When confronted with a fairly new and unusual set of circumstances and you don't know what to do, you should call someone who's dealt with similar circumstances before. Case in point: It's the middle of August, it's really hot, your entire metropolitan region has just suffered a complete loss of electrical power. Who should you call for advice?

The Iraqis, of course.

Though, given this happened in New York City and parts of New Jersey, I suspect we've got Item #2 on their advice-list covered.

Pardon the self-link, guys and gal, but I can't post this on my personal blog and I wanted to share the news. I've got a new blog. I've obviously gone far over the brink of insanity. But shhh. My dad can't know.

Greatest Americans?

I've only received three lists (including my own) of the seven to ten greatest Americans (IYHO, of course). Jaq? Sean? Cody? Hardy, you want in on this? If I don't get at least five total (or two more) then I'll scrap the project. Don't be so lazy! e-mail them to me: nospamnospamssecrest48 AT hotmail DOT com. Remove the "nospamnospam". Gracias.

I'm sure we've all heard the comparisons of political candidates, especially popular in Presidential elections, of the form:

[Candidate X] is the new [Current or past office holder of note]!

Along these lines, Howard Dean is apparently the new....well, it's multiple choice.

A growing pastime, born of GPS technology, is striking out to see just what there is at places where latitude and longitude meet, and a whole website, Confluence.org, documents this fascinating subset of world travel.

Ever since I started publicly listing my email address on the web¹ I have been steadily receiving more and more spam. Nowadays, on average I get betwen forty and fifty a day. If I signed up to each and every one of these offers, I tell you boys and girls, my penis would have been lengthened to twice the circumference of the Earth by now! (I just thought you'd like to know that.)

Initially I started screening spam before I downloaded it from the server by looking at the subject lines or sender addresses but eventually the task became too laborious so I switched to an email spam filter like SpamAssassin (set up as an email proxy SAProxy which ran locally on my windows box). The results were pretty good but after a while I noticed that quite a lot of emails were managing to circumvent it.

Recently I switched from using IE/Outlook Express to Mozilla/Mail. The Mozilla project admittedly took a bit of while to get ready for Prime Time but I'm pleased to report that it's there now and that I'm no longer dependent on a Microsoft product for doing such an important job².

It took me a little time after I started using it to realise that the program actually has quite a nice little spam filter already built in to it. The filter is a Bayesian one and it employs the statistical algorithm described in an August 2002 article by Paul Graham : "A Plan for Spam".

Unlike conventional spam filters which recognize certain tell-tale features of spam (such as keywords: sex, teens, free, credit etc), Bayesian filters start with no preconceptions of what spam should look like at all. When a spam email arrives you simply mark it with the "junk" flag (and optionally have it automatically move it to a "junk" folder). After a while - and it takes at least fifty messages before it really starts to get a handle on things - the filter will automatically start marking certain messages as junk all by itself.

In this early stage you may need to unmark some of these emails, in my cases it erroneously marked a few HTML newsletters, one or two mail server notification message etc. But after quite a few weeks of using this filter, I've found that it does an excellent job. Now only a few spams a day manage to slip through to my inbox and while I still check the junk folder for false-positives I haven't found any more legitimate emails wrongly put in there.

So how about you? What's your daily dose of spam like and what strategies have you been using to deal with it?

---

¹ - the Collaboratory is coming up for its first birthday in two weeks btw
² - I'm also using OpenOffice which is quite a respectable and free replacement of Microsoft Office

The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill is raising quite the debate by asking incoming students to read "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America". I know that at least Jaq and Jason have read this book (as have I). Is this fair game as required reading or is it too biased towards an agenda? Can politically charged books make for good reading for students or should they seek these out on their own time? Would you still feel the same iif it were a Bill O' Reilly book?

John Hardy fixed the sidebar. Three cheers for John!

A common meme in American political discourse is that our country is divided sharply between the liberal, Democratic outposts of the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast, with virtually everything in the middle being solidly conservative Republican. This is commonly demonstrated by simply referring to the electoral map in the 2000 election:



But, the truth -- as is always the case -- is more complicated than that, and indicates that we're not as split an electorate as some might insist. The 2002 election results, which resulted in a pretty even split in Congress despite the conventional wisdom that the Democrats suffered a massive bloodbath, bears this out. If you instead combine the percentages of "red" and "blue" -- say, assigning 54% red and 46% blue to Ohio, just to make up an example off the top of my head -- you end up with what Brad DeLong calls "a purple nation". Check this out:



And, for Republicans who like to think that all that geographical space in their red area is impressive (or for Democrats who look at their tiny little blue area and suffer some kind of Freudian envy), there's this map in which state size is represented by the number of electoral votes.

Blogstop - each entry must be an acronym for the next post. (via mefi). Anyone up for an attempt?

Interesting special flash-based interactive guide to the fence that Israel is trying to build between itself and the Palestinians. Some Israelis view this with relief while others fear that it will reinforce the legitimacy of the pre-1967 borders. Palestinians claim it will exacerbate the economic apartheid they currently suffer

Initially opposed to the fence and urging compliance with the "road-map to peace", President Bush is now backing out of the debate.

To begin the (brief but informative) Guardian tour, click here.

This morning's headlines:

:: Memo Warns of New Hijack Plots

:: Air Marshals Pulled From Key Flights

Well....allrighty, then.

UPDATE: A new headline appeared just now: Flip-flop on Air Marshal Schedules. I'm glad that wisdom has prevailed.

China needs breathing room. Russia's got too much breathing room.

A novel solution.

Have You Seen Me??

Have you seen Sidebar??

"Sidey" was lost in the blogspot area earlier this month and his loving
owners hope he was taken in by a well meaning person who just doesn't
know how to contact them.

Please contact either Sean or Scott if you have seen him.

REWARD!!

I just sent invites to Sam and Cody, so bring it on, fellas!

Further to Scott's post below...

More on Louisiana's MASSIVE erosion problem

Louisiana 1803


land area: 828,000 sq miles

Louisiana 2003


land area: 51,843 sq miles

Taken over a two hundred year period this represents an annual loss of just under 1.3%. This is a very serious situation indeed.

As Scott's article says:

In 2000, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, Chip Groat, said: “With the projected rate of subsidence, wetland loss and sea-level rise, New Orleans will likely be on the verge of extinction by this time next century.”

Hmmm...

101 Facts About Earth

Is the state of Louisiana growing or shrinking? (#74)

Does Earth have the worst weather in the Solar System? (#80)

The answer to these and 99 more ranging from basic knowledge to "whoa, that's cool" found here.

Into the Deep

Tanya Streeter broke the world free-diving record on Monday as, on a single breath lasting three minutes and 38 seconds, she descended 400ft (121 metres) towards the ocean floor and resurfaced using only a pair of giant flippers for propulsion.

She is still a little tired after Monday's dive, which saw her heart rate slow to 15 beats per minute, her lungs compress to the size of scrunched-up plastic bags and her blood cease circulation around her extremities.

Wow.

I did very poorly on this

The very pedantic and difficult Economist style-guide quiz. I broke in the "needs improvement" rating, but there were some things in there I hadn't thought about in a very long time.

TJ I can understand, but Reagan? Really?

Right-wing bloggers take a vote and rank their twenty greatest figures in American History. It'd be interesting to conglomerate a list of our own. Send me your top, um, let's say 5-10 via e-mail (ssecrest48 AT hotmail Dot com) and I'll put it together and post it next Monday.

Thirty-four years ago today:





Isn't it about time we went back?

Ugh.

"That invisible hand of Adam Smith's seems to be offering an extended middle finger to an awful lot of people." - - George Carlin

Here's a fascinating intersection of science and art: astronomers have figured out when Van Gogh witnessed a particular astronomical event which he later painted.

More here, including a photo of the actual painting.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

(It's a dolphin.)

Collaboratory's been sucking wind a little bit lately, wouldn't you say? Cody is interested in joining us, and i'm interested in having him, but I don't want to invite him to something that's languishing. What do we do?

Comment counting should be back now.

Last words of fictional characters.

Gene Wolfe wrote an essay on his love of Lord of the Rings for this book, and his essay was rejected.

If Wolfe, one of SF and fantasy's greatest living writers, didn't make the cut, it kind of makes me want to get that book and find out what did....

Here's one of those ultra-cool "VR" tours, of an Egyptian Pharaoh's tomb. Ultra-cool, even at 56K. (Yeah, I'm still on dial-up. And I'm quite happy with it, because I do very little downloading of big video files and I don't do filetrading of any sort. So there.)

My own theory is that some people prefer the dessert to the main.

Instead of confronting pressing national problems, our president lands airplanes while Rome burns.

Senator Jim Jeffords (Ind., Vermont) recently gave a speech that neatly summarizes why so many of us are, shall we say, less than satisfied with President Bush. And he's not even a Democrat.

(link via Ruminate This.)

I have a recurrent feeling these days, that I'm living in the wrong trouser-leg of time.

And, going even farther, SF author Charles Stross commented the other day on why he's less than satisfied with the 21st century.

(crossposted on Byzantium's Shores.)

Suppose, when he went to Gettysburg to dedicate the cemetery there, Abraham Lincoln had been able to employ the wonderful abilities of....


....(wait for it)....



PowerPoint.

No, but if you hum a few bars, I can fake it.

Literally.

A scientist studies what may be the mummy of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt.

(Note to self: Check previous posts before posting....oh well, at least I got a picture!)

What if Superman were a Red?

What if he had landed in the Ukraine instead of Kansas? An interesting take and very creative endeavor. (Review: may contain spoilers).

A consequence of the computer age: cursive is apparently dying.

Every so often I'll attempt to scrawl a bit in cursive, and it always takes me several minutes just to recall how to make every letter. I believe I was in my early college years the last time I actually used cursive for anything longer than my signature. Even though I do a lot of longhand writing, none of it is cursive. (I print in italics.)

Should we still teach cursive, or has it become irrelevant?

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture (via plep on MeFi). Of course, ol' languagehat has already been there.

Your assignment: pick a favorite site? (and we aint talkin web here, baby.)

What is the Matrix?

This aint near penance enough for my utter lack of posting over here, but why not break the trend now?

Clinton says term limits should be for consecutive terms, not a lifetime.

Now that's an interesting idea (relative to him). I think he's right that it won't happen for him, but would you vote for him?

So you want to have an outdoor wedding. But you still want the trappings of a church, and your addiction to connectivity means that you'll still want to be able to check your e-mail and see if your favorite blogs have updated during the reception.

But how can you have your day to remember, and still have all this too? It's easy!!

First, you pick the field for the ceremony and reception.

Second, you rent one of these:





Third, you solve your connectivity-at-the-reception problem by just stocking the reception area with these:





Fourth: if you seriously consider doing any of the above, smack yourself with one of these:

MemeWatch: Andrew Carlssin

The Collaboratory needs more hits, I think, so I thought I'd add it to the growing list of echoes of the current meme. This is a story about a story.

I first heard of Andrew Carlssin back in March this year in a story posted in Yahoo News:

'TIME-TRAVELER' BUSTED FOR INSIDER TRADING
Wednesday March 19, 2003

By CHAD KULTGEN

NEW YORK -- Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street wiz on insider-trading charges -- and incredibly, he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!

Sources at the Security and Exchange Commission confirm that 44-year-old Andrew Carlssin offered the bizarre explanation for his uncanny success in the stock market after being led off in handcuffs on January 28.

"We don't believe this guy's story -- he's either a lunatic or a pathological liar," says an SEC insider.

"But the fact is, with an initial investment of only $800, in two weeks' time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can't be pure luck.

"The only way he could pull it off is with illegal inside information. He's going to sit in a jail cell on Rikers Island until he agrees to give up his sources."

The past year of nose-diving stock prices has left most investors crying in their beer. So when Carlssin made a flurry of 126 high-risk trades and came out the winner every time, it raised the eyebrows of Wall Street watchdogs.

"If a company's stock rose due to a merger or technological breakthrough that was supposed to be secret, Mr. Carlssin somehow knew about it in advance," says the SEC source close to the hush-hush, ongoing investigation.

When investigators hauled Carlssin in for questioning, they got more than they bargained for: A mind-boggling four-hour confession.

Carlssin declared that he had traveled back in time from over 200 years in the future, when it is common knowledge that our era experienced one of the worst stock plunges in history. Yet anyone armed with knowledge of the handful of stocks destined to go through the roof could make a fortune.

"It was just too tempting to resist," Carlssin allegedly said in his videotaped confession. "I had planned to make it look natural, you know, lose a little here and there so it doesn't look too perfect. But I just got caught in the moment."

In a bid for leniency, Carlssin has reportedly offered to divulge "historical facts" such as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS.

All he wants is to be allowed to return to the future in his "time craft."

However, he refuses to reveal the location of the machine or discuss how it works, supposedly out of fear the technology could "fall into the wrong hands."

Officials are quite confident the "time-traveler's" claims are bogus. Yet the SEC source admits, "No one can find any record of any Andrew Carlssin existing anywhere before December 2002."

Weekly World News will continue to follow this story as it unfolds. Keep watching for further developments.

but it was only after I happened upon this page that I suddenly realised what kind of Internet super-celebrity he has become since then.

The fact that the story was posted in the Entertainment section or that the story was syndicated from Weekly World News should have been enough of a warning for most people you'd think but, no on the contrary, the story of Andrew Carlssin has been running hot continues to be copied verbatum from newspaper to newspaper.

Here's a rundown on the story's progress so far and, of course, as you might expect Carlssin now has his own webpage.

SDB is annoyed that the University of Massachusetts is considering changing its mascot from a Minuteman to a gray wolf. Of course, he seizes on the single sentence in the article he cites that mentions "gender, firearms and ethnicity issues" to complain about political correctness, and completely ignores the article's larger point -- that the Minuteman-bearing merchandise just isn't selling these days.

Is this PC-run-amok, or is this just the free market at work?

Gee, if Frodo had only checked this site, he wouldn't have had to mess around with that smelly ol' Strider guy after all.

Shuttle's Worms Found Thriving in Debris

As NASA begins closing down its primary shuttle debris collection sites, a surprising and symbolic find has heartened the team tasked with the grim and challenging chore of piece together the wreckage: worms, packed aboard the shuttle as an experiment, not only survived Columbia's breakup and free-fall, but thrived.

"It's really wonderful," said Terri Lomax, director of NASA's fundamental space biology program at the agency's Washington, D.C. headquarters. "We never expected this."

Lomax's research team at Ames Research Center in California received the first samples on Wednesday — pencil-tip sized nematodes that had flown in Petri dishes to test a new synthetic nutrient solution designed to extend the critters' lives.

Evidently it works. The worms, known by their scientific nomenclature as C. elegans, were in their fourth or fifth regeneration since being packed aboard the shuttle for launch on Jan. 16.

More

Automated Denial-of-Service Attack Using the U.S. Post Office

In December 2002, the notorious "spam king" Alan Ralsky gave an interview. Aside from his usual comments that antagonized spam-hating e-mail users, he mentioned his new home in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The interview was posted on Slashdot, and some enterprising reader found his address in some database. Egging each other on, the Slashdot readership subscribed him to thousands of catalogs, mailing lists, information requests, etc. The results were devastating: within weeks he was getting hundreds of pounds of junk mail per day and was unable to find his real mail amongst the deluge.

Ironic, definitely. But more interesting is the related paper by security researchers Simon Byers, Avi Rubin and Dave Kormann, who have demonstrated how to automate this attack.

If you type the following search string into Google -- "request catalog name address city state zip" -- you'll get links to over 250,000 (the exact number varies) Web forms where you can type in your information and receive a catalog in the mail. Or, if you follow where this is going, you can type in the information of anyone you want. If you're a little bit clever with Perl (or any other scripting language), you can write a script that will automatically harvest the pages and fill in someone's information on all 250,000 forms. You'll have to do some parsing of the forms, but it's not too difficult. (There are actually a few more problems to solve. For example, the search engines normally don't return more than 1,000 actual hits per query.) When you're done, voila! It's Slashdot's attack, fully automated and dutifully executed by the U.S. Postal Service.

[More]

History textbooks in the United States have long been sanitized to promote the "correct" view of America. Now, apparently they're doing the same thing in Europe.

Scientists have finished mapping the human genome.

In other news, the stars have started winking out....

(Oh, and I get up in the morning, check "Collab" over my morning coffee, and get a nice shot of Donnie Rumsfeld's grinning, skull-like visage! Aieee!!)

I take it back. It's not good news in Baghdad at all.
It's a unmitigated fucking disaster.


"The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'"


Laugh it up laughing boy. History will never forget you.

Good news in Baghdad, no doubt about it.
Nevertheless it's an occupation, hopefully a very short one.



"These are not the droids you're looking for, move along."

Shamelessly stolen from The Infrequent Itinerant

Big-Ass Squid (not the official scientific name) captured in Antarctic waters. Rumors of a sudden upturn in Red Lobster stock were unconnected.

Here's an update to my post a few weeks back:

Mystery bug doctor dies

The World Health Organization expert who first identified the mystery pneumonia that has claimed dozens of lives has himself died of the disease, the UN agency has announced.

Dr Carlo Urbani, a 46-year-old Italian and an expert on communicable diseases, had identified Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in an American businessman admitted to hospital in Vietnam in February.

The WHO said Dr Urbani's early detection of SARS had led to increased global surveillance, enabling the identification and the subsequent isolation of those with the disease to slow its spread.

At least 54 people are known to have died of the disease, and more than 1,400 people to be suffering from it.

[More]

Schools closed in Hong Kong, 1000 people quarantined, complete media blackout in China and denial of access to World Health Organization doctors...

Like I said, this doesn't sound good.

The taste of fugu is incomparable. If you eat it three or four times, you are enslaved...
Anyone who declines it for fear of death is really a pitiable person. -- Kitaoji Rosanjin


Shinto priests offer prayers to appease the soul of this departed fugu.

Digital Globe



I'm completely obsessed with overhead satellite images. This site has quite a few. The image above is Bora Bora, French Polynesia.

Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.

To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

-- Joshua Micah Marshall

I'm not sure what bothers me more: what is apparently the underlying geopolitical strategy of the war in Iraq, in which Iraq becomes just a beach-head -- the Normandy of the US-versus-the-Islamic-World War -- which has been touted by people like SDB and the neocons who have Bush's ear, or the incredible cynicism that the Administration won't discuss it with the American people.

Yee-haw, it's time for the true March Madness!!!

Jane Galt asks: do executives necessarily make good or bad Presidents? This is one of her more interesting posts.

For myself, I tend to agree with her sentiment that there probably isn't any job out there that really qualifies one to be President -- but going a bit farther, I have to admit to a certain distrust of any person, whether they're on my side of the political fence or not, who actually wants the job. I just find something inherently scary about any person who actually aspires to the power of the Presidency, regardless of what he or she wants to do with it.

The military has clear guidelines for just about everything, including their saddest duties of all.

Man, have I even been lax in posting here....

Anyway, some of the mealy-mouthed discussion of post-war Iraq that's taken place has centered on, as example, the reconstruction of Japan and Germany after World War II. Of course, some cite those instances as examples of what we won't do -- "We won't be there for years like we were in Japan, we're gonna win the war and bugger off as soon as the Iraqis can stand up straight" -- at the same time as being cited as examples why we should be just hunky-dorey about an American invasion, since after all, "After WWII we rebuilt Japan and now they're just our best friends!" Curious disconnect, there, and I find it interesting that if a Japanese-style post-war occupation is to be our model, our Administration won't tell us so. Interesting, but hardly surprising -- after all, they're just the most forthcoming Administration in Washington since....2001, anyway.

Oh, yeah -- links and such. I've been thinking about this stuff for a while, and Josh Marshall has written an article and a further commentary on Talking Points Memo about why the Japanese and German occupations might not be very good indicators of future results. (Read the article first, then the blog post.)

Google targets blog text ads

This is a lot smarter than anything Pyra could have done with banner ads. You've probably already noticed that since the takeover, ads for free blogspot sites have been replaced with lightweight Google text ads which appear in a floating frame rather than some clunky GIF. This is a very welcome change for slow loading pages like mine, but there's an additional feature to this, the ads are targetted to readership based on what Google perceives to be the content of that blog.

For example, Laputan Logic is now running ads for biblical archaeology sites. Evidently, it has picked up the theme in my last couple of posts and from the archaeological slant in general. Joshua Legg's site is all about war and peace and Byzantium's Shores today is running ads for freelance jobs and ... swimwear (wtf?).

Some of the ads are targetted to the reader's location (via IP address I imagine). I noticed a number of ads for Australian products which had nothing to do with the content of the blog I was reading. When they can't work out to display, apparently they display ads for charities.

Anyway, as part of the grueling research that I have put into this post, I noticed (finally) that the Collaboratory no longer has a banner ad. How long has it been gone? Please don't tell me its been six months.

Does anyone know who paid for it?

The Arrogant Empire

Okay, apologies in advance for yet another post about the current crisis¹ although I thought this was a particularly good article.

I think it goes a long way to explaining from an American perspective the nature of the diplomatic mess that the Bush Administration has created for itself. America faces unprecedented opposition to its policies around the world, not just from its traditional enemies but from its allies as well and especially from the populations of those countries. I think this map nicely sums it up.

Before being tempted to reach for tired cliches like "knee-jerk anti-Americanism" to explain this, it's worth reflecting that it hasn't always been this way.

But in its campaign against Iraq, America is virtually alone. Never will it have waged a war in such isolation. Never have so many of its allies been so firmly opposed to its policies. Never has it provoked so much public opposition, resentment and mistrust. And all this before the first shot has been fired.

Watching the tumult around the world, it’s evident that what is happening goes well beyond this particular crisis. Many people, both abroad and in America, fear that we are at some kind of turning point, where well-established mainstays of the global order—the Western Alliance, European unity, the United Nations—seem to be cracking under stress. These strains go well beyond the matter of Iraq, which is not vital enough to wreak such damage. In fact, the debate is not about Saddam anymore. It is about America and its role in the new world.

¹ - Though if you'd like to see something else posted on this blog, well, what's stopping you?

This doesn't sound good...

Mysterious illness may be new disease

A mysterious, flulike illness that has stricken scores of hospital workers in Southeast Asia has stumped a battery of tests for known bacteria and viruses and most likely represents a new human disease of unknown origin, federal health authorities said Monday.

At least 14 cases bearing some resemblance to the illness are being evaluated in the United States, including that of an unidentified patient, recently arrived from travel to Asia, who turned up in a Los Angeles County emergency room with a high fever and difficulty breathing.

Patients with the disease come down with a particularly dangerous case of pneumonia -- fluid filling their lungs -- and many of those sickened in Southeast Asia have had to be placed on ventilators.

World Health Organization epidemiologists have already given the disease a name -- SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome -- and have confirmed four deaths and 167 cases worldwide.

Under prodding by the United Nations' health agency, China has disclosed an outbreak of 305 cases from November through February that appear similar to SARS. There were five deaths in China, but none of the cases are included yet in the official WHO count.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told reporters that 10 of the 14 suspected cases in the United States were "almost certainly not" SARS, but that "it would not be surprising" to find the illness soon in the United States.

Cases have been confirmed in Canada, where two members of a Toronto family have died after returning from China. One member of that family subsequently visited Atlanta. Cases are also suspected in Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Gerberding said she was confident that laboratories in the United States or in eight other nations testing for the disease would pinpoint its cause. But the disease detectives are now fairly sure it is a bug they haven't encountered before.

"We are not suspicious this is a common microorganism, or we would have found it by now," she said. It was unlikely to be some form of influenza, because Hong Kong hospitals are skilled in identifying even exotic strains of that deadly diseases.

While ruling nothing out -- including bioterrorism -- Gerberding indicated that the epidemic was behaving like that of a viral illness spread by "close contact" with infected patients in the home or hospital. SARS appears to be highly contagious but requires contact with droplets of infected body fluids through cough or sneezing.

Health Organization Stepping Up Efforts to Find Cause of Mysterious Pneumonia

...[T]wo features of the mysterious illness led the World Health Organization to sound an alarm last week.

"One was the high degree of contagion to health care workers," Dr. Gerberding said.

She cited the case of an American businessman who became ill while in Hanoi and who died after he was transferred to a hospital in Hong Kong. He inadvertently spread the illness to many health care workers. The extent of spread was much more "than we typically see with most infectious diseases" in the health care environment.

One factor in the greater degree of spread was that the hospital in Hong Kong where the businessman was treated used different infection control measures from those used in the United States, Dr. Gerberding said.

The second feature was the rapidity and severity with which pneumonia developed in some patients. Even among patients who suffer a system illness with influenza, "it is quite unusual to develop pneumonia," Dr. Gerberding said. "Here we had a very high proportion of individuals developing pneumonia, and that signaled something unusual," requiring a closer look.

I have two very close friends who have just recently returned from Vietnam. One of them is a health worker who, as part of his trip, worked in a hospital in Hanoi. Needless to say I'm watching this one closely.

Things like this really matter it seems.

So while you're munching on that plate of delicious Freedom Fries, you might be interested to know the etymology of that wretchedly named "French" Toast.

Could the cursed French really have come up with such a culinary wonder?

Now feeling I was getting somewhere, I moved on the my American edition Larousse Gastronomique:

French Toast (PAIN PERDU)

A dessert consisting of slices of stale bread (or brioche or milk bread) soaked in milk, dipped in eggs beaten with sugar, then lightly fried in butter. French toast is usually served hot and crisp. It was formerly called pain crotté, pain à la romaine, or croutes dorées. In the south of France, it was traditionally eaten on feast days, particularly at Easter. Originally intended to use up crusts and leftover pieces of bread. French toast is usually made with milk bread. It may be accompanid by custard cream, jam or compote.

Now, was there a well attested American origin to French toast, I should certainly think my Larousse would mention it. Instead, I find a set of references to traditional French culinary practices. Furthermore, upon doing a search for pain crotté, I find that it is unanimously considered a Picardian tradition, and Picardy borders Belgium. At the other end, I find a number of references to pain perdu as New Orleans-style French Toast, suggesting that the English term "French toast" may in fact refer to the Louisiana French who prepared this recipe.

So, although my search could hardly be definitive without checking out the OED or the FEW (Oxford English Dictionary and Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch - the two most comprehensive etymological references for English and French), I find no support in the secondary sources for an American origin for French toast, and considerable support for an origin in contemporary Belgium or France.

It may be of some consolation to some patriotic souls to realise that the French word for the dish, Pain Perdu, actually means "Lost" Bread. How appropriate for a nation of primates capitulards et toujours en quete de fromages!!

Rainy day FUN!



Found on the back of a Superman comic from 1965.

Mom seems to be suprisingly supportive of Dad's whacky ideas.
One has the impression that he gets quite a lot of them.

Iraq is not Japan

I know this is kinda obvious but sometimes it's necessary to say the obvious.

Starting last fall, we began to hear that U.S. policymakers were looking into Japan and Germany after World War II as examples or even models of successful military occupations. In the case of Japan, the imagined analogy with Iraq is probably irresistible. Although Japan was nominally occupied by the victorious “Allied powers” from August 1945 until early 1952, the Americans ran the show and tolerated no disagreement. This was Unilateralism with a capital “U”—much as we are seeing in U.S. global policy in general today. And the occupation was a pronounced success. A repressive society became democratic, and Japan—like Germany—has posed no military threat for over half a century.

The problem is that few if any of the ingredients that made this success possible are present—or would be present—in the case of Iraq. The lessons we can draw from the occupation of Japan all become warnings where Iraq is concerned. [More]

Myers-Briggs? BOR-ing!

STAR TREK? Cool!

You know the old joke about stupid people breaking their computer's "cup holder"?

Well....

(I'll bet Sean puts this on his Wish List, pronto!!)

It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault. It's all Clinton's fault.

Except, though -- it's not.

Via an e-mail loop I'm on, some Japanese computer-error messages that are naturally in the form of haiku.

........................................................
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
--------------------------------------------
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
-----------------------------------------------
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
------------------------------------------------
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
-------------------------------------------------
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
-------------------------------------------------
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-------------------------------------------
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
-------------------------------------------------
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
-------------------------------------------------
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
-------------------------------------------------
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is
not here.
-------------------------------------------------
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
------------------------------------------------
Having been erased,
he document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.
-------------------------------------------------
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind.
Both are blank

Opposing War Is Good, But Not Good Enough

Faleh A. Jabar is an Iraqi dissident who offers an interesting perspective especially if you oppose the war but are also against leaving Iraq to stew in its own juices until Hussein dies of old age (a.k.a. the "containment" policy).

Opposing the war in itself is good but not good enough. Letting the Leviathan off the hook is a grave mistake for which we will pay sooner rather than later. Opposing war, which is an instrument of politics, should not lead us to forget the crux of the things political. It is not weapons of mass destruction that count most; what really counts is the political system that controls them. Ignoring this fact by the forces of peace simply serves the war camp.

Dozens of nations have chemical and biological weapons. None has deployed them, except Saddam's regime, first against the Iranian forces, later against Iraqi civilians. Governments should be held responsible for such crimes. Ironically, the United States let Saddam get away with no punishment for the actual deployment of chemical and biological weapons back in 1988, but it is now adamant about confronting him for a possible deployment of such weapons in the future. This is the logic of preemption. Yet there is no law, domestic or international, that permits a prosecutor to go after an ex-convict for a future, would-be offense. There is every law to bring a culprit to trial for actually breaching human norms in the first place.

In all the decades of struggle and international lobbying, one approach has never been tried: a meaningful political process to disengage the various components of the regime from each other--above all, a drive to split the ruling class-clan.

Here's what I think ought to happen. One, threaten Saddam with indictment. Two, give him an alternative for safe passage at the same time; this may create a crack in the ruling class-clan. Three, send a list of thirty or so of his aides who are persona non grata and demand that they leave the country with him. This ought to convince the rest of the class-clan members that they are not threatened en masse--only those who were most responsible for the offenses of the regime. Four, encourage this class-clan to oust Saddam into exile and sweeten the deal by offering a mini-Marshall plan. This mini-Marshall plan would be made available provided power was transferred to a civilian, interim government.

Such continued pressure, a political onslaught, should be backed by threat of force. A few warning shots may well be sufficient. This would help split the ruling group and embolden the people to take matters into their hands. A painfully slow process of regime disintegration has already been going on, and this political pressure would hasten the process along. An invasion, on the other hand, would wrench matters out of Iraqi hands and would risk untold consequences.

OK, I don't normally mess with these, but this one struck me as pretty funny.


How Republican Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

What scares me is the likelihood that the people this guy talks to are registered and active voters.

Are Europeans Really So Much Worse Off than Americans?

From the Economist:

Taking account of how Americans waste a chunk of their income on heating, air conditioning, prisons and the like, while also attaching value to Europe's superior public transport, Mr Gordon suggests that perhaps half of the current gap in living standards between America and Europe, as measured by GDP per head, is illusory. Add in the value of their extra leisure time and Europe's living standards are now perhaps only 8% behind America's, he suggests, not the 23% suggested by official data. Indeed, on Mr Gordon's broader measure, Europeans' productivity may have overtaken that of their poor American cousins.

(via sixdifferentways)

Another one of those email scams

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITES STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE.

I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ.

MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER...

[More...]

Putting God on Notice

Life is the frontier we explore deeper and deeper with every breath. It's as basic and as complex as anything we know.

Now, there's something new happening with the creation of life, and no one is sure what to make of it. No longer is the act of creation seen as the sole province of God or nature or the Great Whatever. Tomorrow belongs to me. And to you and other humans.

Former President Ronald Reagan turned 92 today.

We all know that he is the patron saint of today's American conservatives, but here's one commentator who thinks that Reagan's legacy isn't as conservative as we might at first believe.

Curtains for Saddam?

Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN

NEW YORK.- The "Guernica" work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. The reason for covering this work is that this is the place where diplomats make statements to the press and have this work as the background. The Picasso work features the horrors of war. On January 27 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work.

Fred Eckhard, press secretary of the U.N. said: "It is an appropriate background for the cameras." He was questioned as to why the work had been covered.

A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.

This work is a reproduction of the Guernica that was donated by Nelson A. Rockefeller to the U.N. in 1985.



Also mentioned in the New York Times and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr. Scott! How much longer on those damned upgrades of the Universal Translator you promised me!

I haven't read both of these articles yet, but I'm guessing they're good and could foster some pretty good discussion:

Anti-Americanism in Europe

and conversely,

Anti-Europeanism in America. (via aldaily)

Ok. I have to ask. I'm getting into part III of the Brothers Karamazov, but I've taken about ten days off. Where are you all? Sean, have I caught up to your breaking point yet? Can we still mull some discussion off of this? If we do another book read, I think we need something a little less, um, heady and long and literary, to say a few words. I'm just saying, for an experiment, it probably wasn't the best piece to pick. But I was all for it at the time, so I'm definitely not coming down on anyone. Thoughts?

Stars, it turns out, eat their young. Wow.

Iraq gets a 'B'.

Ummm....OK.

Setting aside the issue of whether academic metaphors are really appropriate in the whole discussion of war with Iraq, should we really be impressed with a grade of 'B' when the course was presumably being taken "Pass/Fail"?

Just a bit of incongruity that struck me as funny.

Sometimes I wonder if the greatest force in the universe is not gravity, or the strong nuclear force, or love, but black humor.

Response to a letter received from Tom Daschle

Senator Daschle,

I agree with you. The night of November 5th was long and difficult. The Republican control of Senate (along with the presidency) does put a lot of things that I belive in, that I find importance in, at risk. I agree that it would be preferable to have a Democratically controlled Senate. I appreciate your offer to join the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, but I'm going to decline. Here's why:

In the months after the terrorist attacks, you personally voted for, and led the Democratic Senators to follow suit, to allow President Bush free reign over the money and armed forces of this country to go on any whim that he found fanciful, putting our lives and the lives of millions around the world at risk. During the President's campaign to bomb Iraq, I've not heard you nor any of the Democratic leaders calling out for a rebuttal. You've consistently stood by his side, patting his back, and nodding in assent to every item that he's set out on the agenda.

You state that "with the Republicans in the majority, there will be no action on affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of Americans without health insurance. There will be no accountability for the corporations whose recklessness has sent Americans' 401(k) plans plummeting. There will be no serious discussion on helping Americans who are out of work find new jobs ... no chance for better child care benefites .. no hope of raising minimum wage for those who are struggling to make ends meet in low-paying jobs ... and more."

This is true, Tom. However, in the elections last year, none of these issues were raised by you and your Democrat partners during their campaigns. You painfully ceded all of the issues that the Democratic Party supposedly stands for, opting instead to align yourselves with Bush and the "war against Terror" and Homeland Security. You and your party failed to establish any difference between yourselves and your opponents, deciding instead to play on the fears that the media has been feeding the public for the past year and half. To try to separate yourselves from the Republicans, you decided to make personal attacks on your opponents past history, further burying the issues that I and several million like me hold dearly and desperately want to be raised. You and your people failed us Tom, not the other way around.

Don't tell me that you need funds to stop the Repbulicans. You made your bed. Now we all have to lie in it. Not only have you failed to address any of the issues above, but we've seen thousands more getting laid off in the past year. We've seen Ken Lay and his cohorts escape justice. We've seen Dick Cheney with-holding documents about his company's dirty dealings in Afghanistan and Iraq under the false premise of "National Security". You've allowed people to get away with the destruction of people's lives only to find themselves the benefactors of Golden Parachute clauses and million dollar dream-houses. What happened, Tom?

I'm aware of the fact that some of the very few truly progressive Democrats are up for re-election in 2004. Should I choose to support any of them, I will make a check out to their personal campaigns, Tom. But you sir, you will not be getting a single penny from me. Thanks for the offer, but I politely decline to join you in another year of lip-service and doublespeak. And should you, sir, through some twist of fate become the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, rest assured that I will again be supporting a third party candidate.

Goodbye, Tom.

Methinks we've been discussing somebody a little often.

A left-wing blogger named Ted Barlow has been on a roll as of late, doing -- I kid you not -- lightbulb jokes. Like this:

Q: How many Green party voters does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Dude, we shouldn't have to change lightbulbs. GE has this secret lab in Costa Rica, and they made a lightbulb out of hemp that totally lasts forever.

Start here and then just scroll down through them all. And then, for extra credit and hilarity, someone else has, in the same vein, done a wonderful Den Beste lightbulb joke.

Sometimes it's hard to grasp the present-day relevance of the speeches and writings of historical figures; the temptation is often to say, "How does something written and said in 1967 apply to me in 2003?" Well, check this out: a reprint of a Martin Luther King speech, with selected phrases converted into hyperlinks to present-day news reports, making the relevance very -- and, in most cases, sadly -- clear.

The Seafarer: A poem in Anglo-Saxon.

MÆG ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan
siþas secgan hu ic geswincdagum
earfoðwile oft þrowade
bitre breostceare gebidan hæbbe
gecunnad in ceole cearselda fela
atol yþa gewealc

þær mec oft bigeat
nearo nihtwaco æt nacan stefnan
þonne he be clifan cnossað

calde geþrungen
wæron fet mine forste gebunden
caldum clommum þær þa ceare seofedun
hate ymb heortan hungor innan slat
merewerges mod

þæt se mon ne wat
þe him on foldan fægrost limpeð
hu ic earmcearig iscealdne sæ
winter wunade wræccan lastum
winemægum bidroren

bihongen hrimgicelum hægl scurum fleag
þær ic ne gehyrde butan hlimman sæ
iscaldne wæg hwilum ylfete song
dyde ic me to gomene ganetes hleoþor
ond huilpan sweg fore hleahtor wera
mæw singende fore medodrince
stormas þær stanclifu beotan þær him stearn oncwæð
isigfeþera ful oft þæt earn bigeal
urigfeþra

nænig hleomæga
feasceaftig ferð frefran meahte

forþon him gelyfeð lyt se þe ah lifes wyn
gebiden in burgum bealosiþa hwon
wlonc and wingal hu ic werig oft
in brimlade bidan sceolde

nap nihtscua norþan sniwde
hrim hrusan bond hægl feol on eorþan
corna caldast

forþon cnyssað nu
heortan geþohtas þæt ic hean streamas
sealtyþa gelac sylf cunnige
monað modes lust mæla gehwylce
ferð to feran þæt ic feor heonan
elþeodigra eard gesece

forþon nis þæs modwlonc mon over eorþan
ne his gifena þæs god ne in geoguþe to þæs hwæt
ne in his dædum to þæs deor ne him his dryhten to þæs hold
þæt he a his sæfore sorge næbbe
to hwon hine dryhten gedon wille

ne biþ him to hearpan hyge ne to hringþege
ne to wife wyn ne to worulde hyht
ne ymbe owiht elles nefne ymb yða gewealc
ac a hafað longunge se þe on lagu fundað

bearwas blostmum nimað byrig fægriað
wongas wlitigað woruld onetteð
ealle þa gemoniað modes fusne
sefan to siþe þam þe swa þenceð
on flodwegas feor gewitan

swylce geac monað geomran reorde
singeð sumeres weard sorge beodeð
bitter in breosthord

þæt se beorn ne wat
sefteadig secg hwaet þa sume dreogað
þe þa wræclastas widost lecgað

forþon nu min hyge hweorfeð ofer hreþerlocan
min modsefa mid mereflode
ofer hwæles eþel hweorfeð wide
eorþan sceatas cymeð eft to me
gifre and grædig

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gielleð anfloga
hweteð on wæl weg hreþer unwearnum
ofer holma gelagu

forþon me hatran sind
dryhtnes dreamas þonne þis deade lif
læne on londe ic gelyfe no
þæt him eorðwelan ece stondað

simle þreora sum þinga gehwylce
ær his tiddæge to tweon weorþeð
adl oþþe yldo oþþe ecghete
fægum fromweardum feorh oðþringeð

forþon þæt is eorla gewham æftercweþendra
lof lifgendra lastworda betst
þæt he gewyrce ær he on weg scyle
fremman on foldan wið feonda niþ
deorum dædum deofle togeanes
þæt hine ælda bearn æfter hergen
ond his lof siþþan lifge mid englum
awa to ealdre ecan lifes blæd
dream mid dugeþum

dagas sind gewitene
ealle onmedlan eorþan rices
nearon nu cyningas ne caseras
ne goldgiefan swylce iu wæron
þonne hi mæst mid him mærþa gefremedon
ond on dryhlicestum dome lifdon

gedroren is þeos duguð eal dreamas sind gewitene
wuniað þa wacran ond þas woruld healdaþ
brucað þurh bisgo blæd is gehnæged
eorþan indryhto ealdað ond searað
swa nu monna gehwylc geond middangeard
yldo him on fareð onsyn blacað
gomelfeax gnornað wat his iuwine
æþelinga bearn eorþan forgiefene

ne mæg him þonne se flæschoma þonne him þæt feorg losað
ne swete forswelgan ne sar gefelan
ne hond onhreran ne mid hyge þencan
þeah þe græf wille golde stregan
broþor his geborenum byrgan be deadum
maþmum mislicum þæt hine mid nille

ne mæg þære sawle þe biþ synna ful
gold to geoce for godes egsan
þonne he hit ær hydeð þenden he her leofað
micel biþ se meotudes egsa forþon hi seo molde oncyrreð
se gestaþelade stiþe grundas
eorþan sceatas ond uprodor

dol biþ se þe him his dryhten ne ondrædeþ
cymeð him se deað unþinged
eadig bið se þe eaþmod leofaþ
cymeð him seo ar of heofonum

meotod him þæt mod gestaþelað forþon he in his meahte gelyfeð

stieran mon sceal strongum mode
ond þæt on staþelum healdan
ond gewis werum wisum clæne
scyle monna gehwylc mid gemete healdan
wiþ leofne ond wið laþne bealo
þeah þe he hine wille fyres fulne
oþþe on bæle forbærnedne
his geworhtne wine wyrd biþ swiþre
meotud meahtigra þonne ænges monnes gehygd

uton we hycgan hwær we ham agen
ond þonne geþencan hu we þider cumen
ond we þonne eac tilien þæt we to moten
in þa ecan eadignesse
þær is lif gelong in lufan dryhtnes
hyht in heofonum

þæs sy þam halgan þonc
þæt he usic geweorþade wuldres ealdor
ece dryhten in ealle tid

Amen

:: This endlessly fascinating poem, which I think I understand less each time I read it, has been translated many times by many authors and scholars. A selection of translations, some in verse and some in prose, can be found here, with a hypertext edition of the poem, along with a Canadian scholar's Masters thesis on the poem, here.

*Crickets* Hello?

Oliver's right, this story shouldn't die...

Veterans decry Rumsfeld's draft comments

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A Vietnam War veterans' group is taking exception to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comments this week on the possibility of a new draft.

"Secretary Rumsfeld said troops from Vietnam War conscription 'added no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services ... '" Bobby Muller, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation said in a statement issued Friday. "As Vietnam veterans who served with conscripted soldiers, we find Secretary Rumsfeld's egregious slur a grave insult to the memory, sacrifice and valor of those who lost their lives, and, further, dismissive of the hundreds and thousands of lives, both in the U.S. and in Vietnam, who were devastatingly shattered by the Vietnam War."

Rumsfeld, while commenting on a bill introduced to initiate the draft, said it was unnecessary.

"We're not going to re-implement a draft," he said Tuesday. "There is no need for it at all."

He spoke of the fact that many of those who were drafted were trained, served for a short time and then left the service.

Rumsfeld first referred to the many exemptions issued to certain men in the draft and then said, "what was left was sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place, it took enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone."

This has hardly been reported in the media. Thoughts?

I've read Lord of the Rings in its entirety four times, and I've done a lot of dipping into it for favorite and key passages, so I figured I knew the story pretty well, even though it's been three years since my last full re-read. Well, after reading this synopsis of the books, it's clear that my memory isn't as good as it once was. Bummer.

(Oh, and I know that it's always fun for political pundits on all sides of the spectrum to find allegorical parallels for their worldviews in whatever happens to be the major pop-culture phenomenon of the day, but come on.)

Karamazov

Been a bit since I've heard from you guys about where you are. Regardless, I finished the most famous part of the book, "The Grand Inquisitor" (even available on its own) yesterday. And you all? If you haven't been there yet, here's a topic to discuss later (or now if you have). Is any of Ivan's character based on the Grand Inquisitor that was Torquemada listed as the most evil man ever on this site (posted by Jaq back in Oct) ? Other thoughts on the Grand Inquisitor?

Do you need Singlefile? Do you want Singlefile? Do I need Singlefile?

Singlefile is an easy-to-use web-based service that helps you organize the books you own, the books you are reading, the books you've read and the books you want to read.

SF writer William Gibson is many things: he's one of the foremost pioneers of the cyberpunk subgenre; he's the writer of one of the finest opening sentences of a novel ever (Neuromancer: "The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel"); and now he's a blogger.

A survey of world values

[The University of Michigan] has been sending out hundreds of questions for the past 25 years (it now covers 78 countries with 85% of the world's population). Its distinctive feature is the way it organises the replies. It arranges them in two broad categories. The first it calls traditional values; the second, values of self-expression.

The survey defines “traditional values” as those of religion, family and country. Traditionalists say religion is important in their lives. They have a strong sense of national pride, think children should be taught to obey and that the first duty of a child is to make his or her parents proud. They say abortion, euthanasia, divorce and suicide are never justifiable. At the other end of this spectrum are “secular-rational” values: they emphasise the opposite qualities.

The other category looks at “quality of life” attributes. At one end of this spectrum are the values people hold when the struggle for survival is uppermost: they say that economic and physical security are more important than self-expression. People who cannot take food or safety for granted tend to dislike foreigners, homosexuals and people with AIDS. They are wary of any form of political activity, even signing a petition. And they think men make better political leaders than women. “Self-expression” values are the opposite.

While this Economist article remarks that the postion of the United States is "strange" (i.e. traditional + self-expression), it's interesting (to me atleast) to note that its nearest neighbours are Australia and Canada. Of other English speaking countries, Britain and New Zealand seem to be more similar to Western Europeans.

So now a question for you, Dear Reader. Where do you (personally) fit on the World Value-O-Meter?

Steven Den Beste has written one of the grimmest posts I've read, anywhere, pertaining to this weekend's round of suicide bombings in Tel Aviv. Particularly scary is his last sentence, which has had me thinking ever since I read it. What are we to make of a culture that has embraced death to such a degree as the Palestinians have?

Remember the parody of Fellowship of the Ring that I posted a couple of months ago? And you know how right now, The Two Towers is in general release? Can you see where I'm going with this? (This one's not as funny, but it's still amusing....)

Bob Cringely says at the end of his 2003 predictions that, to him, the rise of weblogs in inexplicable. Why are weblogs so great?

Dammit, I almost forgot!

Happy Birthday, Sean!

Happy New Year!

And for your perusal, I give you a list of the top 100 Sci-Fi books of all time, from Phobos Entertainment. Not being a big SF fan, I've only read seven of these books (yeah, yeah, heresy and all that) and none of the top 25, so my argumentative skills will be of little use here. But I'm willing to bet that all of the rest of you have read many more than I.

Also a list of the top 50 SF films (I've seen a scant 9. Is Rocky Horror really considered a SF film?)

(original top books link via Brilliant Corners)