Worst Festival Ever. NY Times

‘Even all the boring white guys got tattoos now.’

Like an aging sitcom that keeps getting moved to a worse and worse time slot, Dennis Rodman’s celebrity is near cancellation. Rodman, by 1998 second to his teammate Michael Jordan in name recognition among basketball players, has no endorsements, no public appearances and few prospects. Rodman’s collapse is classic American overexposure. Call it the Action Figure Syndrome. From William Shatner to Mr. T, few survive being molded into 11 inches of plastic. It’s a sign that America has made your acquaintance, fallen in love and gorged on your image. And we all know what happens next in romance and marketing: boredom followed by contempt. Today, it’s a short road from the cover of GQ to a throwaway line in Conan’s monologue. NY Times Magazine

The tragedy is that Rodman, like many others, does not realize what process he is victim of.

A Visual Database of Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos

Play ’20 Questions’ with this site; see if you can stump it. I did on the second try, but it quibbles with the way I answered its questions, feeling misled.

Small towns across America could be without fireworks this Fourth of July if federal agencies can’t settle on new homeland security restrictions on shipments by train.

“It’s getting stupid. Do they really think a terrorist will use a firecracker to blow up a building?” said Don Lantis, of North Sioux City, S.D., whose family-owned pyrotechnics company puts on 300 to 400 shows around the country every Independence Day. ABC News

I debated but ultimately concluded that, yes, this blink does belong in my occasional ‘Annals of Depravity’ Dept: Faced with the smoking ban, several New York restaurants are putting tobacco in their food and drinks. Newsweek [via Looka!]

Some pretty in-your-face humor, or at least in Ashcroft’s and Ridge’s faces. Of course, John Stossel finds this phenomenon disquieting. Of course I say go for it…

“I’m normal, people, just like you. I put my pants on one leg at a time, strap on a bomb, go to work.”

“There’s only one thing I’ve got to say about racial profiling: It’s awesome. Seriously. Look at me. I got my ass kicked all through high school. And now, people are actually scared of me.”

“No guys, that’s a lie. I’m not Iranian. I was Iranian for 23 years up until Sept. 11th and now I’m Puerto Rican because that makes life a lot easier. That’s what’s happened to the entire Middle Eastern population: they’ve all become blacks, Latinos and dark Italians…”

“Did you guys see this Dan Rather interview with Saddam Hussein on prime-time TV, right before we’re trying to kill the guy, he’s on prime-time TV, and he challenged President Bush to a debate. Did you guys hear about that? How unfair was that? Going right for our president’s weakness — speaking English.”

“We’re all going to be arrested by the FBI after the show. I hope you guys enjoyed, hope you’re enjoying the show. Hope you’ll visit me in the detainment camp.”

…with your DNA in tree:

Two art students are planning to grow trees containing the genetic identity of human beings.

The idea is to replace the unused “junk” DNA in trees with entire human genomes. Scientists have advised the pair that it is perfectly feasible.

The “humanised” trees would be unaffected by the change, but still carry the biological essence of the DNA donors. One possibility envisaged is that the trees could replace gravestones as a way of preserving the memory of loved ones. Telegraph/UK

Walt Whitman envisioned this a century and a half ago:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

— from Song of Myself (1855)

I’ve been having a hard time understanding the foam hypothesis for the damage that caused the Columbia disaster, but in an independent experiment a 1.67-lb. chunk of foam shot from a gas cannon at around 530 mph at a fullscale mockup of a shuttle wing produced a worrisome gap when it struck a glancing blow on the very first attempt. The mockup, of fiberglass, is if anything more resiliant than the esoteric carbon fiber of the real thing. Like me, investigators were apparently skeptical before the experiment:

“Investigators have already concluded that a hole in the shuttle’s left wing let in the superheated gases that destroyed the wing, and they knew that a piece of foam struck the wing on launching. But they would not have been able to link the two convincingly without experimental evidence, and some of them had been worried that the experiments might not produce any wing damage.” NY Times

Another report says that the foam may have done its damage by dislodging a ‘T’ seal between two segments of the wing, opening up a gap along a seam. Analysis of a recorded radar echo of a piece of debris that flew off from the wing after the chunk of foam hit it suggests it is consistent with a ‘T’ shape.

In city after city, high-speed wireless access may be the next Internet revolution. But don’t go out warchalking; this is not your mother’s WiFi:

“I’ve got a Dell laptop on my knees and the wind is in my (very short) hair. I’ve got as many windows open as a beach house in summer—Google searches and instant messages to my wife; in the background, a new batch of e-mails downloads and my hometown public radio station streams on. It’s the usual cruise down the information superhighway at 2 Mb/s.

But I’m also hurtling down an actual superhighway—U.S. Interstate 4, at a very real 115 km/h. I’m in a Ford Mustang convertible, under cotton-ball clouds and a postcard-blue Florida sky. The Dell is outfitted with a prototype card that communicates with a test network set up by broadband wireless start-up MeshNetworks Inc.

(…)

Mesh is the only company to have figured out how to dynamically hand devices off from one access point to another at broadband data rates and six-lane freeway velocities. But beyond that, Mesh, along with Ricochet and other wireless point-to-point networks, are the best hope for a fully mobile future—a world where we can teleconference each other, watch news and entertainment in real time, order from online catalogs, pay our bills, and answer e-mail—anywhere, anytime, on ever smaller and sleeker handheld devices powered by ever more powerful microprocessors and software.” IEEE Spectrum

Morale Reportedly Flagging in Iraq Guardian/UK

Thanks to Adam for this: swarm of more than 12,000 honeybees turned a downtown electronic walk/don’t walk sign into a makeshift beehive before the owner of a beekeeping equipment company coaxed the bees into a hive box below the traffic light.

Coincidentally, the bees had camped out Thursday just below the sixth-floor offices of Gary Johnson, the owner of Minnesota Package Bees, who was called on to help capture and remove the bees from the busy intersection.

Decked out head-to-toe in a white bee suit and mask, Johnson carried honeycomb frames up a ladder near the sign. Within minutes, thousands of bees flocked to the frames, while others hovered nearby.

No stings were reported. The bees were so engorged with honey that they couldn’t sting, Johnson said. Mpls. Star Tribune

A similarly-sized swarm in New Mexico made the news this week also.

a collection of gutteral moans from comics.

Here’s John Dvorak’s take on things. Usually prescient, he’s really behind the curve here, isn’t he? Blogging is beginning to sound like the CB Radio of the ’00’s to me.

Research funded by drug companies is ‘biased’: “Research funded by drug companies is more likely to produce results that favour the sponsor’s product, reveals a new study.

Researchers analysed 30 previous reports examining pharmaceutical industry-backed research and found the conclusions of such research were four times more likely to be positive than research backed by other sponsors.” New Scientist And lest we forget, there is a more fundamental bias in the reporting of research findings — that positive results (confirming a research hypothesis) are far more likely to be reported than negative (disconfirmatory) ones. This alone may go a long way to explain the bias in pharmaceutical-funded research, since a researcher seeking a grant is more likely to ‘pitch’ a favorable hypothesis to them.

Why the President Had to Show His Balls: “In the annals of infotainment, few moments match the sight of George Bush leaping from the cockpit of a fighter jet and striding across the deck of a carrier at sea. Top Gun: The Pseudo Event enchanted the public, horrified liberals, and galvanized the press. Suddenly media mavens noticed that Bush’s handlers have elevated the photo-op to pure cinema. So what else is new?

Actually there was something novel about this occasion, but it passed utterly below the radar. Discretion prevented anyone from mentioning that Bush’s outfit gave him a very vivid basket. This was the first a time a president literally showed his balls. Check it out—your subconscious already has.” — Richard Goldstein, Village Voice

Goldstein goes on to explore the implications. Thank heavens I don’t watch TV news coverage.

Official, Histrionic, Account of White House response to 9-11:

Trapped on the other side of the country aboard Air Force One, the President has lost his cool: “If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I’ll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!”

His Secret Service chief seems taken aback. “But Mr. President . . .”

The President brusquely interrupts him. “Try Commander-in-Chief. Whose present command is: Take the President home!”

Was this George W. Bush’s moment of resolve on Sept. 11, 2001? Well, not exactly. Actually, the scene took place this month, on a Toronto sound stage.

The histrionics, filmed for a two-hour television movie to be broadcast this September, are as close as you can get to an official White House account of its activities at the outset of the war on terrorism. Globe and Mail

Discerning commentator EJ Dionne writes in the Washington Post: “Bush promised to change the ways of Washington. He has succeeded brilliantly, but not by creating the “new tone of respect and bipartisanship” he promised in 2000. The new tone in Washington is not bipartisan but hyperpartisan. “Bipartisanship is another name for date rape,” said White House ally Norquist, according to the Denver Post this week, as he promised to bring Washington’s new ferocity to the state capitals.

With ruthless brilliance, the White House is wielding power through the unrelenting imposition of party discipline. As a result, Bush will certainly help at least one industry in a troubled economy. All the textbooks pronouncing the death of political parties will have to be pulped and rewritten, creating who knows how many jobs.”

Essentially, Dionne opines that, in the good ol’ days, such a slim, partisan margin would result in compromise and bipartisanship, but now no matter how slim the advantage, it is now used as an opportunity to run rampant. And, I would add, even if the Democrats can take the White House in 2004 — the prospects for which look exceedingly dismal given their inchoate ineffectuality* and the deathgrip the Republicans have on the terms of the public debate — the next administration’s ability to govern democratically, such as it were, will have been immutably crippled on the domestic front by the massive Bush increases in the public debt and in the foreign relations arena by our unilateralism and squandering of the goodwill of the world community and our erstwhile allies.

*Although Howard Dean seems to be catching many people’s imagination, dismissing the rest of the Democratic field as ‘Bush lite” and speaking remarkable common sense. At least he is willing to clearly differentiate himself. If the Greens hold to their seeming dawning recognition that there really might be a difference this time around between reelecting Bush and the right Democrat and refrain from mounting a challenge from the left, we might see a real ideologically cast race.

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.

The extraordinary admission comes in an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, in the July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.

It increasingly emerges not only that we are lied to — no surprise — but that it is an explicit instrument of policy to do so. Wolfowitz goes on to make explicit what I’ve said several times was the most compelling hidden agenda for the war:

Mr Wolfowitz also discloses that there was one justification that was “almost unnoticed but huge”. That was the prospect of the United States being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia once the threat of Saddam had been removed. Since the taking of Baghdad, Washington has said that it is taking its troops out of the kingdom. “Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to the door” towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle East peace, Mr Wolfowitz said. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups. Independent/UK

This is the way, then, that the invasion of Iraq did actually fit in the minds of the Bush cabal with the WoT® agenda, although their halfhearted attempts to assert that they were related were unconvincing. Not being explicit during the buildup to the war about its meeting basically longterm strategic rather than emergent defensive goals, one has to wonder about why it becomes acceptable to admit it immediately upon completion fo the war effort. Wolfowitz is no fool; I suppose he is confident no one is listening now, or that anyone who is has no power to do anything with their upset.

Related: The dysadmnistration’s disingenuousness has a Lewis-Carroll-like illogicality. Justifications seem to be cobbled together, invented on the fly, and have little coherency with one another.

Iraqi “intellectual capacity” for producing unconventional weapons was sufficient justification for the successful U.S.-led war against the country, a senior Bush administration official said today, addressing criticism that U.S. forces so far have found no illicit weapons there.

(…)

Explicitly addressing the lack of WMD stocks found in Iraq so far, Bolton said, “There has been a lot of misunderstanding as to exactly what it was we expected to find and when we expected to find it.”

Since the first Gulf War, he said, “The most fundamental, most important thing that was not destroyed [by international weapons inspectors] was the intellectual capacity in Iraq to recreate systems of weapons of mass destruction.”

Since Starbucks has sunken to the mass-market level of Dunkin’ Donuts, why shouldn’t DD mimic Starbucks offerings? But with one twist — Fair-Trade certified beans. Forbes

A British soldier is today being questioned by Ministry of Defence war crimes investigators after the emergence of photographs showing disturbing scenes of alleged “torture” of Iraqi PoWs.

One of the photographs is reported to show an Iraqi PoW gagged and bound, hanging in netting from a fork-lift truck. Others allegedly depict soldiers committing sex acts near captured Iraqis. This Is London

“this is a kind of collaborative mapping project. it consists of geographical models which are represented as RDF graphs. you can wander round them, like a MUD or MOO, with a bot interface which you can use to create and connect new places.

it is an experiment in gonzo geographical data collection, with location grid data extrapolated from and converted between different sources on the internet, and new connections made between them.

it is a semantic web project; it provides a scheme for semantic web identification of places via unique uris. the interaction with people aspect uses FOAF, in the hope that friend-of-a-friend networks can benefit from collaborative filtering as well as collaborative mapping.

there is a model of london which has an instant messenger bot interface and is addressable via the web.”

“With over 50,000 magazine subscriptions, chances are good that you’ll find the magazine you’re looking for–or perhaps discover one you never knew you needed. Check out a small sample of some of the quirkier titles in our catalog below.” Mushroom News? Armour? Fuel Oil News?

Andrew Stockdale’s Central London: “My work has a consistent aesthetic vision. My images transform people and their environments into an epic visual that makes a strong graphic statement. Generally, I’m interested in portraying my own slant on reality.

The images featured (here) were taken around Central London during the past month. I’ve found many parts of London to be quite neglected, and this series focuses on some of them. I’ve aimed to visualize the beauty found in rubbish, vandalism and poverty.” neumu

A documentary by Prix du Genève award winner Ine Poppe about a group of Dutch hackers, techies, artists, writers, and puzzlers known as the “Hippies From Hell” is now available for free online.

These Dutch hackers, as they were referred to initially, are a special group within the international hacker scene, which they played a major role in forming. The film contains rare footage from some Dutch hackers who would not speak to the media, but speak freely here. In the 1980’s they published hacker magazine Hack-Tic and in 1993 they started the first Dutch Internet provider, xs4all.

The documentary also features the rising of the lockpick sport club TOOOL, and takes you along on a trip to various European open air hacker conferences.

The 53 minute documentary can be downloaded for free at http://hippies.waag.org in DIVX format, Quicktime streaming, and downloadable Quicktime video. 2600

“Researchers are creating mathematical models based upon the ‘six

degrees of separation’ idea to understand how social interaction

contributes to the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome.” Wired News

This may be related to the idea of the ‘superspreader’ implicated in the pattern of contagion of SARS. While most considerations about the superspreader phenomenon have assumed that superspreaders are more contagious than others (as a consequence of their own immunological characteristics or something about the strain of the virus they carry), models of the ‘small world’ or ‘six degrees’ phenomenon depend on a small number of nodal individuals who mix with large numbers of others and form bridges or short circuits in social connectivity. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this ‘granularity’ of the six degrees of separation in this way in a celebrated New Yorker article in 1999, for example. Perhaps the superspreaders are analogous and should be examined for their connectivity rather than their virulence? On the other hand, instead of watching our hands or our feet, perhaps we should be looking to the stars to understand the epidemiology of SARS.

A Common Cause petition drive: “The FCC is considering fundamental changes

to the media ownership regulations that will affect all of us. Despite the

immense impact of the proposed changes, the FCC has held only one formal

public hearing on the issue. While the public has largely been unaware and

uninvolved in the issue, the nation’s largest broadcast companies – which

could reap huge benefits from the elimination of these ownership rules –

have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and political

contributions in Washington.

Join other Americans in telling FCC Chairman Michael Powell to delay the June 2nd vote on media consolidation and oppose relaxing the current ownership rules.”

Or just buffalo on the range? NJ.com

Did Cooked Tubers Spur the Evolution of Big Brains? CogWeb/UCLA

“The Bush administration is considering taking a hard-line approach toward the government of Iran that could include efforts to destabilize Tehran’s Islamic regime, a State Department official told CNN on Sunday.”

Greens Consider Standing Behind Democrats in ’04: “As the Green Party hashes out its plans for next year’s presidential election, some of its activists are urging the party to forgo the race and, instead, throw its support behind one of the Democratic candidates — all in the hopes of unseating President Bush.” Washington Post

About time, although probably closing the barn door after the horse is gone; once you regret how you used your swing vote, it is not likely you will have a chance to be that pivotal again…

Three young neo-Nazis went on trial in east Germany yesterday charged with the “bestial murder” of a schoolboy. The teenager was tortured and killed after his attackers decided that his baggy trousers and dyed blond hair made him “look like a Jew”. Independent UK

but s/he’s not very forgiving upon answering. St Peterburg Times

the EGBG counterscript: “The Direct Marketing sector regards the telephone as one of its most successful tools. Consumers experience telemarketing from a completely different point of view: more than 92% perceive commercial telephone calls as a violation of privacy.

Telemarketers make use of a telescript – a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.” Brilliant. You can print out a .pdf of the counterscript to keep next to your phone for instant deployment. For a long time, I have asked telemarketers for their home phone number and, when they inevitably balk at giving it to me, I wonder aloud why then they presume to call me at home… just before hanging up. This is a quantum leap beyond that as a kultur-jam … [thanks, walker]

Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs: (ed. by the University of Minnesota Blog Collective). “The editors invite submissions for a new online edited collection exploring discursive, visual, and other communicative features of weblogs. We are interested in submissions that analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and the weblog community. Although we are open to a wide range of scholarly approaches, our primary interest is in essays that comment upon specific features of the weblog and that treat the weblog as always a part of a larger community network.” Too bad the execrable term blogosphere seems to be catching on…

“This is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that actually shows our home as a planetary disk. Because Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth. As seen from Mars by MGS [Mars Global Surveyor] on 8 May 2003 at 13:00 GMT (6:00 AM PDT), Earth and the Moon appeared in the evening sky.” And here’s Jupiter from the MGS:

NASA/JPL

I’ve recently become aware that the use of this word is broadening with a corresponding unfocusing of its meaning, as if it is a synonym for background or a hybrid of background and history. A pity; it is useful to have a word meaning what backstory originally meant, as Paul McFedries nailed it at Word Spy several years ago. Googling shows us how it is currently being used.

I saw the Matrix Reloaded the other day and won’t hesitate to say (even if the hatemail starts spewing in) that I found it disappointing. I’m in good company in saying so, IMHO.

You’re not supposed to be able to follow it unless you were into the first Matrix film… but I was. And it is de rigeur to dis Keanu Reeves… but I find his laconic minimalist non-acting has a sort of appeal. So it’s not that. I just found its plotting incoherent and arbitrary. Sorry, those failings offend my minimal expectations of a film, and no amount of <a href=”http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30747.html

“>hacker cred (The Register)

or rock-’em-sock-’em action can compensate. Although it is tempting to hope for a coherent and overpoweringly subversive paradigm-buster to be this popular (“The left has been content to release memes into their own marginal subcultures for far to long. The Matrix unleashes memes into the heart of pop culture…”), it won’t amount to anything.

I’m nagged by the thought, though, that I would have grasped the logic better if I hadn’t been severely jetlagged (I saw it in SF where I was out for a conference) at the time. And perhaps I would grasp its logic better if I saw it again. But I couldn’t put up with that.

I did sort of like the Agent Smiths, although I was preoccupied throughout with what relationship he/they have to other contemporary Men in Black like Smith and Jones. By the way, I find credible the speculation that Smith could turn out to be an ally of The One (anything is possible in these scripts, right?) in the third episode due out this fall. Which (sigh) I’ll probably see, especially because it’ll be the first feature film out simultaneously on IMAX format, I read.

As an aside, I knew he looked familiar, but it was so out of context (wait; maybe not) that I hadn’t realized until I happened upon it here that Councilman West was a cameo appearance of none other than Cornel West.

Crime and Trauma Cleanup – “certified technicians” who “remediate the premises after a homicide, suicide, or un-attended death.” It is a franchise too — you can start your own Aftermath team.

The Spectator reviews a gloomy book by an eminent scientist which gives humankind around 50-50 odds of surviving the next century. While the nuclear threat has receded, he claims (and I am not certain it has), it will be overshadowed by equally destructive but far less controllable threats which

may come not primarily from national governments, not even from ‘rogue states’, but from individuals or small groups with access to ever more advanced technology. There are alarmingly many ways in which individuals will be able to trigger catastrophe.

But fear not; there’s a chance an errant asteroid or comet will finish us off, mercifully, first.

how scientist’s obituary sparked a storm:

It was expected to be a laudatory précis of a life of achievement, a straightforward assessment of the career of a distinguished pharmaceutical expert.

But the obituary of David Horrobin that has just been published in the British Medical Journal falls considerably short of that expectation. Instead it presents a grimly unpleasant image of a conniving opportunist. The scientist ‘may prove to be the greatest snake oil salesman of his age’, it claims.

And the article goes on. Associates described him as ‘a rotter… given to avoiding his responsibilities’, it alleges, while Horrobin’s research ethics are described as ‘considerably dubious’. It is even suggested that researchers testing his company’s drugs had been offered sales royalties to influence the outcome of their work, a ‘highly unusual’ action, the obituary adds.

These views – unprecedented for a journal regarded as the mouthpiece of the medical establishment – have provoked a storm of outrage. The BMJ has been inundated with angry letters. Council members of the British Medical Association, the publisher of the BMJ, have logged complaints, while Horrobin’s family have asked the Press Complaints Commission to condemn the obituary… Guardian/Observer

Eating Apes by Dale Peterson, reviewed:

This book has a terrible title, conjuring up images of roast loin of chimp or gorilla stew. It is absolutely appropriate. Now that I am familiar with Dale Peterson’s style, I am convinced that he chose the title intentionally, for he intended to upset the reader.

We are uneasy about the idea of eating the apes because they behave more like us than any other mammals: they walk upright on their hind legs; they use tools; they laugh and show grief; and they are among the few mammals that understand that it is themselves that they see in a mirror. We share 98.74 per cent of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives, and this ought to transcend the idea of our using them for food.

But this “we” cannot be applied to the indigenous peoples of Central Africa. From time immemorial, they have hunted and eaten the animals that share their habitat. So if they have always eaten gorilla and chimpanzee meat, why should it be a problem now? Because the great apes have now been so assaulted by hunting and disease that they are careering towards extinction. Times of London

Chimps are human, gene study implies: “With just 0.6% difference in the most critical DNA sites, the new work suggests chimps should be in the same taxonomic group as humans.

(…)

It is not the first time such a suggestion has been made – in 1991 physiologist and ecologist Jared Diamond called humans ‘the third chimpanzee’. But subsequent genetic comparisons have yielded varying results, depending on how the genotypes are compared.” New Scientist

“Children like Aberash will be saved only if the West mounts a major effort to help them. The U.S. has responded relatively well to the calls for assistance from Ethiopia, but I’m afraid that much more will be needed. For individuals who want to contribute, some options are listed below.” — Nicholas Kristof, NY Times

“… provides the first online access to Albert Einstein’s scientific and non-scientific manuscripts held by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and to an extensive Archival Database, constituting the material record of one of the most influential intellects in the modern era… The site allows viewing and browsing of approx. 3,000 high-quality digitized images of Einstein’s writings, available for viewing in two sizes: a standard resolution image, as well as a high-resolution image for closer inspection.

‘Call it a two-minute drill for the mind. A Palm OS application will tell users whether or not they’re sober enough to drive, attentive enough to impress a cynical corporate recruiter or responsive enough to prevail in a bloody bout of WWF Smackdown.

In fact, researchers at the National Space Biomedical Research Institute claim their new MiniCog PDA application will help people determine if they “need to eat, sleep, exercise or better focus (their) thoughts.” ‘ Wired News

Is Sen. Robert Byrd the last Democrat? Here’s an excerpt from his May 21 Senate floor remarks; read the entire talk.

The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood–when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie–not oil, not revenge, not re-election, not somebody’s grand pipe dream of a democratic domino theory. And mark my words, the calculated intimidation that we see so often of late by the “powers that be” will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

Scorsese to film Bob Dylan biography AP [via Salon]. But can we trust him? I’ll never forgive him for the hatchet job he did on the rest of The Band in shooting The Last Waltz solely from Robbie Robertson’s perspective.

“Children like Aberash will be saved only if the West mounts a major effort to help them. The U.S. has responded relatively well to the calls for assistance from Ethiopia, but I’m afraid that much more will be needed. For individuals who want to contribute, some options are listed below.” — Nicholas Kristof, NY Times

Philosophers Draw on the Film Matrix: “Hundreds of millions of dollars ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a hacker named Neo reached into his bookcase and pulled out a leatherbound volume with the title Simulacra and Simulation — a collection of essays by the French postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard. But when Neo opened it to the chapter “On Nihilism,” it turned out to be just a simulacrum of a book, hollowed out to hold computer disks…

Mr. Baudrillard was only the beginning. When asked how many hidden messages there were in The Matrix, the Wachowski Brothers once teased, ‘More than you’ll ever know.’…” NY Times

“If NASA had known immediately that the Columbia was damaged on liftoff, it might have sent the shuttle Atlantis on a rescue mission, the chairman of the board investigating the accident said today. But he would not characterize the chance of success.” NY Times There was also discussion about the possibilities of an in-flight repair effort via EVA (spacewalk).

Earliest… and largest… SUV ever? Hemmings Motor News

“Buddhists who claim their religion holds the secret of happiness may have been proved right by science: brain scans of the devout have found exceptional activity in the lobes that promote serenity and joy.

American research has shown that the brain’s “happiness centre” is constantly alive with electrical signals in experienced Buddhists, offering an explanation for their calm and contented demeanour.

Neuroscientists think the preliminary findings could provide the first proof that religious training can change the way the brain responds to certain environmental triggers.” Times of London

Laughter at Dinner Cuts Blood Sugar in Diabetics Reuters

At the United Nations today President George W. Bush announced a proposal to unify all the world’s time zones into a single Universal Time Zone (UTZ), formerly known as the Eastern Time Zone.

“It’s unfair to the United States that other countries have the advantage of being in tomorrow while the US is stuck in today,” said Bush. “If it’s 9 PM in Washington D.C., it’s already tomorrow in London or Paris. That patently unfair.”

Bush continued, “Right now, Americans are losing jobs to other countries whose workforce can give overnight service during their normal daylight hours. We’ll level the playing field and keep more jobs in the US with the UTZ.” BBspot [via walker]

Dancing With the Devil: “Let’s see. Who’s less patriotic, the Dixie Chicks or Dick Cheney’s long-term meal ticket, the Halliburton Company?” — Bob Herbert, NY Times

“Enriched and emboldened after successful fights against asbestos and tobacco companies, some of the nation’s top plaintiffs’ lawyers have trained their sights on drug makers, claiming that many giant pharmaceutical companies have hidden the dangers of medicines the lawyers say have harmed thousands of people.” NY Times

“It’s official. After intensive research, scientists have concluded that politicians lie… Report asserts that lying is key part of democracy.” MSNBC

Surveys pointing to high civilian death toll in Iraq: “Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to researchers involved in independent surveys of the country.” Christian Science Monitor

I hadn’t realized that the NHL playoffs are a fight for the survival of the free world. WorldNetDaily [thanks, walker]

“Uncooperative prisoners are being exposed for prolonged periods to tracks by rock group Metallica and music from children’s TV programmes Sesame Street and Barney in the hope of making them talk.

The US’s Psychological Operations Company (Psy Ops) said the aim was to break a prisoner’s resistance through sleep deprivation and playing music that was culturally offensive to them.” BBC

In one of his few interviews since resigning from the Times on May 1, Blair told the Observer that he “fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism” with his reporting.

(…)According to excerpts from the Observer, Blair said his deceptions stemmed from personal problems.

“I was either going to kill myself or I was going to kill the journalist persona,” he said. “So Jayson Blair the human being could live, Jayson Blair the journalist had to die.” CNN

The Corporate Mofo Guide:

Going into The Matrix: Reloaded, I wasn’t worried if the fight scenes or special effects would measure up to the first film—it was the metaphysics that bothered me. The first Matrix was such a neat allegory of Gnostic philosophy, I was more concerned with how the Brothers Wachowski could successfully extend the metaphor into three films than whether they could pull off even more virtuoso examples of cinematic ass-stomping. What was mindblowing about the first movie, after all, wasn’t the fight choreography or bullet time, but its brave assertion that the banal, day-to-day reality we live in isn’t the real world. In that sense, all the wire-fu was just the candy coating on the red pill the filmmakers were offering to every high school student and cubicle slave in the world. (Though, since I study martial arts myself, I found the idea of kung fu as being metaphorical for something happening in hyper-reality, a la Thibault’s mysterious circle, to be pretty darn appealing.)

Thankfully, Reloaded more than allayed my fears, even if it seems that half the reviewers either didn’t understand what the Wachowskis were getting at, or else were only paying attention during the highway chase. Watching the movie, I was personally less impressed by the fists of digital fury than by the Brothers’ evident familiarity with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the theology of Origen of Alexandria. Seen in the light of the books they’re referencing, the movie’s plot is brilliant; of course, to the non-initiate, the characters’ actions and dialogue seems arbitrary and incomprehensible, and the exposition is just filler between car crashes. It would seem, therefore, that a bit of exegesis of The Matrix: Reloaded is warranted. But be warned: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t read on. There are some major spoilers. <span class=”attrib”Corporate Mofo

“America is now afraid of its own shadow. That was the mocking verdict passed by Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, last week, angry at the haste with which the US issued a terrorism warning against travel to his country. Not exactly the image of strength and conviction that the White House had hoped to project after victory in Iraq, is it?

The West’s fearful response to each new threat or attack is acting as an open invitation to every little terrorist cell. The message is, “We are scared, so why not scare us some more?” All it takes is a few zealots with home-made bombs in Africa or Asia to have the Western world pressing the panic button.

Since the bloody bombings in Casablanca, there has been much talk of a new global crisis. Yet in truth the world cannot be changed by the blowing-up of a Spanish social club and a Jewish community centre in Morocco, any more than by last week’s attacks on petrol stations in Pakistan. Only our overblown reactions to these local incidents can create a crisis. ” — Mick Hume writing in the Times of London

In this Wired piece, he calls him “my favorite Bush administration figure”:

Rummy thinks outside the box. He talks in aphorisms, adages, and apothegms, rather like a magazine columnist. So I find it hard not to like him.

Essentially, he thinks the main problem with the administration is that they don’t follow Rumsfeld’s maxims closely enough.

“(T)op officials are worried by repeated failures to find the proof – and US intelligence agencies are engaged in a struggle to avoid the blame. Guardian-Observer/UK

And: “The Bush administration has changed its tune on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the reason it went to war there. Instead of looking for vast stocks of banned materials, it is now pinning its hopes on finding documentary evidence. The change in rhetoric, apparently designed in part to dampen public expectations, has unfolded gradually in the past month as special U.S. military teams have found little to justify the administration’s claim that Iraq (news – web sites) was concealing vast stocks of chemical and biological agents and was actively working on a covert nuclear weapons program.” Yahoo! News

“Jason Burke, a world expert on international terrorism, says those leading the war against the bombers misunderstand the true nature of al-Qaeda… Al-Qaeda, conceived of as a tight-knit terrorist group with cadres and a capability everywhere, does not exist in that form. It barely existed before the war in Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed Osama bin Laden’s carefully constructed infrastructure there. It certainly does not exist now. Instead, we are facing a different kind of threat. Al-Qaeda can only be understood as an ideology, an agenda and a way of seeing the world that is shared by an increasing number of predominantly young, predominantly male Muslims. Eliminating bin Laden and a few hundred senior activists will do nothing to counter this al-Qaeda. Hundreds more will come forward to fill their ranks. Al-Qaeda, however understood, will continue to operate. The threat will remain and it will grow.” Guardian-Observer/UK [thanks, adam]

On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction reviewed: “How do you get science into literature? (Let’s skip the argument over whether this is a good thing to do.) There would seem to be two different ways. The first is to be a writer of literature with a grasp of science…The second way of getting science into literature is to be a scientist who happens to have a literary gift…

Karl Iagnemma is a research scientist at M.I.T. who specializes in robotics. He is also the author of short stories that have won a Paris Review Discovery Prize and a Pushcart Prize; another of his stories appeared in ”Best American Short Stories 2002.” Such honors amount to a series of presumably independent judgments by the literary establishment that Iagnemma is indeed a man with a literary gift — a verdict from which I would not dissent. But how well does he use this gift to illumine the scientific mind?” NY Times Book Review

Democrats should accept that some political deception is not only inevitable in a democracy but can be legitimate where it is conducted by elected politicians in the public interest where they have the tacit support of the electorate [emphasis added — FmH].

That is the key conclusion of Dr Glen Newey, a reader in politics at Strathclyde University, in his new research which is published today. The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

–snip–

“We try to apply different moral standards to the public and to politicians, yet the more we do so the more likely it is that politicians resort to deception,” he argues. “Demands for openness and accountability create a culture of suspicion which makes it even more likely that politicians will resort to evasion and misrepresentation.

“These demands often arise because of increasing alienation by voters from the political process that they democratically control. Yet the greater the demands for truthfulness, the less autonomy we give to our democratic institutions and the harder it is for democracy to function effectively.”

Dr Newey adds that the electorate will decide in the end whether deception is justified: “In a democracy, the popular will is sovereign. The only general way to determine that will is through democratic procedures which must decided whether the people have willed a given course of action. They can make clear their support or opposition in subsequent elections.”

“The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has delayed for the second time a vote on the promotion of an Army general who commanded a base where a gay soldier was beaten to death by a fellow soldier. The delay gives the committee more time to consider the general’s responsibility for what happened.

Maj. Gen. Robert T. Clark was commander of Fort Campbell, Ky., in 1999, when Pfc. Barry Winchell, 21, was bludgeoned to death in his barracks at the end of a beer-soaked evening.

–snip–

Private Winchell’s mother, Patricia Kutteles …said that he should not be promoted. “He doesn’t have the command authority or responsibility,” Mrs. Kutteles said. “The promotion would be another obstacle in the way of everything we have tried to do to honor our son.” NY Times

“There are plenty of boring Web logs out there, online diaries whose authors dutifully recount their thoughts and actions in excruciating detail. But Dave Walker, a 32-year-old cartoonist and Web editor from Cookham, England, has claimed the distinction of writing ‘The Dullest Blog in the World.’ ” NY Times

“The repatriation of human remains currently held in UK museums and universities to indigenous peoples around the world will do immense damage to science.That is the claim of leading researchers who fear many hundreds of specimens that hold vital clues to our evolutionary past could soon be dispersed to be reburied, burnt or even smashed up.

The scientists have been speaking ahead of a report due to be published this summer by a working group that will recommend changes to the legal status of human material held by UK institutions.” BBC

The Natural History of the Rich reviewed: ‘Having asserted that the rich are so different that they constitute a “pseudo species”, whose behaviour needs interpreting to the rest of us, Conniff spends a good part of his book serially contradicting himself.’ Guardian/UK

Better childcare will do more for our wellbeing than greater affluence Guardian/UK. In taking sides on the ‘nature’ vs. ‘nurture’ controversy (which sophisticated behavioral and social scientists have long since come to think of as an outmoded false dichotomy), Oliver James comes close to identifying the evolutionary biology viewpoint with a reactionary social agenda. He also uses the observation that we have yet to determine a single gene responsible for a single mental illness as arefutation of genetic determinism, the reductiveness of which specious argument I hope is clear to readers…

Invented by the Ruling Classes NY Times

“The repatriation of human remains currently held in UK museums and universities to indigenous peoples around the world will do immense damage to science.That is the claim of leading researchers who fear many hundreds of specimens that hold vital clues to our evolutionary past could soon be dispersed to be reburied, burnt or even smashed up.

The scientists have been speaking ahead of a report due to be published this summer by a working group that will recommend changes to the legal status of human material held by UK institutions.” BBC

In Reversal, Plan for Iraq Self-Rule Has Been Put Off NY Times, Anyone surprised here?

Most anti-Republicans are celebrating their boldness in blocking a quorum and defeating the Republican-insinuated redistricting plan NY Times. My question is why they had to resort to the antics. If they had the courage of their convictions, why not stand against the issue as an unmoveable voting bloc in the legislature instead of hiding out? This does make a mockery of representative government, doesn’t it? Oops; I almost forgot — the redistricting plan was already going to make a mockery of representative government if Tom DeLay had had his way…

40 Killed As Terror Blasts Shake Morocco: “Suicide attackers set off a string of explosions in the heart of Casablanca, killing at least 40 people at a Jewish community center, the Belgian consulate, a Spanish social club and a major hotel.” Yahoo! News I guess if the Bush regime is entitled to call every act of sectarian violence the work of al Qaeda and use it to justify the WoT®, I’m entitled to see each of them as recompense for America’s deadly unilateral arrogance. And what exactly are the ‘hallmarks of al Qaeda?”

No one immediately blamed al-Qaida for the Morocco attacks, but they had many of the group’s hallmarks: multiple, simultaneous strikes; suicide assailants; and lightly defended targets.

“They were terrorists, suicide bombers,” Interior Minister Mustapha Sahel told reporters. “These are the well-known signatures of international terrorists.”

Profound.

“Is U.S. foreign policy being run by followers of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher whose views were elitist, amoral and hostile to democratic government?

Suddenly, political Washington is abuzz about Leo Strauss, who arrived in the United States in 1938 and taught at several major universities before his death in 1973.

Thanks to the ”Week in Review” section of last Sunday’s New York Times and another investigative article in this week’s New Yorker magazine [to which I previously linked — FmH], the cognoscenti have suddenly been made aware that key neo-conservative strategists behind the Bush administration’s aggressive foreign and military policy consider themselves to be followers of Strauss, although the philosopher – an expert on Plato and Aristotle – rarely addressed current events in his writings.”

As for what a Straussian world order might look like, … the philosopher often talked about Jonathan Swift’s story of Gulliver and the Lilliputians. ”When Lilliput was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect.”

For Strauss, the act demonstrates both the superiority and the isolation of the leader within a society and, presumably, the leading country vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

…(I)t is ironic, but not inconsistent with Strauss’ ideas about the necessity for elites to deceive their citizens, that the Bush administration defends its anti-terrorist campaign by resorting to idealistic rhetoric. ”They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they’re conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy” …

— Jim Lobe, CommonDreams [thanks, walker]

Okay, so there are uncanny similarities between this rendition of Strauss’ principles and the pattern of Bush regime behavior, and it appears that a number of Strauss disciples are in pivotal positions to influence the decisions of our naive and credulous President. Many of us have long been convinced of, and outraged by, the centrality of deception in the dysadministration’s P.R. So, if this is Strauss’ influence, how does knowing about it help? It is not as if the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public is going to be won in university political philosophy departments. More bluntly, are most of the people who elect our next President going to grasp, or care, that an insidious pro-authoritarian philosophy is the altar at which the Bush zealots worship? What is to be done? Damned if I know. It does occur to me to regret that the relatively small segment of the population who did not believe there would be much difference between Bush and Gore, and thus voted for Nader (and who, by and large, might be sophisticated and interested enough to pay attention to the influence of an obscure and insidious political philosopher, and who are under no illusions about the power of a small covert inner core to so profoundly influence the direction of a nation’s policy) weren’t familiar with Strauss three years ago.

Also: Ardent opponent of tyranny, or an apologist for the abuse of power?

“Odd as this might sound, we live in a world increasingly shaped by Leo Strauss, a controversial philosopher who died in 1973. Although generally unknown to the wider population, Strauss has been one of the two or three most important intellectual influences on the conservative worldview now ascendant in George W. Bush’s Washington. Eager to get the lowdown on White House thinking, editors at the New York Times and Le Monde have had journalists pore over Strauss’s work and trace his disciples’ affiliations. The New Yorker has even found a contingent of Straussians doing intelligence work for the Pentagon.” — Jeet Heer, Boston Globe

‘…(W)e shouldn’t be surprised if America’s “independent” television is far more deferential to those in power than the state-run systems in Britain or — for another example — Israel…” — Paul Krugman, NY Times op-ed

“The recently completed Human Genome Sequencing Project has confirmed what many scientists knew all along — that humans don’t fit the biological criteria that defines race.

The revelation strikes at the heart of some of the most deeply entrenched social, cultural and political divisions among Americans. But some experts say our conception of race is not likely to be swayed by the DNA evidence.” twincities.com

Related: Researchers: Americans know no more about genetics than in 1990 EurekAlert!

“The prospect of being able to emulate a gecko and walk up a wall and across the ceiling has come a step closer to reality. Scientists in California have begun to work out how to make a material coated with synthetic gecko hairs. If engineers could create a material that matches the nimble lizard’s incredible grip, the applications would be endless.” New Scientist

“A super-powered neutrino generator could in theory be used to instantly destroy nuclear weapons anywhere on the planet, according to a team of Japanese scientists.

If it was ever built, a state could use the device to obliterate the nuclear arsenal of its enemy by firing a beam of neutrinos straight through the Earth. But the generator would need to be more than a hundred times more powerful than any existing particle accelerator and over 1000 kilometres wide.” New Scientist

“The desperate recovery of bodies by distraught relatives is destroying crucial evidence, warn experts.” New Scientist

“A decade-long trawl of data archives reveals just how fast commercial fishing fleets clear the sea of large fish.” New Scientist

“Drugs to treat common cold may be effective against the virus.” Nature

“Astronomer says time is ripe for an unmanned journey to the centre of the Earth.” Nature “The wacky scheme would need the world’s largest nuclear bomb and enough iron to fill 13 large concert halls.” New Scientist

An 18-cent coin would be easier on American pockets.” Nature

Image from Web Project Mushrooms Into Cultural Phenomenon: ” A funny-looking face on an obscure Web site has become an Internet obsession, and it’s made Larry Goldfarb something of a celebrity — in a sense. Learn more about the absurdity of LarrysFace.com, and the “art” inspired by an unflattering mug shot.” NPR

“Republicans in Washington and Austin, Texas apparently used a Homeland Security Department agency to track Texas Democratic legislators who left the state to block passage of a GOP-backed Congressional redistricting bill.

This is the same Homeland Security Department that is supposed to be making America safe from foreign terrorists. It’s the agency we were told would never be used for domestic political purposes.” CommonDreams

The mysteries of Guy Waterman’s suicide

If you started a book (or finished one) just prior to the war, pick it up now. You very well might see it through different eyes.

The book that proved this to me was Chip Brown’s Good Morning Midnight, the story of Guy Waterman, a former political and corporate speechwriter turned dean of the homesteading movement in rural Vermont. On Feb. 6, 2000, Waterman, who was 67, marched up his favorite trail in New Hampshire and deliberately froze to death. Brown begins his book with a scene of Waterman’s friends heading out to retrieve his body, and the search occasions a look back at his life. But Good Morning Midnight isn’t a biography; it’s an investigation. Not a whodunit, but a whydunit. Slate

Prompted by an interview with author Chip Brown I heard yesterday on All Things Considered. A puzzling and arresting detail about his suicide — all he carried in his pack to his death at the summit of New Hampshire’s Mt. Lafayette (one of my favorite mountains in the Whites as well), in addition to some whiskey, were several stuffed animals and two (two?) alarm clocks. Here’s some discussion in an Appalachian Mountain Club forum about Waterman, and a short teaser from National Geographic Adventurer magazine.

a groundbreaking new radio and Internet series produced by Minnesota Public Radio in association with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director, with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and distributed by Public Radio International. The radio program was released in April 2003. Inspired by the adventurous programming of the San Francisco Symphony and its concert festival of the same name, American Mavericks features the iconoclastic, tradition-breaking composers who shaped the development of American music-from Charles Ives, Henry Brant, Harry Partch, Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich and more. Stream the shows here. [thanks, abby]

‘Seeking to broaden the customer base of the popular drug, Pfizer announced the launch of a $40 million “Zoloft For Everything” advertising campaign Monday.

“Zoloft is most commonly prescribed for the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders, but it would be ridiculous to limit such a multi-functional drug to these few uses,” Pfizer spokesman Jon Pugh said. “We feel doctors need to stop asking their patients if anything is wrong and start asking if anything could be more right.” ‘ The Onion [where someone is on top of the psychopharmacological scene]

“Verizon Communications yesterday introduced one of the oldest items in its inventory — the humble phone booth — as its newest weapon in the bitter competition to dominate the broadband communications market of the future.

Verizon said that subscribers to its high-speed Internet access service would be able to go online wirelessly at no charge when they are near a Verizon phone booth in Manhattan.

Verizon said that 150 phone booths — from the Battery to Columbia University — had already been equipped with radio-signal technology, popularly known as Wi-Fi, to enable mobile computer users who are within 300 feet of a booth to connect to the Internet. About 1,000 booths covering virtually all of Manhattan and a few spots in the other boroughs will become Wi-Fi “hot spots” by the end of the year, the company said.” NY Times

“A Princeton University student has shed light on security flaws in Java and .Net virtual machines by using a lamp, some known properties of computer memory and a little luck.

An attack requires physical access to the computer, so the technique poses little threat to virtual machines running on PCs and servers. But it could be used to steal data from smart cards, asserts Sudhakar Govindavajhala, a computer-science graduate student at Princeton who demonstrated the procedure here Tuesday.

“There are smart cards that use Java that you could shine a light on, flip a bit and get access to the card’s data,” he said. Govindavajhala presented the paper at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Symposium on Security and Privacy. CNET News

North Korea’s military fired a laser in March at two U.S. Army helicopters patrolling the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in what U.S. officials call a provocative action, The Washington Times has learned.

Two Apache attack helicopters were illuminated by lasers in early March by a weapon that had the characteristics of a Chinese laser gun, an indication that North Korea has deployed a new and potentially lethal weapon.

Washington Post staff reporter Terry Neal agrees with the points I made yesterday:

“The plagiarism and deceit of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair is an affront to journalism. He disgraced an honorable profession that already suffers a credibility problem. His actions have distressed the great many journalists who go to pains every day to uphold the lofty ideals of their chosen craft. Make no mistake: Blair’s editors fell asleep at the switch, allowing him to abuse his authority and responsibility.

But why can’t Blair just be one severely troubled guy who did outrageous things? Why are some people using him as an example of the evils of commitment to diversity? Why is it that when white reporters commit similar acts of outrageous fraud, no one in the establishment media launches breathy social commentaries about the continued existence of white privilege and entitlement in the newsroom?”

“On the night of May 15-16, millions of eyes will be drawn skyward, where there will hang a mottled, coppery globe — our Moon — completely immersed in the long, tapering cone of shadow cast into space by Earth.

If the weather is clear, skywatchers across most of the Americas, Europe and Africa will have a view of one of nature’s most beautiful spectacles: A total eclipse of the Moon.” space.com

How not to liberate a country, by ‘The Gang That Couldn’t Conquer Straight’ Christian Science Monitor