Subterranean Homepage News

By Sheila Lennon

Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!

February 27, 2004, 5:08 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Music-industry suit ends in free CDs for libraries, $13.86 for me: Did you get your check yet? Several colleagues have thanked me for the $13.86 checks they received this week from their state's attorney general. This blog had alerted them in December 2002 to sign up to become part of the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement if they had purchased CDs, cassettes, or vinyl records from retailers between January 1, 1995, through December 22, 2000.

The attorneys general of 40 states and three territories brought an antitrust suit against record companies and some national retail chains for refusing to permit discount stores to charge less than traditional record stores for music. From the California Attorney General's press release,

The complaint was that big music companies entered "illegal conspiracies" to set minimum prices for CDs. Under the alleged scheme, the music distributors subsidized the promotional costs of selling CDs for retailers who agreed to charge minimum advertised prices, which were dictated by the distributors.

Bertelsmann Music Group Inc., EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp., Sony Music Entertainment Inc., Universal Music Group, and national retail chains Transworld Entertainment Corp., Tower Records, and Musicland Stores Corp. denied any wrongdoing but agreed to a $142 million settlement.

More than 10,000 Rhode Islanders and 68,000 Massachusetts residents are among 3.5 million Americans who joined the suit and will now share $67.375 million. Even better, public libraries across the country will share $75.7 million worth of CDs.

At the suit's site now is a notice that the checks have been mailed, and

The Final Settlement Hearing was held on May 22, 2003, and the Settlement was approved on June 13, 2003. You can view the Judge's order by clicking here. An Order Regarding Claims was issued on July 2, 2003. To view the Order Regarding Claims, click here. The Final Judgment and Order was issued on July 9, 2003. To view the Final Judgment and Order, click here.

At the Rhode Island attorney general's page about the suit -- where we were initially surprised to see it called "Lynch's settlement" since the suits were consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine-- is a notice that

... Rhode Island stands to receive more than 20,000 of the estimated 5.6 million CDs that will be distributed over the course of the next few months. ...

(Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch) said that the Department of Attorney General’s Antitrust Division is now notifying schools and libraries statewide of the process that must be completed to obtain the free CDs. All libraries and schools are asked to notify the Attorney General’s office, by email or fax, of their interest in being supplied with CDs. Each applicant must include a tax identification number and the name of a contact person. The deadline for responding to the Attorney General’s office is Monday, March 1, 2004.

The CDs-including jazz, rock, blues, pop, and classical titles-will be sent to the recipients directly from the settlement administrator.

Questions should be directed to Special Assistant Attorney General Edmund F. Murray Jr. at 274-4400, Ext. 2401.

Whether you personally get the $13.86 depends on whether you signed on back when, but libraries in your area will benefit if you live in any of these places: States and territories that entered the settlement include: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.
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Goodle News: What if Google News only published good news? Here's a prototype. (Unfortunately, it's a spoof, with headlines that go nowhere.)
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Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars. The author -- and admitted "welfare queen" -- is John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC News's 20/20, writing in Reason:

Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.

-- Oliver Goldsmith

Ronald Reagan memorably complained about "welfare queens," but he never told us that the biggest welfare queens are the already wealthy. Their lobbyists fawn over politicians, giving them little bits of money -- campaign contributions, plane trips, dinners, golf outings -- in exchange for huge chunks of taxpayers’ money. Millionaires who own your favorite sports teams get subsidies, as do millionaire farmers, corporations, and well-connected plutocrats of every variety. Even successful, wealthy TV journalists.

That’s right, I got some of your money too. ...

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The Unknown Blogger: Philly mag profiles Atrios, a lefty blogger who shall remain nameless ...as along as he can:

... a quiet man in a gray turtleneck sweater sips a martini. It's the night of the Iowa caucuses, and a gaggle of Philly media and political types is watching the returns on a large TV screen. By Philadelphia standards, it's a solid B-list party -- reporters, mayoral spinners, admen. But the most powerful person in the room may be the man in the turtleneck sweater. And no one knows who the hell he is.

There are two reasons for this. One: Turtleneck is an Internet-only celebrity. He runs a hugely influential website called "Eschaton," at atrios.blogspot.com. It's a "blog" -- a sort of news junkie's online diary. He started the site back in April 2002, because "it's better than yelling at the TV set," he says. These days, he says, 40,000 viewers visit Eschaton every day, including bigwigs like columnist Michelangelo Signorile and New York Times attack pundit Paul Krugman.

The second reason for Turtleneck's low profile is way sexier: He's anonymous. He posts under the nom de 'net "Atrios." That's mostly because he has a "public job" in "education," he says, vaguely. "Anytime there's a headline -- ‘Teacher does X' … " he says, trailing off. .....

Here's a random sample from the blog of "Atrios" -- what he's leading with right now:

Go John and Joe

Link:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly 5,000 Transportation Department workers face a furlough on Monday, a possible result of two senators using an expiring highway bill to force House Republicans to accept a two month extension of an independent investigation of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

``We all have a choice here to make,'' said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., was using the highway bill as leverage to win an extension for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which is scheduled to finish its work on May 27.

He said the choice was between ``minor'' disruptions in highway projects and ``telling the families of those who died on 9/11 that the commission will not be able to complete its work.''

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A Mercedes in chrome. Ever drive a mirror?
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Willie Nelson's political song is a free mp3: You can download What Ever Happened to Peace On Earth on the site of Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Before he sings it, Willie talks briefly about how he got involved with Kucinich, and how he wrote the song. He was watching TV Christmas morning, seeing a lot of bad things happening... Lyrics are there, too.
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There goes the neighborhood: Orkut is Google's entry in the "social software" market (Friendster is better known.) You have to be invited into Orkut, where you fill out a profile, upload a photo, and find yourself part of the "network" of the person who invited you. There are networks built around everything you can think of, just like Yahoo groups (except you have to be invited by a friend, and the number of friends you have follows your name around). This is not the bizarre part.

This is: Today, J.D. Lasica blogs, Does Orkut have a harassment problem? And then I see that Rebecca Blood has published Thirteen Ways to Save Orkut.
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February 26, 2004, 7:10 p.m.

Art first

An amazing fractal.

Readers respond to "Why not pass the Equal Rights Amendment?": There was lots of email on this one. First some more links readers sent, then we're off.

National ERA Meetup day is March 6. Sign up at this link or start at the main page of meetup.com.
www.4ERA.org
The ERA page at about.com

Here we go...

Why do we need the ERA?

I could answer this in five ways: indignantly, philosophically, proactively, historically and practically,

I'll start with my indignant response.
My immediate inner reaction to this question is always: How dare you ask me to justify my desire for women to be included equally in the Constitution. HOW DARE YOU? We need it because we don't have it.

Then philosophically:
If I want to hark back to my days as a philosophy student I would say,"Actually, the answer is very Zen. The answer is in the question. If I were African American, would you ask me why I wanted to be treated equally? Why is it even considered okay to pose the question "Why do we need the ERA"?

It's okay to pose that question because sex discrimination is still acceptable in America. That is why we need the ERA. If sex discrimination didn't exist, ERA activists wouldn't need to go around begging legislators and members of Congress to ratify the ERA. Lawmakers would pass ERA legislation without hesitation, IF sex discrimination did not exist.

My more dignified and proactive response?
We need the ERA because, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, it would send a message of zero tolerance for sex discrimination out to the American public. In the eyes of the Courts (and this is really the only safe answer to the question) it would elevate charges of sex discrimination to the same level of importance as racial discrimination.

If I wanted to put it in historical perspective:
It's inclusion (and the resulting benefit of greater scrutiny by the courts of sex discrimination cases) would begin to affect the attitudes of future generations of Americans much the same as the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote and the Civil Rights Act did for racism. Will it mean that sex discrimination disappears? Probably not. But it will mean that it's victims have greater strength and it just might become politically incorrect to pose the question "Why do we need the ERA?"

And finally , if I wanted to give a practical reason:
Ratification of the ERA would immediately affect insurance, social security benefits and employment practices which are discriminatory to women and which cost women millions of dollars each year.

Idella Moore
4ERA (www.4ERA.org)

Shorter:

It's an abomination that we don't have an ERA when so many people mistakenly believe we do, and even more think we should.

The ERA debate is old news -- clearly the vast majority supports constitutional equality for women.

What is new and news about the era is that it very well may yet be passed with the successful ratification of three currently unratified states. The ERA is alive and well, and it's about time!

c.r. brodak

Against:

sorry, Phyllis Sclaffly makes the most sense.....

KenCon

Long form. This is from Sandy Oestreich, founder and president of ERA Inc of Florida.

I am the ERA Campaign Network coordinator who rekindled the ERA fire in Florida in 2001. Still working hard, we are now ERA Inc comprising 105 organizations with 270,000 members, an ERA Action Team in every major Florida City, and all 67 Florida counties endorsing ERA. My Smart Woman interview (video on the page) about the national effort... is now airing on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox and local TV channels in 80 national markets. We are working for Florida's ratification through SCR 238 and HCR 93 that were introduced early in the Florida Legislature and about to be taken up. I will be moving to our Florida capital, living and eating where I can so that I can lobby (unpaid) for these bills insistently.

We are pleased and proud of the hard work we have done and are doing. We WILL get Florida ratified,just can't promise when. ...

... (Phyllis) Schlafly did talk before the Illinois House, and they all but threw her out bodily! They did right by voting to ratify overwhelmingly! She has refused to debate me twice. Frankly, when her cohorts testify in our Legislature, we welcome them of their ludicrous antique arguments: unisex toilets, women in combat, and abortion==all in place looooong before ERA, and all quite commonplace and accepted now. They keep harking back to the first ERA work with the same stale and whimsical arguments. I love to see them. Only thing is, here in FL, legislators grasp those arguments to use as a smoke screen so that they won't have to admit that they really oppose ERA because Big Business, esp the insurance industry, refuse to pay equal wages for comparable work. And wouldn't THAT enrage more than half the population if they were to admit it!! So they use these to cover up their real motivations.

With an ERA:
1. Sex discrimination would get the same attention ("strict scrutiny", a traditional legal term) as do now race, religion or national origin because these ARE in the Constitution. People bringing sex discrimination cases have already experienced egregious, humiliating behavior. Then when they go to court, they get discriminated against once again because only "intermediate" or "skeptical scrutiny" may be applied to their case. UNTIL THERE'S AN ERA for equality and benefit of both men and women.

2. Horrific sex discrimination in the military would really get zero tolerance. Examples: WASPS and WAVES, WWII women "military" in life- threatening assignments, as they were called, would not simply be dismissed upon the end of need for them. They would not be refused pension, adequate discharge, medical treatment nor be made to pay their own way home! WASPS didn't get government medical care until 1977, when many had died. WAVES still don't, and those who survive still introduce bills for it! Abominable treatment that would not exist if there were an ERA.

The 120 military in all arms of the service who have gathered up enough courage to complain of unbearable sexual harassment would not exist, for it absolutely would not happen with an ERA.

Every citizen everywhere in America would be freed from vulnerability to being judged by sex rather than capabilities by the federal or state governments. It will take 2 years for ERA to in place, giving time for all illegal sex discrimination in governments now occurring to stop. We expect lawsuits because there is so much discrimination going on now. Eventually all sex discrimination in other places will likely become anathema because many companies are connected to government by receiving grants or other contracts . Companies not so government-affiliated will succumb to public, economic and social pressures will find need to conform to ERA. So pay equity (Pay Equity Act doesn't work or we wouldn't still be making about 3/4 salaries of men for comparable work.)

Though men benefit from ERA (they file almost half of all sex discrimination cases before the Supreme Court), sex discrimination of women is more routine and typically more egregious, so after ERA for a time, there will likely be a societal shift due to social pressures: women will not likely be as marginalized, trivialized in ordinary situations as now, will not be required to have a male sign for a mortage, car loan, etc, will break the Glass Ceiling at a greater rate, quality affordable day care, maternity leave, and family leave will eventually surface as they are in other developed countries. This country is not the young, vibrant democracy, ahead of all others, as it once was. I have to get ready for one more speech this week, so must stop this unending list.

It is time to unleash female power and contributions in this 21st century by adopting an ERA. ERA language is in every charter/constitution since WWII, according to Sup. Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. But not the U.S.

In an email exchange, I mentioned to the irrepressible Oestreich that some younger women in the newsroom asked, "What's that?" when I said I had blogged about the ERA. Her response:

That's almost universal. Don't fret about it--just ask them if they know that the ONLY INCONTESTABLE RIGHT THEY HAVE IN THE US CONSTITUTION IS THE RIGHT TO VOTE and we had to fight fight fight for that! When the young woman hears that, she grabs for my petition clipboard to sign on fast.

Who knew?

Thanks for your article.... We're sending it around to our members.... Please send your address to receive mail of VFA events.. Check us out.. http://www.vfa.us

Jacqueline Michot Ceballos
Founder/President - Veteran Feminists of America

Finally:

I worked for ratification of the ERA in the '70s and am ready to do so again. We need it more than ever, despite some great progress toward equality. An amendment to ban marriage between people is another blow to freedom and equal rights. Let's Go, ERA!

Becky Yeatman

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Andrew Sullivan saw The Passion of the Christ last night, and convinced me to skip it: An excerpt (paragraphing added for easier reading):

... PURE PORNOGRAPHY: At the same time, the movie was to me deeply disturbing. In a word, it is pornography. By pornography, I mean the reduction of all human thought and feeling and personhood to mere flesh.

The center-piece of the movie is an absolutely disgusting and despicable piece of sadism that has no real basis in any of the Gospels. It shows a man being flayed alive - slowly, methodically and with increasing savagery. We first of all witness the use of sticks, then whips, then multiple whips with barbed glass or metal. We see flesh being torn out of a man's body. Just so that we can appreciate the pain, we see the whip first tear chunks out of a wooden table. Then we see pieces of human skin flying through the air. We see Jesus come back for more. We see blood spattering on the torturers' faces. We see muscled thugs exhausted from shredding every inch of this man's body. And then they turn him over and do it all again. It goes on for ever.

And then we see his mother wiping up masses and masses of blood. It is an absolutely unforgivable, vile, disgusting scene. No human being could sruvive it. Yet for Gibson, it is the h'ors d'oeuvre for his porn movie.

The whole movie is some kind of sick combination of the theology of Opus Dei and the film-making of Quentin Tarantino. There is nothing in the Gospels that indicates this level of extreme, endless savagery and there is no theological reason for it. It doesn't even evoke emotion in the audience. It is designed to prompt the crudest human pity and emotional blackmail - which it obviously does.

But then it seems to me designed to evoke a sick kind of fascination. Of over two hours, about half the movie is simple wordless sadism on a level and with a relentlessness that I have never witnessed in a movie before. And you have to ask yourself: why? The suffering of Christ is bad and gruesome enough without exaggerating it to this insane degree.

Theologically, the point is not that Jesus suffered more than any human being ever has on a physical level. It is that his suffering was profound and voluntary and the culmination of a life and a teaching that Gibson essentially omits.

That was disturbing enough to read, I don't want to sit through it. The most disturbing part of the Christian story for me has always been the violence, crucifixes everywhere dwelling on the death of Jesus, not the love. I spent fourth grade speed-reading a huge series of books on lives of the martyred saints -- pain stories -- and can still tell you how each one died, although I remember nothing about their lives.

As movies go, graphic torture does not become noble because the victim is called Jesus.

Related: Dozens of viewer reviews of The Passion of Christ at rottentomatoes.com
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Stonehenge made from Twinkies
Thanks to Patrick Blake for this and the fractal above.

Leap year cake: From the The Inglenook Cook Book (1906). (The recipes are linked in the bright yellow table.) Here it is, in its entirety:

Take 1 cup of white sugar, 1/2 cup of butter, whites of 3 eggs, 1/2 cup of sweet milk, 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder, and 1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
Frosting: Beat the yellow of the eggs with at least 15 teaspoonfuls of pulverized sugar. Ice while cake is hot

Sister J. T. Myers, Oaks, Pa.

Related: The Morris County (N.J.) Library's Food Timeline has lots of links to old recipes and background on the newest hot products of their times.
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SUVs yet again: Tom Mangan not only emailed me out of concern for "Steve the truck guy," who wanted to keep his family safe, he also blogged about it:

This is the fundamental fallacy of truck/SUV ownership, that the big heavy frame makes the car safer to the truck/SUV's owner. It actually makes it more dangerous, as Malcolm Gladwell's article, linked yesterday, illustrates.

Here's why: The unit-body car frame is designed to collapse and absorb the impact of a collision so that when the passengers are hurled against the car's interior they'll hit it with less force -- and less injury. A truck or SUV mounted on parallel beams of rigid steel cannot collapse and absorb impact this way, so when the truck/SUV owner crashes, he hits the interior of his car with a lot more force. The other good thing about unit-body: when two cars built this way collide, the impact-absorption goes both ways, making it less likely that both cars' occupants will be seriously injured. But when SUVs and trucks hit stuff, it's more likely they'll do worse damage to themselves and the other vehicle.

If you want safety for your family, buy a minivan. From (Malcolm) Gladwell's (New Yorker) article:

In a thirty-five-m.p.h. crash test ... the driver of a Cadillac Escalade ... has a sixteen-per-cent chance of a life-threatening head injury, a twenty-per-cent chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a thirty-five-per-cent chance of a leg injury. The same numbers in a Ford Windstar minivan ... are, respectively, two per cent, four per cent, and one per cent.

Related: How an S.U.V. Stacks Up to a Car on the Test Track

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February 25, 2004, 7:55 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Why not pass the Equal Rights Amendment? If you're itching to amend the Constitution, why not pass the Equal Rights Amendment -- the one that says men and women are equal? Here's the entire text of it, as written in 1923 by Alice Paul and introduced into every session of Congress since:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this Article.

Section 3. This Amendment shall take effect two years after thedate of ratification.

Isn't that in the Constitution already? No, although 72 percent of Americans surveyed in 2001 think it is.

Thirty-five of the required 38 states had passed the ERA between 1972, when it was passed by Congress and and sent to the states for ratification, and 1982, when its seven-year time limit and a three-year extension, also voted by Congress, expired.

If the ratification period expired, isn't it dead?

Not necessarily, according to Jennifer Macleod, with whom I spoke today. Macleod, National Coordinator of the ERA Campaign Network, notes there is no mention of time limits in the Constitution itself. "The 1979 Congress extended it for three years, and any later Congress could extend it again by a simple majority in both houses," she said.

Illinois may be the 36th state to ratify it, as part of a three-state strategy to get the ERA passed by the required two-thirds three-quarters of the states and then seek an extension of the ratification period. Opponents who might insist ERA would have to start over (and would press their case in the courts), would face a"start-over ERA," that has more than 200 bipartisan cosponsors, in the House, where Rep. Carolyn Maloney, (D-N.Y), is chief sponsor; in the Senate, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced the amendment every year.

A pamphlet titled The ABCs of Women's Issues, (pdf) by The National Council of Women's Organizations (which describes itself as "a nonpartisan, nonprofit umbrella organization of almost 200 groups that collectively represent over ten million women across the United States") notes,

Opponents have also argued that since a number of states rescinded their ratification votes, the total number of ratifying states is less than 35. However, the U.S. Constitution makes no provision for rescission. ...

NCWO supports the reintroduction of the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress, and those working to gain 3 more states for ratification. In light of the fact that the 27th Amendment became part of the Constitution in 1992 after 203 years, the ERA’s ratification period of less than three decades would surely meet the “reasonable” and “sufficiently contemporaneous” standards set by several Supreme Court decisions.

Who are these opponents, and why didn't ERA pass? ERA's most visible opponent remains Phyllis Schlafly, who still opposes it, offering this "thumbnail analysis" of ERA on her Stop ERA page:

1. ERA is a fraud; it pretends to benefit women and "put women in the Constitution," but women would receive no benefit from it whatsoever, and the Constitution has been gender-neutral ever since it was written.

2. ERA would require 18-year-old girls to register for the draft and make them subject to conscription and combat duty just like men, and the American people are not going to tolerate this.

3. ERA would transfer large areas of law, now within the domain of the states, to the Federal Government, such as marriage, divorce, family law, child custody, schools, insurance, prisons, etc., and the Federal Government already has grabbed too much power.

Much of this acquires irony in the light of President Bush's endorsement yesterday of an amendment to prohibit gay marriage.

A January 2003 story in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times headlined ERA activists undaunted by 20-year delay includes this bit of history:

In a 1994 article in the Phyllis Schlafly Report called "Beating the Bra Burners," Schlafly described her victory over the ERA this way: "The unstoppable was stopped by our unflappable ladies in red. They descended on state capitols wearing their octagonal Stop ERA buttons. They treated legislators to home-baked bread. And they sweetly and persistently made their case that the ERA was a fraud: It would actually take away legal rights that women possessed, such as the right of an 18-year-old girl to be exempt from the military draft and the right of a wife to be supported by her husband."

The Mormon Church in Utah, conservative religious groups and anti-abortion groups also weighed in against the ERA.

In a letter (msword, pdf) to members of Congress in February 2003, the National Right to Life Congress said it would withdraw its opposition to the ERA if this sentence were added:

“Nothing in this article [the ERA] shall be construed to grant, secure, or deny any right relating to abortion or the funding thereof.”

American opinion: The study cited above, by Opinion Research Corporation, used telephone interviews with a representative sample of 1,002 adults, 500 men and 502 women, all 18 years of age and older, asked three questions:

Question 1: "In your opinion, should male and female citizens of the United States have equal rights?" 90 percent said Yes, 3 percent No, 1 percent were undecided.

Question 2: "As far as you know, does the Constitution of the United States make it clear that male and female citizens are SUPPOSED to have equal rights?" 96 percent said Yes, 18 percent No, 10 percent were undecided.

Question 3: "In your opinion, SHOULD the Constitution make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?" 88 percent said Yes, 9 percent No, 3 percent were undecided.

I asked Jennifer Macleod, of the ERA Campaign Network, about the buzz surrounding the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

"It calls people's attention to how amendments are adopted." she said. "The President has no role, beyond his bully pulpit."

The states that have not ratified the ERA:

Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
Nevada
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Utah
Virginia

More: http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/overview.htm

In the summer of 1996, the Ford Motor Company began building the Expedition, its new, full-sized S.U.V., at the Michigan Truck Plant, in the Detroit suburb of Wayne.

The Expedition was essentially the F-150 pickup truck with an extra set of doors and two more rows of (seats) -- and the fact that it was a truck was critical. Cars have to meet stringent fuel-efficiency regulations. Trucks don't. The handling and suspension and braking of cars have to be built to the demanding standards of drivers and passengers. Trucks only have to handle like, well, trucks. Cars are built with what is called unit-body construction. To be light enough to meet fuel standards and safe enough to meet safety standards, they have expensive and elaborately engineered steel skeletons, with built-in crumple zones to absorb the impact of a crash.

Making a truck is a lot more rudimentary. You build a rectangular steel frame. The engine gets bolted to the front. The seats get bolted to the middle. The body gets lowered over the top. The result is heavy and rigid and not particularly safe. But it's an awfully inexpensive way to build an automobile. Ford had planned to sell the Expedition for thirty-six thousand dollars, and its best estimate was that it could build one for twenty-four thousand--which, in the automotive industry, is a terrifically high profit margin. Sales, the company predicted, weren't going to be huge. After all, how many Americans could reasonably be expected to pay a twelve-thousand-dollar premium for what was essentially a dressed-up truck? ...

But why?

...Consumers said they liked four-wheel drive. But the overwhelming majority of consumers don't need four-wheel drive.

S.U.V. buyers said they liked the elevated driving position. But when, in focus groups, industry marketers probed further, they heard things that left them rolling their eyes. As Keith Bradsher writes in "High and Mighty"--perhaps the most important book about Detroit since Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed" -- what consumers said was "If the vehicle is up high, it's easier to see if something is hiding underneath or lurking behind it."

Bradsher brilliantly captures the mixture of bafflement and contempt that many auto executives feel toward the customers who buy their S.U.V.s. Fred J. Schaafsma, a top engineer for General Motors, says, "Sport-utility owners tend to be more like 'I wonder how people view me,' and are more willing to trade off flexibility or functionality to get that." According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills....

Firefox differentiates itself from Internet Explorer and other alternative browsers like Opera and Netscape by what it doesn't offer: Firefox is a stripped-down program with a clean and simple interface. It consists only of the Mozilla browser, which is at the core of the Netscape browser. Mozilla.org takes this approach in contrast to the competitors that offer a host of services, a maze of features, and commercial tie-ins to their respective networks.

Firefox installs with just the essentials: a built-in pop-up blocker, a slick file-download manager, and a customizable search box in the browser toolbar. Also included are easy-to-understand privacy controls, a tabbed browsing feature so you can keep multiple Web pages open, and the capability to block many HTML-based banner ads.

Firefox outmaneuvers Microsoft's entry in a number of ways. First, IE still lacks tabbed browsing and a download manager, and it doesn't let you block pop-up ads as Firefox does. Microsoft says a pop-up blocker will be provided in the IE update that will be part of the Windows XP Service Pack 2 due out this year.

Another feature, Find as You Type, is unique to Firefox. It helps you find keywords on Web pages just by starting to type them. Words in Web pages that match your text string are highlighted as you type.

Browser Add-Ons

If you still hanker for a browser that does more, Firefox's Extensions can extend the browser's capabilities....

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Republicans and the Nader Delusion: Why a Nader Candidacy is Bad for Bush at The Evangelical Outpost.
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Hallucinogen May Cure Drug Addiction: A two-part series from KRON-TV in San Francisco reports,

Even as Patrick Kroupa despaired of ever kicking heroin, Dr. Mash was petitioning the Federal Food and Drug Administration to allow a scientific test of ibogaine, which by this time had been classified as a "schedule one" drug on a par with heroin. In 1993, the FDA approval came through.

"We were established, we had a team of research scientists, doctors, clinicians, psychiatrists, toxicologists and we wanted to go forward with this," describes Dr. Mash.

But even with FDA approval, Dr. Mash could not get funding to look into what was, after all, a counter-culture drug. In order to complete her project, she had to leave South Florida and go offshore, to the island of St. Kitts.

In 1998, clinical trials finally got underway. Patients were given carefully prepared oral doses of ibogaine. What happened next astounded the sceptical scientist.

"Our first round in St. Kitts, we treated six individuals, and I will go to my grave with the memory of that first round," says Dr. Mash.

It quickly became apparent that one dose of ibogaine blocked the withdrawal symptoms of even hard-core addicts and was amazingly effective for heroin, crack cocaine and even alcohol.

There are two reasons why: The first, science can measure. The second remains a mystery. ...

The results are impressive:

Within 45 minutes of taking ibogaine, he actually felt his addiction leaving him. "That moment is the first time in about 10 years that I had actually been clean. Not just detoxed, but clean. That was it. That was the first time. That was like a miracle," says Patrick.

That was four years ago. Patrick Kroupa has not touched drugs since. "I'm saying this having been on heroin for my entire adult life. I mean, 14 to 30 is a long time," he says.