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Saturday, April 10, 2004
Subservient Chicken
Chicken the way you want it [thanks, abby]
Indecency Efforts Jolting Broadcasters
"What bothers some First Amendment advocates is that the media is not fighting back.
'That's the most depressing and tragic aspect to this,' said Paul Levinson, chairman of the department of communications and media studies at Fordham University. 'The media, rather than standing up for the First Amendment, are giving into the people who want to trample all over it.'" —Washington Post
Learning to Expect the Unexpected
Hindsight Bias: "The commission itself, with its mandate, may have compromised its report before it is even delivered. That mandate is 'to provide a `full and complete accounting' of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks in the future.'Essentially, Taleb argues that things inevitably happen when you least expect them, that a dire event will always have more specificity than could have been anticipated, that negligence in not preventing an event has to be seen in comparison to "the normal rate of negligence for all possible events at the time of the tragedy — including those events that did not take place but could have". I cautioned essentially the same thing — about the need to avoid "20/20 hindsight" — several weeks ago when the groundswell of "Bush knew!" criticism first mounted. But Taleb's defense of the administration two weeks later appears more disingenuous, an attempt to deflect attention from the specific evidence emerging in the interim.
It sounds uncontroversial, reasonable, even admirable, yet it contains at least three flaws that are common to most such inquiries into past events. To recognize those flaws, it is necessary to understand the concept of the 'black swan.'
A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. Our minds are designed to retain, for efficient storage, past information that fits into a compressed narrative. This distortion, called the hindsight bias, prevents us from adequately learning from the past." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb, founder of a risk research and trading firm and author of Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, New York Times op-ed
The pro-war commentators: what do they say now?
The Independent runs their words then and now in parallel.
Bush Fiddles While Baghdad Burns
Powell Calls U.S. Casualties 'Disquieting':"Powell served as the administration's point man while President Bush spent the second straight day out of public view on his ranch in Crawford, Tex... Bush spent the morning watching national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's televised testimony to the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, then toured his ranch with Wayne LaPierre Jr., chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and other leaders of hunting groups and gave an interview to Ladies' Home Journal."Here is the extraordinary crux of the matter:
"This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency." —Washington Post
As Rice Testifies that Bush 'Could Not Have Done More' to Avert 9-11:
Two Ex-CIA Analysts Blast Bush Administration on 9/11
Ray McGovern, a 27-year career analyst with the CIA who was one of Vice President George Bush daily briefer says Rice's testimony and the events surrounding it have 'the very strong odor of the most accomplished PR machine in White House history.' Former CIA and State Department analyst Mel Goodman says the staff studies of the commission, which were released the same day as Richard Clarke's testimony and were largely ignored, 'make it clear that there was reduced urgency within the Bush administration' on 9/11.
Two FBI Whistleblowers Accuse Bureau of Ignoring Warnings Before 9/11
We speak with FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who accused FBI headquarters in 2002 of hampering the investigation into alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui and former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds who was hired shortly after 9/11 to translate intelligence related to the attacks and says the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before Sept. 11, 2001. Rowley reveals one of her fellow FBI agents contacted FBI HQ before Sept. 11 and said Moussaoui was the type that might try to fly a plane into the World Trade Center.
9/11 Widow Blames White House for Mishandling 9/11 Threat and Hampering Investigation
Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband Richard in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, criticizes the Bush administration for mishandling intelligence prior to 9/11 and hampering the 9/11 investigation. —Democracy Now!
Secrets of the Magic 8-Ball
![[Image '8ballx300.jpg' cannot be displayed]](8ballx300.jpg "Magic 8-Ball")
The trusted oracle of our youth is taken apart and its inner workings revealed. "We're all familiar with its sage advice. But how is such
wisdom generated? Are you ready for the truth?" This may be too disturbing for FmH readers with enough nostalgia or faith. Others, read on. [I filched this link from somewhere and would love to give props, but I have forgotten where I saw it. Sorry.]
No Joke
More on the privacy concerns over Gmail. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's main worry is that we have to rely on trusting the benificence of the Google people's commitment to not abusing the info-mining capabilities they will have on anyone using Gmail. One of the EFF's points is that Google could link the data it derives from your email to your Google search history...unless you frequently delete the Google 'cookie' on your machine. While Google doesn't plan to do anything with that potentiality, they would probably comply with subpoenas to do so in the case of law enforcement investigations. Does it take a privacy extremist to be worried about that aspect of the issue? If your answer is that a law-abiding citizen ought to have nothing to worry about on that account, you are living in an April Fool's world. Google is essentially handing the Ashcroft Justice Dept. the surveillance capability they have been seeking all along with Carnivore, and none are immune to its abuses. I repeat: use this boondoggle at your own risk, law-abiding or not.
"The Constitution of the United States is extraordinary and amazing. People just don't revere it like they used to..."
Reporters told to erase audio recordings of Scalia speech to high school students in Hattiesberg, Mississippi. Last year, Supreme Court Justice Scalia barred television and radio coverage at an Ohio ceremony giving him an award for support of free speech. Now, as he lovingly described the protections the Constitution affords to all citizens, a federal marshal forced an AP reporter in the front row to erase her recording of Scalia's remarks, with no prior warning. And since when are there federal marshals protecting the right of the citizenry to be informed at Supreme Court justices' speeches? —Court TV
Amy Thinks...
...that the widely-blinked (including by FmH) story about the health benefits of nosepicking is a fake.
Release The Memo!
"As Condoleezza Rice's testimony at the 9/11 hearings becomes fodder for media pundits and begins to slide down the cavernous memory-hole of American mass consciousness, the one significant development that will emerge is the commission's focus on the August 6 PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing). The memo is still classified, but information has been leaking out to the public about its contents since May 2002 when The New York Post screamed 'Bush Knew' from its garish front page. To date, it stands as the single most damning particle of evidence that President Bush had intelligence on potential internal threats by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Rice tried to fend off the implication that they had forewarning by framing the briefing as being based on 'historical' data. And stating that it did not contain any 'new threat information.'
But the Democratic panelists would not let that stand. It started with Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, who drew first blood. Then came Bob Kerrey, who unilaterally declassified part of that memo and made Rice's previous statements look something close to perjury.,,
The August 6 memo now represents the public's sole opportunity to guage the level of prior warning the administration had before the 9/11 attacks. President Bush fought against Rice's testimony and caved after a public outcry. Let's see what happens as the 9/11 widows hit the circuit and present their case for full disclosure." —Guerilla News Network
X the Box
Online voter registration: "Last election, over 100 million eligible voters didn't show up to 'X the Box.' And the presidency was decided by only 537 votes..."
Friday, April 9, 2004
Eight Lords A-Leaping
Good news! A New York revival of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, a challenging and rewarding play I saw in London during its initial production. "First produced in London in 1972, Jumpers was Mr. Stoppard's first major play after his breakthrough success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), his existential riff on two Shakespearean bit players. Jumpers is a wildly ambitious work about a charmingly verbose professor (played by Simon Russell Beale) and his increasingly unhinged wife (Essie Davis), and touching on issues from the existence of God to the aesthetic implications of the moon landing.
But as heady as the themes may be, what may be even more challenging is the staging, which required the director, David Leveaux, to create an array of reality-bending moments, including a topless woman on a swing, a cocktail party-cum-crime scene and a bedroom that assembles itself around a completely naked woman. (And that's just in the first few minutes.)" — New York Times
Circuit Benders Unlock the Long Riffs in Short-Circuits
"Circuit bending (is) the creative alteration of electronic devices - usually toys - so they can produce new and unusual sounds. Benders delve beneath the sometimes fuzzy underbelly of talking dolls, toy instruments and basic keyboards. They rewire circuits, experimenting until they hear tones, beeps or squawks they like. Then they solder on switches, buttons and knobs to be able to recreate the novel noises on cue." — New York Times
Ancient Body's Buddy: An Early House Cat?
"If it can truly be said that people train cats, rather than the other way around, human-feline bonding apparently had its start at least 9,500 years ago - about 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.
French archaeologists, excavating a grave in Cyprus, have found the remains of a person, some buried offerings and the curled-up skeleton of a cat. Everything about the grave, dated at about 7500 B.C., suggested to the discoverers that the cat probably had as favored a place in the life of the departed person as that of your dear Daddles or Willie or whatever the name of the little master of the house." — New York Times
Signs That Shiites and Sunnis Are Joining to Battle Americans
"When the United States invaded Iraq a year ago, one of its chief concerns was preventing a civil war between Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in the country, and Sunni Muslims, who held all the power under Saddam Hussein.You have got to hand it to the Bush administration's prowess at nation-building. I would never have believed it would have happened in Iraq if I weren't seeing it with my own eyes. Fitting that this is happening on the year's anniversary of the famous toppling of the Saddam statue. The lesson to be taken from this is not that the tide has turned against us in the ensuing year, but that it was never with us in the first place. Recall that the jubilation at the toppling of the statue was a sham, a photo-op staged for the occasion with a few carefully assembled cheering Iraqi dupes. It is only a pity that it has taken so long, and so many thousands of Iraqi lives, for the Iraqis to unite in effective opposition against the 'coalition' invaders.
Now the fear is that the growing uprising against the occupation is forging a new and previously unheard of level of cooperation between the two groups — and the common cause is killing Americans." — New York Times
Related: Experts Concerned:Milt Bearden, who retired after 30 years with the CIA's directorate of operations, notes that in the last 100 years any insurgency that has taken on a nationalist character -- for instance, a shared goal of getting rid of Americans -- has succeeded.
Other former intelligence officials familiar with the region caution that outside Shiite groups, acting more covertly than the Sadr militia, could prove to be formidable problems.
Bob Baer, a former CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East, said he met with Islamic fighters in Lebanon just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq who told him they were preparing to fight a long-term war with the West in Iraq. They included members of Hezbollah and Hamas, he said. —SF Chronicle
Reality Check
Point-by-point analyses of the errors, evasions
and omissions in Condoleezza Rice's opening statement and Q&A testimony before
the 9/11 commission. —Center for American Progress
So Who Wants to Be a Swan?
"The message boards of Fox's latest reality show, 'The Swan,' turned into a cultural battlefield, even before the first episode was broadcast.
The very concept of this particular show seemed to strike a raw nerve among viewers, who posted several hundred messages in what turned into a surprisingly heated debate over whether television is our fairy godmother, the ultimate Big Brother, or just a boob tube." —Holly Gail, AlterNet
Thursday, April 8, 2004
Sisters
Whitehouse.org unearths second lady Lynne Cheney's 1981 bodice-ripping potboiler... and it's not April 1st anymore.
Open Letter to Google to Suspend Gmail
Twenty Eight Privacy and Civil Liberties Organizations
Urge Google to Suspend Gmail:"The World Privacy Forum and 27 other privacy and civil liberties organizations have written a letter [inserted below] calling upon Google to suspend its Gmail service until the privacy issues are adequately addressed. The letter also calls upon Google to clarify its written information policies regarding data retention and data sharing among its business units.I am pretty sure the call for Google to suspend its plan is not in earnest, and that this is merely a dramatic way to publicize privacy concerns. I hope so, at least. Gmail is going to be voluntary and any thinking person will know that Google is not going to be doing it so much out of the goodness of its heart as for the ad revenues the scheme can generate, and anyone who lets Google handle their email should do so knowingly. I will never use Gmail, much as I never use those supermarket chain or pharmacy "loyalty" cards, which create a database of my buying habits. On the other hand, I am not above making credit card purchases, so there is already a great big database in the sky of my spending patterns. Frugality and convenience are the loss leaders through which we are persuaded to yield up our privacy rights, unfortunately, and everyone has their own setpoint. In many senses, the battle for privacy is already lost; it is just that we ought not to freely cede the remaining vestiges without being informed of what we are doing...
The 28 organizations are voicing their concerns about Google’s plan to scan the text of all incoming messages for the purposes of ad placement, noting that the scanning of confidential email for inserting third party ad content violates the implicit trust of an email service provider. The scanning creates lower expectations of privacy in the email medium and may establish dangerous precedents.
Other concerns include the unlimited period for data retention that Google’s current policies allow, and the potential for unintended secondary uses of the information Gmail will collect and store. "
Annals of Depravity
"A man was arrested on charges of killing his neighbor's 17-year-old dog by place-kicking it like a football.
Chad Daniel Crawford, 23, was charged with cruelty to animals and vandalism Tuesday in the death of Gizmo, a 2-pound miniature Yorkshire terrier." —CNN [via walker]Funny, in the accompanying mugshot, Crawford's head sort of looks like a football itself, ripe for kicking...
Education as Enforcement
Mark Daims reviews Education as Enforcement — The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools edited by Kenneth J. Saltman and David A. Gabbard: "Education as Enforcement incorporates 21 compelling essays (including the foreword and introduction) on the subtext of the process of education in America. Whether or not a reader agrees with any particular essayist, each writer defends children passionately and should be heard. Henry Giroux's foreword forcefully attacks the current administration's tactics concerning education and the greater society. Alluding to a 'tyranny of emergency' and an inauthentic use of the country's fear of terrorism, Giroux feels the President is changing the nature of our society -- community is constructed 'through shared fears rather than shared responsibilities.' Giroux wants educators to act collectively to instill democratic and social values in children and move back towards a society of shared responsibilities.
The greatest struggle Americans face is not terrorism, but a struggle on behalf of justice, freedom, and democracy for all the citizens of the globe, especially youth. " —Human Nature Review
Trumpeting Mediocrity
Trumpeting Mediocrity - Was Wynton Marsalis ever that good? Thank you, Fred Kaplan, for articulating what I have felt for a long time — that Marsalis (along with Ken Burns) has been one of the unfortunate things to happen to jazz in America in the past decade or so. The occasion of a stupifying new album after his much-ballyhooed signing with Blue Note should prompt an overall reappraisal of his overblown bandleading, writing and, yes, playing chops, Kaplan writes. —Slate
Kerry-McCain '04?
Take a Stand on VP Choice: "There is a sound and simple reason why John McCain should not be John F. Kerry's running mate on the Democratic ticket in November. He is a Republican.
The distinction still matters, even in an era when both major political parties are fixated on the nonpartisan, centrist, independent voters who political consultants insist determine the outcome of federal elections.
Reports that many on Kerry's campaign staff are smitten with the idea of the Massachusetts Democrat naming his Republican colleague from Arizona as his vice presidential choice make for amusing chatter in this long lull between the presidential primaries and the party nominating conventions. It is still a fundamentally foolish idea.
Far from elevating Kerry as a bold, bipartisan thinker, the choice of McCain would enshrine forever Kerry's reputation for political equivocation. The question his campaign has spent months sputtering to answer (what does John Kerry stand for?) would only be amplified by such a selection." —Eileen MacNamara, Boston Globe [via CommonDreams]
Amazon shrinkage alarms activists
Not the online vendor; "environmental groups are calling for urgent action to slow deforestation in Brazil's Amazon jungle." —BBC
Wednesday, April 7, 2004
Sicilian Blazes Put Science to the Test
"A series of spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again -- even though electricity to the village was cut off.
An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled 'ghostbusters' have descended on the town searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car." —Reuters [via dangerousmeta]Spontaneous combustion and its most vexing variant, spontaneous human combustion, are a puzzling and, I am convinced, real phenomenon. Perhaps the urgency of such a prodigious clustering of these events will provide the impetus for fruitful investigation and some clues to the phenomenon's cause.
Oh, Say, Can You See?
White House vetting could delay 9/11 report until after election —Yahoo! News; Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable —New York Times
Diet of worms protects against bowel cancer
"Regular doses of worms really do rid people of inflammatory bowel disease. The first trials of the treatment have been a success, and a drinkable concoction containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs could soon be launched in Europe.
The product will be called TSO, short for Trichuris suis ova, and will be made by a new German company called BioCure, whose sister company BioMonde sells leeches and maggots for treating wounds." —EurekAlert [via boing boing]For any of you who know the reference, I'm sure you'll agree; the rest of you, ignore this — I couldn't help thinking of how this utterly vindicates Phil 'n' Lil's culinary tastes...
Hey, Mr Lingerie Man . . .
"Asked in 1965 what might tempt him to sell out, Dylan replied: 'Ladies undergarments'. Now the the Woodstock generation has been jolted by the sight of rock's most enigmatic performer appearing alongside model Adriana Lima as she slips into something sheer to cavort in the Palazzo of Venice." —Telegraph.UK
A ghost is born
Legal Quicktime streaming preview of Wilco's forthcoming disc.
Microsoft Deletes 2 Characters from Office Font
In what it is ramming down the throats of most users by calling it a 'critical update', Microsoft eliminated the swastika and the Star of David from its Bookshelf Symbol 7 font last month. Memory Hole comments:"...(A) 'Critical Update'... is supposed to mean that it is important for the stability or security of the operating system. A simple font change does not qualify, so it's obvious that they wanted to force this update upon their users. A system set up with Automatic Windows Updates (which is most newly installed ones) will have this pushed down by default, and most users will see 'Critical' in the name and accept it based on that. This is an insidious form of censorship, as Microsoft decides for its users what symbols they should be allowed to have in their fonts. This should have been published in the 'Recommended Updates' section, where you would have to read each update and decide for yourself."
Buffalo Bill's
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
Best Treatment May Be No Treatment At All
"The biggest myths of modern medicine were challenged in a new guide for patients launched yesterday that sets out the best treatment for 60 of the commonest medical conditions.
Instead of claiming miracles, the guide admits that often the best treatment is no treatment. Devised by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), it is based on evidence from thousands of research studies and is being made available through the NHS Direct website, the advice service for patients.
Treatments are ranked according to effectiveness and the pros and cons of surgery are explained. In some cases the guide says it can't recommend any treatment because there is no good evidence that anything works." — Independent.UKWith regard to my specialty, mental health treatment, the guide casts aspersions on tranquilizers for anxiety disorders and treatments for anorexia nervosa. I certainly share the BMJ's skepticism about medical omnipotence, and particularly in the areas they single out.
"In my opinion, in 10 years we'll be embarrassed by how much of this stuff we prescribed"
Nominal Benefits Seen in Drugs for Alzheimer's: A major scientific conference reviewing the evidence for benefits from the Alzheimer's medications on the market — Aricept, Exelon, Reminyl and Tacrine — found the benefits to be so modest as to leave most doctors unsure about prescribing them, especially given how expensive they are. In my opinion, there are two types of problems in asssessing the impact of these medications. First, statistically significant effects, which will make the case for FDA approval for a drug, are not the same as clinically significant benefit.
"You can name 11 fruits in a minute instead of 10," said Dr. Thomas Finucane, a professor at Johns Hopkins and a geriatrician. "Is that worth 120 bucks a month?" —New York Times
More importantly, especially in a results-driven healthcare economy, it is difficult to see the benefit of medications which primarily slow an inevitable decline rather than causing improvement. The studies demonstrating that these medications have any substantial value, which I have examined carefully as the drugs were introduced, are prospective studies which follow patients and matched placebo control patients over several years. In other words, concrete benefits will not be apparent to an Alzheimer's patient's treating physician or family, and it takes a great leap of faith and a familiarity with the scientific literature to maintain a patient on such a medication. But surely delaying the need to place a patient in a nursing home for months or years, for example, when their decline becomes so profound that home-based care is no longer possible, is eminently desirable. Analogously, many, if not most, patients with cancer opt for far more invasive treatments to extend their lives at home wtih their loved ones for similar or lesser periods of time. It is important not to promote more magical, unrealistic hopes in either case. Moreover, these drugs are just a first iteration. More specific and more powerful medications working by different medications are in the pipeline; memantine, or Namenda, supposedly the first of these, has just arrived... and, so far, I am reserving judgment. The existing drugs, finally, may be even more useful in pre-Alzheimer's conditions, i.e. as cognition- or memory-enhancers in more benign age-related cognitive decline (like the 'senior moments' I suffer...). [thanks, Jerry]
"The War President": You Lied, They Died
Mosaic of the faces of the American Iraq 'War' dead. This forms the entry portal to Michael Moore's website. [via boing boing]
Soldiers Choose Canada
"Canada has a long tradition of providing safe haven for dissenting Americans: Loyalists during the War of Independence, refugees from the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, so-called "skedaddlers" deserting from Civil War battalions, and, most famously, some 60,000 men and women resisting the Vietnam War.
Unless there's a draft, no one expects a flood at the northern border nowadays. But the trickle could certainly swell. According to a U.S. Army survey released last week, 72 percent of soldiers report that morale in their unit is low or very low. Meanwhile, the suicide rate among service members is at an all-time high. From April through December last year, 23 killed themselves while on duty in Iraq or Kuwait; at least seven more did so after their return home.
Thousands are seeking less dire means of escape. Calls to G.I. Rights Hotline, which answers questions from recruits trying to leave the armed forces, shot up to 28,822 in 2003, from 17,267 in 2001. Meanwhile, though the Pentagon will not confirm figures, military attorneys, activists, and the European press have estimated that 600 to 1,700 soldiers have fled to avoid service in Iraq. Most are likely living underground in the U.S.—going AWOL, even for long periods, is a far less serious offense than actually applying for refugee status in another country—which clearly demonstrates the intent to desert. Nonetheless, the peacenik grapevine in Canada began buzzing on Wednesday with news that a female deserter is on her way.
Canada itself has resisted the war in Iraq. Backed by overwhelming public sentiment, its government officially refused to join the "coalition forces." But much has changed in the 35 years since a draft dodger or G.I. could simply present himself at Canada's border and sign up for landed-immigrant status. "In the '60s, we didn't have a refugee determination system," explains the former Immigration and Refugee Board member, Audrey Macklin, a professor of law at the University of Toronto. "The war resisters who came were not required to jump through any hoops. Now we have a rigorous one-by-one approach and more complex and narrow regimes for permitting entry." —Alisa Solomon, The Village Voice
The Pure Software Act of 2006
"100 years ago, Congress passed a law requiring honest labeling of food and drugs. Now the time has come to do the same for software." —Simson Garfinkel, MIT Technology Review
Discovering Dickens - A Community Reading Project
Stanford repeats the 2002 experience it engendered with Great Expectations; since January 2004 it has been sending out, on demand, weekly serialized mailings of facsimiles of chapters of A Tale of Two Cities, simulating the way the Dickens novel was originally released. Apparently, Stanford's special collection includes a set of these original editions. Stanford is still accepting requests for enrollment in this program, or you can download .pdfs of the releases each week. As an inveterate fan of reading aloud with my family, their invitation to "join the world of family reading circles" is very appealing. We will wait expectantly for each week's installment...
Tuesday, April 6, 2004
Half-Million Milestone
One of you yesterday logged the 500,000th page hit to FmH. Relax, the first half-million are the hardest. I look forward to your continuing reading pleasure here, and thank you all for your support. [I know, I know, boing boing posted today that they get almost 400,000 hits a month!]
Monday, April 5, 2004
GAO Says Army on Road to Ruin
"A new congressional report is alleging that the Future Combat Systems program is poised for major delays and a financial train wreck. Worst of all, the report claims, the Army knew this was going to happen all along." —Wired
Sunday, April 4, 2004
Tech heavyweights explain how to destroy the Internet
"A group of tech celebs gathered on Capitol Hill this week to brief Congressional aides on how Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can, and probably will, make a complete mess of the Internet in about a year's time.
At issue are likely revisions to the 1996 Telecommunications Act and FCC regulations, which, thus far, have managed to do scant violence to the Net. Unfortunately, changes now being contemplated, urged by telecomms and media behemoths and their lobbyists, may soon alter that happy state of affairs. Broadband users are particularly at risk, because they enjoy little of the consumer choice available to dialup users." —The Register [via Interesting People]
The Quest to Forget
Some who work with victims of trauma are defending and developing new techniques for what might be called 'therapeutic forgetting' —New York Times. We have the capacity to interfere pharmacologically with the storage or retrieval of painful memories; but should we? Bioethicists and others argue that having had nightmarish experiences is part of what makes us what we are, and that blunting the memory of painful events diminishes us and prevents us from learning from our experiences. I have previously written in horror about the efforts of the military to use immediate interventions, or even prophylaxis, into battlefield trauma to enhance soldiers' abilities to remain efficient and dehumanized warriors in the face of the horror of what they do and see done in war. One might argue that that is a slightly different issue, as the victims of most trauma have little or no moral responsibility for their victimization as contrasted with the Pentagon's 'fighting machines.' Nevertheless, I share the alarm about the 'therapeutic forgetting' research. If I were living in a hopeless, terminal world like that depicted in post-apocalyptic fiction, where these is essentially no future in store, I might feel differently, but the process of recovering from trauma without shortcuts provides for the future. Moreover, the researchers themselves raise the possibility that interfering with the laying down or retrieval of intense memories might not selectively screen for the alarming or painful ones, and emotionally intense pleasant memories might be blocked or dulled in the process. Finally, the use of such techniques could in all likelihood not be restricted to clinically significant traumas. In much the same way that the burgeoning use of antidepressants since Prozac has led to an age of 'cosmetic psychopharmacology', we could look forward to the further twisting of the human soul by unrestricted damping of the most trivially or mundanely unpleasant memories.
Fundamentally Insane?
Mother Who Stoned 2 Sons to Death Acquitted on All Charges: "A woman who claimed God ordered her to kill her sons was acquitted of murder charges by reason of insanity on Saturday, sparing her a life prison sentence and allowing the state to commit her to a psychiatric hospital.My question: should the fundamentalist preachers who filled her head full of the idiocy that could shape her vulnerabilities into such a malignant form be charged as accomplices to murder, even if she was acquitted on grounds of insanity?
A jury found that the woman, Deanna L. Laney, did not know right from wrong last May 9 when she killed her two older sons, 6-year-old Luke and 8-year-old Joshua, in her front yard by bashing their heads with rocks. She left her youngest son, Aaron, now 2, maimed in his crib...
Her lawyers argued that insanity was the only reason why Ms. Laney, a deeply religious mother who home-schooled her children, would kill her sons without a tear...
All five mental health experts consulted in the case concluded that a severe mental illness caused Ms. Laney to have psychotic delusions. Psychiatrists testified that Ms. Laney believed she was chosen by God to kill her children as a test of faith and then to serve as a witness after the world ended." —New York Times
Altering of Worker Time Cards Spurs Growing Number of Suits
Apparently, time-shaving is a rampant management practice at some of your favorite corporate employers. —New York Times It shouldn't be news; we shouldn't be surprised. If you are an hourly employee who logs overtime, you should probably start keeping your own records of 'time served', if you do not already.
Framework of Clarke's Book Is Bolstered
"Since former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke charged March 24 that the Bush White House reacted slowly to warnings of a terrorist attack, his former colleagues have poked holes in parts of his narration of the early months of 2001 and have found what they say is evidence that Clarke elevated his own importance in those events...
But the broad outline of Clarke's criticism has been corroborated by a number of other former officials, congressional and commission investigators, and by Bush's admission in the 2003 Bob Woodward book 'Bush at War' that he 'didn't feel that sense of urgency' about Osama bin Laden before the attacks occurred." —Washington Post
Violent Disturbances Wrack Iraq From Baghdad to Southern Cities
"Iraq was wracked today by its most violent civil disturbances since the occupation started, with a coordinated Shiite uprising spreading across the country, from the slums of Baghdad to several cities in the south.
By day's end, witnesses said Shiite militiamen controlled the city of Kufa, south of Baghdad, with armed men loyal to a radical cleric occupying the town's police stations and checkpoints. More than eight people were killed by Spanish forces in a similar uprising in the neighboring town of Najaf.
In Baghdad, American tanks battled militiamen loyal to Moqtada Al Sadr, the radical cleric who has denounced the occupation and has an army of thousands of young followers.
At nightfall today, the Sadr City neighborhood shook with explosions and tank and machine gun fire. Black smoke choked the sky. The streets were lined with armed militiamen, dressed in all black. American tanks surrounded the area. Attack helicopters thundered overhead.
'The occupation is over!' people on the streets yelled. 'We are now controlled by Sadr. The Americans should stay out.'" —New York Times
So: "In post September 11 wars, the US secured rapid battlefield dominance in Afghanistan and Iraq. Do these triumphs mean victory? Or, could America be defeated?
Four traits fatally obstruct a balance between threats and capacities and make defeat possible and even likely. First, ignorance is a precursor of gross policy errors that enlarge threats and squander capacities. Not knowing other cultures, histories, or socioeconomic environments is a guarantee of commitments that extend well beyond realistic expectations. From here to the horizon is scattered human debris from interventions in places we knew not at all. Vietnam's long battle against the French was unknown in the U.S. in the early 1960s. Somalia was but an image of state collapse absent detailed on-the-ground knowledge. Iraq's Ba'athist regime was part of an "axis of evil". Attempts to alter local and regional political directions and traditions, however, are not the bailiwick of those without detailed preparations.
Moreover, defeat comes through arrogance. Capacity-driven behaviors are preceded by an assumption that power is deserved, and that deserved power embodies one with a mission to use such capacities for a greater goal. Such a missionary vocation is irrevocably intertwined with hubris - the conceit of power. Yet such arrogance conceals fundamental weakness. Every utterance of arrogant power generates fear, alienation and, ultimately, the development of countervailing and often asymmetric force. With each deception or evidently cosmetic spin, the power of trust and the legitimacy of just force wither. America the indispensable power, the salvation of democracies and the righteously vengeful nation after 9/11 has, in Iraq, found that creating post-war peace and reconstruction depends on far more than US Army occupation.
Distrust of friends, and dread of presumed enemy plots, join to produce the self-flagellation of paranoia. Everything is apprehension, and fright lies slightly beneath the surface. "Report suspicious behavior" flashes the sign above the Beltway - and George Orwell nods. Where one can trust no one, isolated strongholds are one plausible approach to world affairs. The alternative path taken by the Bush Administration is a foreign policy of global unilateralism - pre-empting through raw force whenever narrow national interests seem threatened, surrounding oneself with coalitions of the willing in lieu of genuine alliances. A pre-emptive strategy is one adopted by nations, groups or individuals for whom others harbor evil intentions, and whose presumed intentions warrant immediate countermeasures. It is but a short distance between such trepidation and an irrational paranoia.
Greed is also a quick route to self-defeat. Believing in nothing but today's material interests is another way of believing in nothing. War to end a regime of one leader or party, to capture resources, or to shift a strategic balance, while ignoring justice and other paramount values is a harbinger of defeat. Lie about motives, deceitfully spin information, conceal data or events - do all of these while wars and their aftermath generate huge unaccountable profits for corporate allies of decision-makers and one is sure to lose the normative war and therefore become the victim of peace.
To the degree that ignorance, arrogance, paranoia and greed are all present, those who make decisions about war and peace will pursue a capacity-driven strategy, conflate discourses of war and peace, and incessantly strive for security through strength. Such decision-makers will, thereby, create enemies from friends, replacing mutual trust with endemic suspicion and fear.
This is George W. Bush's America. With each pre-emptive step towards global unilateralism, enemies multiply, friendships wane, and the imbalance between threats and capacities approaches critical. The smell of defeat hangs in the air."
—Daniel N. Nelson, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, University of New Haven, served in the State and Defense departments (1998-2002) and was Richard Gephardt's foreign policy advisor when he was House Majority Leader, CommonDreams
Well: Let's Make Enemies:US occupation chief Paul Bremer hasn't started wearing a hijab yet, and is instead tackling the rise of anti-Americanism with his usual foresight. Baghdad is blanketed with inept psy-ops organs like Baghdad Now, filled with fawning articles about how Americans are teaching Iraqis about press freedom. "I never thought before that the Coalition could do a great thing for the Iraqi people," one trainee is quoted saying. "Now I can see it on my eyes what they are doing good things for my country and the accomplishment they made. I wish my people can see that, the way I see it."
Unfortunately, the Iraqi people recently saw another version of press freedom when Bremer ordered US troops to shut down a newspaper run by supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr. The militant Shiite cleric has been preaching that Americans are behind the attacks on Iraqi civilians and condemning the interim constitution as a "terrorist law." So far, al-Sadr has refrained from calling on his supporters to join the armed resistance, but many here are predicting that the closing down of the newspaper--a nonviolent means of resisting the occupation--was just the push he needed. But then, recruiting for the resistance has always been a specialty of the Presidential Envoy to Iraq: Bremer's first act after being tapped by Bush was to fire 400,000 Iraqi soldiers, refuse to give them their rightful pensions but allow them to hold on to their weapons--in case they needed them later." —Naomi Klein, CommonDreams
Lost Art Form
"We try our best to avoid it, but boredom has its benefits." I was curious about whether the article was, as advertised, going to be about the advantages of being bored. Of course, it is really about the advantages that accrue from shaking yourself out of your torpor. As someone who almost never suffers boredom, I was interested in learning if I am missing something. Now I'll never know...and it is without resorting to most of this culture's ever more frantic, and self-defeating, efforts to help me be less bored. [I got as far as the prescient paragraph acknowledging that some readers might be bored with the article by the time they reached that paragraph.] —SF Chronicle
Liberalism's Lost Script
"Democrats used to thrive on Hollywood endings. Today, liberalism is more like a dark, complicated novel. It's time to go back to making movies.This fall's presidential contest will turn on many things, but one of them will certainly be the parties' contrasting aesthetics: the comforting bromides of conservative cheerfulness versus the disturbing sobriety of new liberalism's cold glare. But while it may be foolish and even dangerous to view the world as anything but tragic, doing so isn't a very promising way to win votes. Twenty-five years ago, conservatives stole liberal optimism, and George W. Bush, currently bumping from one disaster to another, is relying on it to pull him through this election." —Neal Gabler, American Prospect
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