Saturday Night Live2

Okay, another commercial just came on. Wow, I didn't realize how political a good cast of SNL could be the Saturday before an election. That John McCain cartoon in which he had to beat himself up in order to say good things about George Bush was brilliant. Ending with Apocalypse Now with John McCain doing the drunk, broken mirror scene? Brilliant!

[Next commercial]Yep. Eminem just did Mosh. What an episode.

Saturday Night Live

The SNL show tonight is politically brilliant. Two days before the election, and they have Bin Laden talking politically astute/madmanlike. Awesome move.

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That's quite an expert they've got

I really just wanted this whole bulge in Bush's suit that some were claiming was a wire to just go away (because I thought it was just silly). But when NASA image analysts start talking, I listen a little bit harder. I'll keep an eye on this, I guess.

Salon.com News | NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate:
George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. 'I don't know what that is,' he said on 'Good Morning America' on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. 'I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt.'

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.

Google browser? Think bigger.

Lifted word for word from JOHO the blog:

Joho the Blog: Google browser browses the world
Jason Kottke in September guessed that Google is building its own browser. Slashdot got all slashdotty on that idea's ass. The supporting evidence: Google has registered gbrowser.com, they may be hiring people from Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, and there are reasons to think it makes sense for Google to do so...at least in terms of Google's ambitiousness.

I'm not good at this type of prognostication. (So, what type of prognostication am I good at? I accurately predicted that John Travolta would be a huge star back when he was a Sweathog. That concludes my list.) But, yesterday's purchase of Keyhole — yet another Windows-only service, as Dan Gillmor points out — got me to thinking. If Google is building a browser, what might it be like?

It would not be a Web browser. It'd be a world browser. It would find pages on the Web, of course, but it'd also find the ones on my desktop (Google desktop). It would know about my email (Gmail). It would know that my own photos are categorically different from all the other jpgs on the planet (Picasa). It would let me browse the physical earth (Keyhole) and show on a map the documents that talk about any particular place (Keyhole + Google Local).

And it wouldn't be just a browser. It would let me work with the information I've found: Manage my photos (Picasa), manage my desktop files, translate documents (Google Languages), shop...

If that's what Google's aiming at, they need a file manager (no big deal) and would probably want to have a e-wallet and maybe a digital ID offering (Whoogle? — currently owned by AK PRadeep in Berkeley).

The result would replace current browsers but wouldn't look much like them. You'd do so much of your daily work in it it that it would feel more like a desktop...

...which is where it gets really interesting.

For all those catbloggers out there

By the way, my birthday gift from Janella (my birthday is on Halloween) is two Siamese kittens. We've been thinking about getting two cats for a while, and she at first didn't think that she would want Siamese cats... then we catsat for a friend's Siamese, and she softened. So we'll go looking for our kittens here in a couple of days (we think we know someone with two siamese kittens). Pictures, of course, will follow.

This is an amusing site:
The Infinite Cat Project - Cats watching cats watching cats. Hey! It's a concept!

I must need laughter right now

Four days before an election like this, I must need a laugh right now; at leastthat's what I'm gravitating towards.

American Digest: Blogger's Head Explodes:
'His browser history documents that he went from Drudge to Real Clear Politics to Talking Points Memo to Instapundit to Fox News to The New York Times to MSNBC to Kos to Roger Simon to Little Green Footballs to The Corner to Atrios to Google News to Allah to The Belmont Club to Wonkette and finally, and probably fatally, to Andrew Sullivan . All of a sudden his hands flew to his temples and he screamed in pain. Then, as if someone had put a bomb in his cranium, Van der Leun's head popped like a firecracker.'

I'm almost ashamed I laughed so hard

The link has several costumes and pictures of kids wearing the costumes. The page was written by the ever lovable advice columnist, Dan Savage, and playwright and author, David Schmader.

2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes:

The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib

Your child will be the hit of the neighborhood costume parade in this recreation of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal's most indelible image. As an added bonus this easy-to-make costume will remind everyone on your child's trick-or-treat route of our national shame!

Laura Bush supports John Kerry (joke)

I love the Weekly World News, and yes, I know the Weekly World News is a parody newspaper, and put it in the same class as I do The Onion (which I also love). This story of theirs is actually worthy of The Onion in its humor, but with that WWW surrealism.

'I'M VOTING for John Kerry for President because sooner or later, when it becomes politically expedient, he shares my views on everything. He's not hard-headed like my husband.

'And he's not always saying, 'I answer to a Higher Power! It is the Lord's will!' when I fuss at him for forgetting to put the toilet seat down, either.'

With those measured and historic words, first lady Laura Bush expressed her stunning intention to jump ship and vote Democratic in the forthcoming presidential election.

'This is unprecedented in presidential politics,' says Madame Virginia Rousseau, the famed Bakersfield, California- based psychic and historian who blew the lid off the first lady's alleged decision to 'go Kerry' after claiming to have read her mind 'on several remarkable occasions.'

And Walmart controls America's thoughts again

I swear that the power of Walmart to influence public opinion is mind-boggling to me. And all under the guise of trying to please their customer. I'm not saying that Walmart's major concern isn't to give its customer more reason to buy product it sells. But maybe in some minor cases like withholding a book, or a video, or a particular toy, or a CD, the choice is about what Walmart would like the world to believe in order for Walmart's business to increase. If a book came out that very specifically indicted Walmart for wrongdoing, and blasted it across the cover, would that book really be sold at Walmart? Do most of Walmart's customers actually go anywhere else to buy a book?

As much as I dislike the New York Post, I'll quote from their article since they broke this story. Only seems fair.
New York Post Online Edition: business:
ADD George Carlin to the ranks of rankled comedians whose books have been banned from Wal-Mart's shelves.

Publishing sources say the retail giant has returned about 3,500 copies of Carlin's 'When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?' Hyperion published the book on Oct. 12. It is currently No. 27 on the Amazon top-sellers list.

Carlin, known for his subversive comedy, addresses politics, religion and hygiene in the book. It's cover is a rendition of the Last Supper with Carlin pictured sitting next to Jesus' empty chair.
...
Burk said Wal-Mart "didn't believe this particular product would appeal" to its consumer base. "These decisions always have to do with what we think our customers want to buy," Burk said.

The mindset of our president

Two years before 9/11, candidate Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
...
Herskowitz was given unimpeded access to Bush, and the two met approximately 20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that within two months he had completed and submitted some 10 chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters still on his computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush’s ghostwriter after Bush’s handlers concluded that the candidate’s views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.
...
According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush’s beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House – ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.”

Bush’s circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: “They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches.”

Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter’s political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush’s father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents – Grenada and Panama – and gained politically.

Thanks to A Tiny Revolution for pointing me to the article.

Noteworthy for more research

I don't have the time at the moment to fully explore this, but this website, the Corporate Accountability Project, strikes me as worth remembering to explore.

Eminem's video, Mosh

Anyone who has not seen Eminem's anti-Bush, get-out-the-vote video, just has to stop everything and click on this link. It's powerful like Farenheit 9/11 was powerful. It's such a moving thought that music from Springsteen to the Dixie Chicks to Eminem is being used as a political force in 2004.

Bush flipped off the camera

This video is supposedly from Bush's pre-presidential life, when he won the Governorship of Texas. While the camera was rolling, but before the broadcast started, Bush flipped off the camera. What kind of adolescent do we have in charge of our country? This is beginning to be like a bad teenage film depicting scatological jokes and brief female nudity. And our President isn't even the leading actor in the film, but the stupid redneck sidekick.

The solar system just got a whole lot smaller?

Is this article, Mysterious Moonscape Seen on Saturn's Titan, as significant as it appears to me or am I just imagining things?

"We've been saying that Titan was the solar system's last great mystery, and [now] the solar system has become a smaller place," said the Cassini imaging team's leader, Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "But we are still mystified and not quite sure what we're looking at."
...
"The biggest surprise is the fact we're still not seeing craters or evidence of structures," said JPL's Torrence Johnson. The images suggested a smooth, perhaps flat, surface with light and dark patches.

The instruments suggested the patches were made of similar materials, perhaps from "some sort of a coating effect,"
...
"This is the first place we've looked at with atmosphere and precipitation," Johnson said in a telephone interview. "It's more like Earth."
...
But not that much like Earth: "There's sharp boundaries between the bright and dark regions, but there is no topography in our images," Porco said. "Everyhing could be perfectly flat. We just don't know."

Other images showed lines or streaks across flat surfaces that could be caused by wind or geologic forces, Porco said. "They could be cracks in bedrock ice," she added. "There's a pattern and a process going on."

Porco also said "the jury is out" on whether there are liquids on Titan's surface. Scientists had speculated that Titan might have lakes or oceans of liquid ethane, but Cassini found no evidence of either.

When your own magazine doesn't like you...

American Conservative magazine, which is what it sounds like, endorses Kerry for President because they also believe in the Anybody But Bush platform.

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.

Price of ignorance of electronic age

There is a price to be paid for being ignorant of the new technology you are using. The Republicans seem to have paid a price for those members who are ignorant. Here's the story:

See, the website for George Bush's reelection campaign is www.georgebush.com. Some enterprising souls made a parody website on www.georgebush.org. Well, those Republicans who don't really understand the difference between .org and .com (for example, Dick Cheney when he mixed up factcheck.com and factcheck.org) sometimes replied or sent messages to yourrepublicanfriend@georgebush.org. Some of these messages are very revealing about the lengths the Republicans might go to in order to keep people from being able to vote.

Luckily, georgebush.org has a mail server which just keeps all the messages sent to a non-existing user... and the website owners just recently discovered this fact so there's a wealth of emails they have received from tech-ignorant Republican campaign people.

Lovely.

Email, Karaoke, Parallel Parking...

This is a sideways mention of the problem with litigation in the United States that isn't being uttered in a political context. It's also a pretty neat feature for a car to have!
New York Times, Technology: Three Amazing Things Your Automobile Can't Do
Fear of legal action has also stopped Toyota from offering its Intelligent Parking Assist feature, which is now available on the hybrid gas-electric Prius model sold in Japan.

This device automatically parks the car, maneuvering the Prius backward and into the space. To activate it, the driver first pulls alongside the forward vehicle, then drags a picture of a flag marker and parking triangle on the car's touchscreen display, until they are positioned where the vehicle should wind up.

But the system cannot respond to changing conditions, like the vehicle in front suddenly backing into the space the Prius is about to enter. Nor can the system respond to unexpected road obstacles — a soccer ball rolling into the gutter or a child running in the way.

While the system seems ideal for congested streets like New York's, "we have no plans for the U.S.," said Jon Bucci, corporate manager for advanced technology at Toyota Motor Sales. "This is a very litigious society."

This is an extensive summary of a food plant, and was fascinating for me to read based on my interest in the entire manufacturing process of food. The article really pinpoints the effect an economy of scale has on food. I recommend that most of the people at the co-op and Zingerman's read the article in its entirety for a more holistic understanding of what is on their shelf and what possibly makes it different (or not) than what's on the shelf at the big-box food store.

From the piece:
What doesn't come across in this description is the visceral experience of being in a place where there is, literally, so much dead meat all around. People can get used to it; I think people can get used to damn near anything. But it's about as far removed from the occasional chicken or pig slaughter on Grandma's farm as a spacecraft is from a horse-and-buggy. I'm not saying it's wrong; I like the cheap food too. It's an amazing thing that chicken costs about the same today in absolute (not inflation-adjusted) dollars as it did when I was a child. And we have technology to thank for that. I'm glad it's there.

But I'm also glad I know what it looks like, even if I didn't eat hamburgers for a month after I first learned. For one thing it gave me a great appreciation for why the food seems so different when I visit a place like Trinidad or the rural area around Veracruz where they don't have these economies of scale. It seems unlikely, but just as a cabinet made from hand-selected wood by a craftsman will not be the same as one stamp-constructed out of particle board laminate, the chicken that is raised in a barnyard isn't the same as one grown from genetically growth-optimized stock in a closed building and trucked to a closed facility to be mass-processed along with 100,000 other chickens a day. I've learned to appreciate such food when I can have it.

Kerry on Jesus

My religious beliefs are certainly not the same as either Kerry's or Bush's, but when I hear Bush talk about the role of religion in his life I get scared of the decisions he's going to make, what with all his talk of "good" and "evil." I'm not scared of the political decisions Kerry would make based on his religious beliefs, assuming that 30% of the following isn't just spin but partly true.

John Kerry and Jesus:
Katie Couric: "You gave a speech this weekend on faith and values, two things that have heretofore fallen under the purview, if you will, primarily of the Republican party. Why was this important to you? You quoted the Bible, what, four times? Why was this something that you wanted to talk about?"

John Kerry: "It's part of who I am. It's part of what I intend to bring to the presidency. As president, I believe that we are -- those of us guided by faith, have to live out our faith. You don't just talk about faith. You live your faith. And faith puts certain moral responsibilities on you. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and I do, then you believe that you have some responsibility to other people. To community, to the poor, to the sick, to those less fortunate. I don’t think that our policies in the last years have lived up to the values that we ought to be living up to."

Thanks to Psychotria Nervosa for pointing me to this.

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And the fit hits the Shan?

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:
This has been rumored in Washington for several days. And now the Nelson Report has broken the story.

Some 350 tons of high explosives (RDX and HMX), which were under IAEA seal while Saddam was in power, were looted during the early days of the US occupation. Like so much else, it was just left unguarded.

Not only are these super-high-yield explosives probably being used in many, if not most, of the various suicide and car bombings in Iraq, but these particular explosives are ones used in the triggering process for nuclear weapons.

In other words, it's bad stuff.

What also emerges in the Nelson Report is that the Defense Department has been trying to keep this secret for some time. The DOD even went so far as to order the Iraqis not to inform the IAEA that the materials had gone missing. Informing the IAEA, of course, would lead to it becoming public knowledge in the United States.
[MORE]

Link tool

By going to this website from a link on a page, it will show you who links to the referring website through several searches.
Who Links To Me - for the ultimate narcissist within you

Biological computing

The world will keep getting harder to live in for the strict vegan...

A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene.
...
When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. “You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out – and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,” he said. “(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.”

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.

“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”

100 Facts and 1 Opinion

The Nation - 100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration
OPINION

If the past informs the future, four more years of the Bush Administration will be a tragic period in the history of the United States and the world.

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Local Reporter in Michigan gets scoop from George Tenet

Scoop for Local Reporter: Ex-CIA Chief Tenet Calls Iraq War 'Wrong':
The guest speaker was famous, and he was visiting a small town far from the spotlight of network TV cameras and the reach of big-name reporters from national newspapers. In other words: It was a perfect scenario for a local reporter to snag an exclusive. And Anna Clark, correspondent for The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph, Mich., was there to grab it.

Addressing the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan Wednesday night, George Tenet, former director of central intelligence, called the war on Iraq 'wrong,' according to Clark's article today. Tenet added that while the Iraq war was 'rightly being challenged,' the CIA was making important strides toward success in the greater war on terrorism.

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LA Times: The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

'It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed,' an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that 'the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward.'

Pandagon gives us polls from Oct 18, election year 2000

Pandagon: Historicize My Polls, Dammit!:

Polling Firm	Date	Bush	Gore	Bush-Gore
ABC	10/19	48%	43%	+5%
Gallup	10/19	50%	40%	+10%
Opinion Dynamics	10/19	45%	42%	+3%
Reuters/MSNBC	10/19	44%	44%	0%
Voter.com	10/19	44%	39%	+5%
ABC	10/18	48%	44%	+4%
Gallup	10/18	49%	39%	+10%
NBC	10/18	45%	43%	+2%
Reuters/MSNBC	10/18	44%	43%	+1%
Voter.com	10/18	44%	40%	+4%

Note that not a single one of these polls gave any advantage to the actual winner of the popular vote. So while the media crows about this or that metric, remember that they were all wrong at this point in 2000. While the polls did tighten in the ending days of the race, only 3 of the 20 polls taken in the final two days gave Gore any sort of lead.

Maybe they just flipped a coin

Current Electoral Vote
Predictor:
Are the voters stupid? It is not considered politically correct to point out that an awful lot of voters don't have a clue what they are talking about. A recent poll from Middle Tennessee State University sheds some light on the subject. For example, when asked which candidate wants to roll back the tax cuts for people making over $200,000 a year, a quarter thought it was Bush and a quarter didn't know. And it goes down hill from there. When asked which candidate supports specific positions on various issues, the results were no better than chance. While this poll was in Tennessee, I strongly suspect a similar poll in other states would get similar results. I find it dismaying that many people will vote for Bush because they want to tax the rich (which he opposes) or vote for Kerry because they want school vouchers for religious schools (which he opposes).

White House erases history

White
House Removes Page & Link From Website:
Immediately after the VP debate, when the question of which countries comprise the "Coalition" to invade Iraq became an issue, the White House removed the webpage listing members of the Coalition. When people wrote the webmaster to point out that the page had gone 404, the White House re[s]ponded--not by putting the page back online--but by removing the link to the now-missing page.
...
But again, as with other incompetent attempts to erase webpages, different versions of the page escaped the webmaster's notice and, thus, still exist on the site. They can be found with a Google search. In a classic type of screw-up, the "text only" version of the page remains on the White House website here. The Memory Hole has created a mirror just in case this page disappears, too.

"Protect our civil liberties" an arrestable phrase

Bend.com - Press Release "Teachers' T-shirts bring Bush speech ouster": News and information from Bend, Oregon:
Three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and escorted from the event after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties." All three said they applied for and received valid tickets from Republican headquarters in Medford.

The women said they did not intend to protest. "I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president," said Janet Voorhies, 48, a teacher in training.

“We chose this phrase specifically because we didn't think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene," said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher.

Thursday’s event in Oregon sets a new bar for a Bush/Cheney campaign that has taken extraordinary measures to screen the opinions of those who attend Bush and Cheney speeches. For months, the Bush/Cheney campaign has limited event access to those willing to volunteer in Bush/Cheney campaign offices. In recent weeks, the Bush/Cheney campaign has gone so far as to have those who voice dissenting viewpoints at their events arrested and charged as criminals.

Thursday’s actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney – removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as “Protect Our Civil Liberties.”

UPDATE: Here's a picture, thanks to mousemusings

Internet suicide pacts

The real world has a way of boggling my imagination, exceeding the strangest stories I might come up with.
The New York Times > Strangers in Life Join Hands in Death as the Web Becomes a Tool for Suicide in Japan: ...What seems to have brought all nine together - just long enough to kill themselves - are "suicide sites" on the Internet.
For Japanese with high-speed Internet access, which a majority of homes now have, this suicide subculture is just a few key strokes away. On a recent day, typing the Japanese words for "suicide" and "manual" into the Japanese version of the Google search engine yielded 29,761 citations. Suicide sites have names like "Underground Suicide" and "Deadline.''
...
But about once a month since January 2002, Japan has recorded a group suicide, successful or attempted, where the participants had linked up on the Internet.

Jon Stewart scolds news media

IFILM - Short Films: Jon Stewart's Brutal Exchange with CNN Host: Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart browbeats CNN's Tucker Carlson over journalism ethics on Crossfire.

This video is about 13 minutes long, and is so much worth watching in its entirety. It's not funny, by the way.

Daily Endorsement Tally: Kerry Picks up 30 Papers, Widens Lead

Daily Endorsement Tally: Kerry Picks up 30 Papers, Widens Lead:
Kerry gained the editorial backing of at least 30 papers, with Bush winning the support of 17 that we know of, giving Kerry the overall lead by 45-30 in E&P's exclusive tally. Kerry has more large papers on his side, maintaining his "circulation edge" at nearly 3-1: approximately 8.7 million to 3.3 million (we will post a complete tally on Monday).
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Among the papers endorsing Kerry today were several in the key swing state of Florida
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Many of the editorials backing Kerry denounced the incumbent in unusually harsh language.

The United States' "Disappeared" The CIA's Long-Term "Ghost Detainees"

Let's just take a quick look at what a couple of organizations say about what is going on in the U.S. right now, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

The United States' "Disappeared": The CIA's Long-Term "Ghost Detainees"
At least 11 al-Qaeda suspects have “disappeared” in U.S. custody, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. U.S. officials are holding the detainees in undisclosed locations, where some have reportedly been tortured.

USA: Prisoner of conscience:
Abdullah William Webster (m), sergeant
On 3 June, Sergeant Abdullah William Webster was sentenced by US court-martial to 14 months imprisonment for refusing to participate in the war in Iraq on the basis of his religious beliefs. Amnesty International considers him to be a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned for his conscientious objection to participating in war.

The world waits for U.S. regime change

"The editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal may be mostly a comic strip, but the news pages are often excellent, and some of the best reporting in the world can be found in the London Financial Times and other business journals." - Noam Chomsky

FT.com / World - Germany in rethink on Iraq force deployment: Germany might deploy troops in Iraq if conditions there change, Peter Struck, the German defence minister, indicated on Tuesday in a gesture that appears to provide backing for John Kerry, the US Democratic presidential challenger.
...
Mr Struck also welcomed Mr Kerry’s proposal that he would convene an international conference on Iraq including countries that opposed the war if he were to win next month's election.

Germany would certainly attend, Mr Struck said. “This is a very sensible proposal. The situation in Iraq can only be cleared up when all those involved sit together at one table. Germany has taken on responsibilities in Iraq, including financial ones; this would naturally justify our involvement in such a conference.”

Blog/collage metaphor

Reading this paragraph about collage's evolution as an art form tickled my thoughts about the similarities between blogs as a social media using other people's works hyperlinked to a post and collage as an artistic medium using other people's works glued to a board. No thoughts about it yet, just tickles.

The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Art Review | Romare Bearden: Life's Abundance, Captured in a Collage: "But Bearden recognized the medium as a potential literary vehicle, a narrative device, for synthesizing high formal values with a new strain of social history. His genius, aside from his poetic knack for piecing scraps of photographs and other tiny tidbits together, was to see collage as an inherent social metaphor: that its essence was to turn nothings into something, making disparate elements cohere; that it was about mixing and adding, a positivist enterprise."

So much left unsaid

I had an interview yesterday, which went pretty well, I think. But I'm struck by how much is left unaddressed or unspoken when talking about my passions and heartfelt interests. I never touched on my love of Slow Food or my belief in its importance and effectiveness in revitalizing local food economies. I never talked about my long term dream of turning Ann Arbor into the first (or at least one of the first) Slow City in the United States. I felt as if I left unscratched the importance of sustainability in food businesses, not just in farming but beyond that--especially my curiosity about the Southeast Michigan Sustainable Business Forum. I didn't talk about the Local Food Systems Masters Project and my excitement around that. I left unspoken my desire to have producer-consumer interactions become a common part of the Ann Arbor food scene. So much for which we can become a focal point...

completing the watch
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martyrdom
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face of erosion
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commerce2
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mousemusings: For Marines, a Frustrating Fight

mousemusings: For Marines, a Frustrating Fight: "Marines in Iraq Speaking on Record
via | AmericaBlog: 'This is a big ass article. It needs to be passed around the Internets :-)'
I agree. So passing along I am.

[DITTO]

'We're basically proving out that the government is wrong,' he said. 'We're catching them in a lie.'

'Asked if he was concerned that the Marines would be punished for speaking out, Autin responded: 'We don't give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?'"

The New York Times > International > Middle East > The Sanctions: Report Cites U.S. Profits in Sale of Iraqi Oil Under Hussein

Bush's current turn-around on the reason for war being Saddam's abuse of the oil-for-food program makes this an interesting development.

The New York Times > International > Middle East > The Sanctions: Report Cites U.S. Profits in Sale of Iraqi Oil Under Hussein: "Major American oil companies and a Texas oil investor were among those who received lucrative vouchers that enabled them to buy Iraqi oil under the United Nations oil-for-food program, according to a report prepared by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency.
...
Rep. Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican who heads the subcommittee on government reform, which has been investigating the oil-for-food program, said his panel would "follow the list wherever it takes us."

"We want a full explanation of the involvement of all American oil companies and individuals who were involved in a thoroughly corrupt program," he said."

Thanks to MemoryBlog for pointing me there.

Civil Rights Report Posted Despite Republican Efforts

Lifted word for word from the MemoryBlog.

Yahoo! News - Civil Rights Panel to Wait to Discuss Bush
The report is online here and mirrored by The Memory Hole here.

From the Associated Press:

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted Friday to wait until after next month's election to discuss a report critical of the Bush administration's civil rights record. Republican members had objected to the report's timing. The report remains posted on the commission's Web site, however, despite objections from GOP commissioners who sought to get it removed. ...

The 180-page report written by commission staff says Bush "has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words" on the subject. Among other criticisms, it finds fault with Bush's funding requests for civil rights enforcement agencies; his positions on voting rights, educational opportunity and affirmative action; and his actions against hate crimes.

The report offers some support for Bush, including citing a commitment to help people with disabilities and "a commendably diverse cabinet and moderately diverse judiciary."

Elections have to change

"On November 3 a broad coalition of groups and individuals could declare itself the real opposition to whoever ends up in the White House."

Progressive Review: THE ELECTION IS OVER. WE LOST. NOW ON TO NOVEMBER 3RD by Sam Smith: "To be sure there will be a consolation runoff in which we get to decide who we would rather do battle against for the next four years. This choice of battleground is not an insignificant matter but neither is it what a democratic election is supposed to be about. It is more like a cancer patient choosing between surgery and chemotherapy. We don't have to wait for Katherine Harris; this election has already been fixed.
...
Even those who work hard for Kerry could make clear their commitment ends with the closing of the polls, after which they will be with the November 3 Movement and the revival of the American republic.

There are many who might vote for Kerry but who would never include themselves among his 'supporters.' If those preaching so loudly about getting rid of Bush would quiet down for a minute, they might discover that the best way to achieve their end might be to hand out airplane barf bags with the inscription, 'Vote for Kerry.'
...
The only ground rule would be that no one is allowed to argue over election strategy. The morning after the election a news conference would be held declaring the November 3 Movement the official opposition of the newly elected president. A national conference would also be announced, at which delegates would select the issues to guide the movement. This is what should have happened at the beginning of the Clinton administration, which is one reason we face someone as bad as Bush today."

Counting Iraqi deaths

The Progressive Review wrote the following, which I was referred to by Psychotria Nervosa.

Psychotria Nervosa: "We were deeply moved by a comment by Richard Cheney to John Edwards during the recent debate concerning the relative contributions made by members of the 'coalition.' Cheney said that Edwards 'won't count the sacrifice and the contribution of Iraqi allies. It's their country. They're in the fight. They're increasingly the ones out there putting their necks on the line to take back their country from the terrorists and the old regime elements that are still left. . . You suggested. . . somehow they shouldn't count, because you want to be able to say that the Americans are taking 90 percent of the sacrifice. You cannot succeed in this effort if you're not willing to recognize the enormous contribution the Iraqis are increasingly making to their own future.'

We agree that not only has Edwards been deficient in this regard but so have we. We shall henceforth operate on the Cheney principle and count not just the casualties of America and its invading allies , but those of the Iraqi people, both military and civilian, as well. We trust other media will follow suit and that readers, out of respect towards the vice president, will urge them to do so.

The current count is as follows, using the lower estimates in case of conflicting calculations:


AMERICAN COALITION CASUALTIES

Deaths (military and civilian): 19,068
Wounded: 47,413"

ABC Halperin memo and its revelations

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has just written about the Halperin memo, which essentially stated that if a reporter feels that one candidate lies excessively more than the other, which just exaggerates, the reporter can use such strong language to differentiate the two falsefications.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: "Earlier this evening I flipped by the Fox News media criticism show and noticed that they were talking about the Mark Halperin memo posted on Drudge. I had the volume off so I didn't hear what was said. And there is a certain richness to Fox News discussing any other news organization's 'bias' when they're just a few days away from and have yet to explain why their chief political correspondent published a denigrating and fabricated story about the candidate he is supposed to be covering.

But what does this memo say, exactly?

Various right-wing barkers are trying to make it out as though Halperin has been caught in some impolitic or embarrassing remark. But quite the contrary is the case.

This is simply a news organization trying to grapple with the same reality that every respectable news outlet is now dealing with -- how to report on the fusillade of lies the Bush campaign has decided to use against John Kerry in the final weeks of the campaign.

The plain intent of the memo is to tell ABC reporters that they should feel neither obligated nor permitted to equate the level of deceptiveness of the Kerry and Bush campaign's if and when they are in fact not equal.

Everyone can see that they are not equal. Halperin is just saying it. And in doing so he has run smack into the epistemological relativism that now defines the Republican party.

The most noteworthy thing I've seen in the right-wing response is that there seems to be little effort to deny or engage the question of whether the Bush campaign is being qualitatively more dishonest than the Kerry campaign....

That's fine writing, and even if I disagreed with what he just wrote, I think I'd still have to appreciate that writing.

$260 million to scan ALL books ever made

Boing Boing: Kahle: Universal access to all human knowledge is possible: "Brewster Kahle (founder of the Internet Archive and one of the great heroes of the copyfight) just delivered an amazing presentation at the Web 2.0 conference, called Universal Access to All Human Knowledge. It lays out Brewster's plan to see to it that all the information ever created in the world is stored and made available forever. Here are my running notes:"

Thanks to The Memory Blog for pointing me there.

Google Print

Information searching keeps growing.
Google Blog: "
Google Print is an ongoing initiative to scan printed material and put it online where it can show up in Google search results. We've expanded the program, and we're now inviting publishers to send us books that we'll scan and put online for free. There are many, many books out there, and the process of scanning takes time, but depending on your areas of interest, it's likely you'll soon be seeing more Google Print results when you use Google. "

Direct action and positive change

I watched the movie, Iron Jawed Angels, tonight. The movie stars Hillary Swank as Alice Paul, and focuses on the direct action, non-violence met with violence, portion of the women's suffrage movement. It was hard to watch, with hunger strikes and forced feedings and beating of protestors in the street. It brought up many thoughts for me, but the one thought that keeps coming up is one that seems to provoke argument from protestors (perhaps from my own inarticulateness and perhaps from the indefensibleness of my position, I really don't know which one): there's got to be a better way to make change happen. As much as I believe in direct action being an incredibly effective method of creating change, I am also struck by how violent it is.

Let me first say what I don't mean by how violent I see it, before casting stones at me (or rather before taking direct action against me). I don't mean that the violence against protestors is excusable. I don't mean that the goals of the protest or the protest itself (and I'm not confining myself to suffrage here, but to direct action protests as a whole) is not worthy, perhaps even noble. I don't mean that those individuals throughout history who have suffered as victims (both the known and the unknown) of the state by following through on their conviction were following the wrong path or suffered needlessly. I believe wholeheartedly that the violence is inexcusable, that the goals of non-violent protestors are usually noble, and that the path they followed was the path they needed and had to follow given their circumstance.

I am saying that non-violent protest does not seem to escape a cycle of anger and conflict. Having seen protestors, listened to protestors, read protestors' writings, and been in the middle of protests myself, I believe that anger is usually simmering if not boiling over. The anger is usually justified and well placed; that is, it's not misplaced anger but anger placed squarely where the anger should be targeted. But anger it is.

I also see a desire for conflict, a belief that only through conflict can one create change. Perhaps conflict is the wrong word, even. Struggle might be a better one. Struggling against one's bounds. Struggling against oppression. Struggling for freedom. Struggling for choice.

All of that anger and struggle rubs this armchair Taoist the wrong way. There should be a way to create change--meaningful change--without poisoning it with anger and conflict. But see, now we get to the indefensible portion of my position--I don't know how. And once that's on the table, I can see the arms being thrown up in the air and hear the gasps of exasperation. But I don't.

This is where I ramble, with distinct thoughts which I don't have connections between yet.

--Creating something has more chance of creating lasting change than destroying something, whether or not the thing being destroyed should be destroyed.

--Beauty will impact society deeper and longer than ugliness.

--Pleasure will draw more adherents than pain.

--Given two people, one who changes her position because she doesn't like its consequences, and another who changes her position because she discovers one whose consequences she likes, the second person is more likely to keep hold of her new position.

Somewhere in the amalgam of those thoughts lies my idea. But right now, it is too late at night for me to put them together.

My love to all of you.

Conversations and games about blogs

As I spiral deeper into the blog scene, I see that blogging itself is quite the e-conversation topic. It has a very complete forum, Blogger Forum, as well as this strange stock market parody using blogs, Blogshares. All very strange.

Speaking of George Soros

Dick Cheney's mistake during the VP debate is just too rich!
During the debate, Cheney encouraged said, "Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they’re trying to throw up a smoke screen. They know the charges are false. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania..."

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: "And then there's another rather humorous screw-up. Cheney clearly wanted to send folks to factcheck.org; but he sent them to factcheck.com.

So close and yet so far.

Factcheck.com is George Soros's website.

Some guys are just lucky, I guess. Soros spends millions on the campaign. And Cheney sends him a blizzard of more free media."

opensourceCMS.com

I love open-source software. This website, opensourceCMS.com, will let you be the administrator for two hours of any of the open source software they have on their server so that you can try it out before you decide on a particular software. Great idea!
This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to 'try out' some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs.

The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything.

New Blog Directory

This is a new directory of blogs I just found that looks like it only started in the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure where it wants to go, since the Open Directory Project lists lots of blogs, but I'll watch it.
LS Blogs- Blog Directory

New voters swarming in

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Voters: As Deadlines Hit, Rolls of Voters Show Big Surge:
"The vote was so close four years ago, people are now thinking, hey, maybe my vote does count," said Joseph R. Passarella, the director of voter services in Montgomery County. Al Gore won in Pennsylvania in 2000 by 204,840 votes.

Officials across the country report similar patterns.

"Everything we're seeing is that there has been a tremendous increase in voter registration," said Kay Maxwell, president of the League of Women Voters. "In the past, we've been enthused about what appeared to be a large number of new voters, but this does seem to be at an entirely different level."

Someone has a new blog - George Soros

GeorgeSoros.com

Who is George Soros?

Wikipedia:
George Soros (born August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-born American businessman. He is famous as a currency speculator and a philanthropist. Currently, he is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute. He is also the son of the Esperanto writer Tivadar Soros.

Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Soros' philanthropic funding in Eastern Europe mostly occurs through the Open Society Institute and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names, e.g. the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland. He also pledged an endowment of $250 million to the Central European University (CEU).

For many years, Soros did not involve himself greatly in US politics, but that changed under President George W. Bush. In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing Bush from office is the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death" for which he would be willing to sacrifice his entire fortune. Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, committed $5 million to MoveOn.org, while he and his friend Peter Lewis each gave America Coming Together $10 million. (All are groups working to support Democrats in the 2004 election.)

Why Americans believe Saddam Hussein attacked us

With most of America fitting into the hidden reason mindset shown below, is it any wonder that they believe that Saddam Hussein just must have had something to do with the World Trade Center bombing? We are who we are.
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: 40 years of doubts: Conspiracy theories still grip public: Yet today only 32 percent of American adults accept that Oswald was the lone gunman, according to an ABC News poll conducted earlier this month. Fifty-one percent believe there was a second shooter.

In other questions the poll asked, 70 percent said they thought the assassination was part of a broader plot, and more than two-thirds believed there was a government cover-up.

Percent who believe in astrology: a 1997 survey for Life magazine shows that about 48 percent of Americans believe that astrology is valid.

George W. Bush: Keeping America Scared - video

This video is a compilation of all the moments that 9/11, Saddam Hussein, and Terrorist were said during the RNC. It's long.Republican National Committee video (video/quicktime Object)

Blogs as organizing tools

This article, has an interesting development in the blog world regarding using blogs as recruiting tools. Rather, the blog has evolved into an open view of its subject, and if its subject is a company, i.e. an employee blog, its an open view at that company from the employees perspective. I'm interested in the idea of using that tool, a multi-author blog, as a tool to help organize members of a cooperative. Ganas and the lessons I took from it are mixing with my interest in the cooperative movement.

The New Republic Online: Empty Pew

Can you imagine what an experience a child would have going to Sunday School with Jimmy Carter as the teacher? Wow.
The Why W. doesn't go to church: "The first excuse conservatives provide is that Bush can't possibly be expected to have time to go to church, what with being leader of the free world and all. Yet, during Jimmy Carter's four years in the White House, he found time not only to attend a Baptist church in the Washington, D.C., area, but to teach Sunday school there as well. For a presidential delegator like Bush--who has freed up enough time to spend approximately one-third of his presidency on vacation--finding a few hours for church should be a snap. "

New Gallery

I've expanded the sidebar to include a gallery which links to each of my photographs individually. I'm thinking about a thumbnail view, but right now I'm leaning against the idea; thumbnails are just too small in my opinion, the smallest I want the photographs to be is how big they are on the post page. I prefer the full size they become when you click on the image.

Perils of digital photography in the urban environment

I will be pleased when digital cameras are so ubiquitous that no one comes up to me anymore and asks if I'm taking pictures of grass. No. I'm not. I'm just reviewing the last few shots I've taken.