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January 22, 2004, 6:51 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

No blog tomorrow -- I'll be at a wedding.

The World's Most Dangerous Geek: Rolling Stone profiles Justin Frankel, who wrote mp3 player Winamp when he was 17, and took $100 million from AOL for it and his Shoutcast streaming tool. AOL was not pleased when he made the decentralized file-sharing program Gnutella. Or AIMazing. Or Waste. ...

On December 9th, the company shut down the San Francisco office that once housed Nullsoft and Spinner, and laid off 450 employees, including Frankel's half brother. The next week, Frankel uploaded what could be his swan song as an AOL employee: Winamp, version 5.0. In the near future, he says, he's going to have a sit-down with his boss and enthusiastically return to a riskier way of life. This could include some new programs such as a free and open solution for mobile text messaging -- a kind of Gnutella spin on BlackBerry -- or some other stuff that he won't reveal. "Those are the really good ideas," he says.

In many ways, Frankel's future encapsulates the debate over the future of the Internet itself. Does it become just a distribution system for corporate product or more of a way to subvert that corporate control? For Frankel, subversion is in the eye of the beholder. "The question is," he says, "do you think people are ultimately good or bad? Do they want to do the right thing, or do they want to do what's good for them and fuck everyone else? I hope it's not the latter."

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Wireless e-voting machines raise concern: From NewScientist.com, wi-fi voting machines:

Computer scientists are concerned that new electronic voting machines - already bought by several US states - have been designed to have the capability to transmit vote tallies wirelessly.

Critics of e-voting have previously cited uncertified software upgrades or bugs in the programs as problems, but they say the new touchscreen machines' wireless potential poses a novel security threat.

The makers of the new machines, Diebold Electronic Voting Systems in Canton, Ohio, point out that none of the AccuVote-TSx machines currently contain the matchbox-sized card required to make a wireless network connection.

But, unlike their predecessors, they do have a slot for the card, called a PCMCIA slot. And Diebold spokesperson Mark Radke told New Scientist that wireless capability could be implemented "if required by the jurisdiction" simply by inserting a card and configuring the machine.

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Rare Marley songs to be released: Reader Eric Lilius sends along this, from the BBC,

Rare and previously unheard tracks from Bob Marley's early years are to get official releases for the first time.

The rights to 211 songs recorded from 1967-72 - before Marley found global fame - have been bought by record label Universal from reggae label JAD.

The catalogue includes six previously unreleased songs, with the possibility of more being discovered.

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Senate panel's GOP staff pried on Democrats: (Pried on? Spied on? Preyed on?) From the Boston Globe, the news that ranking Republicans have been electronically burgling Democrat computer files. (And yes, that's what the 1972 Watergate burglars were trying to do, minus the electronics.)

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.

The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November.

With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the US Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people to date and seized more than half a dozen computers -- including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives.

But the scope of both the intrusions and the likely disclosures is now known to have been far more extensive than the November incident, staffers and others familiar with the investigation say. ...

... Democrats now claim their private memos formed the basis for a February 2003 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak that revealed plans pushed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to filibuster certain judicial nominees. Novak is also at the center of an investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose husband contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi nuclear programs.

Citing "internal Senate sources," Novak's column described closed-door Democratic meetings about how to handle nominees.

Novak again. His other strange column is in the news today, too: Ex-C.I.A. Aides Ask for Leak Inquiry by Congress
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Painting America in just two colors makes US politics seem too black-and-white. In reality, the national electorate divides into 10 regions that cut across state borders. How they come together will determine the presidential election.

One of the most awful prospects of the next presidential election is the return of…that damn map. Depicting the results of the 2000 election, the reigning graphic of American politics divides the United States into two colors, red for Republican and blue for Democratic. It's also the basis of a lot of simplistic political analysis. "The 2000 election map highlighted a deep cultural tension between the cities (the blue states) and the sticks (the red states)," as Matt Bai put it in the New York Times Magazine earlier this year. David Brooks described this schism in more acerbic tones in the Atlantic Monthly in 2001: "In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere."

But this primary-color collage resonates only because it turns up the contrast. Given that more than 40 percent of voters in the blue states backed Bush and more than 40 percent of voters in the red states backed Gore, doesn't the red vs. blue model seem, well, a bit black-and-white?

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Truth in speechifying: Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, analyzes the State of the Union address.

What Bush Left Unsaid in State of the Union Address
Forget Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now its “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.”

Summary
President Bush accentuated the positive in his annual State of the Union Address to Congress Jan. 20 – leaving out some pertinent but negative facts. Omitted: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the loss of 2.3 million jobs, and who's responsible for the big deficits he proposes to cut. ...

Related: The Onion sums up the key points of the address as only Onion can. And here's a chart doing this from another angle from the Center for American Progress (the new think tank set up by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta).
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President match: Another quiz that aims to educate us on how the candidates' positions on issues make ours, so we won't just vote for the best-looking ones. Based on your responses, the results rank the candidates for you. I have a 100% match with one candidate and a 3% match with another.
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Cotton Candy Autopsy: Beautifully drawn book on the web. Lots of clowns, but it's not a children's book.
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January 21, 2004, 6:30 p.m.

John Langenstein, Phish's longtime security director, is donating much of his personal collection of Phish memorabilia in an effort to raise funds for The Station Family Fund.

"This terrible tragedy could have happened to any one of us that goes to live shows. I took it to heart, The Station Nightclub fire really hit home", said Langenstein.

The Station Family Fund is an all-volunteer, 501 c 3 recognized, tax exempt, nonprofit organization, founded to offer assistance and relief to people directly affected by the fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. 100 people perished, close to 200 severely injured, and more than 60 children lost one or both parents in the horrific fire on Feb 20, 2002.

The wide array of items includes many rare Phish show posters, all but one numbered, a few signed, and all out of print.

Information on the auction can be found by going to http://www.gratefulweb.net/auction.shtml . The auction is scheduled to end at various times on January 25, 2004.

The link above leads to the actual auction page at the Mimi Fishman Foundation site. (The late Mrs. Fishman was the mother of Jon Fishman, drummer for the band Phish). The Foundation's news page adds,

The wide array of items includes many rare Phish show posters, all but one numbered, a few signed, and all out of print. Madison House, the managing company behind The String Cheese Incident, has also stepped up to the plate with several signed items as well as their complete “On The Road” CD catalog, which consists of live recordings from many of their shows. The catalog consists of 150 titles.

Here's how to bid.

John Langenstein directs security for several bands including Phish and The String Cheese Incident.

Canceled: Foreigner’s Lou Gramm and Starship with Mickey Thomas will NOT perform at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence tomorrow night (Thursday, Jan. 22) at 7 p.m.; $5 of each ticket's price will go to The Station Family Fund.
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Stump Connolly from Iowa: The Chicago online journal The Week Behind sent editor Scott Jacobs' alter ego "Stump Connolly" to caucus land, and he came back with a great story full of the kind of detail that shows me what happened out there in Iowa. Here are some excerpts. (There's more, and it's all worth the click. Here's the blog version.)

• At Dean HQ: Outside, dozens of young students walk up and down Locust Street in orange stocking caps with armfuls of literature destined for doorknobs around the city. Inside, I find myself standing next to the chairman of The Texas Democratic Party (a man who will himself personally appoint 21 convention delegates) waiting while a youthful “press liaison” decides whether anyone in the campaign has time to see us.

The office is festooned with sign-up sheets for “visibility events” – standing in the cold Monday morning with Dean signs outside plant gates –“walk packets” for canvassing and ride offers to New Hampshire. But no one seems to have time, or authority, to give the Texas party chairman, Charles Soechting, a tour.

• Kerry rally: The rally is an all-star event. The lights of Kerry’s campaign helicopter hover overhead as I enter the hall. The Des Moines Isiserettes Drum and Drill team are working the crowd into a frenzy. Christie Vilsack (wife of the Iowa Governor) and Ted Henderson (powerful County Democratic chairman) lead a procession of notables to the stage culminating with their secret weapon -- Mass. Sen. Ted Kennedy. The master of ceremonies is Jim Boswell, an Oregon Vietnam vet who suddenly appeared two days ago to remind Kerry he had rescued him from a Vietcong ambush 35 years ago.

Boswell's emergence, it will turn out, is one of the key elements behind Kerry's surge, satisfying voter needs to find a human story among the candidates.

• Gephardt rally: The last event of the evening is a Gephardt rally at the Savery Hotel downtown in Des Moines that kicks off with a Chuck Berry concert. Outside the hotel, The Teamsters Union is driving a caravan of eight full bore semi-trailers around and around the block, blasting their air horns to show their support.

Inside the packed ballroom are Gephardt’s Goons – an army of union professionals who have come from all parts of the country to lend labor’s organizing talents to his campaign. It’s a shoulder-to-shoulder, union windbreaker-to-windbreaker, Bud-in-bottles crowd that, with the encouragement of the candidate, makes it clear they have come to Iowa to get their due.

They are teamsters and steelworkers and stagehands and longshoremen and autoworkers -- and the mix is either exhilarating or frightening, depending on whether you are on their side or not.

• A caucus: The caucus I’ve chosen to attend is being held in the cafeteria of St. Anthony’s Catholic School in Des Moines because the usual gathering spot, the local VFW post, is booked on Mondays for bingo. St. Anthony’s is in a heavily Italian neighborhood, now almost 25% Mexican and Puerto Rican.

“We’re what you call a low-income neighborhood,” Pat Christianson tells me as we wait to start. “We need everything. A lot of people have been laid off. Our schools need books. It’s all people like me. I got a burial plot but no health insurance. I work three jobs, but have no benefits. That’s why I’m walking around with a broken toe because I can’t afford to go see a doctor. What’s the doctor going to do? Tape it up. So I went on the internet for a couple hours, read all the literature, and did it myself.”

• Takeaway: The over-arching story of Iowa was the record turnout of 122,000 (compared to 60,000 in 2000) – some 55% of whom said they were attending caucuses for the first time – and all of whom were united in finding a candidate who could beat President Bush.

These new voters were presumed to be young Deaniacs, but Dean’s army failed to show. Among first time attendees, television polls showed 36% went for Kerry, 24% for Edwards and only 22% for Dean.

• Culture note: “I think voters in Iowa took a second look at Dean and their doubts overcame their passions,” ( Time magazine’s Karen) Tumulty noted, putting the politest face on this outburst (Dean's concession speech). Later on PBS’s Charlie Rose, former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson said it more bluntly. “He looked like a prairie dog on speed.”

Edwards, by contrast, slid into the national limelight as gracefully on election night as he made his way up during the race. His victory party brimmed with enthusiasm and incredibly pleasant people. An axiom of politics (Stump’s Rules of Politics #6) is that a campaign doesn’t hit its stride until it finds a theme song that resonates with the campaign. (Think Bill Clinton, “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow".) On this night, Edwards was running first in class with John Mellencamp’s “Your Time is Now.”

• Bottom line: But in all the commentary, and all the spin, and all the hype of Iowa, never once on election night did I hear the only tally that matters. At the end of the day, the Iowa caucus totals work out to be:

Kerry 17 delegates
Edwards 15 delegates
Dean 8 delegates
Gephardt 5 delegates

(Un-pledged Superdelegates: 11)

And it still takes 2,161 votes to win the nomination.

This is great stuff. I hope "Stump" keeps it up through November. We'll track him here.
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Putting "respect" to bed: Mike Vaccaro of the N.Y. Post gets it.

FOXBORO - I respect the Patriots. I fear the Patriots. I think the Patriots are the most entertaining, well-disciplined, best-coached team I've ever seen in my life. I think Bill Belichick should be a late entrant in the Iowa caucuses, he's such a brilliant mind. I think Tom Brady is the best damn quarterback who's ever worn the number 12. I think there's little doubt the Patriots will win the Super Bowl 72-0.

Is that enough, guys?

That what you want to hear?

Yes, thank you, that will do nicely. What, you're not stopping there?

You know what I see a lot of? I see a lot of people running out of adjectives to describe the Patriots and their 14-game winning streak. I saw a lot of people last week shaking their head whenever the subject of Peyton Manning came up, saying ruefully, "Yeah, but he hasn't played against the Patriots yet."

And you know what else I see a lot of? I see an awful lot of Boston media outlets reacting like love-struck kids, shoving microphones into various Patriot faces and asking questions like (true story): "How does it feel to beat Mr. Superman, Mr. Everything, Mr. Unbeatable Peyton Manning!"

Something wrong with that?
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State of the Union address: Conservative Andrew Sullivan hated it. Here's the blog post, more at The New Republic link.

SOTU WRAP-UP: I've written a detailed critique at TNR. Here's the link. But here are some other thoughts. It was the worst Bush SOTU yet. Maybe the occasion wasn't up to the previous ones. But the speech lacked a real theme; it had only a few good lines (at the beginning, on the war); offered no new vision or any concrete future direction in foreign policy; and revealed complete insouciance toward the deficit and, more importantly, toward those who have not yet benefited from the economic recovery. A pretty bad political misjudgment in my view. To brag about a growing economy without some kind of passage of empathy for those still struggling reveals major political obtuseness. I was also struck by how hard right the president was on social policy. $23 million for drug-testing children in schools? A tirade against steroids? (I'm sure Tom Brady was thrilled by that camera shot.) More public money for religious groups? Abstinence only for prevention of STDs? Whatever else this president is, he is no believer in individuals' running their own lives without government regulation, control or aid. If you're a fiscal conservative or a social liberal, this was a speech that succeeded in making you take a second look at the Democrats. I sure am.

Can't the Democratic rebutters have an audience? Both Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle suffered from not having anyone live to address.

And Tom Brady's cameo shot? I heard, but didn't see, an unnamed Boston sportswriter explaining on TV today that of course the Patriots 'quarterback was being used (as a backdrop for Bush's out-of-nowhere anti-steroids pitch), but if he had refused the invite he'd spend weeks answering reporters' questions about his politics. Take the field trip and get back to the field.
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Melodies of the mushrooms: Originally published in the Baltimore Sun. The subhed says it:

Composer: In the Czech Republic, a man devotes his life to writing down the music he hears in forest fungi.
By Katka Krosnar

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Deep in the Klanovice forest just outside Prague in the heart of mushroom-mad Slavic Europe, Vaclav Halek stands above a small cluster of mushrooms, pen poised over a sheet of music paper.

Within seconds he is scribbling musical notes, stopping only to chuckle delightedly, his hand waving in the air as if conducting an orchestra. Ten minutes later he has completed a musical score, one he insists he hears from the Tubaria hiemalis below.

via wood s lot
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Bacon and egg soup: Teresa Nielsen Hayden at Making Light posts her recipe. (It sounds terrific, except I'll skip the cilantro.)
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January 20, 2004, 7:10 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Democrats Block Spending Bill: Vote to Halt Debate Falls 12 Votes Short. AP reports,

Democrats angry with delayed food-labeling rules and other issues blocked the Senate on Tuesday from finishing a long-overdue $373 billion spending bill but predicted Congress would approve the measure by next week.

The vote to halt delaying tactics against the wide-ranging package was 48-45, 12 votes short of the 60 needed. It was Congress' first roll call of its election-year session and came just hours before President Bush was to deliver his State of the Union address. ...

... "Our desire is not to kill the bill. Our desire is to give them a chance to fix it," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. told reporters before the vote.

Related: The letter Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) sent to his fellow congressmen "urging" passage:

Dear Senator *******:

I am writing to ask you to support the Fiscal Year 2004 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. The bill funds seven appropriations bills. Passing this bill is critical to agencies' ability to carry out their core missions.

The Subcommittees have tried to accomodate your priorities and concerns in this bill. Attached you will find a list of projects that may be of particular interest to you. This list is not exhaustive, and I urge you to double-check items of interest based on the filed bill.

The Omnibus will not only fund these important priorities for your State, it will also fund programs like Agriculture, Veterans medical care, and Education. A Continuing Resolution will not address critical needs for fiscal year 2004. I urge you to support these important programs.

Cordially,

TED STEVENS
Chairman

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Confessions of a Car Salesman: Long, hard-to-put-down read I missed when it first published in July at edmonds.com. A new salesmen narrates his training and time on the showroom floor.

(Thanks to Geek News -- which blurbed it as, "the most detailed read I have found on tricks that car dealers and salesman play to get more money in their pocket and less in yours" -- for keeping it alive.)

Here's an interesting bit:

One young guy was killing time by goofing around with his Palm Top computer. He was outfitted in designer jeans and a T-shirt, so I wasn't surprised to hear that he had just bought the radical new SUV our dealership sold. Michael had told me these vehicles were selling for over sticker prices, so I asked Mr. Palm Top how he made out.

"I got an awesome deal," he said.

"How awesome?"

"Three hundred below invoice," he smugly answered.

I asked how he did it. He said he checked prices on the Internet. He then called the fleet manager and made the deal over the phone.

I had a schizophrenic reaction to this. Part of me admired the fact that he had outfoxed the dealer. But the car salesman side of me was angry that I never "got a shot at him." It seemed like just a matter of time before people who, in the past, walked onto our car lot, would be on the Internet making deals.

The salesmen are only vaguely aware of this developing trend. I was standing on the curb next to George and we saw one of these high-demand SUVs ready for delivery.

"Another damn Internet sale," George said. "Why don't they turn that car over to us? We'd get a grand over sticker. Instead they're selling it at invoice. Does that make sense?" As the days passed I noticed more and more cars marked "carsdirect.com." And as I approached people on the car lot they often informed me that they were here to see the fleet manager. More Internet customers.

The final chapter focuses on car-buying concepts and recommendations, how to make the best deal.
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Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion: Slashdot has the most interesting report on this, quoting a Reuters story and getting feedback on all sorts of mail services as a result. Tip of the hat to Andrew Orlowski for pointing to this one, which strikes a loud chord with me:

Instead of messing around with all this e-mail stuff, how about you concentrate on actually making your search engine useful again? It has become completely overrun with results like sony.dscp10.reviews.digital.cameras.hot.sex.now.fr eesexsite.com that it's becoming incredibly hard to actually get any information out of it. It used to be that when I searched for a product, you gave me user/site reviews on that product. Now, all I get is a bunch of people trying to make me buy it from them.

Please remedy this before trying to do other things.

Yes!
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Dan Gillmor: Tech Industry Giants' Marry Hollywood: You Lose. In the San Jose Mercury News, blogger Dan takes on fair use:

The digital revolution has been all about empowering people, to use technology in ways that broaden our horizons and our freedom. So when the tech industry began moving into consumer electronics, there were reasons to expect great things.

The consumer electronics companies, by and large, have sold closed boxes that deliberately limit customers' options. This is by tradition, in part for simplicity and ease of use, but also to placate an entertainment industry that tramples customers' rights in the name of curbing copyright infringement.

I've been hoping that the tech industry will bring its better traditions into the living room -- expanding customers' flexibility and creativity, not curbing them.

At the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, the evidence was mixed. While new technology is adding some useful features to consumer electronics, tech companies -- by embracing Hollywood-dictated restrictions on how digital content is used -- have allied themselves with a greedy cartel at the expense of their own customers. ...

... The electronics show's most notable display of the tech industry's growing tilt came from Carly Fiorina, chief executive at Hewlett-Packard. Surrounding herself onstage with famous performers and other Hollywood types, she swore an oath of loyalty to the copyright industry.

In coming years, HP will be selling consumer electronics such as PC-based home media centers, music players, digital TVs and more. Fiorina vowed that HP will use every method at its disposal to help copyright holders block unauthorized use of their content. If HP also restricts customers' "fair use" rights -- the ability to make personal copies and quote from others' works -- guess that's someone else's problem.

Well, here's my oath: The HP laptop I bought a couple of months ago is the last product I'll buy from the company until it remembers some of the other principles of its founding and success, such as customer empowerment.

Great column. Please go there and read it all.
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Blowing it: During the weeklong Peyton Manning hype, the Patriots rightly said, "What about us? We chopped liver?," then stuffed Manning in a deliberate application of karma: Manning is picked off, sacked and generally pummeled back where he came from. Only the Colts' red-zone defense keeps the 24-14 score from being 44-14 (five Vinatieri field goals instead of touchdowns).

Now they hear, "Whaddya mean, no respect?" (Patriots only failure: Trying to play the no-respect card)

So now Carolina fans are whining, "What about us? No respect... " (Disrespect issue is fuel for Carolina)

And sportswriters diss 'em both:

Hold your nose: Game might stink
No offense, but Super Bowl shapes up as super ugly game
Will the Super Bowl be a snoozer?
Super Bowl's lure not so super

Sportswriters grab a meme and bounce it around, amplifying it among them selves until it's "true." At least until gametime, when all the Peyton Manning boosters gave the win to Bill Belichick, who didn't play, and tactfully, no one served crow.

Lame excuse: Chris Mortensen, ESPN.com:

"Officially, you might have seen that I picked the Colts to defeat the Patriots, but I made that pick on Friday before I was able to analyze the game with real 'insiders.' After talking to them, it was evident to me that New England was going to win quite convincingly."

If Mortensen's not an insider, who is?

There'll be a gazillion sporting words written between now and Feb. 1 and, after introducing us to unfamiliar players, the rest will be blowin' smoke.

Watch out especially for the reams of ink and pixels that will pitch the game as coaches' chess, the Pats' Bill Belichick against the Panthers' Bill Fox. Neither of them will suit up.

Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi: "I don't want to use the word 'chess' because that's a finesse thing. To us, it was more like rock 'em, sock 'em robots."
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Pundits Got It Wrong: Not football, the Iowa caucus results. Same difference. (It's by Howard Kurtz, WaPo.)

In no Rush to forgive, from the N.Y. Daily News,

PHILADELPHIA - When Sam McNabb heard the words coming from Rush Limbaugh's mouth - the hateful, hurtful words about his son Donovan - he flashed back to another devastating night in the early 1980s.

It was supposed to be a wonderful time for Sam McNabb's family, the culmination of what he calls "the all-American concept" - he finally was able to buy his wife and two children a house in the leafy Chicago suburbs.

But the house was in a neighborhood where almost everyone else was white, and a black family from the inner city wasn't exactly welcome in Dolton, Ill.

"When we closed on our house, that night of the closing, the neighbors got together," Sam McNabb says. "They broke into the house, vandalized it, knocked holes in the wall, urinated on the carpeting, broke windows, and spray painted on the house."

"Here you are trying to create a better lifestyle for you and your family, you haven't done anything to anybody," he adds. "You work, you try to show your kids how to be self-sustaining and to go to school and get educated and do the things they need to do. And then you get this tremendous setback in your life by people who are uncaring and insensitive and all they can look at is the color of the skin and not the content of your character."

Later: Story confused Mt. Carmel, Ill. with Mt. Carmel section of Chicago

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F*** the Nazis, says Winston Churchill's parrot: Strangest story of any day, from the Mirror (U.K.)

SHE WAS at Winston Churchill's side during Britain's darkest hour. And now Charlie the parrot is 104 years old...and still cursing the Nazis.

Her favourite sayings were "F*** Hitler" and "F*** the Nazis". And even today, 39 years after the great man's death, she can still be coaxed into repeating them with that unmistakable Churchillian inflection.

Many an admiral or peer of the realm was shocked by the tirade from the bird's cage during crisis meetings with the PM.

But it always brought a smile to the war leader's face.

Churchill bought Charlie - giving him a boy's name despite the fact she was female - in 1937.

She took pride of place in a bizarre menagerie of pets including lambs, pigs, cattle, swans and, at one point, a leopard.

He immediately began to teach her to swear - particularly in company - and she is keeping up the tradition today. ...

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Microsoft: We took MikeRoweSoft too seriously: At CNet and everywhere else:

Microsoft says it may have been overaggressive in threatening Web entrepreneur Mike Rowe over the name of his Web site, Mikerowesoft.com.

Rowe, a 17-year-old student from Vancouver, British Columbia, registered Mikerowesoft.com to front his part-time Web site design business in August 2003. Three months later, he received an e-mail from Microsoft's lawyers, asking him to transfer the domain name to Microsoft. They offered to pay him a "settlement" of $10, which is the cost of his original registration fee.

However, after the case received widespread coverage on the Internet, Microsoft acknowledged that it may have taken things too far and promised to treat Rowe fairly. A representative of the software company told ZDNet UK: "We appreciate that Mike Rowe is a young entrepreneur who came up with a creative domain name. We take our trademark seriously, but maybe a little too seriously in this case."

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What's not on the net: Marylaine Block -- self-described "Writer, Internet Trainer, "Librarian wihtout Walls' " -- writes,

I have a little chart, designed to blow the minds of students whose first impulse, with any assignment, is to head to the net, and maybe also those folks who ask whether we need libraries now that we have the internet. The chart is my guess -- and I accentuate guess, because I'm not sure it's even possible to get exact numbers -- about the distribution of all the information that has ever existed.

I'm guessing the net represents, at most, perhaps 12% of the world's accumulated store of information. Here is my reasoning:...

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January 19, 2004, 5:55 p.m.

Media consolidation, overtime rules, beef labeling on the line Tuesday: From the Washington Post,

Senate Republicans are cranking up pressure for swift passage of a long-overdue $328 billion government spending bill by warning wavering lawmakers that they could lose thousands of home-state projects and face a freeze on expenditures if they block passage of the measure. ...

...Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) sent senators a letter last week listing home-state projects they would lose if the bill failed. And yesterday Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) warned colleagues in a letter that defeat would mean a loss of spending increases for many popular national programs.

Democrats, angry over GOP inclusion of controversial policy provisions, blocked passage of the measure just before Congress adjourned last year, and Republicans scheduled a showdown vote for Tuesday, the opening day of the new session. If Democrats continue to try to block the bill, 60 votes would be required for passage, and both sides say they expect it to be close.

...Frist's statement appeared to rule out efforts to rewrite the bill to accommodate Democratic objections to provisions dealing with overtime pay, media consolidation, and country-of-origin labeling for beef and other foods, although senators said talks are underway to resolve the labeling dispute.

...Meanwhile, half a dozen conservative groups joined in opposing the bill as bloated and laden with pork. "This is a drunken-sailor budget, and it ought to be defeated," said Paul M. Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America. In addition to Weyrich's group, the organizations included the American Conservative Union, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Club for Growth and the National Taxpayers Union.

In a story that's not publicly available online, Variety notes,

During the summer and fall months, lawmakers attached language to the FCC spending bill restoring the cap on the percentage of TV households one company can reach from the new 45% back to the original 35%. But in the final negotiations to hash out other differences between the House and Senate bills, the White House and GOP leaders in Congress -- without Democratic input -- decided to change the cap to 39%, a move that would allow Viacom/CBS and News Corp/Fox to keep all their current holdings instead of being forced to sell some to comply with the prior limit.

Yes, the same Viacom/CBS that refused to sell Super Bowl time for the moveon.org ad about working children whose only text is "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"

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"Real men of genius" radio ads for Bud Light -- dozens of them -- are on the Web as mp3s. I didn't discover these until they made some of them into TV ads, but they've been going for a few years.

Earlier spots were called "Real American Heroes" but that changed after Sept. 11, 2001.

The crooner on all of them is David Bickler, the former lead singer of the '80s band Survivor (Eye of the Tiger). At 50, he has a new career.
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Good jobs will disappear, and bad jobs will go to "guest workers" with no rights is one of headlines on a jobs story by James K. Galbraith, professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. It's at Salon, where the free day pass still works. Here's a chunk about Bush's immigration "reform" proposal:

...The new class of migrants would have to leave when their permits are up, unless renewed. They would have to leave if fired from their jobs. In a word, employers would judge who stays in the country and who is kicked out. Forget labor rights. Forget unions. Also forget family, home, neighborhood, things like that. Anyone wanting to protect those things will stay out of sight. ...

... This program will permit any employer to admit any worker. From any country. At any time. The only requirement is that it be for a job Americans are not willing to take. But it is easy to create such jobs: Cut wages. Terminate the unions. Lengthen the hours. Speed up the lines. Chicken farmers have known this for years. Bush's plan is a blank check for every bad boss this country has.

And for those who take up the program, register as temporary workers, and then see their permits expire? Bush is at pains to say that he expects this group to go home. But who will make them? Will the government organize a mass campaign of roundups and deportations? Or will the workers just quietly disappear back into the sub-underground of the truly illegal?

And for those who do go home, who will replace them? Another cohort of strangers? This is a program to create a rotating underclass of foreign workers, who never assimilate to American ways or adopt American values. It's hard to imagine anything worse for our social life -- more productive of petty crime -- or for that matter, riskier for our national security.

... For millions of citizen workers, what would happen? The answer is clear: Bad bosses drive out the good. Good bosses will turn bad under pressure. The terms of our jobs would get worse and worse. Who would want a citizen worker? A bracero will be so much cheaper, more loyal, and under control. And who among us, in our right mind, would want to look for work? Unless, of course, we needed to eat. Or pay the mortgage. I am not exaggerating: This is a threat to us all. ...

Yikes!
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"Vote by Issue" quiz: WBUR and the Online NewsHour asks what your positions are on a range of issues, then compares your values to those of the candidates. All nine campaigns responded with their stands on

Role of U.S. Military
Energy and Environment
Social Security
Employment
Family and Marriage
Security & Civil Liberties
Terrorism
Iraq -- Rebuilding
Education
Health Care
Poverty and Homelessness
Gun Control
Trade Policy

You may be surprised to find that your issues are spread around, and that someone you had dismissed is promising to deliver what you want. (What you do with that information is up to you.)
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New website for Katinka Matson's scanner art: At BoingBoing, a pointer to what John Brockman describes as,

"Katinka Matson has just redone her website and put up a catalog of large Iris Giclee prints (up to 3' x 4') for sale. They're beyond spectacular.

As great as they look on the web, the prints take your breath away."

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General Wesley Clark's Argyle Sweater, for sale on eBay, is described as "grey in color, with an attractive argyle pattern in tan, dark green, and dark red."

Here at 5:10, the going price is $12,300.45 after 107 bids, with the auction continuing through Saturday.

Proceeds will be donated to " Liberty House, a transitional shelter that is opening for homeless veterans in Manchester, New Hampshire," the listing says.
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Dear Reader is a free book club that sends two or three chapters of books, spread over several daily emails.
via Judy Watt
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Online, free: The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir's "seminal" work, is online free. (Her boyfriend was Jean Paul Sartre.) Here's how the introduction starts:

Introduction
Woman as Other

FOR a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it. It is still talked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered during the last century seems to have done little to illuminate the problem. After all, is there a problem? And if so, what is it? Are there women, really? Most assuredly the theory of the eternal feminine still has its adherents who will whisper in your ear: 'Even in Russia women still are women'; and other erudite persons - sometimes the very same - say with a sigh: 'Woman is losing her way, woman is lost.' One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that they should, what place they occupy in this world, what their place should be. 'What has become of women?' was asked recently in an ephemeral magazine.

But first we must ask: what is a woman? 'Tota mulier in utero', says one, 'woman is a womb'. But in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest. All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries ? Or is it a Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Although some women try zealously to incarnate this essence, it is hardly patentable. It is frequently described in vague and dazzling terms that seem to have been borrowed from the vocabulary of the seers, and indeed in the times of St Thomas it was considered an essence as certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy. ...

Also on the page: The Second Sex, 25 years on, 1976 interview, begins,

Q. It’s now about twenty-five years since The Second Sex was published. Many people, especially in America, consider it the beginning of the contemporary feminist movement. Would you ...

Beauvoir. I don’t think so. The current feminist movement, which really started about five or six years ago, did not really know the book. Then, as the movement grew, some of the leaders took from it some of their theoretical basis. But The Second Sex in no way launched the feminist movement. Most of the women who became very active in the movement were much too young in 1949-50, when the book came out, to be influenced by it. What pleases me, of course, is that they did discover it later. Sure, some of the older women — Betty Friedan, for example, who dedicated The Feminine Mystique to me — had read it and were perhaps influenced by it somewhat. But others, not at all. Kate Millet, for example, does not cite me a single time in her work. They may have become feminists for the reasons I explain in The Second Sex; but they discovered those reasons in their life experiences, not in my book.

Thanks to wood s lot for the pointer.
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One Suicide Too Many: A long, very good exploration of suicide in Seattle Weekly by Philip Dawdy, who writes as well of his own demons.

"This is where I get off, as well, and perhaps we'll meet again sometime." It was Aug. 2, 2003. "I'm Cynthia Doyon. I host and produce this show, called The Swing Years and Beyond, heard exclusively for this National Public Radio station, KUOW Seattle. The time is 12 midnight."

Then silence, save for a gunshot about 54 hours later.

Related: Is Spalding Gray Finally Swimming to Cambodia? by John Perry Barlow. Spalding is missing. His brother, Channing Gray, works here as classical music and theater critic. Not knowing is the hardest part.
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Music Fans Find Online Jukebox Half-Empty: It's the audio equivalent of 500 channels and nothing to watch, due to the difficulty of securing rights for every song, every outtake, etc.
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No seers here: None of our random newsroom guessers pegged the Pats-Colts score yesterday.
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com