Subterranean Homepage News

Fair and balanced, too!

October 24, 2003 7:40 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Butterfly Alphabet: Amazing posters -- amazing story.

Kjell B. Sandved, the Norwegian-born photographer, moviemaker, lecturer and sometime encyclopedist, has devoted almost four decades of a career with the National Museum of Natural History (a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) to revealing the beauties and amazements of natural and scientific objects.

... Somewhere between a vocation and an avocation lies Sandved’s “Butterfly Alphabet,” a complete set of letters and numbers he has photographed over the years on the wings of his lepidopteran subjects. The project was an instant hit when it appeared in 1996 as an eye-catching book and poster.

Thanks to Cory Doctorow for the link.
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Venture to Offer ID Card for Use at Security Checks: NYT.

Americans hate to wait. But will they pay - and submit to security screenings and even high-technology fingerprinting - to avoid the long lines snaking behind checkpoints in airports, office buildings and sports arenas?

Steven Brill is betting that the answer is yes. Mr. Brill, a journalist and entrepreneur, will announce today a new company, Verified Identity Card Inc., which will offer customers an electronic card containing data showing that they are not on terrorism watch lists and do not have certain felony convictions on their records.

If businesses, airports and government agencies sign on to the plan and put Verified's card readers at security checkpoints, cardholders would be able to zip through, avoiding the most thorough searches.

Newly minted, felony-free terrorists would be the most motivated customers for this. They could sail through unsearched while we not-so-frequent flyers can rot in line with our squawling babies and souvenirs to dump our underwear out for the inspectors.
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Outrage Radio - Liberal Talk Radio with Attitude: Terrible name. Outrage is exhausting, and if that's the attitude, I won't be a frequent listener.

Smart, sane, honest, wise, creative radio -- where's that?
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Downsized: Longtime Providence Journal reporter -- till he took a buyout -- Brian C. Jones writes in the Providence Phoenix why he left a $60,000 a year job for the freedom of independent journalism.
via Romenesko
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Tattoo Artists Database: "This is the interface to the database of tattoo artist reviews submitted by the readers of the Usenet news group rec.arts.bodyart. You can enter search criteria below, or just hit 'Submit' to see the whole list."

via Liz Donovan
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Useful links on e-voting: First, Black Box Voting is back up at http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ with 11 chapters of the book now free online, more to come. The backup site for the chapters, should the link above be taken down again, is http://www.talion.com/blackboxvoting.org.htm

Douglas W. Jones of the University of Iowa Department of Computer Science has comprehensive links at his Voting and Elections pages. Note The Case of the Diebold FTP Site, an exhaustive history. Here's the link to the Johns Hopkins report and to Diebold's response.

Jim March's Diebold page.

Ernie the Attorney Miller has the scoop on Swarthmore, where the administration is yanking net access from student sites that link to why-war.com. This page now contains only the words, "swarthmore.edu has shut this computer. swarthmore will not allow us to link to why-war.com." Here's Google's cache of what was on the page before it was taken down.

Miller adds,

I have spoken with a member of Swartmore's IT department and can confirm that two student pages have been shutdown for linking to a page on Why War?'s website that linked to the Diebold files. Swarthmore is currently re-evaluating its linking policy, but until they are satisfied that they cannot be held liable, students are asked to only post plain text that points to the Why War? website.

This Sunday there's a Forum on Electronic Voting at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 12:30p - 5pm; David Dill, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford (VerifiedVoting.org is his site) headlines.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., just outside Washington, plans a First NIST Symposium on Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems, December 10 and 11.

Updated 10/26: Apologies to Ernest Miller, whom I initially misidentified as Ernie the Attorney Svenson in the Swarthmore section above.
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Tommy Chong on Rush Limbaugh: The New York Times reports,

Tommy Chong (from prison, where he is serving nine months for conspiring to sell bongs) on Rush Limbaugh: "I feel sorry for Rush. I'm glad I'm not Rush. My vice was pot; you can put it down, it's not addictive at all, though some say it's psychologically addictive. I feel sorry for anybody on heroin. He was on a painkiller called OxyContin that's been called Hillbilly Heroin." Adds that he's not bitter that he's in jail while Limbaugh's in rehab: "Not at all. It's a totally different case. Mine is political, his is medical. Is it unfair? Yes, it is. But I would hate to have Rush Limbaugh change the way they handle addicts. You don't put addicts in jail, you put them in rehab. You put political figures like myself in jail."

Related: Background from the Austin (Texas) Chronicle:

Chong was trapped in the OPD net after sending a hand-blown glass bong to Beaver Falls, Pa. While two previous Pipe Dreams defendants pled guilty to similar charges, each was sentenced only to six months of house arrest; so far, of the 50 Pipe Dreams defendants, Chong is the only one who has been sent to jail (see "Will Chong's Freedom Go up in Smoke?," Sept. 26). Chong and his supporters say the comedian's sentence is unreasonably harsh and claim that prosecutor Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for Pennsylvania's western district, used the pot-toking character that Chong has played for 30 years as evidence that the real-life Chong undermines drug-law enforcement.

Cheech hasn't visited Chong, says Chong.
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October 23, 2003 6:20 p.m.

Very busy day here. Tiny blog.

Gator: Don't call us "spyware" -- or else: At News.com,

In an effort to improve its corporate reputation, adware company Gator has launched a legal offensive to divorce its name from the hated term "spyware"--and so far its strategy is paying off.

In response to a libel lawsuit, an antispyware company has settled with Gator and pulled Web pages critical of the company, its practices and its software. And other spyware foes are getting the message.

"There is this feeling out there that they won the lawsuit, and people are starting to get scared," said one employee of a spyware-removal company, who asked not to be named. "We haven't been sued, but we've heard that other companies are being sued for saying this and that, so we've changed our language" on the company Web site.

Gator often distributes its application by bundling it with popular free software like Kazaa and other peer-to-peer programs. When downloaded, Gator's application serves pop-up and pop-under ads to people while they're surfing the Web or when they visit specific sites. Ads can be keyed to sites so that a pitch for low mortgage rates, say, can appear when a surfer visits a rival financial company's site.

The distinction between such "adware," which can report back to its creator with information about the computer user's surfing habits, so as to allow for supposedly more effective ad serving, and "spyware," which similarly monitors surfing habits and serves up ads, is sometimes a hazy one, and lies at the heart of Gator's libel suit.

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Human Spontaneous Involuntary Invisibility. Whew.
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From church to grass house: At The Guardian (U.K.), "Artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey are filling a deconsecrated church with grass, grown from seed. Watch the project develop week by week here, and read their diaries of how, and why, this extraordinary project is developing." Where: Dilston Grove's Clare College Mission Church, South London.

A seeding team, working all hours, covered the walls by hand with clay and seed. Not without some bloodshed; the walls are rough, flint like glass that nicks and cuts. And a pit of clay out back that began to resemble a hippo wallowing pool. But slowly the transformation took place. The dark clay embedded with seed gave a beautiful dense texture, eradicating the flaws of the building, enhancing the architectural elegance. It took 15 - 18 of us five days to cover the interior. As the grass grows, the air is fresh, oxygenated.

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A tough lesson on medical privacy: David Lasazrus of the San Francisco Chronicle reports,

"Your patient records are out in the open... so you better track that person and make him pay my dues."

A woman in Pakistan doing cut-rate clerical work for UCSF Medical Center threatened to post patients' confidential files on the Internet unless she was paid more money.To show she was serious, the woman sent UCSF an e-mail earlier this month with actual patients' records attached.

The violation of medical privacy - apparently the first of its kind - highlights the danger of "offshoring" work that involves sensitive materials, an increasing trend among budget-conscious U.S. companies and institutions.

U.S. laws maintain strict standards to protect patients' medical data. But those laws are virtually unenforceable overseas, where much of the labor- intensive transcribing of dictated medical notes to written form is being exported.

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Correction: This was fixed shortly after publication, but not before yesterday's blog moved to other Belo sites. In the item on e-voting, I incorrectly described Jim March as having been sued -- and countersuing -- Diebold over links on his site. Marsh has not been sued, but he has filed a counter-notification
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October 22, 2003 7:55 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

A group of students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has launched an "electronic civil disobedience" campaign against voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems.

The students are protesting efforts by Diebold to prevent them and other website owners from linking to some 15,000 internal company memos that reveal the company was aware of security flaws in its e-voting software for years but sold the faulty systems to states anyway. The memos were leaked to voting activists and journalists by a hacker who broke into an insecure Diebold FTP server in March.

Diebold has been sending out cease-and-desist letters to force websites and ISPs to take down the memos, which the company says were stolen from its server in violation of copyright law. It has been using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, to force ISPs to take down sites hosting the memos or sites containing links to the memos.

Breaking news: An email at 6:41 p.m. from Ivan Boothe of Why-War.com points to an announcement on that site:

Today, Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons held a public meeting with Dean Bob Gross of Swarthmore College. Overnight, word had spread of this action and Gross had received over 250 emails of support from individuals throughout the world including “tech celebrities” and Swarthmore alumni.

Swarthmore College, unfortunately, is not willing to take a strong stand against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of any student who hosts the files. “We can’t get out in front in this fight against Diebold,” Gross said during the meeting with over fifty students, staff, and faculty. ...

Why War? will continue to provide access to these documents on this page.

Related: Californian Jim March, who maintains a similar page of electronic voting info with attitude, has also been sued by Diebold. He's suing them back.

Jim March writes, "They have NOT sued me in the month-plus since I 'dared 'em to.'

"I am NOT 'suing them back.' I've filed a counter-notification."
(Sorry for the error.)

Why it matters: 40,000 of Diebold's systems -- most using touch screens -- have been sold to 37 states, according to Diebold. (Rhode island is not one of them -- voting here is like taking College Boards. Voters stand up and use special pencils to mark paper ballots, which we then feed into machines that count the votes. There is a paper trail should manual recounts be necessary.)

Voting is the touchstone of a democracy. Firms charged with making the hardware and software essential to the process have nearly a sacred trust. They must be completely transparent, open and above board about their products, inviting scrutiny from all responsible quarters. If we don't trust that our elections are free, fair and honest, we will have become what we disdain: A corrupt society.
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Pongomania! is an amazing site that blogs creatures its creator has molded from colored modeling wax made in Italy called Pongo.

I couldn't find it for sale anywhere on the net, although it seems this might be similar stuff. If so, it's pure beeswax.

What's amazing is how flexible it is -- after a hand warms it -- and how clear the colors are. It's not crude like the stiff old clay of my childhood.
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Paris Review Rebounds: At the Village Voice,

According to conventional wisdom, The Paris Review is a literary magazine that had its run—some 50 years ago, with the bulls in Pamplona. Launched in 1953 by a group of friends that included editor in chief George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, and Harold Humes, it published a number of unknown writers who later became stars. But some would say it evolved into an elitist journal that was run out of the editor's apartment and not particularly well-read, even by its own 4,000 subscribers. Skeptics thought the quarterly would fold with Plimpton, who died in his sleep on September 26.

Guess again. Last week's Plimpton tribute, a celebrity-studded gala at Cipriani on 42nd Street, raised $500,000 for the Paris Review Foundation, bringing the foundation's endowment to about $1 million. Now literary insiders are buzzing about how what used to be a for-profit magazine that lost money every year has turned into a bustling nonprofit with a shot at long-term profitability. Meanwhile, the search for a new editor has begun. ...

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A Marine's Girl is a blog that describes itself this way: "Insight on being the girl friend of a Marine in Iraq. Opinions of news items of the day, politics, and relationships." He wrote a nice love poem to her, too.
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America's too prudish for real politicians: Actor George Clooney, in Germany, says,

HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) - Hollywood actor George Clooney says American society is too prudish -- one of the reasons why he would not follow his fellow actor Arnold Schwarzenegger into politics, he said in a published German magazine interview.

He told Woman magazine that Schwarzenegger's win this month in the California governorship race showed that candidates could only be successful in American politics if they denied things they did in earlier life.

"You read in the media that (Schwarzenegger) was already gushing about wanting to become governor of California 25 years ago -- today he denies that," he said.

"I always say you have to stand by what you've done. Yes, I smoked grass. Yes, I had sex with more than one person. In the US, they make a big deal out of everything as soon as you run for higher office. It's time we did away with this bigotry in America." ...

Is America prudish?

Had the L.A. Times hammered candidates with "How will your policies affect people?" instead of "Who did you goose?" voters might have been informed about the likely effect of this governor on their lives. Instead, voters learned a lot about the macho moves of a movie star clawing his way to top dog in fantasyland -- and deemed it irrelevant.

We want to know about our shared future, and what paths the candidates propose to take us down. That's the choice we care about.
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Halloween retailers fooled by Arnold: Arnold Schwarzenegger's face would be the hot Halloween mask if you could find one. When he was an actor, licensing issues precluded making masks of him. Now that he's a public figure, he's far game, but there are none to be had. The Contra Costa times has the story.
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Providence Patriot Act update: I'm late with this, but Ian Donnis of the Providence Phoenix covered the Providence City Council meeting at which a proposal to oppose the Patriot Act was discussed:

A crowd of residents this week urged the Providence City Council to join the more than 200 US communities that have taken an official stand against the USA Patriot Act.

Chris Goldrick, 28, a public-relations professional from the East Side, was one of those who made her views known. Although she hasn’t been previously been a political activist, Goldrick says the threat posed by the Patriot Act to civil liberties and the Bill of Rights motivated her to speak out. "The thing that I talked about was my concern that the Patriot Act can be abused and twisted in ways not stated to the public," she says, citing a recent New York Times story, which indicated how the act is being mostly used in a variety of prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.

Goldrick estimates that more than 100 residents — a diverse crowd encompassing Democrats and Republicans, young and old, advocates for immigrants and minorities, and other residents —turned out for the city council’s meeting on Tuesday, October 7 at City Hall. "They mostly just listened," she says, and councilors suggested the matter would be considered at a subsequent meeting. ...

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March on Washington Saturday: International A.N.S.W.E.R. is the sponsor, "End the Occupation - Bring the Troops Home!" is the theme. Southern New England transportation:

PROVIDENCE A.N.S.W.E.R.:
CONTACT: rhodeisland@internationalanswer.org or 401-724-7400
TRANSPORTATION: BUSES LEAVE FROM 3 SE NEW ENGLAND POINTS, $50/seat
DARTMOUTH: Faunce Crnr. Shop. Ctr. Exit 12 off 195 Gather 10:00p Fri. Oct. 24, depart 10:15p
PROV.: Branch Ave. Super Shop & Stop Exit 24 off 95 Gather 10:30p Fri. Oct. 24, depart 11:00p
SOUTH CTY.: Wyoming Super Stop & Shop Intrsct. 95 & Rt. 138 Gather 11:30p Fri. Oct. 24, depart 12:00am
Approx. return home: Midnite Sat. - 2am
Time subject to change; more bus stops to be added
Online signup form (pay by credit card)

If you're coming from someplace else, you can find a bus here.
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A Left-Handed Commencement Address by sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin

Maybe we've had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life. Maybe we need some words of weakness. Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything - instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It won't sound right. It's going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if -- only if -- you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they're beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about success?

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don't even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure.

Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself - as I know you already have - in dark places, alone, and afraid.

What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.(...)

Why did we look up for blessing - instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.... (more)

What's amazing is this address was delivered at Mills College in 1983. Thanks to wood s lot for the link.
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Rickie Lee Jones, protest singer: Long interview with Rickie Lee Jones at The Guardian, (U.K.). (Updated, 10/22: full songs from Jones' new CD in AM-radio quality)

Here's the blurb:

She battled her personal demons when she kicked the drug habit that nearly killed her. Now Rickie Lee Jones is squaring up to a far more public enemy: the American president himself. She tells Simon Hattenstone about her journey from Chuck E to George W, and about the anger that spawned her new album

Why she's talking:

Now she has written her first album of new material since 1997, The Evening Of My Best Day, and she's burning. She has never sung protest songs before. She used to think politics was not a fitting subject for music - it was crude and transient, and she wanted her lyrics to last. Now, though, she is singing about the ugly man with the ugly father who is blighting her nation, the two senators killed in mystery plane crashes, and the need for Americans to tell the world what is happening in the US (in a song subtitled Repeal The Patriot Acts NOW).

About Chuck E.'s in Love (that's drummer Chuck E. Weiss below, coming to grips these days with the raw fact that his place in history comes not so much from his own achievements but from Jones's 1979 song title):

People tend to think Chuck E's In Love (about her friend, the musician Chuck E Weiss) was a happy song, she says, but it's not, it's desperate. And she starts to sing it quietly, slowly, paraphrasing. "'How come he doesn't come and hang out with me any more...' That's how that started. I saved it at the end, but most of the song is a lament." She saved it by revealing that Chuck wasn't coming round any more because, in fact, he was in love with her: "Chuck E's in love with the little girl who's singing this song/ Chuck E's in love with me." Perhaps this was the pride of the younger Rickie Lee. Perhaps if she wrote it today, he wouldn't be coming round for the more likely reason that he was in love with someone else.

There's a Weiss interview with some songs behind it at ASCAP Audio Portraits.
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Doc Searls writes of a frightening experience he had when he was anesthetized a while back with

pancuronium bromide, the lethal chemical used to execute prisoners in many states. Pancuronium bromide is coincidentally among the portfolio of poisons with which anesthesiologists cause a patient's body to stop breathing while mechanical ventillators take over the same function. By itself pancuronium bromide does not stop consciousness. In executions it will cause the prisoner to die of asphyxiation, unable even to blink while the brain gradually passes out from oxygen starvation. This, some complain, is cruel and unsual, even if the drug is mixed with others that stop consciousness before asphyxiation occurs.

Reading the piece gives me chills, because I had my own horrifying experience with the misadministration of pancuronium bromide, or something very much like it, before hernia surgery in 1996. Laying on the operating table waiting to fall asleep, I found myself fully awake and unable to breathe, or even to move the tiniest muscle. I wanted to scream but couldn't make a sound. It felt as if a vast invisible blanket lay over me; that I was buried alive in full view of clueless professionals who were about to carry out several hours of surgery while assuming I was asleep even though I was not. ...

Check out the follow-up responses, too.
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If you drop it, should you eat it? A student studies the "5-second rule" -- if you drop food and retrieve it within five seconds the animalcules won't get you.

The bottom line: Clean dry floors don't harbor bacteria anyway. Eat it.

But if there were bacteria down there, they'll cling on contact.

No studies on carpeting though.
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U.S. appeals court upholds Web-radio royalty fee:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Radio stations must pay copyright fees to the artists and record labels whose songs they play over the Internet, a U.S. appeals court has ruled in a decision released Monday.

The decision (pdf) by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upholds rulings by a lower court and the U.S. Copyright Office that radio stations must pay such royalties.

Several radio-station owners appealed last year, arguing that they should not have to pay royalties to performers for their Internet broadcasts because they do not pay them for regular, over-the-air broadcasts.

... A trade group that represents many broadcasters said it was disappointed with the ruling but would not give up.

"We will be exploring all of our legal and legislative options to overturn this decision, which we believe misinterprets the intent of Congress," said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters.

RIAA is happy, of course.

Lou Josephs' take on this: "Look for the NAB to get their friends in Congress to fix this before next year's election or they might have difficulty in getting their radio ads cleared on key stations in their districts."
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JOHO the Blog: I've been appreciating David Weinberger's blog lately -- both his summary of the visionaries' presentations at last weekend's PopTech conference, and a post about his guesses for the future of this form, titled When blogs get really popular. It begins,

"1. The word "blog" will expand to cover any linkable posting (a place) where a person gets to speak her mind more than once. If it's more permanent than IM, it'll be a blog."

Long overdue: I just blogrolled him.
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The Contemporary Art Scene in Vietnam: Thumbnails by various artists open to thumbnails by each artists. Chosen almost at random, the image at right is called Going to Market by Le Thanh Son:

Le Thanh Son was born in Hanoi in 1962 and graduated from the Hanoi College of Drama and Cinematography in 1986. He prefers to fill the canvases with clear, bright colours in an impressionistic style and an intimate atmosphere that can be found in villages around Hanoi. Thanh Son has participated in several shows in Vietnam and also in Singapore (1995), Hong Kong (1996, 1997), and Great Britain (2001).

It can be noted that Pres. Clinton bought one painting by Le Thanh Son when he visited Hanoi in December 2000.

The site is Thavibu Gallery. Thanks to Gordon Coale for the link.

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New voting machines to be reviewed: Maryland General Assembly asks for its own analysis of possible vulnerability (Balt. Sun)

The Maryland General Assembly yesterday asked for its own analysis of the state's planned purchase of electronic touch-screen voting machines, including a review to determine whether an earlier study ordered by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. was "free of outside influence."

"We think we need an independent look at it," said Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, a Baltimore County Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over voting issues.

Related: E-Vote Firms Seek Voter Approval (Wired):

In the wake of concerns raised about security flaws in electronic voting systems, a lobbying group is strategizing a public relations and lobbying campaign to help voting companies "repair short-term damage done by negative reports and media coverage."

And in a separate and surprising move companies, according to one vendor, are reversing their long-time opposition to giving voters paper receipts as a way to verify electronic voting results, a change critics have been seeking for months.

According to a draft plan produced by the Information Technology Association of America, a lobbying and trade association for the tech industry, electronic voting machine makers are discussing ways to convince state election officials that their products are the gold standard and worthy of taxpayer money.

Related: ISP Rejects Diebold Copyright Claims Against News Website: EFF Defends Right to Publish Links to Electronic Voting Memos

Related: Nine chapters of Bev Harris's book Black Box Voting are now online, free, at blackboxvoting.com
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Barbara Bush: How much is enough? Newsweek's Melinda Henneberger spends some time with former First Lady Barbara Bush, who's got a new book, Reflections. I found this excerpt astonishing:

One of the most startling passages in her book is an anecdote about how panicked and vulnerable she felt when she and her husband had to leave the White House. An aide told her she would have to keep a paid staff. “I couldn’t believe my ears. She said Betty Ford... still spent $100 a month on postage alone. I felt like crying.” Though her insecurity seems irrational given her family’s wealth, she writes, “Everyone knew I had never earned any money, as I had never seriously worked in the 48 years we had been married. So besides losing the election, now at 68 I was going to have to work?”

In 1992 -- the year the elder Bush lost his re-election bid -- the Austin American-Statesman reported that "Bush's declared income last year exceeded $450,000, and his net worth is thought to be more than $4 million."

There is also an incident that conjures an amazing image of the former president:

... as they head out for the golf course, the former president opens an interesting window into his postpresidential life when he insists that I stick around and use the pool: “I went to the Wal-Mart the other day, and bought women’s bathing suits in all different sizes, all very discreet”

Can you see him pawing through women's bathing-suit racks, and in line at the check-out clutching a half-dozen one-pieces, some with skirts?
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Gregg Easterbrook: What a morass. Gregg Easterbrook, senior editor of The New Republic, contributing editor for Atlantic Monthly and Washington Monthly, former ESPN columnist and New Republic blogger is watching his life crumble. Here is the last paragraph of Easterbrook's review of the movie Kill Bill:

Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message--now Disney's message--that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

and his long apology.

Here's Howard Kurtz to sum up the aftermath. Kurtz also has links to the firestorm of words from all directions that followed, including testimonials from famous Jewish writers. And, as Jeff Jarvis says, "Yes, everybody's using this incident to beat their own drums."

...Easterbrook is smart, serious, contrarian and perhaps a bit too sure of his own intellect. He is the first to admit that he screwed up badly by blaming the violence of the film "Kill Bill" on two Disney executives, Michael Eisner and Harvey Weinstein, and provocatively pointing out that they are Jewish. This, of course, played to the whole greedy-Jews-run-Hollywood stereotype that is so insidious.

Think it doesn't matter that these are powerful guys? ESPN, which is owned by Disney, dumped Easterbrook and his football column from its Web site within minutes, even though the New Republic controversy has nothing to do with ESPN. All trace of Easterbrook's past writings were obliterated from the Web site.

I guess the media do this all the time. Somebody says or writes something insensitive, the critics pounce, and the person under fire has to prove he's not anti-black, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, you name it. But what's important is to look for a pattern over the subject's career. In this case I happen to know the person. He's written books and hundreds of magazine articles. But when the firestorm begins, none of that seems to matter. The ADL is after Easterbrook. He's suddenly become radioactive. And all sense of proportion is thrown out the window. ...

Power Line passes on a message from Easterbrook. (This blog, and many others hosted by Hosting Matters are down again; the host has been subject to intermittent Denial of Service attacks aimed at a pro-Israel site on the server.) Here's the letter:

"I am in trouble and need your help. Most of you know that last week I wrote, in New Republic's unedited blog, three foolish and wrong sentences that sound anti-Semitic, especially out of context. I was wrong to have done this, and quickly apologized -- if you have not seen my apology, it is at tnr.com. And if you have seen the apology called in print half-hearted, please read it. I did not just apologize for careless wording, I said what I wrote was 'simply wrong.'

"Friday the New York Times ran a brief story, and I thought at the time that to apologize and then be slammed in the Times was a fitting punishment for my offense. But it's now getting much worse. Late yesterday the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement calling me 'totally bigoted.' This morning the Los Angeles Times contains an article extensively accusing me of anti-Semitism. The headline could be a parody of McCarthyism, if this were funny: 'If It Sounds Anti-Semitic, Maybe It Is.' The article asserts that the fact that I have for years belonged to one of the country's few joint Christian-Jewish congregations is -- proof of anti-Semitism.

"Yesterday I was told to expect to be fired by ESPN. It hasn't happened yet, but seems likely [he has since been fired by ESPN]. Friday the top officers of ESPN refused several orders from Michael Eisner, the head of Disney, that I be fired. By the end of the day it seemed likely they would give in.

"Yesterday I got from Frank Rich a set of emailed questions that reads like the prosecutor's indictment in the Kobe Bryant case. Rich dislikes New Republic for reasons unrelated to me. He may plan to take out his dislike for New Republic on me. Yesterday Fox News was running a crawl that said, 'New Republic writer Gregg Easterbrook accused of anti-Semitism.' Saying only that I was accused.

"All this I can deal with, but here is the bad part. My next book, The Progress Paradox, is due out in six weeks. (This book says nothing about religion.) I've sold the serial to Time magazine, and the early publicity reaction has been very favorable. There's a fighting chance this will be the first thing I've ever written that actually sells copies. [Steve Hayward suggests pre-ordering the book from Amazon as a gesture of support. Click here for the link to the Amazon entry for the book.]

"Yesterday I was told by an ally within Disney corporate that Eisner has assigned people to try to destroy the book -- to get Time to drop the serial, to keep me off interview shows, even to get Random House to kill the book. In a published body of work that now extends to millions of words, I have written three foolish and wrong sentences. Now I've not only lost reputation and half my income (ESPN): what matters to me most in all the world, my book writing, is in jeopardy at the worst possible time. And I'm up against one of the richest, most vindictive men in the world.

"Someone who is accused like this cannot proclaim his own innocence. How can I be the witness to my own character? But you can. I appeal to all of you as friends and colleagues to come to my aid. This is my sole hope.

"Contact anyone you know whom you think you can influence, and move fast because the attack against me is moving fast. All I have right now is friends, and all my hopes reside with you. Gregg"

Here's his blog, and his email address. It's between you and him.
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October 20, 2003 5:55 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Red Sox haiku: Submissions are eagerly solicited. Here's a sample:

Going, going, gone
In the eleventh inning
Winter has begun

By: EGCHST

(Thanks, Tom Brady. The Patriots seem to have much better karma than the Sox. Brady-to-Troy- Brown was the path to the Super Bowl last time.)

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Rick Collett writes a weekly column for Snitch, a Lousiville, Ky., crime news tab. Collett served nine years in federal prison for transporting drugs, followed by five years probation. Now he writes about prison life -- sometimes the little things, sometimes much bigger issues: A column about medical care in prison is compelling.

Last week Collett wrote an unusual column, not in his own voice: 'Me, Rush Limbaugh, a drug addict? How?': If Rush were still on the air, he might say ....

I don't want to pull out just one sentence, since it all flows together.

As you might expect, Collett, er ... takes no prisoners.
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WPRO scrubs plan to have Joan Rivers sub for Rush: Andy Smith is working on the full story for tomorrow, but projo.com's Jack Perry did a short version today. (reg.req.)

PROVIDENCE -- Comedian Joan Rivers' guest-hosting gig at WPRO-AM has been dialed back after the syndicators of Rush Limbaugh's radio talk-show show objected, the station said today.

WPRO-AM announced last Thursday that Rivers would replace Limbaugh on a temporary basis while Limbaugh takes a leave of absence to address his addiction to prescription painkillers.

But after Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, complained late last week, the station worked out a compromise with Premiere, said David Bernstein, news and operations manager for WPRO-AM.

Rivers was originally scheduled to fill Limbaugh's noon to 3 p.m. time slot, but will instead offer an abbreviated show starting at 2 p.m. today, the station said.

The Baltimore Sun caught wind of the pressure last week when WBAL tried to program Rush's time slot; radio man Lou Josephs called it: Stations aren't being allowed to break ranks.
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Ha Schult's Trash Sculptures. 1999-2003: By Thomas Hoepker at Magnum.

One thousand life-size sculptures are touring the world. This army of humanoids was created from trash, collected from garbage dumps and industrial, mostly high-tech waste, like computer parts or scrap metal, cans and bottles.

The Trash People have embarked on a journey to the world's most spectacular sites. The project started in 1996 in the arena of the Roman amphitheater in Xanten on the Rhine. Next the sculptures were shown in Paris in front of the modern arch of La Défense (photos available from Magnum photographer René Burri). more...

There are thumbnails and a slideshow of 42 photos. The one above Hoepker shot in Zermatt, Switzerland.
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Don't break the Web: Eric Wolfram's actual headline is How To Score Higher in Google Search Engine (and why Google is saving the web)

That sounds like the subject of many of the spams that come my way, and disguises the truly useful information in this essay. Take a look:

Google rewards useful sites with the eyes of people who are looking for useful information. This is helping the web recover from being the wasteland of marketing hype, which the dot-come-and-gone explosion forced it to become. Google is saving the web by ultimately forcing site designers to make their sites useful again.

...During the late 90's, those who built web sites, and the marketing people and the MBA's who ordered them to, all came to the wrong conclusion that their web sites should be isolated little islands of information. They foolishly and hopelessly attempted make the people who surfed their sites become stranded on their island. All the links on their sites pointed to other pages of their site....

The tremendous value of the interconnection of all computers is that they intelligently link together, in one beginningless and endless chain of consciousness. Google recognizes and rewards this truism: The value of a network is that information is connected. ...

When you create sites that are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Google knows it. ...

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Blogger finds middle ground: J.D. Lasica reports that Denis Horgan, the Hartford Courant columnist-reassigned-to-travel-editor who was forced by his editor to take down his personal blog, has negotiated a compromise with his employer. Horgan will write "about unique places, personalities and policies that make Connecticut such a fascinating place" at www.ctnow.com/denis

Registration will be required to read it. Will that set off a "Free Denis's blog" movement?

JD has background and more links.
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How to render the Segway Human Transporter obsolete: A man named Maddox -- not a shy guy, he calls his site The Best Page in the Universe) writes,

Every once in a while someone invents something so simple and elegant that it makes you say "damn, why didn't I think of that?" Then there are the other inventions, the ones that make you say "man, I know exactly why I didn't think of that: that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen." Introducing Segway, transporter of humans. Of all the places you'll inevitably be transported to, the first place will be the bank because the Segway will cost you one healthy kidney, $4,500, and a pint of virgin blood.

... You'd think all of this technology would be able to do something useful like cure cancer or make an episode of "Will and Grace" funny, but alas, all it does is balance a pole.

... Well I came up with an innovation of my own that will help balance a Segway without years of research and millions of dollars invested in obscure technology. The secret?

I won't spoil it, but it certainly seems simple enough.

via The Presurfer as is the amazing The Picture of Everything -- which puts the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album and every Where's Waldo? seem underpopulated.
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A conservative's review of Al Franken's 'Lies and the Lying Liars': Not what you think.
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Survey: Internet Users Want No-Spam List: Last week in the WaPo. Coming in this morning to find several thousand spam waiting prompts this item.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) today renewed his offensive against junk e-mail, citing a new survey that says 75 percent of the nation's Internet users want a national "do-not-spam" list similar to the anti-telemarketing registry launched by the Federal Trade Commission this month.

More than two-thirds of Internet users would sign up for the list, according to the online survey of 1,500 Internet users conducted by Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Insight Express and Chicago consulting firm UnSpam.

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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com