unraveling
31.Dec.03
It's going to be a white New Year's anyway; snow on the ground in Boise
and more falling as the thermometer struggles to get to the melting
point. More snow expected tonight and tomorrow. Just like winter!
Cool.
That'll be
Sir TBL, if you please. And here I thought he was Swiss.
Chen Shui-bian making the point that Taiwan is a "so-called" separate
country is
extremely immoral to the mainlanders. Or so we're told. Bush is
taking the side of the big boys, there's more money to be made on
the western side of the strait.
Somebody slipped a year at the Gray Lady -- Tuesday's "Today's
Headlines" email came in with a date of Thursday, December 30, 2004.
Maybe I should save it to see if the stories are the same a year fron
now.
The more you know about slaughterhouses, the less interested you'll be
in eating meat that comes from them, I think. Counterpunch's look
inside Big
Meat reviews Jeffery St. Clair's book,
Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of
Nature. Viewer discretion advised.
.
30.Dec.03
It's not just stealth bombers at W's command these days, he also has a
stealth pen, which he used -- on Saturday, December 13th -- to sign a
big chunk of what previously leaked to the light of day as "Patriot II"
into law. Aside from it being the weekend, it was also the
weekend of the glorious retrieval of Saddam from his spiderhole. How
nice that the legislation was right there and handy for a convenient
occasion when it wouldn't make the news.
The weapon of mass delusion is the
Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004
and it's a doozy. As its title suggests, its intent is
"to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2004 for intelligence and
intelligence-related activities," but the statement of purpose ends with
"and other purposes." Could be anything from cloak and dagger to the
kitchen sink. Subtitle D, "Other Matters," includes section 334,
"Modification to definition of financial institution in the Right to
Financial Privacy Act."
Said act, from 1978, obtains a new meaning for the term
"financial institution," the same meaning as in
5312(a)(2) of
title 31, United States Code, said section having a list from A to Z
that ends with "any other business designated by the Secretary whose
cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or
regulatory matters." As if that catch-all weren't enough, it explicitly
calls out stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card
companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office,
travel agencies, pawnbrokers, and all the things you and I once knew as
financial institutions. Congress passed the law around Thanksgiving,
with the Senate taking cover under a voice vote.
To get any records it needs from just about any business that handles
money, the FBI must proffer a "National Security Letter," which is not
vetted or signed by a judge, nor does it require any sort of probable
cause for suspicion. And like the best of the original USA Patriot Act,
the investigation comes with a gag order - your stockbroker, casino,
credit card company and airline can't tell you that the records of your
transactions have been turned over to the FBI.
If all this is in the public interest,
David Martin wonders, why was it so clearly done to escape public
notice? The so-called
statement by the President doesn't rise to quite the same rhetorical
panache that W. employs when he wants us to sit up and pay attention.
Can you imagine him saying this out loud?
"The executive branch shall construe these provisions in a manner
consistent with the Constitution's commitment to the President of
exclusive authority to submit for the consideration of the Congress such
measures as the President judges necessary and expedient and to
supervise the unitary executive branch, and to withhold information the
disclosure of which could impair the deliberative processes of the
Executive or the performance of the Executive's constitutional
duties."
I doubt he could write a 69-word sentence, let alone speak one.
In case you need a secret decoder ring, he says "I've got the authority
for greater power and secrecy in the Executive branch, and you
better believe I'm taking it. Either you're with us or you're against
us."
Speaking of terrorism, did ya hear the one about the guys caught in
Texas with a weapon of mass destruction - a sodium cyanide bomb capable
of delivering a deadly gas cloud? Or the
100 other bombs, bomb components, machine guns, 500,000 rounds of
ammunition and chemical agents they had? Or the documents indicating
that unknown co-conspirators are still on the loose? In May,
2003?! Me neither, but there's
the
story, in the Memory Hole.
But watch out for
people carrying almanacs!
No joke!
Every once in a while I look at a spam message (in plain text), and they
just about always have some found poetry. This evening's attempt to
sell me solvent-based ink for my inkjet from China ended with this:
Sorry to disturb you! If the E-mail have not useless for you please
cancle it right now!
29.Dec.03
One of my fellow retirees has an apt line in his .sig:
Retirement is that time of life when you stop using the
aphorism "time is money."
Eric Alterman's Christmas Eve missive:
Washington Goes to War (with Howard Dean). Washington didn't really
care for Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton coming to town, either. (They did
learn to love Ronny Reagan, though.) About this question of whether or
not we're safer now that Saddam has come out of his hole, if you're
among the reported 22% who think we are, can you answer one more
question? How are we safer?
The argument that "look, Qaddafi rolled over!" is probably the best one,
but in terms of the color of our alert and how likely it is that a religious
fanatic will hijack an airplane and turn it into a missle, or explode a
dirty bomb in some crowded city... Saddam in hiding and Saddam under
questioning don't seem to matter for how many more weeks of war we'll
have.
If the
Aussies
can figure out electronic voting, we should be able to. Open
Systems are working for them.
You can join the lobbying adventure for a better system at
VerifiedVoting.org.
Can you say "voter-verifiable audit trail"? Sure you can.
What do you do when an email discussion goes bad? I used to jump in the
fray, try to argue and reason the opposition in to some sort of
capitulation, but seriously, how likely is that? It happened once in a
great while, as did my own capitulation to another's point of
view. One must recognize the Lost Cause, however.
That was what was in my inbox this morning, a thread gone bad on the HP
Alumni list. It started with a complaint about the end of extensions to
unemployment benefits, from a guy who said he could really use the help
right now. With perhaps a bit of hyperbole (but maybe not!), he wrote,
"for every job I apply for there are 500 qualified applicants."
"It seems the Republicans in Congress will not authorize any additional
extensions, citing the Presidents recent speech in which he told the
American people that the economy was getting better." That issue is
in the news at the moment, a political football in the presidential
election. Expect to hear a lot about "jobs" in the coming months, along
with frequent mentions of "Herbert Hoover." (Just as an order of
magnitude check, the extension of benefits would run about a $billion
per month.)
Anyway, one fellow styling himself "Libertarian" took umbrage at another
poster's complaint about the Bush administration's economic performance.
The worst of the complaint was this: "----better strategy is for us
Americans to move to Iraq and get a slice of the $ 100 + Billion from
being a part of Halliburton or Bechtel! Never mind that the real war on
terror is with Osama in Afghanistan!!!"
Ok, that was off-topic. The Libertarian response?
"Those of you who bash Bush but neglect to blame your own party are
sincerely ignorant of the facts -- but then Democrats have never let the
facts get in the way of their viewpoint. You are so caught up in your
vehement, vitriolic hatred of George Bush that you don't WANT to know
the facts!"
That was followed by a call to the moderator to "ban the senders of
*unfounded* attacks on our politicians," as the previous poster's
"hysterical shrieking is diametrically the opposite of intelligent
thought." A 4th party said let's PLEASE keep politics out of this
group, and L said "Hear! Hear! Thanks for agreeing with me!"
It went downhill from there.
The last flourish from the vorpal blade of the Libertarian was this:
"the *brutally* ignorant responses such as yours, Greg's,
(Greg had asked -- twice -- for political discussions to be taken
elsewhere, made no political statements) and Mr. R's are making me
rethink whether HP hired intelligent people at all. (No offense to those
who agree with me, of course.) Bill, you are an ignorant buffoon."
See, if the problem is that somebody forgot their meds, one more email
is just not going to fix it. It is instructive to observe the form of
the message, though. Early on the pat reply was "impugn the critic's
patriotism." Now, it's "impugn the vitriolic message of hate." For a
Libertarian, this bozo sure sounds a lot like a stock Republican. You
don't have to agree with one party's point of view to observe the plot
line. Unless, of course, you're an ignorant buffoon.
I started to wade in, but came up with a better approach: the cathartic
blog entry.
The actual political strategy may be even more calculatingly venal
according to
this story by Jason Straziuso:
"Emsellem said lawmakers 'want to see how much bad publicity they get
before they capitulate,' but that ultimately Bush's position will decide
the issue."
Zeldman wonders
what if filmmakers
were web designers?
That 19.65 million
viewers were attracted to Michael Jackson talking to Ed Bradley
explains the popularity of the freak show at the circus, I guess.
I usually watch 60 Minutes, but not only was I not attracted,
it's safe to say I was repulsed. And not in that "but you can't look
away" way, either. I could, and did.
I was among the
millions attracted to the epic finale of The Lord of the
Rings trilogy over the holidays, though. Great show. Could've
skipped the 15 minutes of previews and the drawn-out goodbyes, but I was
surprised that the 4th row in front of the Imax screen did not hurt me,
and that the sound level was actually adjusted appropriately. Must be
somebody new in the booth.
28.Dec.03
On the cusp of the New Year, parts of the world are in a mess.
Thinking of tens of thousands of people buried under mud bricks in Iran
makes me think that there is more important work to be done than
fighting wars. We can all rally when our fellows get desperate enough
(although the Iranians did say no to any help from Israel, sadly), but
in the meantime, it's greed, venality, squabbling and the like,
facilitated with
depleted
uranium and exploding things. Just a few millennia back, some
remarkable cultural intelligence popped up, and manage to persist. It's
been nip and tuck ever since, though; the lights could go out any damn
minute if we don't get our act together.
On a slightly less serious note...
If you're not a football fan, it all seems like sound and fury,
signifying nothing, as indeed it is. But it's an entertaining game,
and by creating arbitrary goals, obstacles, rules and so on, we create
excitement for ourselves. Some of us.
I'm a Green Bay Packers fan, just in case you weren't paying attention.
It started when I used to go down the street to the Purmans' house every
Sunday for a communal appreciation of the team's dominance of the
National Football League. They would win pretty much every Sunday in
the 60s, and after the black and white spectacle, we would all go
outside and play football ourselves. Joe Purman and I were typically
the winning quarterback/receiver in the sandlot match-ups. When the
AFL decided to try playing against the NFL and they started this thing
called the Super Bowl, the Packers won that, too. Twice.
Ok, enough history. To bring you up to date, the NFL long ago subsumed
the AFL, teams and players and owners and stadia have come and gone, but
the Green Bay Packers are still owned communally, and they still play at
Lambeau field, on grass. There are new and complicated tie-breaking
procedures to figure who goes on to the 12-team post-season, and this
year's Packers were on the hairy edge of elimination. They had a slow
start (to say the least) and a storybook finish, setting up today's
action with last Monday Night's game
for the history books from
quarterback Brett Favre. (Pronounced to rhyme with "Marv," by the
way.)
The Packers needed the Niners to beat the Seahawks yesterday; San
Francisco had a ton of chances and choked them all away. The Packers
needed the Dallas Wowboys to roll over the New Orleans Saints to
eliminate the Seahawks, but Dallas forgot how to play, too, and lost
13-7. From there, the only thing that would work was GB to win and the
Minnesota Viking to lose. Green Bay had the Denver Broncos at Lambeau,
but since Denver was already assured of their (AFC) playoff berth,
they put in the second string and saved most of their best players for
next week. All the same, Denver threatened to make it a game late in
the last quarter, down 3-17, but first and goal. A touchdown brings
them right back in it. The Pack holds for 1, 2, 3 downs. Denver talks
it over with a time out, tries on 4th down, and gets stuffed yet again,
and the Packers take over on the 2. Next play, Ahman Green gets the
handoff and -- he -- could -- go -- all -- the -- way! 98 yards for a
Green Bay touchdown. The next 7 points when the Broncos fumbled the
kickoff was just gravy.
Meanwhile, out in Arizona... the Vikings had come back from a slow
start, and led 17-6 with but a couple minutes to go. The Cardinals get
a touchdown, recover the low-probability onside kick, and get a
one-footed, 30-yard touchdown play on 4th and forever with time for one
last play. 18-17 Arizona, the Vikings are done, and the Packers go on
to the playoffs next week.
Just one word for all that: unbelievable.
Christmas
If I'd known how long I'd be convalescing, I would have been more
careful about that fall. (How many times has this sentiment been
expressed in sporting lives, I wonder?) Our storm has passed, the sun
is breaking through, there's pure blue to the West, and it grieves me to
think of the footasnow up the hill that I'm not skiing or riding.
That's the basic ingredient for a great day at
Bogus Basin, skiing through the
trees, off the trails, over the top and down the meadows. It's my kind
of day, but here I am hanging out at home. Sigh.
I did graduate from sleeping propped up to sleeping flat last night,
that was a big improvement. But what a sport, huh? Go out, have some
fun, see if you survive to do it again or have to take a week or two
off. Maybe I'll get better at it, or maybe I'll find out about this
"older and wiser" stuff.
The neighbors are out of town and we're watching the cats, which means
we get to read their
newspapers too. It's easy
to see how that gets habitual, so many interesting tidbits from around
the world. Today's feature is yet another bulk of advertisements
(more slick pages than newsprint, again), focused on the big
after-Christmas blowouts. (Question: how do you promote a big sale if
your store's name is
Liquidation World?
Just wondering.)
As with Thanksgiving, the one-day closure gives us time to study the ads
more careful, and time to build the excitement of shopping. (Except
Walgreens is breaking ranks, and is open today. Good news if you
need a prescription filled, I guess.)
Is December 26th a bigger day than Black Friday now? If so, I think
it's a measure of satiety: we have enough consumer goods that we can
wait for the (even better) sale prices. Storewide savings + values.
50% OFF original prices storewide. Sale! &
Clearance! No Payments, No Interest until January
2005*.
* Additional terms apply. See page 55 for details.
We've cut back on church-going this holiday season, rented a movie last
night instead: we watched
Bowling for Columbine
while huddled in our bunker under
Condition Orange. Moore's questions to Charleton Heston are left
hanging: what are you afraid of? why are the guns loaded? It wasn't a
fair fight, unfortunately, as Heston is on the downhill side of
lucidity. Yes, he's an empty figurehead (and a reasonably frightening
one) at this point, but using him to turn the NRA into a strawman is not
all that helpful.
An upstanding member of Colorado's "defense" industry assembling
rockets is contrasted with the horror of alienated students killing as
many people as they could before taking themselves out, and the most
clear understanding of the events comes from
one of the
South Park
creators, Marilyn Manson, and three
Canadian high-schoolers skipping out of school.
What are we so afraid of?
The capsule history of how we've acted on our fears does help explain
why we might be turning away 6 planeloads of Paris-to-LA passengers
because
two or three suspicious people might be boarding. We've got
something to be afraid of now, by golly. Me, I'm afraid of our
progress to becoming a military police state, and the increasing
likelihood that George W. Bush will get re-elected. Whether or not
they're selling bullets at the Marts.
Qaddafi must've got a great deal (starting with "we won't bomb
the hell out of your country and invade it") to roll over, and I'm sure
more big news will be coming out before November. In the meantime,
terrorists can get a lot of mileage by just turning up the "chatter"
without leaving the comfort of home. Feeding terror to get W.
re-elected might not be the most effective strategy for economic
progress, but as a lottery ticket for a ride to Armageddon, it's
probably a
fair
game.
Speaking of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, it seems Ag Secretary Ann
Veneman didn't think the
heads-up from the guy who got the Nobel Prize for
the discovery of prions was that important. He says we should test
every animal that's slaughtered. Sounds like a pretty good idea,
certainly in retrospect. It works for Japan. Imagine if some of the
beef in the supermarket counter had a green sticker on it "Tested
BSE-free!" How much more would you pay for a pound of that?
(The Seattle PI excerpted the longer
NY
Times article.)
When we're speaking of BSE, we're on the topic of prions, and
this remarkable item
has popped up at the same time as concerns about beef:
research with sea slugs and yeast may have turned up a prion-based
mechanism for long-term memory. The research is reported in the journal
Cell.
Christmas Eve
Went out in the rain for the last shopping day before X-mas. Barnes
& Noble was hopping, with all the humans handling the capacity crowd
well. The computers and credit card comm were running slow, though.
As I was loading my panniers on my bike outside, a fellow my age admired
my "nice old bicycle. A Trek, from when they used to make good bikes.
And all that Campy stuff on it." (Just the brakes, actually, and one
crank arm.) "I don't know if I'd leave it out here all by itself,
though." I'd looped the cable through the frame and back wheel, leaned
it against the building where it was driest (rather than where they'd
plunked the bike rack), and smiled, thinking about how
unlikely it was that someone would make off with my bike in weather like
this. I also smiled knowing that it was only cyclists of a certain age
who would admire my 24-year-old custom ride for its finer qualities,
and that its expired fashion is better theft protection than the lock
and cable.
We're getting the first good soak of winter, a long time coming.
At dark-thirty, it was 42°F and windy, cooled into the 30s with the
precip., and then meandered back to 40 with a SE wind. I hope the snow
level gets well below the bottom of the ski hill.
So what if the WMD thing was a cocked-up distortion and subterfuge?
What's the
difference? (Or, for the audio version, I recommend
Le Show.)
The same attention to detail can be found in that bastion of liberal
media, Newsweek, as it makes the case for what corporate America
sees as a
litigation
crisis. S.O.S!
It may be time to seriously consider becoming a vegetarian, or at least
to kick the ruminant habit. Bully for Ann Veneman, boldly announcing
she'll have beef on Christmas, and recommending faith-based confidence
in the safety of our food supply. "No risk," says chief executive of
the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The brain and spinal column
were removed before they could enter the food supply... they were sent
instead to the feed supply, but hey, we don't feed that stuff to
ruminants anymore. Not directly.
Time for a 2nd edition of
Mad Cow U.S.A, perhaps? The first one came out in 1997, the year
after Oprah
Winfrey got sued for disparaging beef.
The industry got the hush-job it was after, ultimately, and now
they can find out whether that was such a good idea.
I was lured in by the domain name, stayed for the story of the
Coat Check from Hell. "We were searching for bags, umbrellas, snow
shoes, dog leashes, hats, gloves, ear muffs, laptops, poster tubes and
just about anything that people feel the need to check in at a
party."
The Homeowner's Association has to be the ultimate
proto-fascist organization. The BVM has never been my thing, but if
someone wants her statue in the yard, why not? Mote Ranch's HA's
answer to that question is "because we said so."
Incidentally, I'm impressed with the HeraldTribune.com's
advertising software; their 3 Sponsored Links on this story were
perfect. A "large collection of statues for indoor and out. High
quality," followed by a Trojan Horse "Homeowners Associations," selling
"commmunity association management" (hey,
get a buzz on
with that), and "Neighborhood Select" interactive websites.
Our own Homeowner's Association went moribund (or at least very, very
quiet) before we moved in, not quite 20 years ago now. (Holy cow, where
did the time go?) We've muddled along, somehow.
23.Dec.03
Jonathan Tasini
American Rights
At Work
Dear Mr. Tasini:
Your essay
("A Home Run")
is nothing if not an interesting and unexpected angle on the story. I
know who A-Rod is, but hadn't been paying attention to his off-season
business.
The reduction of an actual situation to a higher ethical principle
is an abstraction, and your argument supposes that the details
abstracted away are not salient. While the logical simplicity
has a certain attraction, it does not seem to me that ideology
trumps reality by necessity. It certainly does not do so by
any claim to moral authority.
A-Rod's contract is, in any objective assesment, incredible.
Whether it's also obscene, economically justified, reasonable
under the circumstances, etc., can be (and has been) debated,
and I don't need to do that here. $252M for 10 years of sport
is not simply one point, nor even the endpoint on the spectrum of
worker compensation. The money available to fund such a contract
comes from a commercial-governmental combination that charges
willing fans and disinterested bystanders indiscriminately.
There's a boatload of graft and corruption in the parenthetical
historical note, "once partly owned by W," for example.
There are three orders of magnitude between A-Rod's salary and
the poverty level. I'm sure he plays shortstop many times better
than some poor schmuck on the street, maybe even a thousand times
better, whatever that could mean. But a "principle of collectivity"?
No, I don't think so. The 10% of his salary that Rodriguez was
willing to forgo was as meaningless to him as the final score in
a mid-season minor league game. He was willing to bargain for
fame and opportunity not included in the Texas deal.
The "basic principle" that "the value of contracts cannot be reduced"
is absolutely arbitrary. Value by whose measure? The way I read
your account, Rodriguez and the Bosox came up with a mutually
agreeable adjustment between dollars and intangibles, but the
MLBPA said "only dollars matter." It was nice of him to be gracious
to the union after its exercise of arbitrary authority. It is an
imaginative leap to judge it an admirable moral act.
This is entertainment, not religion.
and now Winter
American football is a game of "if only" to begin with, then they added
another layer to the wild card playoff rules. If only the Packers
hadn't wasted earlier chances (like the big lead against Kansas City),
we wouldn't be talking about scenarios where they win their last 2
games, finish 10-6, and still don't get to go. But we'll always have
Monday night, and
the amazing performance by Brett Favre after the untimely death of
his father. What father wouldn't want his son to play the game,
especially a father who helped coach his son to be one of the greatest
players of all time?
It usually takes a contest to make a game interesting, and I don't
suppose Raiders fans really enjoyed it all that much, but it was a lot
of fun for Packers fans, as well as for anyone wanting to know the
boundaries of human performance. Among his other records, this was
Favre's 205th consecutive start as quarterback.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on
one group of
fans who enjoyed the game: Wisconsin Army National Guard's 32nd
Military Police Company, stationed in Baghdad.
Solstice
Not much to report on the longest night of the year and the onset of our
northern hemisphere winter. Graduated from my snowboard class, slightly
bent out of shape after a toe-side edge and a hard fall with my ribs
landing on my left fist took the fight out of me. I was feeling sorry
for myself and watching football when my buddy Rob called to see if I
was up for tennis. Sure, why not? Low 40s, courts almost dry, and some
bruised ribs that keep me from breathing hard. It turned out better
than I expected, for three sets to sundown. I managed to eke out the
last one with a 9-7 tiebreaker.
The whole town seems to be ga-ga over our li'l Broncos going to the
Fort Worth Bowl to meet TCU on Tuesday. Our boys got a 6-pack knocked
out of 'em by the
academic eligibility rules, though. Half a dozen players
didn't make the grade. It's not a terribly high hurdle -- you have to
pass 6 credits per semester, half of the minimum full time course
load.
Chadd Cripe wrote "It's a black eye at the worst time for a (football)
program," but that seems to miss the point. It's a black eye for Podunk
University, Chadd.
20.Dec.03
Solstice eve, it's too warm, and a little wet, and we still get an
inversion. Go figure.
Reading about the (possible) resurgence of
entrepeneurship in Iraq was mildly interesting until it stumbled on
to this statement:
"Clan loyalties are even more intense in Iraq than in Sicily, since
nearly half of Iraqis are married to a first or a second cousin, and
each of these tightly knit families belongs to a tribe with further
demands for loyalty." (My emphasis!) That seems a bit too cozy.
The sociological term describing a society wherein families are a
bulwark to all outside forces is wonderfully descriptive: "amoral
familism." "In the Middle East, the family is a fortress against the
rest of the society and a massive obstacle to democratic politics and
economic efficiency," There's something called a "resource curse," too,
found "in studies correlating mineral wealth with authoritarianism,
corruption and economic stagnation."
19.Dec.03
He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even Arnold
Schwarzenegger has now figured out that
California's in a fiscal crisis. After he rescinded the vehicle
registration tax hike, and with city and county governments in the hole
more than $300 million, he's taken emergency powers to impose $150
million in spending cuts. It's got the drama of the movies, but
the arithmetic isn't quite right.
The folks who can handle big numbers have
lowered the state's bond rating to just a scootch above junk.
18.Dec.03
The NY Times
Magazine's "Year in Ideas" is an amusing tour; get it quick before
it goes behind the paywall. Put in alphabetic order, the finale
provides "comfort in mediocrity," as Dan Pink puts it:
Young
Success Means Early Death. Unless of course you're not mediocre and
you were a young success.
Mid-December, and
SARS is in the news already. A possible case, doesn't seem too
likely...
Well, the Wright Brothers re-enactment flopped (after Bush ditched the
scene?!), but
Space
Ship One took off all right. SS1 rides the White Knight up to
mach 0.55 at 48,000 feet and then: "Binnie pulled SS1's nose up to
60° and lit the rocket for 15 seconds. This blasted SS1 to 930
mph, or Mach 1.2, and an altitude of
68,000 feet (20,700 m)." Wooeee! Even better, after 12 minutes of
gliding, a safe (if scratchy) landing.
It's leading the pack (manned-spaceflight-wise) on the way to the
X prize, at 100km with 3 passengers
and a repeat performance within 2 weeks. Tall order.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the federal government
can't prosecute Californians for growing marijuana for their personal
medical use.
According to
Ann Harrison, the court found that "if the marijuana is not
purchased, transported across state lines or used non-medically, the
federal government has no jurisdiction."
17.Dec.03
Taiwan (a.k.a. The Republic of China) and China (a.k.a. the People's
Republic of China) are having a little Cold War of their own, but the
sides don't seem quite balanced. Taiwan, which has been independent for
more than 50 years, is threatening to hold a referendum on independence.
Scary stuff. The PRC has, oh, 500 missiles pointed at the island, an
arrangement that Annette Lu describes as "state sponsored terrorism."
The US is hell on that, right? Oh wait,
Bush doesn't want to rock the status quo, it all seems pretty well
balanced right now. How do you argue with the observation
"that Bush now views Taiwan's ballot box as more threatening than
China's missiles"?
Meanwhile,
China
issues a new warning: "we must make necessary preparations to
resolutely crush Taiwan independence plots," says the spokesman for
China's Taiwan Affairs Office. What are they going to do, launch a
missile attack on the island?!
14.Dec.03
We're not getting foot after foot of snow like the Northeast, but we got
some nice rain here in Boise this weekend, and more than a foot of snow
up in the mountains. Bogus
Basin opened just enough for lessons on Saturday, and then all the
way today. I took my first two snowboarding lessons, and started to get
the hang of it on the beginner slope, with nothing broken or too badly
bruised. It took me half a dozen tries, but I did finally manage to get
off the chairlift without crashing. Almost like being young again,
except that the healing won't be as fast this time around, 25 years
after my first adventure in skiing.
On my way down the hill, I decided to just go nuts with my digital
camera, set the focus on infinity and shot 64 pictures out the car
windows. This is something I would never think to do with film;
it was fun to shoot with wild abandon once I got going. On the one
hand (ouch, bad pun), it's probably not that smart a thing to do, but on
the other, I've had enough practice driving the road, the storm had
abated, and the traffic was well-spaced and moving smoothly. I did stop
at one of the few convenient pull-offs to take a couple of steadier
shots; having the snow line in the middle of the drive on a sunny
afternoon creates some beautiful scenes.
The numerous shots of the steering wheel and my other hand remind me of
the little 110 camera I bought when I hitchhiked out west in 1973. I
shot 8 or 10 rolls of film along the way, and when they came back from
the developer (after the trip, of course), I discovered that my finger
was in about a third of the pictures. D'OH!
The latest email from BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com (a.k.a. Campaign
Manager Ken Mehlman) is still working off the "messages of hate" theme,
citing "liberal billionaire George Soros, who has compared President
Bush to the Nazis," among others. Looking for some independent
perspectives on what Soros said, I found
kuro5hin's to start with. First of all, Soros was a Jew born in
Hungary in 1930, who survived the Holocaust and the Soviet occupation of
Hungary. He has some direct experience of Nazis to draw on.
He is indeed a billionaire, and a liberal, which I suppose makes him
seem a bit like a traitor to folks in the GOP. He's said to have his
own foreign policy, and takes overt action to support democracy, giving
away billions of dollars for what he believe in. That
should be a Good Thing, one would think. He's opposed to the leaders of
Zimbabwe, Libya, Burma, and Turkmenistan as well as of the U.S.A.
Apparently, this is what Soros said and the
Washington Post reported:
"When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds
me of the Germans. My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have
sensitized me."
Kuro5hin also has a ton of discussion which I didn't
read through, and a link to a
NOW
interview with Soros from September of this year.
"The Republican Party has been captured by a bunch of extremists..." he
said, hard to argue with that.
He also said: "The people currently in charge have forgotten the first
principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there
has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the
policies without being unpatriotic." Generously, about Bush, Soros
said: "I think he's a man of good intentions. I don't doubt it. But I
think he's leading us in the wrong direction." He sounds like a pretty
reasonable guy.
I suppose the appeal will work, though. Even as the Republicans have
been working the class warfare thing for their side (cutting taxes good!
You worked hard for your money! You might be rich some day!),
they're also willing to work it against if it's convenient; liberal
billionaire mind you, he's not like you and me. The appeal is
not intended for people who will look up sources on opposing sides of an
issue and make up their own minds. On the day that news of Saddam
Hussein's capture dominates, and we've made another demonstration of
might, the argument that might makes right is still
ascendent.
Distilling the headline "Soros Likens Bush to Nazi" from what Soros has
said in various forums is a reprehensible ploy. Usenet discussion
threads historically had come to a bitter end when Hitler was invoked in
almost any context, and the headline writers are attempting to both end
the discussion and tar their opponent at the same time.
But let's keep the discussion open a bit longer, shall we?
The December 2003 Atlantic Monthly has a
longer
piece, by Soros himself, which is quite a bit more illuminating
(but perhaps less remunerating) than Mehlman's clever quip. He doesn't
use the N-word, incidentally. Well in to his argument, Soros writes,
"To make the war on terrorism the centerpiece of our national strategy
is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the
world. Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal
preoccupation, we are playing into the terrorists' hands. They
are setting our priorities." Read the rest of what he has to say, and then
you tell me
if you think this is an "angry, rage-filled attack."
The ITAA (Information Technology Association of America) is joining with
the companies selling electronic voting systems to form
the Election Technology Council (ETC), presumably to short-circuit
the increasing current of concern about unauditable systems that are
ripe for fraud.
My cousin sent me a pointer to this lovely
slice
of cheese, the Wisconsin dictionary. Made me feel right at home,
yahhey.
12.Dec.03
Three months ago today, I was liberated from the cube farm.
I don't have a nice, tight answer to the question "what are you doing
now?" which inevitably follows an announcement that I "retired."
(I still get some "you're too young" responses in between, the way I
used to when I mentioned I was a grandfather. The latter have pretty
much dried up; enough gray around the ears and you too can pass for
a grandfather, apparently.)
I like to say "whatever I want to." That's sort of rubbing it in, but
it's the most accurate answer I have. Somebody could turn the tables on
me by asking "so what do you want to do?" I'm still figuring
that out, one day at a time. Necessity still intervenes; there are
bills to pay, taxes to look after, still paperwork to be done to wrap up
my 20-year employment, things around the house to look after.
"Blogging" probably wouldn't satisfy anyone as an answer. I can just
hear the follow-ups: "What?" "But seriously...?" Ok, I'm doing some
writing. (Oh yeah, that would work; mysterious, open-ended -- people
can make it as grand or trivial as they like, without my having to
help.) "We went to China" still works,
but it is a bit of a wasting asset. Where have you been lately?
On a tennis court when I can. My first snowboard lesson is tomorrow.
The one group I don't have to elaborate for is my fellow retirees.
They just smile and say "that's great!" (and maybe "you're so young!")
and we don't need to pin anything else down until the conversation gets
going.
Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) is hot, hot, hot. c|net can
help you
get up to speed
on the subject. I fetched "free phone calls!" enabling software
Skype and now just need everyone I
call to install it, too. :-/ Getting connected to everybody's
phone will cost something, but maybe not so much. How do unlimited
local and LD calls for $25/month sound?
Bruce Schneier wonders if the
MSBlast worm
precipitated the huge blackout back east in August. Having
infrastructure dependent on Microsoft's O/S seems risky, doesn't it?
I'm sure there's something in their EULA that says they're not to blame
if things go to hell in a handbasket.
Cringely's
proposal
for fixing voting technology is grounded in the caution:
"Remember that every public crisis in America is an opportunity for
someone to make money." His solution is dead simple, reliable,
inexpensive, and doesn't have a chance of being implemented.
"I suggest that we add humans to the process in order to eliminate
technological errors."
Speaking of following the money,
colorofmoney.org
provides the data on $200+ federal campaign contributions in a variety
of slices: by state, by zip code, by ethnicity, etc. In Idaho, the
leading per capita contributions for the 2002 election cycle were $206
in Sun Valley, $55 and $40 in neighboring Ketchum and Bellevue. No big
surprise there. Small towns with sizeable donors took the next four
spots; I'd never heard of Laclede, Rogerson or Coolin. The highest
Boise zip code on the list is 83702, with $17 per capita. (The
population figures seem tiny -
Sun
Valley has only 875 adults?!) My zipcode is 38th in per capita
contributions ($5, just above the state average of $3.84), 3rd in
population with 28,392 adults.
83% of contributions of $200+ went to Republicans; they dominate
the money, and state politics. The tables are sortable by total
contributions, population, ethnicities, household income. Interesting
stuff. High-income households cluster in Sun Valley, Eagle, Ketchum,
Felt (where is that??), Boise. The greatest percentage of households
below the poverty line are in May (42%!), White Bird, North Fork, Clark
Fork, Rexburg.
David
Brooks' epiphany about Howard Dean creates a sense of
déjà vu: "At each moment, he appears outspoken, blunt and
honest. But over time he is incoherent and contradictory." We've got
a Resident like that already.
Molly
Ivins weighs in on her choice for President, with a second (who was
first?) for the notion "that this year, the Internet is to politics what
television was in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race."
11.Dec.03
It's old news that
the fix
was on in Florida to elect Bush in 2000, and the
risks of electronic voting
are getting documented. It seems likely that the risks will
not be addressed before the next election. Bravo to
Nevada, for mandating a paper receipt, but a receipt is not an audit
trail, and as amazing coincidences like three races being decided by
18,181 votes start piling up, we are very much going to wish we had an
audit trail.
Charles Fishman in Fast Company,
The
Wal-Mart You Don't Know: "It is, in fact, so big and so furtively
powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate
being." It's controlling inflation, driving gains in productivity, and
providing a pipeline for foreign goods -- especially Chinese goods -- to
the American consumer. "Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great
to have bargains," says Steve Dobbins, CEO of Carolina Mills. "But you
can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out
of jobs."
The White House is backpedaling on the Wolfowitz memo, incredibly.
It caught them by surprise, but it's a measure of the Deputy Secretary
of Defense's position that it has been repudiated. As
The Australian points out in a
Dec. 12th editorial, "a pragmatic alternative was available," to
quietly shut out those with whom we're in a snit. That's not
ideological enough, apparently, so we'll go ahead with the shot to the
foot and cripple progress in the UN, the UN Security Council, and
the forgiveness of Iraqi debt by other countries. James Baker,
newly named Debt Eraser, is left twisting in the wind for his assignment.
Or maybe not, if Greg Palast is right in his speculation that
Baker is bringing
home the bacon for Saudia Arabia.
10.Dec.03
Here's a new hypothesis about global warming:
humans have
been doing it
for 8 millennia now, and we stopped the last ice age that was due
about 3 or 2000 B.C.
Michael Moore's latest
letter to
Bush had us rolling in the aisles.
"It was also a good idea that you made the 'press' on that trip to
Baghdad pull the shades down on the plane. No one in the media entourage
complained. They like the shades pulled and they like to be kept in the
dark. It's more fun that way."
The trial of
John Kerry may have come just a bit too late to make a difference in
next year's -- next year's! -- election for President. To those of us
in the US electorate, just how we pick candidates and Presidents is a
deep mystery. It sure as hell is not done by voting, because no voting
has been done, and yet all the handicappers are saying the race is all
but over. The best person may not be the one who wins, and he or she
may not even make the finals. Only the most rabid of Bush supporters
could presume to believe that he was -- or is -- the best person for the
job he's in. He's the most useful to a lot of people, which may
be all the explanation needed.
I'd like to see the chaff cleared out and have Kerry and Dean (ok, throw
in a couple others if you like) go head to head for a while, and then
have a one-day national plebiscite. The states will never get together
on that, of course, even though enough got together for a "Super
Tuesday" primary. I appreciate Dean's principled stand, but the idea
that Dean "was there when it counted" when the Congress voted to give
Bush war powers is nonsense. The governor of Vermont was not
there. I didn't trust the Bush team's intentions; Kerry did. That's
not a good reason to count him out of the Presidential race right
now.
Just in case you weren't sure if Paul Wolfowitz is still calling the
shots, watch
Scott McLellan defend Wolfie's tweak of Germany, France and Russia,
supposedly for "essential security interests."
There's plenty of blame to go around, but the basic fact is that
Congress failed to pass a budget for this fiscal year (which started
more than 2 months ago) before the end of the calendar year. The VOA
piece has Frist blaming obstructionist Dems, but elsewhere, we see
both sides piling on the Resident for dragging his feet on pet
issues. Mr. DeLay (no pun intended) defended 7,000 special purpose
"earmarks," telling us that pork barrel and log-rolling are just the way
the gummint works.
Maybe they'll get the budget done in late January, check back.
The
wrap-up press release on the BCC/OMX merger provides an adjustment
to my prediction that everyone with million-dollar plus severance
incentives would bail out:
Peterson (OfficeMax president and COO, now "president -- retail"),
Mulet (exec. VP of retail stores) and Vero (exec. VP of merchandising)
are in. Since OfficeMax CFO Michael Killeen didn't make the press
release, I assume he's out, with a modest $2M parting gift.
9.Dec.03
The architect of Boise Cascade's gleaming tower in downtown
Boise had openness and transparency in mind, and I'm sure it's
still a very pleasant place to work. But welcoming visitors
is no longer a matter of revolving doors at each point of the
compass; visitors please use Jefferson St. entrance, this one
door here.
Three cheerful employees waited for me to sign in with the
security guard, eyeballing my outfit (#1 suit) and
appertunance (a tasteful leather folder); a more detailed
inspection wasn't needed. I was escorted to the guest elevator,
one of 4 that connect to the perimeter offices with sky bridges
across the full-height atrium. This morning, they even had
an elevator operator, to help guests get off at the right
floor.
At the 4th floor desk outside the conference room, I signed in
again, introduced myself and was told "you're pre-cleared."
The conference room was set up for 50, had 2 guests seated and a few
employees moving about, getting things ready. George Harad was brought
over to take a phone call, someone with 969,000 shares, voting in favor
of both items? I didn't hear the answer, but after the call, "the
percentage is changing." The fellow in the row in front of me had
a handful of printouts of news about the merger from the web, the woman
was saying something about "some of those people just make those
protests their whole life." Sorry I didn't get in on that conversation
earlier.
There were no demonstrations this time around, of course,
the
Rainforest Action League having declared victory and moved on.
At the stroke of 8, Harad called the meeting to order, 72.5% of
shares represented providing a quorum. An older fellow and his
wife ducked in and sat in the 2nd row, casual clothes, somebody
who worked in the forest once upon a time, I imagine. That made
maybe 20 of us present, at most, with employees in the majority.
"The polls are still open," Harad noted, offered ballots to anyone
who was there to vote in person. No hands, but the fellow who came
in last said "I brought my ballot," duly executed it and got his
joint-owner's signature. The results will be tabulated and reported
later today; the preliminary result is that both measures (the
merger with OfficeMax, and trebling the shares available for issue
under the incentive plan) are approved.
That concludes the formal part of the meeting, not quite 5 minutes.
Questions? Discussion? I raised my hand, introduced myself as
representing John Osborn, of the Sierra Club, and asked what Mr.
Harad thought was the future of the corporation in the forest
products industry if the merger goes through. He gave a warm and
content-free executive answer that they'll be re-evaluating all that, no
news this morning. After the elliptical question and answer, the older
guy up front asked "Are you going to get out of the forestry business?"
"As I said," etc.
That's that then.
We stayed around and chatted a bit, I talked to VP Karen Gowland, George
talked with the fellow and his wife from Ogden, here for his very first
shareholder's meeting, then with me. I mentioned my concern to Karen
that the sale of Boise Cascade's assets might have negative
consequences, brought up the example of Pacific Lumber. That didn't
register, I gave her
the capsule
history: high-leverage, hostile takeover of a company run with
sustainability in mind, resulted in lots of old redwoods being cut to
pay off the debt. She suggested that they would certainly be careful
about a buyer of their assets. Let's hope. The corporation
says nice
things about its environmental stance. When it comes time to sell
off assets, that may not be the first consideration.
George and I talked about mergers, the new company being HP's 3rd
largest customer (or reseller, at least; this according to ex-HP
printing exec Carolyn Ticknor, who is on BCC's board), HP's paper
being made by Champion, which was bought by International Paper,
which licenses Boise to make HP's paper. "Co-opetition" is what
they call it these days.
I was politely escorted to the elevators (ah, this one, here),
asked about using the stairs. "You'll be much happier with the
elevator," my escort assured me, dismissing the bizarre notion
that someone would use the stairs. I asked the elevator operator
what his usual job was ("I work in security"), and exited from
whence I'd come, before 8:20. Beautiful sunrise behind the
capitol dome, the full moon still up in the west.
By 8:24 MST, news was on the wire that
OfficeMax
had approved the $1.4 billion deal, "overwhelmingly."
9:36 MST, news that
the
OfficeMax CEO is leaving to form a retailing venture capital firm.
The prospectus notes Michael Feuer will get a $10.5 million parting gift.
Expect Gary Peterson ($4M), Michael Killeen ($2M), Harold Mulet
($1.7M) and Ryan Vero ($1.3M) to take the money and run, too.
("It's QUITTIN' TIME!")
9:19 MST, Boise Cascade reports
the merger
passed, with 77% of the voted shares in favor (comfortably more
than half of the shares outstanding, as well).
The dilutive increase of shares for the incentive plan passed
also, but with a narrow plurality - 53% of votes cast, only 24M of the
approximately 60M shares outstanding in favor.
7.Dec.03
Terry Dobbelaere describes what happened one day at the VA hospital
when George W. Bush spoke to soliders. (In uniform,
believe it or not.)
Music for America is
something interesting, I haven't read through enough of it to be sure
just what. "Music and Other Social Causes" is the subhead, and the
branches are many. The
interview
available from this archived post purports to tell us what it's
about.
When I first saw Blogs for
Bush I thought it was a send-up, but looking just a bit further, I
see that it does appear to be a grass-roots (or at least astroturf),
pro-Bush thing. I guess 2004 will be the first presidential campaign
where blogs figure. Somehow. (No doubt some 2000-era bloggers
could tell us how important weblogs were 3 years ago, but I don't
think so.)
6.Dec.03
The lead in a
NY
Times story datelined London, Dec. 5th: "One day after President
Bush abandoned American protective tariffs on imported steel to avert a
trade war with Europe, Pascal Lamy, the European trade commissioner,
said he would use the same tactics again in another long-running trade
dispute with the United States."
Not a big surprise, really, with the apparent success of Bush's cynical
maneuver on steel tariffs: they were obviously illegal, but the
administration knew it would take the WTO bureaucracy time to act,
and they bought a lot of votes in key states. The really impressive
part, though, was the "Mission Accomplished" statement, saying they were
no longer needed. Now they can pick up the "free trade" votes.
Unfortunately, our international trading partners may be a little slow,
but they're not stupid, and they'll fight the war with new (and mutable)
rules. Targeting the industries in states crucial to Bush's
re-election, the EU is showing they understand the leverage principle
provided by the US' example.
It's still the economy, stupid. And how well the numbers sort out by
next November will decide whether or not George II gets to follow his
father's example or serve a second term. We've had employment rising
for four months, and it's barely made a tick on the percentage:
down to 5.9%, now, still higher than when Bush took office. (The good
news is that it was 6.4% in June; some progress.) The 57,000
new jobs in November make a total of a third of a million added since
the end of the 2001 recession, in which 1.1 million were lost. You
don't have to do the math; the three quarters of a million additional
jobless will keep track of the problem for you. Nearly a quarter of
them are classified as "long-term unemployed," looking for work for 6
months or more. Employment is down by more than 2 million jobs
since Bush took office.
That giant sucking sound we can still hear is manufacturing moving
off-shore; manufacturing employment has not stopped shrinking during
the "recovery." Output is up, but productivity is rising faster; good
news for investors and management ("Corporate profits rose sharply in
the third quarter"), but not if you're looking for a job. The job gains
haven't been enough to cover the growth of the workforce (estimated at
200,000/month), and the quality of jobs created continues to
decline. The average hourly wage of production workers is barely holding
its own, and not keeping up with inflation. Get used to it; changing
the talking head in the Oval Office won't change the new economic world
order.
Such as this
latest export from the US to Mexico:
"Wal-Mart's power is changing Mexico in the same way it changed the
economic landscape of the United States, and with the same formula: cut
prices relentlessly, pump up productivity, pay low wages, ban unions,
give suppliers the tightest possible profit margins and sell everything
under the sun for less than the guy next door." Its sales are almost 2%
of Mexico's GDP.
One wild card in the mix is the "self-employed," such as yours truly,
if you ask the questino the right way. The numbers quoted above
are all from various statistical measurments, some from surveys of
employers, and households. It's not like we can add up everyone's books
(some of which are half-baked, if not cooked, anyway) and know "the"
answer on such things. As
Floyd
Norris notes, "Some people who say they are self-employed may really
be out of work and trying to bring in money as consultants or freelance
workers. Others may be doing very well, living a dream of boss-free
success." Door #2 for me and mine.
This is the half of the glass you'll be hearing about from the
GOP: "But with (the apparent rise in self-employment), it is
possible to point to one government survey that indicates that more
people are working now than at any time before."
5.Dec.03
If there is a Hell (I have my doubts), I'm pretty sure Fred Phelps is
going there. His latest publicity stunt is to propose
an anti-Matthew Shepard monument for Boise's Julia Davis park to go
along with our 10 Commandments. The more, the scarier.
After the dry weather, hot wind, and catastrophic fire,
the dust in San Diego. Amazing satellite imagery from NASA's Earth
Observatory.
Cringely, on the
recipe
for disaster in electronic voting:
"In the case of this voting fiasco, there was a wonderful confluence of
events. There was a vague product requirement coming from an agency
that doesn't really understand technology (the U.S. Congress), foisting
a system on other government agencies that may not have asked for it.
There was a relatively small time frame for development and a lot of
money. Finally, the government did not allow for even the notion of
failure. By 2004, darn it, we'd all have touch screen voting."
The moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for, especially if
it's something in Information Technology. And the crucial question
left as a cliff-hanger for next week: who decided these machines
would be unauditable?
Buzz Aldrin says
Fly me
to L1. (That's the unstable Lagrange point between the earth and
the moon. There are
4 others,
two of which are stable.)
Meanwhile, after George Bush heard about China's manned spaceflight and
lunar ambitions, he seems keen that the
US should get to the moon first. More miraculous Texas education,
maybe.
This is odd: a company named
Andrew Andrew
with two principles (each named Andrew, natch) who think they think
alike. According to
Rob
Walker's NYT piece on the iPod,
"they require interviewers to sign a form agreeing not to reveal any
differences between Andrew and Andrew, because to do so might undermine
the Andrew Andrew brand..."
It would be more intriguing if their home page didn't have the embarassing
tagline "This website was made with Microsoft Word" complete with a
gratuitous frameset, a ton of semi-compliant embedded CSS and a
noncompliant character probably
intended to be '®'. Microsoft's own trademark, surprisingly
apt.
Just in time for Christmas, you can now view my
wish list on
Amazon. Ok, ok, so you all haven't been waiting with bated breath
to see what it is that I wanted from Amazon, but it can't hurt to try,
can it?
One of my regular readers said he took the trouble to find an
Amazon link on my site (not all that easy, was it?) to go shopping for
some DVD hardware, in order to get me the referral credit. We hope that
works, even though the "5%" credit is limited to $10 per item. That'll
still be more than I usually make in a couple quarters. I don't really
want to turn up the advertising, but I have added the text to the left
and an Amazon search widget (at the bottom of the left column) to
encourage a little more juice. Giving me the referral credit doesn't
add to your bill! And it'll give me a little boost to keep putting up
interesting content.
Ok, enough commercialism for a while.
4.Dec.03
While scanning through a few hundred spam subjects this morning, I was
thinking that even though Cableone's filter is reasonably effective
(maybe 5% or fewer escapes, and about 0.4% fall positives), it's a
tedious annoyance to have to look through this garbage. Then I noticed
a new theme, cheap watches:
Christmas Rolex Sale -- Only $65 - $140!! F...
It made me think about how they're having a "Rolex Sale" all over China
and in a number of other countries, and if you pay $65, you are paying
seriously too much. I'd start the negotiation at $5 (if it's
running, the battery is worth at least 1 or $2), and wouldn't plan on
going above $20.
Or did you think you were going to get a "real" Rolex for a special
price by going spamorder? We're having a special on bridges this
holiday season, too...
Jeanette was surfing around for Yangtze river stuff and found a
beautiful
travelogue from September of last year with photos that put mine to
shame. The
fredmiranda.com site
is interesting, too, hosting a gaggle of excellent photographers.
There is so much good work out there, it's rather amazing.
It stands to reason, though; just about everyone who travels takes
pictures, and there are millions of us traveling...
3.Dec.3
Cableone's email service "all throughout Idaho" has been broken for more
than half the workday, and still counting. They tell me they're working
on fixing it just soon as they can, which I don't doubt, but it's still
majorly annoying. If you emailed me something and it bounced, please be
patient and try your call again later.
Later: the good news is, it's back. The bad news is, all that anxiety
about missing something was misplaced.
32-year-old Shanghai artist, Yang Fudong's punchline
is that the repression of the Chinese government has eased up to the
point that he doesn't feel the need to escape anymore. Travelling's OK,
though: "The purpose of going abroad is very simple. You take a look at
what the world is doing and then you come back and you do it
yourself."
Having just traveled to his country
and brought back my own wealth of new ideas and imagery (and
copywatch, copysunglasses, copydaypack), it struck me as funny that I
feel pretty much the same way. It was an interesting place to visit,
but I wasn't doing it for them, and I prefer living here.
(I've taken to saving any pages from the NY Times site that I want
to reference. I've got 7 days to catch things, or else rely on the fair
users who are willing to republish copies. I see a lot more interesting
stuff than I'm willing to waste blog space on, though. I note this
feature piece with the reluctance of "subscription required, expires in
7 days.")
Here's a bigger
big picture look at the Medicare bill than I did when I looked at
the individual end of the stick
for the drug benefit. How much (less) would drugs cost if we went back
to not allowing them to be advertised? We'd save the advertising
expense, at least.
But that isn't what matters. What matters is that George Bush delivered
on a campaign promise. All that seems to matter is getting GWB
re-elected in 2004, then God help us after that.
The headline from yesterday's runoff election:
Eberle wins in a landslide, 12,000 to 4,000 over the incumbent,
appointee Paula Forney. Boiseans are anti-incumbent by a margin of 3:1,
in a race that exposed no other distinguishing characteristics of the
candidates. It's remarkable how strong a response a little felonious
misuse of city funds engendered. With any sense of proportion, we'd be
throwing out the state legislature bums, and our 4 man Congressional
delegation, too, but I'm guessing by November 2004, the city and state
will come to their senses and re-elect whomever. Whatever!
Ronald Brownstein's Washington Outlook
(LA Times, subscription req'd):
"Seniors with big prescription drug bills, health maintenance
organizations awaiting lucrative new subsidies, upper-middle-class
families anticipating a fat tax refund, and Iraqi cities expecting new
schools or hospitals all have reason to be thankful about President
Bush's extraordinary success at pushing his agenda through the
Republican-controlled Congress this year. There may be less celebration
among the young people who will inherit the tab for these initiatives.
Bush is funding every penny of every one of these goodies by increasing
the national debt."
"Several reliable analysts project the federal deficit will soar past
$500 billion this year -- and then remain near that unprecedented level
for the indefinite future, even if the economy recovers. It's an
understatement to conclude, as the Goldman Sachs investment bank did in
a recent report, that the budget process in Washington is 'out of
control.'"
Tom "tin ear" DeLay won't be cruising in New York Harbor during the
Republican Reaffirmation this summer after all, and the headline writers
are having... "a field day" doesn't quite match the nautical theme.
GOP
Torpedoed (NY Post),
GOP bows to pier pressure (NY Daily News),
DeLay scuttles
NYC ship (The Hill), and so on.
Here's another reason to like the world wide web: you can enjoy
the work of Jay Leno's writers without having to watch Leno.
2.Dec.03
That little blast of winter over the Thanksgiving holiday didn't
hold. It was up in the mid-50s today, sunny and indescribably
delicious. Wet, fallen leaves suffuse the air with the ripe smell of
autumn, and I had a buddy to play tennis with at lunchtime. The
squirrels had a field day. Life is good. Now go back to thinking
snow!
It's more than a little creepy that the Bush administration feels it has
to make up stories to enlarge its image. That little drama about the
exchange with the British Airways pilot on the way to Iraq?
Huh-uh. Never happened. Maybe one of the folks in the presscon
with Scott McLellan can ask "now is this a real
story, or another one of those things you guys just made up?"
Oh wait, maybe it was between the BA pilot and the tower.
Yeah,
that's it.
Doc Searls is a radio-head from way back, and his blogrant about
how
radio can unsuck itself is an interesting read with (as usual), lots
of "additional reading" referenced every-which-way off of it.
"Old Fashioned Broadcasting -- AM, FM, TV, Shortwave -- is railroads.
Internet Radio, by
individuals and small organizations, is cars."
It's Votin
Day again in Boise: one of the city council races ended in a
plurality, so they run off. Everybody expected the mayor's race to end
up here, too, but state Representative
Dave Bieter beat the Sheriff and the Developer in the first
round.
Gypsy Journals
are an interesting collection of travelogues from all over the world.
My friend Diane Ronayne mentioned
Wylie
and Helene's as one of note.
Maybe it's because I went to the University of Idaho up north, or maybe
it's because they share a name with that Denver team (who beat my
Packers once), but for whatever reason, I just have no interest in the
BSU Broncos, unless it's to see them lose. Not much to see this
year, as they're having their best season in recorded history, 11-1, and
off to a freakin' bowl game. It's a little funny that Boise's
own bowl game, the fabulous
Humanitarian
Bowl is not quite good enough for the Bongos now that they've hit
the big time. It looks like it's supposed to be the champeens of the
WAC and the ACC, but... how can we put this nicely? The BSU Broncos
are just too good for the Boise bowl game. God bless 'em.
Pravda's not too keen on the idea of
giving the
Kurile islands back to Japan, but the idea of a cross-border park in
the "Northern Territories" (or southern Kuriles, depending on your point
of view) is
a possibility.
No sign of the purported website of "The Kurile Island Network" that I
could find, though.
A website for people who want to
experience the world and
themselves by bike sounds pretty cool, but the style sheet renders
the poor thing just about unreadable.
Hey, Phil
Greenspun's got a blog. His modest tagline says "an interesting
idea every three months; a posting every day," but I'm guessing he does
considerably better than that. The posting about "how modern
information systems are actually built" was interesting, at least.
Thanks to Dave Winer for the
link.
1.Dec.03
The story of
Tom
DeLay and the Bahamanian-registered luxury cruise liner
where he wants Republicans to stay, party, or just hang out during next
summer's Republican National Convention seems too perfectly made for TV.
The Hammer looks ready to force his way on the issue, with apparent
obliviousness to his party's sinking image. It'll be "secure," one
spokesman offers; unlike New York City, is the implication. (Why are
the Repubs meeting in NY again?) Hey, it might be cheaper if they get
to avoid the city's hotel tax, too, but really - is cost an object
here?
It can remind us that DeLay changed House ethics rules (how many
oxymorons can you find in this sentence?) "so that members could accept
free trips and lodging to attend charity events." It can remind us of
the revolving door between government and corporations, with
DeLay's former chief of staff (Susan Hirschman) in the
lobbying firm hired by the ship's owners to sell the idea.
Maybe there are some deck chairs that could be rearranged.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Tuesday, 06-Jan-2004 15:27:00 MST
http://fortboise.org/blog/200312.html
