But in 2004: FBI Counterterrorism Official Said He Knew of No Thwarted Al Qaeda Attacks. “After a CIA official claimed last year that the government had “probably prevented a few aviation attacks against both the East and West Coasts” since 9/11, John Pistole, the FBI’s counterterrorism director, said he was “not sure what [the CIA] was referring to.”” – 9/11 Commission Testimony, 6/16/2004; New York Daily News, 6/17/04

Los Angeles Mayor knows nothing about the supposed threat: “Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday he was blindsided by President Bush’s announcement of new details on a purported 2002 hijacking plot aimed at a downtown skyscraper, and described communication with the White House as “nonexistent.” “I’m amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels,” the mayor said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t expect a call from the president — but somebody.”” (Yahoo! News )

(via AmericaBlog)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff did not say the drugs were responsible for the fatalities, but they urged close monitoring for “the rare occurrence of pediatric sudden death during stimulant therapy.”” (Yahoo! News)

In this case, the goal of the soap opera was to allow Gonzales not to testify under oath, so that he wouldn’t be likely to be charged with perjury. After that point, everything else just became a big muddle. And, the White House knows, in a situation like this, they win if the hearing turns out to be inconclusive and stalemated.” (BuzzFlash via seth)

Yet such is the febrile climate in which we live today, that what began as a local dispute over some drawings in Scandinavian newspapers of which few had ever heard has escalated into a global dispute, with everybody from the secretary-general of the United Nations to the American and British governments feeling it necessary to get involved.” — Mick Hume (Spiked)

But it was arresting to watch at times because critics of the current administration skewered President Bush as he sat just a few feet away, outside the White House bubble that usually protects sitting presidents, especially this one.

Rev. Joseph Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the group the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once led, spoke after President Bush’s brief remarks and with the freedom that comes from being 84 years old with little left to lose.

“How marvelous that presidents and governors have come to mourn and praise. But in the morning, will words become deeds that meet needs?… [Mrs. King] extended Martin’s message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance, poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.”” (Chicago Tribune)

“It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the U.S., Indonesian, and Australian expedition to part of the cloud-shrouded Foja mountains in the west of New Guinea.

Indigenous peoples living near the Foja range, which rises to 2,200 metres (7,218 ft), said they did not venture into the trackless area of 3,000 sq km (1,200 sq miles) — roughly the size of Luxembourg or the U.S. state of Rhode Island.” (Yahoo! News)

A team in Australia has found that alcohol dampens down the expression of hundreds of genes in the amygdala, which might account for why alcoholics suffer dysfunctional symptoms such as disrupted sleep and depression. It may also help explain why recovering alcoholics are prone to relapse.

The amygdala is a key structure in the brain’s emotional system that acts as an interface between incoming sensory signals and behavioural responses. It is believed to play a key role in drug-seeking. Brain images suggest it is more active in alcoholics, so Rosemarie Kryger and Peter Wilce at the alcohol research unit of the University of Queensland in Herston decided to investigate whether gene expression in the amygdala also differs between alcoholics …” (New Scientist)

The US media reached an “all-time low” in failing to reflect public opinion and Americans’ desire for trusted information, instead acting as a “cheerleader” for war, said Amy Goodman, the executive producer and host of US TV and radio news show Democracy Now!, at a news forum organised by al-Jazeera.” (Guardian.UK)

Last month, Google placed job advertisements in America and the British national press for “Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in…identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fibre contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network”.

Dark fibre is the remnants of late 1990s internet boom where American web companies laid down fibre optic cables in preparation for high speed internet delivery. Following the downturn in the technology sector during the early 2000s, the installation process for many of these networks was left incomplete. This has resulted in a usable network of cables spread across the United States that have never been switched on. By purchasing the dark fibre, Google would in effect be able to acquire a ready made internet network that they could control.

Late last year, Google purchased a 270,000sq ft telecom interconnection facilities in New York. It is believed that from here, Google plans to link up and power the dark fibre system and turn it into a working internet network of its own.

It was also reported in November that Google was buying shipping containers and building data centres within them, possibly with the aim of using them at significant nodes within the worldwide cable network. “Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box<” Robert Cringely wrote. “The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.”” (Times.UK)

More than a dozen companies, like Family Tree DNA in Houston, Relative Genetics in Salt Lake City and African Ancestry in Washington, now sell home DNA tests; the prices range from $100 to $900 each.” (New York Times)

Last month, Google placed job advertisements in America and the British national press for “Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in…identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fibre contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network”.

Dark fibre is the remnants of late 1990s internet boom where American web companies laid down fibre optic cables in preparation for high speed internet delivery. Following the downturn in the technology sector during the early 2000s, the installation process for many of these networks was left incomplete. This has resulted in a usable network of cables spread across the United States that have never been switched on. By purchasing the dark fibre, Google would in effect be able to acquire a ready made internet network that they could control.

Late last year, Google purchased a 270,000sq ft telecom interconnection facilities in New York. It is believed that from here, Google plans to link up and power the dark fibre system and turn it into a working internet network of its own.

It was also reported in November that Google was buying shipping containers and building data centres within them, possibly with the aim of using them at significant nodes within the worldwide cable network. “Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box<” Robert Cringely wrote. “The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.”” (Times.UK)

I have to run to something in 5 minutes or else I might have stayed on the line and ranted a bit longer at the poor volunteer.

Sorry, Howard – still love you, man, but your party has betrayed me, betrayed the country, and betrayed the Constitution and I won’t soon forget it.”

Not so fast. This is a classic zombie error – a commonplace belief that will. not. die!

I am not a specialist in Islamic art, but I teach an occasional low-level survey of the field at these Colleges, where we have an excellent Visual Resources Collection for a school of our size, a collection which is unfortunately for your visual delight very observant of copyright laws, so I can’t post any pictures. I popped some terms into the search engine and came up with this list of paintings of the Prophet Muhammad executed by Muslims that we happen to own slides of; this is not an exhaustive list!

So, journalists, don’t tell us this is a taboo subject matter in Islam. The physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad may be a taboo subject matter in some sects of contemporary Islam, but let’s all be clear — this is not a universal prohibition.

Here are LOTS of examples for you arranged in chronological order…” (The Cranky Professor via walker)

It must have stung to be boxed around the ears by the matriarch icon who once described Wolf’s first book, The Beauty Myth, as the most important feminist tract since her own opus, The Female Eunuch. But Greer, like many other feminists, appears to have cooled towards 43-year-old Wolf since her 1991 polemic against the cosmetics industry radicalised a new generation of women.

Wolf’s follow-up books: Fire With Fire, on career success; Promiscuities, on sexual awakening; and Misconceptions, on marriage and childbirth – developed a feminist treatise from the mirror of her own experiences: what other feminists call an easy life.

Maybe it is an echo of Greer’s withering voice that spurs Wolf to open up for the first time in public about her spiritual awakening. Perhaps it is being asked once too often about the hitherto unexplained “mid-life crisis” that caused her to go off, in her early 40s, into the woods of upstate New York to write her latest book, The Treehouse. This self-help meditation on her father’s wisdom has drawn accusations that the author is embracing what she used to refer to as “patriarchy”.” (Sunday Herald)

We humans share a world and its scarce resources with other intelligent creatures. As the court said, those creatures are capable of dignified existence. It is difficult to know precisely what that means, but it is rather clear what it does not mean: the conditions of the circus animals beaten and housed in filthy cramped cages, the even more horrific conditions endured by chickens, calves, and pigs raised for food in factory farming, and many other comparable conditions of deprivation, suffering, and indignity. The fact that humans act in ways that deny other animals a dignified existence appears to be an issue of justice, and an urgent one.” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Death-metal vocalizing is also known as Cookie Monster singing, if not in tribute to, at least in acknowledgment of, the “Sesame Street” puppet that blurts in a guttural growl, his words discharged so rapidly that they tend to collide with each other.

All this was news to people at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind “Sesame Street.” “We have nothing to do with it,” said Ellen Lewis, vice president of corporate communications. “What is it?””

Every culture produces its paradigmatic social situation, and the date is now ours. ” (n+1)

On the company’s web site, if you click on “Telegrams” in the left-side navigation bar, you’re taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:

“Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative.”

The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn’t help. Email could be counted as the final nail in the coffin.” (Live Science)

I guess someone has to say the obvious, but since most lefty blogs are preaching to the choir, and the mainstream media shows only limited interest in applying the only kind of “balance” that really matters — that between the maximum amount of truth and the minimum amount of misinformation — it seems somewhat like a waste of energy to me.” (unfutz)

On the other hand, it’s also dangerous to let awareness of complexity prevent political conclusions and action, a topic I’ve blogged about before. The traditional academic objective style and the perennial recommendation that “more research needs to be done” strengthen the status quo. So does the related tendency of people who identify with the political middle to reject all nonmainstream input. Our goal should not be to oversimplify — which happens too often on the left as well as on the right — but to reach commitment and action despite awareness of complexity.

Forums for people who fundamentally disagree can be interesting, but I suspect not many underlying assumptions change. I’ve tried in the past to spur discussion across ideological lines, especially in the Israel/Palestine context, but I’m not sure how often that turns out to be useful. Dialogue groups that focus on this kind of exchange can increase understanding, empathy, and friendship — positive outcomes — but as far as I know they don’t routinely lead to effective action toward social change. When we think we are on the side of justice and equality, calls for dialogue and understanding can lead to expectations of compromise that mask rather than resolve justified grievances….”

A survey of 2400 drivers carried out by David Hemenway and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health shows that motorists who carry guns in their cars are far more likely to indulge in road rage – driving aggressively or making obscene gestures – than motorists without guns.” (New Scientist)

I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.

There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press (shocker). So this is what really happened…” (TruthOut)

“Since when is free speech conditional on whether you agree with the President? Cindy Sheehan, who gave her own flesh and blood for this disastrous war, did not violate any rules of the House of Representatives. She merely wore a shirt that highlighted the human cost of the Iraq war and expressed a view different than that of the President. Free speech and the First Amendment exist to protect dissenting statements like Ms. Sheehan’s last night.”

“Stifling the truth will not blind Americans to the immorality of sending young Americans to die in an unnecessary war, against a nation that posed no threat to our security. The President’s speech last night was yet another attempt to distort history, as he suggested – once again – that the 9/11 terrorists came from Iraq. Everyone knows this is not true. We must not be afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes. It’s time to bring our troops home.”

‘The photo of the ‘Marlboro Man’ in Fallujah became a symbol of the Iraq conflict when it ran in newspapers across America in 2004. Now the soldier has returned home to Kentucky,where he battles the demons of post-traumatic stress….The man in the photograph is James Blake Miller, now 21, and he is an icon, although in ways [Dan] Rather probably never imagined.
He’s quieter now — easier to anger. He turns to fight at the sound of a backfire, can’t look at fireworks without thinking of fire raining down on a city. He has trouble sleeping, and when he does, his fingers twitch on invisible triggers. The diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder. ‘

After returning home and being diagnosed with PTSD by a military psychiatrist, the military still wasn’t finished with him. They sent him to New Orleans to help bring law and order to the city in the wake of the Katrina disaster…” — Jeralyn Merritt (Huffington Post via walker)

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.” (New York Times)

The Meehan alterations on Wikipedia.com represent just two of more than 1,000 changes made by congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six month. Wikipedia is a global reference that relies on its Internet users to add credible information to entries on millions of topics.” (Lowell Sun)

“The truth is,” he said in an interview, “most people don’t know the real odds of such an exercise, so they can’t fake data convincingly.”

There is more to this than a classroom trick.

Dr. Hill is one of a growing number of statisticians, accountants and mathematicians who are convinced that an astonishing mathematical theorem known as Benford’s Law is a powerful and relatively simple tool for pointing suspicion at frauds, embezzlers, tax evaders, sloppy accountants and even computer bugs.” (rexswain.com)

The Meehan alterations on Wikipedia.com represent just two of more than 1,000 changes made by congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six month. Wikipedia is a global reference that relies on its Internet users to add credible information to entries on millions of topics.” (Lowell Sun)

At the moment there is no means of doing this, but researchers believe they have the beginnings of an answer. They are building devices they claim can detect whether a facility is producing radioactive material that could be used to produce a nuclear weapon. Their work is preliminary, and it won’t solve the current political crisis involving Iran. Nor for that matter will it shed any light on North Korea’s nuclear activities. But the surveillance device they are working on may prove invaluable to the nuclear police of the future.” (New Scientist)

His approval of a program to eavesdrop without warrants: “As I stand here right now, I can tell the American people the program is legal,” he certified.

His refusal to release photos of him with Abramoff: “They’re not relevant to the investigation.”

His view on congressional anti-torture legislation: “Conducting war is a responsibility in the executive branch, not the legislative branch.”

His refusal to provide Congress with testimony about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina: “That’s just the way it works.”

Midway through this Bourbonic performance, the Los Angeles Times’s James Gerstenzang offered an observation on Bush’s surveillance policy: “This seems to sound like something President Nixon once said, which was: ‘When the president does it, then that means that it’s not illegal.’ ” Whispered “oohs” could be heard in the room. ” (Washington Post op-ed)

Just what part of this deliberate torture-onto-death is negligent? And your punishment? A “reprimand,” a $6000 fine and house detention for eight weeks?” (marccooper.com)

Medical facilities prohibit cell phone use, but some doctors already use them. And it turns out they reduce medical errors because communication is more timely, a new study finds. Mobile phones rarely cause electronic magnetic interference, Yale School of Medicine researchers reported today.

The study is published in the February issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia. It was based on 4,018 responses from attendees at the 2003 meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Of those who responded, 65 percent reported using pagers as their primary mode of communications, and of those, 40 percent reported delays in communications. Of the 17 percent of respondents who said they used cell phones, only 31 percent reported delays.

No word how the patients involved in all those delays fared. But some good news:

Study leader Keith Ruskin, associate professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Neurosurgery, said electronic interference from cell phones is a thing of the past.

“The new digital cell phones used much higher power and operate at a different frequency,” Ruskin said. “The small risks of electromagnetic interference between mobile telephones and medical devices should be weighed against the potential benefits of improved communication.”” (Yahoo! News)

Two ice surges, known to Alaska Natives as ivus, stunned residents who had never seen large blocks of ice rammed ashore.

“It just looked like a big old mountain of ice,” said L.A. Leavitt, 19, who left his nightshift job at the city early Tuesday to check out the ridges.

Ivus are like frozen tsunamis and crash ashore violently. They have killed hunters and are among the Arctic’s most feared natural phenomena.

Residents said the northernmost ivu, about 20 feet high and 100 feet long, contained car-size blocks and left coastal Stevenson Road with only one lane.” (Yahoo! News)

Judge Alito’s nomination does not serve the best interests of our nation; it serves to appease extreme right wing elements of the Republican Party. His nomination is an incredible mistake for America, and only the United States Senate can put a stop to it.

I think it’s time that the United States Senate confirmed once and for all that extreme ideology has no place on the highest court in the land. This is a critical fight for the future of our country. That’s why I’ve taken the time to sign this petition. And I hope that’s why the Senate will step up to the plate and do the right thing for America: support a filibuster against Samuel Alito.”

Ehud Olmert, the acting prime minister, made it clear after an emergency cabinet meeting that talks with Hamas, a Palestinian party sworn to Israel’s destruction, were out of the question, while experts said Israel was now freer to establish its future on its own.

They said Israel — whose own elections in two months could be heavily influenced by the Palestinian results — was likely to focus on speeding up construction of the separation barrier, which runs along and through parts of the West Bank. ” (New York Times )

In the past few years, mirror neurons have come into their own as the next big thing in neuroscience, and while the jury is still out on Rama’s prediction, it’s obvious that something important is unfolding…” (The Edge)

Its orbit is farther from its host star than Earth is from the Sun. Most known extrasolar planets reside inside the equivalent of Mercury’s orbit.

The planet is estimated to be about 5.5 times as massive as Earth and thought to be rocky. It orbits a red dwarf star about 28,000 light-years away. Red dwarfs are about one-fifth as massive as the Sun and up to 50 times fainter.” (space.com)

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist filed a motion to cut off debate on the Alito nomination after his Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Harry Reid, objected to a move by GOP leaders to schedule a final vote on his confirmation Monday afternoon.

Frist’s motion, which requires 60 votes under Senate rules, will come up for a vote at 4:30 p.m. Monday. If successful, senators will then vote on Alito’s nomination at 11 a.m. Tuesday, with a simple majority of 51 votes needed for approval.

Frist’s move came as Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts was lobbying his Democratic colleagues to filibuster the Alito nomination — an uphill fight, given that none of the chamber’s 55 Republicans have opposed his confirmation and three Democrats are on the record supporting it.” (CNN)

The ruling, issued yesterday by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan, came in a lawsuit brought by The Associated Press in April 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act. The suit sought to force the Pentagon to release transcripts of military tribunal hearings held to determine whether the detainees at Guantánamo had been properly categorized as “enemy combatants.”

Last year, the Pentagon released the transcripts of 558 tribunals but blacked out the names and other basic identifying information about the prisoners. In his new ruling, which he described as “final,” Judge Rakoff ordered the Defense Department to turn over “unredacted copies” of the transcripts to the news agency.” (New York Times)

Just the same, neither the GOP nor the president is in any definite long-term political trouble. Conservative Republicans, even without permanent-majority clout, are still more potent politically than liberal Democrats, and likely to remain so. Centrist and neoprogressive Democrats could credibly compete for power with conservative Republicans, but they must first pry their party’s presidential nomination process and key leadership posts from the old-left hands that still primarily control them. Despite strenuous efforts to do so since the mid-1980s by various New Democrat groups, the party is still led mainly by its liberals. Not even the New Democrats have ever really reached out to the culturally conservative and anti-abortion Democrats who have been defecting to the Republican Party since the Reagan years.” — John J. DiIulio Jr., a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, who served as first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (The Chronicle)

It’s not that Steven Soderbergh’s new art house movie is expected to break any box office records when it opens Friday. A low-budget murder mystery set in a doll factory and made with non-actors, it’s hardly blockbuster material.

But because it’s the first feature by an Oscar-winning director (Traffic) to be released in theaters, on cable television and on DVD in a four-day span, Bubble is forcing everyone in town to wrestle with this question: Is the great American tradition of going out to the movies on its way out?” (LA Times)

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.

With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents an hour.

The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year,
a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and
a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.

Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as ‘substandard.’

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.

Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30!!!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented.

There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Two of 10 U.S. adults couldn’t read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores.

According to one pharmacist, ‘Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.’ (Shocking!)

Eighteen percent of households in the U.S had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.”

Look at their updated privacy statement at: http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy

About half-way down the page, in the section on cookies, you will see a link that says WEB BEACONS.

Click on the phrase “Web Beacons.” On the page that opens, find a paragraph entitled “Outside the Yahoo Network.”

In that section find a little “Click Here to Opt Out” link that will let you “opt-out” of their snooping. Be careful! not to click on the next button shown. It is an “Opt Back In” button that, if clicked, will undo the opt-out.

Note that Yahoo’s invasion of your privacy – and your ability to opt-out of it – is not user-specific. It is machine-specific. That means you will have to opt-out on every computer (and browser) you use.” (via Interesting People listserv)

Mr. Starnes, 49, lives in Dayspring Village, a former motel that is licensed by the State of Florida as an assisted living center for people with mental illness. When he gets his medications, he is stable.

“Without them,” he said, “I get aggravated at myself, I have terrible pain in my gut, I feel as if I am freezing one moment and burning up the next moment. I go haywire, and I want to hurt myself.”

Mix-ups in the first weeks of the Medicare drug benefit have vexed many beneficiaries and pharmacists. Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said the transition from Medicaid to Medicare had had a particularly severe impact on low-income patients with serious, persistent mental illnesses.” (New York Times)

How much longer can this nonsense go on? President Jacques Chirac warns that France – of all countries – might use nuclear weapons, if attacked. On whom, I wonder? America blows Pakistani children to pieces and claims it has killed five wanted men, including a bomb-maker. But there’s absolutely no evidence. Bin Laden says that America will be attacked again unless it accepts a truce in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Weren’t we supposed to be winning the “war on terror”? Oh no, the “experts” tell us, Bin Laden and al-Qa’ida are losing, that’s why they want a truce. Some hope.

It’s a game. Bin Laden has no intention of calling an end to his own war and nor has George Bush and nor has Tony Blair. The Bin Laden offer, almost certainly, is intended to be rejected. He wants Bush and Blair to refuse it. Then, after the next attack, will come the next audio tape. See what happens when you reject our ceasefire? We warned you. And we’ll ask: is it him? So why no video tape? Never before in history have so many wanted men sent pictures and messages and video tapes out of the dark.

The irony, of course, is that Bin Laden is now partly irrelevant. He has created al-Qa’ida. His achievement – that word should be seen in context – is complete. Why bother hunting for him now? It’s a bit like arresting the world’s nuclear scientists after the invention of the atom bomb. The monster has been born. It’s al-Qa’ida we have to deal with.” (truthout)

There have been several efforts to count the war’s toll on civilians, yielding reports ranging from 24,000 to 128,000 from last fall through last month. Compounding the complexity, all of these numbers were collected differently and count different things, so they aren’t directly comparable. For example, the widely cited number last month of about 25,000 counts only violent deaths that have been reported to the media. Meanwhile, a study conducted last fall that found 100,000 deaths arrived at that figure by calculating ‘excess’ deaths — all deaths, including those from illness and accidents, were included, but deaths from a comparable prewar period were subtracted out.

The uncertain and inconsistent numbers help explain why the civilian death toll — caused by criminals, terrorists, insurgents and soldiers from all sides — hasn’t been given much attention in major U.S. media, even as many newspapers report every death of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and, last December, headlined incomplete tsunami death-toll numbers for weeks.” (WSJ Online)

…Sometimes referred to as a kind of social problem in Japanese discourse, the hikikomori phenomenon has a number of possible contributing factors — young adults may feel overwhelmed by modern Japanese society, or be unable to fulfill their expected social roles as they have not yet formulated a sense of personal tatemae and honne needed to cope with the daily paradoxes of adulthood. The dominant nexus of the hikikomori issue centers around the transformation from young life to the responsibilities and expectations of adult life — indications are that advanced capitalist societies such as modern Japan are unable to provide sufficient meaningful transformation rituals for promoting certain susceptible types of youth into mature roles within society.”

Siding with evolution does not really pose a serious problem for many deeply religious people, because one can easily accept evolution without doubting the existence of a non-material being. On the other hand, the truly radical and still maturing view in the neuroscience community that the mind is entirely the product of the brain presents the ultimate challenge to nearly all religions.” — Kenneth Kosik, Nweuroscience Research Institute, U.C. Santa Barbara (Nature)