Is Tom Ridge in the Cabinet? Slate explainer
Daily Archives: 10 Oct 01
Cliche Finder: “Have you been searching for just the right cliché to use? Are you searching for a cliché using the word “cat” or “day” but haven’t been able to come up with one? Just enter any words in the form below, and this search engine will return any clichés which use that phrase…”
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there.
–William Carlos Williams,
from “Asphodel, The Greeny Flower”
Can Poetry Matter? A 1991 Atlantic essay by Dana Gioia that may cause you to rethink a few things.
(W)hy should anyone but a poet care about the problems of American poetry? What possible relevance does this archaic art form have to contemporary society? In a better world, poetry would need no justification beyond the sheer splendor of its own existence. As Wallace Stevens once observed, “The purpose of poetry is to contribute to man’s happiness.” Children know this essential truth when they ask to hear their favorite nursery rhymes again and again. Aesthetic pleasure needs no justification, because a life without such pleasure is one not worth living.
Nobel Prize in Economics to three Americans for work on market asymmetries. The article explains the implications of what sounds like an elegantly simple formulation of the information advantage enjoyed by sellers over buyers in transactions across the economic spectrum. One application of the work by one of the winners, Joseph Stiglitz (until recently chief economist at the World Bank), attacks ‘aspects of the free-market “Washington consensus” that has shaped the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank’, arriving at a theoretical understanding of why markets do not work for ‘poor people and poor countries.’ Nobel Committee’s nod in the direction of the anti-globalization movement? Financial Times [via MetaFilter]
Why Anthrax Vaccine Is Scarce — “The vaccine against anthrax is in the hands of a single company that is running out of money, hasn’t gained FDA approval for the vaccine or its manufacturing facilities and hasn’t produced a single dose of the vaccine since it took over production in 1998.
The entire United States is relying on BioPort, of Lansing, Michigan, to produce the anthrax vaccine, for which demand has spiked since Sept. 11. The company has supplied the military with only half a million doses out of 14 million promised, leaving even front-line military personnel unprotected in the event of a bio-terrorism attack.
The company, which would not return phone calls, has a spotty past, and possibly not much of a future if Congress passes the Defense Authorization bill, which includes an amendment that would bring the production of the anthrax vaccine under government control.” Wired
Save Harry! A letter-writing drive spearheaded by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to get author J. K. Rowling to eschew future sponsorship of the Harry Potter movies by Coca Cola and donate to nutritional campaigns the estimated $15 million she will receive from the junk beverage corporation’s deal with Warner Bros. for the marketing rights to November’s first Harry Potter movie.
Why don’t I know anyone personally who died in the Sept. 11th disasters? ‘The World Trade Center question falls into a category that mathematicians call “small-world” or “degrees of separation” problems. The key work in the field for our purpose is being done by a team of five social scientists and mathematicians who have already written a paper on 9/11, “Estimating the Ripple Effect of a Disaster.” It is being published in the journal Connections. You can read it here…’ The upshot of the back-of-the-envelope calculation is that around 1:200 Americans is likely to have known a victim. “The math offers a kind of solace, too. Yes, it shows that we are less directly connected than we think to 9/11. But it also shows that we’re more indirectly connected. The most amazing statistic of Bernard et al. is how many people knew someone who knew a victim. According to their estimates, essentially all Americans — more than 80 percent of them — know someone who knows someone. We are all mourners at the second degree.” Slate. Jargon Watch: While we’re at it, here are the results of a Google search on “back-of-the-envelope.”
These are some interesting items from recent Stratfor Situation Reports:
- The Russian military has secretly positioned troops on the outskirts of Kabul for an assault on the Afghan capital with the opposition Northern Alliance forces, the Russian weekly Moscow News reported. Oct. 9. 2005 GMT, 011009
- A group of 40 Taliban military commanders and 1,200 troops reportedly defected to the opposition today, and took control of the only road linking the southern part of the country with the north, Reuters reported. 2002 GMT, 011009
- A man dispensed an unknown substance on a Maryland subway causing 15 people to become ill Oct. 9. The man struggled with a police officer before being arrested, the Washington Post reported. 1615 GMT, 011009
- An IRS office in Ohio has been evacuated after an envelope was opened that contained a suspicious soapy substance. Hazmat teams were seen decontaminating people outside of the building and crews had entered the building, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. 1700 GMT, 011009
- The United States has reportedly asked Israel for information on assassination techniques that Israel has perfected after many years of dealing with terrorist threats, IRNA reported. Israel has used a variety of methods to strike back at terrorist groups including Apache helicopter gunships, laser-guided bombs fired from fighter airplanes, car-bomb attacks and special forces operations. 1600 GMT, 011009
Osama Has a New Friend: “…in a move that defies all rules of logic, a doctored photo showing (Sesame Street Muppet puppet) Bert with the world’s most-wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, seems to have made its way into an anti-American Islamic protest in Bangladesh.” Wired Here’s a MetaFilter thread about this breakthrough [thanks, Miguel]
Ten proposed new laws for this crisis [From Alan MacKay, courtesy of Sam Smith’s Undernews]:
- To buy an American flag, you must present proof you have voted at least
once in the last three elections (yes, local and state elections count). - To display an American flag in any form, you must present proof of voter
registration. - To wave an American flag in public, you must be able to name at least one
of the following: A. Your Senator B. Your Representative C. Your President
(“George Bush” does not count; ambiguous) - To sell any product with an American flag on it, you must answer the
following question: The Bill of Rights is part of: a) the Constitution; b) the
Magna Carta; c) the Declaration of Independence. - Those heard singing patriotic songs in public may be asked to show their
voter registration cards. - To be permitted to scream “Nuke Afghanistan,” you must be able to
correctly locate Afghanistan on a map or globe. - To be permitted to scream “Arabs go home,” you must list and correctly
locate ten Arab homelands. - Those who wish to express opinions about Arabs and Arab-Americans must
pass the following test: A. Those who follow the religion of Islam are
called: a) Moslems; b) Muslins; c) Fanatics . . . B. The holy book of Islam
is called: a) The Koran; b) The Koram; c) The Bible . . . C. In Arabic, God
is called: a) Ali; b) Allah; c) Jehovah - Priority for purchase of American flags will be given to those whose
ancestors lived on American soil the longest. When all American Indians who
wish to display the red, white and blue are satisfied, other applicants will
be accepted. - A call for war on any radio talk-show will be construed as a public
declaration of willingness to enlist in the US Army; callers will have 24
hours to complete the paperwork.
