If I’m ever The next time I’m in a job-hunting situation I’ll use a version of this response to a rejection letter. Turbulent Velvet reveals he wrote it, finding

it is “from the original email that I sent to seven or eight close friends back when I was in grad school. I had no idea it had ever leaked out from this circle and become an anonymous meme that’s still filling up four pages of Googlesearch seven or eight years after the fact.”

“Media Democracy Day is a day of international action based on three themes:

• Education – understanding how the media shapes our world and our democracy
  
• Protest – against a media system based on commercialization and exclusiveness
  
• Change – calls for media reforms that respond to public interests, promote diversity, and ensure community representation and accountability
  

This citizens’ agenda has been abandoned by government and conveniently side-stepped by mainstream media. Media Democracy Day will bring this vision to life with a day of education, protest, and calls for change in the interest of the people.”

A nifty introduction to game theory from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Pretty obvious that the Bush dysadministration’s senior advisors don’t think this is a useful approach to the family feud with Iraq. Oops; it appears that a central assumption of game theory is that players act rationally.

– And thanks for asking, but you can’t have it. Jon Cohen in Slate

Columbia Company Spearheads Radio’s Conversion to Digital Signals:

A company can’t often promise to invent watershed technology in an industry that’s remained largely stagnant for 50 years – and then deliver on that.

But iBiquity Digital, a Columbia company working to transform the everyday radio-listening experience, is just a few dials away from its destination: digital radio.

IBiquity Technology May Set National Standard:

Radio, long the low-tech cousin in the media family of television, telephones and the Internet, may be about to break out of its rut with a handful of new technologies that promise better sound and more information without requiring more space on the limited radio band.

both: Washington Post

Richard Reeves: Is It Time to Invade… Germany?? Yahoo!

Canadian and U.S. scientists, who successfully reunited a lost orca whale with her family pod this summer, are wondering if they should launch a similar effort for a second killer whale.

The whale, known to scientists as L98, has been living alone off Vancouver Island’s west coast since last year, after becoming separated from a pod that normally summers in the waters of Washington state’s Puget Sound.

Canadian fisheries officials said Thursday that a panel of whale experts will decide if they should attempt to capture the young male next summer and relocate it closer to where its relatives normally are. Reuters/Yahoo!

And, while we’re on the topic of doing right by our animal cousins:

Zookeepers Suspended for Eating Animals Reuters/Yahoo!

Receiving an Apology Does a Body Good, Study Finds: “Most individuals who have been wronged would agree that they feel better after receiving an apology. Now researchers have found scientific proof to back up that claim.” Reuters Health

Actually, there is a more or less continuous stream of research supporting this claim.

” A man who wanted to change his name to God chose a new name when a judge turned down his request.

The former Charles Haffey’s new name is I Am who I Am.

The 55-year-old said he sought the name change as a way to gain release from feelings of anxiety and rage that have plagued him since he served in Vietnam.

“I was fatally wounded in the mind and the spirit,” he said. “I didn’t suffer any bodily injury. It’s just what I saw, what I did. I killed myself.”…

Last week, he bought a tombstone to be inscribed with his former name. He plans to plant it in the tall grass on his property.

(Who I Am) said it will read, ‘Charles Walter Haffey, born Sept. 23, 1948, and died Oct. 21, 1968, Republic of Vietnam.’ “

This needs more exposure:

President George Bush has been laid open to further allegations of hypocrisy in his condemnation of the aggressive business practices of the 1990s with publication of more details of his own dealings.

Harken Energy, the oil and gas company behind Mr Bush’s wealth, formed an entity, or partnership, with the investment arm of Harvard University in 1990 that enabled it to move poorly performing assets and debts off its books, says a report that draws comparisons with the failed energy firm Enron.

The move concealed the company’s financial woes and may have misled investors, an independent student and alumni group that monitors the university’s investments said in a report released on Wednesday.

The group, HarvardWatch, likened the venture to that Enron used to disguise debts before it collapsed. Minutes show that Mr Bush, a director at Harken from 1986 to 1993 and a $US100,000 a year consultant at the time, personally approved the deal. Sydney Morning Herald

US has occupation plan for Iraq. The White House unveiled the plan as soon as the Congressional resoltuion was passed. The plan, apparently based on the U.S. occupation of Japan after WWII, has Gen. Tommy Franks in the Douglas MacArthur role. The plan marginalizes Iraqi opposition parties to prevent a repetition of the infighting in post-Taliban Afghanistan, and, most galling, calls for war crimes trials for Iraqi officials. Sydney Morning Herald As far as I can tell, U.S. oil company executives will not have above-board posts in the occupation government as they do in the US government.

Islamic parties gain ground in Pakistan. Fueled by anti-U.S. sentiment, pro-Taliban coalition of fundamentalists dominates vote in several regions including frontier area near Afghani border. CNN

Vatican Contemplates A Ban on Gay Priests:

“The wave of sex abuse scandals in the U.S. Catholic church ignited a debate over whether homosexuality per se played a role. The equating of homosexuality and abuse riled critics who say there is no evidence that gays are more likely to engage in abuse than heterosexuals.

Others contend that pointing the finger at gay priests is a way to deflect attention from the alleged responsibility of bishops who allowed the scandal to unfold.” Washington Post

The nation’s capital may be the single biggest political power generator on earth, but its grip on reality can seem mighty relaxed. Never mind the government, just look at the city: so rich but so poor; so monumental but so run down. Does anyone ever know what’s really going on? Anyway, it makes sense that reality, or maybe realism, is the underlying theme of exhibitions at three of the city’s major museums.

Escaping Criticism, Pere Borrell del Caso (1874), National Gallery

The biggest attraction is “Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting,” devoted to tricking the eye. It opens on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art. It’s a blast and should be a hit. NY Times

Frank Rich:

“As soon as President Bush rolled out his new war on Iraq, the Democrats in Washington demanded a debate, and debates they got, all right. There was the debate between Matt Drudge and Barbra Streisand about the provenance of an antiwar quote she recited at a party fund-raiser. There was the debate about whether Jim McDermott, Democratic Congressman from Washington, should have come home from Baghdad before announcing on TV that we can take Saddam Hussein’s promises at “face value.” There were the debates about why Al Gore took off his wedding ring, why Robert Torricelli took a Rolex, and why Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson took noisy offense at so benign and popular a Hollywood comedy as Barbershop.

But as for the promised debate about Iraq, it became heated only after Congressional approval of the president’s mission was a foregone conclusion.

It’s the War, Stupid

By FRANK RICH

As soon as President Bush rolled out his new war on Iraq, the Democrats in Washington demanded a debate, and debates they got, all right. There was the debate between Matt Drudge and Barbra Streisand about the provenance of an antiwar quote she recited at a party fund-raiser. There was the debate about whether Jim McDermott, Democratic Congressman from Washington, should have come home from Baghdad before announcing on TV that we can take Saddam Hussein’s promises at “face value.” There were the debates about why Al Gore took off his wedding ring, why Robert Torricelli took a Rolex, and why Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson took noisy offense at so benign and popular a Hollywood comedy as “Barbershop.”

But as for the promised debate about Iraq, it became heated only after Congressional approval of the president’s mission was a foregone conclusion. Though the party’s leaders finally stepped up, starting with Mr. Gore, most of them seemed less concerned with the direction of the nation in 2002 than with positioning themselves for the White House in 2004 (or ’08). They challenged the administration’s arrogant and factually disingenuous way of pursuing its goal, then beat a hasty retreat to sign on to whatever fig-leaf language they could get into the final resolution. (Mr. Gore, after his Sept. 23 Iraq speech, dropped the subject altogether.)

Even at their most forceful they failed to state their qualified, Bush-lite case for war with anything like the persistence, eloquence and authority of Chuck Hagel, the Republican Vietnam War hero. Speaking with almost mournful resignation from the floor on Wednesday, the senator was naked in his doubts about what lies ahead. “We should not be seduced by the expectations of `dancing in the streets’ after Saddam’s regime has fallen,” he said.

That Democratic leaders added so little to the discussion is attributed to their intimidation by the president’s poll numbers, their fear of being branded unpatriotic and their eagerness to clear the decks (whatever the price) to return to the economy, stupid, before Election Day. None of these motives constitute a profile in courage; no wonder George W. Bush was emboldened to present himself as the new John F. Kennedy in his Iraq speech on Monday night.

Agree with him or not, the president does stand for something. He led, and the Democrats followed. The polls, far from rationalizing the Democrats’ timidity, suggest they might have won a real debate had they staged one. Support for an Iraq war is falling, with the dicey 51 percent in favor in the latest CNN/USA Today survey dropping to a Vietnam-like 33 percent support level if there are 5,000 casualties, as there could well be. But even so, the Democratic leaders never united around a substantive alternative vision to the administration’s pre-emptive war against the thug of Baghdad. That isn’t patriotism, it’s abdication.

Perhaps more than he intended, Tom Daschle summed up the feeble thrust of his party’s opposition on “Meet the Press” last weekend when he observed, “The bottom line is . . . we want to move on.” Now his wish has come true � but move on to what? The dirty secret of the Democrats is that they have no more of an economic plan than they had an Iraq plan.” NY Times op-ed

…With Jab at Bush: ‘For his peacemaking and humanitarian work over the last 25 years, former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, and the Nobel committee used the occasion to send a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration for its aggressive policy toward Iraq.’ NY Times

Sopranos Uninvited, Mayor Finds a Parade He Can Refuse. So the story is that New York mayor Michael Bloomberg took it upon himself to invite two stars of The Sopranos he describes as his friends to march with him in the Columbus Day Parade. The parade’s organizers, who objected both because of the aspersions The Sopranos are said to cast on Italian-American culture and because the mayor had not asked them for permission, obtained a court order to bar the mayor’s invitation. (He could be arrested for contempt if he ignores it…) So the mayor simply won’t march. “It is highly unusual for a sitting mayor to refuse the invitation of a major ethnic group to march in its parade. But there have been controversies…. (And) the point at which a mayor enters a parade route — for example, after St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the gay pride parade — and with whom he marches is always a matter for political dissection.” NY Times

Paul Krugman: ‘So here’s my theory: Michael Oxley, Harvey Pitt and George W. Bush are all Communist moles who have worked their way into the center of the capitalist system in order to destroy it. How else can you make sense of their actions?

It’s true that in July they grudgingly agreed to a corporate reform bill, which briefly calmed the growing investor panic. That was because it’s essential for them to control Congress— they need maximum leeway to wreck the U.S. economy. But then they found a better answer. Saber-rattling over Iraq does double duty. It distracts the media: on Wednesday the Dow fell 215 points, hitting a nearly five-year low, while consumer confidence fell to levels not seen since 1996, yet neither story was treated as front-page news. And war talk itself helps depress stocks and consumer confidence, and further undermines the economy.’ NY Times

New Theories Stir Speculation on Unsolved Rap Deaths:

‘ “Tupac is alive and in Cuba,” said José Reyes, 19, a senior at Fort Hamilton High School. “How else could he keep putting out records?”

“Tupac is alive and in Cuba,” said José Reyes, 19, a senior at Fort Hamilton High School. “How else could he keep putting out records?”

…

“I think Suge Knight killed both of them,” said Jose Colon, 26, a sneaker salesman…

“Tupac was killed by the government,” said Arnold Evans, 39, a Fulton Street barber…

Mr. Wilson of XXL magazine said he expected even more frenzy next September, on the seventh anniversary of Shakur’s death, when many fans say he will return from hiding. Fans have devoted Web pages to the prevalence of the number seven in Shakur’s work and life. “That’s what everyone is waiting for,” Mr. Wilson said.

…Anthony Pena, a freshman at Touro College, did not know what to believe. There are just so many theories, he said. “One of them has to be true.” NY Times