evanmorris.com

Posted by evan at 2:31 AM | Permalink

FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be . . . FEMA

It's so hard to keep up with this stuff, and then there's the outrage fatigue and all, but I do have a little question: Why are we using FEMA employees to pretend to be reporters and ask softball questions when Jeff Gannon is almost certainly still on the White House payroll?

Posted by evan at 4:49 PM | Permalink

Prosecutors expected to file charges against Bernard Kerik

Rudy, his former chauffeur (and his nominee for Homeland Security director), and the Gambino crime family, oh my!

Posted by evan at 11:46 AM | Permalink

Click graphic for larger pop-up.

Posted by evan at 11:27 AM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 10:18 AM | Permalink

The New Yorker staff writer talks with the magazine's editor-in-chief, David Remnick.

Posted by evan at 1:15 AM | Permalink

Orphaned hedgehogs adopt cleaning brush as their mother

The four inch long creatures are being hand-reared by staff at the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park in Ashurst, Hants.

Workers say Mary, Mungo, Midge and Slappy get comfort from playing with the centre's cleaning brush and enjoy rubbing against it.

[more hedgehogia at link]

Posted by evan at 1:21 AM | Permalink

Updates and breaking developments are available at irrawaddy.org.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Security forces fired automatic weapons into thousands of pro-democracy protesters for a second day Thursday, and the military government said nine people were killed and 11 wounded.

Tens of thousands defied the ruling military junta's crackdown with a 10th straight day of demonstrations in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon. Security forces also raided several monasteries overnight, beating monks and arresting more than 100, according to a monk at one monastery.

The protests are the stiffest challenge to the generals in two decades, a crisis that began Aug. 19 with protests over a fuel price hike, then expanded dramatically when monks started leading the marches. The crackdown has drawn increasing international pressure on the isolated regime.

Thousands of protesters ran through the streets of Yangon on Thursday after warning shots were fired into the crowds. Bloody sandals were left lying in the road.

"Give us freedom, give us freedom!" some shouted at the soldiers.

---

REUTERS/Stringer

[Note: according to the Japanese news agency APF, the soldier shown shot and killed the already wounded Kenji moments after this photo was taken.]

---

REUTERS/Stringer

Posted by evan at 12:26 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 12:42 PM | Permalink

Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism

Of course, it would be foolish to suggest that people are incapable of making distinctions between social networking "friends" and friends they see in the flesh. The use of the word "friend" on social networking sites is a dilution and a debasement, and surely no one with hundreds of MySpace or Facebook "friends" is so confused as to believe those are all real friendships. The impulse to collect as many "friends" as possible on a MySpace page is not an expression of the human need for companionship, but of a different need no less profound and pressing: the need for status. Unlike the painted portraits that members of the middle class in a bygone era would commission to signal their elite status once they rose in society, social networking websites allow us to create status--not merely to commemorate the achievement of it. There is a reason that most of the MySpace profiles of famous people are fakes, often created by fans: Celebrities don't need legions of MySpace friends to prove their importance. It's the rest of the population, seeking a form of parochial celebrity, that does.

But status-seeking has an ever-present partner: anxiety. Unlike a portrait, which, once finished and framed, hung tamely on the wall signaling one's status, maintaining status on MySpace or Facebook requires constant vigilance. As one 24-year-old wrote in a New York Times essay, "I am obsessed with testimonials and solicit them incessantly. They are the ultimate social currency, public declarations of the intimacy status of a relationship.... Every profile is a carefully planned media campaign."

Posted by evan at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Make-Believe Reagan : Rolling Stone:

... Well, I think as I stand by myself on the curb, so much for Fred Thompson. After all, logic dictates that anyone who's too much of a lightweight for Fox News is probably...

I freeze. Probably what? Probably a shoo-in for the presidency, that's what! I shudder as I realize my mistake, and suddenly the candidacy of Fred Thompson, which seemed impossibly silly just a few minutes ago, makes deadly serious sense. Thompson may act like a blank slate -- a homespun version of Being There hero Chauncey Gardiner running on a platform of "Whatever you say" and "I'll get back to you on that" -- but he represents something else that no one, after seven years of George W. Bush, could possibly have expected: a new low. It was bad enough when the GOP field was led by a grinning Mormon corporatist and a fascist ex-mayor itching to take his prostate pain out on the world, but Thompson is the worst yet -- a human snooze button, campaigning baldly for the head-in-the-sand vote by asking Americans not to think but to change the channel.

Much more at link, and well worth reading. Matt Taibbi is right on the money, as usual.

Posted by evan at 1:20 AM | Permalink

Video Professor upset by criticism, sues 100 anonymous critics:

You've probably seen infomercials for the Video Professor on late-night TV; a kindly-looking John Scherer has been pitching his company's computer training videos for two decades now. But Video Professor, Inc. has no problem using less-friendly tactics when confronted with criticism, and the company is now suing more than 100 anonymous Internet posters over derogatory comments that they made about Video Professor's business.

Derogatory? Perhaps. Unjustified? They sound pretty reasonable to me:

9/24/2007 - Melissa writes:

I ordered the Excel cd from Video Professor June of 2007. I ordered it through a promotional offer stating "free, just pay shipping and handling" I figured $6 shipping to try the product should be fine. I received it in the mail a few days later, never opened it. 5 days after I was charged the $6 shipping, a $89.95 fee shows up. I sent the unopened disk back and called the main phone number. After waiting on hold for 20 minutes someone tells me they will refund my money. Today, September 24th, I have not gotten my refund. On top of it all, I am STILL receiving disks in the mail. Excel, Quickbooks, Windows, you name it! I receive them every 2 weeks, a $6 shipping fee shows up THEN ANOTHER $89.95 fee for each and every disk they send. I had to cancel the credit card to prevent them from charging me. I have called their main number numerous times to cancel the disks and to get my money back and no one is able to help me. They tell me there is no refund for the disks. I have sent each and every one back unopened. SCAM. Do not use this so called "program." It is a waste of money.

Gosh, and to think that all this time I've been assuming his product was merely the useless crap it so clearly is. But a scam, too! You really get your money's worth with these folks.

Posted by evan at 9:53 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 12:43 PM | Permalink

Slang from Operation Iraqi Freedom

Death Blossom : The tendency of Iraqi security forces, in response to receiving a little fire from the enemy, to either run away or do the "death blossom" spraying fire indisciminately in all directions. The term originated in the 1984 movie "The Last Starfighter" as a maneuver in which a single starfighter can single handedly wipe out an entire armada.

A grimly interesting glossary.

Posted by evan at 5:20 PM | Permalink

Childhood TV viewing linked to teen attention problems - New Scientist

Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a large long-term study.

The roughly 40% increase in attention problems among "heavy" TV viewers was observed in both boys and girls, and was independent of whether a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder was made prior to adolescence.

"Those who watched more than two hours, and particularly those who watched more than three hours, of television per day during childhood had above-average symptoms of attention problems in adolescence," Erik Landhuis of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote in his report, published in Pediatrics on Tuesday.

Symptoms of attention problems included short attention span, poor concentration, and being easily distracted. The findings could not be explained by early-life attention difficulties, socio-economic factors, or intelligence, says the team.

Posted by evan at 4:05 PM | Permalink

ScienceDaily: Psychologists Attribute Yawning To The Need To Cool The Brain And Pay Attention

Evidence shows that blood vessels in the nasal cavity and face send cool blood to the brain, and by breathing through the nose or by cooling the forehead, the brain is cooled, eliminating the need to yawn. Recent evidence has linked multiple sclerosis, a demyelinating disease, to thermoregulatory dysfunction. Excessive yawning is a common symptom of multiple sclerosis, and some MS patients report brief symptom relief after they yawn.

Thank you. I thought I was going nuts. And some people thought I was being rude.

Posted by evan at 7:24 PM | Permalink

Lawmakers Describe 'Being Slimed in the Green Zone' - washingtonpost.com

... Brief, choreographed and carefully controlled, the codels (short for congressional delegations) often have showed only what the Pentagon and the Bush administration have wanted the lawmakers to see. At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point.

Tauscher called it "the Green Zone fog."

"Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated."

But even such tight control could not always filter out the bizarre world inside the barricades. At one point, the three were trying to discuss the state of Iraqi security forces with Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, but the large, flat-panel television set facing the official proved to be a distraction. Rubaie was watching children's cartoons.

When Moran asked him to turn it off, Rubaie protested with a laugh and said, "But this is my favorite television show," Moran recalled.

Porter confirmed the incident, although he tried to paint the scene in the best light, noting that at least they had electricity.

Posted by evan at 1:25 PM | Permalink

The Great Iraq Swindle: Rolling Stone

There isn't a brazen, two-bit, purse-snatching money caper you can think of that didn't happen at least 10,000 times with your tax dollars in Iraq. At the very outset of the occupation, when L. Paul Bremer was installed as head of the CPA, one of his first brilliant ideas for managing the country was to have $12 billion in cash flown into Baghdad on huge wooden pallets and stored in palaces and government buildings. To pay contractors, he'd have agents go to the various stashes -- a pile of $200 million in one of Saddam's former palaces was watched by a single soldier, who left the key to the vault in a backpack on his desk when he went out to lunch -- withdraw the money, then crisscross the country to pay the bills. When desperate auditors later tried to trace the paths of the money, one agent could account for only $6,306,836 of some $23 million he'd withdrawn. Bremer's office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation" for $25 million given to a different agent. A ministry that claimed to have paid 8,206 guards was able to document payouts to only 602. An agent who was told by auditors that he still owed $1,878,870 magically produced exactly that amount, which, as the auditors dryly noted, "suggests that the agent had a reserve of cash."

In short, some $8.8 billion of the $12 billion proved impossible to find. "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" asked Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "But that's exactly what our government did."

The war in Iraq currently costs 12 billion dollars a month. That's $7,000 per second.

The average price of an individual health insurance policy for an adult American, incidentally, is $7,000 per year.

Posted by evan at 12:58 AM | Permalink

Personal History: Parallel Play: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

In the years since the phrase became a cliche, I have received any number of compliments for my supposed ability to “think outside the box.” Actually, it has been a struggle for me to perceive just what these “boxes” were—why they were there, why other people regarded them as important, where their borderlines might be, how to live safely within and without them. My efforts have been only partly successful: after fifty-two years, I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life has been spent in a perpetual state of parallel play, alongside, but distinctly apart from, the rest of humanity.

From early childhood, my memory was so acute and my wit so bleak that I was described as a genius—by my parents, by our neighbors, and even, on occasion, by the same teachers who gave me failing marks. I wrapped myself in this mantle, of course, as a poetic justification for behavior that might otherwise have been judged unhinged, and I did my best to believe in it. But the explanation made no sense. A genius at what? Were other “geniuses” so oblivious that they couldn’t easily tell right from left and idly wet their pants into adolescence? What accounted for my rages and frustrations, for the imperious contempt I showed to people who were in a position to do me harm? Although I delighted in younger children, whom I could instruct and gently dominate, and I was thrilled when I ran across an adult willing to discuss my pet subjects, I could establish no connection with most of my classmates. My pervasive childhood memory is an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness.

[more at link]

A remarkable essay by Tim Page, music critic of the Washington Post, about living with Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism.

Posted by evan at 12:21 AM | Permalink

'Nightmare' tarantula rescued in N.Y.

SMITHTOWN, N.Y. (AP) – An orange tarantula with venomous fangs was rescued Friday after its owner said he could no longer care for it.

''This is the kind of spider that nightmares are made of,'' said Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

He said the spider is aggressive and can jump 3 feet and bite with its large fangs. The bites are dangerous to humans.

The spider, known as an ornate golden baboon, has a fat body 5 inches long that is covered in orange hair. Male baboon spiders can have a leg span of about 8 inches, and the female is even larger.

Gross said he was glad the owner, whose name was not released, called the SPCA instead of dumping the spider.

''This spider is so aggressive, it will bite you just to bite you,'' he said. ''It's not a pet you want to cuddle up with at night.''

Baboon spiders have a life span of up to 25 years, are native to southern Africa and spend most of their time near their nests, which are usually holes in the ground.

The SPCA took the spider to a sanctuary for reptiles and other animals.

Posted by evan at 12:47 PM | Permalink

An excellent article in Esquire from Charles Pierce:

The Beauty Contest

... On May 15, Mike Huckabee, a greasy Rotarian gasbag from Arkansas, made a funny. Speaking at a debate with the other Republican presidential contenders, Huckabee said of the Congress that it had "spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop." This nasty little bit solicited gales of laughter from the studio audience and almost unalloyed approval from the traveling political press, and nobody enjoyed it more than the lads at The Politico, a brand-new political fanzine that combines the biting wit of a high school slam book with the nuanced policy analysis of Tiger Beat.

...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the political culture seems to be determined to fag-bait John Edwards out of the race this time around. Channeling the conservative id from the swamps of its birth, as always, Ann Coulter flatly called him a "faggot" at a conference of conservative activists, and Rush Limbaugh regularly chaffs him as "the Breck Girl." From there, apparently, the affair of the haircuts has mainstreamed Coulter's position into more polite precincts. In April, Maureen Dowd wrote a column in The New York Times that speculated that the country was not ready for a "metrosexual in chief," comparing Edwards unfavorably with her dear departed Irish-cop daddy, who used to get his hair cut at the Senate barbershop for fifty cents. You could almost hear the gentle ringing of sputum in the spittoons. Thus are the issues. Thus are the watchdogs. Thus are the politics while people are dying.

The important thing to remember is that toughness is a semiotic dumb show now. In that same debate in which Mike Huckabee flexed for the camera, John McCain pointed out that in his experience, which is considerable, torture doesn't work. On this, he was disputed by a former mayor of New York, who once was tortured by the thought that his second wife would not vacate the mayoral digs in favor of his second mistress, and the former governor of Massachusetts, who once was tortured by the fact that gay people were getting married. Toughness was now a performance skill in a cowardly country taught to fear the best things about itself.

[much more at link]

Posted by evan at 8:08 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 4:03 PM | Permalink

Temperature Index 106.3 F plus crappy little window air-conditioners that keep blowing the breakers equals FUN!

National MS Society : Sourcebook: Heat/Temperature Sensitivity

Heat/Temperature Sensitivity

From The MS Information Sourcebook, produced by the National MS Society.

Many people with MS experience a temporary worsening of their symptoms when the weather is very hot or humid or they run a fever, sunbathe, get overheated from exercise, or take very hot showers or baths. For example, some people notice that their vision becomes blurred when they get overheated-a phenomenon known as Uhthoff's sign. These temporary changes can result from even a very slight elevation in core body temperature (one-quarter to one-half of a degree) because an elevated temperature further impairs the ability of a demyelinated nerve to conduct electrical impulses. Myelin is the protective sheath that surrounds and protects nerve fibers. The destruction of myelin causes the formation of plaques-abnormal areas-on the nerves that slow nerve impulses and produce the symptoms of MS.

The 'Hot Bath' Test Used for Years to Diagnose MS
For many years, the "Hot Bath" test was used to diagnose MS. A person suspected of having MS was immersed in a hot tub of water, and the appearance of neurologic symptoms or their worsening was taken as evidence that the person had MS.

...

Cold Can Also Be a Problem
Some people with MS notice that symptoms, particularly spasticity, become worse in cold weather. It is generally recommended that people with MS who are sensitive to temperature try to avoid extremes of either hot or cold, and that people who are considering a move to a better climate try to visit first to see if the climate change is, indeed, beneficial.

Posted by evan at 4:13 PM | Permalink

Just two of my favorite scenes, which must be watched in order:

Posted by evan at 10:00 PM | Permalink

Romney Speaks Up for Sons' Decisions

BETTENDORF, Iowa (AP) -- Despite his call for the nation to show a ''surge of support'' for U.S. forces in Iraq, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Wednesday defended his five sons' decision not to enlist.

The former Massachusetts governor said his sons were showing their support for the country by ''helping get me elected.''

Posted by evan at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Rare film of Tom Lehrer performing songs on a math theme from 1997.

Internet Archive: Tom Lehrer

Posted by evan at 7:48 PM | Permalink

More California E-Voting Reports Released; More Bad News

... Some of these are problems that the vendors claimed to have fixed years ago. For example, Diebold claimed (p. 11) in 2003 that its use of hard-coded passwords was “resolved in subsequent versions of the software.” Yet the current version still uses at least two hard-coded passwords — one is “diebold” (report, p. 46) and another is the eight-byte sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 (report, p. 45).

Posted by evan at 3:41 PM | Permalink

TheStar.com (Toronto) - News - 10 things we learned this week

Jul 29, 2007 04:30 AM

George W. Bush has a pillow named Pilly, which he takes with him on all his trips. (word-detective.com)

Of course it's true. I'm just not sure that will matter.

Posted by evan at 10:20 PM | Permalink

Oversight Testimony

... Let me say again, we are in SiCKO not because our story is so unique. We are in this film because we are not unique – we represent what is happening to so many others Americans. That is sad for us all. I worry every night that somewhere out there sits a woman like me who is at the end of her rope and has nowhere to turn. She works, so she earns too much for government-based help that do not allow for extreme medical emergency, but her pay after paying her insurance premiums is not enough to support her family. And tonight she’ll sit alone and hurting, not knowing that I pray for her and for her strength to face another day.

I want the members of the committee to know that if HR676, Medicare for All, had been in place for us, we would have weathered the storm. We are hard-working people who under normal conditions make sound money decisions. But placed under the strain of mounting premiums, co-pays, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, we did whatever we had to do to stay alive.

I am so angry with you. I lived the American dream as my father taught me and as his father taught him. I worked, I educated myself, I voted, I bought a home and then moved up into a better home, I raised my children responsibly and I served in my community – and you left me broken and battered because you failed to act on health care reform.

And out there today are hundreds of thousands of people struggling to make ends meet at the same time they are dealing with cancers and heart attacks and all manner of terrible personal health crisis and yet you still fail to act. These people are average, middle class Americans like me who want nothing more than to live a good and decent life surrounded by friends and family in a modest home with enough income to make ends meet.

I am also a Christian. And I do not know what type of Christianity, if any, the current system represents. I hear a lot about family values and respect for human life, but are those just empty words said to placate the religious right voting block or the powerful pro-life lobby? Other good and decent Christians might not share your blind devotion to those points of view. The Christ I learned about as a child attending Arlington Heights First United Methodist Church in Illinois and the Christ I continue to hear about in Sunday services at Cherry Creek Wesleyan Church in Colorado would not allow this to happen to the sick. In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard of any religious group that would allow the sick to be so deeply wounded – and especially not at the hands of other believers. I am asking you to value life and to value it outside the womb too.

And my lobby group will be growing more powerful too. Just as I have come out of the shadows of economic ruin and shame, so too will others come forward to hold you accountable. My faith demands that I love God with all my heart, and to do that I must love my neighbors and care enough to speak up for those too downtrodden to speak for themselves.

But I can only speak here today. You have the power to carry this onward to action. I ask you to search you hearts and your own value systems. Remember hard-working people, put yourselves in the shoes of your constituents and act accordingly. Their bankruptcy shame due to medical crisis really is your shame. You are the body that could have acted and has not. Move forward now, and please do not wait for a new president or for favorable political winds. That course takes no courage whatsoever, and I know each of you has shown courage in stepping up to serve this nation. I just think many of you have lost your way in remembering who elected you and who needs your bravery now.

More at link.

Posted by evan at 4:58 PM | Permalink

This is it. Frontier Psychiatrist (2001). Brilliant.

Posted by evan at 12:45 AM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 10:01 PM | Permalink

It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons of history.

A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven-ways-to-Sunday… it can get thousands of its people killed… it can risk the safety of its citizens… it can destroy the fabric of its nation.

But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain… or even gain power.

The Bush Administration has, tonight, opened this Pandora’s Box, about Iraq.

Posted by evan at 12:27 AM | Permalink

OK, it's pathetic. I sit at my desk, surrounded by corn fields, and watch 46th Street at Times Square on earthcam.com.

Look! Other people! Walking! And some of them are talking at the same time! And not a Buckeye t-shirt in sight!

Yes, I know most of those people are tourists. But even tourists get temporarily smarter in Manhattan.

Posted by evan at 8:27 PM | Permalink

Report: War costing US $12B a month

WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.

[more at link]

I dunno, Louie. What do you suppose we could buy with a bit over 16 MILLION DOLLARS EVERY FREAKING HOUR.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the US, from a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953.

Posted by evan at 5:39 PM | Permalink

Armed autonomous robots cause concern - New Scientist

A MOVE to arm police robots with stun guns has been condemned by weapons researchers.

On 28 June, Taser International of Arizona announced plans to equip robots with stun guns. The US military already uses PackBot, made by iRobot of Massachusetts, to carry lethal weapons, but the new stun-capable robots could be used against civilians.

"The victim would have to receive shocks for longer, or repeatedly, to give police time to reach the scene and restrain them, which carries greater risk to their health," warns non-lethal weapons researcher Neil Davison, of the University of Bradford, UK.

"If someone is severely punished by an autonomous robot, who are you going to take to a tribunal?" asks Steve Wright, a security expert at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

When I was a very small boy, my parents took me to the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, where I was encouraged to sign up as a passenger on "The first trip to the moon," then (circa 1955) still far in the future. I even got a little certificate. A gullible lad, I should have been thrilled at the prospect. But, once home, I was consumed with anxiety. For months I was convinced that someday large men would come to our door, drag me away, and send me, weeping piteously, to the moon.

Now I wish they had.

Posted by evan at 1:47 AM | Permalink

Because I really can't think of another explanation for this:

Posted by evan at 4:15 PM | Permalink

Jobs warns knockoff iPhone "lacks many key features" | Brad Ideas

Steve Jobs of Apple Computer warned today that a rumoured cheap Chinese iPhone knockoff making its way toward America is an inferior product which lacks many of the important features of the iPhone. “It may look a bit like an iPhone, but when consumers discover all the great iPhone features that are missing from it, we think they’ll still line up at Apple Stores for the genuine article,” said Jobs in a released statement. Designed by software nerds, the knockoff, dubbed the “myPhone” by fans, has not yet been confirmed.

Apple released a list of features reported to be missing from the “myPhone.”

* The iPhone has special software that assures you will always use the trusted AT&T cellular network. Lacking this software, the myPhone accepts any SIM card from any random network. Users may find themselves connected to a network that doesn’t have the reputation for service, trust and protecting the privacy of customers that AT&T has. In addition, users may be stuck without 2 years of guaranteed AT&T service.

* The iPhone is configured to assure you the latest iTunes experience. The myPhone might function before you have installed the latest iTunes and registered your phone with it. Indeed, the myPhone lacks the protections that block it from being used without registering it with or reporting back to anybody, depriving the user of customer service and upsell opportunities.

* The iPhone has special software that assures all applications run on the iPhone have been approved by Apple, which protects the user from viruses and tools that may make the user violate their licence agreements. The myPhone will run any application, from any developer, opening up the user to all sorts of risks.

* The iPhone protects users from dangerous Flash and Java applications which may compromise their device and confuse the user experience.

* myPhones don’t forbid VoIP software that may cause the user to accidentally make calls over wireless internet connections instead of the AT&T network. Quality on the internet is unpredictable, as is the price, which can range down to zero, causing great pricing uncertainty. With the iPhone, you always know what calls cost when in the USA.

More at link. Very well done.

Posted by evan at 2:41 PM | Permalink

"We Can't Make it Here Anymore"

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore

That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore

The bar's still open but man it's slow
The tip jar's light and the register's low
The bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore

High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what'll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it's way too late to just say no
You can't make it here anymore

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their shit don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the damn little war
And we can't make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore

And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you're listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore

Music and lyrics by James McMurtry

Posted by evan at 10:13 PM | Permalink

[transcript]

A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. -- Declaration of Independence.

Posted by evan at 7:24 PM | Permalink

Wow. It's clear this wasn't written by the US media:

US evangelist Jerry Falwell dies - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

The Rev Jerry Falwell, whose evangelical convictions and organisational abilities, including as a founder in 1979 of the Moral Majority movement, did much to place religious conservatives in a role of great influence in American politics, died on Tuesday in Lynchburg, Virginia, of apparent heart failure at the age of 73.

He was a figure of immense controversy over the last 40 years, outspoken to the point that his apologies appeared almost as regularly as his thundering denunciations. To him the three great scourges afflicting his country were "atheism, secularism and humanism," and nothing would deter him from defeating his evil trinity.

Most notoriously, he laid the blame for the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, at the feet of his domestic opponents. "I really believe," he said at the time, "that the pagans, the abortionists and the lesbians … and all those who have tried to secularise America helped this happen." His subsequent recantation attracted less attention.

Early in his career he was an avowed segregationist, frequently featuring the likes of Lester Maddox and George Wallace, the diehard southern governors, on his tele-evangelical programmes. He often spoke scathingly of what he called the Civil Wrongs Movement, a position from which, in later years, he again retreated

He strongly supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, once dismissing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace prize laureate, as "a phony". He was an equally ardent backer of Israel, believing that turmoil in the Middle East was the precursor of the Second Coming of Christ, with the stipulation that "the Anti-Christ must be, of necessity, a Jewish male."

[more at link, unless MSNBC has pulled it]

Update: Of course they pulled it. You can find it here.

Posted by evan at 4:42 PM | Permalink

Radio Paradise - eclectic online rock radio

Posted by evan at 2:15 PM | Permalink

Blowing the lid off the pet food industry

Aisles upon aisles in stores like PetsMart and PetCo are devoted to shiny displays of brightly colored bags and cans of dog food. A look at the lengthy list of ingredients on the side of the bag could leave the well-intentioned pet owner confused. What is "animal digest?" "Meat and poultry meal?" "BHA and ethoxyquin?"

Ann M. Martin, author of "Foods Pets Die For," will tell you that none of these things are what animals should be eating.

"In my opinion, when we purchase these bags and cans of commercial food, we are purchasing garbage," she said.

The FDA soothingly states that "consumers can take comfort in knowing that pet food is manufactured under a series of standards and regulations," but concedes, in a monumental understatement, that it "contains parts of the animal not normally eaten by people."

The pet food industry, to put it bluntly, uses food unfit for human consumption.

If the buyer envisions plump chickens and choice, juicy cuts of beef going into that expensive bag of dog food, he is in for a rude awakening. "Meat meal" is ground-up slaughterhouse discards, often containing disease-ridden tissue and high levels of hormones and pesticides. Cancerous tissue and worm-infested organs are perfectly acceptable. Whatever remains of the carcass after it is stripped of the muscle meat reserved for humans are ground up into an unsavory mess.

What are known as 4D animals - "dead, dying, diseased or disabled" - are routinely rerouted into pet food. Plastic foam packaging containing spoiled meat from the supermarkets, ear tags and spoiled slaughterhouse meat also make their way into the mix. Restaurant grease is used to coat the outside of pet food, making it more palatable to pets.

The grains included in pet food are those deemed unfit for humans because of mold, contaminants or poor quality; they also can include hulls and other remnants from the milling process.

High temperatures and lengthy processing procedures rob the mixture of whatever nutrients it might contain; to compensate, a long list of chemical additives are dumped in. These are usually added all together as a premix, and if there is a mistake in making up the mix, it can throw off the entire balance, resulting in a potentially toxic imbalance. Dyes (to add eye appeal) and preservatives such as BHT and Ethoxyquin can accumulate in the pet's body, resulting in organ damage.

Posted by evan at 4:39 PM | Permalink

Iraq For Sale - The War Profiteers - Google Video

Can be downloaded as .avi from link.

Posted by evan at 1:43 PM | Permalink

The democracy of fame? - TLS Highlights - Times Online

from the article:

... It is often noted that celebrities refer to themselves in the first-person plural. “For two years,” Garth Brooks recently told the Independent, “we couldn’t find anything that we wanted to be an actor in.” Other famous people have cultivated the habit of referring to themselves in the third-person singular: “I’ve been very careful that Deborah Norville does the right thing”, the TV personality Deborah Norville told the Seattle Times last year; “Deborah has been pretty clever about managing her associations”. The actor Richard Dreyfuss uses both the first-person plural and the third-person singular (possibly, one day, he will start referring to himself as “they”).

Posted by evan at 1:33 AM | Permalink

A Black Matter for the King | TPMCafe

But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in battle shall join together at the latter day and cry all "We died at such a place"--some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it, whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

--Shakespeare, King Henry V, Act IV, Scene I.

[read the link]

Posted by evan at 7:39 PM | Permalink

Romney Reaches to the Christian Right - washingtonpost.com

VIRGINIA BEACH, May 5 -- Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) did not discuss his Mormon faith as he continued his outreach Saturday to conservative Christians in a graduation speech at Regent University, the school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.

Instead, Romney, who is intensely courting this key segment of the Republican base in hopes of winning the party's 2008 presidential nomination, expounded on conservative themes such as the importance of child-rearing and marriage and the presence of evil in the world.

"There is no work more important to America's future than the work that is done within the four walls of the American home," Romney said. He also criticized people who choose not to get married because they enjoy the single life.

"It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking," Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. "In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

Ooo-la-la, those frisky French. What, is he trying to out-nutter Giuliani?

Posted by evan at 9:59 PM | Permalink

This is my computer running Ubuntu Linux 6.06 LTS. See? Not scary at all. Kinda like Windows, in fact, but without all the crapola. Click the pic for a larger version.

It occurred to me the other day that it's actually a tribute to Ubuntu that I'm running a version two generations behind the current release and find no pressing reason to update it (even though it would cost absolutely nothing to do so). With Windows, I was always tinkering with the system to make it work better. This just works, and in the 18 months that I have been using Linux as my primary OS, it has never once crashed.

Posted by evan at 12:16 AM | Permalink

BibliOdyssey

via boing boing

Posted by evan at 11:16 PM | Permalink

Bush: I'm the Commander Guy - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

WASHINGTON, May 2–And you thought he was still “the decider.”

President Bush coined a new nickname for himself — ‘’the commander guy” — on Wednesday, as he criticized Congressional Democrats in a speech to the annual gathering of the Associated General Contractors of America, a construction industry trade group.

The man who last year proclaimed “I’m the decider,’’ in response to a question about whether he would fire Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, came up with this latest moniker in explaining why he vetoed an Iraq war spending bill that dictated a timeline for troops to withdraw from Iraq.

“The question is, ‘Who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders?,’’ Mr. Bush said. “As you know, my position is clear – I’m the commander guy.”

Posted by evan at 11:36 PM | Permalink

The woman who needs a veil of protection from modern life | the Daily Mail

Before knocking on Sarah Dacre's door, I take the precaution of checking my mobile phone. It's switched off, as she has requested.

"Last time someone came to visit," she warns, "I started feeling awfully nauseous. It turned out he had a picture phone with him and had left it switched on. A picture phone!"

She pauses, looking genuinely horrified. Apparently, this type of mobile automatically sends signals to a local base station every nine minutes - "No wonder I felt so sick."

[snip]

Sarah, 51, is one of a growing band of people who claim to be experiencing extreme - and incapacitating - sensitivity to electrical appliances, as well as to certain frequencies of electromagnetic waves.

"Wi-Fi, or wireless broadband networks, seem to be the worst thing," she says.

"Closely followed by mobile phones - particularly if they're being used in an enclosed space - the base stations of cordless telephones and mobile phone masts.

"I have to restrict the amount of time I spend on the computer or watching television, and make sure I don't have too many household appliances on at once, because that sets me off as well."

[more at link]

Can't be near a cell phone but can sit in front of a TV or computer -- certainly convenient, but does not, um, compute. Her neighbor's wireless router makes her sick, but her own toaster doesn't? Time for a double-blind test, folks.

Posted by evan at 1:25 AM | Permalink

LiveScience.com - Moving Your Eyes Improves Memory, Study Suggests

If you’re looking for a quick memory fix, move your eyes from side-to-side for 30 seconds, researchers say.

Horizontal eye movements are thought to cause the two hemispheres of the brain to interact more with one another, and communication between brain hemispheres is important for retrieving certain types of memories.

Posted by evan at 11:34 AM | Permalink

China confirms exports to U.S. contained melamine - USATODAY.com

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY BEIJING — Chinese authorities acknowledged for the first time Thursday that ingredients exported to make pet food in the USA contained melamine, a chemical the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects led to scores of pet deaths in the past month.

As Beijing stepped up efforts to investigate the contamination, including allowing FDA inspectors to visit China, experts here said the fragmented nature of China's vast food processing industry makes inspection difficult and increases the likelihood of future problems.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said in a statement issued Thursday that an investigation found melamine in wheat gluten and rice protein exported to the USA by two Chinese companies. Previously China has denied exporting any tainted pet-food ingredients to the USA and Canada. The contaminated shipments avoided US customs inspection because they were not declared as pet food ingredients, the statement said. They were declared as products not requiring inspection.

But the ministry rejected FDA claims that the melamine was to blame for harming pets.

"There is no clear evidence showing that melamine is the direct cause of the poisoning or death of the pets," the statement said. "China is willing to strengthen cooperation with the U.S. side ... to find out the real cause leading to the pet deaths in order to protect the health of the pets of the two countries."

[snip]

Binzhou Futian Bio-Technology Company, one of two firms China now admits exported the melamine-laced products, told its U.S. client Wilbur-Ellis that the contamination occurred through accidental reuse of dirty packaging, according to company president John Thacher.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 6:19 PM | Permalink

Honeybees - Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons - New York Times

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

As with any great mystery, a number of theories have been posed, and many seem to researchers to be more science fiction than science. People have blamed genetically modified crops, cellular phone towers and high-voltage transmission lines for the disappearances. Or was it a secret plot by Russia or Osama bin Laden to bring down American agriculture? Or, as some blogs have asserted, the rapture of the bees, in which God recalled them to heaven? Researchers have heard it all.

Brilliant. See? Suspecting GM crops is as nutty as believing the bees have been raptured.

Posted by evan at 11:09 PM | Permalink

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality (April 2007) - News - PhysicsWeb

Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra "hidden variables". Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism -- giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871).

[more at link]

Cats? What cats? I don't see any cats.

Posted by evan at 1:41 AM | Permalink

Wipe your arse less, suggests Sheryl Crow | The Register

Eco-friendly chanteuse Sheryl Crow - who's just completed a US "Stop Global Warming College Tour" with "environmental activist" Laurie David - has formulated a cunning plan to save the planet: use less toilet paper and dispense with the services of paper napkins.

Crow's mission during her 11-stop campaign was "to persuade students to help combat the world's environmental problems", the BBC notes. Her illuminating blog reveals she "spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming".

And here's the upshot of that contemplation: "I propose a limitation be put on how many sqares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required."

[more at link]

Ya gotta wonder why Rush Limbaugh bothers to hire writers.

Posted by evan at 3:07 PM | Permalink

Harper's Magazine

I just discovered that if you subscribe (by mail) to Harper's magazine, you now have access to every issue ever published -- since 1850 -- at harpers.org. Articles by Mark Twain.... Someone has done some serious scanning.

Posted by evan at 2:33 AM | Permalink

A timetable for murder

Mid-April is the time of the year for school shootings in the US. This week in 2006 there were four foiled plots - at Riverton High School, Kansas; North Pole Middle School, Alaska; Pearl Junior High School, Mississippi, and one in Puyallup, Washington. The Columbine High School shootings took place on April 20 1999.

Last October, I travelled to North Pole, Alaska, the site of one of the failed school shootings, to make a documentary about it for More 4. The documentary - Travels With My Camera - will be shown on May 2.

So far there's no word of the Virginia shooter's motive, although the tabloids are saying he was a jilted boyfriend. I suppose we'll never know what was going through his head, nor the Columbine shooters' heads, nor the heads of the many other school shooters who ended the day by killing themselves. Perhaps the most instructive thing about our visit to North Pole was meeting the father of one of the ringleaders of the shooting plot. Hearing his story, I think, goes some way towards understanding why American kids so frequently decide to enact this dark fantasy.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 12:58 PM | Permalink

Pet Food Contamination Scandal Spreads to Pork, FDA Opens Criminal Investigation

The FDA said it knows of five companies that received the contaminated Chinese rice protein concentrate. Three firms have identified themselves by announcing recalls; the other two are not publicly known because the FDA will not name them until the companies come forth voluntarily.

Just in case you were wondering, and you should be, exactly for whom the FDA works.

[much more at link]

Posted by evan at 4:49 PM | Permalink

eclectech : the tinfoil hat song

Posted by evan at 4:43 PM | Permalink

ABC News: Officials: Pet Food Poison May Have Been Intentional

FDA Investigators Say Chinese Companies May Have Added Melamine to Appear to Boost Protein Content

April 19, 2007 — - For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

Food and Drug Administration investigators say the Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products.

Officials now suspect this possibility because a second ingredient from China, rice protein concentrate, has tested positive for melamine. So has corn gluten shipped to South Africa. That means there is a possibility for another round of recalls.

The FDA's top veterinarian, Stephen Sundlof, says finding melamine in so many products "would certainly lend credibility to the theory that it was maybe intentional."

Melamine, which is used to make plastics in the United States and as a fertilizer in Asia, contains nitrogen. Nitrogen can appear to boost the level of protein in products.

The revelations have led the FDA to expand the number of products it is testing as they enter the United States. So far, those inspections at the border have not turned up any melamine in wheat gluten. Tainted wheat gluten used by Menu Foods is suspected in sickening hundreds, if not thousands of pets.

Some of the tainted pet food has apparently made it into feed for hogs. Federal agencies are trying to determine if it was actually fed to animals and whether it may have reached the human food supply.

Copyright 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Posted by evan at 11:03 AM | Permalink

Fears grow on pet food - sacbee.com

New findings expand the threat beyond wheat gluten.

By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg - Bee Staff Writer

Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The monthlong pet food recall expanded Tuesday with a troubling twist, for the first time involving foods that do not contain wheat gluten but still tested positive for a potentially lethal chemical.

The finding makes it much tougher to tell people what to safely feed their pets and fuels suspicions that the chemical melamine is being deliberately added to some pet food ingredients to bolster apparent protein.

Natural Balance, a Pacoima-based company, is "99.9 percent sure" that a rice protein made in Asia is responsible for the melamine detected Tuesday in some of its venison-based pet foods, company President Joey Herrick said.

"It was pretty shocking," he said in a phone interview after the company recalled several of its venison foods. "I was livid."

Herrick declined to name the supplier of the rice protein or the country it came from, saying only that a large American company acquired the ingredient for Diamond Pet Foods, which makes some Natural Balance products.

Because both wheat gluten and rice protein enhance the protein content of pet food, "it certainly is suspicious" that melamine now is associated with both, said Bob Poppenga, a UC Davis veterinary toxicology professor.

Melamine isn't an edible protein, but it has plenty of nitrogen, which can be used as a marker for protein in chemical analyses.

So, if someone wanted to use less of the relatively pricey sources of vegetable protein, such as wheat gluten, and throw in cheaper starches instead, adding melamine to that mix would still make it look like a protein-rich product, numerous veterinary nutritionists and toxicologists have said.

[more at link]

But, of course, "someone" would draw the line at doing this with "human-grade" wheat gluten and rice protein? The US imports 80% of the wheat gluten it uses in animal and human food, and the FDA inspects less than 1% of food imports.

Posted by evan at 12:30 PM | Permalink

Second Tainted Pet Food Ingredient Found - New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An industrial chemical that led to a nationwide recall of more than 100 brands of cat and dog foods has been found to contaminate a second pet food ingredient, expanding the recall further.

The chemical, melamine, is believed to have contaminated rice protein concentrate used to make a variety of Natural Balance Pet Foods products for both dogs and cats, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. Previously, the chemical was found to contaminate another ingredient, wheat gluten, used by at least six other pet food and treat manufacturers.

Natural Balance said it was recalling all its Venison and Brown Rice canned and bagged dog foods, its Venison and Brown Rice dog treats and its Venison and Green Pea dry cat food.

The Pacoima, Calif., company said recent laboratory tests showed the products contain melamine. It believes the source of the contaminant was rice protein concentrate, which the company recently added to the dry venison formulas. Natural Balance does not use wheat gluten, which was associated with the previous melamine contamination, it said.

Last month, Menu Foods recalled 60 million cans of dog and cat food after the deaths of 16 pets, mostly cats, that ate its products. The FDA said tests indicated the food was contaminated with melamine, used in making plastics and other industrial processes. Five other companies later recalled pet products also made with wheat gluten tainted by the chemical.

The FDA has since blocked Chinese imports of wheat gluten. An FDA spokeswoman did not immediately return messages left seeking comment.

Posted by evan at 11:52 AM | Permalink

Conclusive proof that this is all a bad dream:

The Poor Man - What the Hell?

The Poor Man - Aboard the Spirit of Strom Thurmond

Posted by evan at 1:10 AM | Permalink

Will Google get mad at me if I link to The Greatest Living American?

I wonder if Mr. Colbert realized that his idea would crash his own website.

Posted by evan at 1:29 AM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 10:46 PM | Permalink

Massive spam shot of 'Storm Trojan' reaches record proportions

.... Irony, it seems, isn't lost on the attackers. "This is really a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Swidler, "by warning users about a worm attack to get them to click on a worm."

There's little funny about the attack. "We're seeing both a very high volume of spam and a self-replicating worm," said Swidler. "This combination is kind of sophisticated. It's technically sophisticated in how they package the payload, but also in how they're trying to fool users into clicking on the attachment."

The malicious spam, Swidler went on, tries to convince users that their computers are already infected with malware and now part of a botnet. "They're telling people that their e-mail access is about to be cut off, and that they have to install this patch to continue using [e-mail]."

[more at link]

That's not ironic, that's clever and kinda funny. You know what's really "ironic"? That Computerworld, which bills itself as a serious IT publication, would run this kind of "Head for the hills!" article and never once mention that the threat only applies to computers running Microsoft Windows. That's "ironic." Also "moronic" and "corrupt."

Posted by evan at 12:48 PM | Permalink

kutv.com - Tainted Gluten Almost Made It Into Human Food

While the public was focused on the danger to their pets, sources tell 2News that the Food and Drug Administrations had tracked at least one suspect batch of wheat gluten into the human food supply, quietly quarantined some products, and notified the Centers For Disease Control to watch for new patients admitted to hospitals with renal or kidney failure.

Stephen Sundlof of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine says, “We didn’t know at the time whether or not wheat gluten had made it into the human food supply. We asked CDC to put a special emphasis on looking at increased incidence of renal failure in people.”

But there were no spikes in illnesses and the human food ultimately tested clean. The FDA tried to comfort congress today saying there’s “no evidence” any bad gluten got into human food, though the agency still doesn’t know where it all went.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 2:07 AM | Permalink

 
... is what's needed here. Unfortunately, shortly after this picture was taken, the owner drove off the edge of the earth.

Click photo for larger version.

Source.

Posted by evan at 3:40 PM | Permalink

globeandmail.com: Pet food insider sold shares before recall

The chief financial officer of Menu Foods Income Fund says it's a "horrible coincidence" that he sold nearly half his units in the troubled pet food maker less than three weeks before a massive recall of tainted pet food.

Insider trading reports show that Mark Wiens sold 14,000 units for $102,900 on Feb. 26 and Feb. 27. Those shares would be worth $62,440 today, based on yesterday's close of $4.46 a unit.

That represented 45 per cent of Mr. Wiens's units. After the sale, he still owned 17,193 units and options to purchase 101,812 units, according to insider trading reports.

"It's a horrible coincidence, yes . . ." Mr. Wiens said yesterday.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 1:29 PM | Permalink

Some Suspect Chemical Mix in Pet Food - New York Times

XUZHOU, China, April 10 — Behind an unmarked gate in this booming city well north of Shanghai lies a large building at the heart of an investigation over tainted pet food that has killed at least 16 cats and dogs in the United States, sickened 12,000 and prompted a nationwide recall.

This is the property of the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, a small agricultural products business that investigators have identified as the source of contaminated wheat gluten that was shipped to a major pet food supplier in the United States.

Some American regulators suspect there was deliberate mixing of substances. They are looking into the possibility that melamine, the chemical linked to the pets’ deaths, was mixed into the wheat gluten in China as a way to bolster the protein content, according to a person who was briefed on the investigation.

Though American and Chinese regulators are searching for answers, local residents and workers are unwittingly providing clues about how the pet food supply may have become contaminated.

The case is also exposing some of the enormous challenges confronting the global marketplace as China becomes a worldwide supplier of agricultural products.

There are strong indications that Xuzhou Anying, a company with a main office that seems to consist of just two rooms and an adjoining warehouse here, possessed substantial supplies of melamine and even sought to buy quantities of it over the Internet.

[snip]

there are indications that Xu- zhou Anying has manufacturing facilities in this area and also had access to melamine, which is sometimes used as a fertilizer in Asia. For instance, in recent months Xuzhou Anying has posted several requests on Web trading sites seeking to purchase large quantities of melamine.

In a March 29 posting on a site operated by Sohu.net, a big Chinese company, officials of Xuzhou Anying wrote, “Our company buys large quantities of melamine scrap all year around.” There were also postings on several other trading sites like ChemAbc.net.

[snip]

The question that regulators, agriculture experts, and food producers and distributors may now be asking is whether other substances added to food imports can broadly contaminate the American food supply. The F.D.A. has said none of the contaminated wheat gluten leaked into human food.

[snip]

Chinese regulators say they are now carrying out a nationwide inspection of wheat gluten supplies. American regulators have banned all wheat gluten from China, but there has been no domestic recall so far of gluten produced by Xuzhou Anying; the company’s wheat gluten can be used to make bread, baked goods and other food.

[more at above link]

And how, exactly, can the FDA be so sure none of this wheat gluten is in human food?

They can't.

Posted by evan at 1:08 PM | Permalink

A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

In which Garrison Keillor explains why I miss NYC so much.

Posted by evan at 1:35 AM | Permalink

This is the official logo of Menu Foods Income Fund, the folks who are behind the current pet food poisonings, newly added to their own web page. Click photo for larger view.

That beagle doesn't look happy. I'm hoping those poor critters aren't actually eating the company's product. The CEO should be.

Posted by evan at 4:20 PM | Permalink

Pet food recall expands again - sacbee.com

Four days after a Davis-based lab told the FDA it found melamine in some pet foods that had not been recalled, Menu Foods on Tuesday expanded its recall, adding at least six new brands of cat food and some new varieties sold under brands already recalled.

This latest recall comes despite assurances from Food and Drug Administration officials last week that its probe was winding down and it believed all tainted food had been pinpointed.

"We are pretty much coming to a conclusion on this," Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, had said in a news conference Thursday. "The public should feel secure in purchasing pet foods that are not subject to this recall."

The FDA had no immediate comment Tuesday on the fresh wave of recalls.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 11:51 AM | Permalink

"Sewage in lard" prompts new China health scare
04 Dec 2006
Source: Reuters

BEIJING, Dec 4 (Reuters) - China has arrested the manager of a factory which used grease from swill, sewage and recycled industrial oil to make edible lard, a Chinese newspaper said on Monday in the latest health scare to hit the country.

Health officials also detected "toxic pesticide" in lard produced by the Fanchang Grease Factory in Taizhou, in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, the Shanghai Daily said.

"They wholesaled the product to retailers across the country, and the retailers sold it to clients, including hotels and restaurants," the paper said.

Since opening in September 2005, the plant had bought more than 170 tonnes of recycled grease to produce an average of six tonnes of lard daily. A night-time raid found 37,600 kg of raw materials and 5,300 kg of lard, the paper said.

Billions of dollars worth of counterfeit and substandard goods, from fake liquor to luxury handbags, are produced every year in China.

In 2004, a major health scandal erupted when China revealed that at least 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the country's impoverished eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby milk powder.

Last week, several fish farms in eastern Shandong province breeding turbot, a popular type of flatfish, were fined and ordered to suspend sales after traces of cancer-causing chemicals including malachite green were detected in samples.

Authorities in several cities last month found Sudan IV, a cancer-causing industrial dye, in "red-yolk" duck eggs sold to poultry farmers who had mixed it with feed.

Red yolks are regarded as a sign of extra nutrition, thus making them more expensive.

Posted by evan at 10:49 AM | Permalink

Chinese criticized in pet food probe - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The Chinese government and the company that supplied a contaminated ingredient are slowing the federal investigation into the nationwide recall of pet food, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said Tuesday.

Researchers, however, are making strides toward uncovering what has sickened cats and dogs nationwide. A lead scientist said yesterday he is convinced a second contaminant was in the wheat gluten, which FDA and independent researchers said was laced with high amounts of melamine, a chemical used in plastics.

Dr. Richard Goldstein, associate professor of medicine at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine and a kidney specialist who is researching the outbreak's health impact on pets, said he and other researchers saw what they believe is a second contaminant in the gluten and the urine of infected animals, but have yet to identify it. Cornell is among labs working with the FDA.

"The concerted effort now is to identify what else is in there, and what's in the crystals" of infected animals' urine and tissue, Goldstein said.

Michael Rogers, director of the FDA's field investigations division, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the agency has asked the Chinese government for help investigating the gluten and the supplier, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd., based in Jiangsu province.

The FDA is disappointed with slow and incomplete Chinese responses, Rogers said.

"I usually don't speak in terms of cooperative or not cooperative," he said.

Chu Maoming, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., did not return calls or an e-mail requesting comment.

He told the Trib on March 30: "The Chinese Embassy is working closely with the FDA officers to determine the real cause." Since then, he has declined repeated requests for interviews with the embassy representative working with the FDA.

Although the agency got some information from the Chinese, Rogers said, "There remain a number of questions."

Federal investigators haven't determined whether Xuzhou Anying shipped other food products to the United States, or what other Chinese companies it sold wheat gluten to that, in turn, might have been shipped here, Rogers said.

Xuzhou Anying's Web site said it also exports carrots, garlic, ginger, corn protein powder, vegetables and feed. Rogers said Chinese officials have not responded to the U.S. government's question about whether any products other than wheat gluten were shipped here.

"We're certainly reviewing all products from this source," he said. Since the recall, the company has shipped only wheat gluten to the United States, but U.S. officials still are unsure what might have been shipped prior to the recall, Rogers said.

"From an operational standpoint, we still have questions about this company," he said.

The FDA is screening all wheat gluten imported from China and the Netherlands at U.S. ports and seizing all wheat gluten from Xuzhou Anying.

Under the microscope and even to the naked eye, the contaminated gluten looks different from uncontaminated samples, Goldstein said. Researchers see melamine granules and other colored granules throughout the gluten, he said.

"There appears to be other things in there, other than the melamine, but identifying what they are is a long process," he said.

He said researchers ruled out aminopterin -- used as rat poison in other countries -- which New York state officials previously announced was in the pet food.

The FDA, Cornell and other researchers found melamine in high concentrations in the gluten -- up to 6.6 percent of the product.

Even so, they do not believe the melamine made the animals sick, although they said it is a marker for tracking the outbreak, because the crystal found in the melamine and in animals' urine and tissue is distinctive to this outbreak.

Because of a dearth of past studies on melamine exposure in dogs and cats, the only way to know for sure if it could cause the outbreak would be to feed the compound to those animals, Goldstein said, adding, "That's not an option."

More than 10 laboratories are researching the crystals and working together to develop criteria to determine which kidney illnesses were caused by the contaminated pet food. Although the link is relatively easy to establish because of the distinctive crystals, the process needed to find them is expensive and time-consuming, Goldstein said.

The labs will test urine and tissue samples from pets suspected of becoming ill from the food and possibly samples of the food, he said. How that will be accomplished and who will pay for it has not been determined, so pet owners and veterinarians are advised to keep those samples, he said. The labs are trying to develop a way to test for melamine more quickly and cheaply.

Note: The Animal Health Laboratory at the University of Guelph (Canada), experts in screening feed, and New York State Food Laboratory both found aminopterin in the food.

Posted by evan at 2:28 AM | Permalink

Rat poison in China hospital food blamed for death

Last Updated: 2007-04-10 13:00:45 -0400 (Reuters Health)

BEIJING (Reuters) - One person died and more than 200 fell ill after eating breakfast porridge suspected of containing rat poison at a hospital in China, state media said on Tuesday.

Patients and staff at a traditional Chinese hospital in the northeastern city of Harbin suffered nausea and diarrhoea shortly after eating breakfast at its restaurant on Monday, Xinhua news agency said.

"All the victims ate porridge, and investigators suspected the water had been contaminated by rat poison," Xinhua said.

Du Qingrong, a 77-year-old woman admitted on Friday for cardiovascular disease, died on Monday afternoon. All other victims were out of danger by Monday afternoon, Xinhua said, citing hospital sources.

The news agency said the hospital, one of Heilongjiang province's largest and best-equipped medical institutions, had been shut down after the incident and food samples taken for testing.

OK, let's review:

1) Melamine can be, and apparently has been, added to grain products to boost their protein count. It is toxic.

2) Aminopterin is an analog of folic acid, and indistinguishable from folic acid in simple lab tests. Aminopterin is a chemotherapy drug sometimes apparently used as rat poison. Folic acid is commonly used to supplement pet (and human) food. Was there aminopterin in the porridge?

3) China's regulatory apparatus is a very, very bad joke. There have been numerous instances of mass poisonings motivated by simple greed on the part of food producers.

It seems reasonable to suspect that both aminopterin and melamine were in the contaminated pet food, the first as a folic acid substitute, the second to boost protein content. And, since the US gets a large chunk of its wheat gluten from China, the chances that this crap is not in the human food supply are not good.

You might wanna re-think that Pop-Tart.

Posted by evan at 12:18 AM | Permalink

Bloomberg.com: Putin Tightens Internet Controls Before Presidential Election

By Henry Meyer

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- President Vladimir Putin has already brought Russian newspapers and television to heel. Now he's turning his attention to the Internet.

As the Kremlin gears up for the election of Putin's successor next March, Soviet-style controls are being extended to online news after a presidential decree last month set up a new agency to supervise both mass media and the Web.

``It's worrying that this happened ahead of the presidential campaign,'' Roman Bodanin, political editor of Gazeta.ru, Russia's most prominent online news site, said in a telephone interview. ``The Internet is the freest medium of communication today because TV is almost totally under government control, and print media largely so.''

All three national TV stations are state-controlled, and the state gas monopoly, OAO Gazprom, has been taking over major newspapers; self-censorship is routine. That has left the Internet as the main remaining platform for political debate, and Web sites that test the boundaries of free speech are already coming under pressure.

In December, a court in the Siberian region of Khakassia shut down the Internet news site Novy Fokus for not registering as a media outlet. The site, known for its critical reporting, reopened in late March after it agreed to register and accept stricter supervision.

[more at link]

But, but, the Little Prince gazed into Pootie's eyes, saw his soul, and told us he is a good man:

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialog. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He's a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialog and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship," Mr Bush said. [6/16/01]

No, George, your pal is a twisted little thug. But maybe you're working with different definitions of "trustworthy," "constructive," and "soul" than the rest of us?

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." --President-Elect George W. Bush, CNN, December 18, 2000.

Posted by evan at 10:13 PM | Permalink

Thousands of pets may have fallen ill

Veterinary chain estimates 39,000 affected

Tuesday, April 10, 2007 3:29 AM
By Andrew Bridges
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- Pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical might have sickened or killed 39,000 cats and dogs nationwide, based on an extrapolation from data released yesterday by one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals.

Banfield, The Pet Hospital, reported that an analysis of its database, compiled from records collected by its more than 615 veterinary hospitals, suggests that three out of every 10,000 cats and dogs that ate the pet food contaminated with melamine developed kidney failure. There are an estimated 60 million dogs and 70 million cats in the United States, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The hospital chain cared for 1 million dogs and cats during the three months when the more than 100 brands of now-recalled contaminated pet food were sold. It saw 284 extra cases of kidney failure among cats during that period, or a roughly 30 percent increase, when compared with background rates.

"It has meaning, when you see a peak like that. We see so many pets here, and it coincided with the recall period," said veterinarian Hugh Lewis, who oversees the mining of Banfield's database to do clinical studies. The chain continues to share its data with the Food and Drug Administration.

FDA officials have said the database compiled by the huge veterinary practice would probably provide the most authoritative picture of the harm done by the tainted food.

In central Ohio, no confirmed cases of pet poisonings have been reported, although some cases are suspected.

From its findings, Banfield officials calculated an incidence rate of .03 percent for pets, although there was no discernible uptick among dogs. That suggests the contamination was overwhelmingly toxic to cats, Lewis said. That is in line with what other experts have said.

At least six pet-food companies have recalled products made with imported Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical. The recall involved about 1 percent of the overall U.S. pet food supply.

Measuring the tainted food's impact on animal health has proved an elusive goal. Previous estimates have ranged from the FDA's admittedly low tally of roughly 16 confirmed deaths to the more than 3,000 unconfirmed cases logged by one Web site.

"On a percentage basis, it's not breathtaking, but unfortunately it's a number that, if it was your pet that was affected, it's too high," veterinarian Nancy Zimmerman, Banfield's senior medical adviser, said of the newly estimated incidence rate.

In another estimate yesterday, the founder of a veterinary group said 5,000 to 10,000 pets might have fallen ill from eating the contaminated food, and 1,000 to 2,000 might have died.

The estimate was based on a Veterinary Information Network survey of 1,400 veterinarians among its 30,000 members. About one-third reported at least one case, said Paul Pion, the network's founder. He cautioned that a final, definitive tally isn't possible, and that even his estimate could be halved -- or doubled.

Banfield's veterinarians treat an estimated 6 percent of the nation's cats and dogs. After the first recall was announced, the chain beefed up its software to allow those veterinarians to plug in extra epidemiological information to help track cases, Zimmerman said.

The new template allowed vets to log what a sick pet had eaten, any symptoms its owner might have noticed, the results of a physical examination, any urine and blood test results and other observations.

Posted by evan at 11:09 AM | Permalink

Mystery cat takes regular bus to the shops | the Daily Mail

Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week.

The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 4:25 PM | Permalink

Comments and trackbacks have been disabled again. I have better things to do than to moderate hundreds of spam assaults per day. Anyone interesting in commenting can send it to [my first name] at [name of this website].

Posted by evan at 12:54 PM | Permalink

Barking up wrong tree in pet food recall?

Lawyer claims culprit is vitamin D

By ALAN CAIRNS, SUN MEDIA

As the poisoned pet food crisis widened yesterday with the recall of a dry food, a Toronto lawyer leading a $60-million class-action negligence suit against a Guelph company fears scientists might be barking up the wrong tree.

With suspicions in the Menu Foods poisoning shifting from animopterin rat poison to melamine used in Asian fertilizers, lawyer David Himelfarb said suspect food should be "immediately" tested for excessive vitamin D.

Himelfarb said the kidney failure seen in the Menu Foods case is "exactly" the same as symptoms that left a Whitby woman's dog seriously ill in 2005.

The woman, Janet Grixti, alleges in a statement of claim filed in Superior Court of Ontario that her chocolate Labrador Mocha became ill after it was fed Royal Canin pet food with excessive amounts of vitamin D.

10 TIMES NORMAL

"We have taken hundreds of samples of (Royal Canin) food from across the GTA. I can't give you accurate numbers ... but there is an awful lot of (vitamin D) ... some tests have shown more than 10 times the normal amount ... might even be more," said Himelfarb, who is on the class-action case with lawyer Joe Rochon.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received 8,800 complaints of dog and cats deaths or illness.

No corresponding statistics are kept in Canada.

But after receiving 1,000 telephone calls and e-mails from concerned pet owners, Himelfarb suggests that the poisoning tragedy is much bigger than it appears.

"There could be many thousands," Himelfarb said.

Vitamin D is essential to a healthy diet for dogs and cats, Himelfarb said, but excessive amounts cause "total (kidney) failure."

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 5:19 PM | Permalink

Internet Access CAPTCHAs

Posted by evan at 2:06 AM | Permalink

The Word Detective : CafePress.com

Yes, it's the Official TWD Hat, sporting the Official TWD Motto, available in tan (shown) or white. Click picture for larger view. Available at the link above, along with scads of other groovy TWD swag.

p.s. -- If you have to ask, you're not allowed to buy one.

p.p.s. -- Just kidding.

Posted by evan at 1:16 PM | Permalink

PETA Suggests Vitamin D to Blame for Animal Deaths

The animal rights group, People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), says that excessive amounts of vitamin D in pet food might be the cause of the growing number of kidney problems and deaths in cats and dogs across the country.

PETA also called for the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration to immediately resign for his "complete failure" in handling the Menu Foods recall of 60 million containers of wet dog and cat food.

PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich -- citing laboratory evidence -- today urged the FDA to refocus its investigation beyond wheat gluten and consider other possible contaminants in the pet food.

In his letter to Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinarian Medicine, Friedrich said: "Wheat gluten is used almost exclusively in wet foods. However, the mounting number of complaints of illness and death in cats and dogs who had eaten only dry food strongly suggests that there is a second source of the poisoning, another toxic ingredient.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 5:43 PM | Permalink

We went to Hometown Buffet in Reynoldsburg tonight, an all-you-can eat sort of place, where I had:

One piece baked chicken (protein is important)
Mashed potatoes with chicken gravy
Cornbread stuffing
Cole slaw
Cooked carrots

-- end of conventional eating --

-- begin carbohydrate pigout --

Spaghetti with vegetarian marinara sauce (really not bad)
More spaghetti with marinara sauce
Two petit pan rolls
Cheese pizza (soggy, but pizza is pizza)
More pizza, but all they had was festooned with pepperoni (yuck), which I removed
Chocolate cake (quite good, actually)
More chocolate cake

Two cups of really bad coffee

Then we walked over to Target, where I began to feel really, really sick.

Must have been the carrots.

Posted by evan at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Salon.com | How Congress can end the war without hurting the troops

Sen. Reid and I are introducing a bill that would require President Bush to begin redeployment and effectively end our military mission in Iraq by March 31, 2008.

By Sen. Russ Feingold

Apr. 02, 2007 | Many Americans remember the tragic deaths of U.S. troops in Somalia in the early 1990s, vividly portrayed in the movie "Blackhawk Down." Those 18 service members died in a misguided, poorly defined military mission that had dragged on without an end date and without the support of the American people.

As Congress debates the war in Iraq, the congressional debate over Somalia 14 years ago has some surprising parallels. Without question, Somalia in 1993 differs in many ways from Iraq in 2007, from the scope of the mission to the reason for that mission in the first place. What hasn't changed, however, is Congress' constitutional power to end a military mission, and its ability to use that power without endangering the safety of our brave troops.

That is exactly what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and I propose to do with legislation we will introduce when the Senate reconvenes next week. Our bill would require the president to begin safely redeploying U.S. troops out of Iraq in 120 days, with redeployment to be completed by March 31, 2008. After March, funding for the war in Iraq would be cut off, with three narrow exceptions -- targeted counterterrorism operations, protection of U.S. personnel and infrastructure, and training and equipping Iraqi forces. In other words, the current military mission in Iraq would be effectively ended. Sen. Reid has said he will work to make sure the Senate votes on our bill by the end of May.

Since President Bush has made it painfully clear that he has no intention of fixing his failed Iraq policy, it is no longer a question of if Congress will end this war; it is a question of when. The Feingold-Reid bill may be attacked by those who support this misguided war. But for many members of Congress, what they say and do now about Iraq flies in the face of what they said and did in 1993 regarding Somalia.

Today, some supporters of the Iraq war suggest falsely that efforts to cut funding for the war are a threat to our troops in the field. But in 1993, senators overwhelmingly supported successful efforts to cut off funding for a flawed military mission. Defenders of the Iraq war pretend that cutting off funds for the war is the same as cutting off funds for the troops, and raise the specter of troops being left on the battlefield without the training, equipment and resources they need. Every member of Congress agrees that we must continue to support our troops and give them the resources and support they need. And every member of Congress should know that we can do that while at the same time ending funding for a failed military mission. That was clearly understood in October 1993, when 76 senators voted for an amendment, offered by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, to end funding for the military mission in Somalia effective March 31, 1994, with limited exceptions.

None of those 76 senators, who include the current Republican leader and whip, acted to jeopardize the safety and security of U.S. troops in Somalia. All of them recognized that Congress had the power and the responsibility to bring our military operations in Somalia to a close, by establishing a date after which funds would be terminated.

The same day that the Senate voted on the Byrd amendment, 38 senators -- myself included -- supported an even stronger effort to end funding for Somalia operations. The amendment offered by Sen. John McCain on Oct. 15, 1993, would have eliminated funding for operations in Somalia immediately, except for funds for withdrawing troops or for continuing operations if any American POWs/MIAs were not accounted for. The mostly Republican senators who supported the McCain amendment were not disregarding the safety of our troops, or being indifferent to their need for guns, ammunition, food and clothing. They were supporting an appropriate, safe, responsible proposal to use Congress' power of the purse to bring an ill-conceived military mission to a close without in any way harming our troops.

Then as now, by setting a date after which funding for a military mission will be terminated, Congress can safely bring our troops out of harm's way. As Sen. Orrin Hatch said at the time, "The McCain amendment provides the president with the flexibility needed to bring our forces home with honor and without endangering the safety of American troops."

The debate about the Iraq war is the most important, and the most difficult, issue we face as a country. Any American, including any member of Congress, is entitled to support or oppose Congress' using its constitutional power to end our involvement in this disastrous war. But, in contrast to the 1993 debate about Somalia, today some wrongly suggest that ending funding for the Iraq war is tantamount to ending funding for the troops. That misleading argument makes it harder to have the thoughtful, responsible debate about the war that Congress and the American people so badly need.

Now is no time for phony arguments against ending funding for the Iraq war. There may be big differences between the military missions in Somalia and Iraq, but Congress' constitutional power to end a military mission hasn't changed, and neither has the fact that this power can be used without jeopardizing the safety of U.S. troops. As Congress debates Iraq -- and considers the new Feingold-Reid legislation -- we should remember Somalia, put false arguments aside, and have an open, honest debate about a war that drags on with no end in sight.

-- By Sen. Russ Feingold

Posted by evan at 1:11 PM | Permalink

Popular brand now included in pet food recall

... About 70 percent of the wheat gluten used in the United States for human (emphasis added) and pet food is imported from the European Union and Asia, according to the Pet Food Institute, an industry group.

One veterinarian suggested the international sourcing of ingredients would force the U.S. "to come to grips with a reality we had not appreciated."

"When you change from getting an ingredient from the supplier down the road to a supplier from around the globe, maybe the methods and practices that were effective in one situation need to be changed," said Tony Buffington, a professor of veterinary clinical sciences at Ohio State University.

[more at link]

Why would anyone think that the same gluten didn't end up in bread or Pop-Tarts? Why won't they identify the specific supplier in China?

Posted by evan at 7:51 PM | Permalink

Salon.com | Your modern-day Republican Party

Leading GOP presidential candidates believe in the power of imprisoning American citizens with no charges or review.

Glenn Greenwald

Apr. 01, 2007 | (updated below)

Various Republican candidates attended a meeting of Club for Growth, and afterwards, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru spoke to Cato Institute's President Ed Crane about what they said. This brief report from Ponnuru is simply extraordinary:

Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.

Mitt Romeny can't say -- at least not until he engages in a careful and solemn debate with a team of "smart lawyers" -- whether, in the United States of America, the President has the power to imprison American citizens without any opportunity for review of any kind. But in today's Republican Party, Romney's openness to this definitively tyrannical power is the moderate position. Ponnuru goes on to note:

Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.

It sounds like Giuliani is positioning himself in this race as the "compassionate authoritarian" -- "Yes, of course I have the power to imprison you without charges or review of any kind, but as President, I commit to you that I intend (no promises) to 'use this authority infrequently.'"

Two of the three leading Republican candidates for President either embrace or are open to embracing the idea that the President can imprison Americans without any review, based solely on the unchecked decree of the President. And, of course, that is nothing new, since the current Republican President not only believes he has that power but has exercised it against U.S. citizens and legal residents in the U.S. -- including those arrested not on the "battlefield," but on American soil.

What kind of American isn't just instinctively repulsed by the notion that the President has the power to imprison Americans with no charges? And what does it say about the current state of our political culture that one of the two political parties has all but adopted as a plank in its platform a view of presidential powers and the federal government that is -- literally -- the exact opposite of what this country is?

[much more at link]

Posted by evan at 6:45 PM | Permalink

In His White House, Giuliani Says, His Wife Might Have a Very Visible Role as Adviser - New York Times

Asked by Ms. Walters how much of a role Mrs. Giuliani would have in his campaign, Mr. Giuliani said, “As much as she wants.”

Asked if she would be involved in policy decisions, he said: “To the extent she wants to be. I couldn’t have a better adviser.”

As for cabinet meetings, she would sit in “if she wanted to,” Mr. Giuliani said, adding: “If they were relevant to something that she was interested in. I mean, that would be something that I’d be very, very comfortable with.”

Mrs. Giuliani, who used to work as a nurse and a pharmaceutical sales representative, said that “if he asks me to,” she would attend White House policy meetings, “and certainly in the areas of health care.”

Which wife would that be, Rudy?

I must say that the possibility of having a former pharmaceutical sales rep shaping national health policy sets my heart aflutter.

Speaking as someone who was a resident of NYC for most of Rudy's tenure as Mayor, I wouldn't vote for him for pigeon feeder. America's Mayor? Gimme a friggin' break. Giuliani is a twisted little control freak with a history of screw-ups and self-serving publicity stunts dating back to when he used to accompany Al D'Amato on drug raids dressed up like a cross between Mad Max and that motorcycle guy from the Village People.

As for 9/11, he was directly responsible for the fact that the FDNY radios couldn't communicate with the NYPD or their own commanders from inside the towers. That cost lives.

And as for fighting terrorism, how smart was it to put the city's emergency command center in 7 World Trade Center, when the towers had already been attacked once by terrorists? Not very.

Then there's his encouraging the worst shoot-first cowboy tendencies of the NYPD Street Crimes units.

And how come his little buddy Bernard Kerik isn't in jail?

Oh wait, this just in:

Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet. Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination according to most polls, later called the recommendation a mistake.

Yeah, Rudy. You've made a lot of them.

Posted by evan at 1:25 AM | Permalink

Brain stimulation may curb MS spasticity

Last Updated: 2007-03-30 14:05:19 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Magnetic stimulation of the brain (transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS) may help relieve "muscle spasticity" in people with multiple sclerosis, Italian researchers have found.

Spasticity is a form of muscle overactivity. A spastic muscle becomes stiff or rigid and resists being stretched out.

Dr. Diego Centonze, from the Universita Tor Vergata in Rome, and colleagues tested various high- and low- frequency TMS protocols in 19 people with MS and spasticity of the legs.

They report in the journal Neurology that a single treatment session with either low frequency or high frequency TMS had no effect on spasticity.

With multiple applications of high frequency TMS over a 2-week period, however, significant improvements in spasticity were seen. Moreover, the benefit persisted for at least 7 days after the last treatment session.

This study shows that magnetic stimulation of the brain "modulates spasticity" in patients with multiple sclerosis. Further studies are warranted, they conclude.

SOURCE: Neurology March 27, 2007.

It's worth a shot. My left calf muscle has been seized up most of the time for several weeks. And last night my hand cramped so badly -- for no reason whatsoever -- that I was reduced to pounding at it with the other hand like Doctor Strangelove.

Posted by evan at 10:47 PM | Permalink

defective yeti: Incredible Illusion!!

Posted by evan at 11:38 AM | Permalink

Tonight The Word Detective Online passed the two million "unique visitor" (i.e., not counting repeat visitors) mark. And that's counting only since 1999, four years after the site went online.

Now you all have to buy a teddy bear.

(Thanks to Dave Aton, who pointed this out to me right before it happened. I'd probably have noticed months from now.)

Posted by evan at 10:44 PM | Permalink

Yes, that's right, a teddy bear wearing a tiny Word Detective t-shirt.

Of course you want one.

Posted by evan at 1:59 PM | Permalink

For some reason I seem to be unable to post comments on my own blog. Thank you, Movable Type.

In any case, all our cats and dogs are fine so far, thanks, although the dogs are a bit peeved that we won't feed them canned food until this is all sorted out (if ever).

I think it's interesting that the manufacturer of the pet food refuses to name the supplier of the wheat gluten. What makes anyone think that the same tainted ingredient (i.e., RAT POISON) isn't going into, oh, Dinty Moore Beef Stew? Humans being, on average, 15-30 times the weight of their cats, the effects might be sub-clinical but still definitely deleterious.

Posted by evan at 12:05 PM | Permalink

United Press International - Rat poison found in pet food

NEW YORK, March 23 (UPI) -- Rat poison caused the deaths of U.S. pets that ate tainted food from Canada and the death toll is expected to rise, ABC News reported Friday.

A source told ABC that wheat imported from China and used by Menu Foods in nearly 100 brands of cat and dog food contained a rodentidicide called aminopterin.

The discovery was made by scientists at the New York food laboratory in Albany, ABC said. Details were to be officially released later Friday.

Millions of cans and pouches of wet food manufactured by Menu Foods were recalled last week.

It is not certain that the aminopterin is what caused the animals' deaths or if it was the only foreign substance found in the food, ABC said.

Aminopterin is illegal to use as rat poison in the United States but is used as a cancer-fighting drug, the source said.

The number of pets dying of acute kidney failure traced back to the food is expected to swell, doctors at New York's Animal Medical Center said.

"I was shocked and surprised -- acute kidney failure is not a common problem," veterinarian Cathy Langston said. "I've already heard about 200 cases, and so I bet that there are probably going to be thousands."

Many news sources are still reporting ~15 deaths, which is absurd.

Posted by evan at 4:03 PM | Permalink

The good news (I hope) is that I have re-enabled comments on this site. I had turned them off because of a deluge of spam. We shall see.

The bad news is that in the process of cleaning out all the old spam I managed to nuke every comment ever posted here. Sorry about that.

Posted by evan at 8:22 PM | Permalink

Popular dog, cat food recalled after kidney failure, deaths - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A major manufacturer of dog and cat food sold under Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and other store brands recalled 60 million containers of wet pet food Friday after reports of kidney failure and deaths.

An unknown number of cats and dogs suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, Menu Foods said in announcing the North American recall. Product testing has not revealed a link explaining the reported cases of illness and death, the company said.

See article for brands affected. It's not just "store brands" -- Nutro is in there.

Posted by evan at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I see that if I Google my name I get about 54,000 hits. Even given that maybe a third of those refer to me (a fact I find very distressing for some reason), that still leaves a lot of people sporting what I like to think of as my name out there.

But, as I have pointed out before, I happen to own the evanmorris.com domain. And I plan to keep it.

But I also have, and this is where things get interesting, the only other plausible "evanmorris" domain, evanmorris.net. Yeah, there's an evanmorris.info and an evanmorris.org out there, but ".org" is for organizations and ".info" is for losers. Evanmorris.us? Please. Evanmorris.name? Sounds like the start of an Abbott and Costello routine.

Now, I notice that a large number of Evan Ms out there are, shall we say, lucky children. Daddy is a hedge fund manager, Mommy is a senior partner at some big scary law firm, that sort of thing. Bravo, well done. And little Evan plays soccer at Greenwich Country Day or the like, and will go to a good college and probably end up an investment banker.

But when it comes time for not-me-Evan to stretch his golden wings and start his very own boutique firm trading in Martian oil futures, OH NO! The cupboard will be bare, domainwise, because Mom and Dad forgot to buy evanmorris.net from that cat farmer in Ohio back in 2007. Weeping, wailing, and enough resentment to fuel years of therapy will ensue.

Bad, bad, Mom and Dad. You'll spend five grand on the kid's 16th birthday bash, but won't spend that much on his internet future? And, since we all know that the internet is the future of everything, you might as well enroll little Evan in rehab right now.

So, here's your chance, Mom and Dad. Invest in the little nipper's future. Submit your bid to evan@evanmorris.com.

Posted by evan at 5:35 PM | Permalink

Science hopes to change events that have already occurred

Ever wish you could reach back in time and change the past? Maybe you'd like to take back an unfortunate voice mail message, or rephrase what you just said to your boss. Or perhaps you've even dreamed of tweaking the outcome of yesterday's lottery to make yourself the winner.

Common sense tells us that influencing the past is impossible -- what's done is done, right? Even if it were possible, think of the mind-bending paradoxes it would create. While tinkering with the past, you might change the circumstances by which your parents met, derailing the key event that led to your birth.

Such are the perils of retrocausality, the idea that the present can affect the past, and the future can affect the present. Strange as it sounds, retrocausality is perfectly permissible within the known laws of nature. It has been debated for decades, mostly in the realm of philosophy and quantum physics. Trouble is, nobody has done the experiment to show it happens in the real world, so the door remains wide open for a demonstration.

It might even happen soon. Researchers are on the verge of experiments that will finally hold retrocausality's feet to the fire by attempting to send a signal to the past. What's more, they need not invoke black holes, wormholes, extra dimensions or other exotic implements of time travel. It should all be doable with the help of a state-of-the-art optics workbench and the bizarre yet familiar tricks of quantum particles. If retrocausality is confirmed -- and that is a huge if -- it would overturn our most cherished notions about the nature of cause and effect and how the universe works.

[much more at link]

Posted by evan at 1:03 AM | Permalink

MIT to put its entire curriculum online free of charge

In 2002, when MIT decided to experiment with placing course contents on the Web for open access, the university's officials knew they were breaking new ground and had no idea how the effort would be received.

On Tuesday, school officials revealed plans to make available the university's entire 1,800-course curriculum by year's end. Currently, some 1.5 million online independent learners log on the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site every month and more than 120 universities around the world have inaugurated their own sites for independent learners. MIT has more than 1,500 course curriculums available online to date.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 11:46 PM | Permalink

FT.com / Who left the Wags out?

... Is it true that a word needs to have been in use for 10 years before it can make it into the OED? It is only a rule of thumb, Diamond says; the editors exercise their judgment. “But underlying the 10-year rule of thumb is something that points to how philosophically different the OED is from other dictionaries, and that is our responsibility not just to tell you what a word means but to give you a historical perspective on it. That’s the reason we won’t be publishing ‘Wag’ any time soon, because we want to see what happens to it.”

Still, says Diamond, if a new word does become commonly used and understood in a wide enough context, if its meaning has stabilised and if the word shows no signs of fading away, the 10-year rule may be bent - as it was for “chav”, which was published in the online OED in 2006, only eight years after its first verifiable use in 1998.

Surely, though, people were using “chav” colloquially before 1998? Very likely they were, Diamond says, but unless someone can provide hard, documentary evidence, “we can’t do anything about it, because one of our principles is that everything we cite must be verifiable. We can’t just have someone saying: ‘I was using this in 1992.’” The spoken word is no use if it goes unrecorded - although, interestingly, an internet quotation may be usable if it can be printed out and kept in the archives.

From an interesting and engagingly-written article on the current state of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Posted by evan at 11:05 PM | Permalink

Scientists say nerves use sound, not electricity

The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists.

The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 2:09 AM | Permalink

"Don't discuss polar bears": memo to scientists

Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said on Thursday.

Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.

But H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this policy was a long-standing one, meant to honor international protocols for meetings where the topics of discussion are negotiated in advance.

The matter came to light in e-mails from the Fish and Wildlife Service that were distributed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, both environmental groups.

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.

The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 1:29 AM | Permalink

It's a bit hard to see detail in this, but there are about 40 birds of various kinds chowing down on our dime here. Somehow the little ... fellows ... manage to scarf up about 25 pounds of sunflower seed and corn every week.

And they get very angry if we let the feeder run dry. Seriously, they sit out there and shriek.

Not in the picture are the rabbits, squirrels, possum and probably deer who visit at night.

Posted by evan at 8:04 PM | Permalink

Now that I've said that, of course not.

It melted by mid-afternoon.

Posted by evan at 7:16 PM | Permalink

No U.S. Backup Strategy For Iraq - washingtonpost.com

During a White House meeting last week, a group of governors asked President Bush and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about their backup plan for Iraq. What would the administration do if its new strategy didn't work?

The conclusion they took away, the governors later said, was that there is no Plan B. "I'm a Marine," Pace told them, "and Marines don't talk about failure. They talk about victory."

Pace had a simple way of summarizing the administration's position, Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) recalled. "Plan B was to make Plan A work."

Posted by evan at 11:58 PM | Permalink

Salon.com Life | Oprah's ugly secret

Oprah's ugly secret
By continuing to hawk "The Secret," a mishmash of offensive self-help cliches, Oprah Winfrey is squandering her goodwill and influence, and preaching to the world that mammon is queen.

By Peter Birkenhead

Mar. 05, 2007 | Steve Martin used to do a routine that went like this: "You too can be a millionaire! It's easy: First, get a million dollars. Now..."

If you put that routine between hard covers, you'd have "The Secret," the self-help manifesto and bottle of minty-fresh snake oil currently topping the bestseller lists. "The Secret" espouses a "philosophy" patched together by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne. Though "The Secret" unabashedly appropriates and mishmashes familiar self-help cliches, it was still the subject of two recent episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" featuring a dream team of self-help gurus, all of whom contributed to the project.

The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

Much more at link, long but definitely worth clicking through the ad.

Posted by evan at 11:15 AM | Permalink

An Open Letter to Microsoft: Re-Release Windows XP : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

... This time you don't have an escape clause: You can get a new PC with Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, or Vista Ultimate. But it's all Vista, and it's all got the same problems. Only some versions have more of them.

Posted by evan at 4:14 PM | Permalink

Interesting CBC report from 1993 (pre-web). Not badly done, focusing mainly on usenet.

Posted by evan at 1:50 PM | Permalink

Subtitles are a bit annoying, but worth it.

I used to have a job which involved, among many other things, explaining MS Windows and Word Perfect to lawyers ("Get down here right now! Half my screen is off my screen!"). This guy is entirely too reasonable to be a real user.

Posted by evan at 3:10 PM | Permalink

N.M. Orders 500 Talking Urinal Cakes

RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) -- New Mexico is hoping to keep drunks off the road by lecturing them at the last place they usually stop before getting behind the wheel: the urinal.

The state recently paid $21 each for about 500 talking urinal-deodorizer cakes and has put them in men's rooms in bars and restaurants across the state.

When a man steps up, the motion-sensitive plastic device says, in a woman's voice that is flirty, then stern: ''Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home.''

Posted by evan at 3:01 PM | Permalink

So, after the lights had been on for a couple of hours, I cancelled our reservation for the only remaining motel room within 100 miles. Then, around 1 am, I thought I'd take a shower just in case the lights went out again.

Midway through the rinse cycle the lights went out again.

Posted by evan at 4:00 PM | Permalink

Rett Syndrome is reversed in genetic mouse model

As someone pointed out on Slashdot, has anyone noticed that somehow mice managed to manipulate us into curing all their diseases?

Posted by evan at 11:13 PM | Permalink

''If you were just going to talk to someone, I don't know that you would need a wig, a trench coat, an air cartridge BB gun and pepper spray,'' Jones said.

Posted by evan at 3:15 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 12:08 AM | Permalink

US urges scientists to block out sun

The US wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.

It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).

The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.

The final report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise an emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment.

The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: "Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered."

Posted by evan at 11:19 PM | Permalink

At Ease, Mr. President - New York Times

By Garry Wills

We hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

I first cringed at the misuse in 1973, during the “Saturday Night Massacre” (as it was called). President Richard Nixon, angered at the Watergate inquiry being conducted by the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, dispatched his chief of staff, Al Haig, to arrange for Mr. Cox’s firing. Mr. Haig told the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to dismiss Mr. Cox. Mr. Richardson refused, and resigned. Then Mr. Haig told the second in line at the Justice Department, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus refused, and accepted his dismissal. The third in line, Robert Bork, finally did the deed.

What struck me was what Mr. Haig told Mr. Ruckelshaus, “You know what it means when an order comes down from the commander in chief and a member of his team cannot execute it.” This was as great a constitutional faux pas as Mr. Haig’s later claim, when President Reagan was wounded, that “Constitutionally ... I’m in control.”

President Nixon was not Mr. Ruckelshaus’s commander in chief. The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.” [more at link]

I'm glad someone finally took the time to point this out. Unless you are in active duty military service, the president is not your "Commander in Chief."

He is (if you are a US citizen) your employee.

Posted by evan at 1:16 AM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 11:09 AM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 7:44 PM | Permalink

So I axed the kitten food donation feature because you people obviously don't like kittens, and replaced it with a picture that vaguely resembles me. That'll teach you. It actually is me, but that's a 386 computer in the background, so make of that what you will.

Posted by evan at 7:24 PM | Permalink

Salon.com | Seven rules for reading the paper

Jan. 10, 2007 | It seems to me, observing the young in coffee shops, that something is missing from their lives: the fine art of holding a newspaper. They sit staring at computer screens, sometimes with wires coming out of their ears, life passing them by as they drift through MySpace, that encyclopedia of the pathetic, and check out a video of a dog dancing the Macarena. It is so lumpen, so sad that nobody has shown them that opening up a newspaper is the key to looking classy and smart. Never mind the bronze-plated stuff about the role of the press in a democracy -- a newspaper, kiddo, is about Style.

You may have to sit through an ad to read the rest, but it ain't gonna kill you.

Posted by evan at 11:32 AM | Permalink

Before I was so rudely interrupted - Comment - Times Online

Notebook: Alan Coren

Where was I? Oh, right, April, and where I was was here with you, having a laugh, and after that I wasn’t, and yes, you have every right to grumble that you’ve heard nothing since, he doesn’t ring, he doesn’t write, after so many years together would it kill him?

He has an excellent excuse.

Posted by evan at 11:13 PM | Permalink

Children of Men.

Posted by evan at 12:56 PM | Permalink

Report Suggests Mars Microbes Overlooked - New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two NASA space probes that visited Mars 30 years ago may have stumbled upon alien microbes on the Red Planet and inadvertently killed them, a scientist theorizes in a paper released Sunday.

Posted by evan at 3:27 PM | Permalink

America the Overfull - New York Times

... I grew up in a country of sudden and consoling lulls, which gave life a kind of pattern and punctuation, unknown now. It was typified by the somnolence of Sundays, when no stores were open. There were empty parts of the day, of the week, of the year; times when there were no people on the sidewalks, no traffic in the streets, no audible human voices, now and then no sound at all. In this hushed world, a bumblebee was a physical presence, the sound of a cicada could dominate an August afternoon.

Nowhere was solitude more available than on a long drive, especially at night; and it seems to me that my generation was defined by the open road, and the accompanying hope that a promise lay at the end of it. The almost trance-like experience of driving down the soft tunnel of a dark highway at night was something I relished. At most, there would be the distant red lights of a car far ahead, and always the murmur of the glowing radio, the hiss of the tires and, at a certain speed on narrower roads, the fizzing past of telephone poles with their rhythmic whiplash.

Late at night, in most places I knew, there was almost no traffic and driving, a meditative activity, could cast a spell. Behind the wheel, gliding along, I was keenly aware of being an American in America, on a road that was also metaphorical, making my way through life, unhindered, developing ideas, making decisions, liberated by the flight through this darkness and silence. With less light pollution, the night sky was different, too — starrier, more daunting, more beautiful.

Posted by evan at 10:53 AM | Permalink

Very Fine Lines - washingtonpost.com

No. Yes. No. No. Remnick picks up a cartoon of a corporate boardroom with a bunch of guys in suits sitting around a conference table with one chair occupied by a brain in a jar. The caption reads, "But first let's all congratulate Ted on his return to work."

" Ewwww!" Remnick says, half groaning, half laughing. "Bob!"

"It's great!" Mankoff says.

"It's horrible!" Remnick responds, laughing.

"What? A little brain in a jar?" Mankoff replies. "No animals were hurt in the making of this cartoon."

Remnick laughs. But he doesn't change his mind. "Not here," he says. It's a No.

Posted by evan at 12:30 PM | Permalink

George Orwell Was Right: Spy Cameras See Britons' Every Move

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- It's Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers' Week.

One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above:

"You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!'' The confused student obeys as his friends look bewildered.

"People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,'' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.

Almost 70 years after George Orwell created the all-seeing dictator Big Brother in the novel "1984,'' Britons are being watched as never before. About 4.2 million spy cameras film each citizen 300 times a day, and police have built the world's largest DNA database. Prime Minister Tony Blair said all Britons should carry biometric identification cards to help fight the war on terror.

"Nowhere else in the free world is this happening,'' said Helena Kennedy, a human rights lawyer who also is a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. "The American public would find such inroads into civil liberties wholly unacceptable.''

Yeah, well, she obviously hasn't been to the US lately.

More here.

Posted by evan at 12:51 AM | Permalink

Goldberg Variations - Google Video

Video can be downloaded in .avi format at link above.

Posted by evan at 8:18 PM | Permalink

Marksman Called In To Kill Kingstons Pigeons (from Surrey Comet)

Posted by: Roland Runtfarmer on 12:29am Thu 30 Nov 06
What a lot of fuss over nothing. Everyone knows pigeons can't be killed, they are immortal and immune to bullets. Where I come from we worship the pigeon deity and never look them in the eye as this can turn a man to stone. I can only warn the gunman chappy that if he should lift a finger against but one bird he will incur their never ending wrath and more than likely burn in **** for his actions.

I would not risk it myself, it's just not worth it. Leave it !!! Many have tried and even the mightiest have failed! The only way that may have some effect is to tie them down and chant incantations while you flay their hides with an stout oaken branch blessed by a high priest of Nayhead. Mr McNally, the orchestrater of this ill thought out plan I say unto you beware the consequences of your actions against the blessed ones.

Posted by: Fancy Coo-Coo on 12:57pm Thu 30 Nov 06
I'm horrified at the very idea anyone might want to harm these gentle creatures. I myself was raised by pigeons after being abandoned in Trafalgar Square as a young nipper. Therefore I know how noble and generous a species they really are. If anyone were to kill a pigeon in this way, it would be as though they are slaughtering one of my own family. It's murder, I say!

Posted by: Free Willy on 3:24pm Thu 30 Nov 06
I know what you mean, reader. I was raised by yaks but I'm sure the experience was similar. How about a council worker cull instead.

Posted by: Michael Hunt on 4:17pm Thu 30 Nov 06.
Pigeons can be very intelligent creatures. This is because they are actually bred from dolphins and can travel vast lengths underwater as well as through the air. I warn you now Council folk, if you so much as dare remove or cull any pigeon from Kingston or the surrounding local I shall withhold my council tax! I'm prepared to go to prison to save these beautiful specimens of birds so just forget it ok?

Posted by: Joseph Jacobs on 4:51pm Thu 30 Nov 06
What about dogs? Surely these vermin are more of a pest than lovely pigeons. Any dog seen fouling our beautiful Royal borough should be shot on sight. Great. Tiddly tum te de.

Posted by: Mr Snorter on 4:57pm Thu 30 Nov 06
Pigeons are kind and caring. Two come and visit me each day and tell me things. They told me not to discuss this with anyone so none of you say anything if they should ask you. OK?

[much more at link]

Posted by evan at 1:59 PM | Permalink

File this under Things You Don't Ever Want to Do.

Bright and way too early Monday morning, we drove to the OSU MS Clinic in Columbus, where I was to have a lumbar puncture (better known as a spinal tap) done. This is a procedure where they first numb your lower back and then stick a long needle into your spinal column, suck out a bit of the fluid, and send it to a lab to be analyzed. YUCKAROOTIE.

Actually, it wasn't bad at all. I didn't feel a thing, and it took all of five minutes, max. Then I stared at the ceiling for an hour (to make sure the rest of my oil wasn't draining out) and went home after (I love this part) being instructed to drink lots of coffee.

All was well until about four hours later, when I developed the Headache from Hell, a full-blown migraine complete with sensitivity to light and sound as well as balance problems. This is apparently a well-known side-effect of the procedure, so I wasn't surprised, but I had been warned against taking aspirin (bleeding, you know). So I figured I'd just tough it out by whimpering on the bed for a few hours.

It didn't get better. It got a lot worse. It felt like someone was pounding the top of my head with a Louisville Slugger. I was also strangely sleepy.

Now the truly bad part: this lasted for three more days. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I had a blinding headache that Tylenol and Motrin barely dented. I was totally dysfunctional. The only relief came from lying flat on my back, so I spent hours on the couch in my office watching TV.

As of now, it seems to be going away, but I still have a rather bad headache centered behind my right eye.

Posted by evan at 4:29 PM | Permalink

'Big Brother' cameras listen for fights | CNET News.com

In U.K. public places, smarter closed-circuit TV cameras have been given the ability to listen for disturbances and also keep an eye on citizens.

The system has already been put into use in the Netherlands to listen for people speaking in aggressive tones, to try to counter violent attacks in Dutch streets, prisons and railways.

The aggression detector has been fitted to CCTV cameras on the streets of Groningen and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. In the U.K., London police also are considering installing the system, said Derek van der Vorst, the director of Sound Intelligence, the company that created the technology.

The system works by putting microphones in CCTV cameras to continually analyze the sound in the surrounding area. If aggressive tones are picked up, an alarm signal is automatically sent to the police, who can zoom in the camera to the location of the suspect sound and investigate the situation.

"Ninety percent of violent cases start with verbal aggression," Van der Vorst said. "With our system, the police can respond a lot quicker to a violent situation."

The sound system also means fewer people can monitor more cameras in surveillance centers, Vorst added.

Everyday mutterings are not detected by the system, though, Vorst said. "You cannot push a button to hear what people are saying," he said. "And even if you could, the microphones are 3 to 4 meters above the ground, so the words cannot be heard"

Pub brawls were cut by a quarter earlier this year in Yeovil, England, when a fingerprint-before-you-drink scheme was unveiled.

Posted by evan at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Smart school of fish expose stupidity of a popular myth

Fish are not the brainless dolts they are often assumed to be. Scientists have discovered that they are actually adept learners, with distinct personalities that change as they pick up information about the world.

The popular notion that fish memories are measured in seconds has been exposed as a myth by research which showed that rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) remember experiences so well that they alter their behaviour in line with what they learn.

The study, led by Lynne Sneddon of the University of Liverpool, found that individual trout display very different characters — some are bold and inquisitive; others are shy and passive.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 2:14 AM | Permalink

Soldiers of Christ (Harpers.org)

... “Church” is insufficient to describe the complex. There is a permanent structure called the Tent, which regularly fills with hundreds or thousands of teens and twentysomethings for New Life's various youth gatherings. Next to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray box capable of seating 1,500; this juts out into the new sanctuary, capacity 7,500, already too small. At the complex's western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life's founder.

Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation's most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life's “free market” approach to the divine.

read the entire article

Golly, wotta shock. Didn't anyone around here read Elmer Gantry?

Posted by evan at 1:49 AM | Permalink

This is a column I wrote in early October. Since it won't appear on my web site until well past the election, I thought it might be fun to sneak it in here:

Dear Word Detective: Now that we are in the throes of another political
campaign season, my curiosity has become aroused by the designation of
Democratic-leaning states as "blue" states, and Republican-leaning
states as "red" states. These designations seem to have come out of the
blue a few years ago, and I would like to know how and when they came
about. I am curious, too, about the colors. It seems to me they should
be reversed. I associate blue with "blue-nosed" and "blue laws," which
suggests to me conservatism/Republicanism, and red with the left in
politics where the Democrats are generally positioned. -- Russell J.
Greatens.

Good question, but you left out the "purple" states, where a solid
majority of voters cast their ballots for Barney the Dinosaur. The big
galoot actually carried the state of Ohio, where I live, last time
around. Quite a change, I must say. The colors are much brighter now,
people are nicer and almost everyone sings instead of talking. It makes
dealing with the local IRS office downright pleasant. "I love you, you
love me, we'll just waive those penalties...."

OK, back to depressing reality. But Ohio really is a "purple" state (a
mixture of "red" and "blue"), one where the margin between Democratic
and Republican votes has been narrow, to put it mildly, in the last few
elections. In reality, of course, no state is all one party, and the
"red/blue" election-night shorthand only has any validity at all because
of the "winner take all" US Electoral College.

The "red state/blue state" divide has become such a staple of cable news
since the 2000 presidential election that many people assume that it's a
recent invention, but it isn't. More importantly, although "red" and
"blue" have become rallying cries for political partisans in recent
years, the color labels were never intended to last beyond a given
election, and are, in fact, supposed to flip in 2008.

The use of "red" and "blue" as color codes on maps of electoral results
actually dates back to at least 1908, when the Washington Post printed a
special supplement in which Republican states were colored red and
Democratic blue The colors were apparently arbitrarily assigned in that
case, although in later years both parties strove to claim blue (as in
"true blue Americans") and avoid red, with its connotations of radicalism.

Finally, in 1976, the TV networks agreed to a formula to avoid any
implication of favoritism in color selections. The color of the
incumbent party, initially set as blue for Gerald Ford's Republican
ticket in that year, would flip every four years. Consequently, a
successful challenger runs again in four years, as the incumbent, under
the same color. So in 1992, the challenger Clinton was red on the maps, and in 1994, incumbent Clinton was also red. Challenger Bush, red in
2000, was red again as an incumbent in 2004. But perhaps because the
pundits decreed 2000 to be a watershed election, the "red/blue" divide
has assumed a broader political significance (at least to pundits), and
although the formula dictates that the Republicans should be carrying
the blue flag in 2008, it will be interesting to see how the networks
color their maps.

Posted by evan at 4:08 PM | Permalink

“Mother, may I?”

Should you have to ask for permission from the government before you are allowed to get on a plane or cruise ship?

The Department of Homeland Security has proposed that airlines and cruise ships be required to get individual permission (”clearance”) from the DHS for each individual passenger on all flights to, from, or via the U.S. Unless the answer is “Yes” — if the answer is “no” or “maybe”, or if the DHS doesn’t answer at all — the airline wouldn’t be allowed to give you a boarding pass, or let you or your luggage on the plane or ship.

more

Posted by evan at 11:54 AM | Permalink

Neo Culpa: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.

Includes creepy photographs (most by Annie Leibovitz) of the usual suspects, including one of Bush that makes my skin crawl.

Posted by evan at 6:11 PM | Permalink

Click image for larger version

Posted by evan at 1:43 AM | Permalink

U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

By Greg Mitchell

(November 01, 2006) -- The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”

She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq so her death drew wide press attention. A “non-hostile weapons discharge” leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials “said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian.”

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, unsatisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told E&P today. He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here’s what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston now works, reported yesterday:

“Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed….”

She was was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. “But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle,” the documents disclose.

The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, revealing that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.

Peterson's father, Rich Peterson, has said: “Alyssa volunteered to change assignments with someone who did not want to go to Iraq.”

Alyssa Peterson, a devout Mormon, had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and then sent to the Middle East in 2003.

The Arizona Republic article had opened: “Friends say Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson of Flagstaff always had an amazing ability to learn foreign languages.

“Peterson became fluent in Dutch even before she went on an 18-month Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission to the Netherlands in the late 1990s. Then, she cruised through her Arabic courses at the military's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., shortly after enlisting in July 2001.

“With that under her belt, she was off to Iraq to conduct interrogations and translate enemy documents.”

On a “fallen heroes” message board on the Web, Mary W. Black of Flagstaff wrote, "The very day Alyssa died, her Father was talking to me at the Post Office where we both work, in Flagstaff, Az., telling me he had a premonition and was very worried about his daughter who was in the military on the other side of the world. The next day he was notified while on the job by two army officers. Never has a daughter been so missed or so loved than she was and has been by her Father since that fateful September day in 2003. He has been the most broken man I have ever seen.”

An A.W. from Los Angeles wrote: "I met Alyssa only once during a weekend surfing trip while she was at DLI. Although our encounter was brief, she made a lasting impression. We did not know each other well, but I was blown away by her genuine, sincere, sweet nature. I don’t know how else to put it-- she was just nice.….I was devastated to here of her death. I couldn’t understand why it had to happen to such a wonderful person.”

Finally, Daryl K. Tabor of Ashland City, Tenn., who had met her as a journalist in Iraq for the Kentucky New Era paper in Hopkinsville: "Since learning of her death, I cannot get the image of the last time I saw her out of my mind. We were walking out of the tent in Kuwait to be briefed on our flights into Iraq as I stepped aside to let her out first. Her smile was brighter than the hot desert sun. Peterson was the only soldier I interacted with that I know died in Iraq. I am truly sorry I had to know any."

Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson

Posted by evan at 12:07 PM | Permalink

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: Andras Schiff on Beethoven

One of the best-kept secrets in London was the lecture series Andras Schiff gave in parallel to his electrifying cycle of Beethoven sonatas at the Wigmore Hall. In May a friend managed to get a ticket for me - and I was simply dazzled by the performance he put on - a riveting mixture of erudition, analysis, passion, wit and memory. Schiff talked for more than two and a half hours about three lateish sonatas - and for anyone interested in these peaks of the piano repertoire they were quite compelling.

It seemed such a waste that all this scholarship and revelation should not have a wider audience. I learned from the Wigmore Hall's director, John Gilhooly, that the lectures had all been recorded - and neither he nor Schiff needed much persuading that the obvious place to podcast them was on the Guardian's new arts and entertainment blog. Over the next seven weeks you'll have the chance to download the series of seven lectures.

Schiff marks the start of his complete cycle of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas with this first lecture-recital, which you can listen to and download here.

Posted by evan at 11:18 PM | Permalink

TownOnline.com - Sports: Punting, passing and kicking their way to glory

On the boys side, Evan Morris took first place in the 10 to 11-year-old division, while Ryan Mahoney placed third in the 8 to 9-year-old age group.

See, this is weird. I was in my 20s before I met anyone else named "Evan." I even had a teacher in grade school once insist that I was confused and my name must actually be "Kevin." Almost every teacher pronounced my name "Evon" on the first day of class, even in college.

I was named, btw, for my maternal great-grandfather, Col. Evan Nathanael Jones, a stalwart abolitionist. My full name is Evan Nathanael Charles William Morris. What can I say? I was the last of six kids and there were names left over.

Anyway, I actually enjoyed being, at least locally, unique in the moniker department. It drew folks' attention away from my strangely-shaped ears.

In the mid-90s I ran into one other Evan Morris, I think from California, on usenet.

Then Bruce Springsteen named his kid Evan.

Soon thereafter, I heard mothers calling "Evan!" in malls and supermarkets. My name had become a yuppie fad.

According to this, Evan was ranked the 427th most popular male baby name in the 1950s. As of 2005, it's 38th.

And now I'm told it's becoming a popular girls' name. Bizarre. It's the Welsh equivalent of "John," incidentally, first cousin of "Ian."

Anyway, my Google Alert for "Evan Morris" churns out a least one not-me hit per day.

Hmmph. Sic transit novelty.

But hey, I've got the domain. Maybe one of those little trust-fund Evan Morrises will grow up prepared to pay big bucks for it. It's a better bet than Social Security.

Posted by evan at 12:56 AM | Permalink

The Columbus Dispatch

UnitedHealth’s greed is generating profits
Friday, October 27, 2006

I am sure most Dispatch readers will agree with my disgust in seeing that William McGuire, the recently dismissed chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group, will be paid $5.1 million per year for the rest of his life ("Ex-UnitedHealth chief set for life," Oct. 17). He will also be given a lump sum of $6.5 million, as well as holding stock options worth $1.78 billion!

I am a small-business owner and a licensed orthotist and prosthetist. We design, manufacture and fit orthotic devices (braces) and prostheses (artificial limbs) as prescribed by physicians. Our clients are typically older citizens on fixed incomes who have suffered amputations. The devices they rely on are very expensive and must be maintained to provide comfort and function.

Approximately two years ago, United Healthcare, the company’s Ohio subsidiary, instituted a yearly maximum benefit for prosthetic and orthotic care of $2,500 for all groups in Ohio with fewer than 50 employees. This is virtually all of "small business," the backbone of the American economy.

We have all read or seen stories of modern technology in prosthetics and orthotics. The recent reports of care being provided to the injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are only one example of the breakthroughs. Some of these prostheses can cost $50,000 or more but provide increased comfort, function and abilities for the user, as well as enhancing the quality of their lives. Even a "conventional" above-the-knee prosthesis costs $15,000 to $20,000. How is a working citizen going to afford the difference between the cost of these services and the paltry limit on coverage being provided to Ohio small businesses who insure with United Healthcare? In addition to the benefits cap, United Healthcare reimburses providers 35 percent below the level that Medicare recipients receive. This is, by the way, 20 percent less than Ohio Medicaid and is often below the provider’s cost to deliver the service.

To make matters worse, United Healthcare has ruthlessly increased the health-insurance premiums yearly, without regard to the effect it has on small business.

It is no wonder that United Healthcare has recorded record profits over the past few years.

And on a final note, a nuclear aircraft carrier costs far less than the value of McGuire’s stock options.

When will we wake up to this kind of greed and say no to companies that operate like this?

RONALD KIDD

Grove City

Posted by evan at 3:55 PM | Permalink

After Pat’s Birthday

By Kevin Tillman

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman

Pat and Kevin Tillman

Posted by evan at 6:45 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 2:25 PM | Permalink

Imagine Earth without people - 12 October 2006 - New Scientist

"If man disappears tomorrow, do you expect to see herds of poodles roaming the plains?"

Posted by evan at 1:52 PM | Permalink

This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like

As Congress has debated legislation that would set up military tribunals and govern the questioning of suspected terrorists (whom the Bush administration would like to be able to detain indefinitely), at issue has been what interrogation techniques can be employed and whether information obtained during torture can be used against those deemed unlawful enemy combatants. One interrogation practice central to this debate is waterboarding. It's usually described in the media in a matter-of-fact manner. The Washington Post simply referred to waterboarding a few days ago as an interrogation measure that "simulates drowning." But what does waterboarding look like?

Below are photographs taken by Jonah Blank last month at Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison is now a museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities.

[more at link]

Waterboarding can also be seen in the Robin Williams movie Jakob the Liar.

Posted by evan at 3:11 PM | Permalink

Insurance Horror Stories - New York Times

By PAUL KRUGMAN

“When Steve and Leslie Shaeffer’s daughter, Selah, was diagnosed at age 4 with a potentially fatal tumor in her jaw, they figured their health insurance would cover the bulk of her treatment costs.” But “shortly after Selah’s medical bills hit $20,000, Blue Cross stopped covering them and eventually canceled her coverage retroactively.”

So begins a recent report in The Los Angeles Times titled “Sick but Insured? Think Again,” which offers a series of similar horror stories, and suggests that these stories represent a growing trend: more and more health insurers are finding ways to yank your insurance when you get sick.

This trend helps explain something that has been puzzling me: why is the health insurance industry growing rapidly, even as it covers fewer Americans?

Between 2000 and 2005, the number of Americans with private health insurance coverage fell by 1 percent. But over the same period, employment at health insurance companies rose a remarkable 32 percent. What are all those extra employees doing?

Now we know at least part of the answer: they’re working harder than ever at identifying people who really need medical care, and ensuring that they don’t get it. In the past, they mainly concentrated on screening out applicants likely to get sick. Now, it seems, they’re also devoting a lot of effort to finding pretexts for revoking insurance after they’ve already granted it. They typically do this by claiming that they weren’t notified about some pre-existing condition, even if the insured wasn’t aware of that condition when he or she bought the policy.

Welcome to the ugly world of American health care economics.

Continue reading "beneath contempt" »

Posted by evan at 12:19 AM | Permalink

What Columbus needs

Steve Abbott
Coordinator, the Poetry Forum at Larry’s; professor, Columbus State Community College

First, Columbus needs a grander vision, one that looks farther into the future and allows it to take on multiple projects at once and see the building of a community as a long-term project that demands insightful and possibly uncomfortable decisions that will take decades to realize. Our political and business leaders need to think on a longer and larger view. For example, for more than 25 years local leaders have avoided confronting the issues of mass transit and urban sprawl. The result has been increasing de-urbanization and stretching of public services over a larger area, increasing costs and straining the capacity of local government to meet community needs. This has occurred at the same time that the city is working to reinvigorate the urban core, with the result that city goals work at cross purposes. While leaders have dithered, available land and federal support for mass transit has disappeared. The growth of local businesses is limited by how much parking is available near them, so mass transit cannot be ignored. Relying on cars for every transport need has imprisoned the young and the old in our suburbs and turned parents into taxi services.

We have to recognize and develop our local school system, from kindergarten to college, as an EDUCATION system, not simply a glorified form of job training. Although job training is important, the function of schools at all levels must be to create informed citizens who understand how to be part of a great experiment in self-government. It’s amazing to observe that people in countries far less democratic than our own are more active in participating in controlling their own lives than our own citizens. Life is about more, the poet Wordsworth noted, than “getting and spending.” It’s time we taught students that THEY are the government, not some group of businesspeople and the politicians they dine with.

Finally, Columbus needs a Public Clown. This individual’s job would be to attend public political, civic and athletic events in the garb of a jester and whose purpose would be to challenge, on behalf of thinking people, the fatuous proclamations of public figures. The Public Clown (PC for short, to note his role in confronting the renewed political correctness of invoking God for every lame purpose, and even a few venal ones) would sound an obnoxious, fartlike horn at the mention of God or “values” in any political speech or after-game sports interview. If the speaker continued, the PC would slap a cream pie in the speaker’s face, and the evening news could devote a brief segment of each newscast to the day’s PC actions in place of the endless self-promotional and cross-promotional “stories” run on local TV.

Steve has been a friend for more than 35 years, and he's absolutely right. But he left out the most important thing Columbus needs to do: de-emphasize football. Because without football, Columbus would have to at long last grow up, look around, and realize what a mess the city's become. Yeah, right. Rah rah.

Posted by evan at 7:13 PM | Permalink

Is there anything derogatory I could say about Thomas Kincade and his wretched "art" that would prevent Google ads for his kitschy schlock from appearing on this page? Guess not.

Anyway, don't buy it. Anyone with a smidgen of taste will make fun of you behind your back. And I happen to know that Jesus thinks he's a cheap hack.

Posted by evan at 1:22 AM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 10:39 PM | Permalink

YouTube

Via Metafilter, extremely funny BBC parodies of 70s science-intruction films.

"But what is water? It's a difficult question because water is impossible to describe. One might ask the same about birds. What are birds? We just don't know."

Posted by evan at 2:02 AM | Permalink

Hot Library Smut

Posted by evan at 4:48 PM | Permalink

Psycho Killer Raccoons Terrorize Olympia

OLYMPIA, Washington (AP) -- A fierce group of raccoons has killed 10 cats, attacked a small dog and bitten at least one pet owner who had to get rabies shots, residents of Olympia say.

Some have taken to carrying pepper spray to ward off the masked marauders and the woman who was bitten now carries an iron pipe when she goes outside at night.

''It's a new breed,'' said Tamara Keeton, who with Kari Hall started a raccoon watch after an emotional neighborhood meeting drew 40 people. ''They're urban raccoons, and they're not afraid.''

Continue reading "It's like Nature is really mad about something" »

Posted by evan at 10:00 PM | Permalink

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible? | The Register

...We've given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.

But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned.

The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of pestilence and death. We know this because we've watched it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our officials have done. Based on their behavior, it's reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to emphasize).

It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs.

For some real terror, picture twenty guys who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic, clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.

You won't hear about those fellows until it's too late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.

Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer.

Posted by evan at 5:03 PM | Permalink

Kung Fu Monkey: Bar Talk

The brutal, sleepless heat stirs me toward an anecdote, and although I've yet to figure out an underlying point to this ...

Great story, great moral. (Language a little raw, for you delicate flowers out there.)

Posted by evan at 1:15 PM | Permalink

Beats me. I found this photo online a few years ago.

I think it has something to do with the annual Sweet Corn Festival.

Posted by evan at 2:53 AM | Permalink

Bravo TV: Tabloid Wars

As a former New Yorker (and former NY Daily News columnist), I really like this series. Very well done.

Posted by evan at 10:27 PM | Permalink

Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD

By CHARLES J. HANLEY
The Associated Press
Monday, August 7, 2006; 6:24 AM

-- Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.

People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.

Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents _ up from 36 percent last year _ said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.

"I'm flabbergasted," said Michael Massing, a media critic whose writings dissected the largely unquestioning U.S. news reporting on the Bush administration's shaky WMD claims in 2002-03.

"This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence," Massing said.

more

Posted by evan at 10:21 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Radio Dismuke

Vintage Popular Music and Jazz 1925-1935

Discover the exciting music from one of the most vibrant decades in popular culture and entertainment. From the boom times of the "Roaring '20s" to the hard times of the Great Depression...from frantic Charlestons danced to by a generation of flappers to sentimental ballads performed by the early crooners...from the hot jazz bands of the top Harlem nightclubs to the popular dance bands of the formative years of the swing and big band eras, the great music of the 1920s & 1930s lives on and is entertaining a new generation of enthusiastic listeners. Radio Dismuke features original recordings from the 1925 - 1935 decade and can be heard at no cost from anywhere in the world by anyone with an Internet connection and a sound card equipped computer.

The one internet radio station I can listen to all day.

Posted by evan at 5:15 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 12:32 PM | Permalink

Hand Shadows to Be Thrown upon the Wall by Henry Bursill - Project Gutenberg

Posted by evan at 10:40 PM | Permalink

Those morons at ABC have cancelled the one show I watch. Yes, I know it's idiotic, but I like it.

Please sign the petition.

Posted by evan at 7:46 PM | Permalink

Brownie and Fifi the Cat enjoying the day.

Posted by evan at 3:01 PM | Permalink

About Hedgehogs

Hedgehogs are not porcupines or vice versa.

And that's the One Big Thing they know.

Posted by evan at 5:33 PM | Permalink

Save the Internet

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Network neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site pays them the most. Your local library shouldn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to have its Web site open quickly on your computer.

Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech. If the public doesn’t speak up now, Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.

This isn’t just speculation — we’ve already seen what happens elsewhere when the Internet’s gatekeepers get too much control. Last year, Canada’s version of AT&T — Telus— blocked their Internet customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating. And Shaw, a major Canadian cable company, charges an extra $10 a month to subscribers who dare to use a competing Internet telephone service.

This is very serious, and it will be irreversible. Read the whole page and lean on your legislators NOW.

Posted by evan at 12:30 AM | Permalink

No snow. None. Nada. Why do I always fall for the weatherwhores?

Funny how they didn't predict the lightning that struck me last summer.

I'm leaving the lights up, dammit. We'll plug in the tree on the Fourth of July and give the neighbors conclusive evidence that we're insane.

Meanwhile, a new project:

How to destroy the Earth

Posted by evan at 3:39 PM | Permalink

Sorry about the lack of content lately. I'm already late on a project and simply haven't had the time. Perhaps soon.

Topic for discussion:

Resolved: whatever Steely Dan produces, it is not music, and the only reason people listen to them is that it feels so good when they stop.

Honestly, their music makes me ill. It's like Kenny G and the Partridge Family mooshed together and played backwards. Noxious crap.

Posted by evan at 10:37 PM | Permalink

Newsweek Interactive: The Autism Quotient

Posted by evan at 3:26 PM | Permalink

Far and Wide: The Golden Age of Travel Posters

Posted by evan at 10:53 PM | Permalink

"Maybe you take orders from stuffed animals, but I don't."

Posted by evan at 10:44 PM | Permalink

The bestest thing I got for Christmas was The Complete New Yorker on DVD, 80 years of every issue, including ads and cartoons. This collection is the best rationale for the invention of the computer I can imagine.

Unfortunately, I don't happen to own a computer with a DVD drive. Seriously. And it will be at least a couple of months before I'm able to buy a DVD drive for this old clunker.

But then I will get absolutely no work done.

Posted by evan at 10:08 PM | Permalink

Comments on posts have been put in moderated mode because I am being hit by some annoying spam. I will do my best to approve real comments as soon as they arrive.

Posted by evan at 12:37 AM | Permalink

Hey, that's a good look for you, bog man.

LONDON (Reuters) - The preserved remains of two prehistoric men discovered in an Irish bog have revealed a couple of surprises --- one used hair gel and the other stood 6 foot 6 inches high, the tallest Iron Age body discovered.

"He would have been a giant...the other man was quite short, about 5 foot 2 inches," said Ned Kelly, head of antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland.

"The shorter man appeared to attempt to give himself greater stature by a rather curious headdress which was a bit like a Mohican-style with the hair gel, which was a resin imported from France," Kelly told BBC radio.

Bacterial conditions found in the peat bogs preserved the remains so that even fingerprints were clearly visible.

The fashion-conscious gel wearer has been named Clonycavan Man and Kelly said the fact he was able to buy imported cosmetics suggests he was a wealthy member of Irish society about 2,300 years ago. The other was dubbed Oldcroghan Man.

Kelly said both men had been murdered.

"Oldcroghan Man was stabbed through the chest. He saw that attack coming because there is a defensive injury on his arm."

He was then decapitated and his body cut in half while Clonycaven Man had his head split open with an axe before he was disemboweled.

Posted by evan at 1:14 AM | Permalink

NASA - Electric Hurricanes

The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle.

Surprise: During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms--Rita, Katrina, and Emily--did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why.

Posted by evan at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Heart Attack Grill - Home of the Double Bypass Burger - Taste Worth Dying For!

Posted by evan at 1:37 PM | Permalink

The TV Commercial Blog: Virgin Mobile

Posted by evan at 1:05 AM | Permalink