today, was turned off and "Chicken Little" was played.

Patrons got a coupon for a free movie.

wrong season

2005-11-04T09:33:00.000-08:00

"I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles."

headline of the day:

2005-11-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

Scientists show how thinking can harm brain cells

(Scroll down for the press release from the National Institutes of Health.)

the down low from little bro'

2005-11-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

ADB study favours two gas pipelines to South Asia
by Ashok Dasgupta, The Hindu, 1 November 2005

NEW DELHI: The demand for natural gas in South Asia in future is projected to be strong enough to require gas to be piped from both Turkmenistan and Iran, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) expert has said. According to a senior ADB energy specialist, Dan Millison, reserves information from Turkmenistan released some time ago shows a lower-than-expected gas deliverability for a proposed $3.3-billion pipeline project to carry gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to India and Pakistan.

ADB has been brokering the 1,700 km pipeline project since 2002, promoting it as a win-win example of regional cooperation, a pioneering effort to link gas-rich Central Asia with energy-deficient South Asia through Afghanistan. The project would bring clean fuel at competitive costs to India and Pakistan coupled with the much-needed transit fees to Afghanistan and new markets for Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan's Dauletabad gas field has gross reserves of 1.4 trillion cubic metres. However, production forecasts are lower than expected, causing analysts to doubt that it could meet the proposed target of piping 30 billion cubic metres (BCM) of gas annually to South Asia. "The reserves information shows that Turkmenistan could supply enough gas for the first few years but then production is predicted to decline instead of increasing," said Mr. Millison. "They will need to find gas from other fields to meet pipeline design targets," he said. Meanwhile, a $7 billion scheme to pipe natural gas from offshore Iran to Pakistan and India is gaining momentum. This 2,700 km pipeline would cost more than double the Turkmenistan scheme but leaves out Afghanistan, where security concerns remain.

Gas demand estimate

"However, with long-term gas demand from India and Pakistan estimated at 50 BCM a year, there is a need for more than one pipeline," says Mr. Millison. India already imports gas and the demand is expected to soar in the next decade. Pakistan, with its own reserves declining, is expected to begin importing gas after late 2008.

In fact, Mr. Millison feels that the projected demand in South Asia is so strong that there may be a need for a third pipeline from Qatar or Oman. With the new gas reserves data on hand, as well as a draft security analysis report, the next step is for the project's steering committee to meet and discuss inviting an international consortium of investors to build the pipeline.

Turkmenistan is largely a desert country, with proven recoverable natural gas reserves of 71 trillion cubic feet (TCF) (about two trillion cubic metres) and possible reserves of over 200 TCF (about six trillion cubic metres). It is one of the world's largest gas exporters. However, although its 4.5 million people receive free gas, electricity and water, incomes are among the lowest in Central Asia and health and education services are declining. With large gas reserves and a small population, Turkmenistan's export potential is huge, though substantial investments are needed to increase production. Turkmenistan at present pipes most of its gas to Ukraine and Europe via Gazprom, the Russian utility, though it has also a small pipeline to Iran.

Even if Turkmenistan settles for current gas prices with India and Pakistan, observers note that it should have some pricing leverage within five years when the project comes on stream. They point out that Pakistan industries and power plants now pay $100 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas. Apart from financing the feasibility report for the Turkmen project, ADB financed a study for underground natural gas storage in Pakistan, where storage capacity would help meet local demand peaks in winter and counter possible supply disruptions.

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