Hey you, don't watch dat, watch dis

This is the sound of a new generation. One. Step. Beyonnnnnnnnddd!

If you don't speak Madness, that means, I've moved, mate. Archives are still a bit of a waggle, but I'll have it all cleared up before you know it and Bob's your uncle there we are.

Academia, Schmacademia

In the book White Noise, Don Delillo invented a university with two strange departments - one was a Department of Hitler Studies, the second was the Department of Elvis Studies.

An absurd idea of course, unless you equate them with the nascent work being done in the field of Video Game Studies...

Comments?

So where did the comments go? Where are the archives?

I'm working on migrating this blog to Moveable Type on another domain. I tried a migration that ate my archives and comments. I'll try to get the rest over less mangled, but I apologize if I lost a particularly witty comment of yours.

I hope to have the other site up mid-next week.

Salsa is Terrorist Music

First the Bush administration denied visas to Cuban nominees for the Grammy, now they're cutting off the donation of pianos by a New York piano tuner.

I said it first in jest, but perhaps Ashcroft really is afraid the rhythm is going to get him... the rhythm is going to get him...

Or maybe it's a health issue. I've always felt a good beat is infectious. We don't want a repeat of the tragic 1980's outbreak of rockin' pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu.

From Hubble, a Dying Star's Ring of Fire

But I didn't Order a Pizza...

The role of guy I most recommend not answer if an unexpected pizza delivery guy knocks on his door goes to Dubai based businessman Buhary Syed Abu Tahir. Tahir has confessed to Malaysian police that he helped Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sell nuclear parts and secrets to Iran.

Tahir also named several businessmen from Germany, Turkey, Switzerland and the United Kingdom as part of the network of middlemen who helped proliferate atomic technology.

Khan himself was pardoned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, but has been told to remain in his home where he is under guard. Both Tahir and Khan must now have an awful lot of enemies.

Unsafe in Any Election

Ralph Nader will announce on Sunday If he is happy George Bush got into the White House and wrecked the country with his help will run for President again in 2004.

Nader already passed up the Green Party's nomination for this year, so he'd be stuck running as an independent or perhaps on a new party's ticket.

If he needs a name, I suggest the "Stooge of the Republicans" party.

Enemy of the State

The Supremes are ready to consider the "Enemy Combatant" rule, as it relates to captured American citizen, Chicago gang member, and accused would-be-dirty-bomber Jose Padilla. Padilla's case will be considered alongside the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi

I fear this is the run-up to a Dread Scott-like miscarriage of justice. The conservative court will more than likely find a way to effectively grant dictatorial powers to the Executive to continue to deny Padilla and others like him their basic constitutional rights to counsel and to a swift trial.

How can granting the Executive the power to strip a citizen of his rights with no recourse or appeal be in the interests of the constitution or the nation? Padilla may very well have been planning to dirty bomb the very area where I work. If so it's a good thing for me that he was stopped. But think about the implications: what stops a future (or the current) Exec from using the powers granted by upholding the Padilla reclassification in a less ethical and more politically pointed manner?

There is hope that O'Connor will swing the court towards the notion that even bad guys' constitutional rights must be protected, but I'm not optimistic. I hope she proves me wrong. If she doesn't, then this may be an important milestone, marking the beginning of a true Imperial presidency.

Turnaround

Check out the latest polling news on CNN. Lead sentence - "Democratic presidential hopefuls John Edwards and John Kerry both hold leads of 10 percentage points or more in hypothetical match-ups against President Bush, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday. "

Now the $200 million Republican sleaze machine has not kicked into gear yet, so these numbers will change. Hopefully, however, this will get us a big mea culpa from those journalists who proclaimed Bush "unbeatable" a year ago. It'd be nice to get some "Bush is done" stories to balance out the previous lopsided coverage.

Like father, like son.

At Least She Doesn't Have 100 Cats

An amusing link My Mother is Insane.

After she sees this, I hope my wife never claims I'm a packrat again.

Big Day

Dean ends his campaign, though he will leave his name on ballots.

Edwards nearly beats Kerry in Wisconsin.

Greg Maddux signs with the Cubs.

Best line in the last 24 hours - John Edwards, "The voters of Wisconsin have sent a message tonight and that message is... 'Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.""

Second best - Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune on the Maddux deal - "The starting rotation will be Prior, Wood, Maddux, Matt Clement, and Carlos Zambrano. What do you call that? Murderer's Throw?"

Yankees gone wild

Here's the potential lineup for the Yankees next year:

Kenny Lofton
Derek Jeter
A-Rod
Jason Giambi
Gary Sheffield
Bernie Williams
Jorge Posada
Hideki Matsui
Miguel Cairo

With the exception of Cairo and Lofton, any one of these players could be the franchise for most teams. If the Cubs somehow get lucky and make it to the Series, it's going to be a classic pitching versus hitting duel.

Nigerian Scammers Move and Get Religion

I got this message in the mail today:

From: Mrs. Serena Jones
Direct email address: serenajones04@excite.com

PLEASE ENDEAVOUR TO USED IT FOR THE CHILDREN OF GOD.
I am the above named person from Kuwait. I am married to Dr. Harry Jones who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2001. We were married for eleven years without a child. He
died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we were both born again Christians.

Since his death, I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of$13.2 Million (Thirteen Million two hundred thousand U.S.Dollars) with one finance/security company in Europe. Presently, this money is still with the Security Company.

Recently, my Doctor, told me that I would not last for the next three months due to cancer problem. Though what disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this funds to church or better still a christian individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct him or her. I want this funds to be use in building churches, provide foods, materials needs, shelter for orphanages and widows, propagating the word of God and to ensure that the house of God is maintained.

The Bible made us to understand that Blessed is the hand that giveth. I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don't want my husband's hard earned money to be misused by unbelievers. I don't want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly manner. Hence the reason for taking this bold decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace.

I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health situation and also because of the presence of my husband's relatives aroundme always. I don't want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of my Lawyer, who will issue you a letter of authority that will prove you as the original- beneficiary of this fund and all the necessary details as well.

I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shephard. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life. Any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing for a church or christian individual for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein. Hoping to hearing from you.

N.B-PLEASE I WILL ADVICE YOU TO GIVE THE LAWYER ALL THE FULL COOPERATION AND UNDERSTANDING AND I BELIEVE HE WILL LEAD YOU TO YOUR SUCCESS IN JESUS

Remain blessed in the name of the Lord.
Yours in Christ,
Mrs. Serena Jones.
Direct email address: serenajones04@excite.com

Amazon Pricing to the Moon

The new Norah Jones is being offered at Amazon, for ONLY $29.99. $29.99? I saw a coupon in the paper last week for $9.99.

I wonder if this is part of their "variable pricing" scheme. If so, I wonder why I've been marked as a sucker. No thanks.

Wolves Not Allowed

Lou Harrison, the late new music composer who combined classical and contemporary music, built a house of straw before his demise. The LA Times (reg required) has a piece on the beautiful home built near Joshua Tree National Park.

Franc-n-berries

I learned today from a friend in Paris that its almost impossible to get decent non-French wines in Paris. As part of its plan to preserve French agriculture, France slaps a hefty tax on any foreign wine sold in the country.

As a consequence, although French wine drinkers can enjoy French wine cheaply, they can't get any of the Australian, Oregon, California, Spanish, Italian, or Chilean wines that you can get here in the U.S. Your French wines will cost you a bit more here than in Paris, but I think that's worth the variety.

This leads me to the conclusion that serious U.S. wine drinkers should be more knowledgable than French wine drinkers. That's got to hurt French egos.

It's been hours

...Since Drudge put up his World Exclusive!! on the rumor that Kerry has a Monica problem. The more legitimate media aren't even nibbling so far. Not even Fox has reported the story yet, despite Drudge's assertions that ABC, The Washington Post, The Hill, and the Associated Press were working on the piece.

Drudge Retort (clever name) calls Shenanigans on the report and notes that WatchBlog talked about the rumor long before The Drudge Report.

Of course, WatchBlog wonders if this might be a Karl Rove push polling special. Push polling is when you essentially spread a rumor through your polling. An example might be "Who would you vote for if the election were today, Bush or Kerry? Now, if I told you John Kerry has a long face because he once had sex with a chicken held by Jane Fonda while spitting on George Washington's grave and was startled by the police, would that affect your vote?"

This was used by Rove's dirty tricks squad to help kill John McCain's candidacy in the Republican primary in 2000. It might be a disciple of Rove's, or even a former opponent (I'm looking at you Chris Lehane), but it sure smells like a dirty trick to me.

Why Do You Carry This Story?

Mattell issues a press release that says Barbie and Ken are splitsville and the media treat it like real news.

Ken is apparently being replaced by a doll called "Blaine" that's supposed to be an Australian boogie-boarder. Blaine.

The only "Blaines" I know are the chill blaines I get when I don't dress warm enough during a long cold Chicago winter.

My company writes this kind of stuff (though thankfully, not this one).

Direct Marketers are Scum

I know that's not the most startling revelation, but honestly, I'm rarely annoyed by an advertisement in print media or on television. I am always annoyed by ads that come via postal mail, e-mail (spam), and now blog spam. Yes, blog spam. Look at this page for an example.

Great googly-moogly, when will it end!?

The successful candidate will have a PhD in Astrophysics and 7 years experience with Windows XP...

I once came across an ad looking for a Cisco CCNE. The hours offered were long, the location incovenient, and the pay -

The CCNE is a difficult certification to get. Not only must you know switching and routing in depth, you have to know Security, IP telephony, be able to pass several written tests including one monster which qualifies you to pay $1000+ and fly to a practical lab test site after waiting months for a slot to become available. To get the experience necessary to pass these tests, you'd have to either already have access to or have to purchase or rent tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. There are no "paper" CCNE's. CCNE's are well rewarded for this work. In the mid-90's CCNE's were making $150,000-$200,000. After the bubble, a CCNE could still reasonably expect to make $100,000-$120,000 in an urban market.

The offered pay was $40-45,000/year.

I was so annoyed, I responded to the ad and told them they were making themselves look dumb. The poster responded to me and said "you do business your way, I'll do business my way".

There's a site up now that rips these sorts of ads apart. The name of it is F*** That Job!. If you've ever been looking for a job and been incensed by unreasonable base qualification demands or unrealistic salary offers, you'll enjoy this site.

Seven little, six little, FIVE little Indians

Wesley Clark has decided to call it quits after losing Virginia and Tennesee to Kerry.

So far, the process has claimed Carol Moseley Braun, Dick Gephardt, and now Wesley Clark. Clark stumbled with waffling statements about whether he'd have supported the war in Iraq (somewhat like Kerry) almost as soon as he entered the race, and didn't recover (unlike Kerry). Politics is hard. That's why there are professional politicians.

Here's when I think the rest will fall-

Dean - right after Wisconsin. Howard Dean declared he'd withdraw if he didn't win Wisconsin. He isn't going to win Wisconsin. He later tried to retract the withdrawal comment, but he'll be seen as even more dead in the water if he reneges and will be forced out by lack of funds.

Kucinich - I think Dennis will withdraw before the convention. He's not in this to win, but its expensive to run a race like this and I just don't think he'll have the staying power He'll wait until pretty late, though.

Sharpton - Won't withdraw. He has the same purpose (to deliver a message) as Kucinich, but he has Republican money and direction to last at least until the convention.

Edwards - Won't withdraw. He wants to be the alternative. First he was the alternative to Dean, and now to Kerry. Edwards can't do anything but help himself by continuing. His prize will either be a vice presidential nod or a chance to run in 2008 if Bush wins or in 2012 if he loses (by which time he'll be the alternative to Hillary, I'd guess.)

Kerry - uh, no. He's the nominee, barring anything incredibly stupid.

I could be wrong on Kucinich, but I'm pretty sure about Dean, Sharpton and Edwards. Only a precipitous nosedive by Edwards keeps him out. And he sure as heck should address the convention in prime time in July.

BONUS LINK: If you've been following the "Was Bush AWOL or not?" story, you should be reading Calpundit. As Eric Zorn points out today, CalPundit is covering the story better than the national media. The major news outlets ought to be embarrassed they're being so badly outdone.

It Still Looks Goofy to Me

Explainer at Slate explains why Poodles have that dumb haircut.

Latest Timewaster

This one is more for the angry females out there.

Get Out of Phone Jail Free

Next time you get stuck in phone jail trying to work through an unwanted maze of menus so you can talk to a service rep try screaming at the machine.

It might sound useless to scream at a machine, but Wired reports that Shrikanth Narayanan, professor in the Speech Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory at the University of Southern California has written software to detect the level of frustration of a caller. If you swear, scream or otherwise express your searing undying hatred for this PIECE OF CRAP SYSTEM WHEN I JUST WANT GO GET MY DAMN PHONE FIXED YOU STUPID- Ahem. It will transfer you to a live operator.

Seems to me this is going to encourage rudeness to people as well as machines. Are the machines being positioned as the opening act in a concert of rage? Maybe having adequate staff who are trained and competent would be a better idea?

Pan Review

I'm going to a dinner party this next weekend and I've been put in charge of the bread. As you may remember, I made some French bread that turned out pretty well. In retrospect, the crust was a bit too rugged and strong structurally, but it was OK. Of course, OK is not good enough, especially when sharing with friends.

So last night I searched the Internet again and found another recipe that promised Amazing French Bread. Well, with a promise like that, how can you turn it down? If you've clicked on that link above you'll notice its a more complicated recipe than the previous one I made.

I put the bread together, baked it up and it came out with a gorgeous crust. Unfortunately, the bread itself was too dense for my taste and had a slightly off flavor that I blame on using vegetable shortening. I think shortening is great for pie, but too strong for baked goods that don't have other flavors to offset its taste.

Tonight, I'm going to try to fashion a recipe from these two and from others that uses butter instead of the oil in the first recipe and the shortening in the second. Perhaps butter will be the Baby Bear to oil's Papa Bear and shortening's Momma Bear.

UPDATE: My friend in Paris (who berates me for not reading her messages more closely. Hi, Meg.), tells me her survey of true Frenchies reveals there is no fat in French Bread. No oil, no butter, no shortening. And then we got into an argument about the word "shortening". This is really why I love her like a sister. She makes me nuts.

It's not Tux, trust me.

And now a GREAT timewasting link. 578.1 is my personal best.

UPDATE - 593.5!

And the Winning Terrorist Is...



Buenos Hermanos and Ibrahim Ferrer won the Grammy for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album (Vocal or Instrumental) last night.

As noted before, Cubans Hermanos and Ferrer were not present because the State Department deemed them people "detrimental to the interest of the United States."

Maybe John Ashcroft fears the rhythm is going to get him.. the rhythm is going to get him...

Nine Parts of Desire

I just finished Geraldine Brooks's book Nine Parts of Desire. Brooks is an Australian journalist who worked in the Middle East for many years. She found herself frustrated by her inability as a woman to get access to the peopel and places she needed to be to write in-depth stories about the Middle East. Wherever she turned, Islamic influenced rules and laws forbade her from participation. Finally, she realized there was a big story she could report on at a very personal level. She began to talk to the women in these societies.

What she found across many Islamic countries was a society that suppresses women in the name of glorifying them. The second chapter of the book sets the background with descriptions of genital mutilation in Eritrea and Palestine. Not all Islamic societies practice genital mutilation, or any of the various suppressions described in the book, but all the ones Brooks has visited practice some form of suppression.

Brooks explores the various body coverings required by these societies. Islam does prescribe loose-fitting garments that hide the shape from the opposite gender, but the Koran apparently also demands that men wear loose clothing, and Brooks wonders why this instruction seems to be ignored for men.

The answer is of course that Islam oppresses women because those in political power find it convenient and profitable to do so. Like Christianity or Buddhism, Islam can be interprested in ways that liberate or oppress. In fact, as Brooks writes, Mohammed himself had a first wife we would consider the model of a liberated woman. She was an international trader who asked Mohammed to marry her and who supported him, rather that the reverse. Mohammed took no second wives until after this first one had died.

Brooks does find that the particular instruments of oppression sometimes produce positive effects as well. A woman walking the street of Tehran (with the permission of her husband, of course), is safer from assault or rape than in any city of comparable size in the West. Because the women are kept dependent, their sense of connection to family is much more intense than in the West.

While laboring alongside a room filled with Islamic women making bread, Brooks writes that she felt the comradeship of working together and producing something worthwhile. That feeling was interrupted by a small boy who would steal bits of dough from the table after it was formed. "Why should he learn at such a young age that women labor for his benefit?" Brooks wonders.

What comforts there are, however, are minor compared to the intellectual starvation, dependence, and even threat of violence (either in corrective beatings or in the case of a "fallen" woman, in "honor killings") these women endure. In the final chapter, Geraldine Brooks calls on the West to resist the importation of oppression into our societies and to remember that though Islam has its beliefs, we in the West too hold cerain things sacred "among these are liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, and the right to doubt."

I would like to see a credible defense of Islamic treatment of women from a modern Islamic woman to contrast with this book. As Brooks writes, the practices current in many Islamic societies, particularly the fundamentalist ones, are wholly indefensible.

Sconeheads


Made my first scones EVAR yesterday and they were good. I burned the bottoms a bit, but the texture and taste were right on otherwise. The recipe is from Hannah's, which I link to over on the right side here.

Minor modification I made - put two teaspoons of sour cream in the measuring cup and then pour in enough milk to make 1/3 cup of milk/sour cream mix. The addition of the sour cream gives the scones a nice tang.

Orange/Cranberry Scones

4 C. flour
4 t. baking powder
3/4 C. sugar
1 t. salt
Grated orange peel from 1 orange
1 C. butter, room temperature, cut into small pieces
2 large eggs
1/3 C. frozen orange juice
1/3 C. milk (but see above for tip)
1/2-3/4C. fresh or frozen cranberries

Combine dry ingredients plus grated orange peel; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

In small bowl, whisk eggs, orange juice and milk. (Save a couple of tablespoons of the mix to brush tops of scones before baking.) Stir into flour mixture, combining until dough is moist. If it is too sticky to handle, add a bit more flour. Mix in the cranberries.

Turn dough onto floured work surface; knead a few turns. Divide dough into two balls; pat each into a circle. Cut 6 scones (wedges) from each. Brush with reserved egg mixture.

Put on greased cookie sheets and bake at 375 degrees for 18 to 25 minutes. Keep checking until they are golden brown. Watch the bottoms.

Optional glaze: 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon orange juice (concentrated frozen orange juice yields the best flavor). Drizzle over cooled scones.

Is This the Face of Terror?



The State Department has denied visas to all five nominees for the Grammy for best traditional tropical Latin album. All five are Cubans and include such dangerous types as 77-year old Ibrahim Ferrer and 75-year old Guillermo Rubalcaba.

Apparently, according to a diplomat in Havana these successful and talented Cuban musicians are considered to be people "detrimental to the interest of the United States". Maybe all the Americans seeing these people on stage would be pushed to question why we keep up such a ridiculous regimen of sanctions and travel restriction on Cuba?

Commodore, Lionel Richie Not Included

Last night I finished the seventeenth Aubrey/Maturin novel, Commodore by Patrick O'Brian. In this volume Aubrey and Maturin have to contend with rumors of infidelity, a threat from a minor royal to Maturin's freedom and fortune, the slave trade, yellow fever, and the French support of a potential revolt in Maturin's native Ireland.

Really, it's difficult to review this book separately from the rest of the Aubrey/Maturin series which is splendid. This book moves a little more slowly at first than some of the others, but when it finally gets its feet under it, it trots along nicely. The depiction of the slave trade from a British perspective feels authentic, as do the usual forays into early 19th century nautical, medical, and naturalist life.

Once it got going, I quite enjoyed the book and recommend it. But don't read it until you've read the 16 before it. Ultimately, the books are one big story whcih deserves to be read in order.

Vegetarian$

It's been obvious to me for a while that vegan and vegetarian friendly products are big business. I didn't realize just how big, though. This link from Vegan Street shows that most of the familiar veggie-friendly brands are now the property of some enormous companies.

Among the highlights - Kraft owns Boca, Dean owns WhiteWave/Silk (who now supply soy to Starbucks), Kellogg owns Morningstar Farms, and M&M;/Mars owns Seeds of Change.

The author thinks this is a development to be concerned by, but I think its a great sign. If vegetarian options are being produced by mainstream companies, they'll be promoted and distributed by these companies which will make them much more readily available everywhere.

Another Oscar Showtimes Update

Film Name	Picture	Director	Actor	Actress	S. Actor	S.Actress
City of God		X
Cold Mountain			X			X
The Cooler					X
House of Sand and Fog			X			X
In America				X	X
The Last Samurai					X
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	X	X
Lost in Translation	X	X	X
Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World	X	X
Monster				X
Mystic River	X	X	X		X	X
Pieces of April						X
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl			X
Seabiscuit	X
Something's Gotta Give				X
thirteen				X
21 Grams				X	X
Whale Rider				X

Showtimes are not yet published on the Chicago Reader website. I'll try to update this entry soon after they are.

I saw an ad for City of God on TV this morning. It looks like its going to get a limited re-release to boost the chances of its director winning an Oscar. Also, Lost in Translation has hit on DVD. More later.

Satanic Faux Faux

...Or Seitan-ic Faux Pho, to be more accurate. Last night I pulled up the recipe for Vegetarian Pho. Pho Bo is by definition a beef soup from Vietnam, so you can't really make Vegetarian Pho, so much as you make Faux Pho. I made a big batch and it was delicious, nutritious, and filling.

The recipe here is adapted from the one at vrg.org. I like more greens and seitan in my soup so I upped the quantities and dropped the noodles which were excessive when thin rice noodles were substituted.

Faux Pho Bo

8 cups Vietnamese style broth (see recipe that follows)
1/2 pound thin rice noodles
Two 8-ounce packages seitan, drained
1/2 cup bean sprouts
1 cup shredded cabbage (such as Napa cabbage)
1 cup tender greens, torn into bite-sized pieces (I recommend arugula or baby spinach)
1/2 cup basil leaves
1/2 cup cilantro, coarsely chopped
3 scallions, thinly sliced (both green and white parts)
3 Tablespoons chopped, roasted, unsalted peanuts (optional)
1 lime, cut into wedges
2 fresh red or green chili peppers, seeded and cut into small slices
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Make the broth as directed. When broth has been simmering for about 10 minutes, soak the noodles as follows. Bring 4 quarts of water to boil in a large pot. Remove from heat, add noodles, and let soak around 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until noodles are pliable and easily separated.

Drain the noodles and divide them among six bowls. Simmer the seitan in the broth until heated through, about 4 minutes. Remove the seitan with a slotted spoon and slice thinly into six portions. Add to noodles.

Assemble the soup by placing the bean sprouts, cabbage, greens, basil, cilantro, scallions, and optional peanuts on top of the noodles and seitan. Ladle the hot broth onto the noodle mixture.

Serve with a plate of lime wedges, chili rounds, and salt and pepper for individual seasoning

Vietnamese Style Broth

8 cups clear vegetable stock
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
8 medium garlic cloves, peeled and chopped coarsely
1 small onion, diced
One 1-inch piece of ginger
Two 3-inch cinnamon sticks plus 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2-3 pods of star anise
2 large bay leaves

Put stock, soy sauce, garlic, and onion in a large stockpot and bring to a boil over medium heat.

Meanwhile, char ginger on all sides over an open gas flame or in a small skillet. Add to the stock.

Add the cinnamon sticks, star anise, and bay leaves to the broth. Reduce the heat to low. Simmer, partially covered, for 20-25 minutes.

Remove solids with a slotted spoon or strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve. Adjust seasonings if necessary. Return to pot and keep hot until ready to use in soup.

Curse William Saletan

For coming up with the term "Joe-bituary".

Man, I wish I wrote that.

So Where Have You Been?


create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide



create your own visited country map

I took a trip on a train once that would knock out Utah, but I don't like to count it since we didn't stop moving.

What a pathetic countries visited map. I better get cracking on that.

How Now, Mad Cow?

Are we getting the truth about the Mad Cow killed in December? It was a downer cow and its meat was destroyed right?

Well, maybe not. The man who killed the cow denies it was a downer and is certain the meat was sold. Now he's being harrassed and called an "urban terrorist" by government agents. I'm glad my meat consumption is near nil these days. The scary story is in the New York Times.

Joe-mentum? Joe-momma.

Joe Lieberman reportedly will withdraw from the race for President if he is winless in the primaries today. It doesn't look like he will win anywhere, so it's bye-bye Joe.

I'm now convinced he was a drag on the ticket in 2000. I won't be surprised if he goes "Independent" soon, then ends up as a Republican if the Dems don't take the White House.

Will Clark soldier on if he loses Oklahoma? Edwards if he loses S. Carolina? Stay tuned.

Civilization

Via EricZorn's guest blogger Maureen Ryan, I learned of NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown.com. The site discusses all things tea and biscuit/cake related (that's tea and cookies to us Yanks).

I passed the site on to friends in Paris including a tea-mad Brit who confirmed this site was indeed the schnizzle (for lack of a more refined term).

We may have the economic, military, and material advantage over the Brits, but I can't help feel that they live better and more gently than we do.

I Don't See an Entry for "Toby"

The Library of Congress is one of the true wonders of the modern world. Just recently they put this collection of recorded conversations with former slaves on-line. This is history you can almost touch.

And Now They Work for Dell

Wild article by William Safire in the NYT today. In the 1980's, The Soviets were buying chips and technology components on the black market that the U.S. had banned for export. The French turned an agent who had a shopping list from the Soviets. The Intelligence services decided to help the Soviets shop by providing chips that would pass inspection and QC, but fail in production.

This all led to a three-kiloton explosion as the chips were used in a pipeline the Soviets, Germans, and Brits backed but which was opposed by the French and the U.S.

ADDITION: Also in the Times today, Thomas L. Friedman coins a great term - B.M.D. or "Budgets of Mass Destruction".

From 1971

Well Kerry definitely was the first candidate of this year's crop to appear in a Doonesbury.

October 21, 1971:

thirteen

Had a late night last night as I watched thirteen right after the Super Bowl.

The movie boils down to this - parents suck, early teenagers are a nightmare, a good kid can turn bad almost instantly, and our culture is poisonous. How's that for an uplifting flick?

All the parents and adults in this movie (from the absent father to the clerk at the tattoo parlor) have abdicated responsibility for the children. Holly Hunter's Mel, the one exception, is a reformed substance abuser who ekes out a living cutting hair in the house she shares with her son and thirteen year old daughter. And even her character, while recognizing the changes happening in her daughter, refuses to confront her or to really lay down the law. As she says tearfully near the end of thirteen, "I didn't know it had gone this far."

And the changes this teen undergoes include a sudden ability to steal without a hint of remorse, use of many different drugs, drinking, smoking, body modification in the form of belly button and tongue piercings, and of course the beginnings of sex.

Maybe all the adults in L.A. really are this lame, but I doubt it. I wasn't the type of kid who got involved with drugs or smoking, but I knew some who did. I can buy trying out these substances at the age of thirteen, but I don't think I buy the star of this film getting away with it considering how badly she covers up.

Essentially, I think this is one of those Blackboard Jungle type movies that come out every so often. These movies sensationalize the trials and tribulations of a difficult time in a young person's life to the point where they send a certain type of parent into hysterics and cause most kids of that age to lament the lack of accurate portrayals of them in the media. I remember going through the same thing with the 'Dungeons and Dragons caused these kids to kill one of their friends' movies that came out when I was a budding geek.

I'm sure it's more dangerous to be a kid now, and I'm sure many do experiment with activities and substances that would make their parents blanch if they knew, but I just didn't buy the transformation here from good kid to hard case. It happened too fast and too firmly.

See the movie, but see it on disc and don't keep it an extra day.

Best ad on the SuperBowl

Shards o Glass

Into the Mystic

Saw Mystic River today. The acting is of course superb as was the writing. Tim Robbins made me believe he was a miserable scared messed-up South Bostonian. Sean Penn was his usual self and Kevin Bacon turned in a version of the cop character he's been working on for years. Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney have less screen time, but make the most of every minute.

Overall this is a subtle and beautiful film, but I have quibbles (SPOILERS BELOW)-

What is with the blast of music when young Danny escapes into the woods and the camera elevates to the sky? Awful. The music (by Clint Eastwood) is the primary weakness of the movie.

Why the "gotcha" or "you're next" finger gun at the end from Kevin Bacon to Sean Penn? And which was it?

The molester Danny (Tim Robbins) killed at the end came from left field. I believed Robbins's character would have whacked such a person, but a little foreshadowing or would have been nice. It's too "Surprise!" for me.


SPOILERS OVER

I nitpick because I loved the movie. From what I've seen so far (and I've now seen all the Best Picture nominees), Mystic River was the best nominated film of 2003. I like LOTR:ROTK a lot (I've read the books five times now), but if Graham Greene wrote both he'd have classified ROTK as an "entertainment" and Mystic River as one of his important works.

Clint Eastwood did a great job as did the writers, editors, and everyone involved with the movie. It tells a story that seizes the audience's attention and doesn't break believability or pace for 4/5 of the film.

The interrogation scene with Fishburne, Bacon, and Robbins is so strong, as is the scene with Robbins and Penn talking on the back porch. Even with all the star power in the cast, the story is king. Go see this movie.

Not Bitter

I see the adjunct wing of the Reelect Bush in 2004 committe has their website up.

Seabiscuit

Watched Seabiscuit last night with the Mrs. Quick plot summary - nation, horse, trainer, rich owner, and jockey are all little guys who are beat up but just need a second chance. They get it. Crowd goes wild. Disaster strikes. Everything falls apart. Everything comes back together. Crowd goes wild again.

Sounds dreadful, right? Actually, it was pretty good. It took a bit long to get going, and included some unnecessary "American Experience"- type footage, but the showdown with War Admiral was built up well. At first I thought the second comeback was unnecessary, but now I think they just built to the first climax too slowly.

Tobey Maguire, Chris Chandler, and Jeff Bridges are excellent, though Jeff Bridges ages seemingly twenty years in a six year timeframe. The script has a lot of humor and the music os Randy Newman's standard genius, but the real star is the cinematography. It's a beautiful film. That may be why the director fell in love with a lot of footage he could probably have trimmed. At 2 hours 21 minutes it's a good film. At 1 hour 45 minutes it could have been a classic.

Bad Day to Be One of These



-8 actual, -27 wind chill. Ouch.

Some thoughts from walking to work from the bus:

1. You need the whole schmear when it gets this cold - hat, gloves, scarf, and a good coat. You just need to keep your legs moving to keep them from freezing too badly, but I suppose some long underwear would help as well.

2. I'm always amazed that a good leather jacket with a quilted lining can see me through three seasons.

3. Scarf over the ears. The hat is just to cap the chimney. The scarf protects the ears and face.
4. I wonder if you could get a little light to bounce from side to side in that little space between the hat and the scarf where my eyes are. I'm pretty sure I'd look like a wooly cylon.

5. There's a certain scrunch of misery that you only see on people's faces when it's below zero and the wind gets them square on. You can't fake it.

6. Firemen who work in this weather should be given a big bowl of cash and cookies. Go out in the cold and spray water on a building? Forget it, bud.

7. You know it's cold when you blink and your eyelashes freeze together a little.

8. I'm really glad I got rid of my glasses in favor of contact lenses. When I was a kid and still wore glasses during the winter, they'd fog up, get thin sheets of ice on the lenses and worst of all, freeze the bridge of my nose where they rested giving me a horrible headache. Good riddance.

9. It's kind of nice to know you can survive something like this. People are nicer to each other, and with the exception of cabbies, drivers give way to pedestrians trying to get out of the cold.

10. Taxi drivers who cut off pedestrians in sub-zero weather should be pulled from their cabs and made to walk home.

11. A high temperature should only have a negative sign in front of it two or three days a year. This is why Celsius sucks.

Half a Trillion

The new Bush budget asks for a $500 million deficit. One-half a trillion dollars.

I don't care if you're a liberal watching the government be starved of tax revenue so it'll be forced to cut programs for people who need them in the future; I don't care if you're a conservative concerned that the nation is being fiscally irresponsible and that our credit and ability to sustain low inflation and low interest rates will be negatively impacted; I don't care if you're a libertarian upset that the government is going to have to take more taxes from you to pay for the interest from this deficit.

It's clear to me that from every perspective this is a bad budget from a fiscally irresponsible man who should be removed in November, and mounted on a wall as an example of just how bad a president can be.

To Market, to Market

Iowa Electronic Markets on the Democratic race for president:

Oscar Showtimes Update

Film Name	Picture	Director	Actor	Actress	S. Actor	S.Actress
City of God		X
Cold Mountain			X			X
The Cooler					X
House of Sand and Fog			X			X
In America				X	X
The Last Samurai					X
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	X	X
Lost in Translation	X	X	X
Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World	X	X
Monster				X
Mystic River	X	X	X		X	X
Pieces of April						X
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl			X
Seabiscuit	X
Something's Gotta Give				X
thirteen						X
21 Grams				X	X
Whale Rider				X

Showtimes (Chicago, Oak Park, and Evanston only) from the Chicago Reader for the week of Friday, January 30 through Thursday, February 5th:

City of God - Not playing currently, on DVD now.

Cold Mountain - Davis 4614 N. Lincoln - Daily 4:00, 7:00, 9:50; Sa-Su also 1:00 pm;River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. - Fr-Sa 1:10, 2:10, 4:15, 5:20, 7:25, 8:30, 10:30; Su 1:10, 2:10, 4:10, 5:20, 7:15, 8:30, 10:15; Mon-Th 2:10, 3:45, 5:20, 7:00, 8:30, 10:00; Webster Place 1471 W. Webster at Clybourn - Daily 12:50, 3:50, 6:50, 9:50; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:30, 3:50, 7:10, 10:30

The Cooler - Pipers Alley Wells at North Ave - Fr, Mon, Th 5:00, 8:00, 10:30; Sa-Su 2:00, 5:00, 8:00, 10:30; Wed 5:00, 10:30;River East 21 322 E. Illinois St - Fr-Su 1:00, 3:10, 5:20, 7:45, 10:10; Mon-Th 2:40, 5:20, 7:45, 9:50;Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 11:45, 2:20, 4:55, 7:25, 10:00

House of Sand and Fog - River East 21 322 E. Illinois St - Fr-Su 1:30, 4:10, 7:00, 9:50; Mon-Th 2:00, 4:50, 7:30, 10:10; Webster Place 1471 W. Webster at Clybourn - Daily 2:30, 7:40

In America - Pipers Alley Wells at North Ave - Daily 4:15, 7:15, 10:00; Sa-Su also 1:15;River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. - Fr-Sa 1:40, 4:10, 7:10, 9:30; Su 1:40, 4:20, 7:10, 9:20; Mon-Th 2:15, 4:50, 7:10, 9:30; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:30, 3:00, 5:25, 7:55, 10:20

The Last Samurai - City North 14 2600 N. Western - Fr-Su, Tu 1:45, 5:15, 8:30; Mon, Wed-Th 2:00, 5:15, 8:30; Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 3:45, 9:30;Ford City 7601 S. Cicero - Daily 1:45, 5:00, 8:15

LOTR:ROTK - Chatham 14 210 W. 87th - Daily 12:50, 4:45, 8:30;Ford City 7601 S. Cicero - Daily 2:30, 7:30;River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. - Fr-Su 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30; Mon-Th 3:30, 5:00, 7:30, 9:00; Webster Place 1471 W. Webster at Clybourn - Fr, Mon-Tu, Th 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00; Sa-Su 11:00, 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00; Wed 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 9:00; Fr-Sa also 11:00 pm; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 11:30, 3:45, 8:00

Lost In Translation - Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 1:25, 7:00; Landmark's Century Centre 2828 N. Clark - Daily 2:40, 5:10, 7:40, 10:00; Fr-Su also 12:20 pm; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 2:55, 7:40 double feature

MAC:TFSOTW - City North 14 2600 N. Western - Daily 2:20, 5:20, 8:15; River East 21 322 E. Illinois St - Fr-Sa 1:15, 4:15, 7:30, 10:30; Su 1:15, 4:15, 7:15, 10:15; Mon-Th 4:00, 7:15, 10:10; Village 1548 N. Clark - Fr, Mon-Th 6:50, 9:40; Sa-Su 1:10, 4:00, 6:50, 9:40

Monster - Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 2:10, 5:00, 8:10, 10:40; Sa-Su also 11:30 am; Ford City 7601 S. Cicero - Fr-Wed 1:45, 4:25, 7:10, 9:50; Th 1:45, 4:25, 9:50; Landmark's Century Centre 2828 N. Clark - Daily 1:40, 4:10, 7:00, 9:30; Fr-Su also 11:15 am; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:00, 2:35, 5:10, 7:45, 10:20; Lake 1020 Lake, Oak Park - Daily 12:00, 2:30, 5:00, 7:30, 10:00

Mystic River - Biograph 2433 N. Lincoln - Fr, Mon-Th 7:00, 9:40; Sa-Su 1:05, 4:00, 7:00, 9:40; Burnham Plaza 826 S. Wabash - Fr, Mon-Th 7:00, 9:35; Sa-Su 1:20, 4:10, 7:00, 9:35; Chatham 14 210 W. 87th - Daily 1:30, 4:10, 6:50, 9:30; City North 14 2600 N. Western - Fr-Su, Tu 1:10, 4:10, 7:00, 10:00; Mon, Wed-Th 4:10, 7:00, 10:00; Lawndale 3330 W. Roosevelt - Daily 5:00, 8:00; Fr-Su also 2:00; River East 21 322 E. Illinois St - Fr-Su 1:10, 4:15, 7:15, 10:10; Mon-Th 4:15, 7:15, 10:15; 62nd & Western 2258 W. 62nd - Fr-Su 12:45, 3:40, 6:35, 9:30; Mon-Th 4:00, 6:45, 9:30; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:40, 4:00, 7:30, 10:30

Pieces of April - Not playing currently, on DVD Feb 24th.

POTC:COTBP - Not playing currently, on DVD now.

Seabiscuit - City North 14 2600 N. Western - Daily 7:00; River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. - Fr-Sa 7:30; Su-Th 7:00; Also available on DVD now.

Something's Gotta Give - City North 14 2600 N. Western - Fr-Su, Tu 1:30, 4:20, 7:15, 10:00; Mon, Wed-Th 4:20, 7:15, 10:00; Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 1:40, 4:20, 7:50, 10:30; Sa-Su also 10:40 am; 3 Penny 2424 N. Lincoln - Fr 6:20; Sa-Su 1:40, 4:00, 6:20; Mon-Th 6:00, 8:15; Fr-Sa also 8:45; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 11:15, 2:00, 5:00, 7:55, 10:40; Lake 1020 Lake, Oak Park - Daily 12:50, 3:45, 6:40, 9:25

thirteen - Not playing currently, on DVD now.

21 Grams - Davis 4614 N. Lincoln - Fr, Mon-Th 5:00, 7:30, 10:00; Sa-Su 12:00, 2:30, 5:00, 7:30, 10:00; Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 1:50, 4:40, 7:20, 10:10; Sa-Su also 11:00 am; Landmark's Century Centre 2828 N. Clark - Daily 2:00, 7:30, 10:10; Fr-Su also 11:30 am; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:20, 5:05, 9:50 double feature

Whale Rider - Not playing currently, on DVD now.

Whale Rider

Saw Whale Rider this evening. Much better than I had feared. Not at all the "feel good" Bend It Like Beckham-ish movie I'd expected.

The kid's great, but not Oscar great. The range of emotion she showed wasn't great enough and I don't believe her as a stick fighter (yeah I know I'm horribly mashing up the name of a Maori weapn, but I just didn't catch what the pool cue was called).

Worth a rent.

And by the way - Godfather of Soul or Maori Tribal Chief?

Google Gaming

My friend Bryan just turned me on to the best brain teaser ever. Pick two words that, when entered into Google, return one and only one hit. I haven't found any combinations yet, though "spork flamberge" came close with two hits.

Once you've mastered that, try this Google drinking game, that extends the concept.

UPDATE: "micture swingle", "flamberge barf". At least until this page gets indexed.

Challenge

RealityFuel has a challenge I first read about on bookslut's blog - read 50 books this year and blog about them.

So far, I've got Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life" to write about. I read this in Cancun last week and it was a perfect beach book. Bronson's agenda, if he has one, is to encourage people to make the leap out of the dead-end or dissatisfying job they have now to a new and more fulfilling career.

The book is Terkel-ian in that it consists of the individual stories of many people and the changes these people made in their life. Not all worked out, and surprisingly few had a thunderbolt moment that caused them to change. Most worked hard at changing over from what was paying their bills. Some made less money by far than they had at their earlier career. Almost no one had freakish amazing success at first, but most of the people profiled and interviewed in the book found satisfaction in their careers and in their life by persuing a career or lifestyle more suited to their temperament.

Bronson includes anecdotes about his own switch in careers from Wall Street type to writer. These came across as a bit narcissistic, but were very relevant to me personally as I try to work out what comes after Information Technology for me. Most specifically Bronson's industry was "it" in the 80's and he had a chance to make good money in it. My industry was "it" in the 90's and served me well, but I now need a change.

Joe-mentum?

So what happened to the much vaunted "Joe-mentum" that Lieberman claimed to have in New Hampshire?

Kerry - 39%, Dean - 26%, Clark - 12%, Edwards - 12%, Lieberman - 9%, Kucinich - 1%, Sharpton - 0%

Kucinich and Sharpton are in the race make a statement, not to actually take the nomination. With the South and West ahead, Clark and Edwards are ready for some big showdowns. Dean has money to burn, and Kerry now has to be considered the frontrunner.

But what about Joe? Lieberman is in this to win, and it's becoming more and more apparent that he won't win. In fact, I think it's a question now whether he was an add or a drag on the 2000 Democratic ticket. I know he made me considerably less enthusiastic about voting for Gore than I would have been. Did some people stay home rather than vote for the crypto-Republican for vice president?

Clearly Lieberman must think he can finish high in Missouri or Arizona next week. I just don't see it. It's time for "Joe-mentum" to go into "Joe-tirement".

And the Oscar Nominations Go To...

Film Name	Picture	Director	Actor	Actress	S. Actor	S.Actress
City of God		X
Cold Mountain			X			X
The Cooler					X
House of Sand and Fog			X			X
In America				X	X
The Last Samurai					X
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	X	X
Lost in Translation	X	X	X
Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World	X	X
Monster				X
Mystic River	X	X	X		X	X
Pieces of April						X
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl			X
Seabiscuit	X
Something's Gotta Give				X
thirteen						X
21 Grams				X	X
Whale Rider				X

The official list of all the nominees is here. One interesting note - to be nominated for best makeup you have to have two titles.

Every year I try to see all the nominees in the "Big 6" categories. The ones in yellow above are the ones I've seen so far this year. I've got a lot of movies to see between now and February 29th, obviously.

For Chicagoans (and for this purpose, Chicagoans mean Oak Parkers and Evanstonians as well since that's as far as I'm willing to travel to see a movie) - the Chicago Reader for this week shows you can see these nominees at the following theaters:

City of God - Nowhere. On DVD now. Actually made in 2002. What up wit' dat?

Cold Mountain - Davis 4614 N. Lincoln - Daily 4:00, 7:00, 9:50; River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. -Su-Tu, Th 2:10, 4:10, 5:20, 7:15, 8:30, 10:15; Wed 2:10, 5:20, 7:15, 8:30, 10:15; Webster Place 1471 W. Webster at Clybourn - Daily 12:20, 3:20, 6:20, 7:20, 9:30, 10:30; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:30, 3:50, 7:10, 10:30

The Cooler - Pipers Alley Wells at North Ave. - Mon, Wed-Th 4:30, 7:30, 10:10; Tu 4:30, 10:10; River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. - Mon-Th 3:10, 5:20, 7:45, 10:00; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 11:45, 2:20, 5:00, 7:25, 10:00

House of Sand and Fog - River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. Mon-Th 2:15, 3:50, 5:15, 7:00, 8:15, 9:50;Webster Place 1471 W. Webster at Clybourn - Daily 1:50, 4:40, 7:40, 10:40

In America - Pipers Alley Wells at North Ave. - Mon-Tu, Th 4:00, 5:00, 8:00, 9:30, 10:30; Wed 5:00, 8:00, 10:30; River East 21 322 E. Illinois St - Mon-Th 2:10, 4:40, 7:10, 9:20; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:30, 3:00, 5:25, 7:55, 10:20;

The Last Samurai - City North 14 2600 N. Western - Mon, Wed-Th 2:00, 5:15, 8:30; Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 3:25, 6:40, 9:55; Ford City 7601 S. Cicero - Daily 1:45, 5:00, 8:15; Village 1548 N. Clark - Mon-Th 7:10; Sa-Su 1:30, 4:05, 7:10;

LOTR:ROTK - Chatham 14 210 W. 87th - Daily 12:50, 4:45, 8:30;Ford City 7601 S. Cicero - Daily 1:45, 5:00, 8:15; Lawndale 3330 W. Roosevelt - Daily 4:50, 8:40;River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. Mon-Th 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00;62nd & Western 2258 W. 62nd - Mon-Th 4:30, 8:30;Webster Place 1471 W. Webster at Clybourn - Mon-Th 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00;Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 11:30, 3:45, 8:00

Lost in Translation - Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 2:40, 5:30, 7:00, 9:45; Landmark's Century Centre 2828 N. Clark - Daily 2:40, 5:10, 7:40, 10:00; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 2:55, 7:40 double feature

M&C;:TFSOTW - City North 14 2600 N. Western - Mon, Wed-Th 8:00, Tu 7:10, 10:10; River East 21 322 E. Illinois St. - Daily 7:15, 10:10;Village 1548 N. Clark - Mon-Th 6:50, 9:40

Monster - Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 2:10, 5:00, 8:10, 10:45;Ford City 7601 S. Cicero - Mon-Wed 1:45, 4:25, 7:10, 9:50; Th 1:45, 4:25, 9:50;Landmark's Century Centre 2828 N. Clark - Daily 1:40, 4:10, 7:00, 9:30; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:00, 2:35, 5:10, 7:45, 10:20;Lake 1020 Lake, Oak Park - Daily 12:00, 2:30, 5:00, 7:30, 10:00

Mystic River - Biograph 2433 N. Lincoln - Mon-Th 7:00, 9:35;Burnham Plaza 826 S. Wabash - Mon-Th 7:00, 9:35; Chatham 14 210 W. 87th - Daily 1:15, 5:10, 9:15; City North 14 2600 N. Western - Mon, Wed-Th 2:15, 5:15, 8:15; Tu 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, 10:00;River East 21 322 E. Illinois St - Mon-Th 4:15, 7:15, 10:15; Village 1548 N. Clark - Mon-Th 7:00, 9:35;Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:40, 4:00, 7:30, 10:30;

Pieces of April - Nowhere. On DVD Feb 24th.

POTC:TCOTBP - Nowhere. On DVD now.

Seabiscuit - Nowhere. On DVD now.

Something's Gotta Give - City North 14 2600 N. Western, - Mon, Wed-Th 2:50, 5:45, 8:30; Tu 1:45, 4:45, 7:30, 10:15; Davis 4614 N. Lincoln - Daily 4:50, 7:20, 9:50; Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 1:40, 4:30, 7:30, 10:30;3 Penny 2424 N. Lincoln - Mon-Th 6:30, 8:45; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 11:15, 2:00, 5:00, 7:55, 10:40; Lake
1020 Lake, Oak Park - Daily 1:10, 3:55, 6:40, 9:25

thirteen - Nowhere. On DVD now.

21 Grams - Davis 4614 N. Lincoln - Daily 5:00, 7:30, 10:00; Esquire 58 E. Oak - Daily 1:50, 4:40, 7:15, 10:10; Ford City 7601 S. Cicero - Daily 1:30, 4:15, 7:00, 9:45; Landmark's Century Centre 2828 N. Clark - Daily 2:00, 4:40, 7:30, 10:10; Century 12 and CineArts 6 1715 Maple, Evanston - Daily 12:20, 5:05, 9:50 double feature

Whale Rider Nowhere. On DVD now.

Four-Star Foreshadowing

Locussolus points to this entry on Braden's weblog that may ultimately turn out to be one of the most interesting stories of the new year. The U.S. Military is reorganizing the administration of the military in Iraq, and the implications are startling.

My Dreams Were My Ticket Out

Welcome myself back from Cancun. Why thank you, me.

Much to write about regarding Cancun. Later. I have to dig out from under 2500 e-mail messages (probably 80% spam) that accumulated while I was gone.

By the way, it's "e-mail", like "x-ray". The usage "email" is just goofy and looks like a Biblical name. You wouldn't use "xray", would you?

Potpourri

Daniel Gross at Slate says we shouldn't be so gloomy about corporate headquarters leaving Chicago. I think he misses a key factor - cascade. If there are corporate headquarters here, there are customers which moves other service and supply businesses into the local market, expanding the economy.

Mark Spittle in Salon examines the new meme "Don't be an asshole, vote Democratic". I hadn't heard of it, but I'm not part of the media elite.

Want to be a minister? I cancelled my subscription to Rolling Stone when you used to see their ads, but I found the ULC church on the web.

Also in Salon, Michelle Goldberg discusses the Super Bowl broadcast's rejection of MoveOn.org's elegant anti-Bush ad. As Alex Jones says in the article, "The rules are exactly what the owner of the news medium wants them to be, and they are not rules, they are simply choices...The long and short of it is they don't have to run any advertisement they don't want to."

This is the most despicable thing I've seen since the girl who begged for money to pay off her credit card debts. Thanks to ChgoRed:Girl Editor for the link and for the link to Going Bridal - a very funny site.

Think it's cold here? New England is getting punished. In fact, the lows in New England yesterday were lower than the daytime temperatures on Mars. It was 12� F on Mars yesterday, and -33� F in Watertown, New York. Of course at night on Mars it goes down to -130�, which is a bit nippier than anyplace in New England.

Me? I'm going to Cancun on Tuesday, where it's a pleasant 83� F today. Ahhhh...

The City That Works To Sell Off Its Assets

Bad news for Chicago today - J.P. Morgan Chase & Company is buying Bank One for $55 billion. Bank One is the company formed by the merger of the original Bank One and First National Bank of Chicago. First National's management team came out on top in that merger, but you can bet that won't be the case this time.

Headquarters will be moved to New York, and 10,000 jobs are expected to be lost at the senior and middle management levels - that means good jobs leaving Chicago.

In the last few years, we've lost Arthur Anderson and Fannie Mae and now Bank One. The only significant pick-up was Boeing, which keeps most of its employees elsewhere. Why is Chicago losing big businesses? Is it because we don't have the competitive edge, or is it because being competitive these days means selling out to another company?

Chicago's business future is not as bright as it was 48 hours ago.

New City? More like New Sh-

New City's cover story this week is "10 Chicagoans we Love to Hate" ("love" is spelled with a heart symbol on the cover).

I can't quibble with some of their choices but I take exception to a couple. Here's their list -

1. Mike Ditka
2. Former Sun-Times Owner Conrad Black
3. R. Kelly (Michael Jackson's future roommate).
4. Bob Sirott
5. Ira Glass, host of This American Life on NPR
6. Liquor commisioner Winston Mardis
7. Mary Schmich
8. Richard Roeper
9. Former Weather Underground radicals Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who now teach at UIC and Northwestern, respectively.
10. Joan Cusack

OK, I can give them Ditka, Black, Kelly, Mardis, and Roeper. I think they're reaching on Ayers and Dohrn (Maybe someone got a C- in a class, hmmmm?) Situationally, I can even give them Sirott, who knocked Phil Ponce's screen time way down on Chicago Tonight and Cusack, who I've liked a lot in the past, but whose ads for U.S. Cellular make me really glad I'm not a Sox fan.

But Mary Schmich and Ira Glass I have to take exception to. Mary Schmich is one of the more entertaining columnists around, making a name for herself from that "Sunscreen" column she wrote a few years ago that everyone thought was Kurt Vonnegut. I'm always happy to read her. Maybe she's a little precious at times, but it's a matter of taste. Certainly, if I were picking a columnist at the Trib to declare MOST ANNOYING, I'd pick John Kass. He's no Royko, but he thinks he is.

Finally, Ira Glass is indisputedly one of Chicago's gems. If you've heard This American Life, you'll know that it's one of the most original shows on any medium. New City admits it may just be jealousy that leads to his inclusion, but pick on him because of his voice. I'll take Ira Glass's whine over the writing of New City any day.

Sample some of the best of Ira Glass's work here.

Mr. Greens Jeans

In my quest to cook with available fresh ingredients, I procured some winter greens from Whole Foods this weekend and adapted a recipe for them from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. Give it a shot -

Ingredients:
Winter greens - I used a bunch of chard, a bunch of mustard greens, and a bunch of kale.
1 teaspoon garlic powder (not salt)
1 teaspoon onion powder (not salt)
1 tablespoon salt (yes salt)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons olive oil
additional salt and black pepper to taste


Pour 1 quart of water into a large skillet with tablespoon of salt. Bring to a boil.
Take any tough stems off well washed greens and cut into 1"-2" pieces, place in skillet, let cook until mostly tender (5-10 min)
Rip up leaves from toughest greens (kale in this case) into reasonable sized pieces (they will wilt and shrink quite a bit)- add to skillet. Cook until wilted.
Rip up leaves from next toughest green, add to skillet. Cook until wilted.
Rip up leaves from last green, add to skillet, cook until wilted.
Add cumin, onion powder, garlic powder. If you wish you can add red pepper flakes as well (1/2 teaspoon). Mix together.

Cook until all are tender. Remove greens, draining with tongs, into a large bowl.
Toss olive oil in, salt and pepper to taste.

It's not Boston Trading to get Ruth back, but...

The Cubs have expressed interest in signing Greg Maddux. One of the most infamous blunders the Cubs ever made was letting soon-to-be-multiple-Cy-Young-award-winning pitcher Greg Maddux go to Atlanta. Maddux is now 38 and sported a 3.96 ERA with the Braves last year. Of course, the Cubs are now interested in him.

If the Cubs signed Maddux they could have Wood, Prior, Clement, Zambrano, and Maddux in a five man starting rotation, or possiby push Zambrano or Clement back to middle relief, where they've been hurting. Maddux isn't a long-term solution for the Cubs, but with the Astros signing Roger Clemens, he could be Gandalf to Clemens' Saruman. It wouldn't hurt Wood or Prior to have a pitcher like that around to learn from.

Pettite, Clemens, Oswalt, and Miller versus Wood, Prior, Maddux, and Clement/Zambrano. Astros versus Cubs will be the race to watch if both teams can keep healthy and can close out games this year. 1-0 baseball every day.

Maybe by correcting the Maddux mistake we can reverse some of our Cub-karma. What's Lou Brock up to these days, anyway?

Supreme Court Wusses

The Supreme Court has ruled today in Verizon v. Trinko, 02-682 that you may not sue the local RBOC for providing poor service to your phone provider. As you may know, the RBOC's - what's left of Ma Bell - provide the last mile of service to rivals under anti-trust agreements. It was alleged that they provide poor service on the leased lines and last mile lines when they are leased by a rival phone company.

The Supremes agreed with the Bush administration that forcing the RBOC's to offer good service "could threaten substantial disruption of the telecommunications industry." Well so what? It needs some disruption!

Someone is going to figure out a way to get telco drops to every home in America. When that day comes, bye-bye RBOCs.

Guns for Buttermilk

Turkey and Israel have reached an agreement to exchange Israeli high-tech weaponry for Turkish water, shipped over in tankers.

This fascinating article in the Guardian outlines the importance of water in the region and how its scarcity and uneven distribution has historically led to conflict, and how that scaricity increases tensions today.

Interactive Map

I like maps. Try this one out on John Edwards' site. It shows you how if the Dems take the states they took last time plus Arizona, or plus New Hampshire and West Virginia, or plus Ohio (all very possible scenarios), The Dems end up beating Bush.

There's also good info on state voting trends. Illinois is marked as solidly Democratic. I like that.

State of the Candidates

Dean leads Gephardt in Iowa, with Kerry and Edwards right behind. Clark is hoping to do well in New Hampshire and win in South Carolina, but made an interesting gaffe this week when he implied that abortion should be completely unregulated.

Meanwhile Al Sharpton caught Dean off guard by attacking him on the lack of minorities in his cabinet. Carol Moseley Braun stood up for Dean saying, "Rev. Sharpton, the fact of the matter is we can always blow up a racial debate and make people mad at each other."

Right now, I think you'd have to say the race is between Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards, and Clark. Lieberman, Braun, Sharpton, and Kucinich are pretty much out of it already. Lieberman is the only one of that bunch who doesn't think he's done for.

Dean has the commanding lead, but Clark is coming on strong. I watched the candidates speak on C-SPAN this weekend while I took the lights down from our tree, and I have a new favorite if Dean should falter. I had been hoping for Kerry, but he's just not getting it done.

The new man of the hour is John Edwards. He can talk the talk when he's at a dais. I only wish he'd hired some solid political help to raise funds and run his campaign. Dean has benefitted from Bill Bradley's team from 2000.

I also note that within the context of debate, Edwards and Dean have been pretty cordial. Edwards' only sharp criticism of Dean is that he can't win in the South. I'm not sure any Democrat could win in the South, but a Dean-Edwards ticket looks pretty strong regionally, doesn't it?

Pulling Mussels from the sh- I said pulling ugh, pull- ow!

When not boiled up and coated with butter and lemon, mussels are able to stick to ship bottoms like Colin Farrel sticks to strip clubs. Scientists at nearby Purdue University have figured out how. It seems that the mussels are using iron from the surrounding sea water to create their own super glue.

Details and links at Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends.

French Bread

I've been playing with bread the last week or so. First I built a fort, then a boat, then a crocodile, then a moon lander. Then I decided I should stop playing with my bread and learn how to make it.

After much scouring of the Internet (aka two Google searches), I found several recipes that I've sythesized into one. You can play with the ingredients a bit here. I upped the salt from the ones I'd seen, added the proofing stage, and have played with a couple different fats. The results from this recipe are very credible. The bread is soft and well textured with an extremely crispy crust.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups warm water (hot from the tap is fine)
pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
3 tablespoons oil (I've used olive and vegetable - I intend to try butter next time out)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
4 cups AP flour

1. Dissolve the yeast and pinch of sugar in the water. Let stand five to ten minutes. If bubbles are appearing at the top, proceed. Otherwise, you've got dead yeast, man. If the yeast is dead, stop and go get good yeast - you'll just bake a brick otherwise.

2. Add oil and salt to yeast water.

3. Stir two cups of flour into the liquid mixture. Add rest of flour slowly until dough is formed. You can do this in a mixer with a dough hook as well.

4. Flour work surface lightly, and knead dough against it 5 to 8 minutes, working it hard with the heel of your palm. I use an X motion - my right hand pushing it to the left and forward followed by my left hand pushing it right and forward. The bread hook in most mixers will form the dough nicely, but I think the kneading really has to be done by hand. The idea here is to form gluten and smashing the bread-i-cules together helps to form these long chewy strands of protein.

5. Put the dough in a greased bowl in a warm place (if you're not cooking anything else, the top of a gas range is good). Cover with towel and let rise until it's twice it's original volume (45-90 minutes).

6. Punch the dough down and let it rise again until it is twice its original volume (45-90 minutes).

7. Punch it down again and divide it into thirds. Roll each third out into an oblong shape, 1/4" think or so. Roll the loaf up like a rug, long end back on itself. Pinch the ends closed. Place on a lightly greased or nonstick baking sheet. If you have french bread forms, which look like a rounded "w" when seen on edge, use these instead of the baking sheet. Make sure to grease it down lightly.

8. Make several shallow parallel diagonal cuts in the top of each loaf. I add another lengthwise shallow cut. Brush the top of the loaf with water. Let rise until doubled again.

9. Fill a pie pan with water and place on lower rack of oven. Preheat to 375. This will help the crust by keeping the interior of the oven moist. Place the loaves on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

10. If you wish, about 20 minutes into the baking time, brush the tops of the loaves with a 50-50 mixture of water and egg white to get a browner top. You can also use 50-50 milk and water instead.

Spammer Wanted

Orbitz is looking for a spammer.

Baby It's Cold Outside

I once attended a conference in Bloomington, Minnesota on the coldest day in Minnesota history. It was so cold you could toss a cup of coffee in the air and the drops would freeze, the insides still hot, which would then burst through the ice shell in a frozen fireworks fest. A guy on TV showed off this trick.

We all ran outside to try to duplicate it, but just ended up with frozen sidewalk patches in front of the hotel. I guess I should be glad I wasn't in the coldest town in America, which is -

Well, that's the question. International Falls, MN has long claimed the coldest in the lower 48 title, but Embarrass, MN is now challenging that claim. Read it in the New York Times, as they say.

I wonder how the residents of Prospect Creek, Alaska feel about this whole debate. The coldest temperature recorded there (80 below, if you're curious) is 20 degrees Farenheit below Minnesota's worst. If I lived there I'd name my firstborn Kelvin.

Algerie Francais

The late 1950's and early 1960's were a tough time in France and Algeria. France held Algeria as a colony, but an Algerian independence movement had begun to make gains and was inflicting real damage on the French.

Algeria, alone among French posessions was in the same category of land as mother-France. While Tahiti, French Guyana, and other French colonial posessions might be liberated and released by France, it was unthinkable to many Frenchmen that Algeria would ever be separated.

It was equally unthinkable to Algerian separatists that they should remain bound to a European colonial power. A dirty war ensued, on a par with Chile under Pinochet.

In Paris in 1961, a peaceful crowd of 30,000 Algerian protestors in Paris was attacked after a rally by upwards of 20,000 police. More than 200 protestors were killed by police - their bodies dumped into the Seine. News of the killings was suppressed by deGaulle and his government. Issues of newspapers containing accounts of the massacre were siezed by French authorities and destroyed.

It's in this Algeria that Saadi Yacef produced The Battle of Algiers, a ficitious but historically appropriate film. Salon interviews him today and Yacef compares what is going on in Iraq now to what Algeria went through then.

Battle of Algiers is playing this weekend at the Music Box Theatre at 3733 N. Southport at 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, and 9:40.

Hey Apartment Hunters

Looks like Waveland and Halsted is getting a Whole Foods. Cool.

By the way, I hate Hard Rock Restaurants, but I have to give them massive kudos for their remodelling of the Carbon and Carbide building at South Water (Wacker Place) and Michigan. The old black and gold building has revealed itself after much scrubbing to be a beautiful dark green and gold.

I may be annoyed by the interior when it opens, but so far, it looks like they preserved a gem of a skyscraper.

Houses of Cards

Two stories grabbed me this morning - the first is that the IMF issued a report that called U.S. deficits a global timebomb. The IMF worries US debt may end up pushing up interest rates and eliminate the dollar's status as a safe haven currency.

The second is a story on the prospects of rebuilding the mud city of Bam in Iran where 35, 000 people were killed in the recent earthquake. They're seriously contemplating rebuilding the city in mud bricks again because of the heritage implications.

Now color me crazy, but isn't an earthquake that kills 35,000 people God's way of telling you to use rebar?

Dean, Again

Yes, I'm posting a lot of Dean stuff lately, but hey, I'm into the guy for $150 already.

What media pundit wrote this little gem? "He could be intemperate and impulsive ... the image of wrath -- his forefinger pointing, his fist pounding his palm, his eyes ablaze." Sounds like any of a number of Dean naysayers describing Howie the Guv, eh? Nope, it's Theodore White on Bobby Kennedy during the 1968 campaign.

Arianna Huffington has a great piece in Salon comparing Dean's 2004 candidacy to Kennedy's 1968 run. She includes a nice little slap at crypto-Republican Joe Lieberman.

Howard, you might want to skip any LA hotel campaign stops.

Dean Confusion

I see two interesting things this morning. One is the Newsweek cover story on why Democrats are trying to stop Dean and the other is the endorsement of Dean by Bill Bradley. This follows a previosu endorsement of Dean by Al Gore.

So is the party for or against Dean? Terry MacAuliffe is clealry not a Dean supporter, but Bradley and Gore were the two major candidates in the last presidential primary.

It's clear the Democrats are divided. Will this mean weakness in the party or is it a sign that more liberal times are coming?

Religion and Politics

I came across a comment on a site about the vast religious left that got me thinking. In the 1960's and 1970's, the religious figures in the country seemed to be all left leaning. In the 80's and 90's, the fundamentalists took the media by storm.

But did they ever really supplant the left leaning Christians? By Christian, I don't mean the Bible-thumpers like the Evangelicals or hard-core Baptists, but the Lutherans, American Catholics, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians and the like who make up a majority of the believers in this country.

You can separate them for my purposes into the Old Testament Christians and the New Testament Christians. Both sides believe in both testaments, but the Old Testament Christians in my definition hold with the God of fire and brimstone and punishment eternal. The New Testament Christians are the ones who focus more on Jesus and his one Commandment - "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you." John 13:34

I'm not so sure they ever were supplanted in numbers, just in volume and shrillness. I have friends who are religious and friends who are athiests. I even have friends I respect very much who are a couple that are one of each.

I'm not a very religious person myself. At best, I'm a post-Lutheran Agnostic, and at worst a lapsed-Catholic Atheist. I have mixed feelings about my disbelief, however. I mourn the loss of a connection to a greater being and a larger community while celebrating the freedom from what I'm prety sure is superstition.

John Toland Dead

John Toland died yesterday. Toland wrote the definitive popular account of Japan's drift towards militarism and the Pacific War that followed in his book Rising Sun. It is to WWII's Pacific front what William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was to the European front.

Read it if you get a chance.

How Much?

This much.

Back to the Salt Mines

I've been off from work most of the last month (having saved vacation just in case I got terminated). Today is the first day back, and I have to say it's brutal. Not that I'm working too hard yet today.

I think we lose something in this country by not allowing everyone a decent amount of time off. Most people grab their vacations in dribs and drabs. My wife gets her vacation a week at a time and no more. How can you plan to visit somewhere far from home if you have seven days to do it in? It's easy enough to pop up to Wisconsin for the weekend or even to fly cross country for a week, but when you start thinking about going to other continents, a decent amount of time is necessary.

Getting to Australia, for example, takes 18 hours on the most direct flights from Chicago. If you spend four days in transit and one day adjusting to the time change, that gives you two days to enjoy before packing it up and coming home. The same problem applies to travel to Asia, Africa, and even South America.

I think that lack of time to travel hurts us in two ways. One, it ensures that only the elite ever get to see anything outside of North America and the Caribbean, limiting American perspective and driving our politics to be more insular and less global. Two, it limits the world's chance to see Americans up close and personal. I've found when I've travelled that people in other countries generally are wary of us until they meet us - then, they put out the red carpet.

A mandatory solid month off every four years should be part of the national agenda. Seems like a pipe dream, but so was the forty hour week at one time.

I Agree - If You Do, That Is

Paul Graham writes about conformity and the things you can't say.

One dining note - If you go to Mysore Woodlands on Devon and order some of its excellent food, be careful of the Thalis. Unles you have a spare stomach, it's WAY too much to eat.

Dean's Gaffes are His Gains

Sydney Blumenthal thinks so, at least.

Accomodating the Viewer

Paul (aka Locussolus) brought up an interesting point about ROTK in the Cold Mountain comments. He grew impatient with the long slow ending as his full bladder urged him out of the theatre. Return of the King is a long 201 minutes. Add the "pre-show entertainment", aka advertisements, and you're looking at a good three and a half hours of sitting time, probably coupled with a megagulp sized soda.

What can a director fairly ask of an audience's physical endurance?

Lawrence of Arabia ran a long 227 minutes in its restoration roadshow release. Also, I am highly suggestible and required two monstergulps (or approximatley two liters) of Diet Coke to make it through the desert. But, in accordance with the original release, and in service to Maurice Jarre's fabulous score for the film, there was a little thing called an Intermission. That brief intermission let the audience dispose of one large beverage and acquire another (desert, sand, sun, hot, hot, hot, thirsty) before watching Peter O'Toole go steadily more mad.

I propose that ANY movie over 150 minutes include a potty break, er, intermission. Maybe you could cut out that damnable jeans ad where the guy tackles his El Camino in a bull ring. No, seriously, look at it. It's a freaking El Camino!

In any case, if an audience expected an intermission, maybe directors could make 300 minute films if the subject demanded it. I'd still like to see the nine and a half hour version of Greed from the book McTeague that von Stroheim filmed. Put a few intermissions in and it might be feasible.

Or maybe the theatres should all start selling Stadium Pals...

Cold Mountain

Having spent pretty nearly what I expected to spend and having received some killer gifts (nice knives, etc...), the Mrs. and I wandered off to our multimegaplex to view Cold Mountain.

Let me tell you that despite the promos, this is NOT a date movie. At least, not if your date dislikes incredibly gory battle scenes. The movie was very well done, but for every bit of schmoopie, there were two bits of goopy bloody scenes.

I need to read the reviews more closely. By the way, they DO have the scouring scene that I thought was missing from LOTR:ROTK. It's a nice touch in this movie.

A Good Week

Saddam Hussein is captured, George Ryan is indicted, Michael Jackson is charged, and U.S. Citizens cannot be arbitrarily designated "enemy combatants". The Green River killer is sentenced. John Lee Malvo is convicted.

You can't always get away with flaunting the law. And what the hell is a judge doing voting FOR giving the executive the right to completely end-run the Constitution? That judge ought to be removed immediately for either a lack of understanding of the law or for being corrupted by his political beliefs.

Karl Marx captured!



And in other news, this is the day FARK stopped mattering. The admins at FARK hadn't woken up yet when the news of Saddam Hussein's capture was announced. For a good hour or two, the FARKers riffed on the capture in the last thread on the site - one about a blind deer hunter (yes, a blind deer hunter. It is FARK.) The thread was hilarious and not a typical left/right flamewar. Strange riffs on Canadian hockey players, Fidel Castro, Red Sonja, and spider holes ensued. It was great to be part of one of the funniest and most surreal threads in FARK history.

So, of course, the mods killed it. When the "official" thread appeared, the threadjacked deer hunter thread was purged of anything funny relating to Hussein's capture. Soon it dropped from an infinite number of posts (actually around 500) to less than 140 and ultimately closed. The new official thread was a simple flamewar, with the usual right wing idiots saying that "liberals must be crushed to have their leader arrested", and similar witty comments.

So I'm done. I'm not FARKing again for a while. The moderators accomplished their goal of stopping a threadjack, but failed in the larger mission of being funny.

Hey guys - it's not news. It's FARK. And it's not funny anymore.

Google Politics

If you type "miserable failure" into Google, what do you get?

Hmmmmmm....

Old but Classic

The Death of Fun

The company I still work for has had a tradition for the last sixteen years of gathering all the new employees together and mandating that they do a sketch at the annual Holiday Party. The sketch is almost always an excuse to poke fun at management and to let everyone watching blow off some steam at the bigwigs' expense. There has always been a monitor to make sure the sketches didn't deteriorate into something off-color or too cruel, but generally the sketches have been hilarious.

Last year was no exception. Well, there was one exception. An accounting person got pissed off that she was slightly made fun of (really, it was a comment about the incessant demands for timesheets and not about her). She of course, threatened to sue. That was all it took - this year, no sketch.

In my fourth or fifth year here, we were shut down on IT spending and our department got destroyed in the sketches, somewhat unfairly, I thought. Did we threaten to sue? No. The men ouf our department got up front and sang karaoke "Stand By Your Man" at the top of our lungs badly with a little dance. That was our revenge, and we got a standing O' for it.

People today are just too damn sensitive, and companies are too damn wussy. The sketch was a MAJOR morale booster, and I think brought people together (Especially those in the sketch - I can think of one marriage and several hook-ups that came from our sketch). Overall, it was a major team builder. By allowing a nincompoop with no sense of humor to kill the sketch, the new management here has given up a cornerstone of what used to be a great company culture.

Rock on, Dude

Wil Wheaton has introduced me to my favorite new emoticon.

\m/ - rock, on dude!

Get it? No? Feh.

One Tolkien over the Line

I was hoping not to get really geeky on this blog, but my nature demands that I complain about the new Return of the King film before I see it. Harry Knowles, are you listening?

I've read that the Scouring of the Shire, which occurs at the end of the third book of the Lord of the Rings series is not going to be in the film. "Well, fair enough," I thought, "I'll see it on the DVD." Nope.

They didn't even film it. Didn't. Even. Film it.

I've spoken to a few people who expressed relief that the coda to the trilogy will not be shown. To them, the book and the series really ends when Gollum falls into Mount Doom with the One Ring (oh, sorry, was that a spoiler?), and the bits with Frodo and friends returning to roust the rapscallions who have taken over in their homeland is a long unnecessary trailing off. However, I always thought the Shire scenes at the end were crucial.

Tolkien denied frequently that the books were any sort of allegory about anything. That seems disingenuous. Whether Tolkien realized it or not, the Lord of the Rings is a perfect allegory for Britain and Germany (or Democracy and Fascism) in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

The Hobbits are homey creatures who endure and suffer and eventually triumph because of their resiliency. Orwell couldn't have described the English middle class better himself. The evil magical (or technically advanced?) armies of the enemy are brutal and threaten not just the Shire (Britain), but the whole of the world (Europe). The elves who helped to win last time could defeat the enemy, but have gone across the sea and only help indirectly with weapons and lemba(America not acting directly for a long time, but sending weapons and food to the Brits).

The threat from the East and South reflects Britain's view of Germany. Look at a map of Europe and England/Germany's relative positions to the Shire and Mordor. The rise of an evil that had been vanquished before in a mighty battle sounds an awful lot like WWI and WWII.

You can torture the parallels to make the A-Bomb the One Ring, but I don't think you have to go that far.

In this context, the Scouring of the Shire is the scouring of the war profiteers and petty vindictive bureaucrats who crept into British life under the context of of the war. The elimination of the underbrush of petty evil in the Shire was exactly what was needed in England in the late 40's. Politically, this is the most important part of the cycle.

It would have been interesting to see how American audiences would have reacted to scenes that could be seen as the need to eliminate the petty evil that crowds in when you fight a greater evil. Do you think John Ashcroft has seen the movies?

Hi, Ate Us?

Thanksgiving's here. OK, it's a few days away. But basically, I'm getting on a plane tomorrow and flying to the annual T-day celebration. I won't be back until Next Sunday. I may blog, I may not.

So what am I thankful for? Well, I just got married last month, so I'm very grateful for my new family, for a wife I love deeply, and for the fact that we've almost got the reception paid for.

I'm thankful for my friends. When I didn't have a family, I had friends and they were better friends than I could even have imagined. You know who you are.

I'm thankful for the fact I live in the U.S. and not in one of the countries we're bombing. OK, that's unfair. I'm thankful that I live in a country where every four years we get a chance to get rid of the guy in office if he's doing something we disapprove of. Here comes 2004.

I'm thankful that modern medicine has found ways to maintain me with drugs. In a primitive society, I imagine I'd already have been sent into the woods.

I'm thankful for digital music, and TiVO, and Gore-tex, and air purifiers, and paperback books, and cool fall days, and NPR, and the BBC, and Berke Breathed's return, and for vegetarian cookbooks, and trains, and for the Intarweb, and for my cats, and for translation tools and planes,and blog tools, and just about everything that makes the world what it is.

Except for George Bush. And Dick Cheney. Other than that, it's a great life. Really.

Happy employment to you!

Two of my three unemployed friends (well, four if you count the guy who stays at home in Woodstock writing and taking care of his kids) got jobs today! Congrats Mike and Tom.

One more to go. Come on, southsider!

Pear Pimples for Hairy Fishnuts

I searched. I found. Oh yeah.

2 new comics Sunday

Published November 21, 2003

On Sunday in Comics, Section 9, the Tribune introduces two new strips, "Opus," by Berkeley Breathed of "Bloom County" and "Outland" fame, and Darrin Bell's urban strip "Candorville."

Breathed produces "Opus" once a week only. Bell's daily "Candorville" replaces "Housebroken" Sunday in Comics, Monday through Friday in Tempo and Saturday in Weekend Entertainment.

Copyright � 2003, Chicago Tribune

All I Have to Say on the Issue

Tell me, my main man. What is the problem with Michael Jackson?

Can Kerry Rebound?

Slate tells us Kerry's new campaign style is right on target. It sounds like what he should have been doing all along. Honestly, if Kerry or Dean can pull it together I'm happy. I think we go down in flames if any of the other candidates get nominated. I've given money to Dean, but maybe Kerry gets a $50 check as well.

The thought of war-hero Kerry at a debate taunting Bush for his stuffed flight suit approach to leadership makes me all warm inside. "Bring it on!"

Mmmmmm... Fizzy Gravy

What to drink with your Thanksgiving feast? Wine is fine and beer is a good choice, but what if you don't want an alcoholic blast? Well, you could just go get a Coke or a 7-Up. OR you could go get yourself a turkey and gravy soda.



They really should sell white-meat and dark-meat versions.

Human Fund Donations Down

One of the best-received gifts I ever gave was a baby elephant. My roommate at the time was agog over the newly born baby elephant at the Lincoln Park Zoo. As Christmas rolled around, I found a number of small gifts for her, but couldn't find a really good "main" gift until I happened across a solicitation from the zoo to adopt an animal.

Although I had visions of an elephant in our refrigerator (footprints in the butter, you know), I read on and saw it was money marked to defray the cost of keeping the animal. Along with the knowledge that she had a share in the animal, the giftee was invited to special zoo events and treated like a wealthy zoo patron.

When my roomie opened the card, her grin stretched from ear to ear.

Well, this year, I've found another animal-related organization that's worth supporting - Heifer International. Their site is terrible, but the organization is great.

Heifer buys livestock for people around the world. They ship yaks, llamas, earthworms, bees, guinea pigs, chickens, goats, and dozens of other animals to poverty and hunger stricken area of the world, including the United States and Canada. The animals provide a start towards a sustainable economic engine for a village or an area.

Heifer also educates people about land and water use, crop rotation, and other matters that help sustain the livestock. The organization started in Indiana from Spanish Civil War relief worker Dan West's "a cow, not a cup" concept, moved to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1971, and has been honored by Presidents Reagan and Clinton.

Heifer shipped thousands of cows to Germany after WWII, well over a million chicks to Egypt by the mid-60's, and in 2002 announced they'd passed on their 3 millionth animal to China.

I'm sure I'll still send out the sweaters and books and toys to everyone, but I might add an animal or two to each present.

Know anyone who'd appreciate a water buffalo for Christmas?

Death Penalty Revamped

The Illinois House joined the Senate in overriding Governor Rod Blagojevich's partial veto of death penalty reform legislature. What's more, the vote was 115-0. The legislation now goes back to Blago, who has said he will sign it.

Among the reforms in the new law -

* Judges can rule out the death penalty in cases resting on jailhouse informants.
* The Illinois Supreme Court can overturn a death sentence it finds "fundamentally unjust"
* The mentally retarded may not be executed
* Defendants have more access to evidence and counsel

New link

New link of note on the right here - Pressthink. Jay Rosen, a professor at NYU writes this excellent blog on matters relating to democracy, the press, and the threat of "the Media" swallowing the important third leg of democracy - a Free Press. Read his intro for more info.

Movies are Your BEST Entertainment Value

Saw two movies this weekend, Master and Commander and Love, Actually.

Love, Actually first - it's a mess, but there's a lot of good in it. The one bit I'll focus on is an interesting bit in this British film. Hugh Grant plays the recently elected bachelor prime minister who enounters an arrogant President of the United States played by Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton first mildly insults Grant's lack of a wife, makes rude, lusty comments about the staffer who Grant will inevitably end up, then makes a sleazy pass at the same woman.

Earlier, Thornton in private tells Grant that he's not giving him any cooperation on some political goals that are not made clear to us. Grant and Thornton the next day hold a joint press conference. Thornton open the conference with the usual platitudes about the special relationship between the U.S. and Britain. When Grant is asked about his views, he shocks his cabinet and the press by berating Thornton and telling him that a relationship where one party dictates to the other is not a friendship at all. "Britain is a small country," Grant begins, "but she is also great."

The crowd of reporters goes wild, President Thornton is shocked and High Grant dances alone in 10 Downing later that night to "Jump" by the Pointer sisters, played especially for him by a patriotic BBC DJ.

Not a very flattering portrait of Americans. There's another bit with a pasty gross Brit going to America to try to score with the beautiful women he's convinced inhabit every bar. He ends up in Milwaukee, and somehow hooks up with Shannon Elizabeth and three hot roommates who insist he share their bed with them.

Now, I've been in bars in Milwaukee. The thin watery tasteless crap that passes itself off as "Milwaukee's Best" is a good indication not just of the quality of beer there, but of the quality of single women in the bars there. Laverne and Shirley were hotties in Milwaukee, remember. Not only is our president a dick, but apparently the most pathetic Brits are sex gods compared to American men.

But back to the prime minister. Britain as a nation is revolting against Blair and his cooperation with Bush. So much so, that Bush's secret service detail for his visit requested a virtual shutdown of central London for three days while Bush visits with our most important ally. Bush's detail had requested the Tube be shut down, that American troops, jets, and Black Hawk helicopters patrol the area where Bush would be; that the snipers and secret service agents be given diplomatic immunity from prosecution so they would not be liable to be prosecuted for murder if they should accidentally snuff the wrong Brit; and that they be allowed to carry a weapon called a "minigun" designed to kill a large group of people in a very short time.

Is this London, or Beirut? One thing Bush's handlers won't like is that British authorities are not willing to provide the out-of-sight, out-of-mind exclusionary protest zones, that keep King George from having to see the protests of citizens who would rather live in a democracy.

The second movie, I won't say much about. I saw Master and Commander with my friend Tom. He has an MFA in film and was excited about the film because it was directed by Peter Weir. I just like Age of Sail movies.

We watched the movie in relative silence (I think I let out a "whoa" every now and again), and as the lights came up I turned to him and said "THAT was great." He turned to me and said "I thought it was complete shit." Once we would have argued violently the relative merits of the movie, but as we walked to the subway, we just told each other what we liked and disliked about the film and put no animosity into the discussion.

Even your best friends can completely disagree with you. But you've got to respect the reasons why they disagree with you.

Bookslut

I can't find the article on-line, but the Chicago Reader's cover story this week is on the excellent Bookslut site run by Andersonvile resident Jessica Crispin.

I'd discovered the site a few weeks ago through locussolus, so I was both happy for the 'sluts and bummed that my little treasure trove of acerbic wit and literary criticism had been outed to the population of greater Chicagoland.

It truly is an excellent site, whether your tastes run to offbeat literature, comic books, science fiction, or just about any other genre. Check it out but keep it quiet.

J'Accuse Media

Reading and Not Reading

During the Middle Ages, the Arabs kept the ancient texts alive. The greatest library in the ancient world was at Alexandria. Almost all we know of Greek literature was handed down to us through the Arabs. Islamic culture tradionally has embraced learning and literature. In fact, the first message from Allah to Muhammed in the Koran is a command - Read.

But as this Tribune article points out, publishing and reading in the Arab world has fallen on dismally hard times. Aside from the Koran, very few publications are consumed by the average Arab reader.

Among the numbers most stunning - a bestseller in the 280 million person strong Arab world is a book that sells 5,000 copies. Five times as many books are translated into Greek each year as into Arabic. Greek has 11 million speakers, while Arabic has, again, 280 million speakers.

This does not bode well for democracy in the region. An educated populace is crucial for participatory democracy. One of the impediments to wider reading is the cost of a book. Most Arabs are not wealthy and a $4 book is a large chunk of their income. Perhaps part of our huge investment in Iraq and the rest of the region should be to subsidize some secular non-political publishing.

If we bring books as well as bullets and bombs, perhaps we might win a few "hearts and minds".

Bush Against the Military

Huh? Bush against the military? But Bush was the president who was going to give raises to everyone in the military and restore the armed forces, right?

Well, here's a few examples of what he's done so far -

Bush tried to cut combat pay to reduce costs for the legitimate war in Afghanistan and the farce in Iraq.

Bush's VA has attempted to raise medical copayments and reduce benefits for the "rich" 164,000 Veterans who earn over - wait for it - $25,000. WIth 373 co-sponsors out of 435 total Representatives, a bill that would restore the benefits to the veterans was stopped by a threatened veto.

And here's the latest - a large amount of money in Iraqi regime funds were frozen by the administration. The funds were supposed to go to help former prisoners of the Iraqis. Well the Bush administration is fighting them for access to the money. Read this exchange between a reporter and Bush's press secretary.

Military men vote overwhelmingly for the Republicans. Continuing that support for this administration would be like mice voting for the cat.

My Father's Veterans Day

My father was a veteran of World War II. He joined the Marines voluntarily, partly out of patriotism, but also so he could choose to fight in the Pacific and not in Europe where the Nazis were seen as merciless. During the war, he saw lots of mop-up action - arriving just after Sugarloaf on Okinawa - and participated in some pretty gruesome operations.

One of his details demanded that he take a group of men with flamethrowers or flamethrower tanks to investigate the caves on Okinawa. When they reached the mouth of a cave, they yelled in Japanese to come out and surrender. After a short wait, they fired a long blast of flame into the cave to burn up all the oxygen (and presumably anyone left inside). They killed many hold-outs this way and captured few. This operation left deep wounds in his heart. He would sometimes tear up when he told me the stories.

My father never wanted to kill. He was most definitely a lover and a dealmaker, not a fighter. When he got to Guam and was put in charge of the mess and supplies, he worked out shady deals and trades that would have made Radar O'Reilly proud. There is however, one scam he was not able to pull off.

Guam was used by the Marines and Navy as an R'n'R' center near the end of the war. Ever the businessman, my father used his influence to get himself and a few friends of his quartered in a large house on the island. They put in motion the necessary steps to establish a house of ill repute that would have made New Orleans proud.

The command on Guam got word of this, and decided to stop it in the most ingenious way. Late that afternoon, the Protestant Chaplin, Priest, and Rabbi for the base were at the door, luggage in hand, ready to move in to their new quarters.

Another time, my father was tasked with teaching troops that had just come off the worst battle of Okinawa how to use their rifles. Recognizing the ridiculousness of the assignment, my father gathered the men around a tree. "Men, I know you're tired and have been fighting for the last week. Nonetheless, the Marine Corp has decided that I will teach you how to use your rifles," as if they hadn't been using them non-stop for the last few months. He took a rifle from one of the soldiers. 'OK, this is an M-1 Garand Rifle," he started. The troops, settled down, ready to be bored by a long useless lecture. "Take a look at it," He paused, "If you have any questions, I'll be in the Officers' Club." He then leaned the rifle against the tree, and walked away to a hearty round of applause.

My father's time in the Marines can best be described as a mix of horror and boredom, but I think he was glad he served when his country really needed him. I think he was in favor of Korea, and supported our actions in Vietnam at the time, but later turned against war. He thought we should fight when we needed to fight, but didn't support adventurism. Above all else he described his younger self as "the most civilian Marine in the Corps".

My father once traded places on a transport with a soldier so he could continue taking money from the Navy guys playing Hearts for another hour or so. The transport he didn't take was sunk and all on board were killed. That was the closest he came to getting hurt in the war. He never was shot, never was wounded, and died in a nursing home bed just shy of 70.

For the memory of my father today, remember that soldiers are first of all, people, and the best way to support the troops is to make sure they're used only when necessary.

Why not Al

I'm even more frustrated that Gore is not running after reading this speech he recently delivered that gets to the heart of why the Bush administration is dangerous not only to the world at large, but to its own citizenry.

If he were able to keep his head in the game and attack on these fronts rather than the "lockbox" front, he could be elected easily.

Dumb Networks Actually Made Dumber!

The Internet is populated by routers that do nothing but push packets along, not caring what the content is. This allows smart applications to mold the dumb network into whatever the application needs.

Leave it to the marketing guys to screw things up. Belkin is now shipping routers that send you to an ad for Belkin products. I know Belkin just made my "Do not buy under any circumstances, ever" list.

Good job, suits.

All of These Things Are Exactly Like the Others...

First, I just found out I'm two years older than Sesame Street. Yikes.

Next, check out this picture of Bush signing the "Partial-Birth Abortion" Ban.



I'm glad these old men won't be allowed to have late term abortions now.

Just to be Safe, Bomb Cambodia

The war in Iraq is not Vietnam. We are not fighting an organized government, the Chinese and Russians aren't assisting out enemies, and the French didn't pre screw the pooch in Iraq. Casualties in Iraq, though steady, are nowhere near the levels we sustained in even th early years in Vietnam.

However, a recent AP article by Will Lester points out that the political situation may be very similar to what Johnson faced in 1967.

"A nation is sharply divided over the president's job performance. Political opponents grumble about the economy. Growing numbers of Americans say going to war was a mistake.

"The time was summer 1967, the president was Lyndon B. Johnson and the war was Vietnam."

Lester points out that in 1965 public support for the war ran 2-1 in favor of the action. By summer of 1967, the public had turned to 40% against the war - exactly where we are now with those who think we made a mistake by sending troops to Iraq. Bush, however started with 3:1 support in April.

Add to that the lie that got us into Vietnam - the Gulf of Tonkin incident - and the lies that got us into Iraq - the presence of WMD - and the parallels begin to pile up.

I'm not one of those who thinks military action like that in Iraq or Vietnam is always wrong. Vietnam may have been a loss for us, but it showed the Russians it would be expensive to use smaller states to wage war against the U.S. by proxy.

In fact, I think military action, when it ousts dictators and despots, is almost a duty of the free nations. However - it is critically important to secure international cooperation and have a workable plan not just for the fighting but for the reconstruction. We had no clue what a post-war Vietnam should look like and we have had no clue in Iraq.

It's a good thing that Saddam is gone, but let's not forget the mess Yugoslavia turned into when Tito died and Communist-era control over the country melted away. Power abhors a vaccuum and someone will fill the holes we've created. It's important to have the plugs ready before the holes appear and that we not plug the holes with an Arabic Nguyen Van Thieu.

I suppose the one parallel we'll never see is for a shamed Bush to announce he will not seek, nor will he accept the nomination of his party for the office of President.

14 Million Jobs

No, that's not what the Bush years have cost us in jobs, it's how many jobs are at risk if UC Berkeley's predictions of the impact of the "second wave" of outsourcing crashing on U.S. beaches is correct (nicely stretched metaphor, eh?)

The study's authors - Ashok Deo Bardhan and Cynthia Kroll, researchers at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics see many white collar job categories as vulnerable to outsourcing. If you work in a support function, you should read and begin to prepare.

San Francisco is potentially one of the hardest hit cities. The prospects of San Francisco becoming a new Detroit are very real.

Opportunity slams the door

Just when I get an idea about a long-form article/short book I'd planned to write, freaking R.W. Apple Jr. from the New York Times goes ahead and writes an article on the very topic I was contemplating!

I'd decided I was interested in learning more about pepper. Not chilis, but the black, white, and sometimes green stuff that ends up on your dining room table. Salt is necessary for the preservation of life, but how did pepper become its essential companion and get so ubiquitous?

Ther must be some zeitgeist that led Apple to write this very interesting article at the same time.

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

Lock em all up

Dahlia Lithwick has a very amusing account of what must have been a very long day in the Supreme Court.

Atticus Finch spinning in his grave

Does it never stop? Louisville public radio station WFPL is reporting that a circuit court in Kentucky has decided to allow a Republican Party plan to have challengers at 59 predominantly black precincts in Louisville during the next election.

In the 2000 election, as many as 8,000 mostly African-American Florida voters were improperly stricken from the ballot as felons. These voters were not felons and their 93% Gore voting record makes one wonder why they were denied their most basic civil right.

Or maybe it doesn't. 2,400 overseas military ballots which went overwhelmingly for Bush were allowed even though they arrived up to ten days after the election.

Republicans claim to be reaching out to all constituencies. Interesting that when they reach out for Black Americans it's to slap them in the face.

Hola. ?Como Estas?

Well, I've joined the TiVO nation and I have to say I'm impressed. The TiVO was part of our bundle of wedding presents we picked up this last weekend. I wasted no time in setting it up and testing it.

The testing portion of the evening is when I made my fatal error. Instead of testing pause and replay on a dull show like a sitcom or drama, I flipped around until I found a sport - English Premiere League Soccer - which was broadcast in Spanish. I pressed record, let it run for a while, and pressed stop. That was all it took.

My TiVO thinks I'm a Spanish-speaking soccer fan now.

Despite the geek oriented shows I've put it season passes for (Enterprise, Futurama, Simpsons, Good Eats with Alton Brown), or the sitcoms I put in for my wife (Friends, Sex in the City, the BBC version of Coupling), the TiVO insists that the only thing I'll want to watch is Spanish language soccer.

I felt we made real progress this morning when Bryant Gumbel's sports talk show was on the list of "TiVO Suggests" shows. I don't like it, either, but at least it's broadcast in English.

This has happened to other people. As Jeffery Zaslow wrote in the Wall Street Journal article "Oh no! My TiVO Thinks I'm Gay," here reprinted in the DFW Star.

I guess I have to just keep plugging along and recording and rating English language shows. My only other choice is to learn Spanish. ?Como se dice "identity crisis" en Espanol?

UPDATE: OK, what gives? Amazon just recommended "Teaching Yourself English as a Second Language." I know my typing is atrocious, but I swear I speaka the language.

Baghdad Burning

Found a truly remarkable blog that will let you in on what its like to be in Baghdad these days. It's a nice to see what ordinary people are like in a different culture. I learned a lot about the Ramadan fast in the latest post.

Apparently , riverbendblog.blogspot.com (the Baghdad Burning blog mentioned above) annoyed some right winger so much that he created three fakes of the blog - riverSbendblog.blogspot.com, riverbendSblog.blogspot.com, and riverbendblogS.blogspt.com to deceive the public. Another blogger has been tracking the deception.

Typical sleaze from that side of the fence. And it is definitely from that side of the fence. Another blogger finds that the imposter is a retired ex-military GOP Team Leader.

Another good Iraq blog - ...turning tables..., is by a soldier who was in Afghanistan and is now in Iraq. He's about to get out, but his blog is a good read historically.

No blogging today

I'm not feeling so creative or fearful right now. I am feeling a little nauseous from the flu shot I just got. My injector was named Olga. It's the sort of name you'd expect for Igor's wife in Frankenstein. I've never met an Olga until today. Of course I'm sure she never met anyone with my name either.

Time out for a Daisy Break



One of my favorites. Hey, it does address an old fear. Girls, ick.

Plague

I was just out of high school when GRID (Gay-related immunodeficiency) became AIDS. Until that point, the media had warned about a new disease going around in gay men, Hatians and IV drug users. In the middle of the Fundamentalist Christian revival, assisted by the rise of Reagan, AIDS was a cudgel to beat abstinence into the youth of America. "If you have sex, you'll die." What better threat? For a while, there wasn't even a test to identify people or blood with AIDS. You had to take it as a matter of faith that you were clean.

I hadn't used condoms with my high school girlfriend (yes we were young and dumb), and continued not to when I started a long term relationship with a college girl that lasted seven years. I was spared the fears of friends of mine who had more partners for shorter periods of time. I still got tested just to be sure and held my breath when I called in for the results (which were negative, which is a positive thing).

A plague did eventually catch me - the plague of abundance. I developed asthma, high blood pressure, and diabetes because of my low level of activity and high level of consumption of food and drink. Ron Santo, a childhood hero who played for the Cubs, has lost both legs below the knees to diabetes. All these conditions cause higher risks of heart disease. Two of them can lead to premature blindness.

When I was on my own, these risks seemed abstract and immaterial. Now that I've gotten married, they seem too real. There's nothing like someone else depending on you and loving you to make you take care of yourself. I'd like to live to see my children be born grow up and get married. That's why I'm having a salad with light dressing for lunch and hitting the gym after work today.

Some fears can be conquered.

Fire

When I was a child, I was told we were in imminent threat of annihilating nuclear fire by a group of people a world away. The intent of some who told us this was to awaken a love of our country and a fear of the other. The intent of others was to show us how mad the world was and to teach us to oppose the men who would destroy everything in a nuclear conflagration.

The effect, however, was to plant nightmares in our heads. I remember dreaming of flames engulfing the lawns and trees and houses of the near-Western suburb of Chicago I grew up in. A book told us that thirty miles out from a missile hit on the city, the trees would burst into flame, the roofs flash, cars explode as the gas in their tanks caught and any people would of course be cooked either by the flame or microwave-like by the intense radiation that followed.

Although I knew the buldings downtown would be vaporized, I pictured them in flames. How could you imagine vaporization? But fire was something to wrap a nightmare around. I'd seen many times in class and on TV the film from Hiroshima and the pictures of buildings in London and Dresden and Tokyo set afire by bombs and rockets. In my mind's eye, the corncob of the Marina City was black with smoke punctuated by licks of flame. The Sears Tower, its windows smashed, burned like brush on the prairie.

I thought of these nightmares when we returned to Chicago and learned of both the fire in the County Building and the massive fires in San Diego. The pictures reminded me of my dreams. I don't know that I have any fear worse than fire, and I hope that the victims of both these tragedies died swiftly without pain.


Getty Images

-----------------------------------------

This week, in honor of Halloween, I'm going to write pieces on personal fears. It's healthy to reflect on horror as long as you aren't consumed or obsessed with it.

Dude, I'm Married

Yes, it's true. I got hitched. More later. Massive thanks to all who shared the day with us.

Two key phrases from the honeymoon (no, not that part): "When the nav system says, 'Make a U-Turn,' make a U-turn." and "Simmons Beautyrest". I've never slept on a better mattress.

Sun-Times Screws Up

Big-time. OK, sure, the Smoking Gun has it as well now, but the Chicago Sun-Times published the name of the fan who stopped Alou from making a play on a foul ball last night. I'm not going to publish it here or link to the sites. You can do that yourself.

On top of it, they made it easy to find the poor guy, who sounds liek a true-blue lifelong fair and foul weather fan. On top of it all they published the name of his employer and the name of the Little League team he coaches. The HR department of his employer even decided with him that he shoudl stay home today.

Just when you think the Sun-Times is in danger of turning into a decent paper, they pull a stunt like this. Are they still associated with Murdoch or is this residual taint?

This is serious stuff, this guy's life is in danger. If a half-drunk Sox fan will have a go at a first-base coach just for the fun of it, think what could happen to a guy despised by a city of crazed Cub fans, starved for victory. The police are taking it seriously enough to station a squad outside his home.

I'm thinking this guy better look into baseball in Toronto next year. Let's hope for his sake, that Kerry Wood will be able to pull the win out tonight and this all becomes a footnote to the . If not, this poor schmuck better think of relocating, pronto. It's going to be a very long winter.

Oh. My. God.

Leon Durham, your table's ready.

I'm so stunned I can't even speak now. Saint Kerry of the Wood, please deliver us from the everlasting pit of failure.

Holy Allegory, Batman!

The End is Extremely F'ing Nigh!

The Cubs could have closed it out last night, but they got smoked by the Marlins' Josh Beckett. Beckett pitched a hell of a game and the Marlins deserved the victory.

Tuesday, they shift back to Chicago and Mark Prior. The weather is supposed to get very chilly with gametime drizzle and fog. I don't know if we'll get the game in, but when we do, Prior should be able to shut down the Marlin machine.

Here's hoping.

Rush Limbaugh is a Skiny Pill-Popping Idiot

Yep, Rush admitted an addiction to pain-killers today, and said he's going into rehab.

Now normally I wouldn't be so happy about this, but I do like seeing a hypocrite get roasted. In 1995, Limbaugh said, "if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up".

"If(Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders) wants to legalize drugs, send the people who want to do drugs to London and Zurich, and let's be rid of them.
-- Rush Limbaugh show, Dec 9, 1993

"By legalizing drugs, all you're going to do is define further deviancy downward. We have a duty to pass on values to our descendants, values that will maintain the standards of behavior and ensure the survivability of the American way of life. And drugs are no different. You end up destroying more than yourself."
-- Rush Limbaugh Playboy interview, December 1993

"What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."
-- Rush Limbaugh show, Oct. 5, 1995

Some are reporting in 1998 he changed his stance, - "What is missing in the drug fight," he told a call-in listener, "is legalization," but read the next few lines. "If we want to go after drugs with the same fervor and intensity with which we go after cigarettes, let's legalize drugs. Legalize the manufacture of drugs. License the Cali cartel."

Do you think he really wanted to legalize the Cali cartel? Or does it sound like he was mocking those who think our drug policy is more destructive than drugs themselves?

Oxycontin is a powerful drug. A friend of mine who took Oxycontin after surgery on his shoulders told me recently, "I think everyone gets a little addicted to that stuff". There's no shame in the fact that Rush couldn't handle his drugs. That's kind of the point of drugs, really.

However, consider that Rush will do no time most likely, and will come out of his encounter with the legal system relatively unscathed while similar less well connected people who get caught for the same thing will go up the river.

This is the same treatment that Noelle Bush received when her father Jeb pushes draconian laws to punish users of the same drugs she was caught with. Some would say this is the treatment that our current president received when he was caught with cocaine in his "youth" (mid-30's).

It's the hypocrysy, stupid. You can't lock up the poor and let the rich run free for the same infractions. Rationalize our drug policy now. I don't really want to see Rush in jail (well, maybe, but not for drug use). I also don't want to see Joe Nobody in jail for the same addiction and weakness. Right now our system saves the well-known and punishes the unconnected.

The solution, which has been proposed for decades is expanded treatment, legalization of soft drugs, and education about the relative risks of drugs. Kids aren't dumb. When you tell them pot kills or funds terrorists, they understand you're the one who's been smoking something.

Best Bush-ism in a While

From Slate:

"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."�Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003

I'll be sure to let the Japanese know.

Big Softie

Maybe I'm just getting to be a big old softie the week before my wedding, but I'm actually touched by the dedication and love Siegfried Fischbacker is showing towards his longtime partner Roy Horn after Horn was injured by a tiger on stage.

Yes, they're flamboyant. Yes, they epitomize the Vegas of Liberace. Yes, they play with white tigers on stage, but really, read this and tell me it isn't touching.

Cubs win, Red Sox win (ho hum)

Cubs thrashed the Marlins last night in homer-fest. Prior allowed two solo home runs, and won the game 12-3. While the Cubs were frying up some Marlin, the Red Sox went into the Bronx and beat the Yankees 5-2.

While the Cubs-Marlins series may someday be seen as the start of a long time rivalry between two evenly matched teams, the long deep hatred between the Red Sox and Yankees and their fans is legendary. I stumbled on this little tribute to how the Sox fans feel about the Yanks.

Who Ya Gonna Wear?!

Adbusters! I can't hear you. This entry is the reason I blog anonymously.

I hold a position of responsibility in a firm that, well, pimps for corporations. At the same time, however, I have a deep-seated love of the "culture jammers", those people who deface billboards so change the message to something more honest or accurate, who create parodies of ads to point out the dangerous silliness of many ads; People who generally mess with the branding of everything in sight and the endless battering of your psyche with commercial messages.

Adbusters magazine, published by the Adbusters Media Foundation, has been the flagship journal of the culture-jamming world. They are now taking their fight to the enemy's territory. In January, Adbusters will start selling sneakers with a black spot on the side (where the Nike swoosh would normally go). The idea - make the swoosh passe and irrelevant.

The sales of the Black Spot will also allow the AMF to get ads on the air on media outlets that have refused to take their previous work. Some of these spots are great.

In my workaday world, fucking with a brand is the ultimate sin. I'm very happy to say I will be buying the Black Spot sneakers the second they come out in January. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the sweatshop charges levelled at Nike, which are what seems to get up the AMF's noses the most. Nike could certainly afford to pay its workers much better, but is no job better than a locally good paying job that pays low on the global scale? What annoys me about Nike is the fact they sell ugly ass sneakers at exorbitant prices to the people who can least afford them.

Adbusters also promotes the anti-consumptive idea of the annual Buy Nothing day, scheduled for the busiest shopping day of the year, right after Turkey Day. Try buying nothing for a day. It's tougher than you think. (OK, it's easy if you stay home. Go out, Poindexter!).

Just to complete my betrayal of the industry in which I work, here's a little something from Adbusters:

Arnold is Governor

And the Cubs lost. All is wrong with the world.

ADDENDUM: Plus, the Chemistry Nobel prize went to two guys in Maryland and the East Coast. No U of Chicago connection.

Having a good discussion in the comments on one of locussolus's posts about Schwarzenegger's and Clinton's indescretions, political hypocrisy, and personal responsibility in a feminist context. No, really.

The Ex-Cub Factor

Ron Berler discovered what has become known as the "ex-Cub factor". The Factor explains that a team that has more than three ex-Cubs on their roster cannot win in post-season, or if neither team has three or more, the one with the most ex-Cubs on its roster is doomed. The ex-Cub factor has been a reliable indicator of the playoffs since 1981.

But wait - the Braves lost to the Cubs this year. Does that mean the factor is no longer operative?

Not necessarily. As shown here, the Braves had four EX-Cubs (Will Cunnane, Matt Franco, Ray King, Greg Maddux), while the Cubs had plenty of current Cubs, but only two EX-Cubs (players that had once been Cubs but left and then came back (Doug Glanville, Mark Guthrie)). Cubs win.

If the factor is not dead, the Cubs are in trouble The Marlins have only one ex-Cub - Lenny Harris. Generally a team has to have three ex-Cub players to be in trouble, but if you add coaches, Gary Matthews and Gene Clines both played for the Cubs, but only Andre Dawson on the Marlins side spent a stint in Chicago North, leaving the total at two for the Fish and four for the Cubs.

Laugh, but the Giants had three ex-Cubs and they fell to the one ex-Cub Marlins. The Yanks should have fallen to the Twins based on the Factor (the Twins, alone among playoff teams, had NO ex-Cubs), but I think Steinbrenner bought them a second chance.

Our only hope is that the ex-Cub factor doesn't apply to the team that spawns them, like a spider or snake being immune to its own venom. Couldn't we put Glanville and Guthrie on the DL for a week?

Looking at the other league, the ex-Cub factor should dicatate the BoSox over the Yankees, but again, there's the Steinbrenner factor.

Cubs in Six. I'll walk under a ladder and let a black cat cross my path if they win.

ADDENDUM: Guthrie the ex-Cub serves up the Winning HR.

All The Way!

I wa sin the middle of the mass of humanity at Clark and Addison shortly after the Cubs finished off the Braves to advance to the NLCS series, or as it might be known, the Pennant series. The crowd was positive and LOUD, chanting "Cub-bies! Cub-bies!", singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", and most interestingly, chanting "All the way! All the Way!"

Chicago thinks this team can win the World Series, and why not? They knocked off the Yankees at Wrigley during the regular season, including one game matching Wood against Clemens. They beat the Marlins more often than not this year, and they have two of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball.

I expect Zambrano to win on Tuesday. The Marlins may eke one out in Miami, but the Cubs are on a mission. Dusty Baker is on the verge of becoming Phil Jackson or Mike Ditka.

One piece of old business - Mike Fick of the Braves should be heavily fined and suspended for the first part of next season for his attempt to injure Eric Karros on Saturday. It was a play worthy of the Green Bay Packers. Maybe Fick will have time to think about what he's done as he sits home and watches the Cubs take on the Marlins this week.

You Know What Your Problem Is?

I'm hoping the Cubs problem on Wednesday was a lack of home cooking. They are all tied up with the Braves 1-1 after winning one and losing one in Hotlanta. Tonight the matchup is between two amazing pitchers, Greg Maddux an Mark Prior. Throw is a gray rainy day and I'm expecting a low scoring game tonight.

My prediction is the winner of this game win the series. If Maddux gets beaten, I expect Matt "What the hell is that on his chin?" Clement to win tomorrow. If Prior loses, I think the Cubs' spirit will be crushed and they'll lose either here on Saturday or back in Atlanta, even with Wood pitching again.

Maddux is one of the best pitchers ever, and he has experience with Wrigley and foul weather, but he's also 37 and has n ERA two points higher than Prior's. Prior is a machine but hasn't pitched a playoff game yet. Still, Prior was hotter than any other pitcher in the league near the end, and he's got nerves of steel.

Cubs win, 2-1. Let's hope, eh?

Tonight is also my bachelor party. The plan is to watch the game, then head to Second City. I have my suspicions that may not be the whole agenda. I'm packing my spare liver, just in case.

Z Takes a Nap

Carlos Zambrano notched a loss as the Cubs fell to the Braves tonight. Even up, we head to Friday for Prior vs. Maddux.

Cubs in four. It's been my prediction all along.

ESPN gets its Rush Controversey

There was little reason for ESPN to hire Rush Limbaugh save the desire to create controversey. Well, it's Week 4 and here's the first good controversey. During a pre-game show, Limbaugh, whose racist comments from the past were documented in an earlier blog entry of mine, said the following:

``I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well,'' Limbaugh said. ``There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team.''

The United States Got My Wash 50% Whiter!

Salon has a nice interview with Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors of Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War in Iraq.

Rampton and Stauber criticize the administration's approach to selling the U.S. like soap flakes: Particularly they criticize Charlotte Beers' attempts to build "brand U.S.A." Traditional advertising is at its best when the product its advertising is no better than its competitors. A product that really is better should sell itself.

At the heart of the Bush II Administration's failure to win over the hearts and minds of the Arab world is a disdain for the Arab public. Certainly, literacy levels aren't as high as in the West, but the Arabs aren't stupid. Pop music, blue jeans, and whiter teeth aren't going to make the Arab people forget decades of sometimes insultingly anti-Arabic and anti-Muslim policy.

What's needed is not a snappy jingle, but a rearrangement of our foreign policy. America was founded on some pretty compelling ideas involving personal liberty and responsibility and the idea that the government works for the people and not the other way around.

If we just stop pissing people off constantly, that message might start to get out again.

Pump and Dump

Good post by waitigetit on Slashdot about Darl McBride's motivation for pushing the SCO lawsuit against IBM.

Weeners

My beloved soon-to-be wife had her bachelorette party on Saturday while I was in the suburbs watching my beloved Cubs clinch the Central Division. Before she and her friends left for the evening, they had a bit of a blast at our place.

I was a little surprised when I returned home to find little tiny penises all around our apartment. There was packaging for a weener whistle, a penis veil, and most disturbingly, a package of gummy John Thomases on our TV.

My bachelor party is next week. We'd originally planned on going fishing on Lake Michigan, but the charters are all too small to handle the expected crowd (which isn't really all that big). The current plans being hatched by my two best friends are being kept from me, but I'm pretty sure that no genitalia-shaped candies will be involved in the festivites.

While I'm not sure that objectively the weenie gummies are any weirder than Dots or Jujubes, they still disturb me.

Taste fine, though.

Let's Play Two!

And win them both. Please?

Pretty please?

Go, Cubs go!

ADDENDUM: Oh my god they did it! Cubs win! Brewers help!

Game 3 vs. Atlanta - Greg "ex-Cub" Maddux vs. Mark "future ex-Cub" Prior at Wrigley. Can a better pitching matchup be imagined?

Wood, Zambrano, Prior in the first three games. I like the CUbs chances. Atlanta is a dominant ballclub but if the Cubs play like they have this last month, the Braves will be watching the Series on TV.

Le Fromage Vert

The European Space Agency sends its first probe to the moon this weekend. Good luck.

Blues Zoo Review

The NY Times reviews the new Martin Scorcese series on PBS - "The Blues". The series traces the history of the Blues and picks out some of its practitioners for special scrutiny.

Scorsese's name not only allowed him to get the series made, but enabled him to pull in other directors such as Wim Wenders, Clint Eastwood, Charles Burnett, Marc Levin, and Richard Pearce.

Some of the episodes are Ken Burns-like documentary and some are told as a story. The schedule of episodes is:"FEEL LIKE GOING HOME," Sunday night. Directed by Martin Scorsese; "THE SOUL OF A MAN," Monday night. Directed by Wim Wenders; "THE ROAD TO MEMPHIS," Tuesday night. Directed by Richard Pearce; "WARMING BY THE DEVIL'S FIRE," Wednesday night. Directed by Charles Burnett; "GODFATHERS AND SONS," Thursday night. Directed by Marc Levin; "RED, WHITE AND BLUES," next Friday night. Directed by Mike Figgis; "PIANO BLUES," Oct. 4. Directed by Clint Eastwood.

I've seen the multiple soundtrack CD's in the stores and am thinking I may need a few of them. Overall, I think this may be the biggest thing to hit Blues since Jake and Elwood demolished Chicago for "The Blues Brothers." Hi de hi de hi de hi!

The Cubs, God Help Me

The Cubs are back in a first place tie with the Houston Astros after Carlos Zambrano got shellacqued last night by the Reds. The Cubs put up three homers and 7 total runs but were still beaten 9-7 because of a 6 run inning by the Reds.

Z is one of our aces, but he is just 22. Talent is present at a young age, but with a few exceptions (I'm looking at you, Mark Prior), consistency is the privilege of age.

Three games to go. Three games til the playoffs. If it ends in a tie, then Monday there's a one game playoff at Wrigley and the Astros are saving their best pitcher for it. Let's hope the Astros drop one between now and Monday and the Cubs don't.

My head may very well explode by Monday.

If my friend Len is reading - sorry about your White Sox, but look on the bright side - it gives you more time to concentrate on your surprisingly good NIU football team. Go Huskies!

Strange Fashion Sense

A report comes from the Netherlands that electronic paper may soon be a reality. Dutch scientists at Phillips have succeeded in manipulating colored oils in a thin flexible screen. The ultimate use may be to create a piece of "paper" that can hold moving images (think Harry Potter).

I'm very excited about the prospect of this technology. Especially if they can get the price down low. But read on.

MSNBC goes on to say that "With an e-paper screen sewn into a jacket, wearers could read e-mail or even watch the news on their sleeves while hot-footing it from one meeting to another."

Do a lot of people sew paper into their jackets? This strikes me as an unlikely use not because I don't think it could be done, but because that's not how people work. Do you want to be sitting on the train with your coat open so you can watch the news? Strange.

Mangosteen

R.W. Apple writes in the New York Times today about the glories of the mangosteen. Mangosteens are a tropical fruit that grows only where the temperature never dips below 40 Fahrenheit. The fruit is described as the most amazing and delicate balance of sweet and acid.

One problem, they aren't currently importable into the U.S. because they might be infested with the Mediterranean fruit fly. Irradiation of the fruits may soon allow them to be sold in U.S. supermarkets. The Mangosteen is described as the "queen of fruits" and the infamous durian as the king.

I think I'm interested, but I've heard scary scary things about the durian. I hope the mangosteen is more genteel.

But Where's the Lemon Joke Kid?

Real Lans has a remembrance on his blog of his time as a puppeteer with the legendary Bill Jackson and Dirty Dragon at the Gigglesnort Hotel. If you grew up in Chicago in the 70's this will bring back some great memories.

Clark and Addison

My soon-to-be-wife (25 days and counting - yikes), was looking for Wesley Clark to enter the presidential race even before she knew his name. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Clark was on the news expressing his opinions abot what needed to be done to catch and kill Al-Qaeda. He came across very well.

I remember at the time she said "Why isn't this guy president instead of George Bush?" Now that Clark is in the race, a lot of people are going to be asking that same question.

I've been a supporter of Dean, but I have to admit that my enthusiasm for him has waned a bit. He's a bit more conservative than I like. That may be surprising since Dean is positioned as the "ultra-liberal" candidate, but if you look at his positions you'll see he's more of a moderate.

Even with my flagging enthusiasm for Dean, I can't bring myself to wholeheartedly push for Clark. He's made some startling gaffes in the first week of his campaign, including the "Help me, Mary" fiasco where while being interviewed, he asked his campaign manager what he thought and what he had said. He admitted he didn't know what the Brady Bill did about assault weapons, and said he "probably" voted for Nixon and Reagan and was brought into the Democratic fold by Clinton, though he considered that voting for the man and not the party.

I'm also troubled by the "joke" he told the other day that he'd have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned his phone calls. So he's for sale to the party that'll give him the best deal? I know Ike went through the same process, with both parties trying to nominate him, but I think he ultimately went with the party of his convictions. Clark seems to have no conviction that the Democrats are the party of justice, economic sanity, and global leadership. Shouldn't your party's leader believe in the party?

I don't see why we need a general. We have a military fetish in this country (or at least the punditocracy does) that says a military man is the right man for the job. Historically however, the generals who became president have been a mixed bag, and of our three greatest presidents (Washington, Lincoln, FDR), only one was a military man.

All that said, if Clark gets the nomination, I'll be behind him 110%. My goal in this election is not to put Dean or Clark or Kerry in the White House but to move the current squatters out. In this instance, I'll take the devil I don't know and pray I'm right.

One last "Clark" related note - My beloved Cubbies, who play at Clark and Addison are in first place with only six games to go. Breathe deep. Don't panic.

Economic powerhouses

Interesting link - the Chicago Standard Metro Statistical Area has more economic power than the Russian Federation.

New York City's SMSA is more economically powerful than Brazil. Illinois is more economically powerful than South Korea. California is more powerful economically than France. There's more bling in Florida than India.

Strange.

Meow

Best thing I've read today -

Dogs have owners.

Cats have staff.

My God, It's Full of Stars

Eric Zorn links to this Tribune article about Lauren Holly moving to the North Shore. The more interesting paragraph to me is this one:

Holly is the first national entertainment figure to move to the Chicago area in the last few years. Others living in the area include actor Daniel J. Travanti and director John Hughes, both in Lake Forest; director Neil LaBute and former talk-show host Jenny Jones, both in Barrington; singer-songwriter Richard Marx, in Mettawa; actor John Mahoney, in Oak Park; actor-director Harold Ramis, in Glencoe; comedian Bernie Mac, in Frankfort; former Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan rocker Billy Corgan, on the Gold Coast; talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, who owns a North Michigan Avenue duplex; talk-show host Jerry Springer, who lives in the John Hancock building; singer R. Kelly, in Olympia Fields; actor John Cusack, on North Michigan Avenue; actress Joan Cusack, in the Graceland West section of Lakeview; and actor Jeremy Piven, who owns a condo on Lake Shore Drive.

Those who have left the area in the last few years have included actor Kyle Chandler, who sold his Lincoln Park townhouse; rocker Liz Phair, who sold her Lincoln Park home; and former Beach Boy Brian Wilson, who sold his home in St. Charles.

Back to the Future

So I was driving my hover car to work this morning and my boss called me from his villa on the moon to tell me I'd have to work a full 30 hour week. Or not. The future we envisioned as kids never panned out (I doubt it ever does). Instead of flying cars and short work weeks and living on the moon we have Hummers, 80 hour weeks, and a shuttle program in tatters.

NASA now is contemplating a return to the manned capsules that marked the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The shuttle program is old and has shown itself to be vulnerable to catastrophic failure at a rate too high to sustain. The killer is not necessarily the bad press over the loss of human lives, but the high cost of replacing a shuttle that explodes on launch or disintegrates on reentry.

The capsules are cheap, but require naval rescue, bringing a military flavor back to the space program. I don't know if it's a good idea long term, but it's a cheap idea to keep spaceflight going while we figure out how to build a reusable launch vehicle with fewer problems.

Zogby



Locussolus has just launched the Chicago blog map based on the excellent code from the dc metro blogmap. Great work, Paul!

Minor Hiatus

Sorry no posts this week. I'm planning a wedding and I'm in the thick of it now. I'll have something on Wesley Clark soon.

I will say this - if Clark gets elected, he'll already have a street in Chicago with his name, just like Clinton did.

Look out for a candidate in 2008 named "Western" or "Naragansett".

Krugman on Maher

I caught Paul Krugman on Bill Maher's show Friday night. Krugman was part of a panel with Jesse Ventura and Betsy Hart. Ventura was a grade A ass making declarations about things he didn't understand which culminated in a polemic on farmer subsidies. Ventura asserted that farmers had their prices regulated down so they had a hard time making money.

Coming at the end of a long line of profound misstatements and misunderstandings by Ventura and Hart (about which Maher did or said nothing) This assertion just about made Krugman's head explode. "Yes, the prices are regulated but it's a floor, not a ceiling! They're regulated up!" Krugman put his head in his hands and shook it back and forth in disbelief and apparent physical pain.

Krugman clearly was the most intelligent of the bunch and understood the issues. He didn't get to speak much, though and came off poorly.

Unfortunately, Ventura is a personality and Krugman is an economist. Hart is.. Well, I have no idea what she is except conservative. Krugman looked weak and Ventura looked strong, despite being mostly wrong. Maybe a shot of testosterone for Paul is in order next time, or a direct IV drip of "in-your-face" from Al Franken or Joe Conason.

Race to the Finish

Pop Quiz time! What sports figure...

1.) Once told a black caller to a phone-in show "Take the bone out of your nose and call me back."
2.) Asked listeners "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"
3.) Declared "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."
4.) Responded to a caller to a phone in show who suggested blacks should be heard, "They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?"

Maple Menace

Nina Shapiro in Seattle Weekly describes the Mexicanization of the Canadian border. For decades, the U.S. and Canada have bragged about sharing the world's longest undefended border. Since 9/11, that lack of defense has started to worry many, and the U.S. has been pouring resources into securing the interface between us and our neighbors to the North.

The problem of course is that the tactics used on the Mexican border don't work, so why should they work on the Canadian border.

Come a Knock Knock Knock On Heaven's Door...

The summer of the dead celebrity continues with a two-fer today. I'm still recovering from the death of Warren Zevon when Johnny Cash snuffs it. Cash's death wasn't unexpected. He skipped an awards ceremony at MTV earlier this year because of health problems. Cash was one of the few older artists to figure out how to connect with younger fans.

Add to that the death of John Ritter, star of "Three's Company" and "Eight Simple Rules For Dating My Daughter" and the musical trifecta is complete. Ritter was not himself musical as far as I know, but he was the son of Tex Ritter, a country music giant.

At his funeral, a saucy misunderstanding about the phrase "laid to rest" will occur in his honor.

Chong's Not Here, Man

Tommy Chong was sentenced to nine months in federal prison and fined $20,000 for selling drug paraphenalia on the Internet.

Not drugs - Paraphenalia - as in bongs.

I haven't smoked the good stuff for about five years now, but it's clear to me that soft drugs like pot are not going to destroy the country, unless the destruction is done by hysterical anti-drug crusaders razing our rights and needlessly imprisoning harmless old men like Tommy Chong.

I don't know where Tommy's home and family are, but I would advise him to flee to Vancouver. Canada still is the land of the free.

Remember your Thoreau - "Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

Really Don't Read This Post if You Have a Weak Stomach. No, Really.

OK, so I picked up a copy of Saveur that features the glories of milk. Milk is a wonderful beverage and many fabulous and strange treats can be made with it. Among these is cheese.

Cheese is a strange thing when you really think about it. Curdle some milk, chunk it up and voila - mozarella. Let it go moldy in a cave and voila - Gorgonzola. Chunk it up, let it get runny, and voila - brie. However, if you let it go really really bad and get some maggots to grow in it, you get casu marzu.

Clifford Wright writes in Saveur about his experience with actually trying casu marzu or "leaping cheese". I steal this exerpt from the "Things that piss me off" weblog.

The prized pecorino called casu marzu, "rotten cheese," however, is not [readily available in Sardinia]. Banned by Italian health laws and EU regulations, it is basically a pecorino which has been infested with the larvae of flies, which live in and eat the chesse and make it pungent and creamy-chunky in texture. Casu marzu, also known as walking cheese, usually kept in the dark so the maggots remain dormant, is not sold in stores, but Antonella managed to find one for me... The maggots started jumping around like crazy and landing everywhere, including on us. It was quite wild to look at, let alone contemplate eating. I smeared a piece of creamy leaping cheese on a piece of bread and took a bite. It tasted like an extremely ripe gorgonzola without the veining of blue mold.

Share the Pain

The RIAA issued 267 subpoenas the other day for people they accuse of copyright infringement using peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa and Grokster. Among those caught in the dragnet was the dastardly honor roll student Brianna Hall. The nefarious Miss Hall, a hardened criminal at the tender age of 12, was threatened with fines reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Operating from her secret lair in public housing in New York City, Miss Hall undermined the fragile record industry through the known Communist tool Kazaa, but because of her cunning in being poor, was able to strongarm the RIAA into just taking $2,000 from her mother for the alleged violations.

RIAA leadership was pleased with the settlement, showing no remorse at the fact they had pushed an already poor family deeper into poverty.

Wherever there's a villain, there's a hero. The hero in this story is P2P United, a coalition of file sharing services that has stepped up and offered to pay the $2,000 fine assessed Brianna and her family.

I had written to Senator Dick Durbin about founding a fund to pay Brianna's fine, but that now won't be necessary. I chose the senior Senator from Illinois because he asked an RIAA executive during a Judiciary hearing the other day, "Are you going to the junior high schools to round up the usual suspects?"

I hadn't heard back as of this writing, but I'm glad to see someone else thought it was absurd this child's family should pay record industry extortion.

ONE NOTE: You will not see any posts today about the events of two years ago. I believe that like Pearl Harbor, the attacks on the U.S. should be remembered, but not turned into a maudlin holiday. The dead wish they had the chance we have today, to go on living and working. That's what I'll be doing.

Stick a Cork in It

The subject of corks came up at a dinner party the other day. Specifically the subject of wine corks and the prospects for the upscale screwcap wines that have started to appear.

Traditional corks are in increasingly short supply, and can react with wine to create a foul tasting mix. Screwcaps and hard plastic corks have been seen as potential solutions, but the public's mind has firmly associated these closures with Boone's Farm and Cook's Champagne, two abominations and crimes against viticulture. (Rumor has it Cook's was created primarily so American ships could be christened with American Champagne. It's a wonder the Navy ever recovered from it.)

A third solution has now been made available. A company outside Seattle creates 400,000,000 synthetic corks every year. The synthetic corks are made of a "biomedical grade thermoplastic elastomer", or fancy plastic foam. The company can make your cork look like wood or as they did in one case put a cow motif of black spots on white into the mixture.

Waiter, this wine has biomedical-grade-thermoplastic-elastomered.

Microsoft Blackout?

Locussolus intimated that when he first heard about the blackout last month, he thought it might be related to the MS Blaster worm. It turns out he may have been right.

NewsForge reports on suspicions that an indirect infection on the network at First Energy may have been responsible for the outage.

Mr. Gates, attorneys for 50 million electrical customers on line one.

Irresponsible Accusations

I'm a liberal guy, but I have to call "shenanigans" on this piece in the Guardian by former British MP Michael Meacher. I don't take issue with his contention that the Bush administration has used 9/11 as a pretext to justify plans they already had, but I do take exception to this:

Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war.

Slip and Sue!

In the new movie Dickie Roberts, David Spade attempts to slip and slide on a Slip N Slide that has not been wetted down and gets a nice bright pink road rash (slide rash?) So, does Wham-O thank the producers for the publicity? No, they sue to keep the movie out of theaters until a disclaimer is added or the Slip N Slide scene is removed.

Opus One, aged well

Is there any better news for the fan of the intelligent comic strip than the latest that Berke Breathed will be returning to the funny pages? Breathed is the man behind Bloom County, the second or third best semi-political comic strip ever (behind Doonesbury, and of course, Family Circus - er, Pogo).

When he decided to stop Bloom County, Breathed moved a few of the characters from Bloom into Outland, a Sundays-only strip that ran for a while before Breathed decided to hang it up and concentrate on some truly marvelous children's books.

His new strip will be called Opus and feature our favorite naive penguin and former Vice Presidential candidate of the Meadow Party. Pear pimples for hairy fishnuts, indeed

Exiting shirtless from bathroom...

Don't look at this page if you've recently consumed a mind-altering substance or are feeling a little oogy. Whoa.

Pay up

Bush went on TV to make the case for 87 billion dollars in funding for Iraq reconstruction. My natural reaction is that we should oppose anything Bush is for, but in this case, I think we need to put the money in. The worst thing you can do is to half-ass a job and that's what we've done in Afghanistan and Iraq. Either stay out, or do it right. Now that we've gone in, commit the troops, money, and diplomacy to build a stable nation. I don't trust this administration to spend it right, but a miracle could occur. And let's put some cash into rebuilding Afghanistan, shall we?

Or as Warren Zevon might have said, "Send lawyers, guns and money, for the shit has hit the fan". Warren died yesterday at 56 from mesothelioma, an inoperable lung cancer that spread to his liver. Zevon is best known for a novelty hit "Warewolves of London", but his talent extended into more listenable mainstream songs. He wrote hits for Linda Ronstadt in the early 70's before releasing his own albums, including one of rock's nearly perfect records - Excitable Boy. Zevon never had the chart success he deserved, but he got a lot of praise and attention from musicians who appreciated his no-nonsense playing and his intelligent, playful songwriting. He knew he was dying as he recorded his last album "The Wind" which will now become a best-seller, I'm sure.

On a much happier note, the Cubs and White Sox are both in first place. In September. Current temperature in Hell - 34 Farenheit and falling.

Oh Come On Now!

A friend of mine sent me this link to a New York Times article I somehow missed. Here's the lead paragraph:

"The Bush administration is relaxing rules that say hospitals have to examine and treat people who require emergency medical care, regardless of their ability to pay."

Geek and Roll!

I love this page.

Breakin the law! Breakin the law!

Kerry On

I'm a Dean supporter right now. I even gave his campaign $50, the first time I've contributed to a presidential candidate since Paul Simon ran. Dean's no-nonsense John McCain-without-the-slightly-psycho-twitch attitude won me over. But every now and then I cast a longing glance at a candidate who might have been my political beau if things had gone differently.

Yesterday, John Kerry kicked off his campaign for president. He's clearly been running for the job for months, but yesterday was the official start. Gotta wait until summer white is out and the kids are back in school, I guess.

John Kerry on paper is the perfect candidate for me to support. He's got a liberal-ish voting record, comes from a state that produced one great Democratic president, and is immune to the charges of unpatriotic sentiments the Republicans like to level at Democrats. In Vietnam, Kerry was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and for his three wounds in battle, three Purple Hearts. After being discharged he helped found the group Veterans Against the War. But Kerry doesn't give me the same visceral satisfaction that Dean does.

William Saletan thinks the problem is partially superficial, but also a lack of political courage. Kerry has the same disease most Senators and Representatives have - they compromise. In real life, and in Congress, that's a great trait. In a presidential campaign, where the country doesn't so much look for a brilliant politician as a great leading man, the tendency towards compromise is a liability.

Dean is a fire-breather right now. I like most of what I've seen. John Kerry remains the meek geek. Kerry should be my guy, but for now, I'll let the answering machine pick up when he calls while I doodle "President Dean" on my notebooks over and over.

Half-entry

Just a note - Eric Zorn's blog today shows why good writers should blog. I'm laughing at most of his posts today and nodding solemnly at the others. I especially like the supermarket, sting, and metric posts. None of the items were really long enough in their present form to fill a column, but they work well in a blog. Nicely done.

Old Books

If you're an old man like I am, you rmeember watching one of those episodes of Star Trek where they come across some vast alien library. There aren't ever any books there, only some sort of digital media (well, I'm assuming it was digital with my puny human brain). I always thought when I saw these that it would be kind of weird trying to read a book on screen. And what happened to all the old books? Did they put them in as text or as pictures?

When the Internet came along, the LOC or Library of Congress was a standard measure of capacity or bandwidth. "Why, that hard drive would hold the Library of Congress twice!" "You could transmit the Library of Congress in just seven days with this modem." And so on. Again, I was skeptical. Carl Sagan pointed out in Cosmos that a broadcast television station transmitted multiple LOC's of data in a week. "Obviously," wrote Sagan, "some information is more valuable than others.

Two developments bring these memories to mind. The first was the announcement by BBC chief Greg Dyke last week that the BBC is going to put much of its archives of original programs on the Internet, available for everyone. I'm hoping Spike Milligan is in the first batch of releases.

The second was a link I found to a site called Octavo. Octavo sells digitized copies of old books (and I mean really old books) on CD-ROM. Check them out. The Gutenberg Bible, the collected works of Durer, Mercator's Atlas, all are available on line. Check them out.

Brother, Can You Spare a 401K With Early Vesting and a Healthy Company Contribution?

The article is not online yet, but Business 2.0 carries an article this month about the coming labor shortage. Ok, I'm going to repeat that. Labor shortage. Not job shortage, but labor shortage like 1997-2000.

The argument goes that the Boomer population bubble will be retiring soon. The Boomers are the majority of the labor force now, and the demographics just aren't there to replace them. The last time there was a comparable shortfall was after the Bubonic Plague struck Europe.

Monster has a bit of information on the expected phenomenon. The Austin Business Journal notes the potential for a problem as well, and even Sun Microsystems has an article on the looming crisis.

The Business 2.0 article analyzed the potential stays of execution for employers and found them all wanting.

1. Delayed Boomer retirement. Boomers will work later in life to make up for squandering financial opportunities in their youth and for the loss of 401K money in the crash. This is a good argument, but statistics show that the trend is towards people retiring earlier rather than later and even the nutso salaries of the 90's boom didn't make a dent in retirement age.

2. Outsourcing of tech jobs overseas will ease the crunch in the tech market. Maybe someday, but not soon enough. India's entire IT sector is 150,000 jobs. The U.S. currently has 3.3 million jobs in our tech sector, and 60% of them are boomers. The universities of India and China can't turn out grads fast enough to meet the need. The jobs that will be outsourced will tend to be lower level jobs. The Gen-Z'ers might face significant pressure in the IT jobmarket, but the X'ers and Y's should be fine. If anything, as Business 2.0 pointed out, the tragedy of outsourcing is that not enough jobs will be outsourced overseas to ease the crisis here.

3. Automation will fill the gap. History has shown that automation will actually create more skilled jobs. Intel requires more skilled workers today with a highly automated system than it did when the whole process was more manual. Management jobs are even less vulnerable to automation, though the nature of the work done may and will probably change.

THAT'S the way it is!

Walter Cronkite gives us his perspective on "liberal" in the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Zorn free

I've been Zorned! Eric Zorn, the eminently readable and often very entertaining part-owner of a timeshare column on page one of the Tribune Metro section has linked to me. I'm flattered. I pointed out some broken links on his new blog Breaking Views, and I suspect the link is a thanks for the help, but perhaps he enjoys my random ramblings occasionally.

Whatever the reason, I've been a fan of Zorn's for quite a while. When Royko died, I rather hoped that he and/or Mary Schmich (it's spelled S-c-h-m-i-c-h, but it's pronounced "FLBBTY flbflarglooooey") would get the spot. Alas, John "and here's another thing that's wrong with Daley" Kass got the spot instead and Eric now shares the column with the very talented Ms. Schmich (whose work you may know from "Sunscreen") and newcomer Dawn Turner Trice who is growing on me.

One other page of note - Eric Zorn is running a page on the Illinois U.S. Senate primary campaign. I'm interested to see what he has to say about the candidates. My friend Paul, over at locussolus is a Barak Obama supporter. I haven't decided on a candidate yet.

Zorn may be best known for, and should be repeatedly commended for, his series of columns on the railroading of Rolando Cruz and the vicious prosecution of an innocent man for murder by the DuPage Country prosecutors Joe Birkett and Jim Ryan. I am certain Zorn's coverage helped to defeat Ryan in the general election.

Do I sound too much like a fanboy?

Chicago rats v. New York rats

Christopher Ketcham relates an appropriately heebie-jeebie inducing set of anecdotes about the resilience of the Norway rat in New York city. New York is drowning in rats. A couple of years ago, rats were estimated to outnumber humans in the "greatest city in the world" by twelve to one.

In Chicago, by contrast, the rat population has plummeted. In 1979, the rat population was estimated to be six million. Today, the population is estimated to be down in the 500,000 range.

What happened? Why is Chicago winning the fight and New York dismally failing? Chicago took several steps on the theory that rats exist because there is food to feed them. Dry up the food, while attacking the population with poison and you might just make a dent. To that end:

1. "Supercarts" or those enormous 90 gallon trash cans with lids that clip closed were given to most residents. The clip keeps rats out and deprives them of a major food source. Owners of dumpsters that did not control overflow were ticketed. Every so often, the city will start a highly publicized campaign against negligent restaurant owners by shutting down high-profile restaurants without locks on their dumpsters.

If your supercart is damaged in any way, by the way, the City will replace it for free. Rather than use market economics, the City uses common sense for the greater good.

2. Streets and Sanitation can, on their own, issue tickets to owners of buildings where conditions exist that make rats nests likely or where rats nests exist. Many rats nests in the late 70's were under garages, whose owners were reluctant to do the work to remedy the situation. Streets and Sanitation sought and received the authority to pull down garages and structures which were not remedied, and billed the owner of the property for the demolition. This deprived the owners of an inertial defense and the rats of habitat.

3. A massive poison baiting campaign with a new effective type of poison was deployed to kill off the existing rats.

Reap What You Sow

A spammer in New Zealand has ceased operations after being harassed in RL when his name address and phone number were leaked to a national newspaper, and from there, the Internet.

A few Slashdot users claim they've received much less spam since this one individual shut down. Could it be that net vigilantes are our best defense against the viagra-mailing few? The Internet used to be described as a new Wild Wild West. Maybe we're entering the bounty hunter phase.

The spammer complained that he'd receive obscene phone calls and that he had to forbid his 5-year old daughter from answering the phone. Maybe he finally understands that other parents don't like their children receiving sexually explicit spam in their AOL accounts, eh?

Technology of Destruction

Imagine you are a peasant in medieval times. You depend on your Lord and the castle for protection from other Lords and bandits. One day, an army comes to lay seige to your Lord's holdings. As usual, you drive your livestock and family inside the castle walls and prepare for a long wait as the army at the gates wastes itself on the great walls of your castle. It'll be a while, but you've been through this before. The walls always hold.

Now imagine that a few days into the seige, you hear a loud boom, and a ball of iron tears through the previously impregnable walls. Your safety is in jeopardy and your complacency is shattered. You've just encountered a cannon and you've just encountered the end of the ways things used to be.

That's the problem with technology. No matter how clever it is, something more clever is waiting. And eventually everybody has the once new technology.

Cruise missiles are neat, aren't they? Well Bruce Simpson in New Zealand thinks they're also pretty easy to build. He's buidling one for under $5,000 and documenting it on the web.

John McPhee famously recounted the story of Ted Taylor, an American atomic scientist who claimed all th einformation needed to make an atomic weapon was out there in the public domain.

Eventually, a technology gets so old, anyone who wants it can have it. We need to come to grips with the implications of that fact, and now.

Is You Is or Is You Ain't?

You may be familiar with Am I Hot or Not?, but have you seen the latest?

Flash in the Pan

FlashMobs have received a lot of attention. My friend Tom describes them as an update to the 60's "Happenings", but with a post-modern twist. New York has been the scene of some truly briliant mobs, and now Washington is getting in on the action. Chicago, however, is stuck with an idle mob.

Charles Shaw (no relation to "Two-buck Chuck"), of newtopia magazine seems to have been the one that organized the Chicago Flash Mob Yahoo group. If not, he was certainly one of the more active mailers and has been identified by Eric Zorn as the organizer. Early on, Shaw gave some good advice on not participating in a mob that was going to paper the Clader flamingo with post-it notes. A lively and disorganized discussion ensued leading to the leaders of the group to shut down access to the mailing list. Unfortunately, that also shut down any sort of energy the group had.

To make matters worse, the group, which by the organizers' own admission in an e-mail to the group reached "critical mass" back on August 4th, has done nothing yet. The first event isn't even planned until this Friday. Since the list started Richard Roeper has made fun of the phenomenon, and many successful mobs have been held in other cities.

One of Chicago's traits is an unwillingness to leap into a fad too quickly. Unfortunately with something like Flash Mobs, I think we've already missed the boat. To quote Debbie Harry "Flash is fast, Flash is cool". Chicago's mob is not fast and with a strict top-down organization I fear it's not too cool, either.

Prove me wrong on Friday.

HP Keeps a Low Profile

Sure seems like it, doesn't it? Did you know HP released over 100 new products a couple weeks ago? No? Yesterday, HP announced lower than expected results for the third quarter.

It seems that the "New HP", the result of a merger between Compaq and HP kept the computer marketing guys from HP and the printer marketing guys from Compaq.

Go ahead, go to HP's site and tell me what the 100 new products are. You can't sell a product if no one knows it exists.

More SCO nonsense

SCO showed the weakness of its hand in the Linux wars when they showed code they claimed was copied from them. The code was very similar right down to the comments. What they didn't realize apparently was that the code was from 1973 and already public domain. It wasn't developed by SCO, or their licensed forebearers, but by AT&T; way back when sideburns, walrus mustaches, and patchouli were hot.

The link of the day for me, is this list of insider transactions in SCO stock. You'll notice there is no buying. Sell, Sell, Proposed sale, Option exercise, sale, sale.

When your CFO cashes out - you ought to be doing the same.

Residence Evils

Invisible Adjunct has a nice glossing on the NYT article about an antitrust lawsuit against the Match.

For those not familiar, the Match is the National Residency Matching program. The lawsuit contends that because of the match, residents are paid artifically low salaries and forced to work long hours.

It's no secret that the economics of health care depend right now on highly paid attending physicians supervising newly minted interns and residents who are paid next to nothing (especially if you calculate it per hour). I've always questioned the wisdom of allowing a sleep-deprived physician to make life-and-death decisions about your care. The system is set up to minimize the risks that sleep deprivation pose, but why incur the risk?

I wonder if the plaintiffs understand they may be shooting themselves in the foot financially down the road for the sake of a few more dollars and few more z's right now? A fair salary structure would increase helath care costs which would inevitably be taken out of the hides of the more established physicians by the HMO's, PPO's and Medicare.

Overall I think it's a good idea, though the potential to dilute the talent of doctors in the mix to supply the many extra needed physicians under the work hour limitations and the class action suit make me worry.

O'Reilly Live on Stage!

I think I've figured out Bill O'Reilly. It's all a big performance piece, right? How else could you explain this incoherent self-pitying rant on FOX News today?

Seems like Al Franken got under his skin - WAY under his skin - with the new book where Franken outlines just what a big liar O'Reilly is.

Ha!

UPDATE: Who would you most like to have defending you in the court of public opinion? How about PAUL FREAKING NEWMAN!? Paul Newman writes for the NYT today an amusing parody of the FOX lawsuit. Summary: He thinks it sucks eggs. Though not fifty of them - no man could do that.

Iraq

U.S. Troops are battling a fire at a sabotaged oil pipeline. CNN expands the oil pipeline story to include sabotage at a water pipeline as well.
MSNBC offers a report card on Iraqi occupation (in typical weasel media fashion - "problems persist despite gains").

US Troops shot and killed a cameraman from Reuters when they reportedly mistook his camera for a shoulder launched missile.

Gary Trudeau got in his licks on Sunday:

Howard Dean Rocks!

Actually he lays down licks in 12 bar 4/4 as he plays the blues.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blackout.

Network Resliliency

During the blackout, I received messages from users in New York with Blackberry devices. This surprised me because I figured the cell towers wouldn't have independent power.

As the power comes back on, I'm getting messages from devices in NYC indicating that they've turned back on. That's great, but it also implies Verizon and Sprint are up all across Manhattan even with power off on most of the island.

MSNBC carries a story this morning about how resilient the networks have been.

As Paul Goyette at locussolus notes, the internet was up without a hitch, and some people found out about the blackout through the New York Times website (oh just register already, its free).

Newsday has some stunning photos of Manhattan in the dark. It's based on Long Island, but I still think Newsday is the best NYC area newspaper. Here's one of the photos I particularly liked:

Daylight Brings...

A city mostly without power. Times Square is lit, as are some other areas of Manhattan, but two million people are still without power in New York. My company's office in midtown is still dark. No subways are running for the morning rush hour.

Only four burglaries in NYC overnight and police made arrests in all four. I think that's lower than an average night.

Aaron Brown said there was one example of widespread lawlessness - the newly instituted ban on smoking was being ignored in bars across the city.

Most other cities are recovering, but Detroit may be dark until Sunday. Given the history of riots and violence in Detroit, it may be a very long weekend. Detroit and Southern Michigan has the problem of a water supply pumped by electricity.

Cleveland's Plain Dealer is on an obnoxious affiliate site that won't let me through a zip code/birth year check even when I enter apparently good data. Cleveland, you're on your own. UPDATE: I've slandered the Plain Dealer. It's down because of Internet problems. They're blogging instead!


NYC at dawn

Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?

New York, Toronto, Detroit, Toledo, Montreal, Cleveland are all in the dark right now. The Niagra Mohawk power grid overloaded and probably caused a cascade failure across the Northeast United States and South East Canada.

Sound familiar? It happened before - November 9, 1965. The cause was eventually determined to be a problem in a breaker that tripped at Niagra due to an unexplained surge in power.

At any rate, it doesn't appear to be terrorist related right now and power is coming back in isolated areas. Here's hoping the grid comes back before darkness falls.


Map from NY Times                   Picture of New Yorkers outside Grand Central Station from CNN

Sun sets at 7:53pm NY time.

UPDATE: MSNBC runs a civilian-level feature on how the power grid works. Howstuffworks has their article as well. An old Wired story asks if hackers could hack the power grid. A more recent Wired entry talks about alternative power generation systems using the 1965 blackout as a starting point.

UPDATE: Fox News finally got the story (their content creation is in NYC, apparently) and include this paragraph:

"NAERC Press Secretary Ellen Dancoe said the affected power grid revolves around Lake Erie and affects areas as far northwest as Saskatchewan, as far southwest as Oklahoma and as far south as Florida.

Dancoe said her organization is still unclear as to why all of these areas have not been affected by blackouts. Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Washington, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Ky. and Kansas City, Mo. all were unaffected by the power failures."

Let's not tempt fate Ellen, shall we? As for FOX, I'm surprised they haven't blamed Al Franken yet.

UPDATE: It's dark. Lights back on in most of Albany, Cleveland, New Jersey. Some lights on in NYC, Toronto. Canada claims it was a lightning strike on the U.S. side, U.S. officials deny that the lightning caused a shutdown or even that there WAS a lightning strike on this side. People generally behing well, but Wolf Blitzer characterizes Manhattan crowds as "beery" and "milling around".

Slashdot brings together a number of articles about Mohawk-Niagra and asks if deregulation could be to blame for outage.

War Corrupts Democracy

AP reports that U.S. soldiers fired into a crowd in Baghdad today after being attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade. They killed one civilian adn wounded four others. The crowd had gathered to protest troops pulling down an Islamic banner from a telco tower.

ABC adds that Shiite leaders in the area are now demanding that the troops leave the neighborhood.

Historically war has been bad news for Democracy. The Athenian Deimos were replaced by autocrats after the Spartans defeated them in the Pelopennesian war. The U.S. has seen its darkest moments in the Spanish-American War (a media-fueled power grab by us), and in Vietnam (Lt. Calley and My Lai).

Either we have to add the necessary troops to rebuild Iraq quickly (which is almost certainly not going to happen), or we watch the war corrupt the principles on which the U.S. was founded.

Stinky but Smart

The BBC today reports on a study by the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Australia that suggest creatine, a non-steroid supplement used by body builders to build muscle, may also boost memory and intelligence. Subjects taking the supplement were able to remember numbers an average of 8.5 digits long, while those taking placebos topped out at 7 digits.

Of particular interest, the study used vegetarians because meat is a natural source of creatine. This raises the question, are vegetarians making themselves dumber by not eating meat? I'm mostly vegetarian (I eat fish and the twice a year steak), so this is of particular interest to me. I found a number of abstracts on the issue. One indicates that vegetarian children, for example, tend to have an increased risk for psychomotor problems associated with iron defiicency, but that older veggie kids tend to have higher than average intelligence. I wasn't able to tell if they normalized for income, genetics, etc...

Before you go out and buy a load of creatine to make yourself S-M-R-T, it should be noted that the improvements may only be for the short term and that creatine has an interesting side effect. Creatine users are often described as, well, smelly.

The creatine in fish and meat, by the way, is mostly destroyed in cooking so to get the most from your fish or meat, eat it raw. Pork tartare, anyone?

Al Franken Sued by Fox, Laughs All the Way to the Bank

Al Franken has a new book coming out called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Well as you might expect, conservatives are not so thrilled with the book. As you might NOT expect, Fox News is suing Franken over his use of the term "Fair and Balanced", claiming they own it.

Franken and Fox have tangled before. CSPAN's BOOK-TV, of all places, was the venue for a particularly amusing exchange between Franken and Bill O'Reilly. The video is in RealPlayer, sorry.

Well, Al Franken should be sending a big thank you card to O'Reilly and Murdoch and company. Pre-orders for his book have skyrocketed since the news of Fox lawsuit. He'll win the suit - parody is protected by law unless it tries to confuse and no one would confuse his book with a Fox product - so the net for him is a big gain and Fox News looks less fair and more unbalanced than ever.

Rats From a Sinking Ship

SCO Execs are dumping their stock, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune. SCO has been agressively ticking off every advocate of Open Source software, and courting disaster by taking on IBM, the king of intellectual property in an IP lawsuit.

I'm thinking the SEC might want to leave Martha Stewart alone (since they WILL lose that case) and go after SCO for stock manipulation.

End of an Era

In the 1980's and early 90's if you said you knew PC networking, you meant you knew Novell Netware. For almost a decade, Netware was the dominant NOS in the market. As Microsoft encroached on Novell's territory, Novell failed to make the minor adjustments in pricing models, GUI administration, and marketing communication that would have allowed them to beat back the MS threat. Novell still innovated with Directory services and the first zero-administration model on the PC, both of which were years ahead of offerings by Microsoft.

Now comes word that Novell may be taking an entirely new tack. CNET reports that Novell is going to stop development on Netware and run its services instead on top of Linux servers. This is a great move, I think. Despite the FUD generated by SCO's lawsuit(s), Linux is the clearly the big competitor to Microsoft. Giving it world class services like the ones Novell provides only strengthens its position.

Go big red!

It's Impossible to Parody a Parody

The political system gets weirderer and weirderer. Jerry Springer decides not to run for the Senate. Gary Coleman decides to run for Governor of California, joining Arianna Huffington. Arnold Schwarzenegger may or may not be running - tune in to Jay Leno on NBC to find out and see his movie T3 while drinking an ice-cold Pepsi, won't you?

The Yanks are Coming. Well, a couple, at least.

After much hand wringing, Bush has decided to send... (drumroll please) - six to ten U.S. soldiers to aid the peacekeepers in Liberia.

I guess it's Liberia's fault for not striking oil. Perhaps the six to ten will guard the Amoco station in downtown Monrovia?

Zhou Hai

The New York Times carries an article on the Chinese photograper Zhou Hai. When I saw the photographs in the slide show that accompanies the article, I immediately thought of the WPA photos of the 30's. The China Zhou Hai photgraphs is dirty and dangerous and gritty, but also dynamic.

At Zhou Hai's site you can see photos from his project, "The Unberable Heaviness of Industry".



I hope this may signal the beginning of a dynamic period for Chinese art.

Comment

Painpill has experienced debatus interruptus. The interesting debate on the Terror Market that was going on in the comments section was lost when Squawk Box decided he'd had enough of the good stuff for free.

Well, Squawk Box isn't really "good stuff", but you know what I mean. I'm using them at the moment, but there hasn't been a comment problem here since I haven't generated the kind of discussion painpill has.

Anyone know a really good service that's "more free"? I'd like to switch before we do get a good debate going and get cut off. MAybe I'll surf the blogosphere today to find one...

We'll Have a Gay Old Time

George Bush waded into the gay marriage debate two days ago. Then the Pope weighed in yesterday. Gay marriage is, in the Pope's words, "harmful to the common good" because it "goes against the natural law". Natural law? Who knew the Pope was a disciple of Hobbes?

Why now? The impetus seems to be the Lawrence vs. Texas decision that overturned Texas's ban on homosexual sex. Long ignored for the most part, the law was declared unconstitutional. Also, the Canadian supremes set an example in handing down a decision declaring that restricting marriage to a man and a woman and denying two men or two women the same right was unconstitutional. Also, as the Chronicle article linked above points out, a Massachusetts court is expected to rule soon that same-sex unions are legal and that bans are unconstitutional. This will of course cause a firestorm of protests from the religious part of the right, where Bush gets a significant part of his support.

The Dems have, predictably, run like hell from the issue, with Daschle issuing a statement that marriage is between a man and a woman. Clinton himself signed the "Defense of Marriage Act" and if the proposed Constitutional Amendment is passed, it'll have an awful lot of Democratic backers. That would be, by my estimation, only the second amendment that removed rights from the people. The other one was repealed and showed the folly of Constitutionally legislating morality.

That the Vatican feels it can say anything now, even try to bully lawmakers by teling them it is their moral duty to oppose such legislation, the Church strains its own credibility. The position is consistent with its statements over the years, but perhaps the Church would like to stop protecting its employees who bugger underage altar boys before it issues any statements dealing with homosexual anything?

When you get down to it, civil union is a government matter, but marriage is a religious institution. Michael Kinsley wrote a piece a few weeks ago that was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but at its heart was brilliant. He proposed getting government out of the marriage business.

Where do I stand? Well, I'm straight and I'm getting married in two months (yikes, I've got a lot of work to do!) However, I think love is rare enough that if two adults find love with each other then they should be able to declare that love and enjoy all the benefits of a committed union.

I saw Thee Ships Come Sailing In

This is Venetian Night Weekend in Chicago and the tall ships are in the water. Just outside my office window moored on the Chicago River are the Indian three-masted ship Tarangini, and the two masted Pride of Baltimore II. Once the river was bustling with activity, now only rarely do you see much more than the odd archtectural cruise or river taxi.

Chicago grew up where it is because of the water - the river and the lake, and grew great because she ran rail lines from her to capture the agricultural bounty of the near West and supply the farmers. St. Louis was better sited geographically on the Ohio and Mississippi, but Chicago got agressive, smart, and big first. The land where my office stands once was where sail powered ships like those visiting today brought the Great North Woods of Minnesota and Wisconsin to be chopped into lumber and sent out to make homes and barns in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and the rest of the plains states.

The pictures below are the Tarangini, the Pride of Baltimore II and a 1925 picture of South Water street near my building (well, where it would be someday). I couldn't find a good one of the lumber yard on line.



A great book on the city and the river's role in opening the west is Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon. If you like old photos of the city check out the Historical Society's online collections, or the Film Vault's collection of films of the city from 1900-1950.

Not all the ships made it into the river unharmed yesterday. A replica of the HMS Bounty had the tip of its mast broken off when it collided with the top of a raised drawbridge. The replica was built in 1960 for the film with Marlon Brando. Trevor Howard, and Richard Harris. (Brando and Harris together? It's a ham buffet!) The damage was minor and the ship has been declared safe for tours. Come on down if you're in the city.

Baby Names

Here are the most popular baby names of last year with my personal obnoxious take on each one. My caveat is that my first name is unusual and I'm very particular about it.

Girls' Names

1. Emily - A little precious but overall a good name
2. Madison - This is not a first name. Why not Fillmore or Kennedy or Nixon?
3. Hailey - An ugly name. This is the kind of name you give to a child who is going to sit on the sidelines at the dance all her life. I have a friend with what I remember as an adorable niece who had this name. Of course her second cousin was named "John Thomas", so what are you going to do?
4. Kaitlyn - How many ways can you spell this one? Caitlyn, Katelynn, Kaitlin, Caitlin, you name it. Good name, but very easy to misspell.
5. Hannah - I have bad associations with this name because of Hannah and Her Sisters and the former battle-axe who ran U of Chicago when I was there - Hannah Gray.
6. Sarah - Actually, I kind of like this one. With the "h", though. Without is a little "Sara Lee" for my tastes.
7. Brianna - Ugh. A cheese and Anna. Brie + Anna.
8. Ashley - This name, along with the next one is a marker for a girl who is just too high-maintenance. Ashley drinks Perrier. Sarah drinks house red. See?
9. Alexis - I thought Dynasty got cancelled years ago?
10. Abigail - An old fashioned name that I'll probably get to like eventually. "Dear Abby" needs to be gone from the papers for a while before I like it, though.


Boys' Names

1. Jacob - Got a ladder? Who knew a nice Jewish name like Jacob would get to be number one? Oy.
2. Michael - Nothing against it, but there are just WAY too many Michaels out there. Plus it's the Gloved One's name.
3. Matthew - I like Matthew. Hate Matt. Matt is in a frat.
4. Joshua - How about a game of chess? No, let's play Global Thermonuclear War.
5. Nicholas - Except for Adam Sandler in "Little Nicky", all the Nicks I've known have been good guys.
6. Christopher - Chris is OK. Androgynous, but OK. Don't let him date Patricia.
7. Joseph - What are you, God's father or something? Joe's a good name.
8. Ethan - Who knew the Cohen brothers were so influential. Or is it the furniture chain?
9. Andrew - Andy or Drew or Andrew? Problems all around. Andy is a joker, Drew is the slow kid, and Andrew is pretentious for not going with Andy or Drew. Catch-23.
10. Daniel - Dan. Danny. Daniel. There's a pretty good Elton John song for you right out of the box. Not a bad name.


I like Declan, but that's been vetoed by the fiance. She like Anne and Eleanor. Anne is fine by me, and Eleanor was my mother's name. She has no boys' names. Not like we need to use one anytime in the next two years (I hope), but maybe we should work on that between now and then.

Organizations Win Elections

Machine politics led to some of the worst abuses of democracy in our country. Big-city machines, however, also took the edge off the immigrant experience. Immigrants, fresh off the boat, would often be accosted as their foot touched dock in New York harbor. There, they'd be given advice, a meal, and an address to go to if they needed anything. In exchange for this kindness, the machine expected loyalty to its candidates, who often proceeded to enact policies that kept the immigrants dependent on the kindness of Tammany Hall.

In Chicago, Richard J. Daley who ruled forever, said "Don't worry if they're Republicans or Democrats. Give them service and they'll become Democrats." and most relevantly to this discussion, "No poll can equal the day-to-day visits of the men and women of the Democratic party." You have to get out and talk to people. Find out what they want and what they fear. A poll can't tell you that. Daley's machine re-elected him with 70%+ in most of his mayoral contests and it wasn't an accident.

More simply stated, good organizations win elections.

So far in this upcoming presidential election, the two good organizations I see are Howard Dean's and George Bush's. Kerry and Edwards are playing the Bill Bradley/John Glenn role this time out. Each would probably make a stronger presidential candidate than Dean in the general election, but they aren't putting the organization together to make it through the primaries. Braun, Sharpton, Kucinich, Graham, and Gephardt all are hopeless organizationally. You'd think Gephardt would be better at this than he is, but maybe that explains how the Democrats got beat up under his leadership.

Lieberman is the other candidate with a decent organization. The problem with Lieberman is that even the Jewish people I talk to (who are mostly Democrats and who are interested in seeing a Jewish president) are lukewarm about the guy. Lieberman is severely charisma-impaired. He has his organizational ducks in a row, but are even the people in his organziation all that enthusiastic about him? I sense no fire, and that spells doom unless he can get people revved up about him soon. Every time I see him I think, "Elmer Fudd is running for president?".

Dean and Bush are a different story. Dean has tapped into the Internet to get people meeting face-to-face to discuss his policies and candidacy. He's firey when he speaks. He doesn't mind drawing moral distinctions between the Republicans and what he wants the Democrats to become. Basically, he's what voters have said they want. But do the voters really want what they've said they want?

Bush of course is a Franken-creation of a very efficient Republican machine. If someone could just piss off McCain enough to get him to challenge Bush in the primaries... Never happen, of course, but a boy can dream, can't he? Honestly, with the machine the Republicans are building, they could run an ex-actor and get him elected.

Which leads me to Arnold. Is he running? Is he not? He received a blow yesterday when a court struck down the rule in the California gubernatorial recall election that only allwed people who had voted on the recall question to pick a replacement for Gray Davis. That means the Dems will be able to pick a suitable replacement, just in case the recall succeeds (which is not at all certain). Arnold had a chance when only the dissatisfied were going to be allowed to vote, but now that the left can place candidates on the ballot, his candidacy will probably be Terminated. He won't be back.

Nasdaq is up, Dow Jones is down and the Terror Futures market is Booming!

"The Market" is the new snake oil. Gets your whites whiter and builds healthy bones six ways. It'll make you a better lover, and even predict terror attacks. Yes, predict terror attacks.

Admiral John Poindexter, the man who brought you the huge glowing illuminati eye of the total information awareness program and one of the key figures in the Iran-Contra scandals has come up with another doozie of an idea. The Pentagon is setting up a system to allow investors to "bet" on terror attacks, assassinations, and other events. The idea is that the all-powerful market will give the Pentagon intelligence it wouldn't otherwise have.

More likely, the system will be used to allow terrorists to profit from their crimes by judiciously placing money on attacks they then carry out. I'll buy 20,000 shares of "Nuclear bomb in Keokuk, Iowa". Hey, it's a low price right now. Boom! Just cashed in. Remember how outraged people were by the news that some investors had shorted the airlines just before 9/11? Wait until the first big winner in this market tries to collect.

If they're trying to catch terrorists by giving them a "honey pot" to invest in, and then tracking the investors, they're even loonier than I thought.

How dense do you have to be to not see this is a bad idea?

UPDATE: Well apparently the Pentagon now thinks the market is a bad idea and will abandon the Terror Futures project. I guess it was just a trial balloon. A $750,000 trial balloon. Is the Bush administration over yet?

So are new customers good or not?

Microsoft and Oracle are often at odds. This last week shows just how deep the philosophical differences run.

Ephraim Schwartz at Infoworld runs a piece on a town hall phone call call for PeopleSoft shareholders by Oracle (which is bidding to buy PeopleSoft) on which Chuck Phillips, EVP at Oracle basically told PeopleSoft shareholders and employees that Oracle is not interested in new customers, but is much more interested in becoming a service and maintenance company for existing customers.

Meanwhile Microsoft is touting a new incentive pay program for its executives tying their compensation not to total revenue or profitability but to the number of new customers the company adds over a three-year period. That's right, while Oracle poo-poo's the idea of new business, Microsoft is making it central to executive compensation packages.

New customers cost money, to be sure, but I think Oracle misses the point. To get current customers you need new customers.

Of course, this could all be a ploy by Oracle to further spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in the PeopleSoft base and either make the takeover cheaper or harm PeopleSoft's reputation so Oracle can get into CRM in a bigger way.

I hope that's it, because otherwise, Oracle is about to become the next Ashton-Tate.

Stick the fish in my ear?

Slashdot points out a press release from Dr. Franz Josef Och that claims that with enough parallel translations of works, and with two hours to process them, his lingustic system can translate from any language to any other language. He has the right to brag - his system scored highest in a recent test for Arabic and Chinese translators.

The idea is similar to that of the Rosetta stone. With enough information in the form of texts already translated from one language to another, Och's system can statistically determine the likely correspondence in meaning of phrases and words. Of course there has to be a body of work already translated into these languages.

Perhaps painpill can use this as a goal for his Aymara studies?

The number you have dialed is no longer in service...

Jane Barbe, the woman whose voice is on just about every phone company message and voice mail system in America died yesterday.

Has there ever been someone so simultaneously anonymous and ubiquitous?

Bob Hope - dead. Abe Vigoda - Check for yourself.

Prison Rape Reform

For a long time the problem of rape in prison has been winked at and even made part of the acceptable pop comedy repertoire. The attitude is best exemplified by the fears of the main characters in Office Space that they will be sent to a Federal "pound-me-in-the-ass" prison.

Congress on Friday finally and unanimously took the first step to ensure that a stint in jail won't necessarily include being the victim of a rape. A study mentioned in the Post article linked above found that 22% of inmates in Nebraska penitentiaries were forced to have sex against their will. Extrapolate that nationally and that's 400,000 victims of prison rape. Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive report on male prison rape which found that often guards knew about rapes, but didn't do anything about them. Do you think that makes the victims more or less likey to lash out violently when they get out?

If you are younger and not immediately part of a racial or religious gang in prison your chance of being raped soars. And once you've been raped, you're marked for further rapes and abuse.

I'm very glad Congress finally decided to address the issue. I hope that "tough-on-crime" types won't subvert the legislation to help stop this human rights abuse.

Gushing about Fountains

Famously, in 1974, Jon Landau wrote in Rolling Stone magazine, "I have seen the future of rock ' roll and it's name is Bruce Springsteen."

Well, I have seen the future (and present) of geek rock and its name is Fountains of Wayne. For those of you looking for a band to complement your Weezer, Ataris, and They Might Be Giants records, the new Fountains of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers not only fills the bill, but it surpasses the output of those bands (with the possible exception of TMBG's Flood).

The rock critics at Spin, Billboard, the Onion, Blender, and even Entertainment Weekly rate the album at 90/100 or higher (Spin and Blender giving it a perfect 100 score). Add to that the fact that Rolling Stone, the crazy old rock and roll aunt who everyone is pretty sure we should have committed, but who nobody has the heart to write up the papers for, hated the album. (Rolling Stone has, by the way (secondary rant) unintentionally reclaimed its title as arbiter of cool. If it's Rolling Stone, it's not cool. God forbid you go to a film they liked.) Critically, it's a smash.

I'm listening to the album now, and the best way to describe it is by asking you to think back to the first time you heard AC/DC's Back in Black, or Abbey Road, or Led Zeppelin II, or Nevermind, or OK Computer or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot any one of a dozen perfect albums.

Halley's Waitress is a sad, Klaatu-esqu (obscure meter pegs) ode to a waitress that like the comet only comes around once in a very long time ("Darling, don't you know, we miss you when you go."). In Bright Future in Sales FOW (yes, I'm adopting a pretentious in-the-know acronym for the band's name. Deal.) articulates the frustrations of a go-nowhere white collar job. In Hackensack the guy left behind by a star from Jersey deludes himself that she'll come back to the town she came from and back to him. Delusion also plays a big part in the first single from the album Stacy's Mom (Has Got It Going On), a fun power pop romp sung from the point of view of a young boy smitten with a classmate's much older (but hot) mother .

They range musically from country to folk, to power pop to post Beatles Oasis. Get the album, or if you must, Kazaa a couple songs and then get the album. You'll like it.

Snoopy, Come Home!

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.

The above wretched prose is the product of the sick imagination of Ms. Mariann Simms from Wetumpka, Alabama, and it won the 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an exercise in the execrable. Since 1982, San Jose State University has sponsored this contest to create the worst possible opening line for a book. The contest's name comes from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton a minor Victorian novelist responsible for this opening line from his novel Paul Clifford -

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

You may know it as the line Snoopy writes all the time in Peanuts.

My personal favorite entry from the contest is a runner up from a much earlier year -

Like a beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent corpse of Santa lay flat in front of the firplace.

Someone got into the top ten with a similar entry in 2001. Frankly, I'd read a book that started that way.

Stalin - Party of Three?

Why do the people behind the counter at "upscale" fast food places like Jamba Juice or Einstein Bagels ask for your name? I know the idea is to cut down on the impersonal "Number 27!" calls for food. The whole system still irks me.

I have a name that is not the most common. It has been used for at least one minor TV character, but I was friends with a guy who knew the writer of the show so I think my name may have been the inspiration. When I go to order a drink and give my real name, inevitably, the person who makes the drink will call out something almost entirely unlike my name. "Greg! Uhhh.. Jarrett! Errrr.... Buffy!" I'm not kidding. I've heard all three of those used for my name which is certainly not Buffy or Jarrett or Greg. I often wonder if they mangle the name on purpose. In any case, it irks me to hear them almost willfully refuse to get my name right.

To avoid this annoyance, I've taken to giving the unsuspecting clerk a fake name. I'll ask for a drink and the half-attentive clerk will ask "Name?" and I'll tell them something like "Omar" or "Shemp" or "Balthazar". I can't give them a name like "Tom" or "John" because there's probably a Tom or John in the store and I don't want to cause confusion. I could use my middle name, I guess, but it's Manford. Yes, Manford. I'm not sure I want a bunch of strangers spinning their heads around when the clerk calls out "Manford!" to see what kind of person ambles up to take his drink.

This prevarication about my name causes problems later when I go back to the same place and order a drink using a different name. If a cashier remembers me, they usually narrow their eyes and ask a second time, "Shemp? Really?" At that point, I'm stuck with the lie and have to nod. "Yes, Shemp." I usually get a dirty look and I'm pretty sure they spit in my juice.

My friend Bryan took the fake name game to its logical end. We went to a take-out pizza place a few years ago and when the counterperson was done taking our order and asked for the name, before I could say anything he answered, "Stalin," in a very matter-of-fact manner. "Stalin."

The clerk didn't react, just wrote the name down. Maybe she was used to getting orders for a light dinner for ruthless Communist dictators. Or maybe she was just too young to know who Uncle Joe was. More intriguingly, I wonder if she'd just finished handing a driver a box with a 16" vegetarian special and cheesy sticks for Hitler.

A few minutes later, she called out "Stalin? Pizza for Stalin?" and we headed home, the pizza of a madman in our hands. Did Stalin himself ever order take out? I wondered if the peasants would meet the collectives' crop quotas this year as I munched on a Bolshevik slice of cheese and sausage.

From now on, when they ask for my name at a fast food place, I'm telling them "Number thirty-four. My parents were big Walter Payton fans."

Time for Jeff
This is just the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Got the link from Jeff Bridges' blog.

Apparently he has a thing for clocks, because this nifty little clock lives on his site, as well.

The Secret Service Has No Sense of Humor

And really, that's probably a good thing. But they're making noises about taking action against the L.A. Times and/or Michael Ramirez, the cartoonist of this image:



The Secret Service considers this a threat to the President's life. A cartoon.

For those of you too young to remember afros the first time around, the cartoon is based on this image



of the execution in 1968 of a Viet Cong prisoner by South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, who was on our side. This photo and others helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam war.

Ironically, Ramirez's cartoon is meant to support the president who Ramirez is depicting as being unjustly damaged by politics about Iraq.

Flat Facts

Is there any business magazine that is the bane of technologists more than Forbes? I don't think so. For as long as I can remember, the Forbes Tech issue that comes out every year just before Chistmas has caused confusion and long conversations about how it would not be a good idea to (for example) ditch our laptops and desktops and rely on Psion handhelds for everything, or why (for a more golden oldie example) despite Forbes' analysis, a GUI interface is a good thing and will eventually take over command line computing.

The most recent howler is an article that completely underestimates the hurdles SCO faces in its fight with IBM. It condescendingly refers to Linux advocates as "crunchies" (this despite evidence that linux is making significant inroads into big companies like Boeing, Grumman, Schlumberger, Mercedes, and of course a large part of the tech industry including Blue Chip darling IBM), and predicts doom, despair and agony for Linux. It reads like a Microsoft press release.

This ignores the fact that under the terms of the GPL, even if SCO's claims are all true, by continuing to distribute the code in dispute as part of Linux, SCO has GPL'd its supposedly proprietary technology, releasing it to the community at large.

Add that to the fact Forbes' site offers to install a Xupiter/Gator-like piece of software onto your computer to feed you business headlines throughout the day and you can see why I prefer to have my execs reading Fortune or even Fast Company.

If you want more information on the use of Linux in business, check out IBM's Linux case studies. There's a good case study for every industry.

SCO scam

I'm thinking an SEC investigation is going to be launched when the whole SCO IBM lawsuit is over, and I'm betting some SCO people will be sitting in Club Fed for a few years.

Take this litle piece of price manipulation - SCO releases that they've "received U.S. Copyright registrations" for UNIX System V source code from the U.S. Copyright Office. SCO's stock goes up 20%.

Sounds like bad news for the Linux crowd, right? Well, the problem is copyright registrations and patent applications are two entirely different beasts. With a patent application, the government (the patnet offic eto be more specific) is supposed to investigate whether the claim has any merit and then grant or deny a patent based on their findings. Not so with copyright. A registration of copyright simply indicates that someone has claimed copyright on a work. The registration is a receipt. It carries with it no value judgement on the part of the government agency that issues the registration.

So essentially, nothing changed today, but the stock went up 20%. Silly investors.

So much time, so little to do! Wait, strike that - reverse it.

Do any of the rest of you have the same problem I do? No, not that one. The problem I refer to is that I appreciate way too many things and want to learn them all. Too frequently, this ends up meaning I learn none of them well enough to satisfy me.

My current project list includes:

Learning Java
Learning Linux
Learning Spanish
Learning MySQL
Learning PHP
Learning Perl
Learning Apache
Finding a better job (more stable)
Planning a wedding
Finishing my novel
Rewriting the then-finished novel
Finding a place to finish my degree
Read the 246 books currently on my to-read list
Learn a musical instrument (piano? guitar?)
Get CISSP certification
Get CCNP certification
Read negotiation books for work
Learning to paint/draw

...plus 20 or 30 other major projects.

All seem quite urgent to me at one time or another. I have prioritized the items to some extent (wedding tasks take precedence), but I still find myself persuing these things in a mostly desultory manner. The world is vast and wonderful and there's too much to do, too much to learn. Some people have a laser-like focus in their lives, but I can't escape an intellectual dillettantism that distresses me.

I often feel that life's spread a beautiful buffet of possibilities in front of me, and that I'm going to starve because I can't figure out which dish to try first.

Am I the only one who has this problem?

Yellow Cake

Mmmmm... Yellow cake.



Slate's Explainer has a nice umm.... explanation of just what the heck uranium yellowcake is anyway. Makes a nice Christmas present.

Was David Kelly killed? I'm sure that's going to be the Vince Foster memorial $64,000 question the next few months. The Guardian has a roundup of UK and World newspaper reactions to news of the apparent suicide of the BBC's sole source for a criticism of Britain's Iraq-Niger yellowcake intelligence.

Right now, it looks like Kelly committed suicide, possibly because of all the pressure put on him as the BBC's sole source and the campaign to discredit him put on by the Ministry of Defense. Many are criticizing the BBC for not protecting Kelly's identity better. Some are saying Kelly was not a suicide, but died at the hands of British intelligence. Although that seems a bit cloak-and-dagger-y, it wouldn't be the first time a civilian was killed by an intelligence service.

Bulgarian intelligence services killed dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978 using a pellet containing ricin fired from an umbrella.

Also, over a four month period from the end of November, 2001 to March 2002, eleven prominent microbiologists were killed - most as the result of violence. Certainly that could be a coincidence or it could have been an intelligence service. I prefer to think it was the guys from the 12 Monkeys movie, watching our backs.

Where the Hell Did you get the Atomic Bomb?

We're trying to stop rogue nations from getting the atomic bomb. But how exactly can we prevent Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and hundreds of other countries from building bombs when a high school kid was able to build a breeder reactor in 1995 from pretty easily obtained materials.

I don't know about you, but I'm scared.

Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Beer

That's the phrase Richard Stallman used to explain the idea behind GNU and the Open Source movement. I am beginning to think that the Open Source idea (where people choose to share code and code once released may not be locked up in derivative works) is more than just a commercial philosophy. I believe that Open Source is the germ of a much larger political idea that dovetails nicely with the communitarians.

I had a rather muddled bit here explaining what I mean, but let me just say I'm not a fan of the Communitarians. They're like Ayn Rand's Objectivists - the idea seems good at first, but then you work out the details and the consequences and it all gets much less attractive.

In any case, I wonder if the idea behind Open Source has the kernel of an idea that could be aplied to society on a larger scale. Share the benefits of your work with all while protecting the original work itself. I'm sure someone will explore that political idea and put it into effect eventually. In a big enough system, all things that can happen will.

By the way, you can read Stallman's book Free as in Freedom on O'Reilly Books' site. For free - as in beer.

CORRECTION: The book is not by Stallman but about Stallman. I shouldn't type when I'm tired.

The Cisco Kid Was a Friend of Mine

Big news in "collapse of the Internet" news. Cisco released an advisory that a certain malformed IP4 packet can lock almost all of its routers. Since traditionally, 75% of the Internet uses Cisco routers, this is huge news.

I know we'll be patching all our outwardly facing routers this weekend. Ask your techs at work what they're doing about the bug.

Illegal Art

By 1937, the Nazis had removed most of the works they considered Degenerate Art from Germany's museums. To show the people what they were expected to hate, 650 of the works were assembled into an exhibition that toured Germany, eventually drawing crowds of three million people. Works by Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Edvard Munch, Max Beckman and others were mocked in the exhibition as degenerate, Jewish, or Bolshevist.

The Nazis and the era of Fascist Nationalism were swept away and Klee and company have been recognized as the innovators they were. In the new post-modern world, nations often have less influence on our culture than corporations do. In San Francisco this month, art that has been declared "illegal" is on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Most of the works ran into trouble because of claims of copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property infringement.

My personal favorite is the conceptual work by Kembrew MacLeod who trademarked the expression "Freedom of Expression" then hired a lawyer who was not in on the gag to sue a friend who ran a fictional punk rock magazine called "Freedom of Expression". The cease and desist letter includes this beautifully surreal statement

"This letter, therefore, constitutes formal notice of your infringement of our client�s trademark rights and a demand that you refrain from all further use of Freedom of Expression."

Indeed.

Enemy of the People

The latest outrage against the free exchange of ideas is a bill introduced by John Conyers (D-Mich) and Howard Berman (D-Calif) that would make uploading a file to any P2P a FELONY. The bill also provides for penalties for people who register domains with false information.

So the Democrats are working on eroding the First Amendment (and Second Amendment if you interpret it that way), while Ashcroft and the Bush Administration are going after Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine. They split on assulting the Tenth Amendment and the Republicans get a few blows in on the First Amendment as well.

I'm just glad no one's going after the Third Amendment. I don't have space to quarter any soldiers in our apartment.

ADDENDUM - This item on Ari Fleischer's exit interview with the media contains one tidbit that illustrates why, even with all he's done, people still like Bush. Ari Fleischer recalls getting a note that said, "'Ari, the president would like you to meet him on the South Lawn at 6 p.m. to play catch." Catch, as in baseball and glove in hand. I don't like the guy, but getting to play catch with the President is pretty cool. Work hard, play hard.

David Nelson, White Courtesy Telephone

If your name is David Nelson, you're having a hard time of it at the airports these days. There's a man named David Nelson on the Federal No-Fly list. Because of this man, everyone named David Nelson is getting stopped and delayed while airport officials determine if the David Nelson they have is the one the Federales want.

Well, nothing makes a good song like personal tragedy, so check here to download an mp3 of The Ballad of Davids Nelson by Patrick Short and Amy Gray. The song is based on an article by Margie Boule in the Daily Oregonian.

In These Times has a few words to say about the no-fly list as well.

Inflation

Usually I let a long entry sit before sullying it with an addition, but this irked me. In this story on the fall of Sao Tome ("Over Macho Grande? I don't think I'll ever be over Macho Grande"), The BBC refers to Nigeria as a "regional superpower".

This is verbal inflation of the worst sort. Sure, Nigeria's the big kid on the block in West Africa and should be referred to as a "regional power", but SUPERpower? This is the sort of tomfoolery that led to Kate Moss being referred to as a supermodel, the Bay City Rollers as a supergroup, and Ben Affleck as a superstar.

Gotta nip it in the bud before I get declared a Superblogger. Well now wait a minute...

Beating Around the Bush

The polls that will be most relevant to this question are being taken now, but I have a suspicion that when the new Zogby comes out, Junior Bush's popularity will be much dented. Consider the strories coming out of the White House this week:

The budget deficit this year will be a record $455 billion, revised up from estimates of $300 billion. And that's not subtracting the shenanigans with the Social Security Trust Fund. The true deficit is even worse. Of course tax cuts prevented it from being even deeper, right? Huh? The Clinton era surpluses, remember, peaked at $236 billion. That's almost a $700 billion turnaround.

The Administration still struggles with the Iraq getting Uranium from Africa story. It's certain now that the CIA and the White House knew the story to be bogus, but in desperation to justify an attack on Iraq, they allowed the claim to get into the State of the Union Address. I'm wondering why no one picked up on all the other specific claims Bush made about chemical weapons in quantities in that same address. Where's all that stuff?

Chatterbox on Slate has an article dissecting many of the other lies put forth by the White House. The mainstream press is starting to smell blood. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Network (Fox) of course shades the news by putting the blame at the feet of Clinton appointee Gerge Tenent.

Meanwhile, North Korea claims it reprocessed its nuclear fuel into weapons grade plutonium, and most seriously, soldiers continue to get killed in Iraq, with no exit in sight.

Joe Conason pointed out this howler of a lie regarding Iraq from the last week. Remember how countries in Europe wanted time to let the inspectors work in Iraq? Well in a Washington Post story defending the reasons for the war the Post writes: the president said the decision was made after he gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."


The last two Zogby polls are illustrative. The last one published is from June 24 - July 1 and results were compared to a similar poll from June 6-June 10.

Key questions.

Your impression of Bush?
Favorable or Somewhat fav.:June 10 - 65.9%, July 1 - 52.7%; Somewhat or very unfav. - June 10 - 32.3%, July 1 - 46.1%.

Reelect Bush or Time for Someone New?
Bush: June 10 - 49.2%, July 1 - 48.7%; Someone new: June 10 - 38.4%, July 1 - 47.3%

Is the US going in the right direction or wrong? Right/Wrong: June 10 - 58.1%/35.1%;July 1 - 46.9%/48.4%

That's right, although Bush is marginally still thought of favorably, the all important "right track" question (which in the past has been a good indicator of electoral success) now skews against him.

The next Zogby will be very interesting and show if Bush's slide will continue or if he's bled all he can for now.

Brave New World

No real theme to today's post. Just a collection of the cool, scary, and musical.

First, check out this site which allows you to create a disposable e-mail address that points to your real e-mail address for a short period of time. It's a great way to give your e-mail address to someone you don't necessarily want to have your e-mail address, if you know what I mean. Spammers tremble.

MSNBC reports on the growing problem of U.S. tech sector jobs fleeing for India and parts unknown. I'm practicing for my next career. Want to hear? "Was that grande or vente, sir?"

Are you a creative audio type? Opsound has source tracks for you to use, mix, and add your own touches to. Opsound stands for Open Sound Pool and applies the ideas of OpenSource and the Creative Commons to audio.

Speaking of Open Source audio, friends of mine will know I'm an Ogg Vorbis fan. Ogg Vorbis is a music encoding scheme from Xiph, similar to .mp3, but with smaller file sizes and superior sound quality. Unlike mp3, Ogg is patent-free and open source. The Vorbis project includes open source projects for a patent free video codec, streaming audio server, speech codec, and lossless audio codec, as well as the wonderfully named MGM or Moaning Goat Meter.

Ogg's big weakness has been the lack of a portable player. Digital Innovations - a local Chicago company - has been working with Xiph on the problem, and the Neuros player (of which I am a proud owner) now can play Ogg files. The transfer software is still a little shaky, but the player is great and worth buying even if you only want to play mp3's (Luddite!).

Finally, Europe is getting serious on spam. They've made it illegal, but worry that most of the spam received by European users comes from Asia and the U.S. I have to tell you, I'm pretty embarassed that Europe is ahead of us on this one. The U.S. constantly squanders its lead in technology because of commercial infighting. It's not just in the computer age, either. Goddard was way ahead of everyone on rocketry, but the Russians and later the Germans ended up being the leaders in the use of the technology. We caught up (and surpassed them eventually), but why give your commercial rivals the edge? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

TIA = DOA

Those of us afraid of the big illuminati eye of the TIA can breathe a bit easier today. Slashdot carries an entry about the TIA's funding being yanked by Congress. I guess they didn't like the idea of Admiral Poindxter knowing everything about them, either.



Remember, kids, Giant says -

Vive La France

Happy Bastille Day, vous'all. Have a big order of freedom fries at lunch today to celebrate.

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arriv�!
Contre nous, de la tyrannie
L'�tendard sanglant est lev�

(repeat)

Entendez vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces f�roces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes.

CHORUS

Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

Amour sacr� de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Libert�, Libert� ch�rie,
Combats avec les d�fenseurs!

(repeat)

Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure � tes m�les accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!

Still my favorite part of Casablanca.

Miss Sally sees Joey, and Susie, and Ralphie and...

Painpill beats me to the story on the Chicago police putting surveillance cameras up to monitor street corners that are high crime areas.

The Illinois ACLU is not objecting. This is a bit strange because the national ACLU has come out against public surveillance. I understand the legitimate need for surveillance of known criminal areas, but I worry about the future use of these devices. Right now, they can be used to identify and track known and suspected criminals, but when you pair it with the story last week about the DOD working on a project to track vehicles in a city using cameras, it all gets a bit "Blade Runner".

England's had public surveillance for years. You go to any popular part of London or any other major city in Britain, and you can be sure there's a camera staring down at you. Notbored.org has a chronology of the use of CCTV cameras in London, starting in 1961 and ending in 1998, as well as an interesting anti-surveillance page with an anarchistic bent.

If we continue down this path, it seems we'll automate much of the human element out of law enforcement. Is that a good thing? It'll help to alleviate corruption, but can you program compassion and extenuating circumstances into the system? The cameras are inevitable. Privacy is over. I still agree with an article I saw on the subject years ago in either Mondo 2000 or Wired (which I can't find, by the way), that suggests not only that the cameras be available to the police but that additional cameras be put in the police stations and that anyone be allowed to monitor any of the cameras. That solves the biggest issue I have with the system, which is asymmetry of power.

It's fair dinkum you'll end up a dipstick battler without a brass razzoo if you make your bizzo I.T. in the Lucky Country

ZDNet Austalia has a very depressing report on the future of Australian I.T. The reason is the success of globalization in the I.T. industry and the emergence of outsourcing.

Australia has been a technological overacheiver until recently, boasting high computer ownership and robust independent I.T. shops. A lot of that has changed as connectivity to the world has improved because its now easier to ship work to India and other countries where the prevailing wage for otherwise highly paid IT workers is extremely low. The reaction of Aussie IT workers has been very similar to the reaction of outsourced workers globally. There are calls for unionization and for anti-outsourcing laws.

To me this seems like the tip of a very large iceberg. Blue collar jobs in manufacturing have been moving overseas for decades. I.T., as an enabling force in business, has made it possible to start to outsource white collar and new collar jobs. Ironically, the first jobs to be outsourced are the I.T. jobs that made it possible. Don't think it'll stop there, though. Why couldn't an accountant in Malaysia do your billing for your company? Why couldn't your HR department run out of Mexico City? Why couldn't your middle managers all be lower paid Indian workers? What vestigial parts of your firm really need to be in the U.S.?

This is the dark side to globalization for the middle class. Modern capitalism has already made lifetime employment a thing of the past. No longer can you count on working for an employer for 25-40 years. Now, it seems, no longer can you count on the same career for 25-40 years no matter how many employers you have. Expect industries to change rapidly as I.T.'s promise starts to make itself felt, and expect to need to retrain mid-career for a new path you never thought you'd take.

THIRD, man, THIRD!

Remember as a child when you threw water balloons around? Well, don't do it anymore and especially don't throw around any water balloons near someone in the line of succession to the presidency.

The Sacramento Bee reports that a 33 year old man in Dixon, Illinois was charged with felony aggravated battery for splashing House Speaker Dennis Hastert with a water balloon that he threw at an antique fire truck. The man says he didn't know Hastert was driving the truck. Aggravated Battery is a Class 3 Felony in Illinois and carries a sentence of 2-5 years plus 3 years Mandatory Supervised Release and up to a $25, 000 fine.

During the hearing where the man posted $25,000 bail, the judge told him, "He is third in line to the presidency of the United States. You won't forget it next time, will you?"

So this man now faces a felony conviction, loss of his freedom for 5 years, and $25,000 for moistening a Republican.

Well who the hell cares how close he is to the presidency? Do we punish certain people differently based on who their victims are? Is that fair? The answer of course is yes, we do treat people differently based on who the victim is and no, it's not fair. It's especially odious when we start treating our elected officials like some sort of Lords and Ladies. Didn't we fight the British to get rid of the aristocracy?

Turnabout is Fair Play

Found this via Angie O'Neal's weblog -
The Boston Globe is reporting that two MIT researchers, annoyed at the Total Information Awareness (TIA) surveillance project have come up with a system that allows citizens to create dossiers on government officials. The two, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, and Ryan McKinley have created the GIA or Government Information Awareness project. The page for the project is at http://opengov.media.mit.edu.

Asymmetry of power between the government and the people is a challenge. This project may help remind the government that it exists and that public servants are entrusted with their jobs only at the sufferance of the people.

Whoops there goes another celeb, kerplop

It's been a rough month for the celebrity crowd. Among the dead this last month were Katherine Hepburn, Hume Cronyn, Gregory Peck, Barry White (below), Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddox, and today Buddy Ebsen.

Certainly the summer months can be hard on the wealthy and old, but what does this all mean, aside from an annoyingly long dead segment at next year's Oscars? Well, it means points and prizes for those few sick individuals who participate in Dead Pools.

Dead Pools are contests where people pick living celebrities at the beginning of the year and get points for each one who dies. The points vary from pool to pool, but the best are those which offer a number of points equivalent to the dead celebrity's age subtracted from one hundred. This, of course, means that those who wasted a slot on Strom Thurmond got 0 points this month when he died. Bob Hope is now also a point-free celebrity. If, however, you were to pick someone like, say, the Dell guy, you might pick up 75 points if he were found dead in a computer store hanging from a ribbon cable tied to a fire sprinkler. I'd like to pause a moment and consider that image... OK, back to the blog.

The grandmaster dead pool is the Lee Atwater Invitational Dead Pool, which goes all the way back to the dark era of the Internet - 1995. The top celebrities picked for this year are Warren Zevon (kind of a gimmee, there), Bob Hope, Strom Thurmond, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Lester Maddox, Johnny Oates, Madam Chiang Kai-Shek, Lady Bird Johnson (who knew she was still alive), and Katherine Hepburn. Only one person in the pool picked Fred Rogers.

The prize offered by the pool is $2003, and they've dished out over $32,000 since inception. There's money in them thar celebs.

Can't Get Enough



Sept 12, 1944 - July 4, 2003

Nike v. Kasky

I'm a bit late on this, but it's important. You may be aware that in the globalization debate, Nike is a lightning rod. Back in the mid-90's, trying to deflect criticism of the company's labor practices, Nike (or more accurately their PR firm) made a number of statements about their track record as a socially responsible company. Among these statements were the assertion that Nike paid "on average, double the minimum wage" in their overseas operations and that its workers "are protected from physical and sexual abuse".

Marc Kasky didn't believe them and sued Nike in 1998 for false advertising under California consumer law. Nike countered with a First Amendment defense that their claims were political speech and not commercial speech. Political speech would be protected under the California statutes, but commercial speech - that is, speech designed to help Nike sell products - would not be covered.

Nike filed a request to have the Supreme Court reject Kasky on First Amendment grounds. The Supremes rejected the request last week, and the trial will go on. Meanwhile, the PR industry, as represented by the PRSA, PA Council, Institute for PR, Page Society and Council of PR Firms, filed an amicus brief to the court in support of Nike, essentially claiming that Nike ought to have the right to make misleading or false statements and not be called on them.

No one's ruled yet on whether Nike's statements were true or false, mind you, just on whether it matters if the statements were true or false. The PR industry came out, in essence, in favor of the corporate right to lie to consumers about their social record.

The issues in this case are complex. Nike and other firms have the right to be free of nuisance lawsuits. For that reason and others, the ACLU has come out in favor of Nike in this case. I think they're dead wrong. I belong to the ACLU, and believe they are usually on the side of the angels even when defending devils, but speech that is intended to deflect criticism of a company in order to improve its reputation and ultimately sell more product to green minded consumers is commercial speech. How could it not be?

The best all-in-one guide I've found on the case is here. UPDATE: the site went down just now, but should be back up soon.

What? I Can't Hear You!? Yeah, It Is Loud!

MSNBC carries an article on what just might be the most annoying "sport" around - building big-ass car stereos. A 747 at takeoff is approximately 140 decibels. The record, held by a team of German scientists (no really, I'm not making this up) is 177.6 decibels. Remember that the decibel scale is logarythmic and you'll get an idea just how loud that is.

Why does anyone want to encourage these jokers? I hear enough loud bad music booming from cars in my neighborhood.

Next up, the Pentagon has announced they'd like to put a spy cam system in place in key locations, but doubt they could actually track every single vehicle in a big city. I'm sure this company, which specializes in commercializing military technology has something to say about that.

Maybe they could put microphones in the spy cams and track the idiots with the loud stereo systems? If they did, I'd buy a newly commercialized EMP gun if and when it became available, just to take out the loud car stereos.

In Other News George Bush is a Doodie-Head and I Like Pie

Wired reports that Bloggers can't be sued for libel for republishing information available elsewhere. Fark takes off after Bloggers calling us self-indulgent circle jerkers.

Slate, meanwhile, reports on the emergence of Blogger maps - maps of a city's public transportation system, with Bloggers identifying the train station they are closest to.

The idea is to give a psychographic map of the city, or at least to let the locals know what kind of miscreants inhabit their neiighborhood. Maps exist for London, D.C., and New York, but I haven't seen one for Chicago yet. Someone locally with a lot of bandwidth want to take the challenge on?

Finally the dullest blog in the world (yes, even worse than this one.)

Then Don't Do That
The Hartford Courant has been running a series of articles on medical schools that produce "troubled" doctors at a high rate. The four they identify as the "crap de la crap" (my phrase) are Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Mexico, Howard University in Washington, Manila Central University in the Philippines and Meharry Medical College in Nashville. Howard has had a medical school since 1868. Their being on that list is a bit of a surprise, but the Courant's methodology seems sound.

From the article - "Together, these large, well-established schools have produced more than 600 doctors cited by licensing boards for negligence, incompetence, sexual assault, drug abuse, fraud or other problems."

I've heard anecdotal stories from doctor friends of mine that would frighten you. It's very important to find a hospital and a doctor with good credentials who went to a school, a residency, and a fellowship (if necessary) that have a good reputation. I'll tell you one thing - if I lived in D.C. or Nashville, I'd fight tooth and nail before going to Meharry or Howard for treatment.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: I first became aware of the Courant article through NPR's reporting on Morning Edition.

Two rules
Last night, my fiancee and I were goofing around, playing music and dancing around the apartment when we heard what we thought was a crowd whoop. We'd seen a number of people hanging out near the entrance to our alley and assumed the school on the other side of the alley was giving another fundraiser party. After about fifteen minutes we prepared for bed and were just settling in when we started to hear sirens. Out on our street a fire truck stopped and firemen walked into the alley.

Our building is long enough that we wouldn't necessarily know if a fire on the far side of the building started until it was well underway. Just as a matter of precaution, I pulled on my pants and went down to find out what was happening.

I saw a number of college-age women and men walking out of the alley. I asked a woman with a "t" shaped scratch in her face and she told me a porch had just collapsed. A dozen or so firefighters and cops were pulling people from the wreckage of the three story wooden porch that fell three doors down from us. I went back upstairs and got my fiancee, who is a doctor, to come down.

We went downstairs and she was off. I couldn't keep up with her. She dove right into the crowd and told the emergency crew who she was. I stopped just out of the way in the crowd lining the far side of the alley from the apartment building. It was hard to make out details in the dark, but it was clear that there was no third floor left to the porch. I overheard a slightly dazed barefoot man with a wet shirt tell a girl that the third floor collapsed which took out the second floor down to the first floor.

The police shooed the crowd back to the street to give the EMS teams space to work. I couldn't see it from my side, but a triage area had been set up on the next block and a dozen or more ambulances had arrived to care for the wounded. My fiancee had come back around the block and suggested we go back in to get out of the way. The emergency teams had told her to step back and if they needed her, they'd tell her. Right after that, however, dozens more EMS personnel had arrived and she was extraneous. The EMS teams know how to extract people from rubble and dangerous situations and how to stabilize them much better than most doctors.

Then she told me the two rules she'd been taught about codes and emergency situations. I think these are good rules to know and remember.

1. If you wonder if you should go to help, you should go to help.
2. If, once you get to the scene, you can't figure out what you should be doing and wonder if you should be there - you should leave and get out of the rescuers' way.

This morning, the neighborhood is swimming in satellite trucks. Twelve dead, four dozen or more injured. They don't know exactly how many people were on the porch when it gave way, but it looks like more than 30 on each of the top two levels, ten on the first floor, plus people on the stairs.

ADDENDUM: I should note that the Chicago emergency crews were amazing. The firemen and cops who took charge of the scene did what can only be decribed as a thoroughly professional job. I'm not always a fan of the cops in this city, but in this case their work was exemplary and not heavy handed.

Kusin-, Coocin-, How the Hell DO You Spell Kucinich, Anyway?
I don't think Dennis Kucinich has an Italian ice's chance in Hades of getting the Democratic nomination, but I'm starting to really like the guy as a person.

Anyone who would stage this photo opportunity...



...is Jake in my book. Civilization = Polka, Bowling, and Kielbasa.

Does my clogged Midwestern heart proud.

Leave Me Alone
Yesterday was the first day you could sign up for the national telemarketer Do-Not-Call database. Telemarketers are required to check and respect this database when making their cold calls. Exemptions exist for charities, political solicitations (of course), and for businesses with whom you've had a recent transaction. You can register both cell and land lines on the system and the penalties for telemarketers who call your number when you've registered is stiff - up to an $11,000 fine per incident.

Telemarketers of course cry foul. They feel like their legitimate business activities are being impeded by this legislation. To which I say, "Yeah. So?" Telemarketing is the lowest form of white-collar employment, degrading to both the recipient and initiator of the call. Certainly some economic impact will be felt, but I wonder if anyone's done an analysis of the economic impact of eliminating leech industries like this one. I have a feeling the money wasted in this sector will show up elsewhere.

Google is putting new tools on its browser search toolbar. Among the tools are a form-filler that will enter your name and address in online forms automatically and a pop-up blocker. Now if they'd add an "annoying Flash ad blocker" I'd be very happy.

Of course the marketers sometimes use spyware (or "scumware") to figure out what ads to serve you. The solution to that is SpyBot Search & Destroy. Ad-Aware is also a good tool, but in recent months, SpyBot S&D; has held the technical edge. Run this software. You'll be disgusted by how much junk has attached itself to your browser. And for God's sake, never agree to download anything from Xupiter or Gator.

While you're enjoying the extra time you gain by not answering telemarketing calls and not closing pop-up windows, maybe you can catch up on your snail mail. Get a lot of junk mail there, too? Dude, you really have to stop entering those free vacation sweepstakes. Well, here's a page that will tell you how to reduce your junk mail.

One last note about the do-not-call registry If you notice the URL (http://donotcall.gov/register/Reg.aspx), you'll notice it's an aspx page. That's right, the government is relying on Microsoft .NET. Open Source advocates, file your protests now. I don't know what hardware they're running the site on, but it's still trying to post my registration from fifteen minutes ago.

Blogger Boggler
I was unable to post yesterday when Lester Maddox died, the Public Domain Enhancement Act was presented by Congresswoman Lofgren (D-CA) and Congressman Doolittle (R-CA) and will be introduced to the House, and an Iraqi scientist turned over part of a gas centrifuge the Iraqis had from before Gulf War I that is used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

But Blogger was getting updated so I got frozen out. Maybe I'll write about these items in more detail later.

The Selling of the President 2004
Sometimes, you come across an item that reads better than any parody you could ever come up with. Well, here's the item for this week. Slate found the prototype for W's re-election site. Although most of the other links they put together now lead to a password protected area (WIndows IIS, I think), the one live link is to the George W. Bush Interstate W'04 site.

Among the items offered for sale are travel mugs, mousepads, keychains, and perhaps most amusingly, football jerseys with BUSH and 43 on them. The logo is hilarious. This is what the GOP feels is the best way to market the president:



(If a guy is wearing the red "W" bandana on his left leg but with the W hanging out is he a "top" or do I have the code mixed up?)

I can't decide if this is idiotic or sheer genius. I think it may be a bit of both. Whoever came up with the logo and sold the GOP on it had a huge pair of these

The pair in question apparently belong to Ted Jackson of English Emprise, a marketer specializing in conservative political tchochkies. Mr. Ringling would be proud.

And Iran, Iran so far away
A Washington Post poll this morning tells us, among other frightening facts, that 58% of Americans support "military action" against Iran to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons.

The Moscow Times carries an article by Alexander Shumilin in which he frets about the proper position for Russia to take in the emerging Iranian crisis. His concerns, which are reflective of Russian concerns in the region as a whole include the worry that the U.S. will bomb the Bushehr nuclear plant where Iran is making its fissile material.

The hope is that the IAEA will somehow bring the Iranians to heel. The Iranians are making the right noises, but will they follow through? The IAEA worked in North Korea and Iraq, right?

The same Post poll also shows Bush's approval rating in the high 60's. Huh? My take on why the public seems to like Bush so well is that Americans like a leader who presents the U.S. as the guy with the BSD (to use Michael Lewis's phrase). Subtlety almost never generates the kind of admiration in the public that a loud mouth and a brash demeanor do. Why is that?

Harry'er than Thou
Painpill blames me for the Harry Potter shortage. I only bought one, honest. At least I read it before writing anything about the book unlike Polly Shuman at Slate, who gets all cranky about the book because she waited three hours in the rain to get a copy. Then she complains about bits of the book without having finished it. Maybe it's a bit slow in the beginning for a reason? I guess she wouldn't know becasue she hasn't read the damn thing. I had no rain problems. I walked into Border's at 12:30am and picked one up off the shelf.

Richard Roeper read the book in a lickety split and gets a column two-fer out of it. First he wrote his review of the book, then he wrote his review of the experience of reviewing the Order of the Phoenix so quickly.

By the way, what's with film reviewers reviewing this book? In addition to Roeper, Slate's other reviewer in Book Club this week is David Edelstein who reviews movies for Slate. There will be a movie of this Harry Potter book, I'm sure, but it seems a little out of the film baliwick while it's words on paper.

Harry Potter (one SPOILER that's been all over the media already)
Like much of the English speaking world I snapped up a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night just after midnight. I finished the 890 pages of J.K. Rowling goodness (my, that sounds saucy) just a few minutes ago and I can say it was a most enjoyable read.

Unlike the other four books (expecially the first three), Rowling departs from the neat formula of "Harry suspects something creepy, learns about a (mcguffin goes here) and overcomes with the help of friends to find the (mcguffin goes here) and defeats Voldemort, while nasty things happen to the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and Gryffndor wins at Quidditch". Oh the elements are there, but Rowling's got a much more sophisticated way of handling them in this story.

Also, everyone is crankier than usual, Hermoine and Harry most notably so. I won't say more so as not to ruin it for those of you infected with the sickness. It's a darker, but much more satisfying read. And someone dies. But I ain't saying who.

Hipster dufus?
Great blog piece here by Jan Herman about the difference between Allen Ginsburg's "Howl" and Salman Rushdie's "Fury". I just read "Fury " last month, and Herman's critique of Rushdie as "an insider... posing as an outsider who rails against celebrity" struck me as precise and accurate. I love "Midnight's Children", was puzzled over "Satanic Verses", and am certain "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, but Rushdie's succumbing to comfort. "Fury" tries to be lean and mean, but at heart it's a fat and lazy book from a man capable of Olympian story-telling. I'm hoping the excesses of American power displayed by the Bush administration will reignite his pilot light, but I'm not optimistic. Where's William S. Burroughs when you really need him? Probably shooting up in heaven, somewhere...

Norman Rush, another favorite of mine, has just published his third novel - "Mortals". Slate features it in their Book Club feature this week. His previous two - "Mating", and "Whites", were very strange books that had me flipping the pages at a prodigious rate, then turning back to re-read and make sure I'd understood what he'd written.

I'm just about to finish "The Devil in the White City". Just go out and buy this book. Trust me.

Just testing

Digital Rights Mismanagement
CNN carries a story about new anti-copying technologies being incorporated into new audio formats. Among the potential technologies being tried out are one-time only CD and DVD's. You play it once and then you have to pay to play it again.

This seems to me to be a colossal mistake on a number of fronts, not least of which is that people view content differently. Not everyone watches a DVD all the way through the first time. I personally check out the interface and the scene selections (well, unless its Mulholland Drive which has no scene selections), and if I've seen the movie before, I'll revisit a favorite scene or two before watching the whole thing front to back.

Now, admittedly, I'm a strange individual and not everyone watches their movies this way. Under the new scheme, you would have to watch your films a certain way. Maybe the disk would be good for 24 hours, but that would mean you couldn't go back to see a scene that stuck in your head from a day or two before without paying again.

I don't think this encourages innovation, either. I think you are less likely to try a new musical artist if you don't already know what you're going to hear. Now, I can buy a disc for $12-14 new or $8-9 used, listen to it for a while and sell it for $4-5 at the used CD store. My risked investment in that disc is at most $10, and at the lowest level $3. Innovative and risky artists will get fewer sales and fewer avant garde artists will catch on without this reduction in risk, I believe.

What kills me most is that we've done this before. In the movie industry, DIVX players (not the codec whch was named after it, but the rent-a-DVD technology) failed miserably. In software, dongles and copy protected disks helped a number of large software companies become small software companies or cease to exist altogether. Remember 1-2-3? It was dominant in the market. No one could touch it. Until Excel came along sans copy-protection and ate Lotus's lunch. Try to find a major company that uses 1-2-3 as their primary spreadsheet these days.

I hope this will play out like the software copy protection wars did. Or was it piracy that kept Microsoft from ever becoming a big player in the market?

ADDENDUM: Newsweek's Steven Levy reports on DRM and it's potential as a "crime against humanity" here.

99 Luftballoons
The Administration is contemplating ways to intercept North Korean shipping in an effort to cut off arms sales from the country. They aren't talking blockade just yet, but its becoming apparent that we're stepping up the pressure on Pyongyang.

Let's hope Bush can be as measured in his actions as Kennedy was in '61. I'm not optimistic, and the stakes for East Asia and the world are high.

Vigilantes
Not satisfied with the harassment being dished out by the Federales, it seems several banks and credit card companies are now taking it on themselves to hassle their customers with Muslim names.

This may be the ugliest time in American history since the Red Scare of the 50's. If we're going to target Muslims for harassment because Muslims took down the World Trade Center, shouldn't we target guys with mullets because of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? I don't know what to do except find a candidate for president in 2004 who can beat Bush and his cronies.

I know this - we'll all look back on this time and those of us with consciences will feel deep regret and shame at the actions of our people and our government.

Monday, by the way, was the one year anniversary of American citizen Jose Padilla in prison without being charged, allowed access to a lawyer, access to his family, or even a prospect of a trial.

Maybe it's time for a refresher on this section of the Bill of Rights:


Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Layoffs

My company is this week the victim of layoffs. I'm a little bummed (and I'm not included as far as I know), so I may not post much this week.

Patently Absurd

Microsoft has just been granted a patent on a "networked interactive entertainment system" which "allows viewers to create their own customized lists of preferred video content programs, such as movies, games, [and] TV shows." EmbeddedWatch has details.

Can anyone doubt our IP laws are hopelessly outdated and misregulated?

Popping the Cork

Slamming Sammy Sosa caught corking. Sammy Sosa was tossed from the game yesterday when his bat shattered in the first inning and umpires found cork in his bat. Sosa, who has in the past pish-poshed claims he cheats by using steroids, was caught cheating in the lowest Albert Belle kind of way.

What really annoys me about this story is that corking a bat doesn't work, except possibly by giving the hitter a psychological advantage.

The Cubs were winning but barely on the road against some tough teams without Sosa. They'll have to do without him for up to ten games once the league rules on suspending him. Will they suspend him for the historic Cubs-Yankees series? Or will baseball somehow weasel the situation so the suspension starts after the weekend?

The White House Gets One Right
I don't agree with the Bush White House on much of anything but I applaud their urging the Supreme Court to let stand a ruling that sought damages from a group putting Wanted posters up of doctors who perform abortions. Whatever side of the issue you're on, I think it's clear these posters incite violence. The AP article is here.

SCO uses legal system as a denial of service attack on Linux, MS cackles in the wings
Santa Cruz Operation (SCO, NASDAQ:SCOX) is seeding the Linux waters with a healthy dose of fear, uncertainty and doubt. SCO has claimed that blocks of its source code found their way into Linux and is suing IBM for $1 billion (insert Dr. Evil little finger gesture here). Complicating matters is Microsoft, which has just licensed UNIX from SCO.

SCO's claims were countered this week by Novell, who sold licensing rights to System V UNIX to SCO. The deal they have sends 95% of the licensing revenue back to Novell, and 5% to SCO. Novell claims that although they sold the right to license UNIX to SCO, they did not sell the copyrights or patents to UNIX to the company. SCO claims the copyrights aren't important, but won't explain why they tried frantically to get the copyrights and patents from Novell in the months leading up to the suit.

Cringely makes the observation that SCO may have wakened a sleeping giant by poking at IBM. IBM is enormous, even after its troubles in the late 80's/early 90's. Lou Gerstner streamlined the place and made them even more of a competitor than they used to be. SCO can't take on IBM in the long run.

Until recently, SCO licensed and sold its own version of Linux. If the offending source code is in the version they released, they may have inadvertently GPL'd the product, releasing it to the world at large. A lawsuit from Linus Torvalds might be used to enforce the GPL that Linux is distributed under and keep the code public.

It's easy to conclude that Microsoft may be behind all this. MS has been losing share in the server market as Linux starts asserting itself in more and more shops as an inexpensive way to set up a machine. Why pay $500 for a WIndows 2000 license for an SMTP gateway when you can use Linux for free? The hardware for most "utility" machines and gateways is less than the cost of the license MS wants for its OS. If there is no viable alternative, however..

Look for the Union Label
Corporate Mo-Fo has a nice piece on the nascent Freelancer's Union in New York. It's only in NYC right now, but this idea looks like it has staying power and should spread. Among other benefits, the Freelancer's union offers 401K, health, disability, and life insurance.

If It's Good Enough For Iraq...
This administration is pro-gun, I think it's fair to say. That's why I was surprised by this article in the New York Times (free reg req.) that tells us the U.S. miiltary is requiring most Iraqis to give up their guns.

This is the same administration about whom Kayne Robinson, the new president of the NRA told an audience during the 2000 election that "the NRA will have... a President where we work out of their office".

The Bush family as a whole has a more ambiguous relationship with the NRA than you might think. Former president George "the Elected one" H.W. Bush resigned from the NRA in 1995 when the NRA attacked Federal officials in an NRA mailing.

If we can ask the Iraqis to give up their guns to help stabilize their country and prevent violence, why can't we do the same thing here? I recognize that the military is allowing the Iraqis to keep their smallest guns but I'm pretty sure the weapons being confiscated would be legal here. I know the NRA has pushed in the past to make them legal here.

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery
Aware that the phrase "Total Information Awareness" conjured up images of Winston Smith with a rat strapped to his face, The DOD has renamed the project the "Terrorist Information Awareness" program.

Oceania is our ally. Oceania has always been our ally.

Monopoly is a Boring Game
The New York Times has an article that details how Wal-mart increasingly dictates American culture (free reg required, but you can give them a fake name). If your book is too controversial to appear at Wal-mart, you can bet you won't achieve Stephen King or John Grisham-esque success.

Clear Channel is doing much the same thing in radio. ClearChannelSucks details the many ways that Clear Channel contributes to the demise of a vital radio scene. Has radio in Chicago ever been so unlistenable? Someone obviously is listening to this junk, but who? No one I know.

You might expect I'd rant against Barnes & Noble and Border's as well. I think that in more cities they actually bring more diversity of cultural product to a market. Chicago has suffered the loss of some very important bookstores since these giants moved in (along with the now departed Waterstone's), but the selection that the giants brought in compensates for their loss. Sure, the Marxist philosophy section at any of the chains is never going to compare to the one at long-gone Guild Books, but the books in that section at Guild seemed to be pretty dusty, if I remember correctly. I miss Kroch's and Brentano's technical and magazine sections. They were great for the era.

I do try to buy from independents when possible. My favorites are Unabridged Books in Boystown, and Barbara's in several locations in the city. For used books, Powell's on Lincoln, and O'Gara and Wilson, Powell's Hyde Park location. A couple of non-used book bookstores, 57th Street and the Seminary Co-op also deserve your attention.

I do occasionally order from Amazon, but it usually doesn't flip off my "instant gratification needed" switch.

Push the Envelope
Found a couple of good sites for the literarily inclined (i.e. propped up to a 4 degree angle on a stack of Strunk and White's).
First is Chicago Writer which is exactly what it sounds like.

The second spoke to me. It made me realize that I can actualize my potential to come out with a win-win situation for everybody involved. The site is Buzz Killer and it's dedicated to the idea that the best writing is free of fatuous buzzwords. Going forward, I'll be dialoging with them to ensure they don't get lost in the shuffle. Unfortunately, the last entry on their Buzzblog is from October. I hope they haven't opted-out of the blogsphere.

Speaking of flaks, Ari Fleischer is sailing off into the sunset in July, presumably on a big raft of the horse puckey he spewed for the White House the last two years.

Mr. Anderson, Who Art in Mainframe
The Canadian National Post has an article on the Matrix as an allegory for Christianity. Keanu Reeves has already played Buddha, so why not? Look for him next in Moses and Muhammed's Big Adventure ("You stepped on my robe you medieval dickweed!").

Seriously, the article makes some interesting points. Other than the obvious "Neo" = "One" and the baptism in water when Neo is awakened from the Matrix and drained into the sea, you could look at the very name Trinity, and Morpheus's role as a John the Baptist character. Is Agent Smith then the Devil, a fallen "angel", the Lord of the Files?

I found this via Reality Carnival.

UPDATE:Corporate Mofo has an expansion along the same lines here.

Kelly Lynch and Audie Murphy

Reports are now coming in that the dramatic story about Kelly Lynch's rescue from the Iraqis was mostly hooey. Originally, she was reported to have courageously fought off captors, killing several before being shot several times, knifed, raped in some versions and then mistreated horribly by her captors. American special forces were dispatched and facing heavy hostile fire, secured Pricate Lynch and brought her home to safety. It appears she really was captured without being wounded by the Iraqis, was slapped around a little by the Iraqi troops, but treated very well by the civilian Iraqis at the hospital where she was taken, and the rescue operation was conducted against no resistance - the Iraqi troops having buggered off two days earlier. And now Private Lynch is the face of the war, the hero of the moment.

Compare this to the story of Audie Murphy. Murphy was the most decorated soldier of World War II. He overachieved on almost every mission. The incident which earned him the Medal of Honor though is what I want to focus on. Murphy was a second lieutenant at the time and was forward directing artillery fire. He found himself in a bad spot with German troops on three sides of him, with tanks. Instead of surrendering or withdrawing, he climbed up on a burning tank destroyer and started shooting its .50 caliber machine gun. He fought, single handedly, for an hour against dozens of Germans with tanks. By wiping out the tanks' infantry support, he caused the tanks to withdraw.
When he finally ran out of ammo, he jumped down into the snow to discover he was wounded in the leg. He'd killed over 50 Germans, some 10 yards from his position on the tank destroyer. Ignoring the wound, he ran back to his troops and organized a counterattack that forced the Germans to withdraw.

Certainly, there is a difference between the two wars. In one, we were fighting for the survival of an ally, the resotration of democracy and the halt of fascism. In the other, we were purportedly fighting for the end of weapons of mass distruction and the overthrow of a dangerous dictator in a relatively minor country with a whole lot of oil. I think it's illustrative of the times, however, that in the 1940's (and in the 1950's when Murphy played himself in movies about his actions), the hero was a person who took action, while in 2003, the hero of the war is a victim.

I think the change occurred in Vietnam. The best known soldiers from that war were the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton (including John McCain), and Lt. William Calley, who was court martialed for the massacre of 347 civillians in My Lai. Given the choice, the citizens of the most powerful country in the world identified with the victims.

Mezcal vs. Tequila
Ate at Frontera Grill this evening with friends. What a place. Rick Bayless, who has been on PBS with two seasons of cooking shows about Mexican cuisine is the force behind this restaurant as well as the attached Topolobampo. If you are in Chicago you should try this place. It's less expensive than many other places in town, but was rated the #3 restaurant in Chicago by Chicago Magazine last year.

So the question came up about the difference between Mezcal and Tequila. I found this reference on the subject on a Texas-oriented webpage.

Basically it boils down to: Mezcal is smoky, Tequila is not. Mezcal is from Oaxaca, Tequila is from Jalisco. Mezcal might have a worm, Tequila does not have a worm in the bottle. However, all tequila is mezcal, but not all mezcal is tequila. Huh? Anyone with a more definitive guide to the two Agave beverages (or the one and the subspeciality), please explain it to me.

A Novel Idea
Not many updates recently - here's why. I've been writing a novel. I entered an extended vacation with the idea of working out some stroy ideas, and noodling around a bit with techniques for fiction. One of those ideas turned out to be novel-length. I'm up to Chapter 9 out of 22.

One of the inspirations for me was Paul Goyette's Trio of Minuet, a children's opera that Paul wrote the libretto for. We saw it over the weekend in Indianapolis and it was stunning. To think that something can go from ink on a piece of paper to a massive production like this was and is inspiring. It was a great time, but like a true writer, Paul already has expressed a desire to edit, edit, edit.

The tactic I've been using to ensure I write this story is that I haven't told anyone what the story is. And I won't until it's done. I've found that if I tell someone the story, I feel like I've already written it. Plus, the absurdities of a plot that exist when it's conceptual are exposed and self-doubt takes over. If I actually write the damn thing instead of talking about writing it, I fix the inconsistencies as a matter of course and should end up with something to show for it.

Personally, I'm hoping to finish the first draft of my novel before the end of the week Sunday. That means 3-4 chapters a day - a tough, but do-able pace.
Ultimately, I figure it's easier to rewrite than to write and even if my story turns out to be utter rot (which I don't think it is right now), it'll be a complete novel. No longer will writing a novel be an impossible mountain to climb. It will be something I've done. And something I can do again, I hope.

Empire Strikes Back II
Slate has an article about America's first empire - the Philippines. Ay porbida.

But were the Philippines part of the first American empire? I would argue that the West, Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Hawaii all qualify as colonial territories now incorporated into the larger nation. We also have a bit of Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam (where my father was supply officer, and where he almost set up a house of ill-repute). and the Virgin Islands left over as part of our WWII territories. We did grant the Marshall Islands independence in 1986. Since we did nuclear tests there in the 50's and 60's have we now nuked two countries?

There are other territories we hold including Midway Islands, Wake Island, Johnston Atoll, Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Islands, Kingman Reef, Navassa Island, and the ever popular Palmyra Atoll.

You might include central America and the Carribean as "Finlandized" territories to the U.S., but you could also probably make a case for adding the UK to that category.

George Orwell was an Optimist

Saw this on Slashdot. MRI technology has now been enhanced to the point where oxygen use (and thus activity) can be mapped in what is being called a Functional MRI or fMRI. This article from the Boston Globe asks some interesting questions. Is "brain privacy" the next big legal battleground?

What if a perfect lie detector could be created? Should it be allowed? What if fMRI technology could be used by the Army to screen out gays or by employers to screen out non-comformists or potential depressives? More and more the future looks less like Star Trek and more like Blade Runner.

The West
While I was in Las Vegas I read Richard Rodriguez's Brown:The Last Discovery of America, a meditation on race in America from the perspective of a Hispanic/Latino/Chicano American.

Among the many topics he covers is the topic of terminology. He personally prefers the term Hispanic because it is a uniquely American construction, injected into the culture by Nixon's Census Bureau. Latino, in his vew, excludes people from Old World Spanish descent, and Chicano is an almost exclusively Mexican word. Hispanic does not make these distinctions, and no one outside of the U.S. refers to themselves as Hispanic. If you ask a Columbian what they are, they will say Columbian, if you ask an Argentinian, they will say they are Argentinian. But when these same people come to America, they become something else - Hispanic. The Colombian and Argentinian and Venezuelan and Mexican put aside many of the differences they would have had if they'd remained in their birth countries and take on the mantle of Hispanicism.

The implications of the color brown as he uses it involve impurity and incongruity, not in a negative manner but as a source of strength and delight. He also touches on the implied eroticism of racial miscegenation in American history, which was a new idea to me. It will help your navigation of these essays if you know who Edith Sitwell and T.E. Lawrence are, as he references them frequently.A familiarity with key scenes in the movie Lawrence of Arabia is also useful.

The most intriguing idea he discusses is the idea of the future. To Americans, especially in the east, the future has always been West. Even after the settling of the country was complete, the East Coast media see California (and lately Seattle) as the place where the future is born - from Proposition 13, to personal computers, to gay rights, to the Internet boom and crash. Rodriguez argues they've missed the point. The future is no longer east-west but north-south. NAFTA and the burgeoning movement for a hemispheric free trade region have followed the dialogue between West Coast intellectuals and their Mexican/Latin/South American counterparts. There is still dialogue between the East Coast intelligentsia and Europe as there has been for decades, but Rodriguez argues this dialogue is mainly a rehashing of arguments long resolved. New ideas and New thought starts to the south.

The book is worth a read and may inspire you to seek out more Southern viewpoints.

Back in the Saddle Again

And now I'm back... from outer space. OK, not outer space but from Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Frankly, I don't feel like writing about it tonight since I just fought my way through airports and trains and a team of consultants on the El home who blathered on about SLA's and synchonization of values and corporate cultures and just ick.

Something tomorow I promise.

Bob Edwards

I was in Louisville this weekend and saw this speech from Bob Edwards, anchor of Morning Edition on NPR in the local paper. He has good observations on Clear Channel, the conservative cowing of the media and the questions that are not being asked of this White House. Who thought I 'd ever link to the Courier-Journal?

Mississippi, Goddamn!

Nina Simone died today. Those of you who know me will hear at least one of her songs at our wedding this October. The song my fiance and I have chosen to be our first song is My Baby Just Cares for Me, which is uncharacteristically light for Simone. Simone sang a lot of angry songs like Go to Hell, Mississippi Goddamn, and To Be Young, Gifted and Black (the latter taken from a phrase of Lorraine Hansbury's, author of Raisin in the Sun.

She also sang introspective songs like Wild is the Wind, which is the definition of an art song for me, and Strange Fruit, the song about lynchings in the South that Billie Holiday made famous.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
...
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.


Mississippi Goddamn remained her signature song, especially during the Civil Rights Movement's height in the 1960's. Here's a sample of the lyrics as she sang them in 1963:

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

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

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

...
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!"
...
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 Goddamn

That's it!

Salon has a great biography of her. It might be a Premium article, but you should be subscribing to Salon anyway.

Jackie Chan, 1923-style

No, Harold Lloyd didn't fight the bad guys with awesome Kung-Fu powers the way Jackie Chan does, but if you get a chance to catch Safety Last from 1923 on TCM this month, take it. Lloyd did all his own stunts like Chan, and when you see him hanging from a clock's hands a hundred feet above the ground, he's really hanging from a clock's hands a hundred feet above the ground.

Chan has been accused of stealing his ideas from Lloyd. I don't know if that' s fair. Either way, you owe it to yourself to see Lloyd in action in glorious silent black and white.

Why does this not trouble anyone?
The Tennessean has an article about a secretive religious organization known as "The Fellowship" or "The Foundation" that subsidizes the living spaces for six members of the Congress. The Congressmen pay $600/month to live two blocks from the Capitol building. The six lawmakers are U.S. Reps. Zach Wamp, R-Chattanooga; Bart Stupak, D-Mich.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; and Mike Doyle, D-Pa.; and U.S. Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev.; and Sam Brownback, R-Kan. A previous tenant was Steve Largent, the Republican ex-wide receiver and ex-Representative from Oklahoma.

The United Methodists also are in the renting-to-the-pols biz, but they charge almost $1000/month for a space across from the Supreme Court. I guess their Scottish roots don't allow the Methodists to take a loss on the rent.

Whew
Ever fry a CPU? Last one I toasted was an Apple II+'s 6502 chip. I was in high school and I moved a disk drive from one machine to another. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the second computer was on when I plugged the card in. ZAP! That taught me an important lesson that's kept me in good shape with all the computers I've ever worked on since. However, I almost broke that streak with a my own Pentium 4 last night.

I bought a second hard drive for my main machine. When I looked inside, I discovered I couldn't slide it into the cage without removing the heat sink from my CPU. Well, removing the heat sink also tore the P4 right out of it's closed ZIF socket. Ouch.

Have you ever performed brain surgery with salad tongs? That's what I felt like I was doing last night as I very carefully unbent the pins on the P4 with tweezers, knives, blow in cards from magazines and a very unsteady hand. After a long time, interrupted by a call from a friend and from the redhead, I was able to straighten the pins out so they would go back in the socket. I thought I was in the clear.

You should note that any time someone says he "thought (he) was in the clear", he isn't. I turned the PC on and... nothing.

Oh crap. I'm looking at trying to slide an expenditure for a new CPU through the household accounts when we have to save every dime for our upcoming wedding. The chances of this happening are just about nil. Or, rather, I could do it, but I'd feel like a heel for the next six months and my fiance would have that in reserve for when we get into arguments about raising our theoretical kids, which ruins any arguments I might have for getting me a Jaguar vs. wasting it on braces for junior. My other alternative is to go back to the much slower Athlon that I just stripped down to be a server until the cash crunch eases. Not attractive.

So I do what any good tech would do. I futzed with it. I jiggled the chip. I pushed it down with a tamper. I took it out and reseated it seven or eight hundred times. Each time I tried - I got nothing. Finally, I reseated the chip one last time and bingo - BIOS screen! For about ten seconds. Then it went off again.

Well, OK. So I hadn't ruined the chip. But what happened? I got the answer when I reached down to pull the chip out and got a nice burn blister on my finger. Heat. The computer's deadliest enemy (sort of like cobras and mongooses, but they're not so mad at each other any more).

I'll cut out the various ways I tried to reconnect the goo on the bottom of the heat sink with the goo on the top of the chip (which had my oily insulating fingerprints all over it), and just say that I got a couple tubes of silver heat sink compound, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and am now using the previously feared to be fried CPU to update the blog today.

Phew. Still don't have the second drive hooked up but I'll get that done after the weekend. Or maybe I'll just leave it alone.

Geek

Thanks to painpill for tipping me off to squawkbox for the comment feature. Now you can make fun of my writing in real time!

Salon has Tim Robbins speech to the National Press Club. Hit the mascot.

Where's yer Messiah now? Mnyah.

Today is the last day at work for me for a month. My company has a very nice program that allows one to take four weeks off every four years. Today's my eighth anniversary with the firm and tomorrow I start my sabbatical.

The word sabbatical (which I want to spell "sabaatical" for some reason) comes from the Latin sabaatum, which in turn comes from the Hebrew shabbath, which means the seventh day. In the Bible/Torah/Pentateuch/thing you find in the top drawer of the hotel nightstand, you'll find the Ten Commandments. Don't kill people, don't shtup your friend's wife, write your poor mother once in a while - these are all very good ideas. Other commandments seem archaic. Coveted your neighbors male or female servants or their ass lately? One we certainly don't take seriously is the idea of a sabbath.

Sure, in most states, blue laws are observed that make it illegal to buy liquor at the store on Sundays, but with the presence of 24-hour Walmarts and the orgy of sports on Sundays, we sure as hell don't take a day off for reflection and deep thought anymore.

I'm not religious, but I do appreciate the idea that we should take time off to work on other interests and persue our higher natures. In Mosaic law (which is suprisingly not the law of a bunch of tiny bits of tile, but the law of Moses), a sabbatical year is declared every seven years. During that year, no crops were to be planted or harvested, debtors were to be given a respite from lenders, and most appropriately, slaves were allowed to go free. However, during this time, the people were expected to listen to a reading of the Law and to strive to fulfill the demands the Lord had made of them - essentially to become better people.

This wage slave plans to make good use of his sabbatical by writing and exercising; improving both my mind and my body. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I have a lot of problems with my company, but their recognition that people need time to work on themselves and reflect is not one of them.

Fox, meet Henhouse

This comes via Slashdot. A former exec from DoubleClick, the internet ad company that tracks your behavior so they can serve you appropriate ads, has just been appointed in charge of privacy for the Department of Homeland Security.

What's next, Michael Jackson in charge of DCFS? I suppose the guys from Gator and Xupiter weren't available for this job.

Ring-a-ding-ding
Last night the redhead and I made plans to go to Vegas for a week for vacation. The interesting thing about this is that she doesn't like gambling. Hates it. Despises it. I have no problem with it and can quit at any time. No, really.

She's more interested in the pool situation than in the casinos, but she hasn't been there yet. It took me 36 years before I got to Las Vegas and when I got there I asked everyone why the hell they hadn't told me about the place when I was 20? It's crass, it's loud, it'll give you a headache, occasionally make you angry, and extract an awful lot of money from your wallet, but man on man is it a good time.

I'm encouraged by reports that it's going back to its old roots. I'm insisting we see Fremont Street where all the old casinos are. Also, I looked over the shows we might see and of the name acts, I think Penn & Teller and Wayne Newton are the top prospects. Of course, it's $100 to go see Wayne Newton. Danke Shoen, but no Danke Schoen.

We're not just going to Vegas, however. We're also going hiking in the red rocks of the desert (where I'll undoubtedly get bitten by snakes, stung by scorpions and piddled on by a prarie dog) and to the Hoover Dam.

The Hoover Dam is very cool. It's huge. It's bigger than huge, it's 'ginormous. They had to cool the concrete so it would cure in less than a hundred years. It provides all the electricity that lights Las Vegas. Up to 5,200 people worked on it at one time. The geek in me is excited as hell. After the visit, I hope we get to go out somewhere and see the night sky far from any city light pollution.

We went out into the dark the last time I was in Las Vegas (also the first time) to see a meteor shower. Three friends and I went out to a dark spot that hid the city behind a hill and watched the streaks of white and green light paint the velvety sky. It was very spiritual.
For about twenty seconds. Then, like the idiots we are, it evolved into a competitive game of "I saw one way cooler than you did!" A pair of streaks would appear and if you were standing nearby you'd hear "Oooh!" "Ah!" "Wow!" "Crap! I was looking the other way." We're such dorks sometimes.

Honestly, that was my favorite night of the trip.

You have to push the door.
I get bugged (just a little) when I'm on the bus and someone at the back door sits and stares at it at the bus stops, willing the door to open with her mind. "You have to push the door," I'll tell her. She usually looks at me with an annoyed expression, pushes the door, and exits the bus.

As I'm in front of the computer, I come back here and check the site to see if there's anything new. Then I look at the computer annoyed and head back to FARK.

Hey, I'm new to this blogging thing.

It's a letter from Satan, your Highness
I just got a mailer from Clear Channel Entertainment. I'm assuming this company is related to the radio Clear Channel ninnies. They're offering me the chance to "Come Join the Show!" at the Tweeter Center (aka the World Theatre aka the New World Theatre). All I have to do is call and order Season Tickets or Gold Box tickets, undoubtedly at exorbitant prices. Want to know where all the best seats go? This is your answer.

This is all part of the VIP'ing of America. The United States was born as an egalitarian nation with 50% of the people categorically denied the vote, and a large number of people who only counted as 3/5 of a "real" person. Since then, as we've professed the ideal of "All Men are Created Equal", we've tried to find ways to separate ourselves from the unruly rabble that makes up our fellow citizenry. The Billy Goat Tavern has a sign that says "VIP Lounge. For Very Insecure People".

I'm guilty of this as much as anyone else. In fact, I took a weekend flight to Seattle and back just so I could get the miles to keep AAdvantage Gold status so I can get on the plane first and get first crack at upgrades (well second or third crack after the Platinum and Executive Platinum types). Airline programs were one of the first to bring VIP treatment to the great unwashed masses, but now you can get preferred status at the grocery store with your discount card, or even at the ballpark.

The Cubs were caught reserving tickets to the most popular games to sell through their own ticket brokering service where $45 tickets can go for as much as $1500. If you've got the money you can get anything in America.

This would all be fine by me, except that instead of just increasing services available to the "elite", companies are reducing service for the "proles" to make elite status more attractive and to cause stupid people like me to fly across the country for the sake of a little bit more legroom and a little politeness at the counter.

Dad, I'm sorry for everything I ever did
Sometimes when wandering the web, you find something that's ever so slightly amusing. Sometimes you find a site that makes you laugh out loud. Occasionally, you come across a site that forces you to hold your skull together to keep it from splitting from the force of your laughter (nice Viking imagery there, I thought). The Story About the Baby is a skull splitter. I don't like to build things up too much so let me just say you will never laugh more in your life than at this site, which details the first year of life as a father. The phrase "poo bomb" is now embedded in my vocabulary.

Flight now arriving from Washington
According to WBEZ and the Red Streak (aka Sun-Times jr.) Peter Fitzgerald has told his close friends that he's not running for the Senate again. Fitzgerald said he had no "fire in the belly". He spent more than $13 million of his own money on the campaign last time and barely won against an opponent heavily weighed down by allegations of financial impropriety and dictator-coddling.

ModernVetebrate has a run down of the potential candidates (including Fitzgerald, but disregard him now). This will be a spotlight race in 2004.

Can we get O'Hare expanded now, please?

First Post! (ahhh shuddup)
This would be my first entry. Why am I blogging? Because I am in possession on the one true, uhhh... truth. Yeah, that's it.

OK, really, I just want a place to spout, flame, and link to those things I find on the web that distract me and delight me. I don't necessarily know anything you don't, but I do know the words to most of the hot dog/lunch meat related jingles of the Seventies. Don't believe me? Ohhhhhh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner...

What you probably won't find here - 1337 5P33K, reviews of My Little Pony, the Movie, or Sea Monkeys. Anything else is game.

So who am I? I'm an old man in a modern world (37 in 2003), who mostly hangs out with talented people 1 to 15 years younger than me. I'm a career IT geek reconsidering his field he's chosen. I'm a very lucky man who has an intelligent, sweet, dedicated, beautiful (and tall) fiance I clearly don't deserve. I'm previously a confirmed bachelor (no I don't mean "confirmed bachelor") who is learning to cook and clean and like Trading Spaces. I live in Chicago in the heart of the Yuppie neighborhood Lincoln Park where I once swore I'd never reside; and I have been described as politically just to the left of Mao. I'm a little more conservative than that, but don't let anyone know.

I won't tell you my name because I work in IT management for a subsidiary of a large company. They don't have the best sense of humor about publicity, and I'd like to be able to talk about my experiences there. If you're reading this, you either know me in real life or you've been sent here by a like-minded individual. Besides, the only me you might be interested in will be found in what I write.