There's no way around it folks. $13.50/hr should be the bottom line. That plus universal health care and a safety net for seniors that's solid, and we're on our way to a civilized society.

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Petition to oppose new copyright rules that would close many Internet streaming radio stations, due to doubling royalties.

More info (and sample letters) here.

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Genetically altered crops are beginning to get noticed far from their source. This case in Mexico over corn is just the tip of the iceberg, I'll bet. I can't believe scientists think they can control something like this.

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BigMed can share your medical files, but you can't share music. Coz it's, you know, Good For The Economy.

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I watched the new video of Donnie Darko tonight, and really fell into it. It's rare for me to be so bewildered by a movie in a good way. This one was more of a brain-spinner than Memento , though the direction wasn't as flashy. The film's vibe of dislocation in time and reality was very familiar. Not a "big" film, but one I like more than most. Rather phildickian.

The official website is Flash and trippy -- a game or something. I have limited patience for this. Here's the metacritic summary and here's a pretty good review form salon . I'd heard tell of this film, but it slid by quickly, and I can see why. Except for the supernatural angle, little about it is like the popular films of late. And it is way too complex and nuanced for most audience's taste, I'd imagine. Right up my street though. I like nothing better than a movie I have to see twice to appreciate. I'll be following Richard Kelly's career closely.

No I won't say anything about it. See it before you read about it. Or read the salon review, if you must.

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Thursday, March 21, 2002


Apparently the New Imperial 57¢ stamp -- which features the same eagle as the armband for the new Neighborhood Watch program (Ed McMahon encourages you to snitch on your neighbor) -- is based on a Nazi SS design ("Aryan Blue" -- really), which in turn was based on a design from the Roman Empire's Obsidian Order/Praetorian Guard. [link via Orlin Grabbe]

This is my only source for this however, and I couldn't find a pic of the stamp. The current Art Deco one is pretty intimidating too, though. Also, I saw on TV today that the price of stamps (all rates) are supposed to go up again this summer (first class to 37¢).

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For you Warren Zevon fans -- if you haven't heard, he did a collaboration with Carl Hiaasen based on a "song" in Hiaasen's new novel Basket Case, of the same name. Mp3 available on Zevon's site. Not bad, either, though I don't listen to much rock anymore, and wouldn't be the one to ask.

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But if all this generates more wattage and higher stakes by Oscar time, that's just show biz, say many observers.

"This isn't shocking really, it's reality," says Lisa Schwarzbaum, movie critic for Entertainment Weekly. "Oscars have always been about more than 'pure' artistic merit. With thousands of people voting, each with personal agendas and interests, what wins is inevitably a mix of merit, zeitgeist and odds. What's shifted in recent years is the degree to which the campaigning has become visible."

But why is it liberating for a college-age woman to jump into bed with a man that is not her husband? Why is it freeing to become intoxicated and to hook-up with anonymous frat guys? Why is it an expression of equal rights to give into men's animalistic instincts?

Presumably, women could exercise their true power to tame men by using celibacy (and other ladylike behavior) to induce men into monogamous stable relationships and eventually into marriage. Along the way to healthy relationships, women could also gain some self-respect.

[...]

The result of young women's abdication of responsibility has been significant moral decay on America's college campuses. Can the moral high ground ever be reclaimed? Perhaps one church pew at a time. [link]

rightright.

[via Unknown News, always a pleasure]

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More news on how we deal with Sekhu: alternative dispositions.

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Tom Tomorrow does one for the kids!

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The government issued strict rules for how federal agencies may use cookies in 2000 after it was discovered that the White House drug policy office had used the technology to track computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising. The rules ban the use of "persistent" cookies, which track Web habits over years.

Daniel Brandt discovered on Thursday that a CIA site had placed one of those long-lasting cookies on his computer. Brandt is president of Public Information Research, a private San Antonio-based group that preserves publications related to intelligence and business.

Brandt said he discovered the cookie, which keeps working until 2010, when he was looking at the Web site for the CIA's Electronic Reading Room, which provides access to previously released agency documents.

"They're not supposed to be doing this," Brandt said. He said he was particularly concerned because the reading room site allows users seeking documents to search for particular words.

"The keywords you put in reveal an incredible amount about what you're looking for and what your interests are," Brandt said. "It would be very, very tempting to track that kind of information."

A notice on the CIA Web site states, "The Central Intelligence Agency Web site does NOT use the 'cookies' that some Web sites use to gather and store information about your visits to their sites." [link]

German researchers claim face creams and preservatives in food aren't allowing bodies to decay, thus crowding cemetaries. [via null device]

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When I was 9, my family took us to Palisades Park , a huge amusement park across the river from NYC. I was never big on scary rides, but they took me on the big roller coaster anyway. I screamed so loud and so ferociously they actually stopped the ride, which I understand was never done. I was out of my mind. Last roller coaster I ever rode. No I did ride something similar (but much smaller scale, and not arcing over the Hudson River) with my first girlfriend (natch) 11 years later, at Great Adventure in my hometown of Jackson NJ.

Another sign that I wasn't going to fit in very well in our adopted homeland. People doing things over and over that seemed like torture to me. [above link to defunct amusement parks nice site via boing boing]

I was born in Canada, btw.

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Tuesday, March 19, 2002


"Black water" off the Florida Gulf Coast. [last 3 posts via Undernews]

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San Francisco's "diversity index" looks like a good idea to me.

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Wild in the streets?

BALDWIN, Pa. - Police plan to file charges against at least seven children, ages 8 to 12, for allegedly invading the apartment of two young women, molesting them and stealing their food.

Which nicely follows up my post from the weekend about academe and the CIA.


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British men are less fertile than hamsters.
Seems hormone-disrupting chemicals are crashing the sperm count of British men. This reinforces the post from last week about the unprecedented pollution of water with household and industrial chemicals in the US and the unknown effects they may have. Pesticides, PCBs, and prescription estrogen all screw up your hormones.

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There's a petition circulating to demand hardware manufacturers include Ogg Vorbis support in their players.

I can't say I've found it to be superior in quality to mp3 (as many claim), but I still agree with the premise.

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Speaking of dictionaries, Your Dictionary seems like a good clearinghouse for them, particularly foreign language ones. I still think I like refdesk's multi-dictionary lookup service best for definitions in English though.

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Interesting blowback on HBO's Project Greenlight series from participants Aidan Quinn and Kevin Pollak.

Like many of those who were kicked off the island, then went home and saw how they were portrayed in highlights of the CBS reality show, Quinn, Jones and Pollak all complained that the footage aired on "Project Greenlight" was edited to show onlythe experience's infrequent moments of tension and frustration. The director and his stars all told United Press International they were greatly disappointed the showfocused on the few negative moments and not the passion and joy they felt in making a movie they are all very proud of.

Admitting that "Project Greenlight" generated a lot more publicity for "Stolen Summer" than most low-budget films usually receive, Pollak said he was concerned that the series also made the movie look like a "train wreck." The upside to that, he said, is that the series lowered people's expectations to the point where they may find
themselves pleasantly surprised by how good the film really is.

[...]

"They made Aidan out to be Richard III and they used something I said that was so out of context that I was floored. I could not believe it. ... They succeeded wildly
in creating an unbelievably entertaining show and they raised the profile of the movie and (director) Pete Jones, who, I think, is a wonderful story teller. And I love that
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are giving back to the writing community. All of that is fantastic, so if the series raises the awareness of all that, then it outweighs the
negative and my little personal concerns don't rule the day. Quite frankly, I know not to ever do this again to myself." [via Drudge]

Among the most controversial CIA policies is its insistence that scholars sign a lifetime secrecy agreement before receiving a security clearance. According to CIA spokesman Tom Crispell, this means they must submit for review any books or articles they write that touch on the topic of their classified access or the broader subject of intelligence. Crispell stresses that the review is not editorial; rather, it is designed to prevent inadvertent disclosure of classified materials. But some allege that the review process can be highly politicized. And as the recent cases of Wen Ho Lee and John Deutch show, academics, like anyone else, are legally liable if they act improperly with classified information.

Chicago's Bruce Cumings is adamant that security clearances are simply incompatible with the obligation of scholars to "speak truth to power," as international relations guru and Vietnam protester Hans Morgenthau once put it. Says Cumings, "Professors involved in international affairs should not have security clearances from any governments, including their own." If academics want to heed Karl Spielmann's call to research "denial and deception," he says, "why don't they go join the CIA and stay there, and stop pretending they're professors who subscribe to canons of truth, objectivity, and honesty in the classroom?"

[...]

In Cumings's view, far too many scholars today, particularly in international relations, collaborate with the government. "It's quite common for people in the IR field, younger and older ones, to go to the National Security Council for a while or to the CIA as consultants," he says. Cumings believes this both creates intolerable burdens on academic openness and skews scholarship: "That's one of the reasons the subdiscipline of international relations is so conservative and so concerned with realpolitik and realism as the major paradigms of inquiry, which sort of fits with what national security managers believe in." [link]

Of course these days academics are being accused of being "liberal" just because they teach at universities. So I imagine anyone whose politics are "questionable" or whose research touches on intelligence, Arab culture, terrorism, or anything considered germane to 9/11 and Islam, all are under some scrutiny, or will be.

An interesting sidenote: Thomas Volgy, a professor at the U. of Arizona, claims he walked by a door with the words 'Office of Weather and Climate Modification' written on it. He was told his security clearance wasn't high enough to ask what that was about. This confirms rumors I've heard though. Neither Volgy nor Chris Mooney, the writer, bat an eyelash at this information however. Just a funny incident, y'know.

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shrubadmin invokes Patriot Act to submit secret evidence for the first time.

Employing a controversial strategy, the U.S. Justice Department says it plans to use secret evidence to justify the financial sanctions it imposed on a Chicago-area Muslim charity as part of its effort to choke off terrorist funding after Sept. 11.

Bridgeview-based Global Relief Foundation has filed a lawsuit saying the government violated the Constitution in freezing the charity's assets in December, citing suspected links to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.

The case in federal court in Chicago appears to be the first time the government has tried to use secret evidence--which would be shared with the judge but not with the charity or its attorneys--under a provision of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act signed in October by President Bush, legal experts said.

Immigration cases are a more common venue for the use of secret evidence, which has drawn fire because it changes one of the most basic rules of the American legal system: that people get a chance to confront the evidence being used against them by the government. [viazem.squidly.org]

Interest in 17th-century Dutch painting seems to be cresting, including several current popular novels that are set in that period. A thrilling exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, "Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt" shows why. "A Lady Writing" is just one of some 50 paintings by Dutch masters in the show, which manages to uncover the very roots of modern thought in art, religion, and democratic social structure (the rise of the middle class and the importance of the ordinary person). The paintings celebrate daily life among rich and poor alike, domesticity, and the economic contributions of women to the household. And they celebrate the interior spiritual life, the common man or woman alone with God.

Long before anyone ever heard of Qualcomm, CMGI, Cisco Systems, or the other high-tech stocks that have soared during the current bull market, there was Semper Augustus. Both more prosaic and more sublime than any stock or bond, it was a tulip of extraordinary beauty, its midnight- blue petals topped by a band of pure white and accented with crimson flares. To denizens of 17th century Holland, little was as desirable.

[...]

Bulb prices rose steadily throughout the 1630s, as ever more speculators wedged into the market. Weavers and farmers mortgaged whatever they could to raise cash to begin trading. In 1633, a farmhouse in Hoorn changed hands for three rare bulbs. By 1636 any tulip--even bulbs recently considered garbage--could be sold off, often for hundreds of guilders. A futures market for bulbs existed, and tulip traders could be found conducting their business in hundreds of Dutch taverns. Tulip mania reached its peak during the winter of 1636-37, when some bulbs were changing hands ten times in a day. The zenith came early that winter, at an auction to benefit seven orphans whose only asset was 70 fine tulips left by their father. One, a rare Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen bulb that was about to split in two, sold for 5,200 guilders, the all-time record. All told, the flowers brought in nearly 53,000 guilders.

Soon after, the tulip market crashed utterly, spectacularly. It began in Haarlem, at a routine bulb auction when, for the first time, the greater fool refused to show up and pay. Within days, the panic had spread across the country. Despite the efforts of traders to prop up demand, the market for tulips evaporated. Flowers that had commanded 5,000 guilders a few weeks before now fetched one-hundredth that amount. [link]

These themes of the idealization of the middle class family (and the renewed interest in spirituality in general) and the addictive glee of financial speculation -- as well as the new significance of women in the economy -- are now prominent here as well.

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"I never really sensed that there was any problem between Dave and Ted," Burnett said. "I know that there's no animosity personally between the two men."

Letterman, in his on-air valentine to Koppel last week, called him "a gentleman, a great guest and very funny."

"What he has done and his contributions to American culture speak for themselves," Letterman said. "He is one of a very small group that represents the highest echelon of broadcast achievement, without question."

Was that guilt talking?

Perhaps a little. Pity was probably speaking louder. [link]

I especially admire the author's treatment of L. Ron Hubbard, the man with the indelibly dubious reputation (as brought to light in John Carter's book Sex and Rockets). Initially, Scientology was probably a very effective tool to obtain mental and spiritual health, if not complete liberation from the matrix of manipulation and control. However, negative forces in the form of various occult and intelligence agencies, governmental and otherwise have stepped in to use it for their own short sighted, delusional purposes. Such malignant colonization of potentially liberating means by negative forces has become so widespread that it would be hard to dismiss these intrusions as paranoid fancy or merely anomalous phenomena after reading Phenomenal World.

[...]

I could not help but get drawn into D'Arc's inclusion of information pertaining to the possible Masonic ritual sacrifice of Apollo astronauts . Gus Grissom, one of the Apollo 1 astronauts that died in a space capsule fire on 27 January 1967, was a 33 degree Freemason. Apparently during the fire, Alnitak in Orion's belt was at 33 degrees. Also the UN Space Treaty of 1967 was being signed in the White House during this staged disaster, no doubt as a prelude of things to come (Challenger?).

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Also from boing boing, the always intriguing Kevin Kelly on how music will change because of P2P and the net, etc.

Free is overrated as a destiny. It is only the second phase of the three stages of copydom. The first phase -- perfection -- is experienced in both analog and digital. Perfect duplication made the modern world and modern music.

The second stage is freeness. Costless duplication made Napster possible and a music revolution thinkable.

Yet it is in the third level of digital copy-ness that the real revolution lies. This third power is liquidity, and it will take music beyond Napster.

Digital copies are not only perfect and free, they are also fluid. Once music is digitized it becomes a liquid that can be morphed and migrated and flexed and linked. You can filter it, bend it, archive it, rearrange it, remix it, mess with it. And you can do this to music that you write, or music that you listen to, or music that you borrow.

. . . when [marketing whiz Charlotte] Beers went on a mission to Egypt in January to improve the image of the U.S. among Arab "opinion-makers," it didn't go well. Muhammad Abdel Hadi, an editor at the newspaper Al Ahram, left his meeting with Beers frustrated that she seemed more interested in talking about vague American values than about specific U.S. policies. "No matter how hard you try to make them understand," he said, "they don't."

[...]

Somehow, despite all the global culture pouring out of New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta, despite the fact that you can watch CNN in Cairo and Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu, America still hasn't managed, in Beers' words, to "get out there and tell our story." In fact, the problem is just the opposite: America's marketing of itself has been too effective. School children can recite its claims to democracy, liberty and equal opportunity as readily as they can associate McDonald's with family fun and Nike with athletic prowess. And they expect the U.S. to live up to its promises.

If they are angry, as millions clearly are, it's because they have seen those promises betrayed by U.S. policy.

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A new site, "The Daily Enron," has a .pdf graphic of Bush/Enron connections.

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Another good reason to read David Brock's book (see below): Americans for Victory Over Terrorism the new "'front organization for the hard neo-con (neo-conservative) right,' [according to one of their targets, Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's ] which has gained unprecedented influence in the Bush administration, particularly among the top political appointees in the Pentagon and Dick Cheney's office." Another target: that anarchist firebrand and friend to terrorists everywhere, Jimmy Carter.

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With a surgeon shortage in the offing , perhaps government subsidies (for school grants maybe?) will be necessary to lure doctors into the profession? And maybe the sundry huge costs of medical education through medical equipment, etc. will have to be looked at. Though that won't change the fact that women (half all med school graduates now) will miss most of their child-bearing years if they choose the surgical profession.

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The Catholic Church's um karma catches up with it.

From schools of theology to dining- room tables, a growing number of Catholics are questioning the bedrock on which the church is built the all-male, celibate priesthood. Parishioners are calling for open dialogue and debate about a tenet that Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II has said is closed for discussion.

In a startling step, the official Catholic newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, said in an editorial on Friday that the Catholic Church must now confront questions and commission studies about whether the celibate, unmarried, all-male priesthood should be continued.

Cardinal Law, who is considered a conservative Vatican loyalist, said on Friday night that the editorial was not intended to question the church's position on clerical celibacy, but to reflect issues raised by others because of the scandal. No church leaders expect any immediate change in a doctrine that has served the church for centuries. But the practical effects of the scandal are evident already.

The church is at risk of losing some of the legal protections that have shielded it from criminal prosecution in the United States. Its moral authority on such issues as social justice and the status of Jerusalem is also in peril. [link]

US NAVAL OFFICER WHO WROTE ADVANCE WARNINGS OF 9-11 ORDERED FREED ON BAIL WHILE LAWYERS NOT PRESENT, JUDGE MAKES PUBLIC THE ADDRESS WHERE MIKE VREELAND WILL BE LIVING AND ORDERS CURFEW HOURS. THE SAME ORDER IN 1986 LED TO THE PUBLIC EXECUTION OF INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE AND DRUG SMUGGLER BARRY SEAL

[...]

Vreeland's assertions, based upon documentary evidence and continuing court proceedings have steadily been gaining credibility in spite of unfounded and meritless attacks by U.S. media that have failed to address any of the specific documentation in the case. [link]

Scientific study of both the physical world and the inner world of human experiences are, according to Dr Newberg, equally beneficial.

"When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our usual everyday sense of reality," he said.

He added: "Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality."

Nicotine doesn't just stimulate the brain's "reward" centre, it also shuts down the system that limits how long those rewards last.

[...]

The brain's reward centres normally reinforce behaviours that are good for you, such as eating when you're hungry.

Nicotine hijacks the reward system by attaching to receptors on nerve cells and triggering the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter which causes pleasant feelings.

Nicotine also attaches to another receptor that triggers the release of a chemical called GABA, which stops dopamine.

The receptors keep releasing GABA until they run out and they can't produce more for up to an hour after being exposed to nicotine.

Without GABA, the body can't stop the pleasure signal caused by nicotine.

"As a result, the reward system is turned on right away and it keeps sending reward signals for 60 minutes even though nicotine levels drop off 15 minutes after smoking," said McGehee.

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA, TIMES OF INDIA - The popular American theory that money talks, or at least it makes people talk, is in dire threat of eing disproved in Afghanistan. The $25 million bounty Uncle Sam has offered for information leading to the capture of Osama Bin Laden hasn't worked, because, US officials are now saying, the Afghans can't comprehend just how large the sum is. The result: Uncle Sam is now "downsizing" the reward. The US will now offer to build a road, dig a well, or give away a flock of sheep to Afghan communities that rat on Bin Laden. The change in the "booty treatment" comes after American officials in the region found that poor Afghan peasants were clueless about Big Money. A general reportedly asked an Afghan what he could do with $25 million if he helped the United States find Osama Bin Laden. The local replied that the money might be enough to feed his nine children for a year. So the Bush dministration has now considered a $5 million discretionary fund to pay for basic inducements such as cash, livestock or help drilling a well. The hope is that average Afghans, many of whom are poor and illiterate, can relate to owning a flock of sheep more than becoming a millionaire. [via Undernews]

=========================================

Inside, in the cramped space doubled by the mirrors on the walls, there wee several long rails with various types of jeans and a long shelf of shoes, mostly trainers. Tatarsky cast a weary glance over the splendour of leather and rubber. Ten years ago a new pair of trainers brought in from abroad by a distant relative used to mark the starting point of a new period in your life -- the design on the sole was a simulacrum of the pattern on the palm of your hand, from which you could forecast the future for a year ahead. The happiness that could be extracted from such an acquisition was boundless. Nowadays, to earn the right to the same amount you had to buy at least a jeep, maybe even a house . . . 'The inflation of happiness,' he jotted down hastily: 'having to pay more money for the same amount. Use in advertising real estate: Ladies and gentlemen! These walls offer you sure-fire protection against cognitive dissonance! You need never even know what it is.' [from Homo Zapiens by Victor Pelevin]

David Brock's "Blinded by the Right" is a confession of a tawdrier color, though no less a classic contribution to this significant literature of our time [referring to The God That Failed by Koestler/Spender/Gide etc. and Whittaker Chambers' Witness about the Russian Communist era]. Arguably, Brock played a more momentous part in his movement than did his confessional predecessors in theirs. Accordingly, he is hugely contrite. He has much to be contrite about -- much, much more than he owned up to in a confessional article published in Esquire in 1997. Anyone wishing to understand America in the 1990s will have to read his book.

This time the conspirators are assassins of character (of Anita Hill, Bill Clinton), not of Trotsky. The right-wing crowd Brock fell in with in the late 1980s and 1990s was not terribly interested in ideas. These well-fed propagandists and lawyers (including an appellate court judge) moved among Washington D.C. townhouses and restaurants scheming to obstruct liberal causes and bring down the elected government of Clinton, whom they mistook for the antichrist.

These slash-and-burn power-seekers fancied themselves "conservative" but were, and are, Brock says, "a radical cult," well-placed, well-funded and ruthless, who organized single-mindedly to get power by smearing their opponents and who succeeded brilliantly, with no small assist from him.