wood s lot pointed to this review of Moorcock’s newly-reissued tetralogy that I tried to read several months ago, hailed as a seminal fount of postmodern and cyberpunk sensibility. I was excited, not being a fan of Moorcock’s sword-and-sorcery fantasies but finding the sprawling intricate Mother London a delectable and rewarding read some years ago. Disappointingly, I found the Cornelius novels horribly written and uninteresting to the point of unreadability. This reviewer essentially agrees: “Jerry Cornelius, the protagonist of the quartet of novels that comprise this collection (and others besides), is a perfectly uninteresting antihero, a virtual cipher of a character, and his adventures are prolonged studies in existential action: He is an inconsequential character (despite what he might believe), enacting inconsequential quests, invariably returning his world to a stability that he himself removed it from.” Significant, perhaps, but completely unenjoyable. PopMatters

Stop Bush before he makes Nixon look good.

“At least our 37th president specialized in committing outright political crimes, which by their very clandestine nature were necessarily limited in scope. George W., on the other hand, traffics in legal political vice, which, given the rightward turn in this country since the late 1970s, can be practiced on a widespread scale openly and even boastfully. And legal or not, “vice” is the only way to describe the wholesale political indecency pushed by this White House. Behind virtually every move–whether on the budget, an economic stimulus package, the environment, defense spending, you name it–lies the fundamental motive of padding the pockets of its own socioeconomic class. To hell with others and to hell with the future. There either ain’t no tomorrow, or if it does come, at least those at the top won’t be burdened by today’s consequences.

A jaw-dropping $4 trillion of your money in the form of federal budget surpluses has gone up in smoke, or rather, 41 percent of it into the pockets of W.’s friends.” History News Network

I always liked Chumbawumba, but now even more — “anarchist band sell song to General Motors for $70,000 – but give the money to activists’ campaign against the firm.” Observer UK

“program listings for hundreds of public radio stations around the world. Follow the audio links to hear your favorite programs and discover new ones.” [via Rebecca’s Pocket]

Weblogger and online friend Rebecca Blood’s book, she says, is almost done. It’s due in June and can be preordered.

Using the web as a journalism tool; these powerful resources are useful for non-journalist info junkies as well. Poynter.org

Monkey Moves Computer Cursor by Thoughts Alone

It may seem like science fiction, but scientists say they have developed a technology that enables a monkey to move a cursor on a computer screen simply by thinking about it.

The breakthrough could someday help totally paralyzed, ”locked-in” patients “operate external devices such as a robot arm, or a computer to surf the Internet,” explained researcher Daniella Meeker of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Reuters Health

Race is a fault of science — ‘Race, and the role of science in its identification, focused a passionate debate among researchers of differing political hue before a free, public gathering at the Science Museum in London in remembrance of the Holocaust…’ BioMedNet [requires free registration]

Rumsfeld: Prepare for Surprise Attacks

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday the United States must prepare now for potential surprise attacks “vastly more deadly” than the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings.

Oh, here’s the real ticket:

In a speech laying out the Bush administration’s justification for proposing a $48 billion increase in the 2003 defense budget [emphasis added -FmH], Rumsfeld said the nation is vulnerable to new forms of terrorism ranging from cyberattacks to attacks on U.S. military bases abroad to ballistic missile attacks on American cities. Washington Post

ID card for air passengers

Trusted-traveler cards would authorize passengers to bypass extensive security screening at airport checkpoints. The Israeli government instituted a trusted-traveler program five years ago in an effort to speed up long lines at airport security checkpoints.

The electronic card would have an encoded biometric description of the owner to ensure that the person using it is the same person identified on the card. Biometrics refers to computerized systems that identify a unique part of each person’s anatomy, such as fingerprints, facial structure or irises. Washington Times

Strikes me as akin to — but of course vastly more insidious than — the ‘trusted shopper’ cards they try to push on me at the supermarket, the chain bookstore (ugh!) and chain pharmacy (is there any other kind anymore??) at which I shop when for a moment I lose the sense that usually steers me toward my local independent merchants. They entice you with promised discounts when the real agenda, of course, is building an extensive profile of your shopping behavior. I always refuse the sales representative’s offer and try to engage them in a dialogue about why I’m refusing. They must be trained specifically in how to deal with this frontal assault — uniformly, no matter what store, they stiffen, become stony, stop making eye contact and offer no response, neither critically nor understandingly.

Israelis consider building ‘Berlin Wall’ in Jerusalem

The police minister, Uzi Landau, who met yesterday with Mr Sharon to discuss ways of boosting security after two devastating Palestinian attacks in the city centre of Jewish West Jerusalem, said that “stone walls and barriers” are to be constructed to keep Palestinians from the West Bank out of outlying Jewish areas of the city.

The walls will be high: they are meant not only to deter Palestinians from crossing, but to make it harder for Palestinian fighters to snipe at Jewish areas or throw petrol bombs. The Scotsman

Reed Irvine: Someone has finally talked

Those who accept the government’s claim that the crash of TWA Flight 800 was caused by a fuel-tank explosion dismiss the evidence that the plane was shot down accidentally by missiles launched in a Navy exercise off the Long Island coast.

They say that such an accident could not have been covered up because a lot of Navy personnel would have known about it, and some of them would have talked. One of them has finally done so. He recently said in an interview that I recorded that he was on the deck of a Navy submarine very close to the crash site and saw TWA 800 shot down. NewsMax

“Sooner or later, Mr Bush, self-styled universal soldier of truth, will have to stop pretending that tragedy gave him a free hand to remake America and the world to fit his simplistic, narrow vision — or risk having voters and US allies end the pretence for him.” — Guardian UK

Bush speech could break international coalition: British press

The Financial Times said that although Bush’s keynote speech “pressed all the right buttons” at home, “there is a danger that his ringing rhetoric about defeating an `axis of evil’ will divide the alliance, rather than seal a common purpose.”

“North Korea and Iran do not belong in the same breath as Iraq. To lump them together is simplistic and will alienate new allies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East,” added the business daily.

Its assessment was shared by The Independent which said Bush’s “forthright views will play well at home. But many outside America are likely to find them distinctly disturbing”.

The broadsheet added: “America is already envied and disliked because of its domination. The danger is that Mr Bush’s speech, with its simple certainties and pronounced unilateralist flavour, will merely fuel that resentment further.”

The harshest criticism of Bush came from the left-of-centre Guardian, which said the US president’s address “unabashedly set out” to “exploit and manipulate the September 11 tragedy for political advantage.

“When Mr Bush speaks of ‘tens of thousands of dangerous killers schooled in the methods of murder … spread throughout the world like ticking bombs,’ he is not only being irresponsibly alarmist; he is also disingenuously justifying the whopping $US48 billion ($A95.16 billion) defence increase he always dreamed of,” it said. TheAge.com.au

Choking on the Enron Pretzel. a/k/a Clueless in Guantanamo: Wideranging rant from Al Martin takes on all the usual suspects — Enron (“what’s the difference between Enron and an offshore Republican slush fund?”), the pretzel-choking incident, the Cuba detainees, the ‘war’. This particularly caught my eye because I’ve been marvelling at the lack of commentary about the number of fatal equipment failures in Afghanistan:

Another US helicopter has crashed in Afghanistan, a CH-53E Super Stallion, the biggest single-rotor helicopter. Two servicemen were killed and five were wounded. It’s interesting to note our material losses in this Afghani campaign now equal the losses of the campaign in Iraq, which were actual combat losses. This latest loss is again being blamed on “mechanical failure due to faulty spares parts and poor maintenance.” It’s the same reason for all previous crashes of both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in Afghanistan. It’s a pretty sad commentary on the preparedness of US armed forces.

The readiness status of our armed forces during the past ten years from Iraq to Afghanistan has declined enormously. Past GAO reports stated that in Iraq 53% of our fixed wing and helicopter fleets were serviceable. Now this figure has declined to 38%. Part of the problem is that the budgets for normal maintenance procedures have been cut in favor of buying a lot of high tech weaponry systems that don’t work. We rush new weapons systems into production — systems that we know have design flaws because contractors can’t meet their deadlines. They’re built with sub-standard materials because the budget for inspectors has been trimmed back. And there’s no more quality control over the materials being used to make these weapons systems. And there’s the problem with spare parts and mechanical problems, which are all ongoing. The commentator in the media calls these new weapons systems that don’t work — “political gravy weapons.”

The answer, by the way, of course is that there is no difference between Enron and an offshore Republican slush fund…

Asteroid impact hazards “greatly overstated”: ‘If A collision with an asteroid is going to finish us off, it will have to be a lot larger than anyone thought, according to a controversial new study of the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.’ New Scientist

General Accounting Office to Sue White House — ‘The General Accounting Office said today that it would sue the White House to try to force Vice President Dick Cheney to release documents detailing contacts between corporate executives and the administration’s energy task force.’ NY Times

“Telehypnosis, conducted via a videolink, is more effective than face-to-face therapy, a small UK study suggests.” New Scientist

Nuclear tourism: Fed up with the south of France? Tired of Tuscany? Mellowed out by Majorca? Never fear, there’s a travel agency that’s just waiting to give you the hottest holiday of your life.

New Men Travel, in Kiev, Ukraine, is launching tours of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that exploded and spewed radiation all over Europe in 1986. Radiation monitors and protective suits are provided.

The Webby Awards: Call for Entries. As you can see from the blinked page, there’s a fee to nominate your site, except in the People’s Choice category. Was I the only one who hadn’t realized this?

Militants kidnap US journalist:

‘A Pakistani group seeking better conditions for prisoners being held by the US in Cuba says it has kidnapped an American journalist who went missing last week… An accompanying message sent to US news organisations said Mr Pearl was being held in inhuman conditions – similar, it said, to those experienced by al-Qaeda suspects being held at the US base at Guantanamo Bay. ” BBC Human rights advocates don’t want to say ‘I told you so’, just as it was taboo after the 9/11 attacks to suggest that American global neocolonialist swagger had contributed to inviting Muslim fundamentalist wrath, but it is clear that the Administration’s arrogant assertion that the POWs in Guantanamo are not entitled to human dignities and the protections of the Geneva convention has invited this. But then of course it’s in the interest of the Administration to demonstrate that there are still nasty terrorists out there in case the popularity polls begin to show waning enthusiasm, isn’t it?

get your enr on, from the makers of the hilarious get your war on.

William Fields turns the utterly pointless — albeit fun — googlewhacking meme into an intriguingly useful, potentially powerful community-building notion to which he refers as submonitions.

Good to see that Steve Baum is back to his inimitable yarn-spinning at Ethel the Blog again. His Jan. 25 short piece about some new options in peer-to-peer music distribution is intriguing, especially because I’ve (finally) arranged for a broadband ‘net connection instead of the 56K dialup that’s sustained me for so many years (I was an early adopter of the US Robotics Dual Standard modem, back when there were dual standards, and one of the first to upgrade to .v90). By the way, Baum is one of the luminaries who should have been invited to contribute to American Samizdat, IMHO. Dr Menlo??

Bitter Shack, which pointed me to this distortion of Oliver North’s 1987 testimony before the Iran-Cotra hearings circulating on the Internet in the aftermath of 9/11, called it “further evidence that conservatives are dumb.” Urban Legends Reference Pages

Brain Scans Link Two Key Pieces Of Schizophrenia Puzzle: this is big big news in the effort to elucidate the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, which affects around 1-2% of the world’s population. It has long been known that schizophrenic symptoms come from dysfunctions in two brain areas — underactivity in parts of the frontal cortex (which probably underlies the cognitive and ‘negative’ symptoms of the disease) and dopamine overactivity in a deep region called the striatum (probably related to the florid ‘positive’ symptoms — delusions and hallucinations — of the disease). Classical antipsychotic medications block dopamine in the latter areas, thus treating some of the dramatic symptomatic episodes but not more fundamental impoverishment suffered by the schizophrenic patient. The newer ‘atypical’ antipsychotic medications help to modulate, either instead or in addition, the frontal underactivity and thus allow more global restitution of function. But, although I and others have long suspected, it had never been demonstrated until this study by some of the luminaries of NIH (National Institutes of Health) schizophrenia research, that the dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex is primary and that dopamine activity in the striatum is under prefrontal control. The principal investigator comments, “These results provide a long-sought insight into the roots of dopamine dysregulation in schizophrenia. They suggest a possible treatment strategy that targets prefrontal cortex dysfunction, not just excess dopamine.” They may allow the rational, rather than trial-and-error, design of treatment strategies that would get at root causes, rather than slapping bandaids on end manifestations, of the illness. ScienceDaily

Cancer and Folie à Deux

(case report): In this case, the patients delusional system had a grave impact on her ability to make rational healthcare decisions, for which she was deemed incompetent. The first choice for her healthcare surrogate, her husband, was so affected by his sharing of her psychotic condition that he could not fulfill this role. In assessing a suspected case of folie à deux, awareness of several issues the point at which religious overideation becomes delusional, the spectrum of competency, informed consent, and treatment refusal is important.

Yale researchers are able to vaccinate users against the euphoriant effects of cocaine and prevent drug abuse relapse. The inoculations actually stimulate the immune system to produce anti-cocaine antibodies, à la classical immunizations, that inactivate cocaine circulating in the bloodstream. EurekAlert!

They are being dubbed the ‘Binmen’, a burgeoning number of Islamist terror suspects being detained as the UK wakes up to its enemy within. The Observer uncovers al-Qaeda links from Brighton to Bolton to reveal that Muslim extremism is not limited to a few fiery mullahs. Guardian UK

After Green Beret Operation, Townspeople Have Questions About Bound Bodies: Townspeople say the target may have been in error and that people in the compound pleaded for their lives, saying they would surrender. Corpses in the compound were burned after being shot; several were found outside with their hands bound behind their backs with heavy strapping. The bodies have beeen buried and are not available for examination. [If true, file under ‘barbarism.’ -FmH] “The Pentagon defends the raid as an appropriate military action,” reports the New York Times correspondent.

‘With his nomination of Mississippi District Court Judge Charles Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals, President George W. Bush is substantiating fears that he would attempt to turn the federal judiciary into a right-wing monster.’ Detroit Free Press

Wealth spawns corruption. ‘Physicists are explaining how politics can create the super-rich.’ Nature

Anarchist in the Academy: ‘Philosopher Robert Nozick died Wednesday, at the age of 63. Nozick, a Harvard professor from 1969 until his death, wrote on many topics, but he remained best known and most discussed for his first book, the National Book Award-winning Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). This was the first book to make libertarian views on the nature and legitimacy of the state respectable in academia.

Anarchy, State and Utopia set out to prove, in a manner both intellectually rigorous and playful, that the only morally defensible state is one restricted to the minimal functions of adjudication and defense against force and fraud. No welfare state, no industrial policy, no bailouts, no anti-discrimination laws allowed.’ Reason

New technology raises concerns about grocery shoppers’ privacy:

You swipe your savings card against a screen mounted on a supermarket shopping cart. As you move around the store, the screen flashes ads for products you usually buy, notes that you haven’t bought toothpaste in six months, and provides recipes and health information.

All the while, your every move – including which aisles you go down and how long you spend in each department – is tracked for marketing purposes via the savings cards, also known as loyalty cards.

Such technology is in the works and privacy advocates – already concerned about the proliferation of cards that monitor customers’ purchases – are outraged. Fresno Bee

Marijuana’s Effects: More Than Munchies: “Scientists have …learned that the drug, which an estimated 70 million Americans have at least tried, may be highly addictive to a small percentage of those who use it.” NY Times

NASA’s on-again-off-again plans to explore the fringe are — for now — on again. NY Times

Bush Reconsiders Stand on Treating Captives of War. In an execrable display of hubris, Dubya ‘said he was reconsidering whether Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should be protected under the Third Geneva Convention. But he quickly added that they were “killers” who would not be granted the status of prisoners of war.’

NY Times

And: Let Them Be POWs, editorializes Nicholas Kristof.

When I first wrestled with this issue, I thought I was going to wind up endorsing President Bush’s view that the prisoners are, as he put it today, “killers” rather than P.O.W.’s. But as I read the convention and talked to legal experts, it became clear that the administration’s arguments, while initially persuasive, have the disadvantage of being wrong.

To be more precise, they conflict with the letter and spirit of the convention. Moreover, as some in the Pentagon are quietly trying to point out, they set a terrible precedent for our own Special Operations soldiers. NY Times op-ed

Word of the Day: esemplastic (es-em-PLAS-tik) [adjective]:

Having the capability of moulding diverse ideas or things into unity.

[From Greek es- (into) + en, neuter of eis (one) + plastic. Coined by poet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), apparently after German Ineinsbildung

(forming into one)].

“Here is how Coleridge used the term in his 1817 Biographia Literaria or

Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Vol. I, Chapter 13:”

On the imagination, or esemplastic power.

O Adam! one Almighty is, from whom

All things proceed, and up to him return

If not depraved from good: created all

Such to perfection, one first nature all

Indued with various forms, various degrees.

Wordsmith

Latest news, little of it good, on threats to indigenous peoples from the exemplary NGO Survival International. One-click links to take action.

Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, contemplates the possibility that the next theater of operation in the WoT could be Somalia again. Guardian UK

Pentagon Plans New Command For U.S.: “The Pentagon has decided to ask the White House for approval to set up a new four-star command to coordinate federal troops used to defend North America, part of an intensified effort to bolster homeland security, defense officials said.

” Washington Post

And:
another way to make your head disappear.

The definitive guide to ALT texts in IMGs, which grapples with the essential distniction between content and metacontent in HTML. “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon,” as the Buddhist truism goes…

“Don’t we run drug tests on interns?” — Bill Gates Virus Responsible for Gates Security Memo: ‘An embarrassed Bill Gates admitted today that a memo outlining Microsoft’s new focus on security called Trustworthy Computing was sent out in error when an idealistic intern sent him the fanciful, pie in the sky report in a virus infected e-mail.

“I forgot to patch my Outlook Express and it went out to my entire address book,” said Gates. “You would think that if anything were to get us to focus on security in our software that it would be a gaffe like this. To ensure security in all our software, however, would mean dropping half of our product lines and I have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders.” ‘ BBSpot [thanks, David!]

Register as a Patriot Now!

“As part of the Bush Administration’s ongoing efforts to obliterate all traces of terrorism in the United States, the Department of Justice has commenced registration of each and every American Patriot. By registering all non-terrorists within our borders, it is our intention to make use of the process of elimination to identify the evil ones who walk among us. If you are a non-terrorist (American Patriot), your participation is required. Please register below.

– John Ashcroft

United States Attorney General”

Union Spies

Suppose that on Monday, January 7, President George W. Bush had branded hundreds of Justice Department employees as potential security risks because they were union members?

Might we have expected a question or two at next day’s White House press briefing? Would the networks, perhaps, have been at least mildly interested? Or the newspapers?

Apparently not, because on January 7 President Bush did exactly that to some five hundred labor union members who work in United States Attorneys’ offices, Interpol’s U.S. branch, the Criminal Division, the National Drug Intelligence Center, and the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.

Mr. Bush’s order said that since these offices “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” the presence of unionized workers would not be “consistent with national security requirements and considerations.” Bad Attitudes

Human For Sale – How much are you worth? Have you been thinking about putting yourself up for sale lately? Ever wonder how much money you could get on the open human market? HumanForSale.com will attempt to place a value on your life using a variety of criteria in 4 basic facets of life (physical, mental, lifestyle, personality). This is obviously a very subjective matter and is not intended and does not claim to be scientifically accurate. The more honestly you answer the questions, the more realistic the dollar value returned will be.

Addendum: Graham Leuschke writes: “Humans for Sale is almost certainly a data-collecting mechanism – it’s been around since August, and mentioned at the following places (that I know about):

• http://www.leuschke.org/log/archives/00000119.html
  

• http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/9392
  

• http://www.kottke.org/notes/0108.html#010806“

As Leuschke posted, here’s, allegedly, a site that lets you opt-out and get your data expunged after you’ve gotten sucked into this ingenious strategy for harvesting your provate demographic information, as I did.

Vigilante justice at the hands of an angry net-mob Chicago Tribune

John Grohol: Psychology of Weblogs

The most popular weblogs are those spearheaded by strong personalities, by dynamic individuals who have something to say. Not just about some random link, but about an ongoing theme in their lives that is displayed in a dozen different and unique ways every week, or even every day. These individuals (or groups of individuals) have opinions and you are going to hear them. In a social setting, face-to-face, they may be nothing like their online persona. Some are shy, ingratiating. Others are just as anarchic as their online writing is. But they gain a following for taking a stand, for sharing their innermost thoughts, not because they always take a popular stand or point of view, but because they take a point of view at all. They take one, over and over, day in and day out. The more controversial a person is, the more noteworthy (and often famous) they become. Look at Howard Stern, Dr. Laura, or Jerry Springer in the offline world.

The best weblogs and online journals, however, are not always the most popular. The most popular fall into the same trap as nearly anything driven by popularity – the need to outdo oneself, to remain on top. That pressure affects the writing, and it affects the mission of the person’s site (or in offline terms, the quality of their show). For proof of this, just look into the archives of any old popular weblog or online journal and see how the writing has changed. The subjects that were once original and thought-provoking often become stale, dry, and overwrought. The authors turn to commenting on the mundane, or take up meaningless causes, or rattle on about any old thing in their lives. They become more melodramatic in their writing, and start talking back to their foes. Instead of originality, they become self-referencing, circular, and ultimately, boring.

Sounds like he’s got a grudge against some popular webloggers… Grohol, by the way, is a Psy.D., not an MD, to whose online persona I long ago took an instant dislike after observing that he always insists on referring to himself in print as “Dr John Grohol”. Sure, Ph.D. and Psy.D. psychologists have earned a doctorate, but in a medical environment someone’s claim that by referring to themselves as a doctor they didn’t intend to create the misconception that they were a medical doctor is pure disingenuousness. He’s jockeyed for position as the world’s leading cyberpsychologist for at least a decade, but his Mental Health Page does have some merit. His online biography lets us know, among other things, what car he drives, the name of his pet, and (because he’s sure his readers are passionately interested?) his marital status.

Grohol’s name struck a chord with another weblogger who sent me this pointer to a search of references to him on MetaFilter, especially this thread, the gist of which relate to the fact that he was probably the anonymous author of deadat32, a pathetic attention-getting web project to which I paid little attention, as did few others, in which the writer wrote of his conviction that he would be, yes, dead at 32. (He pulled the plug before his 33rd birthday scheduled for September, 2001.) Grohol denied, rather unconvincingly in the face of a cabal of MetaFilter websleuths, that he was the deadat32 guy.

Fascinating little glimpse of web sociology and individual dynamics seemingly by a guy who studies them in others, and if true a warning to us all about the sordid little axes people grind in private behind their public faces.

How to tell if your ass is too small

Googlewhacking: The Search for The One. Can you find a Google query that’ll return only one result? Opine Bovine (“just another silly cow with an opinion about everything”), I noticed, has come up with a few, e.g “uvula + television” and “faux + beverage”. What does it all mean that these things generate any hits at all??

Fairvue Central >> Features >> Second Annual Weblog Awards: time to vote. One of the new treasures I discovered browsing the nominees is Dollarshort. Among other things, this is a visually understated and gorgeous Movable Type weblog.

Arafat: ‘I’m Like George Washington’

“Did you ever accept the British occupation of the United States,” Arafat asked. “Didn’t George Washington fight, along with his people, until they freed the United States?”

Arafat made his statements one day after the Palestinian cabinet called on all Palestinian factions to abide by the PA’s cease-fire orders of December 16.

Arafat’s vow yesterday to continue the “struggle until victory” was no contradiction to the cabinet’s call for a cease-fire, and was not in defiance of the American demand that he do more, Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to the Palestinian leader told The Jerusalem Post. The Jerusalem Post

Apparently, Arafat has been encouraging this simile for awhile now. It provoked this response in December from Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley:

Incredibly, when the tide began shifting last week, some in our community attempted to rally support by comparing Arafat and his suicide bombers to George Washington and the heroes of the American Revolution. Nice try.

Washington raised an army of patriots willing to die for liberty and used conventional military tactics to defeat a superior foe. Arafat fights with pitiful fanatics who are brainwashed into believing that by murdering innocents they’ll gain a greater heavenly reward.

Washington was a freedom fighter. Arafat is a terrorist.

(…)

It took three months longer than it should have, but the moral equivalency argument was at last blown to pieces in the suicide bombings that killed 26 Israeli civilians last weekend.

The Bush administration finally understands there is no equating the intentional slaughter of children on a family outing with the occupation of Palestinian territories, or the accidental deaths that result from subduing terrorism.

The only moral equivalency that can be drawn today is between the death and destruction inflicted on the United States on Sept. 11 and the daily torment suffered by Israelis.

If only George W. Bush had seen that sooner. Perhaps the dozens of Israelis murdered in recent months might have been spared.

The similarlties, however, may be more apt than his detractors would acknowledge — but turned on their head. Couldn’t you imagine the Founding Fathers targeting British civilians for terrorist attacks if they had had access?

“Don’t we run drug tests on interns?” — Bill Gates Virus Responsible for Gates Security Memo: ‘An embarrassed Bill Gates admitted today that a memo outlining Microsoft’s new focus on security called Trustworthy Computing was sent out in error when an idealistic intern sent him the fanciful, pie in the sky report in a virus infected e-mail.

“I forgot to patch my Outlook Express and it went out to my entire address book,” said Gates. “You would think that if anything were to get us to focus on security in our software that it would be a gaffe like this. To ensure security in all our software, however, would mean dropping half of our product lines and I have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders.” ‘ BBSpot [thanks, David!]

Blogger Pro rolls out, but for now it’s just for Internet Explorer users. Enought of a reason for me to jump ship from Mozilla and whore for Microsoft?

The Collective Unconscious Project:

‘Users can contribute to the site by logging their dreams. This has a double effect, both helping to grow the database of dreams that the project can explore, and creating a personalized dream log for each user. The explore section of the site is the realization of TCUP. This is an environment that allows you to travel from dream to dream in a nonlinear yet interconnected way — without being made fully aware of what those connections are, and without being in control of the path you take.

In this way I hope to make the environment itself very dreamlike. The next dream that you view will be based on the dream you are currently viewing, what emotions are related to that dream, etc. Unexpected connections will be made, and interesting stories will be told. Images will also surface and pass by. Unable to be viewed for very long, these snapshots of memories aid to the dreamlike interaction.’

Blinkenlights

Celebrating its 20th anniversary the Chaos Computer Club has made a special present to itself and the city of Berlin. Since Sept 12, 2001, the famous “Haus des Lehrers” (house of the teacher) office building has been enhanced to become world’s biggest interactive computer display: Blinkenlights.

The upper eight floors of the building have been transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 lamps behind the building’s front windows. A computer controls each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels.

During the night, a constantly growing number of animations can be seen. But there is an interactive component as well: you can play the old arcade classic pong on the building using your mobile phone and you can place your own loveletters on the screen as well.

Death Knell to Cloning Movement?: “News this week that researchers can take versatile stem cells from

bone marrow worries backers of cloning because they fear they’ve lost

their best argument.” Wired

Turning Macs on Thievery: ” Stolen computers are notoriously difficult to recover. But a Houston

man cleverly found his sister’s stolen iMac using remote control

software, friends on the Net, luck and brains.” Wired

The Others: Howard Zinn, moved by The New York Times’ monumental memento mori to the WTC victims, wonders if putting a human face on those who have died under our bombs might affect those Americans who declare their support for Dubya’s “war on terrorism”. The Nation

New Theories Dispute Existence of Black Holes — ‘Two U.S. scientists have questioned the existence of black holes and suggested, in their place, the existence of an exotic bubble of superdense matter, an object they call a gravastar. The two are pointing out that physicists have swept some “humiliating” problems with black holes under the carpet. By confronting these problems, they claim to have found an alternative fate for a collapsing star.’ Cosmiverse

What Is An “Unlawful Combatant,” And Why It Matters

‘According to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters currently being held captive at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not prisoners of war, but “unlawful combatants.” What’s the difference?

The short answer is that a prisoner of war is entitled to the protections set forth in the 1949 Geneva Convention. In contrast, an unlawful combatant is a fighter who does not play by the accepted rules of war, and therefore does not qualify for the Convention’s protections.

Buried within that short answer, however, are a host of complexities and troubling implications.’ FindLaw [via dangerousmeta]

Taleban army rises again to face US

A renegade army of 5,000 Taleban soldiers with 450 tanks, armoured carriers and pick-up trucks is locked in a tense stand-off with American special forces in Afghanistan.

The troops fled Kandahar with their commander and more than 100 senior Taleban figures in December after reneging on a surrender agreement. They have regrouped among villages in the mountainous region of Ghazni province, northwest of Kandahar.

Amid growing concern that powerful pockets of resistance loyal to Osama bin Laden remain in Afghanistan, an American soldier was wounded in the foot and 15 Taleban and al-Qaeda guerrillas were killed yesterday in a gunfight north of Kandahar. The Times of London

Robert Fisk: “The man who would testify against Sharon is blown up. Was this another targeted killing?”

Why would anyone want to car-bomb the former Lebanese Phalangist militia leader and government minister Elie Hobeika in Beirut – less than two days after he agreed to give evidence against Mr Sharon in a Belgian court, which may try the Israeli leader for the murder of up to 1,700 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in September, 1982?

Independent UK

The last gasp of celebrity culture? “The end of Talk magazine this week was big news–if you live within 75 miles of Times Square (OK, 10 miles), or in ZIP code 90210, northwest Washington and maybe Boston. This isn’t to say that the people who live in the rest of the U.S.’s 3.6 million square miles don’t care about celebrities and buzz and what’s up below East 14th Street. They’re just not preoccupied with, well, talking about it.” WSJ OpinionJournal

Simson Garfinkel: Message in a Bottleneck

Many people who have never tried wireless messaging think that it’s just another techno-gadget—a technology looking for a market. But as soon as they try it, most realize that it’s friendlier, faster, more reliable, less intrusive and generally a lot cheaper than making a cell-phone call. The big difference is synchronicity. With the phone, Beth and I both have to be present at the same instant. With messaging, I can send her a question when I want, and she can answer it on her own time—handy if she’s changing a diaper when I try to reach her (or doing something really important, like sleeping).

This combination of attributes has given rise in the United States to a dedicated, but perplexingly small, following for two-way wireless messaging systems. MIT Technology Review

Broadband Walks the Last Mile: “If you want fast access from home, your only hopes are cable-modem and DSL services. Or are they?” MIT Technology Review

How Amazon finally made a profit: ‘Seattle-based online retailer, one of the poster children of the Internet, surpassed even Wall Street’s expectations, recording a net profit — one without qualifications — for the first time in its six-year history. The news sent its stock up 24 percent yesterday to $12.60.’ Seattle Times

Unlocking door to homes of tomorrow

The latest round in the home entertainment wars was kicked off by Steve Perlman’s start-up company, Moxi Digital. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, Moxi unveiled the Media Centre (MC): “a combination digital set-top box, video and music jukebox, media server, and internet gateway and firewall”, says the company. It will play your DVD movies, CDs and MP3 music files. It will record broadcast TV, just like a TiVo personal video recorder (PVR).

And licenses permitting, it will stream multimedia to any personal computer or TV set in your home. It is, according to Forrester Research’s principal media and entertainment analyst Josh Bernoff, “the first true entertainment gateway”. Guardian UK

Searchin’ for the Surfer’s Saint

A group of Vatican elders is angling to give the Internet a patron saint –­ a holy helper with a dedicated connection to the Divine.

The church’s leading candidate is a seventh-century Spanish encyclopedist, Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636). A theologian and a scholar, Isidore was best known for his massive, 20-volume Etymologiae, ­an attempt at compiling all the world’s knowledge, covering grammar, medicine, law, geography, agriculture, theology, cooking and all points between.

Wired

Palm to unveil wireless device. “According to the sources, the i705’s key feature will be always-on, secure wireless e-mail access through its Palm.net service. The service will also be able to notify subscribers when there is a new message in their in-box.

The i705 will cost $449 and will also come with a Secure Digital expansion card slot, 8MB of memory and a monochrome screen with a resolution of 160 pixels by 160 pixels.” CNet As a longtime Palm fan watching painfully as the company has floundered in its last several iterations, one can hope that they’ll get it right next time, can’t one?

Bluetooth for existing mobile phones: “Plantronics recently announced its M1500 Cordless Headset Solution with Bluetooth support at the Winter 2002 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), as the first solution that brings Bluetooth to those who already have mobile phones and would like to Bluetooth-enable them. The M1500 includes a cordless headset and a Bluetooth adapter that plugs directly into the headset jack of many popular mobile phones.” infoSync

Qaeda Moving Into Indonesia, Officials Fear — ‘For the last two years, Osama bin Laden has been working to establish a beachhead here in the world’s most-populous Muslim nation, say American and Asian officials. Members of his organization Al Qaeda have slipped in and out of the archipelago, bringing millions of dollars in cash for radical Islamic organizations, recruiting members, and providing military training, those officials say.’ NY Times

“Media Alliance is a 25-year-old nonprofit training and resource center for media workers, community organizations, and political activists. Our mission is excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media in the interests of peace, justice, and social responsibility. MA offers a wide variety of services and support to its 3,000 members and groups affiliates, as well as to the general public. We publish MediaFile, the Bay Area’s media review, and People Behind the News, a comprehensive guide to media outlets and journalists throughout the Bay Area; and we train hundreds of community organizations and activists every year in media and computer skills and media advocacy techniques. We have also conducted analyses of media coverage of welfare legislation, affirmative action, and bilingual education and published the results of our analyses.”

Recent articles in MediaFile include:

• Terry Messman: Justice Journalism: journalist as agent of social change, from William Lloyd Garrison to Indymedia.
  

• Andrea Buffa: Watt’s Up? Behind the media’s coverage of the energy crisis.
  

• Jeremy Rifkin: Media Giants Lobby to Privatize Broadcast Spectrum

Great list of links to media-related resources online.

If their work is appealing to you, they’re appealing to you. “Though it is on the opposite coast from you, I thought you might be interested. Heard about Media Alliance via an SFGate article and was impressed with their history, etc. Unfortunately, they are having funding issues and I was dismayed to think another voice of dissent might be silenced,” writes an FmH reader.

Former ‘Beirut hostage’ Terry Waite: The Guantanamo Prisoners, Justice or Revenge? “I can recognise the conditions that prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba’s Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet; beaten on the soles of my feet with cable; denied all my human rights, and contact with my family for five years, and given no access to the outside world. Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled at the way we – countries that call ourselves civilised – are treating these captives. Is this justice or revenge?” CounterPunch

The New York Times tone: It’s there whenever the Paper of Record takes a look at any of the quirkier aspects of modern culture — as if to offer a distanced, bemused reassurance to its readers of the entertainment value of taking a tour of the slums — it occurred to me as I read these two articles in quick succession. (That’s all they have to do with each other, of course):

• When Nerds Collide: Bots in the Ring
  

  At first glance, it’s obvious why “BattleBots,” the robot fighting show on Comedy Central, would draw television viewers like passers-by to a car crash.

  It is, after all, a series of staged battles between remote-controlled machines equipped with spinning blades, ramming spears and swinging maces. It has noise, wreckage, pseudo- sports commentary modeled on professional wrestling and the all-too-obvious décolletage of Carmen Electra, proffered to the camera as she asks a robot designer, after a bout, how it felt to have his weapon lopped off.

  In short, it is mildly nasty, mechanically brutish and thoroughly tasteless — the perfect television show.

  And yet, talking to one of the show’s creators, you get the idea that the whole BattleBot universe is a giant math class, much more effective than those that take place in a classroom. Trey Roski, president and chief executive of BattleBots, would have you believe that the show is almost nothing but redeeming social value.
  

• “Kiss someone who has just eaten Marmite, and you’ll think you were licking paint…” Long live Marmite! Only the British could love it. The vegetable and yeast extract celebrates its centennial.
  

  That no foreigner has ever been known to like it simply adds to its domestic allure and its iconic status as an emblem of enduring British insularity and bloody-mindedness. Were Hogarth to paint a still life in a 21st century British pantry, a jar of Marmite would have to figure in it.

In Personal Anecdote, Some See New Distance Where Others See New Strategy: ‘…(P)eople close to Mr. Bush said his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch, served as a convenient device for him to distance himself from the Enron debacle and to appear more empathetic to its investors and employees than to the wealthy business executives who escaped the Enron collapse with flush bank accounts.” NY Times And: Why Bush deserves his share of the 9/11 blame — Aaron Marr Page: “Did Bush, at a key moment, dismantle the Clinton administration’s increasingly effective anti-Al Qaeda apparatus (which, though hardly flawless, was far better than nothing)?” The American Prospect

Jonathan Chaitt: Reform School: “At first glance, the Enron scandal suggests we need campaign finance reform. Upon closer inspection, it suggests we need it desperately.”

Noam Scheiber: Business School: “Campaign finance reform seems the obvious way to prevent future Enrons. Except that campaign finance didn’t buy Enron its influence.” The New Republic

Froma Harrop: Was Enron also a cult? “There is, of course, one big difference between Lay and traditional cult leaders. Koresh and Applewhite perished with their followers. Lay had no intention of sharing their fate. While urging his employees to stay the course with Kool-Aid, he cashed out of Enron stock to the tune of many millions. No team-playing fool he.” Providence Journal

Digital divide: racism’s new frontier

“The internet is slow to recognise its responsibilities as an ethical player. If we have racism, a digital divide is its new colonial frontier. Passions surrounding the access and control of IT worldwide have triggered a cultural revolution.” Guardian UK

Cheney’s old firm on shaky ground. ‘A Texas energy giant finds itself on the financial ropes despite spending years currying favor with Washington. Nevertheless, the company can still claim a special friend in the White House.

Enron? Nope. This would be Dallas’ ailing Halliburton Co., whose former chief executive is Vice President Dick Cheney.’ San Francisco Chronicle

Important Seymour Hersh story on a secret Pakistani airlift of 5000 or so Pakistani nationals and other non-Afghani fighters for the Taliban trapped in the Northern Alliance siege of Kunduz. The US assented to, or even assisted in, this evacuation after stalling on surrender negotiations. General Musharraf persuaded the US that his slender hold on power in Pakistan would be jeopardized if his people came home in body bags. Reportedly, the US was supposed to have, but has never gotten, access to interrogate those evacuated.

India, whose intelligence service is the source of this story, is incensed but wary of offending the US with a public denunciation. Diplomatic notes of protest to the US and the UK have reportedly been ignored. Indian intelligence is convinced that many of the airlifted fighters will be encouraged to infiltrate into the ongoing Kashmiri conflict; Musharraf cannot afford to have them remain in Pakistan.

Hersh quotes sources who feel that India’s enraged “jilted lover syndrome” over this and other evidence of the Bush Administration’s decision to make Pakistan its chief ally in the Afghanistan war has contributed to the escalation of Indian-Pakistani belligerency in the wake of the December 13th attack on the Parliament Building. The precariousness of the standoff between these two hairtrigger nuclear powers grows daily.

India’s grievances—over the Pakistani airlift, the continuing terrorism in Kashmir, and Musharraf’s new status with Washington—however heartfelt, may mean little when it comes to effecting a dramatic change of American policy in South Asia. India’s democracy and its tradition of civilian control over the military make it less of a foreign-policy priority than Pakistan. The Bush Administration has put its prestige, and American aid money, behind Musharraf, in the gamble—thus far successful—that he will continue to move Pakistan, and its nuclear arsenal, away from fundamentalism. The goal is to stop nuclear terrorism as well as political terrorism. It’s a tall order, and missteps are inevitable. Nonetheless, the White House remains optimistic. An Administration official told me that, given the complications of today’s politics, he still believed that Musharraf was the best Pakistani leader the Indians could hope for, whether they recognize it or not. “After him, they could only get something worse.” The New Yorker

The First Six Months of George W. Bush: “Whatever your beliefs, know what your president is doing.”

A new group blog from the estimable provocateur Dr. Menlo, American Samizdat, themed so: “underground word lines especially needed by progit-heavy U.S.” It will include contributions from invited participants including “Fred Pyen of Metascene, Andrew Aab of gmtPlus9, Kirsten Anderson (founder, owner and curator of Seattle’s first and best alternative art gallery, the Roq La Rue), Brooke Biggs (formerly purveyor of the Bush Files over at Mother Jones, who now does the highly recommended Bittershack)…”, that ol’ Bushwacker Fred Lapides, Adam Rice from randomWalks, Mark Woods of wood s lot, and Jim of jimwich. RU Sirius was invited too, but no sign of him yet…

I’m honored to have been among the invitees, and may post there from time to time. Dr. Menlo astutely reassured me in the invitation letter that he doesn’t intend this to take any more time than my preexisting weblogging activities — that would be like blood from a stone — but that I might get extra mileage from time to time from posting some of the items from FmH on issues that particularly incense me.

Brain disease shaped Boléro

Brain disease influenced Ravel’s last compositions including his Boléro, say researchers. Orchestral timbres came to dominate his late music at the expense of melodic complexity because the left half of his brain deteriorated, they suggest. Timbre is mainly the province of the brain’s right hemisphere.

French composer Maurice Ravel suffered from a mysterious progressive dementia from about 1927 when he was 52 years old. He gradually lost the ability to speak, write and play the piano. He composed his last work in 1932, and gave his last performance in 1933. He died in December 1937.

Neurologists have puzzled over his illness ever since. Nature

Gravity leaps into quantum world: ‘Far from falling smoothly, objects moving under gravity do so in lurching, quantum leaps, a French experiment has revealed. The finding confirms that gravity, like the Universe’s three other fundamental forces, can have a quantum effect.’ Nature

Stephen Metcalf: Little Darlin’ – Wes Anderson, the sequel to Quentin Tarantino — ‘Too much creative control too soon equals too little self-control, a hothouse delight in one’s own talent.’ Slate

Consumers fight back against new protected CDs — ‘All across the world, people are dropping newly purchased $17 CDs into their CD-ROM drives and freaking out. In some cases, the CD won’t play at all in their computers. In other instances, the CD cannot be ripped into digital files for use on MP3 players. And sometimes, the CD will play only with Windows Media Player.

For people who have grown accustomed to using their PC to play CDs, this is tantamount to fraud. In some countries, these so-called protected CDs have labels on them so that computer users know which ones to avoid. However, this is not the case in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. The music industry’s head-on collision with technology has never been a thing of beauty, but I think that selling people CDs that are effectively broken has to be a new low…

Thanks to a site called Fat Chuck’s, irate consumers are compiling their specific knowledge of protected CDs (Chuck calls them corrupted ) into a database. You can search and browse the database as well as send in reports of the corrupted discs you buy so that others won’t make the same mistake. Even better, Fat Chuck–whoever he is–tries to verify the comments that people make, so you’re not just getting feedback from people who don’t like the CDs they buy for other reasons.’ CNet

The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath: ‘… the psychopath has the image of a cold, heartless, inhuman being. But do all psychopaths show a complete lack of normal emotional capacities and empathy? Like healthy people, many psychopaths love their parents, spouse, children and pets in their own way, but have difficulty loving and trusting the rest of the world. Furthermore, psychopaths do suffer emotionally as a consequence of separation, divorce, death of a beloved person or dissatisfaction with their own deviant behavior.’ Psychiatric Times

E. Fuller Torrey, MD: The year neurology almost took over psychiatry:

In December 1880, the emerging profession of neurology almost absorbed psychiatry, which had established itself four decades earlier. The final confrontation was the culmination of an extremely bitter three-year battle, and the outcome was very much in doubt as representatives of each side prepared to testify before the New York State Senate Investigative Committee on Asylum Management. One possible outcome would be the recommendation that neurologists be given administrative control of the state asylums and, effectively, of psychiatry. Other states watched New York’s battle closely and seemed likely to follow its lead.

The Urge to Punish Cheats: Not Just Human, but Selfless. ‘In the ferocity of the public outcry, and the demand from even those with no personal stake in the Enron collapse that “justice” be done, some scientists see a vivid example of humanity’s evolved and deep-seated hatred of the Cheat. The Cheat is the transgressor of fair play, the violator of accepted norms, the sneak who smiles with Chiclet teeth while ladling from the community till.’ NY Times

Ethical Reporting ‘Journalists have long been accused of wielding power without responsibility. But a group of more than 200 UK-based editors, writers, producers and reporters have spent the last year acting on the Primo Levi principle: “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Together they have produced a book, Reporting the World, a guide to “ethical reporting” in times of conflict.’ MediaChannel

Write here, write now: “Soon you’ll be able to post a message in the air wherever you go. Bennett Daviss explores a weird new way to keep in touch:

… Pinning messages in mid-air, using the location’s Global Positioning System (GPS) reference, could become the next craze in communications. The messages are not actually kept in the air: they’re stored on an Internet page. But that page’s Web address is linked to coordinates on the Earth’s surface, rather than a person or organisation. As you move about, a GPS receiver in your mobile phone or PDA will check to see if a message has been posted on the website for that particular spot. If you’re in luck a snippet of info-left as text or a voice recording by someone who passed there previously-will pop up on your screen or be whispered into your earpiece.” New Scientist

“President Bush’s war Cabinet is drawing up a secret plan to topple Saddam Hussein as soon as six months from now.

A new Afghanistan-style strategy is being finalized to use Iraqi freedom fighters, backed by U.S. military forces, … a Bush administration adviser is reported to have said.

The adviser is quoted as saying that a “general consensus” has emerged among members of Bush’s inner circle that the dictator must be ousted.” New York Post […bastion of responsible journalism. -FmH]

Notes from a Blogger Pro demo at the Weblogger Interest Group meeting in Mountain View. This won’t mean much to those of you who don’t use Blogger, but I’m salivating.

How to seem smarter — ‘The goal behind this painless four-step plan is to seem smarter without having to read any books, listen to classical music, or depend on crutches like word-of-the-day toilet paper. By making a few minor modifications to your behavior, you will give the impression to those around you that you are smarter–not only smarter than you were before, but, more importantly, smarter than they are.’ ReadyMade

Leon Wieseltier on Cornel West: All and Nothing at All

Since there is no crisis in America more urgent than the crisis of race, and since there is no intellectual in America more celebrated for his consideration of the crisis of race, I turned to West, and read his books. They are almost completely worthless. The man who wrote them is a good man, an enemy of enmity; but he is, as he writes again and again, for “a better world.” Who is not? And who, at this late date in the history of the attempt to better the world generally, and to better the world of what West calls “America’s chocolate cities” specifically, can still use this expression without irony, or without an anxiety about the degradation of idealism?

West’s work is noisy, tedious, slippery (in The American Evasion of Philosophy, “evasion” is a term of praise, a description of an accomplishment), sectarian, humorless, pedantic and self-endeared. His judgment of ideas is eccentric. The New Republic

“Slow Wave is a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world, and drawn as a comic strip by Jesse Reklaw. A new strip is uploaded every week on the first minute of Saturday in San Francisco; 3 AM Friday in New York; 6 AM Saturday in Paris, France; and 3 PM Saturday in Sydney, Australia…

Submit your dreams.”

Human Rights Watch World Report 2002 (Human Rights Developments in 2001)

Director Calls Bush ‘An Embarrassment’ — ‘Veteran filmmaker Robert Altman is venting about President George W. Bush again.

Altman, who’s been showered with critics’ accolades and a Golden Globe of late with the comedy murder mystery “Gosford Park,” first announced before the 2000 presidential election that he would leave the country if Bush were elected president.

He said a Republican victory “would be a catastrophe for the whole world,” taking issue with Bush’s plans to cut taxes and raise military spending.

Now in an interview the The London Times, Altman became enraged when speaking of Bush and the American government.’ The Boston Channel

“States must tighten their procedures for issuing driver’s licenses. That was clear after Sept. 11, when it became known that several of the hijackers had obtained licenses by using false identities.

But how far should the tightening go? Should these essential state identification cards become national IDs?” Christian Science Monitor

National ID in development : “…(T)he public’s willingness to trade some privacy for the promise of increased security seems to be slipping. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll released last week says just more than half of all adults would support a national identification card that includes fingerprint information. Two months ago, several polls indicated that more than two-thirds of all adults would support a national ID card.” USA Today [… a paper that’s not good for much, but when even it reports that Americans are disappointing conservative expectations it’s worth noting… -FmH]