April 2003 Archives

A Tufte Alert goes out, of course, whenever misleading graphics rear their ugly head (named for Yale's own rock star of graphs). In today's Times, there's a misleading graphic depicting an "epidemic scorecard" which attempts to put SARS in context of all the other epidemics in the world. A quick glance at the graph gives one the impression that the size of each epidemic's rectangle is relative to the number of deaths (or cases) associated with that disease. However, a closer look reveals that there's apparently no such relation: Denge Fever, with 24,000 deaths a year, is about twice the size as Influenza, with 250,000 deaths a year. Tuberculosis and Diarrheal Diseases have about the same number of deaths, but TB is about 1/3 larger. All of which undercuts the point they're trying to make: SARS, with 353 deaths, is given about 1/2 the space as Yellow Fever which has 100 times as many deaths. (Or 50 times, if you annualize SARS.) Shame on their graphics department for fumbling this one.

[Update: I posted this up on Tufte's website (the "Ask E.T." section) and actually got a response from the man himself!]

Those of you who take polls to be the word of God should check out this article on this modern world.

Only 40% of Americans can name the three branches of government, while 37% can't even name one.

40% of Americans think there's strong evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11, while only 36% know there is little to none. Support for the Iraq war continues to be strongly associated with the belief that Saddam was involved in 9-11. (An earlier Retropoll had found that among people who know there is little or no evidence linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda, opposition to the war was over 75%.)

Americans of all stripes overwhelmingly reject individual Patriot Act provisions -- secret searches, electronic surveillance, arrests without detention, etc. -- but seem blissfully unaware that they are part of the War on Terrorism.

On some level, American do seem to understand the depth of their manipulation, with "media hype" named as a leading cause of fear.

Disturbingly, however, belief that the US must prove charges against other countries before attacking them is declining significantly.

Since we’re all about the french connection today, I’ll toss in something found at Tristan Nitot’s Standblog, to wit, a bookmarklet that allows you to change all instances of the word freedom in a page to French.

UPDATE: Daniel Glazman’s blog, the location of the bookmarklet, seems to have evaporated since I found this info. Perhaps it will return.

The top French restaurant "Tour d'Argent" has proudly announced the official strangling of their one millionth duck. The chef claims that strangulation keeps the flesh more succulent then if you simply slit their throats. Once the act is done, carcasses of freshly strangled ducks are pressed to extract the blood which is mixed with cognac and port to make a rich, sizzling sauce. Yum! The chef reflected on his accomplishment: "One million ducks. It's marvelous, really moving."

No ducks were available for comment.

From this report in the Guardian (also reported elsewhere), the Sugar industry is putting pressure on Congress to cut funding for the WHO after it recommended that sugar be no more than 10 percent of a healthy diet. Here's an excerpt from the Sugar Association's letter:

"Taxpayers' dollars should not be used to support misguided, non-science-based reports which do not add to the health and well-being of Americans, much less the rest of the world," says the letter. "If necessary we will promote and encourage new laws which require future WHO funding to be provided only if the organisation accepts that all reports must be supported by the preponderance of science."

I have no idea of whether Mike Hawash is innocent or not, but statements like the following give me the creeps:

"Around that time, neighbors in the placid suburb of Hillsboro called the police to report that Mr. Hawash had become increasingly religious, growing a long beard and favoring clothing common in the Middle East."

Google has a long list of stories related to this case, and there is also a website organized by his supporters.

I find the images used as short hand fascinating. His own website uses this photo, from his wedding:

to emphasize his Americanness. (See, he's cheek to cheek with his blond wife !). The other photo that is circulating emphasizes his otherness (I wonder where it comes from ?):

Remind me not to grow a beard and start observing my first amendment rights any time soon, unless I become a nudist at the same time.

[And no, I'm not trying to bias you by showing the 2 photos at different sizes. I'm just linking to the versions I've seen out there, and am too damn lazy to save them and resize them to equivalent sizes, or so that his face is the same size in both]

The most fun a moderate can have is when he gets to take a simultaneous swipe at the right and the left - and one of the best arenas to do this in is education. This morning's New York Times features a great review of a book I want to buy (or, well, borrow from a friend willing to shell out $24) - The Language Police.

Now, before you left-wingers get upset about yet another book bashing political correctness, and before you right-wingers get upset about yet another book assaulting and eroding key family values - you'll all hate it! The author's position is that both sides follow the same nutsy reasoning: Both sides "believe that reality follows language usage," [and] that if they "can stop people from ever seeing offensive words and ideas, they can prevent them from having the thought or committing the act that the words imply."

Of course, the real fun is that each side has a very different sense of what offensive words and ideas are. As the author puts it, censors on the right aim "to restore an idealized vision of the past, an Arcadia of happy family life" in which Father knows best, Mother takes care of the house and kids, and everyone goes to church on Sundays, censors on the left believe in "an idealized vision of the future, a utopia in which egalitarianism prevails in all social relations," a world in which "all nations and all cultures are of equal accomplishment and value."

So, thanks to the radical right, textbooks can't show dinosaurs (evolution!), quarreling parents or disobedient children (not uplifiting!), etc. But the radical left brings us such brilliant censorship as no mothers cooking (sexist!), no african-american families living in the city (racist!), and a host of "disfavored words" such as "brotherhood, fraternity, heroine, snowman, swarthy, crazy, senile and polo." I'm not sure why polo isn't allowed. Add to that hilarious suggestions that aren't clearly left/right like replacing mentions of unhealthy foods (like candy) with healthy ones (like yogurt), and not mentioning birthday parties (because some kids don't get to have them), and you end up with textbooks that read like pabulum.

The solution? Let ME write all textbooks. Other than a little too much emphasis on "Star Wars" and "Buffy" themes, it would be much more exciting and enriching to your average 13 year-old.

Burlesque, thankfully, does not mean "like Burl Ives." Now we want to go every week!

-- an amazing work of theater, as much for its performance as for its history and politics.

I had a great weekend of celebration for my 33rd birthday, which was yesterday. Saturday night Debbie and I went to the Va Va Voom Room, the burlesque show at Fez hosted by the hilariously deadpan Miss Astrid. "We have to come every week!" said Debbie afterward, and I tend to agree. I wonder if they allow kids?

How is it that they can suck all the life out of the book? Is it some sort of spell?

Murder. Madness. German Expressionist sets.

Math and The Simpsons.

Unused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer, 2002, for The Fellowship of the Ring Platinum Series Extended Edition DVD, Part One

Did you know that the Close Encounters UFO is the same height as the Empire State Building? Well, now you do.

Hey, guys? In the van parked on 7th Avenue? The one with the big sign duct-taped to the side of it, advertising your floor-sanding and painting services, with pink flyers attached, the same ones you blanket the neighborhood with? You might want to remove the copy of High Times from your dashboard. Just a suggestion.

As someone who is currently getting my identity passed around from scam ring to scam ring, I have a vested interest in just how easy or hard it is to tell who you are during a traffic stop (especially in Portland). Somehow, even with my ridiculous story (which I will tell sometime), this new in--the-field fingerprinting idea doesn't make me more comfortable. Having had my identity snatched, am I more or less at risk of turning up with the wrong thumbprint and getting dragged downtown? Hard to say, but I think the answer is "both."

[Also, note the logic emanating from the current Federal Law Enforcement geniuses, "You have to drastically cut back on your budget, so here's $900,000 to spend on 300 high-tech field-fingerprint remote identity database access devices."]

"The Minnesota-based Identix manufactures the technology, which captures fingerprints at the scene and remotely transmits them to a database. The Portland police will run the prints against the FBI's automated fingerprint database, and a database of seven Western states, known as the Western Identification Network.

If there is a match, the system returns the person's name, date of birth and mug shot directly to the officer's handheld terminal, the size of a Palm Pilot. Then the officer can check the person's criminal history and search for any outstanding warrants.

Manufacturers and police tout the time it could save officers, keeping them from needlessly transporting suspects to a police precinct or jail to fingerprint them.

'With shrinking budgets and shrinking staff, we need to capitalize on emerging technology,' said Capt. Greg Hendricks, of the bureau's identification division.

Within a year, the bureau intends to expand the pilot purchase of 15 to more than 300 terminals for all patrol officers, under $650,000 set aside for the Portland police by the U.S. Department of Justice and recently approved by Congress."

That "you're either with us or against us" line just keeps resonating and resonating. Not that Molly Ivins is exactly The Economist when it comes to financial analysis, but here's yet another gift from The Dubyas to their mistress Big Bidness:

"The Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act."

Chewbacca returns. This alone may make the third Star Wars prequel the best of the trilogy. Not that the bar was set high - we recently rewatched the barely-watchable "Send in the Clones" (or whatever it was called). Let's just hope that the forgettable actor who plays Anakin Skywaker gets burned beyond recognition fairly early in the movie.

We were just showing off

Previously unimaginable heights of impunity? Check. The White House has ceased bothering to pretend. Lies are the new Truth. And nary a consequence in sight.

"To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war -- a global show of American power and democracy.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

'We were not lying, said one official. 'But it was just a matter of emphasis.' ...

What if Sept. 11 had never happened? Would the United States have gone to war with Iraq? Administration officials and others say no...."

One day later, U.S. restarts production of plutonium parts for bombs

"The United States has regained the capability to make nuclear weapons for the first time in 14 years and has restarted production of plutonium parts for bombs, the Energy Department said Tuesday.

The announcement marks an important symbolic and operational milestone in rebuilding the nation's nuclear weapons complex, which began a long retrenchment in the late 1980s as the Cold War ended and the toll of environmental damage from bomb production became known.

'Since 1989 until today, we were the only nuclear power in the world that could not make a pit,' said Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department agency that runs the weapons production complex.

A pit is a hollow sphere made of plutonium, surrounded by conventional explosives that detonate and start fission as the sphere implodes.

Under a Bush administration plan, the Energy Department will begin limited production of plutonium parts for the existing stockpile of nuclear weapons and begin laying plans for a new factory that could produce parts for hundreds of weapons each year.

The last time the United States made a plutonium pit was at the Energy Department's Rocky Flats site in Colorado, which was shut down after serious environmental laws were broken and the FBI raided the plant.

Weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory said Tuesday that they had built a plutonium pit for a W-88 warhead for a Trident nuclear missile. The production took eight years and ultimately will cost $1.5 billion when the pit is fully certified by the Energy Department in 2007, Los Alamos officials said.

'It is a sign that after a long period of decline, the weapons complex is back and growing,' said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Energy Department weapons expert. 'To the average U.S. citizen, it would be accurate to say we have restarted the production of nuclear weapons.'"

Following up on my and Mike’s brilliant suggestions for conservative ice cream flavors, and since I haven’t seen it anywhere else (read: Google got me nothing), I hereby offer to the offended parties the slogan Sanction Sanctorum. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, and good night.

Note: this is not a site that provides catchy slogans. Sorry.

A quick follow-up to the Rick Santorum story: We all know by know that gay rights groups have come out in force, rife with indignation about having gay sex compared to (among other things) polygamy.

But did you know that the polygamists aren't that happy about it either?

No word yet from the "man-on-dog" activists that Senator Santorum seems concerned about.

"The Bush administration intends to produce -- not just research -- a thermonuclear bunker-busting bomb to destroy hardened, deeply buried targets, the Pentagon has acknowledged for the first time.

The weapon, known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, would be a full-power hydrogen bomb that would throw up enormous clouds of radioactive dust while wreaking large-scale damage and death if used in an urban area. It would be thousands of times more powerful than the conventional 'bunker busters' dropped on Baghdad in an attempt to kill former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Federal officials signed documents in Washington this week to launch a preliminary design contest between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

'This administration is very serious about rethinking the entire thing,' said a physicist at a U.S. nuclear weapons lab. 'I think everyone around here is really encouraged to look at what the actual role is for nuclear weapons.'"

Creed fans sue band for sucking. Found on can't-stop.org.

Not that I check Blogdex religiously, but it would seem to me that a program in Kansas to exact taxes from the sales of illegal drugs would get some notice in the blogosphere. Slippery-slopers, get yer megaphones ready.

From This Modern World comes this story of a Canadian woman on a Continental flight to Vancouver who was threatened with legal action for breast-feeding while flying

Overheard last night, before Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, two gentlemen seated behind me:

"I didn't know this was animated. I tell you, I have grave reservations about this."
"You don't like animation?"
"Not this kind."
"I've seen this before, in Italy. These characters are Italian. It's cartoons for big kids. I don't really like it either."
"Then why don't we see another one -- what's next door? A Mighty Wind?"
"Sure. We'll tell them we didn't know this was animated."

Exeunt.

Excuse me? How exactly did you fail to notice this salient fact about this movie? Did you perhaps neglect to read anything about it before you bought the tickets? Or not notice the poster? What kind of decision-making process went into this selection? Maybe one of you is a Charlie Parker fan, and the other likes Westerns?

Sigh.

Oh the movie? Lots of fun. Looks great. As in all the Bebop series, a triumph of style over substance. But, with more time, the plot actually makes more sense than some of the 0.5 hr shows. Fortunately, more time for great fights. Unfortunately, more time for melodrama. Major disappointment: didn't use "Tank!" for the opening credits, but the music was actually pretty good. It probably stands on its own without knowing the series, but I think you'd do better renting a DVD or two of the shows to see if you like it first.

My favorite headline of the morning: "Dixie Chicks Pose Nude to Answer Critics." Entertainers have the best way of demonstrating their politics.

I remember that, back when they were announcing their embarassment about being from Texas (because it is the home state of President Bush), thinking "well, I'm not buying any more of their albums until I see a little T&A!"

Obviously, I wasn't alone.

Rush sings about being a Nazi. I love sound editors...

Last night we were watching the special features on The Princess Bride DVD. (Did you know that André the Giant used to be driven to school by his neighbor, Samuel Beckett?) Deb asked if Chris and Susan Sarandon were related and so off to imdb. (Turns out they used to be married. Bonus trivia question: Chris S. was in another movie with a PB co-star. Name it for a Ishpoint!) Then we were curious as to what else Rob Reiner had directed. His latest project, as it turns out, is a romantic comedy based on a story by Dostoyevsky. "Out of all the Russians, Dostoyevsky is pretty much at the bottom of the barrel for romantic comedy sources" said Deb. But as it turns out, 90 movies have been made from Dostoyevsky's works. Tolstoy? 91. Gogol? 45. Pushkin? 54. Chekhov? A whopping 128.

Suddenly a new game is born! Find the authors with the most screen credits! We all know that the cultural relevance of an author is really measured by how many movies have been made from your books. All the arguments about the canon could be easily resolved by referring to the new Ishbadiddle / IMDB Author Relevance Index.

Can you beat these? More Ishpoints for any authors we've missed.

One of von Trier's first features, a dreamlike / nightmarish combination of Kafka, Brazil, Hiroshima mon amour, and Beckett. Filmed in brown!

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it!

[Sorry Mike. It's just such an incredible song, and Nina Simone just died ... I couldn't figure out how to edit it down. I put this up after hearing it on the radio, it sent chills up my spine.]

What more should I say, other than how can you not like an event which includes questions like this in it's FAQ:
Can I rent the Colossal Colon for an event? How much does it cost?
Click here and here to find out more.

So I want to take a break from writing about politics and write a little something about all the tech stuff I've gotten into recently. This is a long post, the culmination of a few weeks of surfin', so bear with me and let me know in the comments if you want me to stop posting such long posts. I'm moving towards fewer, more in-depth posts, but that might not suit everyone and I certainly don't want to inconvenience any of you. Anyway, on with the info.

First, I've really gotten into Mozilla, the open-source browser built on the bones of Netscape Navigator. I downloaded it because there was a program I wanted to try (which I'll get into below) and I have to say I love it. The main thing it has to recommend it (stolen from Opera) is tabbed browsing (ie, your browser window looks like an excel page with many different sections). Click on a link and the new page loads in the background, allowing you to continue reading or switch over and switch back without getting as lost. It makes checking out nooks and crannies that much easier--something you'll be wishing you had in this article, for example.

The real killer app part of tabbed browsing, though, is the ability to bookmark a group of tabs as a single bookmark. I have a politics tab with all my favorite sites in it (e.g. atrios, DailyKos, Hullabaloo, Salon) and, with a single click, they've all loaded. When I'm done reading, I close the tab and move on. It's really changed the way I use the internet.

There are some drawbacks to Mozilla, and it's not my only browser (not that you can uninstall the IE browser, as the Microsoft trial proved--well, sorta kinda and this entry is long enough already). The mail client isn't as good as Outlook Express, but it's all right. The main bummer is that it's not as well-integrated with Blogger as IE. There's a plugin called Mozblog that doesn't work as well for me as the right-click BlogThis feature. I bookmarked the javascript BlogThis app, and it only works occasionally. Even Blogger's web interface looks a little funny when you load it (the margins in the posting frame are half-width), and you can't do CTRL-SHIFT-A to make links, which is a real drag. Other than that, though, the browsing experience is much, much better with tabs.

I downloaded Mozilla because NewsMonster required it. I found Newsmonster on Six Log, the blog of Six Apart, the company that makes Moveable Type. MT really has some interesting features Blogger doesn't have yet, and I've toyed with getting it up and running, but in the VHS/Beta department, Blogger gives free, painless hosting, and that could be the equivalent of "it records longer than 30 minutes." I'd love it if Blogger implemented some of MT's cooler featurees, including TrackBack and categorized archives.

Anyway, Newsmonster is one of the many networking tools trying to generate emergent content. It subscribes to RSS feeds of various weblogs and/or websites and, in its not-yet-implemented feature, will allow you to search on nodes to find more interesting news. Let's say you like my site. You can then see which sites I've subscribed to and go to them directly, and so on, until you're getting the content you want--see the site for details (and his idea about blognet--it's sort of like Weblog Neighborhood in Radio). The issue is how to overcome Clay Shirky's observation about the fact that information gets centralized on the internet. I was interested in this because I had the exact same idea a few weeks ago (no, really) and it turns out the guy designing it lives ten blocks from me.

Basically, it seems to me that we're really on the verge of some cool emergent content. For some background on what emergence is, here are some good places to look. Start with this really good overview, then read Joi Ito's article on emergent democracy, then check out his archives on emergent democracy. Blogroots has a trackback-based site that aggregates posts about weblogs here, and you might want to check out the blog from the author of Smart Mobs.

The problem with emergence comes down to a couple of things. First, you want to make sure there's a low signal-to-noise ratio, so that the democracy of the internet, where anyone can say anything, doesn't turn into cacophony. One way you can do this is via reputation, where someone is invested in his/her reputation and therefore doesn't say anything stupid. The problem is that sometimes, anonymity really frees people up to say something useful that they might not ordinarily say for fear of reprisal. These two articles (here and here), while technical, are pretty interesting--they describe an anonymous persistent reputation system. That way anonymity isn't just an excuse to talk smack. (More information on reputation systems can be found at the Reputations Research Network.) The other way to preserve high signal-to-noise ratios is by moderating (or "modding") comments, so that cream rises to the top. Clay Shirky has written an interesting article on the social contracts implied in collaborative/emergent/content management systems.

When emergence works, you end up with true collective wisdom. Farah and I won our local video store's pool based on share prices in the Hollywood Stock Exchange, deciding to go for it based on James Surowiecki's excellent article on decision markets. We won without having seen a single picture (we're new parents in the video-only phase, with this being a notable exception)--which made Best Picture go down a lot easier, actually. Ideally you'd end up with good ideas floating to the top. Clay Shirky imagines this changing the music industry; some people use NetFlix because it's so good at recommending new movies. Howard Dean's campaign has made a lot of hay out of this, using Meetup and actually raising tons of money from an idea that emerged from the grassroots.

If you want to move out of the realm of the theoretical, here are some implementations of it. There's Friendster, a way of finding new friends of friends (pitched initially as a dating service). On the information front, you can find out new information by tracking word bursts, or random links from similar sites through Tangent, or More Like This From Others (which is an ingenious idea for solving the problem of different people categorizing information in different ways). Mediagora is a really cool idea by Kevin Marks for a content distribution system where copying would generate benefits to all people (another idea I had--damn it). MoJo is an idea for distributed journalism--basically a way of coordinating a bunch of eyewitness reports. On the technical front, there's the Open Content Network and the more-established BitTorrent, which use p2p networks to cache materials from servers that are getting overwhelmed. If these ideas don't appeal to you and you have a better one (but no coding skills), submit it to the LazyWeb.

I've also found some tools that enable this kind of collaboration. The biggest and baddest is slashcode, but there are a few more like Scoop (and MeFi clones such as FreeFilter and phpilfer), as well as closed-source apps like Open Cola and Groove. I didn't know anything about PHP based community software, but then I checked out an amazing site called Open Source CMS and took PHPNuke and Postnuke for a test drive (see the PHPnuke tutorial here: PHPNuke: Management and Programming and the postnuke tutorial) for more information). What Open Source CMS allows you to do is register as the admin and administer (for an hour) a site running the software of your choice. This spares you the hassle of installing it and trying it out (and messing stuff up) but it allows you to see how hard/easy it is to do certain tasks. This site is one of the coolest ones I've found in a long time. I just wish they'd allow you to test-drive MT.

As this moves forward, it of course becomes more and more vital to address the digital divide issue. A network is only as good as its reach, and millions of people in this country (and billions around the world) can't participate in any discussion. Think of it as the loss of a ton of human capital, if the rights idea doesn't appeal to you. In an emergent network, their loss is literally your loss. So I'm particularly intrigued by Don Samuelson's plan to bring wireless broadband access to low-income housing in Chicago.

In the meantime, I'm having a love affair with a pre-cyber form of information distribution for the public--the San Francisco Public Library. I'm going through a phase of checking out the library's extensive collection of electronica, reserving discs on the SFPL's incredibly slow website (come on, folks, this is where it took off) and getting emailed when they're in. I'm also refreshing my HTML and starting to learn PHP and Perl. I just want to know enough to be conversant with the people who do it--the same way I don't want to fix my own car, but at least know when I'm getting good service. Anyway, I hope you found this as interesting as I do.

For those of you tired of leftist ice creams ( Ben and Jerry's?), feast your eyes on Star Spangled Ice Cream. Billing itself as "ice cream with a conservative flavor," it offers flavors such as "I Hate French Vanilla" and "Iraqi Road." "School Prayerleens & Cream" and "Gun Nut" are just of the few promised future flavors.

C'mon now - Ish is a pretty creative group of people! How about a free pint of "Im-Peach Clinton" to the best conservative ice cream name provided in the comments?

As you've hopefully heard elsewhere, Santorum, the number 3 man in the Republican Party Leadership in the Senate, recently said:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

"All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution."

And, here, in the interest of fairness, is Santorum's clarification:

"In the interview, I expressed the same concern as many constitutional scholars and discussed arguments put forward by the State of Texas, as well as Supreme Court justices. If such a law restricting personal conduct is held unconstitutional, so could other existing state laws.

"Again, my discussion with the Associated Press was about the Supreme Court privacy case, the consitutrional right to privacy in general and in context of the impact on the family. I am a firm believer that all are equal under the Constitution. My comments should not be misconstrued in any was as a statement on individual lifestyles."

The White House has declined to comment thus far. Here's my guess -- I don't think that Santorum will leave, and I think the White House will treat this very differently from the Lott affair. Core Republican supporters (and perhaps even average voters) see race and sexuality very differently, and will have no problems with what Santorum said. And in terms of general accountability, Richard Perle is still a member of the Defense Policy Board, despite his very clear conflicts of interest with them. Unless gay groups within the Republican party have more clout than they seem, this one is dead in the water.

Brilliant. Found on monoki.

Via memepool: Bridesmaid Dresses From Hell

OK, my general lack-of-driving-around means I don't listen to the radio as much as I used to. Perhaps I'm not as up on the latest in radio programming trends. But can anyone explain to me why, in one weekend of driving in Pennsylvania, I should hear "Cum On Feel The Noize" twice? Is there some Quiet Riot revival going on that I'm unaware of?

Ben's gone through a number of phases. Right now it's the circus -- a few weeks ago we went with him, my father and stepmother, and his Aunt Jen to see the Ringling Brothers in MSG, and the week before that he went with Debbie and Zonker Colin to the Universoul Circus in Prospect Park. So now he wants to read books about the circus, including International Circus by Lothar Meggendorfer. (Isn't that a great name? What do y'all think of "Lothar Meggendorfer Everett-Lane" if the Deuce is a boy?)

But before the circus it was trains, including, of course, The Little Engine That Could.

Xander gets cool. Faith goes bad. Giles gets fired.

3rd Edition. I still can't get D, F, K, O, Q, R, Y and Z. Help!

It starts at 41st Street and Broadway at 1PM, and arrives at Madison Park (located between 26th and 23rd street and Broadway & Madison Avenue) at 3PM. Free food at the end.

My feelings about the execution of the parade vary ... sometimes I think it's well done and accessible to outsiders, and sometimes I despair of my communities ability to communicate anything to the outside world. Still, I haven't been for a number of years, so I'm going again. Email me or give me a call if you want a "native guide" to translate for you. I'd normally say look for the guy in the Orange turban, but hopefully that description will apply to thousands ;).

... and other State Nicknames. From Colin's watchful eye.

Vertigo, then and now. The kind of thing I’ve always meant to do in one location or another, with one movie or another, but just never got around to. How much fun could you have with New York and this activity? You could have a party and make the entrance requirement a pair of prints: one from a movie shot in NYC at least 20 years ago and the other of the same location now. Bonus points for a third print of either (a) a movie still from within the last 5 years at the same location (remakes excluded) or (b) a still from a movie that recreated the same location as a set. Points off for using hackneyed landmarks, points on for using unique views of those landmarks. And a big goose egg for using the WTC.

Via Tantek (who doesn’t know that I have pictures of his sister)

Via Bad Culture, this story on Fox's own Bill O'Reilly:

Emceeing Saturday night's Best Friends rock-and-roll gala at the Mariott Warman Park -- which raised $800,000 for the 15 year-old charity benefiting inner-city schoolchildren -- the Fox News Channel star was trying to fill dead air during a lull in the entertainment.

Members of the "Best Men," as the sixth-to-eighth-grade boys in the program are called, were delayed getting onstage to perform a lip-synched rendition of the Four Tops standard "Reach Out (I'll Be There)." O'Reilly ad-libbed: "Does anyone know where the Best Men are? I hope they're not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps."

Oh, the hilarity! You can read it all here.

Well, will you be using the Open Source Haggadah? Or the BDSM Haggadah? Via Boing Boing.

Well, in addition to computer assisted voting fraud and cancelled presidential elections, we now have EZ Pass Voting:

Unlike lawmakers in Congress or other state legislatures or even in the assemblies of Nicaragua and Albania, New York's representatives don't actually have to be present to vote.

Here's how it works. Each member of the State Assembly receives a plastic ID card to swipe at the entrances to the chamber. Once the card is swiped, a legislator automatically votes yes on every bill that comes up that day. Only rarely does someone call a "slow vote," which means actually punching the button to cast a ballot.

The controlling Democratic Party's bills are the only important ones that actually come up for a vote in the Assembly. So it's the Democrats who are often missing from the floor. Some are at committee meetings, some in their offices, some playing hooky for all voters know. Never mind. Even absent, they cast their phantom votes.

In the Republican-controlled Senate, the system is essentially the same. Every session day, members come into the chamber and wave to the clerk, who marks them present. They are then automatically recorded as voting with the leader on the day's legislation.

Yeah, these are the guys who are supposedly responsible for your state. No wonder we're cynical.

Spirited Away. Still wonderful the second time around.

A couple of signs I've noticed around town today:

First, a bench outside a cafe in my nabe that some employee has labelled "FOR COSTUMERS ONLY". I don't ask the guy sitting there what he thinks of Edith Head's legacy.

At the Border's on midtown, a sign announces the upcoming appearance of "HAROLD BLOOM, AUTHOR OF HAMLET." They meant Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, I suppose. Debbie says Bloom's ego is such that he might actually consider the sign to be accurate. In some post-modern sense. Still, wasn't there this guy Bill.... Bill Something?

On the side of a crosstown bus, one of those ads for Fox News. "FAIR AND BALANCED" it crows. And then in large letters: "REAL JOURNALISM". In yellow letters. Making the hidden message: "yellow journalism". I can't decide whether this is unintentional or they have some subversive in their art department.

The award for the coolest commercial I’ve seen in months (and for best use of Sugar Hill Gang’s do-I-have-to-mention-that-it’s-overused “Rapper’s Delight” in an even longer time period) goes to Honda for the Accord Wagon, only in the U.K. (See it at Beam.tv or Honda UK itself.) And the bestest part of all? No CG!

Maha gracias to the indefatigable Coudal Partners.

We're all excited at the image of Saddam's statue falling down ("They got it down!"). You might be interested in some more information about that scene in Fardus Square. (Who won the war? Why, capricorn won, of course...) Also: what the war is costing us..

And, on an unrelated note, the GOP is of course no longer the party of Trent Lott. However this did not prevent Rep. Babara Cubin (R-WY) from equating black people from drug addicts in a discussion on limiting the criminal liability of gun manufacturers:

Yesterday's debate suddenly veered from guns to race when Cubin criticized a failed Democratic amendment that would have banned gun sales to drug addicts or people in drug treatment. After noting that her sons, ages 25 and 30, "are blond-haired and blue-eyed," she said: "One amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug treatment. So does that mean that if you go into a black community you can't sell any guns to any black person?"

You can read the whole shebang in the Congressional Record. It's unclear exactly what she was getting at.

My words intended to state, and if I had been able to finish my
sentence and my thought, they would have stated that I do not believe in stereotyping anyone, any time, ever, for anything. That is what I believe, and I believe that from the bottom of my heart. I do apologize, not just to the gentleman from North Carolina. I apologize to everyone who may have been hurt in any way or insulted because of my remarks. But I really intend only, only to make the point, and I will speak on this bill later, but to make the point that stereotyping is always wrong. It does not matter who it is; it is always a wrong thing to do.

She may in fact have been trying to get to the point that it would be easier for white people to buy guns, because of stereotyping. But as recent events have shown, it's best to think (and speak) carefully before framing these sorts of issues.

The reign of Saddam Hussein has ended. (If you read it here first, you're not paying attention.) Now is the time to show our true colors.

Someone told us it was good B-movie fare. No offense to that someone, but it should have been called The Boring Identity. The story of a man who wakes up not knowing who he is, chased by killers, involved with a beautiful woman... if only they'd set it on Mars...

OK, folks. This is the last time we're going to discuss this here. I am sick -- and tired -- of having every substantive discussion here turn into an anti-anti-war-protestor screed. Case in point. It's happened so many times over the last few weeks that I'm beginning to loathe to talk politics here, knowing that it'll devolve into an off-topic back and forth over protests. I know some of my fellow Ishers have already slacked off posting for this very reason. And so, by grand fiat, I declare this the Last Ishbadiddle Discussion on the Morality, Legality, Political Efficacy, and Fashion Sense of Anti-War Protests. No further posts on the discussion. All comments to be made here; comments that creep into later posts will be deleted. Anything else you have to say on the subject, you can start your own blog. Be my guest.

First, WTF? Like, we're fighting a war here, and probably changing the course of American foreign policy and the global strategic balance for the next century. I'd like some discussion of how and why we're doing this. (Did anyone read this?) Instead the right seems obsessed with trashing the anti-war movement. (It's not just here. I'd go and find links but -- oh, just go read Andrew Sullivan or something.) Now I'm not going to address here any of the actual meritorious arguments for or against war. Those are still fair game for later posts and comments. But herewith, I logically and methodically demolish each of these anti-protestor arguments. (Those of you who read Ish comments regularly will notice I'm repeating things I've said before, but in the interest of ending this nonsense, here it all is:

Evil Xander! Evil Willow! Evil Joyce! Everybody turns eeeevil!

More fun with Photoshop!

Yesterday our neighbor downstairs found this dog, walking along Carroll Street with a leash and a harness but no tags:

Ain't he cute? Clearly this little fella isn't abandoned; he's well groomed, and his leash was still on. (I was calling him "Sasha" when I thought he was a she, but it works for boys as well, as long as he's Russian.) Our neighbor took him to one of the local vets, where they scanned him for a microchip. Nada. Then I took him out to the park, thinking that he might have run from there. But because of the snow, there was hardly anyone in the park, and the few dog owners I talked to were nice but couldn't help. I took him to another vet's and to the local animal hospital, but no one had reported a lost Pomeranian. Our neighbor put him up last night, but none of us are allowed to have dogs, so we can't keep him for long. Also, he snapped at Ben this morning as Ben was attempting to hug him, so we're nervous about having him here much at all. But other than that, he's really rather sweet. Debbie says I'm a softie. I told her that she knew that the day she met me.

So this morning I took him out and put up posters. One guy came up to me and said, "I found a dog once? And my wife, she made me keep it. I tell you, just put down the leash and look the other way." I did talk to a nice dog walker who said she'd spread the word. Now we're calling up animal shelters. The first one I talked to, BARC, asked "How do you know he's lost? Did he tell you?" But actually they were very helpful.

So, does anyone want to put up a dog for a few days until we find his owners (or a new home)? Call us. We've already got the food.

Update: Sasha's currently boarding with the folks from Muffin's Pet Connection. They'll keep him or a few days while we wait for the owner to come forward, and then find a good home. The more time goes by, the more I think he was really abandoned.

So it's not as though there's been a shortage of things to write about lately, but offline life has its uses, too. Anyway, here's a good long roundup to keep you occupied throughout the weekend. Sorry for the length, but let me know in the comments if you found this at all useful or if you'd prefer smaller increments of that Left Coast Goodness.

I'm going to lead off with a story that hasn't gotten much play. It's about electronic voting machines, and someone at Metafilter posted a story that prompted me to do a writeup. The basic problem with electronic voting machines iseloquently summarized by Bev Harris at Black Box Voting:

A safe voting system is one that many eyes can view. Machines eliminate transparency in vote-counting. The newest machines eliminate the paper trail - the only voter-verified evidence of how votes really were cast, effectively saying "trust us" - voters and local election officials no longer have any way to verify that votes were counted accurately.

Aside from the fact that Manufacturers Admit Voting Machines Unreliable, there are legitimate concerns that electronic voting machines are A Vote for Touch and Go Away. Here in the tech capital of the U.S., there's been a lot of opposition from scientists and other wired types who are worried that an Electronic voting system is an invitation to trouble.It gets more disturbing, though, when you consider the possibility of deliberate manipulation of the vote, especially since ownership disclosure of voting machine companies is so hard to come by.

It all comes together in the case of Chuck Hagel. A little background on the story here, but I'll quote this article to spell it out:

Hagel controlled and still partly owns the only voting machines that counted his votes when he ran for election in 1996 and 2002.

But, wait. There's more. The majority stake in ES&S is owned by Howard F. Ahmanson and the Ahmanson Foundation, heirs to the Home Savings of America fortune. Howard Ahmanson has long been associated with Christian Reconstruction, a radical faction of the Religious Right that seeks to replace American democracy with a theocracy based on biblical law and under the "dominion" of Christians. For years, the Orange County, California multimillionaire served on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, the lunatic Right's think tank. He has channeled millions from his family's fortune to a variety of causes designed to discredit and defeat Darwin's evolution theory. He currently is a member of ultra-right Council for National Policy.

Christian Reconstructionists have been instrumental in getting at least 24 conservatives into the California legislature; launching prop. 209, California's successful anti-affirmative action law; financing Prop. 22, California's effort to ban gay marriages; and financing the Chalcedon Institute, which reportedly believes in the death penalty for homosexuality and other "sins."

Let me draw a picture here: about 60 percent (and growing) of the computerized ballots cast in elections in the United States now pass through machines whose software is owned, designed and controlled by people who are soul brothers of the Taliban.

Like the other handful of secretive companies that produce computerized voting systems and depend upon the kind of political patronage that Republicans excel at, ES&S is extremely well-connected. Jeb Bush's first choice as running mate in 1998 was Sandra Mortham who, according to the Tallahasee Democrat (October 6, 2002, Page B6), was a paid lobbyist for ES&S and received a commission for every county that bought its touch-screen machines.

Virtually all of the information in this post (as well as The Hill article) was unearthed in nearly two thousand hours of research by a tenacious writer and publicist named Bev Harris, who is the author of a forthcoming book Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century. Harris owns a PR firm called Talion in Renton, Washington, which is just southeast of Seattle. She says she began researching voting machine companies when she discovered that unauditable private, proprietary codes are used for vote-counting, and that ownership of voting machine companies is often kept secret.

You'll find virtually all of Harris' supporting documentation and backup materials here. If all these dots can be connected, she's onto one hell of a story. Thom Hartman has additional details at Common Dreams

So let's go to that article, shall we?

Maybe Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two US Senate elections. Maybe it's true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush, Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles.

Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it's now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past six years and just won't work here anymore. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots.

But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the voters' hand to prove it.

...

The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska.

Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska."

What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

"This is a big story, bigger than Watergate ever was," said Hagel's Democratic opponent in the 2002 Senate race, Charlie Matulka (www.lancastercountydemocrats.org/matulka.htm). "They say Hagel shocked the world, but he didn't shock me."

Maybe, if you're like me, you're saying to yourself, "Jesus Christ". If so, please be thinking of our President, and encourage your kids to do the same. I hope this is a joke (the header says April 1), but, sadly, reality is pretty dire.

Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham and one of the nation's most outspoken critics of Islam, said Wednesday he has relief workers "poised and ready" to roll into Iraq to provide for the population's post-war physical and spiritual needs.

Graham, who has publicly called Islam a "wicked" religion, said the relief agency he runs, Samaritan's Purse, is in daily contact with U.S. Government agencies in Amman, Jordan, about its plans.

The group's main objective is to help refugees and people who have lost their homes or are sick and hungry as a result of the war, Graham told Beliefnet. "We realize we're in an Arab country and we just can't go out and preach," Graham said in a telephone interview from Samaritan's Purse headquarters in Boone, N.C.

However, he added, "I believe as we work, God will always give us opportunities to tell others about his Son... We are there to reach out to love them and to save them, and as a Christian I do this in the name of Jesus Christ."

Graham didn't seem concerned that the public presence in Iraq of Samaritan's Purse--which has put out a press release about its activities--could prompt already-skeptical Muslims worldwide to view the war as a crusade against Islam. "We would not go in and participate in something that would embarrass our administration," he said. But he added, "We don't work for the U.S. Government, so we don't get our permission from them."

Speaking of Iraq, The Onion has inspired coverage here, here, and here. (And here. Because I can't link to it, here's a funny one paragrapher:

Government No Longer Even Bothering To Hide Halliburton Favors

WASHINGTON, DC-With last week's announcement that it will award Halliburton a lucrative contract to put out Iraqi oil-well fires after the war, the U.S. government has officially stopped trying to hide its favoritism toward the Houston-based company. "When we first started cutting Halliburton sweetheart deals, we'd worry about how it would look, with Dick Cheney being their former CEO and all," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "Somewhere along the line, though, we just kind of said, 'Ah, fuck it.'" Fleischer added that Halliburton has something "real juicy" coming its way when the U.S. invades Iran in July 2004.

There's also this disturbing article Joe Conason has on postwar plans for Iraq. Read the whole thing--there are many good sources quoted there, but here's a taste:

The excesses of the neoconservatives, as they concoct their postwar plans, are addressed in a surprisingly strong editorial today in the Washington Post, one of the nation's most hawkish newspapers. The Post editorial board worries that "a secretive Pentagon-led group is already far advanced in plans to unilaterally install a postwar regime dominated by Americans and Iraqi exiles -- one that would effectively exclude not only the United Nations but also European and Middle Eastern allies whose support will be essential to stabilizing the country. Even the State Department's nominees would be shut out by Defense Department leaders who talk of leaping from military rule to an interim Iraqi government in 90 days with the help of the American officials who would run Iraqi ministries. This narrow approach could compound the diplomatic damage of the war and expose the United States and its soldiers to large and unnecessary risks."

What that "Pentagon-led group" (shorthand for Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, and Wolfowitz) appears to be imposing is their version of a Tammany-style patronage clubhouse, fronted by the U.S. military. For years now, the neocons have wanted to replace the Baathists with the Iraqi National Congress and their pal Ahmed Chalabi, its leader. Achieving this objective while simultaneously building democracy raises a troubling contradiction, however -- since almost nobody in Iraq has ever heard of Chalabi, scion of a privileged Iraqi family that left the country decades ago. And many of those who have heard about him, over there and back here, would be none too pleased to see him in power.

Over here in the United States, here's some more news on problems with state budgets (which have already led to some serious problems with primaries). Quoth the Post:

The effort to secure the homeland is being carried out and financed increasingly by levels of government least able to pay for it: states, now facing their worst fiscal crises since World War II, and cities, which rely heavily on states for aid.

Governors and mayors said they are not skimping on public safety, but as a result, they are skimping on much else. "These responsibilities are unprecedented, and it's an extra cost burden when none of us can absorb it," said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R). "If you put extra personnel on bridges, you're taking money from public schools or telling scholarship students they can't go to college or taking medicine from elderly people. We're beyond the point of inconveniencing people. We're close to hurting them."

Last week, when President Bush unveiled a supplemental budget for the war in Iraq, including $2 billion for states and cities to step up security, governors and mayors of both parties declared it inadequate. Those funds, intended to cover costs for increased security during wartime, would come in addition to money other federal agencies are distributing to states and cities for health, transportation and other security needs.

Paul Krugman hits the same story:

In a remarkable recent article titled "The 9/10 President," Jonathan Chait of The New Republic documents how the Bush administration has systematically neglected homeland security since 9/11. In its effort to keep spending down, the administration has repeatedly blocked proposals to enhance security at potential domestic targets like ports and nuclear plants. What Mr. Chait doesn't point out is the extent to which already inadequate antiterrorism spending has been focused on the parts of the country that need it least.

I've written before about the myth of the heartland - roughly speaking, the "red states," which voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, as opposed to the "blue states," which voted for Al Gore. The nation's interior is supposedly a place of rugged individualists, unlike the spongers and whiners along the coasts. In reality, of course, rural states are heavily subsidized by urban states. New Jersey pays about $1.50 in federal taxes for every dollar it gets in return; Montana receives about $1.75 in federal spending for every dollar it pays in taxes.

Any sensible program of spending on homeland security would at least partly redress this balance. The most natural targets for terrorism lie in or near great metropolitan areas; surely protecting those areas is the highest priority, right?

Apparently not. Even in the first months after Sept. 11, Republican lawmakers made it clear that they would not support any major effort to rebuild or even secure New York. And now that anti-urban prejudice has taken statistical form: under the formula the Department of Homeland Security has adopted for handing out money, it spends 7 times as much protecting each resident of Wyoming as it does protecting each resident of New York.

To summarize, I bring on Matt Bivens:

While the Congressional Republicans play off cops and firefighters against veterans in an artificial tug-of- war over a billion or two dollars, it wants to hand over (again, a ballpark guesstimate) some 20 or 30 times as much money to America's bestest families, the top 1 percent of wealth. Welcome to the Republican agenda: They lead you in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and when you put your hand over your heart, they reach into your pocket.

Or, as our friend Tom DeLay says,"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." (Thanks to atrios.) It's all proof that Everyone in America, including me, has been driven completely insane by this war. So let's take to the streets and reclaim our position as the Second Superpower. Just make sure you don't do it in Oregon, or you'll end up doing 25 years.

There's a gorgeous freeware version of François Guyot's 16th c. Two Line Double Pica Roman font over at Apostrophic Lab.

The Hamilton Collection Lord Bless This Defender of Freedom Figurine

One of the more cogent pro-war arguments I've read thus far: The Pentagon's New Map. Via robot filter.

neat stuff at design object; the most sacrilegious flash game ever, Holy Virginity; and the Gallery of Food and Cereal Toy Premiums. Gosh, I wish I had sent away for a Jughead hat back in 1969. Oh, wait, I wasn't born yet.

I'm evidently third in the search for "blogs on being jobless". Nothing like having a search engine remind you.

These selected quotes are from The Hindu, an Indian Newspaper, because this was the top hit on Google's news engine.

In what could be seen as an embarrassment to the US-led invading forces, two western journalists were allegedly arrested, beaten up and deprived of food and water in Iraq by American armymen.

It said that despite possessing the proper 'Unilateral Journalist' accreditation issued by the Coalition Forces Central Command, both journalists were detained.

"I have covered 10 wars in the past six years in Angola, Afghanistan, Zaire, and East Timor. I have been arrested three times in Africa, but have never been subjected to such treatment or been physically beaten before,"

The Israeli journalist had some choice remarks as well, although in another article.

I link yet again to an excellent piece written by MS, Jewish intellectual (hey, that's his byline!), this one on Germany. Michael, you did France last -- is this a European series? Will you be writing on Belgium next?

Speaking of Radnor alums, I saw a guy with a Radnor Raiders t-shirt on the 2 train this morning. He looked like the kind of guy who I would have enjoyed punching, back in high school, if I actually punched anyone back in high school, which I didn't. So I didn't go up to him and say, "Hey, I went to Radnor too." Lucky for him.

A friend sent me this MSNBC story about the little-remarked bardlike qualities of our Secretary of Defense. "The Situation," in particular, strikes me as an eloquent ode to zen-like, pre-war ennui.

Maybe we were just tired, but after 40 min neither of us knew what the hell was going on. And.... everything... moved.... so... slowly....

... Carnival of the Vanities! Thanks, Nicole!

Why, here in these United States, a man was just arrested for putting explosives into a van--so that he could kill a Palestinian Muslim family. He's a repeat offender. Atrios turned me on to this story.

Well, I was getting ready to write something long in response to M_____' question posed in this comment thread where it looks -- gasp! -- like there's an actual discussion taking place. I may faint. Anyway, he posed a question about polling data, and I was trying to find this site on W's approval rates. (It must have been on a blog I saw somewhere.) This guy is clearly anti-Bush, but he does have the raw data over time which is pretty interesting to look at. During my Googling for this thing, I came across an interesting study on the "rally 'round the flag" phenomenon -- the oft-noted tendency of the President's approval ratings to jump once we get into a conflict. The average, as it turns out, is a 3.8% spike, with a 3 month half-life. But he's got some interesting things to say about the rationality of the American public.

Anyway, this was going to be part of a longer post, which I may get around to actually making later on. But thought you'd be interested in some numbers. Hey, I've got numbers here! Come and get 'em!

Buttercup rules. Includes McCracken's original pilot for the PPG, the Whoopass Girls. Also, DVD commentary by Mojo Jojo!

Richard Price. Spike Lee's adaptation was way off the mark (see below). The novel was worth rereading.

Folks, I’ve had enough. After years of (mostly) working for dehumanizing corporations ruled by faceless bureaucracy and baseless policies, after years of stewing in a country that doesn’t seem to want my kind any more, I’ve decided to opt out. While it’s a pretty big change, even for me, I think it’s going to be the best thing.

The S.O. and I have talked it over, and we’re moving to Rome. She figures she can get a job teaching English, and once my Italian gets a little better, I figure I can too. Until that point, there’s bound to be good opportunities for someone of my experience. The Italians use computers, don’t they?

Since she graduates in May and finishes up working in June, we’ll probably leave then or soon after. I’ve already given my two weeks’ notice at work and am going to go on a farewell tour by automobile of these great United States immediately after, so let your friends in Dubuque know that I’m coming to town.

Until then, have a happy April first.

Update: This was timely and humorous, but Blogger had a “serious hardware failure” earlier today that took until 6pm EST to sort out.