charging the canvas

Saturday, September 07, 2002

The HAARP Project has been a hot topic in New Age/conspiracy circles for years; now it seems a group of Russian Parliamentarians are raising the red flag (whoops) about it too.
"The significance of this qualitative leap could be compared to the transition from cold steel to firearms, or from conventional weapons to nuclear weapons. This new type of weapons differs from previous types in that the near-Earth medium becomes at once an object of direct influence and its component.["]

[...]

The USA plans to carry out large-scale scientific experiments under the HAARP programme, and not controlled by the global community, will create weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines and have a negative impact on the mental health of people populating entire regions, the deputies said.
This story is a few weeks old too, but bears repeating. This is some nasty shit they're cooking up in the Arctic.

7:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

This item about the Fort Bragg spouse killers showed up in Undernews a couple weeks ago, when I was unable to post for awhile
MARK BENJAMIN AND DAN OLMSTED, UPI - Friends of the three Fort Bragg soldiers suspected of killing their wives this summer say the men exhibited unusual anger and incoherence after returning from Afghanistan where they were given an anti-malaria drug associated with aggression and mental problems. One of the soldiers was "almost incoherent" and visibly shaking while describing marital problems to a neighbor. Another became unable to control his anger at his wife in public, startling those who knew him. A third puzzled his new neighbors with his strange behavior. Soldiers at Fort Bragg said they are well aware of mental problems linked to the anti-malaria drug Lariam, which include aggression, depression, paranoia, hallucinations and suicidal thinking, even as official military spokesmen dismiss a connection between the drug and the events around Fayetteville this summer which have drawn national attention. Spokesmen for the Army, which invented the drug and says it is safe, told UPI the Army will review scientific literature on Lariam, also called mefloquine, but believe it played no role in any of the deaths because there is evidence of domestic problems in each one.

7:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Been a long time since I . . . posted search referrals
paxil heaven
foot fucking post
orwell playlist
spanking blogs
all the girls that fucked davezilla
towers open fire william burroughs
spanking mummy's little boy
angelina jolie getting her toes suck
"world trade center" towers tarot alamut
hyperreal erotica
fetish japanese crossed legs
kesey cornstarch
John Marley candles upper canada.
"the pre-teens" cincinnati
Shania Twain tied up and gagged STORIES
george gray weakest link pics
"canvas" "dying"
fairly odd parents- fanarts
Also, there was the google text redaction for the "jolie" post, which was amusing:

(... sucking Hilary Rosen's toes ... is out due to Angelina Jolie's ... Democratic candidates were getting ... international figure, like her ... vampiric energy they suck ...)

These are the only interesting posts for the last 2 1/2 months. Things really slowed down with the new design/URL.

7:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

As 9/11.2 approaches, the propaganda machine is gearing up major

7:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tip o' the Blog to ~~Webmink~~ The Mink Dimension (there ya go Simon!) for linking here

Thanks Simon, you're on my list (of links that is).

11:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Canadian Confusion

According to the Globe and Mail, Canadians "overwhelmingly say U.S. foreign policy [is] at [the] heart of terrorist anger", yet 40% think Saddam should be "removed by any means possible".

The latter isn't a majority but it's still way higher than I would expect.

11:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

On a personal note

We're finally getting rain. It's rained since yestereday afternoon, with a few breaks but good downpours too. Arizona needs it desperately. Looks like the pattern may continue through Monday too.

Weird synchronicity My grandmother passed away a few weeks ago, and was buried in northern Manitoba near my grandfather. The village cemetary and small church are all that's left of Rembrandt, Manitoba, which is 10 miles NW of Gimli, the nearest town of note, where the wake was.

The strange thing is, I was just looking at the Guy Maddin site (eccentric and lauded Canadian filmnaker) which I read about when Wiley Wiggins was guest-blogging on boing boing last summer, and one of his notorious films is Tales from the Gimli Hospital ("Reckless envy, unconsummated passions, and necrophilia set the tone for the surreal tales shared by two patients confined together during a smallpox epidemic in turn of the century Gimli, Manitoba.").

Now believe me, a lot of Canadians have never heard of Gimli, never mind Americans. My grandparents actually emigrated there from the Ukraine . . . after the turn of the century, around WWI I think.

Very weird.

10:30 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Government still not serious about drug price relief

A "10-13% reduction" -- and the drug store conglomerates might fight that.

9:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

...now the news from Europe: Conservative Swedish pol says Swedes need pornTV for the economy (more kids), the French overwhelmingly want pornTV banned because it's making kids abuse each other

9:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"My way or the highway. . ."
Where did our current President obtain this belief in raw power being used for his benefit alone? For that we need to look to Pluto, raw power is never so evident as when one is born with Pluto in the 1st house, as was George W. Bush. Pluto has the ability to hide and justify hidden agendas, obfuscating what is really going on. Pluto is as adept at confusing issues as Neptune, but Pluto does so with intent. When placed in the 1st house of self, it becomes ones own personal agenda that is being hidden.

[...]

Hidden workings were afoot that would ultimately and shockingly affect our roots; and will continue to impact the very foundations of this country. Unexpected changes to the underpinnings of the US would rule this Presidency.

[...]

...look for all the hidden agendas to be brought into the light until Election 2004.

9:09 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, September 06, 2002

August 30, 1964: A cultural snapshot of the night Dylan got the Beatles high
Something was happening here . . . but no one knew exactly what. The American middle class, soon to be dubbed "Mr. Jones" by Dylan, was complacently confident in itself, its power, and its future, for there seemed to be no limit to what its America could achieve. It had won two wars and put a man in space. The gross national product had averaged 5 per cent annual growth for more than thirteen years, and the real income of the average American worker had risen steadily for more than a decade. Clearly, things were getting better all the time. Compared to his counterpart in the mid-1950s, Mr. Jones could afford to welcome change, but only because he was certain that the rational, technical, disinterested minds of business, government, and academy could control the scope and force of that change.

[...]

This was the America -- confident, stable, risk-taking, with tiny fissures of doubt opening here and there -- in which the Beatles, for the first time, got high. In which McCartney, according to a firsthand account of the afternoon, "seems to have had an out-of-body experience"; he "declared that he was 'really thinking' for the first time and ordered road manager Mal Evans to write down everything he said."

Really thinking meant what? This is a question about the effects of psychedelics, but it is also a question about the needs of the young people who found in them something (what is exactly the question) that would help them get by. "There's no question," remembers writer Annie Gottlieb, "that the shift from alcohol to grass and acid manifested an enormous break in sensibility between us and our parents." But what exactly was the nature of this new sensibility? What explains the difference between Frank Sinatra singing subtle and sophisticated lyrics by Cole Porter and Bob Dylan delivering [his] caustic attack (in the form of a thirteen-bar blues) on the hapless Mr. Jones?

9:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Robert Prechter on the coming deflationary depression
"Only the largest stock-market declines lead to depressions ... and those are the ones that follow ... a big amount of credit and a large mania of stocks that gets the public involved. I think the United States is in the middle of one of those."

"The last major area will be a fall in real estate. The real-estate frenzy we saw this summer was a replay of the stock frenzy we saw in 2000. We went back 200 years looking at the major peaks and found the real-estate market tended to peak nearby, usually with a two-year lag."

"What's going to happen when the stock market finally bottoms? You'll be able to go in there and buy stocks that used to trade at $85 a share for maybe half a dollar or a quarter of a dollar."

"I'm not fully sure what will happen with gold and silver. Precious metals do not go up in deflationary periods unless there are price controls on them, as (gold) did in the '30s. The price of silver went down with everything else. I have five reasons why you should own (gold) anyway."

Prechter also questions the safety of most money-market funds and bank deposits, which bankers have squandered on expensive real-estate loans that will plummet in value. The 53-year-old forecaster recommends a number of safe-money reports that rate banks by their lending reserves.

At the heart of Prechter's case is the credit expansion of the 20th century.

8:31 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

My name cyborged by the Obedient Replicants at Brunching Shuttlecocks [aprés Lester]

6:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Hi-toned Moonie puffpiece on lizardboy II
But history may show that Vice President Dick Cheney was precisely the right man, at the right place, at the right time, and that in the space of those few hours, he changed the perception if not the reality of the vice-presidency.

In many ways, Sept. 11 was the moment for which Cheney had been training for all his professional life.

[...]

"Dick Cheney doesn't shake. He's the Grand Tetons -- he is unflappable," said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a former aide.

[...]

"The White House foreign policy is Cheney's foreign policy. He is providing the intellectual context for the White House," argues [historian and Hunter S. Thompson editor] Douglas Brinkley.
OOOhhh yeahhh, he da man.

5:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Why do sites like PC World (which you'd think would know better, and have a sense of pride about features on their website) have search engines that are useless?

5:00 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

shrub's niece won't wear turban on catwalk, falls ill

Muslim hex suspected.

4:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Public Service Announcement: South African "Hi-speed" condoms sponsored by Metropolitan Insurance
...a condom can be put on in just three seconds, compared to the standard 30-40 seconds, the developers say.

Research shows that many people do not use condoms because they are fiddly and can be "passion killers".

[...]

As a life insurer, Metropolitan has an interest in helping people live longer he said, explaining why he had agreed to fund the project.
And -- how 'bout this synchronicity!? -- right when I was posting this, 2 Mormons came to the door and they were fiddly "passion killers" too!

So I threw them away and whipped out my Hi-Speed spiritual prophylactic and got busy!!

The ~~Lizard~~ Lord works in mysterious ways, truly.

4:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Drudge is breaking the Mailer piece in the London Times this weekend on post-9/11 patriotism in America
"The British have a love of their country that is profound. They can revile it, tell dirty stories about it. But deep down their patriotism is deep. In America we're playing musical chairs - don't get caught without a flag or you're out of the game. Why do we need all this reaffirmation? It's as if we're a three hundred pound man who's seven feet tall, superbly shaped, absolutely powerful, and every three minutes he's got to reaffirm the fact that his arm pits have a wonderful odor. We don't need compulsive, self-serving patriotism. It's odious...

"When you have a great country it's your duty to be critical of it so it can become even greater..."

[...]

"Clinton made a point of surrounding himself with people who might be 90% as intelligent as himself, but never his equal. Bush is smart enough to know that he couldn't possibly do the same, or the country would be run by morons."
Nothing I disagree with here. About time someone said this stuff besides Woody Harrelson and Gore Vidal et al -- who didn't put it quite this way.

1:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Foreign contestants -- and local fundamental Islamics -- protest Miss World contest in Lagos, Nigeria

Misses France, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Togo are boycotting because of the well-publicized stoning sentence given under Sharia law to a woman accused of adultery. Militant Islamic groups say the pageant offends nudity standards, claiming promiscuity is promoted which increases the AIDS dangers.

9:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

China, whose government has been embarrassed and conflicted about the extent of AIDS there, leans on BigPharma on AIDS drug prices

The government blames provinces for not reporting but clearly doesn't want -- and doesn't want outsiders to know -- how bad the epidemic is there. A campaigner for AIDS victims disappeared 2 weeks ago.

9:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Gary Price links to DocMorph which is a web app that allows you to convert files to .pdf or extract text from an image file among other things

12:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, September 05, 2002

France's 35-hour work week experiment ends abruptly under conservative government fiat [u]

11:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

How neo-con thinktanks the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Washington Institute and the Middle East Forum dominate the media [u]
Although these three privately-funded organisations promote views from only one end of the political spectrum, the amount of exposure that they get with their books, articles and TV appearances is extraordinary.

The Washington Institute, for example, takes the credit for placing up to 90 articles written by its members - mainly "op-ed" pieces - in newspapers during the last year.

Fourteen of those appeared in the Los Angeles Times, nine in New Republic, eight in the Wall Street Journal, eight in the Jerusalem Post, seven in the National Review Online, six in the Daily Telegraph, six in the Washington Post, four in the New York Times and four in the Baltimore Sun. Of the total, 50 were written by Michael Rubin.

Anyone who has tried offering op-ed articles to a major newspaper will appreciate the scale of this achievement.

The media attention bestowed on these thinktanks is not for want of other experts in the field. American universities have about 1,400 full-time faculty members specialising in the Middle East.

10:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

10 films for the fall

10:16 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election ("A documentary film about the battle for the Presidency in Florida") looks like a must-see -- have to petition my local video store to get it

9:36 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Greg Palast will be on Phil Donahue at Midnight PT, if you missed it today, talking about Jeb Bush

9:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"X Files" fans and conspiracy researchers take note: The new book by Jane's Defense Weekly veteran reporter Nick Cook, The Hunt for Zero Point, looks like a watershed for people interested in black ops and anti-gravity experiments, as well as the notorious and very creepy Operation Paperclip
...The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Anti-Gravity Technology ... documents [Cook's] ten-year search for a mythical technology that all the brightest minds in aerospace were gushing about in the early 1950s. Strangely, just a few years later the aerospace world was suddenly silent on the subject. After about 1956, anyone who mentioned antigravity, or the once-imminent "G-engines," was given a wide berth. It was an odd switch that left Cook with questions: Had there been anything to these rumors and reports? If not, why the hype? If so, what had happened?

[...]

One conclusion Cook reaches in The Hunt for Zero Point is that some of the "Foo Fighters" that World War II pilots reported seeing over Axis territories may have been German prototypes of new flying machines that used antigravity technology. He also posits that somewhere in the black world, work has likely continued along these lines, and that much of the wackiness surrounding sightings of "UFOs" has been deliberately spun to ward off investigations of new technologies in development.
Imagine what they're still not telling us if this info -- and the recently reported experimentation in anti-grav by Boeing (also reported by Cook) -- is being officially released now.

Also of note: Canadian renegade researcher John Hutchison's verified success in transmuting lead into steel and vice versa, and the case of Hans Kammler, architect of the Nazi secret weapons program and co-architect of the death camps -- and (though he conveniently "disappeared" before Nuremberg) perhaps the mind behind the black ops architecture in the US.

8:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Here's a piece at The Atlantic's site that asserts the President does have to get Congress's approval before declaring war

I'm no Constitutional expert, but the writer clearly has no personal qualms about invading Iraq, so that lends some legitimacy.
...the constitutional scheme has never been smashed as irretrievably as it would be by an unauthorized invasion of Iraq. President Eisenhower vowed in 1956: "Until the Congress, which has the constitutional authority, says so ... I am not going to order any troops into anything that can be interpreted as war." And while the Vietnam War is often cited mistakenly (as recently as August 28, in a New York Times editorial) as a congressionally unauthorized war, in fact the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964 gave President Johnson blanket authority to (unwisely) defend South Vietnam.

Since then, Presidents Nixon (who secretly bombed Cambodia in 1969-1970), Reagan (who occupied Grenada in 1983), George H.W. Bush (who invaded Panama in 1989), and Clinton (who occupied Haiti in 1994 and bombed Kosovo and Serbia in 1999) have all usurped congressional war powers. But the Grenada and Panama operations -- which succeeded militarily and thus politically -- derive a tincture of legitimacy, or at least of mitigation, from the need for surprise and from the tacit recognition in the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that sometimes presidents will send troops into brief hostilities without prior authorization. Clinton's occupation of Haiti was bloodless, and his high-altitude bombing of Kosovo and Serbia shed no American blood.

There is no precedent, therefore, for a congressionally unauthorized invasion that could not possibly be a surprise and could cost many thousands of American lives.

8:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Metafilter comment on real battle behind Iraq war threat
It's really not that complicated, two of the UK's largest and most powe[r]ful companies are BP and Shell. They stand to make trillions of dollars if there is a new Iraqi regime that doesn't have a nationalized oil company. Saddam is a tyrant, so the down side is not huge, espcially if the victory is as easy as UK and US warplanners believe it will be.

The flip side is France and Russia, who have already signed deals with the current regime, and are against the invasion.
This ignores the PR effect on the Arab world in particular and other effects, but this is certainly a valid observation.

11:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sole US Iraq attack supporter allied with "Axis of Evil"? [a]
Iran and Israel have a common enemy in Iraq. They are not enemies only of Saddam Hussein, but also of the various groups that he has created. The fact that Iran sponsors Hezbollah does not change the fact that Iraq also sponsors anti-Israeli groups. If Iran will help destroy those groups while still supporting Hezbollah, Israel is a net winner. And if Israel can help Iran defend itself, Iran is a net winner.

It is the United States' position on this that is not clear. There certainly have been times when Washington wanted to support Iran, but it is not clear that this is one of those times. If Iraq is destroyed, Iran will be the most powerful country in the region, no longer checked by Baghdad. In addition, Iran appears to be helping al-Qaida. Therefore, this would not seem to be a time when Washington would want to strengthen Tehran.
Not so black and white, is it?

10:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Conservative watchdog proclaims shrub White House "more secretive than Nixon Administration" [a]
"This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration. They don't believe the American people or Congress have any right to information," said last week Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that is suing the administration to force it to reveal the members of the energy task force.

10:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

20 academics try to explain "Why Everyone Doesn't Love The US" to baffled US officials -- in secret

Afta' all, it's just a ruma' an' we don't want to bother folks' heads none.
There is a genuine sense of confusion amongst many people here in the US about why there should be so much anti-American feeling worldwide.

The belief, particularly on the right of US politics, is that the American dream is something most of the world would aspire to if they were only free to do so.

[...]

...the author Salman Rushdie had some very public advice for everyone involved.

He warned that attacking Iraq would unleash what he described as a generation-long plague of anti-Americanism that could make the present epidemic look like a time of good health.

Certainly US President George W Bush has displayed a rare talent for alienating world opinion, right from his early decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

And many outside the US would argue that it is American policies themselves that are at fault, not their presentation, however much money and effort is spent on it.

9:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Canadian senate presents 600-page report advising "complete legalization of cannabis," plus amnesty for any Canadian with a jail record for possession

The traditional opponents of such a change (the Right and the cops) -- who stand to lose money (and be laughed out of office?) if it's enacted -- along with pressure from the US (where the legalization of drugs would probably bankrupt the CIA) will probably kaibosh the proposal, however.

9:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sherriff shrub's crafty use of archaic backwoods slang baffles and distracts world media

Attempt to revive B-Western context and "certainties" of Raygun Era having little galvanizing effect, however -- despite the Sherriff's obvious experience with "stiffing" and "crawfishing" himself. . .

Check out the "e-cyclopedia" at the right of the page for an amusing list of recent terms used by politicati.
liberal elite noun, derogatory. Used to denote the establishment, partic. the arts, the law and the media; liberal used not in the sense of open-minded, but rather in the sense of licentious, i.e. "anything goes", esp. relating to sex, drugs, law and order.

9:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Forest fires and a change in weather have made the smog in Moscow so bad asthmatics and pregnant women have to stay indoors. Visibility is down to 300 feet in some places.

We had a fire north of us here in AZ a week ago that had a similar efect, though we have little smog otherwise.

8:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

Sheesh

Tried out Direct Connect just now. Snazzy interface, though confusing and not intuitive enough.

But it's mostly for broadband people, which I'm sadly not yet. A lot of movies, games, software being swapped -- I'm mostly into music right now (don't even have DVD on PC or TV). Many of the "hubs" I tried require you share 10GB or more, which is understandable since movies are huge files. But I have around 6GB of music on my PC and that's nearly a third of my hoary old (3 years next month) hard drive. And you have to have 3 slots open -- the up- and down-loads would take forever.

Feeling old now. Lack of broadband and DVD feeling acute. Looks like a good service to try for high-speed folks.

Back to WinMX I guess. Damn RIAA. Audiogalaxy was filling in pretty well after napster bit. WinMX hasn't got a lot of the obscure stuff I want though.

But, to paraphrase Webern, "The present day (cash-strapped) music lover refuses to die!"

6:06 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Hmmmm

The day I post the Project Censored 2001 -- really just randomly picking the US support of paramilitaries in Colombia out of the list -- I get a hit from the Colombian Petroleum Company.

Just like the day after I posted about the Navy blocking calls from NRDC activists about LF sonar I got a hit from the Naval Ocean Systems Center.

Funny isn't it?

I don't get many hits, but they lead me to interesting places.

4:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Eight Israeli army reservists take case to Supreme Court: Palestinian occupation illegal

4:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

In the MeFi death-of-napster thread Direct Connect is mentioned as being the best P2P app now. Anyone have experience with it?

10:56 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Secret US-Europe treaty could crush civil rights [a]
European Union governments are secretly drawing up a treaty with the United States on issues ranging from extradition to undercover police operations in a move which has huge implications for individual rights and liberties.

[...]

The US said the agreement should go beyond the fight against terrorism and cover what it called general "criminal matters".

Documents leaked to Statewatch, an independent group monitoring threats to civil liberties in the EU, show the planned treaty will include joint police operations, intercepting communications and the search and seizure of bank accounts.

They also show that the US wants to make it easier for European governments to extradite EU and non-EU citizens by making it harder for individuals to plead political immunity and by fast-tracking judicial procedures.
It strikes me that when the current extradition and other buffers to "fast-tracking" these criminal procedures are removed, the members of the government decide who's a criminal and what's done to them with far less oversight. Outside of the civil rights issues, the potential for abuse is huge. I sure as hell don't want shrubcroft deciding these things. (The article mistakenly calls Ashcroft "Ashworth")

It's hard to believe Europe would accede extradition to a country with capital punishment, but anything seems possible lately.

10:12 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Project Censored 2001 Top 25 [rw]
3. U.S. policies in Colombia support mass murder

American media, as critic Noam Chomsky ha[s] pointed out repeatedly, has a propensity for downplaying the human rights abuses of U.S. allies.

So we hear all about the dirty deeds of the Marxist guerrillas in Colombia but almost nothing about the Colombian government's ties to paramilitary death squads.

It's not like this information is hard to come by. You don't have to spend months nosing around the back alleys of Medell�n tailing shadowy, heavily armed characters. All an enterprising reporter has to do is give a call to the folks at Human Rights Watch. The organization has uncovered what it calls "detailed, abundant, and compelling evidence of continuing close ties between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups responsible for gross human rights violations."
Project Censored website.

1:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

David Thomson on the creepy new Bob Crane bio-pic Auto-Focus [robot wisdom]

. . .which sounds intriguing (as you'd expect from Thomson) despite the tediously prurient directorial hand of Paul Schrader.

I have to say the casting of Greg Kinnear as Crane and Willem Defoe as his nemesis sounds inspired.

1:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Firewalls that supposedly protect company etc. networks do a mostly lousy job and need to be replaced by "good backups, pervasive encryption and employee background checks, for example"
I'm certainly not advocating that businesses do away with their firewalls; many Microsoft operating systems are so vulnerable that there is no other practical way to protect them. But we need to build a new security paradigm. The core principle should be an assumption that every network is already compromised; systems should be designed accordingly. In practical terms, this means encrypting all information that passes over the network and equipping every computer with its own host-based firewall. This kind of belts-and-suspenders redundancy is not particularly elegant, but then again, neither is an armored car.

12:44 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Service businesses are piling on secret fees and pissing people off
In many instances, consumers do not become aware of the charges until they see the final bill.

The costs often result from an uptick in local or state taxes, passed on to consumers. But other fees are added by service firms to compensate for base prices set to beat the competition.

Add-on fees have been used sparingly for a half century. But marketers have become much more savvy about consumer psychology during the past decade, experts say, and the recent economic slowdown has driven some to try more unconventional tactics.

"The economy has dealt companies a double whammy," says Meryl Gardner, a marketing professor at the University of Delaware in Newark. "Companies have less money to pay for costs, but fewer customers can pay higher prices. By passing costs on to consumers as an added fee, they may be able to keep their budgets flat."

Consumers have recently seen new fees pop up for a variety of services they once received for free.
Are we tired of gangster economies yet?

12:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

I don't even care that much what the World Earth Summit attendees eat, but you'd think they'd have the sense of PR -- if not the decency -- to recycle more than 20% of their garbage [u]

8:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Cash-strapped US Airways cuts services [u]

No credit toward future flights if you miss a flight, no alcohol on transatlantic flights and a $25 fee for a paper ticket when an electronic one is available.

Boy has the romance of air travel taken a fall. Even before 9/11.

8:06 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

It's Just Good Business File: Monsanto wants to take advantage of developing world water supply "discontinuities" to rake in the millions
...the crisis of pollution and depletion of water resources is viewed by Monsanto as a business opportunity. For Monsanto, "sustainable development" means the conversion of an ecological crisis into a market of scarce resources. "The business logic of sustainable development is that population growth and economic development will apply increasing pressure on natural resource markets. These pressures and the world's desire to prevent the consequences of these pressures, if unabated, will create vast economic opportunity - when we look at the world through the lens of sustainability, we are in a position to see current and foresee impending-resource market trends and imbalances that create market needs. We have further focused this lens on the resource market of water and land. These are the markets that are most relevant to us as a life sciences company committed to delivering food, health and hope to the world, and there are markets in which there are predictable sustainability challenges and therefore opportunities to create business value."

7:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry (Minatom) is apparently a Stalinist holdover with alarming independence from government oversight [a]
Even though Minatom employs more than 600,000 people and has an annual budget estimated to be about $1 billion, about 1.5 percent of Russia's federal budget for 2002, it keeps many of its actions hidden from both parliamentary and government monitoring agencies -- and even from President Vladimir Putin.

More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the nuclear agency continues to enjoy virtually the same level of confidentiality it did when hundreds of thousands of its employees packed away in "closed cities" across the Soviet Union were designing and building nuclear weapons.

Critics charge that Minatom takes advantage of its secrecy status in order to engage in transactions that have little to do with Russian defense and pay little regard to the country's strategic interests.

[...]

Although Iran has expressed willingness to obtain nuclear weapons technology and, according to the Bush administration, has ties to international terrorist groups, Minatom regards the $840 million Bushehr reactor simply as a successful business venture and could care less about its potential uses, according to a Russian nuclear scientist who frequently travels to the project site.

"Yes, Iran will get their weapons-grade plutonium and build a bomb. Everybody knows that," said the scientist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"So what? We are making money today."

12:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

A Cincinnati-area high school is trying a bold experiment to re-invent what high school is [u]

And more power to them.
The two high schools, Glen Este and Amelia, are each home to five small schools that include core curriculum and specific classes centered on a theme. For example, Glen Este has the School for Scientific Studies and the School for American Studies. Amelia has the Business & Technology School and the International Baccalaureate program. (Seniors at both schools will finish in the traditional program.)

Among ways small schools will differ from traditional schools:

One team of teachers will teach the same students throughout high school.

Work will involve more hands-on projects, although lectures won't disappear.

Students will see more integration of subjects. For example, they'll do an experiment for science class, but will write about the experiment in English class.

Students have to make some hard choices. No longer will they be able to take just any class or extracurricular activity.

Students will have fewer classmates - less than 300 in each small school.

"They won't find themselves one of 1,400 kids," said Michael Ward, a 33-year educator and West Clermont's superintendent since 1999. "One of our goals is to have more involvement in a personal way."

But motivating students to achieve at higher academic levels is the driving force behind small schools. The district believes all students, not just the brightest, can be challenged to do tougher work.
This is the best education news I've heard in a long time.

12:01 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Shameless Plug: The New Stephenhead is a new BLogStudio blog and it makes me laugh

9:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Google cache formatting

If you've used the cached pages on google to view this site, or are viewing it that way now, the page formats pretty weird. The right column with all the links doesn't show up at all, and the left column is ratcheted up to the top of the page. Sorry about that. Wayne tells me it's because of too many links & embedded links, so I'm not sure what to do. Maybe a simpler template is in order. The posts show up OK though.

Meanwhile, remember you can search the archives since I redesigned in late June through the link at top left. It seems to be working well.

The old page shows up fairly well in google cache, and the individual pages are archived there. I may start doing that here too, archived by week, maybe on a separate page. But the archive search function will remain.

Thanks for dropping by.

9:25 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, September 02, 2002

McCain, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the new importance of hard money and the narcodollars behind it all

This is not an unbiased article, yet the list of campaign contributions here backs up the fact that this lobby wields quite a stick in Washington. And McCain's connection with them is obviously cozy.

11:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The new Jeff Eugenides book Middlesex sounds pretty good

I never got into his first, The Virgin Suicides or the movie for that matter. But this one sounds like a looksee at least.

10:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Boy, does this guy's picture inspire confidence that he's NOT corrupt?

I read about 100 pages of Blinded by the Right and noticed how Brock slammed the Sandinistas and never mentioned Somoza, one of the creepiest and most murderous of Central America's 20th century leaders. I had to wonder what's been going on since the Iran-Contra thing in Nicaragua, since administrations more amenable to Washington have been in power.

I guess this is the answer. . .

Oh here's a short review ending with Alem�n's ascension.

2:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Whoops

Sorry about the multiple posts below, BLogStudio was a bit funky for awhile.

1:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Cool blue art-damaged site with many obsession-related links: ikastikos

Current topics: Claes Oldenburg, Hannah Wilke, Hapsburg Princess Sissi, Hundertwasser and more.

I wish there was a real archive, as the section on UFOs in art I saw a while ago was neat.

11:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pushing the hiphop envelope way out: The Deep Dickollective turns most queers into stunned WASPs

11:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

An engaging review of Camper Van Beethoven's re-working of their original 80s tapes of a "faithful" reconstruction of Fleetwood Mac's epic groaner Tusk

No, I'm not kidding and yes, the review might be more entertaining than the music, but if you weren't into CVB, you probably aren't going to try anyway.
Bassist Victor Krummenacher (who is also this publication's art director) agrees that Tusk's utter lack of indie cred was key to its appeal. "Tusk, to me, was so bad that it was good. It just seemed a weirder, more absurd choice than Pussy Galore doing Exile on Main Street, which seemed kind of �ber-hip. Tusk was anti-hip. The Mac version is just a cold, dead, lifeless thing to me. I do, however, love the thread that runs through it, which is Lindsey's apparent psychosis. Stevie is a wreck at this point; it's just a chronicle of decadence and self-destruction -- kind of like an Orson Welles movie in rock terms, The Magnificent Ambersons of rock. It's not so good, but it's fascinating."
I loved the first CVB album (the one with "Take a Skinhead Bowling" -- remember when bowling and golf were still things that weren't cool?), and just missed seeing them live at CBGB's in '88 or so. I suppose this project has its moments, but it shows how they really didn't have any place to go with their concept (the band, not the Tusk reconstruction) after awhile.

This also kind of casts a humorous light on Phish's replicating their favorite albums by other artists live. . .

10:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Nader on the pro-credit conglomerate anti-consumer bankruptcy limitation bill about to slither thourgh Congress' final days of the year
Congress's gift to the predatory lenders is a scam artist's dream under the guise of "bankruptcy reform." The sponsors hope this "lenders relief" bill can be shoved through Congress in the last days of the session -- before the American public realizes its elected representatives are rewarding the banks, credit card companies, finance companies, and other financial corporations that have provided the Congress nearly $30 million in campaign contributions to promote bankruptcy reform in recent years.

The financial industry -- along with allies like gambling casinos and car dealers -- are attempting to convert the nation's consumer bankruptcy law, which has served consumers and business well for decades, into a punitive debt-collection enterprise that will keep hard-pressed consumers in what amounts to debtors' prisons for years.

10:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

This sounds like a funny take on working at amazon during the bubble

10:38 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Unsurprising figures on American servicewomen being harassed/attacked/raped by American soldiers
As in the society at large, Nelson finds social and institutional hurdles that prevent many cases of rape and sexual victimization from ever being reported. Many suffer in silent shame.

But even worse, when women report attacks by fellow soldiers, the official response by military authorities is often less than supportive. When prosecution does result, almost all the accused perpetrators walk away free.

A study by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense measured conviction rates for rapes reported to military criminal investigation offices in 1994-96.

"Another startling fact is that over 95 percent of the accused rapists in the Navy and Marines in 1992 were found not guilty of the alleged rapes and not convicted of the crimes," Nelson writes.

10:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Canadian cops want to routinely monitor email [un]

10:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

17 year-old sentenced to 10 years in adult prison for stealing a 6-pack and escaping police car [un and a level gaze]
After Bollenback was tried and convicted of the crimes, the state Department of Corrections recommended the boy, now 17, wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet for two years. The Department of Juvenile Justice thought a stay in a high-level youth facility would be more appropriate.

On Tuesday, Circuit Judge Ric A. Howard discarded those suggestions and sentenced Bollenback to a 10-year prison term.

"You're well on your way to a lifetime of prison and I don't want to see that happen," Howard said before handing down the punishment. "This sentence is going to break your spirit right now."
Bollenback did have a record of scrapes with the law, and is bipolar.

I'm sure whatever time in the clink he actually serves will turn him into the hardened criminal the judge is "trying to protect him from becoming."

10:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Arlington TX police want store clerks to fingerprint customers who pay by check [Unknown News]

9:53 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

China gets a clue that Tibet might be more than just a state to be ethnically cleansed and used for a nuclear waste site: tourism, which could be slightly less destructive
"China hasn't had a modern life, but now it's beginning to get one," said Orville Schell, a China expert whose book, "Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood," explores Western obsessions with this area. "The stress, the pollution. Their lives are a bit defoliated of color, adventure. In a very inchoate way, they find the promise of escape now more appealing."

The place now being served up as escape fare is at a cultural and economic crossroads. In this square-built town of 140,000, monks ride motorcycles and shop for the latest mobile phones alongside stalls that sell butter churns and yak-tail brooms. Teenagers spend hours in Internet cafes battling aliens, while road crews still pound rocks into gravel with hammer and chisel, and government officials hover for warmth in their offices over aluminum trays of coals.

Now, the town is selling a Western-defined copy of itself to all comers in a bid to improve its future. Which is how to explain the team of workmen from what is today called Shangri-La County busily affixing wood carvings and painting multi-hued floral designs to the fronts of stores, hotels and offices. They aim to imbue a distinctive, not to mention state-mandated, Tibetan aesthetic.

Shopkeepers have been trading in Chinese character-signs for new ones that also include Tibetan script. Usage of the script is rusty here, which has resulted in some unintentional satire. A sign that should read "Beauty Center" instead spells out "Leprosy Center." The front of Fresh, Fresh Restaurant now bears a sign that says "Kill, Kill."

"We're building the Shangri-La brand," said Liao Chunlei, vice director for the Shangri-La County Ministry of Tourism.
Oh dear. . .

9:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

3 scientists claim many ecstasy studies are flawed and that it's not nearly as harmful as has been stated [og]
Ecstasy is said to affect cells in the brain which produce serotonin, the chemical known to influence mood. But the changes observed involved the degeneration of nerve fibres, which can be regrown, and not the cell bodies themselves, the psychologists say.

They accuse other scientists of minimising the impact of data suggesting that ecstasy exposure had no long-term effects. Although numerous tests were run on volunteers, only positive results were reported in detail, they say. "This suggests that hypotheses concerning the long-term effects of ecstasy are not being uniformly substantiated and lends support to the idea that ecstasy is not causing long-term effects associated with the loss of serotonin," write the authors.

The article is critical of the way studies involving young users have been conducted. They point out that many psychological problems start in adolescence anyway, ecstasy users invariably took other drugs as well, and some of the symptoms reported mirrored those caused by simply staying awake all night and dancing.

12:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, September 01, 2002

24/7 librarians search for answers using the Web -- and subscription databases the public already pays for through taxes
"You're seeing an adjustment in anthropology coming out of the digital revolution," said Kevin Starr, a historian who is California's state librarian. "This has been predicted in the past by Marshall McLuhan: If we create a continuous information environment and a continuous Internet environment, then we shouldn't be surprised that we're creating a continuous work environment."

As state librarian, Starr has been helping to build 24/7 Reference, the biggest nonprofit online reference service in the United States (www.asknow.org or www.247ref.org), based in Southern California.

For years, many libraries have responded to e-mail reference queries. But the responses can often take a day or longer. Google and other search engines, on the other hand, provide instant answers to queries millions of times daily.

Public librarians argue that they are needed more than ever to authenticate the information retrieved by search engines, especially since the results that some of them deliver are increasingly determined by advertisers' fees.
Other sources mentioned in the article are the New Jersey Library Network and KnowItNow24X7 (Cleveland Public Library).

11:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Whew!

Just finished Du Pont Dynasty. That's a long book (900 pages), but a fascinating history of the family/company up to 1984.

Too bad DuPont effectively suppressed it (twice!) so you can only find used copies (for the story on this, see the Into the Buzzsaw link in the left column, the first chapter is by the author). I got mine for a steal at $19.50 used on amazon. Right now you have to pay over $240 for any of the 3 copies at amazon, though the copies listed are in "very good" condition, mine is maybe a bit less, yellowed cover edge etc.

There's some revelations from the book listed here. The author (Gerard Colby) has a somewhat Marxist POV (as you can see from the quote at right -- and which is essy to understand on the evidence presented here), but his research is exhaustive, and would be hard to refute -- thus Du Pont's reaction I imagine.

I even had a visit from the Brandywine Barons to this site a few weeks ago (well someone from Du Pont anyway). Maybe they bought up all the cheaper copies, coz there were several between $50-$75 a couple months ago. alibris and ebay don't have any right now.

6:30 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

FYI: A Canadian reader of Undernews says the Fraser Institute -- whose information that article I posted on the Canadian health system was based on -- is an alarmist right-wing think tank and "not to be trusted"

1:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Apple Computer users are hippie Darwinist devil cultists! [bb]

Another reason to switch perhaps?

Infiltrate the cult!!

1:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

'nother good Doonesbury

10:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

I read about the Tartt book on The Observer's "Coming Attractions" page for the fall, which lists a few things -- were I a rich person in London -- that sound pretty intriguing

Judi Dench and Maggie Smith on stage together for the first time (The Breath of Life") . . . Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho exhibit . . . Tom Waits' and Robert Wilson's Woyzeck . . . Barnett Newman at the Tate . . . Merce Cunningham dancing with his troupe at 83! . . . and a movie you can see here in the US, the 2nd version of Thomas Harris' first Lecter novel, Red Dragon (the first was Manhunter with William Petersen, Brian Cox (as a pretty good Lecter), Kim Griest, Joan Allen and Tom Noonan).

I liked Manhunter, but this version has Edward Norton as the hunter, Ralph Fiennes as the hunted, and Hopkins and Lambs screenwriter Tally -- not to mention Philip Seymour Hoffman, Emily Watson, Harvey Keitel and Mary Louise Parker. Hopefully that will be as good as it sounds.

Finally, I don't know how good the new British film Morvern Callar will be (though it stars Samantha Morton, who's never disappointed me yet), but the ST sounds killer -- Can, Lee Perry, Holger Czukay, Aphex Twin, Stereolab and Boards of Canada.

Oddly, after all that, the Tartt book reference at the top is the only mention of her new book on the page.

8:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Funny how I've been thinking about Donna Tartt lately. . .

I liked The Secret History a lot, though it wasn't as satisfying as it could have been, partly due to editing I think. The ending particularly. Then again, it was pretty damn good for a first novel, and I got the sense that some reviewers at least were jealous. It was optioned for film, but (perhaps wisely) they didn't follow through.

Six years later her new book The Little Friend is due out (Oct 22), and I'm looking forward to it.

8:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Brit ad writers paid by Labour party to write novel about globalization summit
The writers deny their work qualifies as propaganda and say the characters they create have a life of their own.

"It is a brave thing for a company to employ us," said Lury, 46, who has been an adviser to the policy centre. "But most organisations just don't win arguments by firing out information.

"We leave the arguments open-ended because it works best, although we would re-write if asked to. We hope we are writing rattling good yarns in the popular style. We are not talking about the great modern novel."
What's hilarious is that Fay Weldon -- who wrote a novel featuring Bulgari products and financed by Bulgari last year -- calls this "horrific."

As I said when that book came out, as long as the book is packaged as what it is -- a blister pack of baloney with the appropriate logo bigger than the title -- fine with me.

8:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

This Ramones tribute might actually be fun (scroll down)
01 Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Havana Affair"
02 Rob Zombie - "Blitzkrieg Bop"
03 Eddie Vedder with Zeke - "I Believe in Miracles"
04 Metallica - "53rd & 3rd"
05 U2 - "Beat on the Brat"
06 KISS - "Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio?"
07 Marilyn Manson - "The KKK Took My Baby Away"
08 Garbage - "I Just Want to Have Something to Do"
09 Green Day - "Outsider"
10 Pretenders - "Something to Believe In"
11 Rancid - "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker"
12 Pete Yorn - "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"
13 The Offspring - "I Wanna Be Sedated"
14 Rooney - "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow"
15 Tom Waits - "Return of Jackie and Judy"
Though this is a fine example of something that should be a download rather than a $17 CD.

8:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Back again

Our client was down again yesterday for awhile. Sorry if you tried to comment and couldn't(?).

Problem should be solved by next weekend for good.

7:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

charging the canvas

The Link Section