How Karl Rove’s ‘winner-take-all’ strategy for the midterm elections did the trick; I lifted this link from boing boing, which liked the following paragraph about Rove’s two-way:

Through it all, Rove wore his war room on his belt’the postcard-size BlackBerry communicator that holds his unmatchable Rolodex as well as his e-mail system, through which he squirted orders and suggestions to campaign workers and lobbyists using only a few words. “It’s like haiku, “says a political operative who has been on the receiving end. During meetings’even ones with the President’Rove would constantly spin the BlackBerry’s dial and punch out text on its tiny keyboard. “Sometimes we’re in a meeting talking to each other and BlackBerrying each other at the same time, “says a colleague. At times Rove’s voltage got too hot even for all his outlets. He became known for breaking into song in midsentence. During games of gin rummy on Air Force One during Bush’s campaign swings, Rove was always the loudest one yelling, “Feed the monkey! “when it was his turn to pick up a card. (Bush played once, Rove says, and “whipped me.’)

But there’s plenty more there. Time

“Having helped spark the file-trading revolution, some stars of the peer-to-peer networking world are swapping their original anarchistic philosophies in favor of capitalism. Napster co-founder Sean Parker–perhaps best known for writing some of the ill-fated company’s most legally damning memos–is launching a new company called Plaxo on Tuesday, focused on helping Microsoft Outlook users keep their address books up to date.” CNET.com

Despite being found guilty of grand theft charges, actress Winona Ryder has vowed to find the real shoplifters.

“I cannot and will not rest until the real perpetrators of this crime are found. Despite the potentially damning video tape and the fact that I was arrested with the items on my person, I will find the people who framed me,” said Ryder, “especially if asked to do so by my director. Perhaps in a role as a girl who finds the real criminals in a film called… uh… Framers!”

“Even if I have to search from a prison cell, I’ll find some of the people who saw Little Women and Girl, Interrupted who believe I’m innocent,” continued Ryder. “And since I’m a celebrity, I will spearhead a campaign ensuring that in the future, celebrities will not be held liable for crimes unless they are felonies or federal offenses.”

E!, the entertainment network, plans on covering the Winona Ryder Search for Truth tour which kicks off after sentencing next month. Kato Kaelin will host the specials.

Police reported riots erupting in Beverly Hills. BBSpot [thanks, Walker, who suggested I include this in my “OJ Still Searching for Wife’s Killer” Dept.]

In another apparent “Alan-Sokal-like” scandal, two French science-fiction-writing twin-brother ‘geniuses’ have managed to get a supposedly meaningless paper purporting to describe the singularity at the moment of the universe’s creation through the peer-review process and published in a physics journal. But the case turns out to be far more complex than a hoax. Chronicle of Higher Education

Theory links slavery, stress disorder:

Mims, Reid, and Larry Higginbottom, another black social worker, recently taught a symposium at the Simmons Graduate School of Social Work and are writing a book about what they call ”post-traumatic slavery disorder” – a derivative of post-traumatic stress disorder. They are holding workshops to propose to fellow professionals that drug abuse, broken families, crime, and low educational attainment in segments of the black community can be directly linked to the trauma of slavery, and that ”black people as a whole are suffering from PTSD,” Mims said.

These Boston clinicians were not the first to note the lingering psychological effects of slavery. Harvard University psychiatrist Alvin F. Poussaint wrote in 2000 about ”posttraumatic slavery syndrome,” calling it ”a physiological risk for black people that is virtually unknown to white Americans.”

In a book Poussaint co-authored on black suicide, ”Lay My Burden Down,” he wrote: ”A culture of oppression, the by-product of this nation’s development, has taken a tremendous toll on the minds and bodies of black people.”

Now, Mims, Reid, and Higginbottom – none with backgrounds in academia – have taken it upon themselves to try to educate other mental health workers about their theory, and promote a curriculum and therapy based on the idea. They would like to see what they call ”PTSlaveryD” entered into diagnostic manuals. Boston Globe

Officials Question FBI Terror Readiness: “With intelligence agencies predicting that Iraq and sympathetic Islamic extremists will attempt to launch terrorist attacks against the United States in the event of war, many government officials are growing concerned that the FBI is dangerously unprepared to detect or thwart strikes on U.S. soil.” Washington Post

”It was a sedan when he parked it and two hours later, it was a convertible.” ‘Firefighters mistakenly ripped off the roof, doors, and steering wheel of a car the department thought was supposed to be used for a rescue drill on Friday morning. The black 1986 Honda Accord, however, was owned by Antonio Rocha…, who parked the car on a grassy lot behind the fire station… Two other cars slated for demolition as part of the Jaws of Life drill already were parked in that lot, where the department has been holding rescue exercises for years, according to (a fire dept. official)… Police and fire officials have been unable to locate Rocha at his… address. Rocha had parked his car, which had about 204,000 miles on the odometer, and walked to his workplace … up the road, according to police…’ Boston Globe

Brian Livingston writes that ‘ millions of Windows users have unwittingly installed “parasites” when setting up music-sharing programs or other free marketing gimmicks. Some parasite programs harvest fake sales commissions from e-commerce sites. They can also make your PC unreliable and crash-prone.’ InfoWorld

He points us to a British website developer named Andrew Clover at whose site you can test your computer for dozens of different parasite programs

. Here’s a Google parasitology search to take you further. Perhaps the most informative and useful site I found is Nasty Secret.

Salon Letters: ‘In his Oct. 30 “Idiocy of the Week,”

Salon columnist Andrew Sullivan scrutinized an article written by Buffalo State College professor Michael I. Niman titled “Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?”

Niman responds.’ After Wellstone’s death, I suggested we’d be hearing from conspiracy theorists. Niman either is or isn’t…

A ‘news log’, updated daily, of Iraq-related news stories and analysis from AlterNet and elsewhere.

Buried deep within the 670-page No Child Left Behind educational act is a provision not only requiring public secondary schools to allow military recruiters access to their facilities but forcing them to provide contact information on every registered student or face a cutoff in federal funding. ‘Recruiters are up-front about their plans to use school lists to aggressively pursue students through mailings, phone calls, and personal visits — even if parents object. “The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman,” says Major Johannes Paraan, head U.S. Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York. “Or maybe if the kid died, we’ll take them off our list.” ‘ Mother Jones

“A cure for wireless gadget overload may not be far off.

It’s called software defined radio; a technology that replaces analog radio circuitry with digitally generated samples of radio waveforms.

This week, wireless technology makers will convene in San Diego to demonstrate SDR, which could hold the key to developing a single standard for a myriad of portable devices.

By replacing the custom-designed, single-purpose transmitter and receiver electronics inside today’s wireless gadgets with software running on a CPU chip, SDR developers hope to unlock new opportunities for wireless communications.” Wired

‘Two California men rebelling against a sea of America Online promotional compact discs have got mail like never before.

People around the world have sent Jim McKenna and John Lieberman more than 80,000 CDs offering trial subscriptions to AOL’s Internet services. They say when they collect a million, they’ll go to the company’s front door in Virginia to say, “You’ve got mail.” ‘ Wired