By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
March 19, 2004, 6:55 p.m. -- (Last
week's weblog)
This blog turns two tomorrow. Here's the very
first week, beginning March 20, 2002. Last year, busy with Iraq links and
the Station Fire blog, I didn't even notice. Here's that
week in 2003.
I've been updating the Iraq
links page with fresh news this afternoon.
Political
cartoonist Lurie was 'agent X' for Mossad, CIA: From the Israeli
Debkafile,
No secret agent ever admits freely to being spy, certainly not someone like
internationally known political cartoonist ex-Israeli Ranan Lurie, who today
resides in New York. So it was not surprising that in his exclusive interview
with DEBKAfile, the artist, whose finely detailed caricatures of world leaders
are familiar to readers everywhere, was reluctant to part with too many details
of his own undercover past.
The interview moves from questions about the Mossad’s purchase of
a weekly magazine in Israel to provide the young cartoonist with a springboard
to international journalism, to the training given every U.S. agent, including
lessons in guerrilla warfare and parachute jumps with the 101st Airborne
Division.
The conversation touches on the episode that ended in Israel shooting down
a plane carrying the entire Egyptian general staff - to Claire Booth Luce,
who opened her heart and the Time-Life empire to the dashing Lurie...
This is a two-part series. Earlier this week, The
Double Life of the Media Celeb did not name the agent.
Lurie's work has been seen in many U.S. publications; on
this page, scroll down for some samples.
Link
to this item | Comment
United
for Peace plans 250 U.S. events, protests in more than 50 countries
Saturday.
Link
to this item | Comment
The modern-day Venus
de Milo: BBC reports,
The
vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square is to be filled with a marble statue
(that's a small model of it at right) of a naked woman. Rather than
aping classical sculpture, the model - Alison Lapper, born with no arms
- says
it is a
very modern
take
on femininity.
When heavily pregnant with her son, artist Alison Lapper posed naked for
a sculpture which is about to take pride of place in the heart of London.
The work - entitled Alison Lapper Pregnant, by Marc Quinn - has been selected
to fill the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for 18 months, the latest
in a rota of sculptures for the plinth.
It is a work which celebrates all that is important to Ms Lapper - single
motherhood, acceptance of disability, and her own body as a thing of beauty.
"I've explored these issues in my own work, through photography and
installations, but I never would have been able to afford to do so in 15-ft
high Italian marble, as Marc will be able to do with this sculpture," she
says.
"I love the fact that it has got the UK talking, that it gives disability
a platform for debate. It's a positive image of womanhood, even though it's
not going to appeal to those who wanted the Queen Mother up there."
Born in 1965 with phocomelia, a congenital condition similar to that caused
by Thalidomide, Ms Lapper stands at just 3ft 11ins, having cast off the artificial
limbs she wore as a child. ...
Link
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The
Senator Prank: "Posing as a ten-year-old boy, I (John Hargrave)
sent the following plea to each of our nation's U.S. Senators:
Dear Senator,
My name is John Hargrove, and I am in the fifth grade at Fiske Elementary school
in Wellesley, Ma. For my Social Studies class, mrs. Rawson assignded us a
govermnet project. I want to be a comedian when i grow up, so I am writing
evdry U.S. Senator and asking what there famorite joke is. Please send the
joke on the included form.
Sincerely,
John Hargrove
Age 10
He included a Senator Joke Form.
America's Funniest Senators: "The
Senators who fell for it" include Sen. Kerry
-- well, one of his staffers and 14 more:
Dear John - The following is a joke that Senator Kerry has been using recently
at public speaking engagements. I hope it is helpful with your project and
that you realize your dream of becoming a comedian (although you will probably
need better material than this!) Good luck.
Sincerely
[Name]
Office of Senator John Kerry
Joke : "We have a new Chaplain in the Senate and a tour came through the
other day. They asked him a lot of questions about being Chaplain and one person
turned to him and asked: "When you open the Senate with prayer each morning,
do you look out at the Senators and pray for them?" The Chaplain didn’t
lose a beat – he said "No, actually I look out at all those Senators
and I pray for the country."
Link
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100
Most Often Mispronounced Words: from yourdictionary.com. This might
raise some hackles. Their "mispronunciation" is my regionalism. Whoever says
the
"th"
in "clothes" hails from nowhere.
Link
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FCC v. Howard Stern: Doc
Searls and Jeff Jarvis are all over this.
Related: Hundreds
Of Howard Stern Fans Protest Indecency Crackdown from MTV.
Salon: (free reg.req.) Defining indecency down
Link
to this item | Comment
Dennis Miller embarrasses himself:: Here's a clip of Eric Alterman on the Dennis
Miller show. It's inexplicable
-- if Miller doesn't want to talk with him, why invite him? Here's a bit of
Alterman's take on it:
In my dressing room, which was pretty elaborate as such things go, I met
with a series of staff members who informed me that Dennis would be wanting
to discuss
topics such as George Soros and the funding of 527s; whether Bush was exploiting
the 9/11 families, and I forget what else, just like a real talk show. Then
I go out there and what? I’m talking to a stoned teenager, who can’t
be bothered to say more than, “Whoh, man, you are so totally screwed
up. Like, you really believe that stuff, dude?” I paraphrase, but really,
Dennis did not say much more than that. Everyone on staff was extremely apologetic
afterward and the word “unprofessional” was used over and over.
Later: Alterman writes, "Dennis Miller called my cell to apologize and to
say
that he was in the wrong and he is sorry. I accepted his apology."
Once upon a time, kids, Dennis Miller was a smart, funny man.
Link
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Coke
Scrambles to Deal with Water Recall: Reuters reports,
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co., harshly
criticized in 1999 for its slow response to a product contamination scare
in Europe, scrambled to contain potential fallout from a recall of its Dasani
bottled water brand in Britain.
The world's largest soft drink maker voluntarily began pulling all of its
estimated 500,000 bottles of Dasani from the British market on Friday after
discovering some samples contained levels of bromate that exceeded legal standards.
Long-term exposure to bromate, a non-metallic salt, has been linked to a higher
risk of cancer.
Link
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March 18, 2004, 6:55 p.m. -- (Last
week's weblog)
Diebold ATMs (and voting machines?) play music: Diebold,
the voting machine company, also makes ATMs. (See, they can give
paper receipts.)
My colleague Tim Barmann passes along an email about such a machine at Pittsburgh's
Carnegie Mellon University::
From: Carla Geisser <cgeisser@******.cmu.edu>
Subject: For your amusement: Broken ATM
A Diebold ATM in Baker hall just crashed, and dropped to a Windows XP desktop.
Several intrepid students started Windows Media player, and it was playing
a variety of music with a nice visualizer.
So much for security...
Photos:
http://www.coed.org/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=3334
Movies (with audio):
http://yogi.pdl.cmu.edu/~cgeisser/photos/
- Carla
Tim added, "The phrase 'Pay no attention to that man behind the
curtain' comes
to mind."
The underlying Windows software also popped up on 40 percent of the
Diebold voting machines in San Diego during the March 2 primary election. According
to the
San
Jose Mercury
News,
Poll workers were trained to expect their computer screens to show a page
from the voting-system software. Instead, 40 percent of the 1,611 devices
initially displayed a screen from the Windows operating system, according
to the report
by the county's Chief Administrative Office. ...
Diebold Election Systems of McKinney, Texas, is trying to determine the
cause. The county's report blamed an unexpected discharge from an internal
battery that caused the computers to reset themselves and display the Windows
screen.
"We just don't know yet why there would have been a low battery or
power-source issue," Diebold spokesman David Bear said. "We are
certainly looking at it."
The county said Diebold is expected to deliver its own report on the problem
in about two weeks.
Back in the ATM world, Finextra
reported Tuesday that
Wincor Nixdorf is releasing a cryptographic device designed to prevent viruses
from triggering unauthorised cash withdrawals at ATMs.
Wincor Nixdorf says switching ATMs from from private X.25 networks to Internet
connections has resulted in an increased risk of viruses attacking cash
machines. ...
... In December last year, ATM manufacturer Diebold had to shut down a number
of units running Windows XP Embedded after they were hit by the Nachi worm,
which was written to exploit breaches created by the MSBlast, or Blaster worm.
Link
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Fundrace2004
Neighbor Search: Campaign contributions are a matter
of public record, and now you can see who your neighbors have supported.
Link
to this item | Comment
Japanese
artist Yoko
Dholbachie makes beautiful
monsters and much more.
At right: a Christmas card -- along the bottom, the type reads, "Sweet
silent Christmas night for you."
Here's a
larger version, here's a
visual index at Dholbachie's site (these are not miniatures, just a circular
section, so you need to click on each to the see the entire image).
via Patrick
Blake
Link
to this item | Comment
The
nuclear merit badge: Tim Rauschenberger at the Christian Science
Monitor reviews The
Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story Of A Boy And His Backyard Nuclear
Reactor, a book by Ken Silverstein
based on his 1998 story
in Harper's. Here's the ending of that story:
David went into a serious depression after the federal authorities shut
down his laboratory. Years of painstaking work had been thrown in the garbage
or
buried beneath the sands of Utah. Students at Chippewa Valley had taken to
calling him "Radioactive Boy," and when his girlfriend, Heather,
sent David Valentine's balloons at his high school, they were seized by the
principal, who apparently feared they had been inflated with chemical gases
David needed to continue his experiments. In a final indignity, some area
scout leaders attempted (and failed) to deny David his Eagle Scout status,
saying
that his extracurricular merit-badge activities had endangered the community.
In the fall of 1995, Ken and Kathy demanded that David enroll in Macomb Community
College. He majored in metallurgy but skipped many of his classes and spent
much of the day in bed or driving in circles around their block. Finally, Ken
and Kathy gave him an ultimatum: Join the armed forces or move out of the house.
They called the local recruiting office, which sent a representative to their
house or called nearly every day until David finally gave in. After completing
boot camp last year, he was stationed on the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise
aircraft carrier.
Alas, David's duties, as a lowly seaman, are of the deck-swabbing and potato-peeling
variety. But long after his shipmates have gone to sleep, David stays up
studying topics that interest him--currently steroids, melanin, genetic codes,
antioxidants,
prototype reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. And it is perhaps best
that he does not work on the ship's eight reactors, for EPA scientists worry
that
his previous exposure to radioactivity may have greatly cut short his life.
All the radioactive materials he experimented with can enter the body through
ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact and then deposit in the bones and
organs, where they can cause a host of ailments, including cancer. Because
it is so
potent, the radium that David was exposed to in a relatively small, enclosed
space is most worrisome of all. Back in 1995, the EPA arranged for David
to undergo a full examination at the nearby Fermi nuclear power plant. David,
fearful of what he might learn, refused. Now, though, he's looking ahead. "I
wanted to make a scratch in life," he explains when I ask him about his
early years of nuclear research. "I've still got time. I don't believe
I took more than five years off of my life."
Don't try this at home, kids. Really.
Link
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How
to make computers greener: BBC reports,
...Research carried out previously by UN researcher Eric Williams proves
empirically that re-use is better for the environment than recycling.
The majority of PCs routinely disposed of for recycling by businesses and
consumers alike are actually far from their real end-of-life and could go on
to give as much as 6,000 additional hours of use.
This year alone will see two million working Pentium PCs buried in the British
countryside as people embrace the latest technology on offer. Quite simply
it is consumerism gone mad.
In stark contrast to this, in the developing world, 99% of children leave
school without ever having seen or touched a computer in the classroom.
According
to Share the Technology's
National Donation Database, Seeking Pentium IIs and IIIs
in Rhode Island right now: The R.I. Historical Society Library, the Exeter/West
Greenwich
School
District
and the
Central
Falls YMCA Community Center.
Thanks to Canadian reader Eric Lilius fro the link.
Link
to this item | Comment
A
Risky Culture Fight: Paul M. Weyrich, writing in the very far-right
American Spectator, decides to support Howard Stern. Because...
Legislation like this sets a precedent. If stations can be shut down for
the garbage spewed by Stern, what happens when President Hillary advocates,
and
gets passed (sic) a liberal Congress, legislation which allows complaints
to be filed for hate speech. Hate speech could well be defined as exactly
what
Rush, Sean
Hannity, Mike Reagan and others put out over the airwaves.
Amazing they'd admit that.
Link
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There's new Yeti Sports penguin
game, with more new twists.
Link
to this item | Comment
Mark
Cuban is
having too much fun. Dan
Gillmor shot him some questions, which
Cuban
answered but didn't blog.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 17, 2004
New
'Local Google search' seems a bit lost: This
could be a good idea -- "Find local businesses and services on the Web." Google
defines local as
15 miles
from the address or zip code you enter.
I entered the newsroom zip and the first word that came to
mind: sashimi.
If the first result had not been on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston,
40 miles away in the Eliot Hotel, I might have better things to say about this.
Was that a paid listing?
The second was Sylvia's Restaurant on Westminster Street. I didn't
think Sylvia's had sashimi. I called.
"Tommy's," said the voice on the phone.
"Is this Sylvia's?" I said.
"Sylvia's Lounge? Yeah."
"Do you have sashimi?"
"No."
Number 3 on the list was Quizno's Subs. It didn't look promising,
but when I called, they do indeed have sashimi.
So I did learn something after wading around some ringers. The
url is local.google.com.
Link
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The Library of Babel, a short story by by Jorge
Luis Borges, is online.
Link
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Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner Mark
Cuban has a weblog: Yesterday he published a reporter's
email, today he comments on his NBA fine.
Anybody can do this, folks. You, too.
Link
to this item | Comment
Apple announces
new "Spoken Interface" technology: At MacNN,
Apple announced new "Spoken
Interface" technology designed to vocalize and make audible everything
that visually happens on a desktop. The software is much like screen-reading
software--the last of which was discontinued for the Mac last summer, according
to BusinessWeek: "And
even better, unlike traditional screen readers, Apple's technology will
be built right into the next version of the OS X operating system. That
will be a big help. For starters, the price is sweet. Spoken Interface
won't cost anything extra because it'll be part of the core OS. Screen
readers for Windows can run up to $1,000, on top of the cost of the computer
itself." Apple has posted an online
user survey, which it says will help it develop the technology, which
will be included in Mac OS X 10.4.
Link
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Find that tune: Jeff Houck, at Side
Salad, finds an answer to
one of my recurring questions: What's that tune?
I know I'm officially old when the best music I'm exposed to on any regular
basis comes from commercials. It's how I found out about Nick Drake, The Strokes
and other great music.
But I had to dig through a ton of sites to find out who did the songs. Now
Ad Tunes compiles info on who does commercial music, as well as film trailers
and TV shows.
Link
to this item | Comment
Iraq
on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq. This
searchable database come from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member
of the Committee on Government Reform -- on that
committee's house.gov site.
Here's the
report itself, a pdf.
Link
to this item | Comment
Dilute your own: A Low-Carb
Blog reader busts
Tropicana® Light'n
Healthy -- which advertises that "It
has one-third less sugar and calories than orange juice, contains a full day's
supply of Vitamin C and is an excellent source of calcium." An 8-oz. glass has
70 calories, 17 g of carbs (!) and 14 g of sugar -- about a third less than
regular Tropicana orange juice, which has 110 calories and 22 grams of sugar.
Reader Maddy writes in the comments,
I read the back of the carton, and lo and behold...less
sugar. The reason: less juice. There is only 60% orange juice in this product.
The rest is filtered water. So..less juice..less sugar. A no-brainer. And
the cost is the same. So, you are paying the same for a watered down juice.
Also,
the calcium is reduced from 35% to 20%...
Related: Low Carb Freedom is tracking the low-carb products as they appear
in supermarket chains.
Link
to this item | Comment
Vivid images: Shelley
Powers (Burningbird) has been out with her camera, at
the St. Louis Botanical Garden, in the funky town of Nashville, Indiana, at
an
Arboretum. Soul food.
Link
to this item | Comment
Call for input: Freelancers. Tom
Tomorrow blogs,
A group called Working Today is trying to demonstrate to policymakers that
independent workers need to be included in any health care reform. To this
end, they've got a survey for freelancers, independent contractors, temps,
etc., here. They say they need 1,500 responses by next Wednesday. If you're
in any of these categories, go help them out.
Tom also has a
long, informative over-the-transom email from a Spanish reader of
his blog, a local perspective on what happened there last weekend.
Link
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Is
a Reporter's E-mail Address Really Anyone's Business? at Online
Journalism Review.
Link
to this item | Comment
NC State Scientists Develop Breakthrough Internet Protocol: 6,000
times the speed of DSL.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 16, 2004
Spain:
Appeasement vs. anger: Borja Echevarria, news editor for elmundo.es,
the website for Spain's El Mundo daily, participated in a chat at the
Washington
Post site today.
Several of the questioners probed the motives of Spaniards in turning out
the conservative government. These two questions were especially interesting:
Lake Ridge, Va.: Mr. Echevarria:
I find it troubling that the people of Spain are misdirecting their anger
at the US. Why are they not angry at groups that actually perpetrated the
attacks? It seems quite obvious that the terrorists truly accomplished their
goal in Madrid: the act of terror turned Spain against their own ally and
has created an atmosphere of appeasement in Europe. How can those of us across
the Atlantic think of anything but the appeasement of Hitler before WWII?
Has Europe learned nothing of the policy?
It is true that if you do not anger your enemy, he won't attack you in the
immediate future. But unless you are prepared to fully succumb to him in
the future, you must be prepared to fight him in the present. Why do Europeans
have a hard time seeing this? I'm not advocating all-out war anywhere. I'm
just saying that I believe a united front against terrorism is the best and
only weapon with which to fight it. But the European nations seem more concerned
with just not being the next attacked than actually finding a way to win.
Borja Echevarria: I dont't think spaniards are angry with americans,
but with the spanish goverment and with Bush policy. To the other question,
most of us think we should fight together against terrorism, but in a more
clever way than bombing Afganistan
-because Bin Laden hid there - or Irak - because Sadam lived there.
_______________________
Silver Spring, Md.: If Spain pulls out of Iraq, does that not serve
the purposes of those who threaten the free world with random acts of terror?
Is it not almost certain that they will escalate their tactics to try to
break the will of other nations?
What evidence is there that a policy of appeasement will not fail in the
present case as it has throughout history?
Borja Echevarria: It's true that, if Spain finally pulls out of Irak,
terrorists would probably have achieved their purpose, but it's more true
that spaniards didn't want to be there, and this is why they voted against
the party in the government.
Nathan Newman makes street sense.
...Let's face it-- terrorism is designed to put its targets in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If you ignore their demands, especially when those demands reflect broader global social grievances, you just help them recruit new supporters. If you give into the demands, you look weak and might encourage more attacks seeking similar concessions.
So screw the opportunistic response to the attacks themselves.
Do What Makes Sense: If getting out of Iraq was a good idea for Spain before the attacks, they are a good idea after the attacks. And while I'm not for the US abandoning Iraq without a decent attempt to prevent full-scale internal slaughter in our exit's wake, I think Spain and other countries removing cover for our unililateralism is the best way to pressure Bush to create a real international administration of the country.
Al Qaeda won the minute Bush decided to match violence with violence. Since then, global support for the terrorists has risen and support for the US has plummeted.
So in cleaning up after Bush's dance to Bin Laden's tune, we need some hard-headed decisions that ignore opportunistic responses to terrorism but address the fundamentals...
We're Americans talking about how to solve our problems. That's how we do it. What gets us beyond eyeball to eyeball?
We decide what's important to us as a people, not what's important to heads of state.
And then we act on our consensus. We choose whom we want to represent us in fair, open, free elections.
If we want anybody anywhere to think American democracy is worth importing, we walk the talk.
This is a much better story than the horse race.
Related: If you're
interested in a short history of modern Spain, the Wikipedia "free encyclopedia"
page on Generalissimo
Francisco Franco about sums it up.
Liz
Donovan also found there a large reference
page on the Madrid bombings.
Link
to this item | Comment
It's not all about us: (Wince.) Libya
upset over US calling disarmament a "victory" for
Washington. From AFP,
Libya is upset the United States has portrayed its nuclear disarmament as
a victory in US nonproliferation efforts, saying it should be recognized as
the fruit of international cooperation, an official close to the UN watchdog
said Tuesday.
On Monday, US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham had taken reporters on a
tour of Libyan nuclear arms materials and equipment being housed in the US
state
of Tennessee and claimed their handover was an "important victory" in
US nonproliferation efforts.
"Libya was quite unhappy with this dog and pony show because it hurts
them domestically (and) in the Arab world," said the Vienna-based official
close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which is headquartered
in the Austrian capital.
"It looks like unilateral US disarmament of Libya, and Libya wants it
recognized as disarmament under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and IAEA
auspices," the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters in
Washington.
Tact. Diplomacy. Face.
Link
to this item | Comment
Save
Marriage? It's Too Late: The Pill made same-sex nuptials inevitable. That's
Donald Sensing, in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal section.
I'm in a sliver of the population of the exactly right age to discuss
this with Mr. Sensing: When I was in high school, there was no Pill. When I
was
in college,
there
was. He writes,
The impulse toward premarital chastity for women was always the fear of bearing
a child alone.
No, the fear was of becoming pregnant instead of going to the prom or going
to college, and of incurring parental wrath. Bearing
a child never inevitably implied raising a child.
Many went away to "maternity homes" and gave up the child
for adoption, or their
mothers
raised
these children as their
own "change of life" babies. Others sought -- or were forced into -- illegal
back-alley abortions, sometimes with tragic results. Ever see the 1959 movie Blue
Denim, Mr. Sensing? It jibes with my memories and fears of that time.
The Pill removed this fear. Along with it went the need of men to commit
themselves exclusively to one woman in order to enjoy sexual relations at
all. Over the past four decades, women have trained men that marriage is
no longer
necessary for sex. But women have also sadly discovered that they can't reliably
gain men's sexual and emotional commitment to them by giving them sex before
marriage.
You can't gain love by blackmail, then or now. Withholding sex to force
men into marriage is hardly a path to "sexual and emotional commitment"
either.The Pill permitted both sexual expression and family planning.
Women agreed to give men exclusive sexual rights and guaranteed paternity
in exchange for their sexual loyalty and enduring assistance with childbearing
and -rearing. The man's promise of sexual loyalty meant that he would expend
his labor and resources supporting her children, not another woman's. For the
man, this arrangement lessens the number of potential children he can sire,
but it ensures that her kids are his kids.
Mr. Sensing, before the Pill there were plenty of children sired by "milkmen"
and brought up by unknowing cuckolds as their own. Unless they were dead ringers
for friends
of the family, sometimes no one was the wiser.
Of all the reasons gay people may wish to marry -- be they romantic,
economic or wanting to be part of a historic movement -- the Pill seems least
relevant of
all: Gays need not even take it.
But Mr. Sensing's concern is about control:
Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another,
because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable.
The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated.
Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and
talk in 2004 of "saving marriage" is pretty specious. There's little
there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages
till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it....
Successful, enduring marriages happen because the people in them are committed
to each other, not because they are trapped.
...same-sex marriage, if it comes about, will not cause the degeneration of
the institution of marriage; it is the result of it.
Polls show most Americans share Mr. Sensing's opposition
to extending marriage to gay people. I don't have a dog in this fight, but
I don't think we should mess with the Constitution over it. And I don't think
we should blame it on science. The societal strictures that the Pill loosened
were artificial to begin with, and,
as a woman, I experienced both sides of this as more than a theoretical argument.
As that review of Blue Denim notes,
The film ends as Art finds Janet at the first train stop, he sits, they
hug, and we know they will live happily ever after as gas station attendants
instead
of the doctors, lawyers, or engineers they could have become if they had
not foolishly done the "sex" thing.
That's not a time I'd hold in a golden haze as the good old days.
Link
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Great
Gardens is a partnership between
the Providence Public Library and Southside
Community Land Trust; they're
offering a series of three free workshops at the downtown library. The first
is Saturday
at 2:00 p.m.:
Gardening from the Ground Up
with Katherine Brown PhD, SCLT Program Director
We will weave practical information about creating and maintaining healthy
soil with poetry about the wonders of growth, seeds and gardens. Participants
will explore the living soil and learn techniques for starting seeds right
in their windowsills.
April 3's topic will be "Growing Organic in the City and Beyond: Why and
How" with Rich Pederson, SCLT City Farm Manager; May 8, Great Family Gardens with
Kiera Mulvey, SCLT Education Coordinator.
The library is at 225 Washington Street. Workshops take place in the Family
Place Room (Level B). More information: (401) 455-8005. The program promises
you'll bring a seedling home
from each workshop.
Link
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Sandra
Tsing-Loh: "A stand against
pompous gasbags." It's worth watching the free ad at Salon to read
this
interview
with the author and
NPR contributor whose engineer forgot to bleep a "bad word" in a series about
knitting,
as
they
had
planned,
and she was fired. The quote in the headline refers to her
boss,
who
fired Loh,
went on vacation, then offered Loh her job back. No thanks, said Loh.
There's more
at the L.A. Times -- a reg.req. site, you know what to do.
Update: Time -- no reg.req. -- How I Lost My Radio Show
Here's an older
interview with Loh about her audiobook
“A Year in Van Nuys” at audiobookcafe.
Link
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Headline double entendre:
Saudi
official: 2 wanted militants killed
When I saw this AP headline, my first thought was, "And what did everybody
else want?" Oops.
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The U.S. Press and the 'Heroes in Error' At
Editor & Publisher,
Despite recent articles about the role of defectors in misleading U.S.
intelligence agencies over the alleged presence of WMD in Iraq, not
a single national
newspaper saw fit to follow up on a damning admission by Ahmad Chalabi
in The Daily Telegraph of London. ...
This is The Daily Telegraph story they're talking about: Chalabi
stands by faulty intelligence
that toppled Saddam's regime.
An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington
said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited,
had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator.
Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress,
for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US
intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for
providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington,
shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. "We
are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.
"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That
tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before
is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're
ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
Last night on Hardball, Chris Matthews read that quote above to Hans Blix,
chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. Here's the transcript:
MATTHEWS: What do you make of that? In other words, the ends justify the
means.
BLIX: Well, not in my mind.
I think it is cynical and I think is dishonest to do so. But I think what‘s
even worse is that the U.S. accepted it.
MATTHEWS: Right.
BLIX: That they believed these things. We knew, for instance, that Khidhir
Hamza, who published a book here in the U.S. about being Saddam‘s bombmaker,
and there are enormous errors in it. And I‘m sure that CIA didn‘t—knew
that as well. But why didn‘t they pay more attention to what the inspectors
had to say?
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about the gullibility of the American leaders,
people in the Pentagon, you mentioned, Wolfowitz, I guess Feith, the others
involved in this issue, the vice president‘s office, Scooter Libby.
Do you think those people were so driven toward war by ideology that they
almost were responsible for the gullibility in accepting the case made by Chalabi
about weapons of mass destruction?
BLIX: Yes, I think we would like to ask more critical thinking on behalf
of our leaders and our—people high up in the administration. They were a
little like the witch-hunters of past centuries. They were so convinced that
there were witches that it was only a question seeing whether—if you
saw a black cat, that was evidence of a witch.
Related: Iraqi
exile group fed false information to news media. From Knight Ridder in Washington,
WASHINGTON - The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration
exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information
to leading newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain
and Australia.
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The late Nuyorican
poet...: I'm late reporting that Pedro Pietri, featured
here Feb. 13, died March 3. He was on a plane enroute from Mexico, where
he gone for
alternative treatment of inoperable stomach cancer, to
New
York.
NPR has an audio
tribute
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March 15, 2004, 7:01 p.m.
Linux:
'So easy even a woman could use it': Originally from ZDnet uk.
A local council in Germany may have found the secret to overcoming user
reluctance to Linux handing out stuffed penguins and showing users that even
a woman can find her way around open source software.
The small southern Germany city of Schwäbisch Hall ditched Microsoft's
software in favour of open source back in late 2002. On Wednesday, Horst
Bräuner, the civil servant responsible for implementing the migration,
revealed the tactics used to get the council workers of Schwäbisch Hall
onside.
Undoubtedly the most controversial move on Bräuner's part was the use
of a woman to demo the software.
"We put the chairwoman of our workers' council on stage in front of
all the municipal workers, and showed her using the new system. After that,
we found that no man would say that he couldn't use his PC now that everyone
knew a woman could do it."...
Oh, those cuddly Germans do make me giggle.
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Corned
Beef and Cabbage: I made this
recipe this weekend (without the
beans) and it's great. It's steamed over beer (use the cheap stuff people
brought to your last party that you'll never drink). The cinnamon and allspice
make the house smell great, and infuse the meat and vegetables with great
flavors. Make it overnight, steaming gently.
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Military
families join in war protest: KRT reports. The AP photo at right
is of Mr. Suarez, mentioned below, holding a poster of his son
...about 600 demonstrators Sunday ... marched to the gates of the base (Dover,
Del. Air Force Base) to protest the war and to complain about restricted
access to installations, like Dover, where the bodies of those killed in
Iraq are returned.
The protest attracted various groups opposed to the war: veterans, pacifists
and church groups that were bused in from Philadelphia, Baltimore and other
northeastern cities. But it was the military families -- traveling from around
the country -- that were the centerpiece of a 3.5-mile march from a local
meeting house to the massive military base.
Forbidden to enter the complex, the marchers crammed a sliver of lawn at
a busy intersection outside the base and listened as some members of Military
Families Speak Out read the names of U.S. troops -- now numbering 564 --
who have been killed since the war began last March.
''Bush lies, and who dies?'' said Fernando Suárez del Solar of San
Diego. ``My son, Jesús Suárez del Solar Navarro, March 27.''
''I'm very disillusioned with the American government,'' del Solar said
before the march. ``For it to get involved in an illegal war and to play
with the emotions of the American people with 9/11 for politics is wrong.''
Several family members said it's also wrong for the Pentagon to prevent
people from witnessing the return of the remains of soldiers killed in Iraq
to American soil. ...
"Vietnam
on speed," indeed.
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Florida as the Next Florida: NYT on e-voting.
...Four years after Florida made a mockery of American elections, there
is every reason to believe it could happen again. This time, the problems
will
most
likely be with the electronic voting that has replaced chad-producing punch
cards. Some counties, including Bay County, use paper ballots that are fed
into an optical scanner, so a recount is possible if there are questions.
But 15 Florida counties, including Palm Beach, home of the infamous "butterfly
ballot," have adopted touch-screen machines that do not produce a paper
record. If anything goes wrong in these counties in November, we will be
in bad shape.
Florida's official line is that its machines are so carefully tested, nothing
can go wrong. But things already have gone wrong. In a January election in
Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the victory margin was 12 votes, but the
machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. It is simply not believable
that 130
people showed up to cast a nonvote, in an election with only one race on
the ballot. The runner-up wanted a recount, but since the machines do not
produce
a paper record, there was nothing to recount. ...
(Rhode Island uses optical scanners to count ballots marked by making a black
line that links an arrow's head to its tail next to the name of the candidate
of your choice.(sample, pdf.) Voting is like taking College Boards standing
up, but my eyes were
better when
I was
taking
College Boards.)
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Tree
Play at ArchitectureWeek focuses on last summer's Treemendous
Treehouses exhibit at the Atlanta
Botanical Garden. (Only subscribers to Architecture Week can see full-size
images, but they're at the Atlanta site anyway.)
via Michael Elliott's dehiscent, which
I learned about when he emailed to add it to the Garden
Blogs page. Dictionary
on
dehiscent:
adj.-
(of
e.g.
fruits
and
anthers)
opening
spontaneously
at maturity
to release
seeds
indehiscent - (of e.g. fruits) not opening spontaneously at maturity to release
seeds
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Minnesota
Zen master: The Guardian (U.K.) profiles Lake Wobegon's Garrison
Keillor.
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Firefox browser easy, fun, fast, safe, free: Dwight Silverman at The Houston
Chronicle reviews the child of Mozilla.
Where IE is bloated and intrusive, Firefox is nimble and elegant. Firefox
has many features you'd expect in a modern browser that are missing in Internet
Explorer, including a downloads manager and a pop-up ad blocker. It also displays
pages faster than IE.
It's also relatively more secure than Internet Explorer. You can worry less
about your browser being a gateway for malicious code or hackers.
Firefox is a product of the Mozilla Foundation, a coalition of open-source
software developers. Among their other projects is Mozilla, the free browser
that is also the basis for America Online's Netscape browser, which is at version
7.1.
Firefox is the foundation's next-generation browser, a rewrite of the software
with an emphasis on speed, convenience, security, simplicity and expendability.
The software is free and available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh computers
at www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/.
Related: The
Google of Email. Fast Company gushes over a $49.95 program called Bloomba:
This
is
Bloomba's
great
innovation: the ability to retrieve comprehensive search results from within
one's own inbox.
Searching for the keyword "Bloomba" in my inbox, for example, quickly
turned up messages sent to me by someone with a Bloomba email address, emails
from my editor with "Bloomba" in the subject line or message body,
and messages that I sent to execs at Bloomba while experimenting with the
product. Bloomba even searches text attachments.
Mozilla has always offered this capacity as part of the mail program (for
body searches you use a pinpoint-search dialogue; it doesn't search attachments,
but neither do I). Why are you folks still using IE???
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Paper toys to print,
fold and glue. Japanese paper
robots, ditto. Plus, this month only, a free
download of a paper Victorian
Science Fiction Submarine at /www.tin-soldier.com/
via boingboing, which just scored large at the Bloggie Awards.
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Fear
and Glowing at the Orkut Launch Party: At hiphopmusic.com, the
report from the Feb.6 launch in San Francisco of Orkut,
Google's invitation-only
social
software, finally arrives.
(Must have been quite a party.)
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Flash
guitar
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Listener
Files Petition For FCC Rehearing on Indecency Cases: At fmqb.com (Friday Morning Quarterback), which tracks radio programming:
Fed up with FCC fines against Clear Channel and Infinity for broadcasts
deemed "indecent," as
well as Clear Channel's decision to take Howard Stern off the air, a New
York attorney says he has filed papers with the FCC to intervene on behalf
of himself
and millions of other listeners. Civil rights attorney Carl E. Person feels
that if the public doesn't intervene now regarding fines for Bubba the Love
Sponge and WKRK/Detroit's Deminski & Doyle, then Stern will be the next
casualty. "If Howard Stern is taken off the air, I feel that my First
Amendment rights are being violated too," Person said.
Person issued a press release saying his "intervention" relates to
FCC penalty proceedings against Clear Channel and Infinity. He's getting involved
because he claims the radio companies are unable to appeal the fines themselves
out of fear that the FCC will strip their licenses away if they do....
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Repaying
a Big Debt to Lt. Kerry: L.A. Times profile of Jim Rassman, whose life
Kerry saved in Vietnam; Rassman contacted the Kerry campaign to volunteer two
days before
Iowa.
(This is a Yahoo news link, and may not require registration. The original
link does.)
Related: The
Tenth Brother: "Douglas Brinkley, author of Tour of Duty: John
Kerry and the Vietnam War, interviews Kerry’s tenth warmate and
gets a story sharply different from what the other nine crew members have
had to say " At Time, online only, and probably not for long.
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