unraveling
28.June.03
After day 2 of her 3 day job volunteering at the Boise River Festival,
one of the 5-year-olds who had talked his parents into bringing him back
for the second day, and who had been an enthralled participant in the
storytelling, gave her perhaps the best possible audience response
imaginable. Glowing with enthusiasm, he told her "this has been the
happiest day of my life!"
Matt
Bivens details the trickle-down effect of the Republican
tax cut; the states are
taking it
in the shorts. It doesn't seem terribly well-reported, but maybe
that's just because this is blindingly obvious: the record millions of
dollars that Bush is collecting in his campaign fund-raising is a direct
payback for policies that are benefiting -- and especially, will
benefit -- the contributors. The terrorist-threatened quivering mobs
must just feel like it's good to be watched over and taken care of, not
to mention being freely taken to the cleaners.
Scroll on
down
for the entry about the $3.5 million evening, and the $20 million 2 week
run the Bush campaign has going.
Or House majority whip Roy Blount's attempt to slip in a little
legislation for Philip Morris -- here's a surprise: his son lobbies for
the company -- that got cut off at the pass by Speaker Hastert. A whole
lot of such maneuvers don't get exposed. He's not calling this the
Daily
Outrage for nothin'.
Renana Brooks:
"Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his extensive studies of 'learned
helplessness,' showed that people's motivation to respond to outside
threats and problems is undermined by a belief that they have no control
over their environment."
Terrorism threat level Orange! But just go on about your normal living
(we'll take care of things for you).
Here's something you can control: the
Federal Do Not Call list
paid for by your tax dollars (i.e. "free"). The signup process is
absurdly simple -- give them the phone number, and your email, where
you'll receive a request for confirmation. That's perhaps a little
too simple, in that anyone can put any number on the list, eh?
Not like that would be a calamity, but still...
The first 17 hours (yesterday) averaged 43,000 registrations/hour.
They could have simplified the process by just putting ALL numbers on
the list, and then had people register to be put on a "Do Call" list,
eh? I don't suppose the telemarketers would have liked that idea,
though. I had no trouble getting in and registering this evening,
and my confirmation email came in less than a minute or two.
Dodged a bullet:
No
SCOTUS justices to retire, for now. It would seem. Both sides can
demobilize on that, and return to the fighting over the appellate
court nominees.
More of your tax dollars at work, in
Guantánamo: "Each prisoner lives in a separate cell that is 6
feet 8 inches by 8 feet. The door and walls are made of a tight mesh
through which it would be hard to pass anything larger than a pencil.
Unless rewarded for good behavior, each prisoner is allowed out of the
cell only three times a week for 20 minutes of solitary exercise in a
large concrete-floored cage, followed by a 5-minute shower. Before
coming out of the cell, he must submit to a
shackles-connected-to-handcuffs arrangement known as a 'three-piece
suit.' Guards escort him on either side."
Look out for the next Tiger Woods:
Michelle Wie is 6 feet tall and drives the ball an average of 290
yards. Oh, and she's thirteen years old.
27.June.03
Well, no glorious tennis results to be reported this weekend.
I got knocked out in the quarterfinals (aka "2nd round," after a 1st
round bye - sounds better than "in my first match") by the guy I beat in
my seminfinal match last time, Glen Fosnacht. I ran him hard enough to
wear him down, but I didn't stay in the match long enough to take
advantage, losing 3-6, 3-6. Afterwards, he said with all sincerity that
he'd been waiting for a chance to play me again, had his calendar
marked. I'd really motivated him, and he hadn't lost since.
Of course, I want him to win the championship now, so that I can pretend
I'm right up there with the winner.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
made the news today, with their report on the recycling strategies of
the two largest PC makers in the US, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Prison
labor is part of Dell's method for "keeping all of our recycling offers
as low cost as possible." The prisoners work voluntarily, and they're
paid from 20 cents to $1.26 an hour. Is that a good and generous thing,
or low-down and despicable? I don't know the answer, but it doesn't
seem like terribly good PR in the
New York Times news story.
The MoveOn primary is over, and
the results are
in. That takes care of everything but
the grousing. Dick Gephardt complaining that he didn't get a fair
start is a bit pathetic. You've been in Congress for
years, Dick, you were the Minority Leader for God's sake.
Do you really think your 2.4% showing is because you didn't get to send
us all an email? On the other hand, the top three who did get to send
out emails were the only ones standing out of the noise.
I'd like to see more of them get grilled the way Howard Dean did on Meet
the Press last Sunday; I thought his performance was impressive. (And
unlike Andrew Sullivan, I did see it.) The questions were tough, and
not all the answers were perfect, but the ones that matter to me were
good. Is he an "intemperate, arrogant bully"? Maybe we'll learn more
about that, but the things that bother
don't
bother me quite so much.
10 big
whoppers we were told about Iraq, summarized.
26.June.03
Pekka Parviainen says he's got 50,000 or so photographs of the night sky
in his Polar Image collection
from way up north in Finland. He's got some knock-outs, as you'll see
in a moment if you navigate to the Oct. 3/4, 2002 Aurora Borealis page.
Thanks to Science magazine's
NetWatch feature for
the tip.
Not only is Gray Davis not going to get to make a run for the
presidency, it's not clear he's going to hold on to the job he's
got now, with the
recall
campaign gathering steam. How much of the post-bubble economy and
state budget debacle can really be blamed on him, or did he just happen
to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Some of both, maybe, but
the Republicans back in Washington must be chortling about California's
situation.
With the
the Vatican
Museums Online, you can now get a personal tour of the ceiling of
the Sistine Chapel, without the jet lag.
I'd seen tinyurl.com used to cut
through URL cruft before and appreciated it, but then I actually used
it myself today to make some tiny URLs. What a great service, and
what a wonderfully simple user interface. I thought this little touch was
especially clever: Note: For IE 4+ on Windows, the TinyURL is
automatically copied to your clipboard and is ready for pasting.
While looking up some newly historical documents on the
case against the Sony
Bono copyright deal, I came across this little ditty on
Happy
Birthday. My father used to sing the first couple lines of
"Good morning to you" to his children in the morning, did he hear it in
kindergarten, I wonder? Anyway, if you need an example of the absurdity
of how copyrights have been extended, consider this song from the late
1800s with some new words tacked on -- by someone, we don't know who --
in the 1920s or 1930s, which will remain protected until 2030.
But does that protect something of significantly greater creativity
as the laugh-out-loud
READ THIS
FIRST! by Dave Barry? Nooooo. (I looked, I really did, for one
that looked like it was sanctioned by the author, but maybe he didn't
want to just give it away.
25.June.03
Hard to believe, but the
Boise River Festival
is going on for the 13th year. It was nip and tuck there for a while,
and they have had to trim the Nite-Lite Parade. One of the most
prominent links on their home page is to a request for contributions.
Jeanette is back, donating her services as an Irish storyteller. I
guess the stories are going to be Irish, in keeping with the
"featured country" theme.
One of the attractions is a local troupe of kids doing Irish dance,
which was coincidentally also the entertainment at the Transducers
conference banquet in Boston a couple weeks ago. I'm definitely getting
a "been there, done that" feeling about Irish team stomp dance. Great
for exercise, but I think I've had all the entertainment I'm going to
get out of it.
One thing's still working - the weather is picture perfect today, with
the forecast for more of the same as it warms up into the weekend. The
balloons were out en masse in the cool, still morning air, under
a perfectly clear sky.
William Gibson, on
The
Road to Oceania:
"It is becoming unprecedentedly difficult for anyone, anyone at all, to
keep a secret. In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence
extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later
if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of
every diplomat, politician and corporate leader: the future,
eventually, will find you out. The future, wielding unimaginable tools
of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be
seen to have done that which you did...."
The USTA tournament site finally shows my win in the Men's 3.0 Singles
flight of the
2003 Idaho Open, although they got the score wrong, oddly. I've
been keeping my own detailed notes, and they say it was 3-6, 6-1, 6-1,
rather than 6-4 in the second set. "It wasn't that close."
The
Riverfest tournament (no discernible connection with the city-wide,
contemporaneous celebration of the same name) is up next, and I'm signed
up for both singles and doubles this time, we'll see how that works.
I've got a first round bye and "a target on my back," as my buddy Rob
put it, seeded #1. So far I'm on track, with my warmup match with my
teammate Scott tonight going in his favor, as it did before the last
tourney. Now I'm motivated. (And a little scraped up, crashing and
burning for a set point that I should have conceded.)
24.June.03
In case I wasn't sure about it being election season already (for
2004!), there's the
MoveOn primary for a Democratic nominee. I just cast my vote.
I liked that they had two categories: one a single vote for your
favorite candidate, and the other for any or all of the candidates you'd
support. They also provided "easy" links for making a donation to your
candidate's campaign (strike while the iron is hot!), or for
volunteering, but I'm not quite ready for all that yet.
Krugman, on
Denial
and Deception: "There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush
administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is
why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the
obvious."
Nicholas Confessore in the Washington Monthly analyzed why
why Krugman is hot:
"His columns aren't about trade theory or stochastic calculus, but about
flagrant deceptions and fourth-grade arithmetic. What makes Krugman
interesting, in short, is not just why he writes what he writes. It's
why nobody else does."
(The URL says 2001, the piece is dated Dec. 2002, and the copyright
notice is for 2003; go figure.)
These guys are way out there: Dirk Kempthorne's
not
conservative enough for them. Too cozy with industry.
(Huh?!)
23.June.03
While we're destroying computers owned by people who violate
copyrights, should we
start with Orrin Hatch's server? "That's ironic," as Hatch's
spokesperson said.
WinXP and Office for $36: that ought to put a dent in Linux sales.
And Microsoft can still make money with a 90%+ discount, nice
trick, huh?
With all the negative press about executives these days, it's nice to know
there are still some good ones. Business 2.0
lines up its
Dream Team.
22.June.03
42°F this morning, this is summer?! The sun worked all day but
could only manage to push us up into the mid-60s.
I curled up with Ann Patchett's book, "Bel Canto," because it's
Boise's selection for the
"What if
Everybody Read the Same Book" project, and Jeanette managed to check
it out of the library before the rest of the town caught on.
Well, she grabbed it because it's the selection, I started reading it
because she handed it to me, and because it's about the love of
beautiful singing (aka Bel Canto), something I share.
21.June.03
It's summer up here now, although the cool day provided camouflage for
the solstice. That celestial event happened shortly after we returned
home from...
the grand opening / open house for the new Boise Airport terminal, and
the dedication of two major works of art in it, "Terra Firma" in
terrazzo, and a painted mural, "River's Edge." The photo here is from
the drumming and dancing that some of the natives did for the dedication
of the floor, and I've put up a photoessay of
the event as well.
Email from Alan Arnette prompted me to read the
final
dispatch of his second attempt on Everest and also his editorial,
When Good Guides Turn Bad. Great reading for lowlanders as well as
mountain climbers.
20.June.03
My weblog would probably be more interesting if my life were more
difficult. Given the difficulty of living in post-war Iraq,
Salam Pax's blog remains excruciatingly interesting. "What do you
do when you are in a car with someone who asks you about the best place
to hide a hand grenade?"
Cringely deconstructs SCO v. IBM, sorting out the legal arguments
and the winners and losers. He thinks IBM's legal team will dispatch
David Boies without breaking a sweat, and that you-know-who will be the
big winner. "Microsoft is smart and quick. They are no doubt angling to
take advantage of this new chaos in the software industry. If history
repeats, Microsoft will make very good business decisions. Everyone
else will make very poor, if not stupid business decisions."
(Last
week's edition had a different avenue of speculation, along with
some interesting stuff about ultra-wide band (UWB)'s outlook after the
FCC limited its power. "With gigabit speeds, it isn't enough to say
that UWB is Bluetooth on steroids. UWB is thermonuclear Bluetooth.")
19.June.03
Happy Juneteenth!
We don't often get to see the buying and selling of influence quite as
well-documented as this story of Westar investing in Tom DeLay and
his pals for legislative gain.
"We have a plan for participation to get a seat at the table, which as
been approved by David the total of the package will be $31,500 in hard
money (individual), and $25,000 in soft money (corporate). Right now,
we have $11,500 in immediate needs for a group of candidates associated
with Tom Delay, Billy Tauzin, Joe Barton and Senator Richard
Shelby."
John Ashcroft didn't think there was anything worthy of investigation in
all that.
40 companies reshaping the global economy,
according to Wired. We've got direct investments in 4 of them, but
also in 2 of the "unlucky 13" that used to be on the list.
Ya win some, ya lose some.
The EPA's report at the end of Ms. Whitman's watch is looking a little
dumbed
down, with only Republican science making the grade.
Lessig: "If the public domain were as young as it was for most of
our history (30 years old, max), then losing it would mean something to
most people. If the work of the 1960s and 1970s could easily be built
upon, then taking that work away would excite a revolution. But the
(brilliant) strategy of the copyright extremists has been to slowly
remove the public domain, by slowing extending copyright. (Remember Hal
in 2001, as Dave turns off his brain?) They have succeeded in making it
irrelevant to most. The question now is how to make it relevant
again."
Lessig also has a proposal for increasing customer satisfaction with
service calls: make it easy (and legal) for us to
record the conversation as needed. I started taking notes when
doing business over the phone years ago, after an incident of someone
denying having said what he'd said led to an impasse and extra work.
Now we have technology that could do much better than that.
A candidate for president with
a blog
-- that could be interesting.
In case you're still figuring out this blogging thing, you have to first
understand that the world is set in motion by the "A-List" bloggers.
What are those, you ask? Here is your
simple
guide. Its need for editing is all part of the humor, I guess.
It's unpleasant to imagine
my
hometown without libraries and librarians, but youngsters all across
the country are going to have a new experience. Maybe they're all moot
now that we have the internet (not hardly!), but it seems the world will
be poorer for losing them. All part of the plan to eliminate the evils
of big government.
18.June.03
Mr. Kempthorne's no stranger to Washington, D.C., having served as a
senator before taking the top job in Idaho. Now it looks like he might
be going back there, as
head of the
EPA to succeed Christie Todd Whitman. It's hard to know which to
fear most - another non-advocate for the environment in charge of the
Environmental Protection Agency, or the man who would replace Kempthorne
back here: the inimitable Jim Risch. I'd rather have Kempthorne
stay home, although I don't know anything about the others considered
for the EPA post.
Capitalism comes to China complete with a burden of
abuse of worker's lives. "The factory failed a safety inspection by
the Huizhou Center for Disease Control as recently as last summer. The
center's report shows that some work stations had ambient silica
concentrations as high as 70 times the standard allowed by the Chinese
safety code, which is less strict than related American and European
standards by a factor of 20."
Lynne
Cheney's Q&A:
John, from Stapleton writes:
Where are the weapons of mass destruction?
Lynne Cheney
Be patient. We'll find out.
Handicapping the
viceroy's performance: the Washington Post
collects opinions from
Lebanon,
Pakistan,
the UK,
Hong
Kong,
Korea and
down under. No one seems to be warmly positive and optimistic.
"What we are seeing here is a fundamental reassessment of the situation
in Iraq in terms of political and military stability," said Daniel
Goure, a Pentagon adviser at the Washington-based Lexington Institute.
"We have been operating on two assumptions: that once the war was over
the Iraqis would rapidly move into peaceful mode, and second, that there
would be a new political and economic spirit in the country. We
discovered neither of these assumptions is true."
17.June.03
The best we've been able to come up with on the WMD front -- those two
trailers -- have pretty much been
ruled out at this point. They were most likely just what the Iraqis
said they were - mobile setups for generating hydrogen for artillery
balloons.
"I am concerned about the canvas sides. Ideally, you would want airtight
facilities for making something like anthrax. Not only that, it is a
very resistant organism and even if the Iraqis cleaned the equipment, I
would still expect to find some trace of it," said the chair of the (UK)
Royal Society's working party on biological weapons.
Thanks to
Harry Shearer (RealAudio) for the tip.
For the least charitable interpretations, visit Robert Scheer's
Column Left. "What did the President know and when did he know
it?" And when will Congress hold the Executive branch accountable?
Paul Krugman, on the Bush administration's
dereliction of its duty to homeland security. Where is funding for
the protection of our ports? Where is our commitment to secure our
victory in Afghanistan?
Tales of despair from Guantánamo.
SCO v. IBM escalating: SCO Revokes IBM's Unix license.
What
women want, or might want, when it comes to computer games:
so far the assumptions look like the wrong (and self-serving) answers.
Building a new Library of Alexandria, creating an internet Bookmobile and
preserving the history of the
internet in the Wayback Machine:
talking
with Brewster Kahle. It also involves running up against the legislated
expansion of copyrights. "Ninety-percent of all books controlled by
copyright are out of print."
How about this idea?
Dealing with the Taliban to restore order in Afghanistan.
15.June.03
It's been a little spotty here of late, with most of a week in Boston to
attend the Transducers '03
conference, followed by a long weekend over at Three Forks for the 5th
Owyhee Rendezvous. Interesting phase transitions, going from the
intricate details of silicon microfabrication techniques, to a
much-too-quick tour of
MIT's Media
Lab to an introductory comparison of invertebrate ecology of the
main and north forks of the Owyhee river in the space of 48 hours.
Seven tricks that Web users don't know. No doubt there are more;
not much surprises me about what people can't find in user interfaces.
Everytime I look over someone's shoulders and see the Mighty Morphin'
Menus of Microsoft's latest O/S, I ask them "do you like having your
menus change all the time?" I haven't had anyone answer "yes" yet, so I
always follow-up with "Would you like me to show you how to fix that?"
About half seem interested in a simple adjustment to the user interface
that would make it closer to their preferences.
 |
I'm in the half of all American internet users who didn't
use
file-sharing software last month to copy music without paying for
it. I just haven't got around to it yet. I'll probaby be interested in
buying good tunes for less than a $1 a song, but I haven't got around to
that, either. I do have an occasional interest in using and/or
arranging compositions for our choir, and a recent interaction with
Warner Bros. Publications illustrates how unsatisfactory the existing
system for selling such things is. As the copyright owner, WBP sent me
some clear messages: your time is not important to us, you have no
negotiation power, and "all your base are belong to us."
First phone inquiry: recording, saying "call back at our convenience."
Second call routed to a recording (gee, couldn't we have done this the
first time?) telling me to fax my request to them. I sent them a
succinct, 1-page fax describing what I wanted to use, and for what, and
to please tell me their conditions. A week later, the fax came back
with a note handwritten on it, asking me to tell them exactly what
song(s) I wanted to use. I wrote my own note on the fax, pointing to
the first sentence wherein I had stated just that. Two more weeks pass,
and I get US Mail with a cover letter and 2 copies of their "standard
Arrangement Permission" form.
This form grants me the right to arrange, perform and duplicate for the
sole use [sic] of "THOMAS VON ALTEN/CHOIR," the song in question. I
cannot distribute or sell the arrangement without (further) written
permission, and (this is my favorite part) the arrangement will be a
"Work Made For Hire" with all copyrights owned by the copyright holder
of the original song, i.e. them. I pay them $50 for the privilege
of making some property for them.
Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr. deconstructs a recent Tom Friedman column mentioned
here. It is a good idea to keep concepts of Power
and Market distinct, but I would not dismiss market power so easily.
Dominant players in markets get to usurp "mind share" and can
eliminate competition just as surely as dominant countries can overrun
weaker ones.
I'm also guessing that Rockwell doesn't have to write for deadlines; he
certainly doesn't appear to be edited for length on the Ludwig von
Mises Institute website.
12.June.03
Still looking for those WMDs; this is getting a little awkward, at best.
Fortunately for the Republican administration, Congress is controlled by
the same party, and the Legislative branch has
just
said no to investigative public hearings.
"The administration welcomes the review," Ari Fleischer says; at least
the closed-door review by their buddies.
The documents that are already in the sunshine
don't appear to support the Administration's case, at least by
the analysis of John Prados at the National Security Archive.
Somebody who knows a thing or two about impeachment - John W. Dean - has
thoughts
about Bush's current problem.
9.6.3
Scenes from the big city: grocery store in the middle of downtown a few
blocks from Copley Square. I'm in line between two lovely young
mocha-colored ladies whose accent is impossible for me to place. As I
put my goods down on the belt behind theirs, one of them glances back at
what I'm buying, then me, then again at the groceries. She looked more
closely at the small bag of granola. "What's that?" she said, picks
it up for a closer look. "Granola," I offered, giving no help. "Uh,
rolled grains, toasted..." Still nothing. "Oats." "Ah!"
That made sense.
At our evening event, a private opening of the Museum of Fine Arts, we
enjoyed a couple free drinks, and a look around at
the new
Gainsborough show (not yet open to the public), a gallery of
Impressionists, and a show of one man's selections from the permanent
collection. That included a couple Impressionists, too, and after
taking off my glasses for an up-close inspection of Van Gogh's brush
strokes, I stepped back and started to take a no-flash, hand-held
(impressionistic, don't you know) photo of it, and the guard slipped up
to my side faster than I could get it set up. "Excuse me, there's no
photographing in this exhibit, Tom, thank you very much,
Tom," reading my name off my conference badge hanging from around
my neck. I'd shot a photo of a Gainsborough, a Pisarro, and a Monet,
and some guy had taken a flash photo of a Picasso in the other
room. But this exhibit, from the permanent collection is no-go? What's
up with that?
Oh well, a few minutes in the presence of the brush strokes of Claude,
Vincent, Pablo and were a tonic all the same.
8.June.03
The Fairmont on Copley Square in Boston is a nice hotel in a
great location, and I've got a lovely quiet room on the 4th
floor. The room service menu footnote is not to my liking, though:
For your convenience a cover charge of $2.50
per person, 15% Gratuity, 4% Administrative Fee and 5% Tax will be added
to the menu prices listed in your copy of the In-Room Dining Menu.
Consuming raw or undercooked meat, poultry, seafood, shellfish and or eggs
may increase the risk of food born illness.
Pretty darn convenient. The prices are through roof to being with
and they don't have any good beer on the menu, either. I won't even spend
someone else's money on that deal.
Had a good all-day class, and a good long walk this afternoon/evening,
around the Commons, up Beacon Hill, down along the Esplanade. Thought
of sailing on the Charles River basin there, August, 1976, with my brother.
The sun peeked through a bit at first, no rain today, but then back to cool,
gray. I didn't bring a sweater. D'OH! Or enough long-sleeve shirts. D'OH!
I found a TJMaxx in the neighborhood, went to buy a shirt and didn't
remember what SIZE I am. Sheesh. Went into the dressing room to look
at my label... Calvin Klein says "M". :-*
6.6.03
The opening of
Jeanette's and Chris' show went well. There was a small but
enthusiastic -- and interactive -- crowd. We shared food, stories of
what moved us in the exhibit, ideas about windows into other cultures
and doors that open into change. One refugee family from Iraq was
there, just one week into the experience of a new culture and foreign
land. The exhibit itself can draw you in and hold you for a while if
there are no distractions. It'll be open Wednesday through Saturday,
1-5pm, through June 28th. If you can, check it out at the BSU Hemingway
Gallery.
We had a bit of a wild west story yesterday, with
a
runaway train and a brave Idaho State Police officer saving the town
of Nampa. Deconstructing the events gives a slightly different slant,
though. First of all, it wasn't a train, but rather a locomotive. It
was a runaway, and was headed for Nampa, and might have run into trouble
had it got there. The trooper did hop on a moving locomotive, that was
daring. He made a go of at 20mph or so, and decided that wasn't smart,
got back on his motorcycle and followed it until it had slowed down to 5
or 10mph -- between a jog and a run, but with all that stuff on your
belt, eh? -- and then succeeded in climbing aboard. Now what? I get
the impression whoever was kibitzing over the radio didn't know, either,
but look for the "emergency" lever. "Prescott then found a lever that
said 'reverse.' The locomotive stopped, then, and started to go
backward."
Hmm. The engine wasn't running, so it probably wasn't the
reverse lever that made it stop or reverse. It reportedly had been
going as fast as 40mph, then 20, then 5 or 10, then it stopped and
started going the other way. Sounds a lot like the influence of
gravity, going up the grade to Nampa. By this time, a couple of unnamed
railroad employees were on board as well, and after one figured out
there was no air pressure to actuate the brakes, they went out to use
the brake wheel, and to wedge a railroad tie behind a wheel before the
locomotive rolled back down the way it had come.
"It really wasn't a big deal... I just got lucky," Prescott said.
I used to "get lucky" when I was a kid hopping freights, but I never had
to try stopping one. Fortunately, I never got my name in the paper for
it, either.
While reading a
story in
Science News this morning about the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,
"scheduled to view some 100 million galaxies over the northern sky by
2005," I got to thinking about what it means to live in a universe with
100 million (plus) galaxies. If you spent half an hour contemplating
one galaxy, it would be 5,700 years from now before you finished
thinking about that survey. Even at just a minute per galaxy (which
seems like short shrift for a collection of a couple hundred
billion stars), you'd be at it for 190 years. Then it would be
time to start on the southern sky.
And speaking of counting things, just who are you, anyway?
This gut check
makes us wonder: "In people, some 500 to 1,000 kinds of bacteria reside
in this part of the gastrointestinal tract, and these gut microbes
outnumber all the cells in your body, perhaps by as much as a factor of
10." You may think you're in charge, but when that community isn't
happy, no one is happy.
Charges of "class warfare" are supposed to end arguments.
TomPaine.com steps up to the challenge: "Let’s have a real debate
about class in America. That’s just what the people screaming 'class
warfare' fear most, so bring it on."
5.June.03
The Guardian has issued
a retraction about their interpretation of Wolfowitz' comments
regarding the US' reason for going to war with Iraq. The DOD says he
says "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had
virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a
sea of oil," so go figure.
Occupational hazards: "Iraq is still a mess, and U.S.
troops are still being killed. Can America's new man in Baghdad turn
things around?"
An NDTV poll says
most Iraqis welcome US as liberators, if not as an occupying force.
The Indian Express also reported something that regular readers of
his weblog figured out a while ago, that Salam Pax is for real:
Peter Maas' testimony
on Slate.
4.June.03
Overheard at the door to the stairwell:
"...before the money was gone, I was so bored..."
Take a tour of Earth's
impact
craters, organized in an impressive database.
Is Wolfowitz a loose cannon, gone off the deep end, or what? If
his
revelations have the blessing of the Bush administration, we have to
wonder what they're thinking. Get the shocking truth out of the way now
so that by November 2004 it'll be old news and we've all moved beyond
that?
"Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North
Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The
country swims on a sea of oil."
Jim Lobe
Asia
Times Online forecasts a long, hot summer in Washington DC after
"editorials spluttering outrage" from the Weekly Standard
and the Wall Street Journal.
I think this would qualify as burying the lede
in the New York Times story,
"Iraq Arms Report Now the Subject of a C.I.A. Review":
"When Mr. Graham, then the intelligence committee's chairman, finally saw
the report, he asked that its findings be declassified in time for the
Senate debate on a resolution to support the war in Iraq. When Mr. Tenet
provided a letter to Mr. Graham that included some of the report's
findings, Mr. Graham complained that only those findings that supported
the administration's position on Iraq had been declassified, while
others that raised questions were not."
That was the last paragraph.
The Directory of Open Access Journals
lists "free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly
journals."
It's Leo Harris' turn, and he wants to talk about
bringing classical
music to African-American kids who would otherwise never hear
it.
Connecting the dots (and slashes) on
Justin
Frankel's departure from AOL. At 24 and with a few million$ in his
pocket, I suppose he'll land on his feet.
Joel on Software and why
he doesn't want
VC: "(A)s an entrepreneur, you're going to be forced at
gunpoint to bet on three cherries again and again and again. You know
you're going to lose, but the gunman doesn't care, he's got bets on all
the slot machines and one of them is going to pay off big time."
If you don't like his point of view, he's got some great references for
further reading.
Technological irony:
bad
cell phone coverage on Sand Hill Road.
I guess I should mention the name of Jeanette's and Chris' show:
Portals / Portales. That might make the excerpt of the P.R.
(below) make a little more sense.
3.June.3
Jeanette has an art opening this Friday evening, at the BSU Hemingway
Gallery. From the City of Boise Arts Commission press release:
Created by artists Jeanette Ross and Chris Binion, the installation
literally opens doorways -- portales in Spanish -- to the
universal experience of leaving someplace familiar and settling
somewhere unknown. Focusing on Mexican American migration, past and
present, the artists weave stories, artifacts and a degree of mystery
into two rooms. Passing through the portals, viewers are asked to
revisit their own memories and emotions, then leave words behind to
inspire the "migrants" who follow in their footsteps.
The reception's at 5:30pm, June 6th, with a "facilitated civic dialogue
session" from 6:30 to 8pm. On Saturday, June 7th, families are invited
to take part in a shrine-making workshop from 2 to 5pm: "All ages are
invited to create a collage display that celebrates a favorite person or
memory. Materials and guidance will be provided." The exhibition will
be open for the month of June.
Harsh brown potatoes, waiting will be prosecuted, and
other funny translations from
Engrish.com
2.June.03
How much electricity do you use in your house or apartment for
lighting? A couple of compact fluorescents, an incandescent here and
there, maybe a half dozen for decoration, mood or security? I'd guess
the local average is a few hundreds of watts to over a kW for people
like our next door neighbor who keeps 5 outdoor lights on all night,
every night. Can you imagine being in circumstances where
one watt could change your life?
"We make no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect
the American public from further terrorist attacks,"
said
Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. The
implication is that the Justice Department has no plans to make
apologies for the side effects of the broad sweep of suspects after
9/11, either.
1.June.03
Ari Fleischer says that people in the lowest tax bracket would "benefit
the most" from the new tax bill. This of course is another
Big Lie. The people who benefit the most are in the highest tax
brackets. Who do you suppose the message is for? My guess is the broad
middle who will see some small benefit and be made to feel good about
the fairness of it all. The Bush team does not care about and does not
have any use for voters in the lowest tax brackets, except perhaps as
extras in crowd scenes.
As Eleanor
Clift reports one Republican staffer put it: "(T)he people who just
got screwed weren’t at the president’s dinner last week when Bush raised
$22 million for Republican campaigns."
Tom Friedman's
Theory
of Everything: "This is where the story really gets interesting.
Because suddenly, Puff the Magic Dragon -- a benign U.S. hegemon
touching everyone economically and culturally -- turns into Godzilla, a
wounded, angry, raging beast touching people militarily."
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Sunday, 06-Jul-2003 15:15:50 MDT
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