If you wash dishes by hand, here's a tip that will make cleanup go much quicker: rinse the dishes in the hottest water you can manage. If your heater is, like mine, set too high, that scalding water will drip off and evaporate like nobody's business.

(I picked this up reading the section on washing dishes in Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts because our dishwasher broke.)

As Apple keeps innovating, its challengers keep competing like engineers, thinking that advantages in storage capacity or battery life can make silk purses out of ugly, hard-to-use sows' ears of machines.

WSJ.com - Real Time: The Second Coming of Apple

The first thing to do is carry a notebook and during quiet times or as the thought occurs to you, compile a list of anything that really interests you.

On Being a Photographer - Excerpt

Reason: Gabbo Gets Laid. 2004: The Year of Puppet Sex (Thanks, Thatcher!)

For me, the defining moment of the year came when the Motion Picture Association of America required Trey Parker and Matt Stone to trim a few seconds from a sex scene in their marionette movie Team America: World Police. Even in its reduced state, the sequence probably set a record for explicit puppet-on-puppet sex.

I am doing 43 things.

I wasn't depressed about having to work on the day before the day before Christmas, but then I got on the bus which was totally empty and then I got on the train and saw all those sad bastards having a terrible Thursday. Now I'm feeling sorry for myself.

Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors, according to documents released yesterday.

FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay (washingtonpost.com)

"I just felt like the pace of progress at which they are comfortable moving is too slow," he says. "The audience can handle a quickened pace, and the country can't afford a slower pace."

...

NPR needs more creative marketing to reach underserved audiences, the host says. He takes the network to task for lacking a diverse staff. Even President Bush, he says, recognizes the symbolic importance of having a diverse Cabinet. "I'm not really sure that NPR has even gotten on base symbolically," Smiley says.

...

Some white listeners complained that Smiley's delivery, which diverges from the more reserved sound of most NPR hosts, is too loud and energetic.

Current.org | Tavis Smiley leaves NPR show, 2004

''The most difficult thing that I have had to do,'' he said, ``is fight a culture at NPR, a culture that is antithetical to the best interests of people of color.''

Tavis Smiley's Departure: A Loss to Blacks -- and NPR

CNN.com - Court allows church to use hallucinogenic tea - Dec 10, 2004

The U.S. Supreme Court sided Friday with a New Mexico church that wants to use hallucinogenic tea as part of its Christmas services, despite government objections that the tea is illegal and potentially dangerous.

KRUCOFF'S TOP

"Lest We Forget" was originally compiled and released by Aaron Elliot of the acclaimed fanzine Cometbus (and drummer for Crimpshrine and Pinhead Gunpowder) in 1991 to document the Berkeley punk scene of the 80's. I don't want to be accused of wild exaggeration by saying the music here is exactly essential (although there's some great stuff here) but it is absolutely essential to appreciate the why, who, and how of what was being created at the time. Their output has had a significant impact on today's music. You can connect the influential dots from this tape to Maximum Rock'n'Roll to Operation Ivy to Green Day to whatever indie/punk act you're listening to right now.

This Magazine: The Rebel Sell

What we need to see is that consumption is not about conformity, it’s about distinction. People consume in order to set themselves apart from others. To show that they are cooler (Nike shoes), better connected (the latest nightclub), better informed (single-malt Scotch), morally superior (Guatemalan handcrafts), or just plain richer (bmws).

Poor Salvadorans Chase the 'Iraqi Dream' (washingtonpost.com)

Juan Nerio, a 44-year-old mason's assistant, was sick of living in a mud hut on the side of a volcano. When he heard that an American company was offering six times his $200 monthly wage, he signed up. Six weeks later he found himself holding an AK-47 assault rifle and guarding a U.S. diplomatic complex in Iraq.

...

"This is the equivalent of a poverty draft," said Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America, a rights and policy group in Washington. "The United States is unwilling to draft people, so they are recruiting people from poor countries to be cannon fodder for us. And if they are killed or injured, there will be no political consequences in the United States."

Sloane Crosley has written an essay for the Village Voice: “With bad manners just a ‘send’ button away, we need some rules. Call it technetiquette.” I’ll leave the odd coinage of technetiquette aside. (Google actually shows a Michael Finley using the term in 1997.) Instead, I’m happy to focus on her number one complaint: Evite.

Ah, the Starbucks of the Internet. The illusion of choice, made to order. Since I've never known anyone who has wholesomely selected a "Girl's Night In" or "Super Bowl" template (perhaps I simply need new friends), Evite as I know it has always been a bit of a nuisance. The following guidelines might get me dropped from the guest lists of future soirees, but if it means no more clip-art martini glasses, I'll take the risk. ... Because Evite is a public forum in a private space, I am still working on reminding myself I don't actually have to read the responses. There's nothing more irritating than a private joke played out among a small segment of the invitees. Tina: "I'll be there . . . as long as I can touch Bob's pineapple." Jeff: "Happy birthday man, even though we all know your pineapple has been canned since Atlantic City."

Air America's Beltway debut will be Jan. 20, with Franken broadcasting from President Bush's second inauguration.

Link: Air America, Touching Down in D.C. (washingtonpost.com).

The PVRBlog Interview: Ten Questions with TiVo’s Director of User Experience, Margret Schmidt | PVRblog

rodcorp: How we work

The Morning News - The 2004 Good Gift Games Guide

New Comet Now Visible to Naked Eye

Act the Angel, Be the Brute

When The New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh spoke at Hampshire College in Massachusetts a few weeks ago, he told two stories about the mental damages of war. The first came from his reporting of the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam.

"There were 547 people killed in My Lai," Hersh said. "People don't know this, but the blacks and Hispanics shot into the air. It was the white rural farm kids who did most of the shooting. One rural mother said to me, 'I gave them a good boy, and they sent me back a murderer.'"

When he was reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, Hersh got another call, this time from a devoutly Catholic mother. When her daughter, young and newly married, returned from serving in the military police at Abu Ghraib, she immediately left her new husband and her family, cut off all contact with them, and started living alone. Every weekend she gets more big, black tattoos - enough so they now cover most of her body.

The mother said she began to understand what happened to her daughter when Hersh's Abu Ghraib stories started coming out. She began to clean out the files on her daughter's laptop and found one labeled "Iraq." It contained over 1,000 pictures.

"One of them was run in The New Yorker," Hersh said. "It was the one with the man with two dogs on either side, and they were coming to attack him. The whole thing was photographed. The dogs attacked. You can imagine what they bit. There was a lot of blood... This is something no mother should see, something no child should see. On that level, we're dealing with enormous atrocity."

Do It Now by Steve Pavlina

It is absolutely imperative that you develop the habit of making decisions as soon as possible. I use a 60-second rule for almost every decision I have to make, no matter how big or important. Once I have all the data to make a decision, I start a timer and give myself only 60 seconds to make a firm decision. I think people too often delay making decisions when there is no advantage to putting them off. Many people probably spend more than 60 seconds just deciding what they'll eat for dinner.

On the occasion of the DVD release of "Pee Wee’s Playhouse," PEE WEE HERMAN — who hasn’t been heard from since 1991 — joins Elvis Mitchell, host of the nationally syndicated public radio program, The Treatment for a special broadcast,* *Monday, December 6th, 2:30 to 3 pm on 89.9 KCRW and KCRW.com*.

You heard it here first. Find the stream at KCRW.com.

Dave Morin is Apple’s first public weblogger. They launched a “student weblog” on their education site yesterday, “for students to hear from other students about their observations and Mac-related stuff.” (That’s the sharp focus and clarity of purpose I like to see in a new weblog.) Lacking any external links or the ability to accept comments, the most interesting thing about the blog so far may be the disclaimer: “Any information in the blogs is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement or representation by Apple. Apple is not responsible for the content.” I hope Dave does something interesting with the site so it doesn’t remain the token brand-positioning corporate weblog it appears to be.

Jesse James Garrett: jjg.net

Well, I think five years away is long enough, don't you?

Too damn long, if you ask me.

Link: Panic - Extras - The True Story of Audion.

Remember that last day of school, when the yearbooks arrived, and you'd invariably end up spilling your guts to your secret crush(es) via hastily worded, heart-dumping notes tucked into the corner of the back page?

Whoa, I didn't know anybody else did this.

Did everybody do this?

Many people have told me that if [insert name of candidate] wins or there is a draft, they are going to leave the country. If you really mean it and are interested in getting a Masters degree in Computer Systems, you might consider a Masters program I am running. It focuses on operating systems, networks, distributed computing, parallel computing, grids, multiagent systems and other systems areas. Knowledgeable observers consider my group to be one of the top three systems groups in Europe.

Andrew Tanenbaum is the man behind the nerve-wracking electoral-vote.com.

Anyone want to buy a 40 GB click wheel iPod? It's been handled very gently and works like a dream. Comes with dock, cable, and unused headphones in original foil. These are sold for $400 brand new.

Celebrating hope in randomness is fine for monks and physicists, but it seems much less empowering in the service of someone holding a scratchoff card and a "lucky bear."

del.icio.us/merlinmann

On Bush's watch, America's environment deteriorated in many critical areas — including the quality of air in cities and the quality of water that people drink — and gained in very few.

Bush also has ordered dozens of sweeping changes to existing environmental policies, usually to benefit business interests. He reversed the government's course on global warming, power plant emissions, roadless areas of national forests, environmental law enforcement and agricultural run-off.

Environment Worsened Under Bush in Many Key Areas, Data Show

I don't like George Bush because he only likes Americans.

The Village Voice: NY Mirror: Shelter: God Bless América by Toni Schlesinger

I love the fact that all the students took off their shoes before climbing on it, says UC Berkeley philosophy professor John Searle, who, as a young faculty member, joined the movement 40 years ago. That's so American. Americans respect cars. They don't respect the police, but they do respect cars. I like that.

...

The notion that the Free Speech Movement was a victory of the left is a time-honored misconception. At the beginning of the school year in 1964 when, at the height of the civil rights era, the university banned political advocacy of off-campus social issues on school property, both liberal and conservative student groups joined forces, calling themselves the United Front.

After the Revolution, The Commemoration (washingtonpost.com)

The dean refused to see the other students, who, in turn, refused to budge from the building. The standoff continued into the next morning. A police officer arrested a mathematics grad student named Jack Weinberg for not identifying himself. But before the police car could take him away, students and their supporters surrounded the car, the roof and hood of which became the impromptu podium, sans shoes, for the day's rally of nearly 5,000 people.

...

I'll tell you a secret about democratic societies, Searle concludes. If a movement is successful, it has to be symbolically absorbed into the mainstream. I think that's what happened to the FSM. The FSM is not a threat to anyone if it's a coffee shop -- a cafe, for God's sake. If a police car can be something that former presidential candidates can climb on, it's no longer a revolutionary act. And I think that's terrific. It's a sign of a healthy democracy.

Healthy or ill as democracy may be, there is at least one lesson unlearned from this movement. Nevada rancher Larry D. Hiibel was arrested in May of 2000, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, only because he thought his name was none of the [arresting] officer's business.

The only physical evidence the administration offered for an Iraqi nuclear program were the 60,000 aluminum tubes that Baghdad set out to buy in early 2001; some of them were seized in Jordan. Even though Iraq had a history of using the same tubes to make small rockets, the president and his closest advisers told the American people that the overwhelming consensus of government experts was that these new tubes were to be used to make nuclear bomb fuel. Now we know there was no such consensus. Mr. Bush's closest advisers say they didn't know that until after they had made the case for war. But in fact, they had plenty of evidence that the claim was baseless; it was a long-discounted theory that had to be resurrected from the intelligence community's wastebasket when the administration needed justification for invading Iraq.

The New York Times: The Nuclear Bomb That Wasn't

There are two basic ways to terrorize people. The first is to do something spectacularly horrible, like flying airplanes into skyscrapers and killing thousands of people. The second is to keep people living in fear. Decades ago, that was one of the IRA's major aims. Inadvertently, the Department of Homeland Security is achieving the same thing.

European countries that have been dealing with terrorism for decades, like the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Italy, and Spain, don't have cute color-coded terror alert systems. Even Israel, which has seen more terrorism -- and more suicide bombers -- than anyone else, doesn't issue vague warnings about every possible terrorist threat.

These countries understand that security doesn't come from a scared populace, and that true counter-terrorism occurs behind the scenes and away from public eye. For earthquakes, the long term security solutions include things like building codes. For terrorism, they include intelligence, investigation, and emergency response preparedness.

The DHS's incessant warnings against any and every possible method of terrorist attack has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with politics. In 2002, Republican strategist Karl Rove instructed Republican legislators to make terrorism the mainstay of their campaign. Study after study has shown that Americans worried about terrorism are more likely to vote Republican. Strength in the face of the terrorist threat is the basis of Bush's reelection campaign.

Bruce Schneier: How Long Can the Country Stay Scared?

There is a widespread belief that President Bush is making us safe. The opposite is true. President Bush failed to finish off bin Laden when he was cornered in Afghanistan because he was gearing up to attack Iraq. And the invasion of Iraq bred more people willing to risk their lives against Americans than we are able to kill - generating the vicious circle I am talking about.

President Bush likes to insist that the terrorists hate us for what we are - a freedom loving people - not what we do. Well, he is wrong on that. He also claims that the torture scenes at Abu Graib prison were the work of a few bad apples. He is wrong on that too. They were part of a system of dealing with detainees put in place by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and our troops in Iraq are paying the price.

How could President Bush convince people that he is good for our security, better than John Kerry? By building on the fears generated by the collapse of the twin towers and fostering a sense of danger. At a time of peril, people rally around the flag and President Bush has exploited this. His campaign is based on the assumption that people do not really care about the truth and they will believe practically anything if it is repeated often enough, particularly by a President at a time of war.

George Soros: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush

NYT: Scientists monitoring Mount St. Helens, which erupted with a minor explosion for the first time in 18 years on Friday, said on Saturday that they were expecting a more powerful and possibly life-threatening explosion within a day or so.

The scene shows fewer tumbrils
but more maimed citizens
in painted cars
and they have strange license plates
and engines
that devour America

from In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Declaring that personal security is as important as national security, a judge Wednesday blocked the government from conducting secret, unchallengeable searches of Internet and telephone records as part of its fight against terrorism. (AP/Yahoo)

Throughout the week, a DOD blimp will float above the Washington area conducting tests to determine how effective electro-optical and infrared cameras aboard are at detecting potentially threatening movements on the ground. (WP/photo)

Growth of the lava dome in Mount St. Helens' crater could come either from a buildup of gases within the 8,364-foot volcano, which erupted with devastating force in 1980, or from molten rock moving into the dome, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. (AP/Yahoo)

The Montreal Expos will be playing for Washington, D.C. on Opening Day next April, ending the city's 33-year wait for a baseball team to return. (WP)

Federal Election Commission: Frequently Asked Questions About Election Day and Voting Procedures

The Tuesday after the first Monday in November was initially established in 1845 (3 U.S.C. 1) for the appointment of Presidential electors in every fourth year.  2 U.S.C. 7 established this date for electing U.S. Representatives in every even numbered year in 1875.   Finaly, 2 U.S.C. 1 established this date as the time for electing U.S. Senators in 1914.

Why early November?  For much of our history America was a predominantly agrarian society.  Law makers therefore took into account that November was perhaps the most convenient month for farmers and rural workers to be able to travel to the polls.  The fall harvest was over, (remembering that spring was planting time and summer was taken up with working the fields and tending the crops) but in the majority of the nation the weather was still mild enough to permit travel over unimproved roads.

Why Tuesday?  Since most residents of rural America had to travel a significant distance to the county seat in order to vote, Monday was not considered reasonable as many people would need to begin travel on Sunday.   This would, of course, have conflicted with church services and Sunday worship.

Why the first Tuesday after the first Monday?   Lawmakers wanted to prevent election day from falling on the first of November for two reasons.  November 1st is All Saints Day, a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics.  In addition, most merchants were in the habit of doing their books from the preceding month on the 1st. Congress was apparently worried that the economic success or failure of the previous month might influence the vote of the merchants.

sere adj.
Withered; dry.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

I've been whirling in the vortex surrounding Merlin Mann's take on Getting Things Done for a week now, and have finally decided to stop fighting the current. God save us, I ordered a label maker and some manila folders today.

I took the clippers to Sol's hair yesterday, after Lorraine mentioned that we're supposed to check him regularly for ticks upon returning from his little school in the woods. I'm sorry I don't have a picture to post yet, but we've taken to calling him "flock of seagulls" if that gives you an idea.

I honestly think it looks pretty good.

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Shrooms: Not Just For Salad Anymore

Mushrooms graduated through evolution to become acute survivors that recycle life after devastation. About 250 million years ago, after a massive extinction from a meteorite, Stamets says fungi inherited the Earth and "recycled the post-cataclysmic debris fields."

Hurricane Risk for New Orleans: "if that Category Five Hurricane comes to New Orleans, 50,000 people could lose their lives. Now that is significantly larger than any estimates that we would have of individuals who might lose their lives from a terrorist attack. When you start to do that kind of calculus - and it's horrendous that you have to do that kind of calculus - it appears to those of us in emergency management, that the risk is much more real and much more significant, when you talk about hurricanes. I don't know that anybody, though, psychologically, has come to grip with that: that the French Quarter of New Orleans could be gone." (Nb. this excerpt from a fascinating 2002 American RadioWorks documentary does not refer specifically to Ivan.)

As he was falling asleep last night, after his first day of preschool, Sol asked me, "Daddy, why is the sky kind of a whitish blue sometimes and purple?"

History's New Look (washingtonpost.com)

For years [the National Museum of Natural History] displayed artifacts in old-fashioned dioramas with mannequins of Indians in sparse hunting gear. As part of its renovation, it has been tearing up those exhibitions. This summer it dismantled the hall in which they resided. It has also returned to tribes many items that had been collected and donated by scientists. One of the most famous was the brain of Ishi, who for years was believed to be the last Yahi-Yana of Northern California. His brain was sent to the Smithsonian by an anthropologist and remained in museum storage for 83 years. It was returned to his kin from other tribes in 2000.

The new National Museum of the American Indian avoids the anthropological approach in an effort to correct past museum practices by reflecting "authentic voices of native peoples themselves". (bugmenot, washingtonpost.com)

Merlin Mann's 43 Folders is brilliant, full of lifehacks for geeks.

Ultimately about learning how you work, where you get bogged down, and how your brain wants to operate. Once you develop the tweaks for your own contexts and special situation, you’re golden.

Mark Romanek directs music videos. His website is a great example of the web providing supplementary and explanatory material to more traditional forms of media. His music videos are all online in quicktime and you can read original treatments and see on set photographs. Romanek directed the video for Jay-Z’s 99 Problems this year and the video for Johnny Cash covering NIN’s Hurt in 2003. These are both great videos, and they complement each other perfectly. They are both by quintessentially American artists who work in quintessentially American forms, but their music could not be more different. Both videos offer recapitulations of the artists path and the choices they have made. The video for Hurt suggests that Cash wouldn’t change a thing, while the video for 99 Problems suggests how easily things could have ended differently for Jay-Z. And they both illustrate what music videos can do best: provide an alternate narration for a song, expose meanings you hadn’t considered before, evoke new resonances.

The RNC is coming to town, and area sex workers are ready to accommodate the demand:

The on-again-off-again prostitute with streaked pixieish hair looks less like a hooker than a bartender at Galapagos—which made her ideal for one politically charged client last year. He’d asked her to show up at his apartment wearing a black hoodie with patches and no perfume or deodorant. "I said, ‘Do you want me to dress like a protester?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’ He tied me down, spanked me, and wanted to yell at me a lot. He said, ‘You bad girl! You smashed the Starbucks!’ He was a very conservative Wall Street banker, and he basically wanted to fuck the movement."

George Takei spent four years of his childhood in internment camps.

Tribute was paid to those who passed in all 10 internment camps with candles lit by representatives from each of the camps. I was honored to represent Camp Rohwer in Arkansas, where my family and I were held before being brought to Camp Tule Lake. As we paid our respects to those who passed in these camps during World War II, my thoughts were also with those Arab Americans today who are being detained without the due process to which we are all entitled.

U.S. Air Quality: The Smog Blog

USAQ is a daily diary of air quality in the U.S. using information from NASA satellites, ground-based lidar, EPA monitoring networks, and other monitors. Interpretation and analysis is provided by the staff of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Atmospheric Lidar Group.

That's fucking awesome.

New York Times: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Connections and Contradictions infographic.

NPR : Dungeons and Dragons Turns 30

Anyone who thinks that Dungeons and Dragons has been consigned to the scrapheap of 1980s relics, right next to Pac-Man and leg warmers, would be surprised by what happens every Thursday night in Peter Girvan's apartment in the Bronx.

For the past two years, Girvan and four friends--all professionals in their 30s--have been getting together every Thursday to play D and D--sitting around a table with inch-high plastic figures, rolling odd dice and saying things in the odd, imagined voices of their characters.

BoingBoing: Bruce Sterling SIGGRAPH 2004 speech "When Blobjects Rule the Earth"

Our material culture is not sustainable. Its resources are not renewable. We cannot turn our entire planet's crust into obsolete objects. We need to locate valuable objects that are dead, and fold them back into the product stream. In order to do this, we need to know where they are, and what happened to them. We need to document the life cycles of objects. We need to know where to take them when they are defunct.

In practice, this is going to mean tagging and historicizing everything. Once we tag many things, we will find that there is no good place to stop tagging.

In the future, an object's life begins on a graphics screen. It is born digital. Its design specs accompany it throughout its life. It is inseparable from that original digital blueprint, which rules the material world. This object is going to tell you -- if you ask -- everything that an expert would tell you about it. Because it WANTS you to become an expert.

Part of why we're doing this is to reclaim public space and give people a way to use the nighttime that's not mediated by commerce. In our town, the parks close at sundown, you have to buy something at coffee shops. We wanted to give people a way to interact with each other outdoors without having to spend any money."

The New York Times: Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon.

I had a conversation with Kerry. It was pretty disheartening. I asked how he felt about civil liberties. He said, "I’m for ’em!" That’s great, but how do you feel about Section 215 of the Patriot Act? He said, "What’s that?" I said, it basically says any privately generated database is available for public scrutiny with an administrative subpoena. He says, "It says that?" I say, "You voted for it!"

Reason: John Perry Barlow 2.0: The Thomas Jefferson of cyberspace reinvents his body -- and his politics.

iTMS: Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay Mix because I am such a tool.

There was no surer way for me to get into the spirit of the time (primarily the early to mid 1940s) and the feel of the place (primarily New York City) that gave birth to the comic book than to put on some Ellington or Goodman.

what's in rebecca's pocket?

I am volunteering at the Democratic National Convention this week. I'm looking forward to it: I've never been to a political convention before. From what I know of my schedule, I likely won't have time to update my weblog during the next week. While my duties will leave me little time to post here, the tradeoff should be access to events and areas which would, were I credentialled, be off limits.

MacInTouch Home Page

[Brian Shaw] Unmentioned on any Mac/Apple web site that I can find is the fact that neither of the new iPods includes the remote control or case. They are both options with both units (see iPod specs). Furthermore, only the 40GB includes a dock.

Since all three of these options have a $39 price tag, it is not correct to state that the new units reflect a $100 price reduction from current models. For example, a 20GB 3rd-generation unit, which included a dock, case and remote, listed for $399. The 20GB 4th-generation lists at $299, but add the optional remote, case and dock, and it costs $416, a $17 price increase!

Put another way, I now can get a 40G iPod without paying for an iPod sleeve and a featureless remote.

U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General: Special Reports — why is 2001 missing?

LA Weekly: Jesus and the Patriots by Judith Lewis.

No version of Jesus, be it the "radical egalitarian" who emerges from Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography or the mystic described in The Gospel of Thomas, said anything about what constitutes a marriage. According to Crossan, Jesus was an itinerant Mediterranean peasant who considered the family an instrument of oppression, a microcosm of political hierarchy, and he sought to destroy it. ("From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three," he foretold in Luke 12:52.) The real Jesus is frightening, revolutionary, inimical to the economic doctrines upon which we base our lives. Churches, which as Emerson observed, "are not built on His principles, but on His tropes," are wise to have little to do with Him. Governments should have even less. And the less churches and governments have to do with each other, the better for Jesus' reputation.

But if presidents and legislators can't be persuaded to see Jesus this way and give Him up altogether, then perhaps they can at least start taking the words he allegedly handed down in the Gospels a little more seriously. DeLay, for instance, might be compelled to examine his desire to further slash welfare according to Mark 10:21, "Give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven." Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback could rise up and shout, "Woe unto you who are rich!" And ultra-pious Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma would respond wisely to Bush's assertion that the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were the actions of a "few bad apples" with the Lord's words from Matthew 7:18: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit."

The New York Times: In Silicon Valley, Tear-Down Interrupted in which Preservationists dispute Steve Jobs' Impeccable Taste.

In this affluent community west of Palo Alto — where bridle paths wend their way to hitching posts at grocery stores stocked with $800 bottles of burgundy — the woodsy rural life, or a semblance of one, is valued above all. The debate over the Jackling estate has pitted preservationists from Woodside and beyond against those, like Mr. Jobs and many property owners here, who argue that a man's home is his castle and if the castle happens to be an outdated white elephant its fate should be his to determine. Historians say the house qualifies for the California Register of Historic Resources and therefore merits protection under the state's Environmental Quality Act. "It's a significant house and it can continue to serve the community," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "It's symptomatic of a discard society. He ought to buy another lot."

"It was never really a very interesting house to start with," Mr. Jobs, who lived in the house for ten years, explained to the commissioners. "So I think I could build something far, far nicer and far more historically interesting down the road."

At a Web site, Folklore.org, Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, describes visiting Mr. Jobs in the house in June 1985: "We knocked on the door and waited a few minutes before Steve appeared and led us inside. The massive house was almost completely unfurnished, and our footsteps echoed eerily as he led us to a larger room near the kitchen, with a long table, one of the few rooms that had any furniture."

Mahalanobis

Karl Pearson introduced the term "Random Walk". He was interested in describing the spatial/temporal evolutions of mosquito populations invading cleared jungle regions. He found it too complex to model deterministically, so he conceptualized a simple random model.

Pearson posed his problem in Nature (27 July 1905):

A man starts from a point 0 and walks l yards in a straight line; he then turns through any angle whatever and walks another l yards in a second straight line. He repeats this process n times. I require the probability that after n of these stretches he is at a distance between r and r 'r from his starting point.

Reviewer: Stewart Brand
Subject: Better than Whole Earth Catalog...
...because 1) it's current, 2) it focuses on real tools rather than books, 3) it's completely Web-active.

Compulsive reading, eager shopping for real value, better living as a result.

Archive.org: Cool Tools 2003

Virginia lawmakers are expected to move swiftly to correct legislation which mistakenly bestowed the right to a weekend day off to millions of Virginians.

Churchgoers Get Direction From Bush Campaign (washingtonpost.com) Am I the only one who missed this?

The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives.

Campaign officials said the instructions are part of an accelerating effort to mobilize President Bush's base of religious supporters. They said the suggested activities are intended to help churchgoers rally support for Bush without violating tax rules that prohibit churches from engaging in partisan activity.

"We strongly believe that our religious outreach program is well within the framework of the law," said Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Please tell me this is not really happening.

NPR's ombudsman says that this Morning Edition piece on hip-hop producer Timbaland was "tough to take, especially that early in the morning," and proceeds to grapple with the issue of NPR's failure to attract a diverse audience — without once mentioning race.

Morels appear throughout the continent in spring. Trees are just beginning to bud, so relatively unfiltered sunlight warms the earth directly. This triggers the appearance of a number of wildflowers: trillium, phlox, trout lily, Dutchmen's breeches, violets, wild strawberries and many more. Along with the temperatures, these flowers are indicators of when to look for morels.

The "where" isn't quite as simple. Where the spores fall, cross-pollinate and germinate is where morels will grow-after a five-year cycle of nutrient-gathering and storage. Black morels (which appear first) tend to be more exclusively in hardwood forests, but not around any particular type of tree. Finding them is often like a connect-the-dots game. When you find one, be still, and look nearby. When the spores that created the morel you just picked were jettisoned years ago, there likely was a wind pattern that blew the spores in a particular path. There may have been a nutrient source or environment (soil type, moisture, pH, etc.) that was conducive for growth. Look for the patterns.

Mother Earth News: Morel Mushrooms. randomWalks says don't eat unidentified mushrooms.

Watch Your Garden Grow - Beans

Fresh pole beans and bush beans can be stored, unwashed in plastic bags in the vegetable crisper of the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Do not wash them before storing. Wet beans will develop black spots and decay quickly. Wash beans just before preparation.

Green beans can be frozen, dried or canned. Immature beans retain more color and undergo less texture and flavor loss during freezing. All vegetables must be blanched before freezing. Unblanched vegetables quickly become tough and suffer huge nutrient and color loss. Vegetables naturally contain an active enzyme that causes deterioration of plant cells, even during freezing. Blanching before freezing retards the enzyme activity.

Freezing does not improve the quality of any vegetable. Freezing actually can magnify undesirable characteristics. For instance, woodiness in stalks become more noticeable upon thawing. Select vegetables grown under favorable conditions and prepare for freezing as soon after picking as possible. Vegetables at peak quality for eating will produce best results in the freezer.

Apple - Mac OS X - Mac OS X Server v10.4 Tiger Preview

A new Weblog server in Tiger Server makes it easy to publish, distribute and syndicate web-based content. The Weblog server provides users with calendar-based navigation and customizable themes, is fully compatible with Safari RSS and enables posting entries using built-in web-based functionality or with weblog clients that support XML-RPC or the ATOM API. The Weblog Server, based on the popular open source project "Blojsom," works with Open Directory for user accounts and authentication.

We All Lose if Cops Have All the Power, says Larry Dudley Hiibel.

I hadn't been argumentative; I wasn't picking a fight. Basically, when Deputy Dove demanded my papers — and he didn't ask for them, he demanded them — I didn't say, "Hey cop, I'm not going to give you nothing." I just asked why he wanted them. "What have I done?" I asked. If he'd explained what he was doing there, perhaps it could have been settled on the spot. But his position was that he wanted the papers first.

Here's why this was so important to me: I don't believe that the authorities in the United States of America are supposed to walk up to you and ask for your papers. I thought that wasn't lawful. Apparently I was wrong, but I thought that that was part of what we were guaranteed under the Constitution. We're supposed to be free men, able to walk freely in our own country — not hampered, not stopped at checkpoints. That's part of what makes this country different from other places. That's what I was taught.

I was at a party in Richmond, Virginia, trying to figure out how to get drunk when this guy (who wouldn’t touch liquor because it upset his stomach) took me aside and started describing a book he was reading by the guy who wrote Brave New World as I would recall for the next 8 years during which I occasionally attempted a futile Google. At Powell’s on my honeymoon I discovered over a dozen books I’d never known Aldous Huxley had written, but nothing about a world in which certain souls are fingered like Jedi to spend their lives studying the most peculiar game you’ve ever tried to describe. Of course Huxley never wrote such a book; the book was Herman Hesse’s Magister Ludi and the game was the Glass Bead Game. Have you read it? U: Don’t know why that link is dead, but the same article is posted here.

Who waits in line at the Clinton book signing in midtown Manhattan? Salon answers the question. (Free day pass, blah blah blah.) By far, the best person profiled is the precocious 10-year-old who came all the way from Westport, Conn.:

And then there was Matt Lloyd-Thomas, who said he was 13, though he was really 10, because the lady at the door had said that the age limit for kids to get signatures was 12. His younger sister, Sophia, who was really 7 and a half, was posing as 12.

"We've just been passing the time, reading," said Lloyd-Thomas, whose skin was brown with suntan and a couple of freckles. "My sister's been bugging me the past few hours. Once the rain started there wasn't much we could do because it was really quite wet and you couldn't sit down." They'd had to wake up at 4, which Matt admitted was hard. But the whole trip had been his idea. "I was listening to NPR one afternoon and they said that President Clinton would be signing books in midtown Manhattan, so I said that's pretty close, why don't we go in?" So Matt, Sophia and their mother, Beth -- all from Westport, Conn. -- came to New York last night and stayed at an uncle's place. "I think it's pretty cool to have a book signed by a former president," said Matt of his reason for marshaling his family into action. But then, Matt is also a kid who a year ago persuaded his whole third-grade class -- some of them Republicans -- to send letters to President Bush asking him not to send troops into Iraq. His mother said that lately he's taken to giving PowerPoint presentations on the benefits of voting for Kerry over Bush. "You know, his father and I are both Democrats but not that involved," she said, shaking her head slightly. "Matt is very much his own thinker." What did he think of the president he was about to meet -- a man who was first elected before he was even born? "Well," began Matt thoughtfully, "not in his personal decisions but politically, I think Clinton was a very good president, especially since he was interested in what was going on in this country more than in foreign affairs." But what about those pesky personal decisions? "Well, I was only 6 at the time, and I didn't really enjoy politics," he said. "But I think that lying about a personal affair is one thing. Lying about weapons of mass destruction or lying about connections between Iraq and al-Qaida -- which affects a lot more people -- is a lot worse." "My sister thinks I'm a news junkie," confided Matt, who said he skims the Times but mostly relies on NPR's "Morning Edition" for his news. Sophia, in a Nantucket lifeguarding sweatshirt and looking very, very, very bored, nodded silently. "We're going to the American Girl Cafe after this," said their mother. "So that they both get something they like out of this trip."

David has a guest author at hello, typepad this week. Anna Lappé is all about food, health and politics. She’s pretty awesome.

Silicon Valley (Version 2.0) Has Hopes Up says the New York Times. Among the optimists is a member of a startup company producing products for the “Web log” market:

"It feels like we're 12 months, 18 months away from the equivalent of the Netscape I.P.O.," said Andrew Anker, a former venture capitalist who this month became executive vice president at Six Apart, a start-up based in Silicon Valley that aims to help businesses publish Web logs, or blogs.

In 2000, according to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, 55 percent of the region's major freeway miles were snarled in traffic during commuting hours, compared to less than 40 percent in 2002, the latest year with data available.

"The bleeding has stopped," said Alex Resnik, a part-owner of Spago Palo Alto. No longer do "three youngsters in their late 20's spend $3,000 on dinner," he said with a frown, but the restaurant is starting to do a brisk business again in wines that sell for $60 a bottle.

The main thing I realised was the unbearable lightness of addiction. The ball and chain had floated off, light as a feather. It was as simple as the flick of a switch. You just put 'No' where 'Yes' used to be.

The Observer | Magazine | Trip of a lifetime — an account of an addict's ibogaine experience. That's about what quitting smoking was like for me.

I love space as much as the next monkey, but I have no idea why this private ascent into space is such a big deal. To me, it heralds an age of unaccountable space polluters, shitty space meal service, and, quite likely, low earth orbit space ads. Will my daughter remember a time before the giant Pepsi logo in the sky eclipses the sun twice a year at sunset?

What's to limit this policy in the future? If a school district reverts to racially segregated classrooms, does a divorced black mother have no standing because the father prefers that policy? If — in direct violation of Supreme Court precedent — a public school district starts teaching the biblical account of Creation, is a scientist prohibited from challenging that practice because the other parent is a fundamentalist Christian?

And what if a mother agrees with her daughter's teacher that it's proper to start off every school day by having the class stand up and say that it's fine to treat atheists (like the girl's father) as second-class citizens? Wait a minute: that's precisely the case that, after tens of thousands of hours invested over six years, the Supreme Court simply dismissed last week.

The New York Times Op-Ed Contributor: Pledging Allegiance to My Daughter — Michael Newdow was the plaintiff in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow.

Erudite Mac community members lament the shortcomings of the iTunes Music Stores France, Germany, and UK.

If Life Hands You Lemons, Make Compost (washingtonpost.com)

He declares himself still a hippie, but then modifies the description to a "guerrilla capitalist." Like the compost itself, he has mellowed with time. He has, after all, come a long way from difficult beginnings. He dropped out of high school, worked as a racetrack blacksmith and descended into drugs and alcohol. When he picked himself up, sober, he bought a chain saw at a yard sale and went door to door looking for tree work. This later blossomed into a bona fide tree company that continues today, along with the nursery in Olney. He operates under a number of enterprises, including Pogo Organic Tree Products (www.pogoscompost.com).

General Granted Latitude At Prison (washingtonpost.com)

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents.

~stevenf on Airport Express

It's not bothering any consumers really at the moment, but Apple is tying more and more things into iTunes, and they should be careful not to become an island again, like the Apple of yesteryear. If Microsoft released a wireless-to-stereo adapter that only talked to Windows Media Player on XP, and played only from an encrypted WMA stream, everyone would have cried "monopoly". Just sayin'.

Venus Transit: Cycles of the Heart

We are about to experience the first Venus Passage in this millenium. The Venus Passage presently upon us comes in a pair, with each transit in the pair spaced eight years apart. There will be one transit on June 8, 2004 and one on June 6, 2012.

This article explores the eight-year pentagonal cycle of Venus; how the retrogrades of Venus are created; the 243-year Venus Passage cycle; why the transits in this cycle come in pairs for a while and why they then become singular; the drift of this cycle through the zodiak; the star alignments of the 2004/2012 transits in the sidereal zodiak; the psychophysiology (mental-emotional-physical facets) of Venus in our lives; and the astrophysical resonances of Venus in light (color), sound, and brain wave frequencies.

Washingtonpost.com: Book Your Seat for Venus Transit.

Even more infrequent than the transit of Venus is a simultaneous visit by Brood X (17-year) cicadas. The last time these cicadas emerged concurrently with a Venus transit was May 22, 797, and the time before that was May 23, 921 BC.

We recommend that humans, especially pregnant women and young children, limit the amount of cicadas they eat as a result of these preliminary findings. We do not believe that eating a small number of these insects will result in irreparable harm, but mercury exposure may harm an unborn baby or young child's developing nervous system.

UC Engineering Researchers Find Mercury In Cicadas

In September, Pantheon Books will publish Art Spiegelman's comic strip musings on 9/11 and its aftermath, In the Shadow of No Towers. Thank you, Bookslut!

The New York Times > Washington > As Ashcroft Warns of Qaeda Attack, Some Question Threat and Its Timing

The Bush administration said on Wednesday that it had credible intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the United States in the next several months, a period in which events like an international summit meeting and the two political conventions could offer tempting targets.

But some intelligence officials, terrorism experts - and to some extent even Mr. Ashcroft's own F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III - offered a more tempered assessment. And some opponents of President Bush, including police and firefighter union leaders aligned with Senator John Kerry, the expected Democratic presidential candidate, said the timing of the announcement appeared intended in part to distract attention from Mr. Bush's sagging poll numbers and problems in Iraq.

The questioning of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners last fall in the newly established interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison yielded very little valuable intelligence, according to civilian and military officials.

The New York Times > Washington > Prison Interrogations in Iraq Seen as Yielding Little Data on Rebels

we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The New York Times > International > Middle East > From the Editors: The Times and Iraq

Newsday.com: U.S. military arrests war's 'bargaining chips'.

In a little-noticed development amid Iraq's prison abuse scandal, the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups. These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws.

Daring Fireball: An Ounce of Prevention is the definitive resource for the recently discovered OS X security concerns.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > What's Next: To Quiet a Whirring Computer, Fight Noise With Noise

Dr. Sommerfeldt's system has four miniature speakers and four even tinier microphones set in a ring around the computer fan. The microphones and other sensors detect the noise of the fan blades and, with the help of digital signal processing and algorithms, radiate opposing tones from the speakers. The whole system can be tucked into the same space that a conventional computer cooling fan would occupy.

Wild prediction: Someone named in this story is getting a phone call from Steve Jobs tomorrow.

CNN.com - Salsa herb holds health benefit - May 26, 2004 A compound isolated from cilantro (coriander) is extraordinarily effective against Salmonella bacteria.

washingtonpost.com - Amy Goodman Live Online

One recent guest we had from Guyana was talking about globalization. As I moved onto another discussion, on the US elections, she said she wanted to be a part of that too. I asked "why?" She said, "The whole world should get to vote for the president of the United States."

In the face of the atrocities committed by US Soldiers guarding prisoners in Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has banned cameraphones. Banned cameraphones! This harkens directly to his testimony before Congress last week when he lamented the new digital world that allows anyone to effortlessly beam information from where ever they are. Restated: We're very truly sorry we got caught. We'll take steps to ensure we get away with this from now on.

Jeffrey Veen: Ringtones and Torture Pictures Want to be Free

Macworld: Shoot Action Like a Pro by Derrick Story. Because a little bit of video technique is a dangerous thing.

The key to recording good action footage lies in learning how to hold the shot. The subject should be moving, not the video camera.

Flowers That Plant Themselves

Many annuals and perennials drop their seeds after they bloom, then those seeds grow and flower the following season, creating unexpected, intriguing new partnerships with other plants in the garden. These self-seeding flowers are also useful because they sprout up and fill open areas of the landscape that would otherwise be prone to colonization by weeds. And, because self-seeders emerge where conditions suit them best, they perform as well, or better, than painstakingly nurtured plants.

I'm thinking about gardening as a radical political act.

"Cicadas are the sound of summer, of that year when you were young," said Professor Thompson, happy that he was no longer being asked to fit the end of "Friends" into some cultural gestalt.

The New York Times > New York Region > Cicadas Respond to Their 17-Year Cue

When the whole head has matured, all the florets close up again within the green sheathing bracts that lie beneath, and the bloom returns very much to the appearance it had in the bud. Its shape being then somewhat reminiscent of the snout of a pig, it is termed in some districts 'Swine's Snout.'

The withered, yellow petals are, however soon pushed off in a bunch, as the seeds, crowned with their tufts of hair, mature, and one day, under the influence of sun and wind the 'Swine's Snout' becomes a large gossamer ball, from its silky whiteness a very noticeable feature. It is made up of myriads of plumed seeds or pappus, ready to be blown off when quite ripe by the slightest breeze, and forms the 'clock' of the children, who by blowing at it till all the seeds are released, love to tell themselves the time of day by the number of puffs necessary to disperse every seed.

When all the seeds have flown, the receptacle or disc on which they were placed remains bare, white, speckled and surrounded by merely the drooping remnants of the sheathing bracts, and we can see why the plant received another of its popular names, 'Priest's Crown,' common in the Middle Ages, when a priest's shorn head was a familiar object.

botanical.com: Dandelion - Herb Profile and Information

The role that mighty taproot plays is to bring up minerals and other nutrients from various soil layers, making them available first to the dandelion itself, and then to whatever fortunate creature eats it. That's why the Chinese call it the "earth nail."

It supplies hefty amounts of beta-carotene, potassium, sodium, phosphorous and iron and also contains, zinc, magnesium, Vitamin C, Vitamin D and B vitamins.

Dandelions, in Such Good Taste (washingtonpost.com)

Luckily there are people in Durango who celebrate these misunderstood weeds. The Dand-elion Duet, consisting of Katrina Blair and Brian Carter, led a dandelion flute-playing workshop this weekend. Carter showed the crowd of 20 how to find the stoutest stems possible and, with the small scissors on a Swiss army knife, cut little diamond shaped holes along the stem, after cutting off the flower head.

"If it’s flimsy you can only get a couple of holes; if it’s real strong you can get a whole octave."

The Durango Telegraph: Digging dandelions

randomWalks is a (non-commercial) group weblog. The site is actually assembled using three weblogs in Movable Type: the main weblog, Flux the miniblog, and the tagline (“I can no longer shop happily”) blog. At least 27 authors have access to the various randomWalks blogs. Only about six of those post regularly, but another ten post often enough to be considered active authors. In addition to the three randomWalks blogs, our Movable Type installation supports six other weblogs including four personal weblogs kept by editors and friends of randomWalks: blue period., dru blood, gargoyle drumming, and zagg, and two (non-commercial) member projects which are rather idiosyncratic and difficult to describe. These other six blogs have some overlapping authorship with the randomWalks blogs and also account for about another half dozen active authors in the system. We have four other defunct weblogs in the system, and a total of 53 author accounts. All told our installation is used by 9 weblogs and about 22 authors. U: Make that seven “active” weblogs and 22 authors. cf. Six Log: How are you using the tool?

I saw a few this weekend. Some good displays of shells on the undersides of our great linden leaves and one fellow on a Rudbeckia bush. Most of the adults I saw were dead, though. I don't think they live very long at all. They're huge and ugly, but they don't trigger my general aversion to small mechanistic creatures that most bugs do.

I have not yet been hit in the head by a cicada. The buzz has started, it's a low roar during the day. It's got a pitch to it, a dominant frequency. I wonder if a distant SETI program is busy interpreting the 17-year cycle of Magicicada for signs of intelligent life.

Feast of sauteed cicadas makes man ill

The man showed up at a Bloomington clinic Thursday, covered from head-to-toe in hives, and sheepishly told a doctor he'd caught and ate the cicadas after sauteing them in butter with crushed garlic and basil.

Finally I offer this gorgeous gallery of Magicicada photographs on mac.com.

The New York Times > International > Psychology: Pressure to Go Along With Abuse Is Strong, but Some Soldiers Find Strength to Refuse

Although details of their actions are sketchy, it is known that one soldier, Lt. David O. Sutton, put an end to one incident and alerted his commanders. William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, "refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure" from military intelligence, according to the report. And Specialist Joseph M. Darby gave military police the evidence that sounded the alarm.

Psychedelic Culture : The Case Against DMT Elves, by James Kent — “an edited version of an e-mail conversation written during a bout of insomnia, in response to DMT, Moses, and the Quest for Transcendence, by Clifford Pickvoer."

Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the site of the Library of Alexandria, often described as the world’s first major seat of learning. BBC NEWS: Library of Alexandria discovered.

The Earth, it seems, will be safe when its magnetic field falters during the next reversal of its magnetic poles.

A new model of the way the Earth interacts with the solar wind indicates that a replacement field will form in the upper atmosphere during the switch.

Scientists had previously thought that the planet would be left without a protective shield to stop lethal radiation from space reaching the surface.

New Scientist: Solar wind to shield Earth during pole flip. Not uncharacteristically, I've been really worried about this. I hope they're right.

"Yes, I personally ended up in the Amazon," she says. "In my own mid-50s, I wanted to study plant medicine. In the Amazon I spent part of a year trying, three or four times, ayahuasca. When Kate relates the initial nausea, then the experiences, I have done this, too."

Star Telegram | Alice in wonderment. Alice Walker's new book includes an autobiographical account of her recent drug trips.

The deadly truth about cicadas.

"The story in this country is that wealth concentrates," he says. "That's unstable. We need smaller operations, local processors, more evenly spread out capitalism."

Alternet: The Not-So-Sweet Success of Organic Farming.

Vanguard of Brood X Marks Its Spot: All Over (washingtonpost.com)

In isolated pockets across the Washington area, periodical cicadas have begun to emerge in heavy numbers, the silent beginning of an infestation of black-bodied, red-eyed insects that is going to get a lot more intense and a lot more noisy before it ends next month.

It's happening. I'd seen about 8 holes before this weekend, but now they're obvious. You glance downward, holes. Moving cinderblocks for the compost pile, I uncovered one guy who had tunneled all the way up, only to hit the block and say, "shit" while another tougher nymph had tunneled up and was now traveling horizontally, but was in the throes when I lifted the block.

Ehrlich Calls Multiculture Idea 'Bunk' (washingtonpost.com).

These kinds of comments from leadership, from people who are in high-level positions, are really fueling an environment that is very dangerous and negative. It says it is okay to consider people who are different as something less.

Which echoes what Zagg has said about the racism inculcated in our troops and our culture flowing from the very top. It's not difficult to see, once you know what to look for.

Metafilter remembers 1987 better than I do. I'm starting to remember how loud it was, though. The buzz is holy.

I used to fill buckets with the exoskeletons too, Witty. I'd go out in my backyard and there'd be a hundred of them clinging to the wooden fence. I'd look down the cracks in their backs through their "eyes".

My sister and a friend of hers used to go downtown with a handful of them and hang them on people's backs as they walked behind them.

The Search field is disabled in iTunes 4.5’s Party Shuffle list. This could be improved: the Party Shuffle display should have a third horizontal pane for search results.

After paying $500 a year for auto insurance, camper living is incredibly inexpensive, Mr. Hines said. Except for extreme hot or cold weather, he pays about $10 a week for propane, for which he must drive the camper to Nassau County for refills. He pays $25 a week in gasoline for the generator.

He spends $7 a day on cigarettes, $4 on coffee and the rest on food.

Jimmy Hines, 50, lives rent-free in New York City.

The New York Times > National > Prisoners: Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S. "Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates."

You hear them, but you don't see them everywhere. They're in the trees. It's not like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. People talk like we have to come to work in a Kevlar and flak jacket. It's not like that. It's media hype.

Fort Meyer Pentagram: Cicadas gnaw on imagination.

Johnson's advice on what to do with cicadas: children can tie sewing string to them and walk with them around the block.

I had never experienced such a thing. I thought I was living out a scene from The Birds or something. I got that clear plastic umbrella and carried it with me day and night. People laughed at me, but then they'd say, 'That's a really good idea.'

Cincinnati Enquirer: Umbrellas can help in battle of bugs.

Until the arrival of European settlers, most of the area the cicadas inhabit was forest — on the face of it, a good habitat for the insects. But Dr Clay's early research suggests that "suburban savannahs" (leafy avenues, lawns with the odd sapling growing in them, and golf courses) are actually better for the insects than the forests which preceded suburbanisation. Suburban trees tend to be younger and healthier. They also have to compete less fiercely for resources than trees in dense forests. And younger trees probably have tastier roots as well. The ancient forests of pre-Columbian America would not have provided such sumptuous dining.

Entomology: Invasion of the Brood (Economist.com).

baltimoresun.com - Today's cicada update: Beilenson says it's not the end of the world. In addition to that reassurance, The Baltimore Sun offers an infographic, an audio clip, photos from 1987, 1970, and 1936, and an interactive Swat the Cicada game (which may be a bit more gratifying in a week or so). The special section on the periodic cicada features Sun articles from 1987 as well.

Their slow, lumbering flight carries them into buildings, cars, people and ultimately into the six arms or legs of a receptive mate.

Spreading Calm Before the Swarm (washingtonpost.com).

Hampshire College Student Uses J.K. Rowling's Quidditch as Basis for Artificial Intelligence Experiment: "Crawford-Marks now calls his earliest work 'kiddy Quidditch,' as it evolved teams that played like he thinks six-year-olds might. But, now well past the 50th generation it starts to look a little more like Rowling's game, with a practically uncatchable Snitch."

Appearing Friday in the Rose Garden with Canada's prime minister, President Bush was answering a reporter's question about Canada's role in Iraq when suddenly he swerved into this extraneous thought:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun "ours" is "Americans." So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans' skin. He does not mean that. But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters.

George Will: Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq (washingtonpost.com). Will goes on to conclude, somehow, that a) Bush is not racist and b) people who practice the Muslim faith cannot self-govern, but I thought it was a quote worth sharing.

An excercise to find the worst songs on the iTunes Music Store and compile them all together in one handy playlist. Those with a strong stomach can now preview all the songs together through the Dumpster Diving iMix.

Macworld's Jonathan Seff reports that, according to Apple, the big difference between ALC and FLAC is speed -- Apple says ALC is faster. Apple says ALC is not based on FLAC, but was created by Apple itself.

I've not seen anything else about the Apple Lossless Encoder yet.

There are some things going on here that I can't live with.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US military in torture scandal

Inside the psychedelic, rave and harm-reduction communities, Earth and Fire are considered leaders, even heroes. But they insist they’re just a pair of librarians — archivists and "Internet dorks" who believe that better access to better information just makes for better decisions in the long run. "Basically, we act as if there isn’t prohibition," says Earth. "We are trying to publish this information as if the world were already making rational choices around this complicated area."

The LA Weekly explores the Vaults of Erowid in Don’t Get High Without It by Erik Davis.

The Slashdot: Apple Releases Major iTunes Update discussion includes the following gems (unattributed, because I'm lazy):

Lastly, and this is a feature of the entire music library, not just playlists or Party Shuffle, the same "arrow" icons that show up in the iTMS when you search for a song are present in iTunes. This means you can click an arrow for a song name, album, or artist and it will launch a search on iTMS. But say you don't like that feature? Well you can of course turn it off in preferences, but you may also hodl down "option" and click it. The result? it searches only YOUR library, not the iTMS.

You can now use other playlists as criteria for a Smart Playlist. Create one playlist that is a combination of several other playlists.

Question: I was pulling the onion grass out of one of my beds and decided to pull up the weed barrier (the black meshy sheet that we laid under our mulch last year to stifle the weeds) and sure enough there were about 25 large, somewhat hibernating cicadas. I guess my question is, we laid that weed barrier all around our beds. Will the cicadas be trapped under there? Is that a bad thing?

Adrian Higgins: The cicadas will be trapped under your barrier. They have waited 17 years for this moment, and you are preventing them from attaining their destiny. For 17 years, they have nibbled together on tree roots, enduring the hardships with the knowledge that one day, they would smell the fresh air, feel the warmth of the sun on their bodies, experience the thrill of flight, and of true love. If you leave the weed block down, these cicadas will never live their dream. But you be the judge.

Bear with me, it's a good story: heraldsun.com: The buzz: Cicadas get ready to emerge

The Brood X bugs, red-eyed cousins of the larger annual black-eyed late-summer "Dog Day" green cicadas, will begin emerging from their underground holes in western North Carolina later this month. They don't devour vegetation the way locusts do, and they don't bite or sting. But they sure do sing.

Like many human adolescents, periodical cicadas spend umpteen years in their dirty rooms, indulging in sweet stuff and oblivious to much of the world outside themselves. Then, suddenly, as if a hormone switch were flipped, they emerge with a single-minded commitment to find favor with whatever peer they deem sexually appealing.

The bug nymphs live all that time on tender hardwood tree roots until they finally get the hots. Well, it's more like the "warms," because their signal to go forth and mate is a rise in the soil temperature to 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once in heat, millions of them push their way to the surface and climb onto new branch growth on nearby trees and shrubs, according to entomologist Stephen Bambara, who works with the N.C. State Cooperative Extension Service in Raleigh.

The males get together in choruses and harmonize in a unique doo-wop that strikes humans as a decidedly un-sexy metallic screeching. But cicada females respond to it with abandon, making clicking sounds and wing flips -- their version of an air kiss and a toss of the hair.

After 13 or 17 years of underground obscurity, periodical cicadas emerge to a multi-week Mardi Gras, a party thrown by nature solely to ensure that what goes around comes around, generation after generation. Like most such reveries, it's noisy, it's not pretty, and many participants meet violent fates from predators. But in this case, it gets the job done, according to Bambara, because the weird life cycle itself offers a form of protection for the species.

"Cicadas go 13 or 17 years between life cycles because it's to their advantage," said Bambara. "It throws possible predators off track. Seventeen years is a long time to wait between meals if that were your prey. So I think that's where they got their niche. A lot of them are consumed and die when they come out. But their sheer numbers also help ensure their survival. Even if a lot of them get eaten, a lot of others are still left to reproduce."

Birds are periodical cicadas' main predators, he said, plus other omnivorous ground-dwelling animals such as opossums, skunks, raccoons and foxes. Fish, too, eat cicadas that fall into the water.

Cicata Field Guide: Cicada (“Si-Kay-Duh”) Common Name: Periodical Cicada Scientific Name: Magicicada Aliases: 13 or 17 Year Cicada; 13 or 17 Year Locust; Satan’s Parakeets

You think just because the words are garbled in his mouth, they're garbled in his mind?

Stingy Kids: A Poet for Queens.

With roots both in Silicon Valley's digital culture and the 1960's counterculture, Mr. Jobs has long been an arbiter of what is cool in technology, much like a real-world version of a trend-spotting character from "Pattern Recognition," one of the cyberpunk novels by William Gibson.

AND, helped by his growing prominence in Hollywood through his second company, Pixar Animation Studios, Mr. Jobs has attained a level of influence over how life is lived in the digital age that is unmatched by even his most powerful computer industry rivals. "He is the Henry J. Kaiser or Walt Disney of this era," said Kevin Starr, a culture historian and the California state librarian.

The New York Times > Never underestimate Steve Jobs.

The New York Times > Technology > Rich to Get Richer if Google Goes Public

The current prediction is that Google, if it decides to sell shares to investors this year, would probably end up with a market value of $20 billion to $25 billion by the end of its first day as a publicly traded company.

A $25 billion market value would instantly make Google worth more than Lockheed Martin, the big military contractor; Federal Express, the package delivery service; or Nike, the sports clothing maker.

"The Atari Paddle TV Games controller looks, feels, and plays just like the original Atari paddle. Games featured in the device include: Breakout, Canyon Bomber, Casino, Circus Atari,Demons to Diamonds, Night Driver, Steeplechase, Street Racer, Super Breakout, Warlords, Warlords Arcade, Video Olympics, Arcade Pong and Pong. There will be two types of Atari Paddle TV Games units released this summer: single player and two player. The Atari Paddle TV Games will ship for approximately $20 this summer."

Too bad there's not a four player version. Four player Warlords was the most fun four kids hopped up on pizza and coca-cola taking a break from Dungeons & Dragons should know how to have.

Bringing Earth Day Home (washingtonpost.com): "Although it is unlikely many of us will spend the day saving a rain forest or preventing the drift of coal-fired power plant emissions, we can make a positive contribution closer to home." The Washington Post offers 10 "simple" actions to reduce your home's environmental impact. More info is available from the EPA. (It's a great concept, but I'm not sure that number 2, "Eliminate lead-based paint," qualifies as simple.)

Mary McGrory, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and, before that, The Washington Star, died April 21, 2004. She was 85.

CNN.com - Study: Chocolate, BBQ addiction may be real - Apr 21, 2004

A brain scan study of normal, hungry people showed their brains lit up when they saw and smelled their favorite foods in much the same way as the brains of cocaine addicts when they think about their next snort.

Among the most exotic of Einstein’s predictions was that massive bodies — planets, stars or black holes —actually twist time and space around as they spin, much like the winds of a tornado. Other tenets of general relativity have been tested, such as the warping of time and space by massive bodies, but the twisting effect, known as frame dragging, has never been put to the test, scientists said. If Einstein is right, scientists say, the satellite should detect that small bits of time and space are actually missing from each orbit, something indiscernible to orbiting astronauts but measurable nonetheless.

Nasa launches Einstein Gravity Probe B - The Times of India

In a First for Mammals, Mice Are Created Without Fathers (washingtonpost.com)

Lacking any paternal genes, all the mice born this way were females. But they are not clones, because each is a genetically unique animal developed from its own egg.

The feat does not suggest that men will soon become irrelevant for human reproduction. The extreme genetic manipulations used by the team are for now, at least, technically and ethically infeasible in humans.

The experiments produced far more dead and defective baby mice than normal ones.

As a defiant Mordechai Vanunu headed out of prison on Wednesday after 18 years, flashing the victory sign and declaring he was proud of what he had done. Mr. Vanunu, 49, appears to be as widely reviled today as he was in 1986, when he was kidnapped by Israel's intelligence service in Rome after giving a detailed interview on Israel's clandestine nuclear program to The Sunday Times of London.

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Vanunu, Disdaining Israel, Is Freed to Chants vs. Cheers

NPR : Justices Hear Arguments in Guantanamo Detainees Case

The Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The detainees have requested a ruling on whether U.S. courts can review challenges to their incarceration. The Bush administration argues foreign prisoners picked up on the battlefield and held outside U.S. borders do not have the right to access the courts. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.

FT Reviews: Animals & Psychedelics

If even an ant can tell the difference between being straight and high, in this instance by sucking secretions from the abdomen of a lomechusa beetle, what does this tell us about the consciousness of something like a mandrill, which munches the intensely potent iboga root, then waits up to two hours for the effects to kick in before engaging in territorial battle with another mandrill? Equally fascinating is the fact that many animals appear to use psychedelics recreationally — and that not all individuals of a particular species will indulge, just as some humans are more partial to tripping out than others. One in the eye for the stark behaviourists, it would seem.

On April 28, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in two cases that New York Times reporter David Stout noted are likely to result in rulings of "profound importance, drawing the lines between the powers of courts and the administration and, perhaps, affecting the civil liberties of Americans in ways not yet imagined."

The justices will hear the cases of two American citizens, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, who have been held as "enemy combatants" in Defense Department prisons on American soil indefinitely, incommunicado, without charges, and without the continual Sixth Amendment guarantee of access to a lawyer.

The Village Voice: The Hidden Supreme Court by Nat Hentoff: How many of you can recognize the nine most powerful Americans?

If you're a little high and you just want to look at pretty pictures, you can get fixated on the centerfold and you take out a magnifying glass and look at all those snowy flakes -- that's the resin, that's what gets you stoned. People like to look at that.

High Times At 30, Getting Its Head Together (washingtonpost.com).

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange April/May 2004: April is so exciting in the garden.

A pause that discourages in the development of the On the Road movie.

The Slack Album is a mostly tongue-in-cheek project fusing Jay-Z’s The Black Album to Pavement’s classic lo-fi album Slanted and Enchanted, combining the songs track-by-track in order of the original album sequences. Some of the resultant music is hip-hop-ish; some is not.

The New Yorker Profiles Aaron McGruder

There is, at first, something disappointing in this vision of America’s most radical cartoonist at work: slouched on the sofa, armed with a remote and TiVo, not a pencil or a drawing board—or even a snarl—in sight. McGruder is not yet thirty, and already he is jaded, content to settle for the kind of perfectly passable work he so often eviscerates others for. Or maybe this is the point: he is not yet thirty. He has aspirations to raise hell for a whole new audience, in a whole different way, and he is afraid of blowing the opportunity on a stupid youthful mistake.

With that in mind, he has decided to lay off Condoleezza Rice—seemingly a prime target these days, in the wake of Richard Clarke’s allegations—for the near future. ‘Having that show on the air just opens up a whole new realm in terms of power and influence,’ he said. ‘I want to say the things no one else can say, but it’s a tightrope walk. Up till now it has always paid off for me. I’m waiting for the moment when it will not pay off.’

Via leuschke.org:

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 23
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence [on your website] along with these instructions

From Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies? by Kenneth V. Iserson, M.D.:

When patients are kept on ventilators despite being dead, their hearts stop within hours to days.

Whilst strolling down Hawthorne Blvd. recently, we noticed a rope with a basket tied onto it had been hung out of someone's second story apartment window, coming down just shy of street level. There was a sign attached: "PB & J Sandwiches - $1".

If you put your dollar in the basket, rang a bell attached to a second rope, the basket would go up, and come back down with, presumably, a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich inside.

~stevenf: The Entrepreneurial Spirit

Aljazeera.Net - Falluja siege in pictures (warning: photos of children killed by US)

MAPS A/V archive: Ecstasy Rising

Peter Jennings Reporting: 'Ecstasy Rising' takes viewers through the seminal events in this story and introduces all the major players -- from Alexander Shulgin, the famous chemist who was the first person to report the effects of Ecstasy, to Michael Clegg, the Dallas businessman who gave Ecstasy its name and turned it into a recreational drug, to the drug enforcement officer who led the fight to make Ecstasy illegal, to the DJ who brought Rave to America.

Download time varies according to the speed of your internet connection.

LVX23 reminds me what can be so great about weblogs — it’s like he’s blogging just for me.

I just think it transcends what you normally get to do on TV. It's funny, sad, heartbreaking … I love the heartbreaking stuff, which is another reason we probably got canceled.

Interview with creator Paul Feig (but not writer/producer Judd Apatow) on the occasion of the release of the Freaks and Geeks DVD set.

hello, 28!

The firing of the mellifluous Edwards, my morning companion through all these years, portends bad things. The telling sign was not just that he was axed as the program's host but that no one can tell you why.

Poynter Online - “USA Today Scandal A Threat To White Privilege, Mediocrity” in which Dr. Ink asks will Jack Kelley’s sins be visited upon other white journalists?

In the 21st century, having leaders who don't really think the Earth is warming is a little like having leaders who don't really think the Earth is round.

<a title=“Boing Boing: Send-up of “Respect Copyright” PSAs” href=“http://www.boingboing.net/2004/03/18/sendup_of_respect_co.html">Boing Boing: Send-up of “Respect Copyright” PSAs

I don't know why anyone would ever steal a movie. Unless of course it's to avoid this commercial which we now play in front of every single movie you could possibly go to, telling you you're bad for stealing even though you just spent $11 to see some movie and instead you have to sit there and listen to me whine at you and accuse you of being a thief.

Rocks Can Help Create a Natural, Low-Maintenance Garden (washingtonpost.com)

This is the perfect time to design and place landscape stones. Plants are just breaking out of dormancy, so you can see the bones of the landscape. Early bulbs are just appearing, so you can arrange rocks around them.

The main focus of my art is currently the exploration of the infinite ever-changing worlds contained within the subconscious mind. In Heaven and Hell Aldous Huxley wrote:

"Like the giraffe and the duckbilled platypus, the creatures inhabiting [the] remoter regions of the mind are exceedingly improbable. Nevertheless they exist, they are facts of observation; and as such, they cannot be ignored by anyone trying to understand the world in which he lives."

The worlds inside the mind are just as real as the world outside, but describing and documenting the inner worlds can only be done by using similes and symbols from the outside world. I see my work as symbolic representations of subconscious landscapes, creatures or events. Each work is a piece of an infinite puzzle representing my subconscious mind.

Update 2023/04/22: Link above just goes to the homepage now, but Ben Tolman is on Instagram

The Fog of War is currently playing at AMC Courthouse; AMC Hoffman Center; Bethesda Row Cinema; Visions Bar Noir.

As far as I'm concerned, music is not a commodity. It's something that people have earned by being human. They have a right to hear it, and a right to share it, as they always have in churches and parties. That's how music happens.

Why do both WeatherPop and iPhoto display dates in the form “9:30 AMAM”?

Chicago Tribune | Jack Kerouac in Orlando

I want people, especially young people, to embrace the idea of history in the suburbs. I call it suburban archaeology. This idea of Kerouac as the precursor of the hippies — he was Catholic, he was conservative, and he lived with his mother in the suburbs.

So says Bob Kealing, a reporter for WESH-TV and the author of a new book, Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends. Read an excerpt in Orlando Magazine.

Cancer Anxiety Study - Easing the Anxiety of Death: “The Research & Education Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is conducting a study designed to measure the effectiveness of the novel psychoactive medication psilocybin on the reduction of anxiety, depression, and physical pain.”

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: “This is the first study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy ever approved in the 18 1/2 years since MDMA was criminalized.”

Mars wiggles!

Aktion Reinhard Camps.

originally posted by daiichi

The picture of him playing soldier suit on an aircraft carrier, the helmet under his arm like he just got back from a run over Baghdad, marks him as exceedingly dangerous. He believes he is a warrior president. He is not. He is a war dodger. Therefore, it is preposterous for George Bush to be a commander of anything. He doesn't have the right to send people to war.

originally posted by xowie

Beat waves by Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News:

6,000 hours of lectures, performances and classes featuring some of the greats of American arts and literature, particularly the beat poets, have been recorded at Naropa over the past 30 years.

Those voices include writers Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, Michael Ondaatje, Andrei Codrescu and Ken Kesey; cultural agitator Timothy Leary; musicians John Cage and Philip Glass; and spiritual leaders Ram Dass and Chogyum Trunpa Rinpoche.

Already, Naropa is setting up a listening station in its library, and by summer plans to have part of the collection available to the public on the Web. It is also producing a boxed set of four CDs - Taylor calls it a "virtual workshop" - with poets Diane DiPrima, Ginsberg, Burroughs and Waldman.

Since McKinley returned to the United States in April, the vision of the dead marine’s face has sat in her mind like an elephant blocking the road. ‘‘When I first got home, the nightmares were him basically calling me selfish, asking why didn’t I help save him,’’ she said, her voice so grave and quiet that it was nearly inaudible. ‘‘And now it’s changed to he’s asking me why I didn’t go with him.''

originally posted by xowie

Did the President have to take time off from National Guard duty to do community service as a sentence for a crime?

originally posted by xowie

32. Which of these figures are of African-American descent:

a) George Herriman, creator of the Krazy Kat cartoon strip. b) Best-selling novelist Frank Yerby. c) Carol Channing, actress and stage performer. d) Johnny Otis, 1950s rhythm and blues star.

originally posted by xowie

We wonder why, four days after, a glimpse of a hood-ornamented nipple warrants in-depth coverage in every section of the Los Angeles Times; why the FCC will spend tax dollars investigating so-called ‘indecency’ and not the free-speech-chilling effects of media consolidation; why it was Janet’s breast, and not general depravity, that persuaded parents in Laguna Beach that MTV should no longer infiltrate their high schools. Rarely does it occur to any of us that this outrage might be a healthy reaction to the systematic depreciation of an enchanting aesthetic feature peculiar to human females.

originally posted by xowie

CBS and Viacom said an ad featuring children to make a political statement was over the top. Yet a male entertainer stalking his female prey was not. The president was spared by the media moguls. Not so lucky were America's girls as CBS and Viacom told them it was just fine for boys to sing, "I'm gonna have you naked at the end of this song."

I am hoping to hear bell hooks on the story of the Super Bowl, but until such time I am hearing a lot of sense in Derrick Jackson's words.

Making fun of Asians and Asian-Americans is still perceived as socially acceptable in a lot of places.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is withdrawing its previously announced support of Howard Dean’s presidential bid.

AFSCME’s brilliant associate general counsel, Robert D. Lenhard, was nominated to the Federal Election Commission last summer.

originally posted by xowie

I've learned recently that some folks in the hip-hop community respect what I'm doing, and it's such a thrill. [One hip-hop guy's compliment] is like five pop guys telling you that your music's doing it for them. I like being myself and kinda sticking to that. Maybe that's kind of the part to be respected. I think also I'm a 'beat' guy. I'm a rhythm guy.

John Mayer plays electric guitar.

For Albert, the film's casting directors are seeking a 17 to 18-year-old African-American male who is "stout-hearted as well as stout ...exuberant, funny and sweet." The actor should also be able to rap, sing and dance. For Old Weird Harold, the directors are seeking a 17-year-old African-American male who is very tall (around 6'5) and somewhat awkward.

Fat Albert Casting Call :washingtonpost.com

Many references to the iPod in this week’s SF Bay Guardian.

originally posted by xowie

Oh, there were plenty of times where at 2am I'd be sweeping a floor on a Friday night and wonder, "What the hell did I do?! Dear God!" 'Cause I was an old guy! I was 34 when I went to culinary school and it nearly broke me. The internships that I did -- going from being a commercial director where, you know, you were The Guy, to being nobody -- "Here's the broom; sweep the walk-in" -- was extremely humbling. It was a very humbling experience. But I'm sure glad I did it. Learned a lot about myself.

Channel Guide Magazine interviews Alton Brown, via Julia.

"I think we have somebody who's fainted there," Mr. Kerry said, hopping off the stage to check on the man as the murmuring crowd made way for him. Moments later, he reclaimed the stage and said calmly: "Ladies and gentleman, he's all right. He's all right. He's a World War II vet, and he's been standing for a while on his legs and he needs a little air and a little water."

"You should be president!" a woman in the crowd called out.

originally posted by xowie

I don't think about race that much. I forget that I'm Asian. I don't know why. Maybe it's because my eyes are in my head. (laughter) But when I'm reminded that I'm 'different' it shocks me. I was on a plane and the steward was coming down the aisle, serving lunch to everyone, and he's coming down the aisle: "Asian Chicken Salad…Asian Chicken Salad…Asian Chicken Salad…" and he gets to me and he's like, "…Chicken Salad?" What does he think I'm gonna do?..... "This is not…the salad of my people!"

originally posted by xowie

Looking for the roots of bluegrass? Think Floyd, says The Washington Post.

Fragments From Floyd.

At one point during my visit with the Badirs, I pull out my cell phone and make a call. Before it even connects, Shadde, who is sitting across the room, recites all 12 digits perfectly. Ramy smiles at the parlor trick. "It used to be disgusting to be blind," he says. "Today, you scare people. You possess skills that those with sight cannot possibly understand."

originally posted by xowie

Rocky Mountain News: Books: Raucous times with beat poets.

Kashner arrives in Boulder ready to "eat death and live poetry" at the feet of the these Wild Men of the Fifties, who experimented with drugs, sex, sanity, and words with mad, reckless abandon. What he found were old men: in 1976, William Burroughs was 62; Ginsberg was 50; Jack Kerouac had been dead seven years. As Kashner points out, this was "the Beat Generation in a weird retirement phase."

Not that they had lost all their moxie. No sooner has Kashner settled into his student apartment, than he is enlisted in a midnight drive into the mountains with Burroughs and a few others to harvest a marijuana field the old renegades have been tending.

‘Gone Postal,’ as the Jeep is known, has 40 batteries, each weighing 40 pounds, with a peak draw of 4,000 amps at 240 volts. It is the pride of the EV racing crowd, who consider its shape ideal. People who don’t like the look of it ‘don’t understand the concept of the sleeper,’ says its creator, Roderick Wilde. ‘It’s the little-old-lady-from-Pasadena theory — you get something that doesn’t look like it goes very fast, and then it blows everyone away.’

originally posted by xowie

When, in a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt, they broke the salt tax laws. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire. It was real. While our movement has won some important victories, we must not allow nonviolent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual, feel-good, political theater. It is a very precious weapon that must be constantly honed and reimagined. It cannot be allowed to become a mere spectacle, a photo opportunity for the media.

originally posted by xowie

The Blogging of the President: 2004 details are as follows: “The time of the show is Sunday, Jan 25, from 9pm-11pm EST (check your local listings to be sure). Guests include Atrios, Andrew Sullivan, Gary Hart, The list of the stations is here. If you don’t live in one of these areas (final list will be posted tomorrow), you can stream from a lot of these over the web:” It’s a call-in show so give the country your what-for. I’ll be recording the show with Audio Hijack Pro.

Ms. Farley, now 79, is a proponent of natural childbirth and chairwoman of the board of the Maternity Center Association in Manhattan. Being around hospitals a lot, she was disturbed to see how many people died alone, with no one to nurture them through their final days. In 1998, while at a conference dealing with end-of-life issues, Ms. Farley listened to a talk by Dr. Sherwin Nuland, a professor of surgery and an author. He stressed how important it was for sick people to have companionship to help them accept death, and he used the Yiddish word for funeral, "levaya," which means "to accompany."

The New York Times: Final Days: In Death Watch for Stranger, Becoming a Friend to the End.

So Dick's little hunt was not all that rare. Which of course makes it no less stupid, no less of a brutal blood rush. It was a taxpayer-supported trip taken solely for the sake of ... what? Not sport. Not gamesmanship. Not food. Just the little thrill that comes from killing something that never had a prayer? Is that it, Dick? Kick up the defibrillator a notch? Must be.

originally posted by xowie

Well, the thing that kind of bothers me is that all the girls are white.

Optic Nerve #9 preview

This is a rare case where the veil of secrecy has been lifted. We don't know all the details or explanations, but we know that something terrible happened. Our government took a man from an airport in New York City and handed him over to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months. I think I've made a decent case that he was probably innocent; that this was done with the knowledge and approval of fairly important government officials; and that this was not some freak accident or isolated occurrence. This happened, and there is no reason to believe it will not happen again.

Obsidian Wings: Maher Arar Archives.

To the Moon: Our Journeys to Luna (and Back) - A Timeline of Lunar Exploration

Wayback: http://web.archive.org/web/20040215002154/http://www.kokogiak.com/luna/default.asp

When the researchers looked at how people returned to sites they had visited before, they discovered that context made all the difference. When subjects in their study had the chance to describe a site in their own words and were given the description six months later, they had little trouble finding the site again. Yet in today's typical bookmark applications, users cannot annotate sites they save.

The New York Times: What's Next: Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites in which we learn of a three-year $378,000 grant from the National Science Foundation which, if wildly successful, can simply rediscover the efficacy of weblog as bookmark replacement.

New York officials unveiled plans for the Freedom Tower — the centerpiece of new construction at the World Trade Center site — on December 19th, including plans to incorporate wind turbines that will generate 20 percent of the building's electrical power needs. If built as planned, the Freedom Tower's use of wind turbines would be the world's first large-scale integration of wind turbines into a building. Wind turbines are generally not suited for urban environments because of the turbulence created by nearby buildings, but the height of the Freedom Tower may overcome that difficulty.

EERE: News - World Trade Center's Freedom Tower to Feature Wind Turbines

Battle McCarthy: The vertical wind farm concept.

New York Times: From Simmer to Boil for Alternative Rock Survivors — the Flaming Lips that is.

Seattle Weekly: Shameless Shaman featuring a couple of big jpgs from late Kesey's new jail journal.

Lowell Sun: 'On the Road' but not to Lowell.

Liverpool Echo: Magic mushrooms sold in city shop — "We handed the mushrooms to police." ....

Washington Post Book Report: American Nomads: Travels With Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders.

The Ghetto Blue is also a moving swap meet, where passengers hustle to sell watches, pairs of white cotton socks, incense, Kool cigarettes, lotions, batteries, tapes, CDs and chocolates. ‘What you want? What you need?’ Bus tokens, which come in bags of 10 for $11, become a form of currency here, like food stamps. People peddle them for a small cash profit. ‘Tokens?’ one woman asks anyone on the train within earshot. A couple of Mexican youths rush over and pull out bags of them. The transaction goes down like a drug deal, both participants looking over their shoulders for authorities as they quickly exchange the goods.

originally posted by xowie

Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own.

The Mushroom Speaks

Rotten.com: Terence McKenna

[Terence] McKenna believed that organic hallucinogens provided a window into an experience that was both spiritually significant and literally real. So when the hyperdimensional machine elves talked, he listened. And listened. And listened.

Pit bulls are not mean dogs, at least not where humans are concerned, but when they decide to rebel against this selfish appropriation of their souls, they can kill. This, to me, is comforting: The ultimate decision about animal happiness lies with the animals themselves.

Also in the Weekly, goodbye to local wild man, and my hero, Zorthian.

originally posted by daiichi

In some parts of the world it is considered dangerous to awaken someone quickly as they may not be able to return to their body safely.

Thanks, but would you try telling that to my three-year-old?

• Barbelith: Magick: Shamanism in a nutshell (1)
• Barbelith: Magick: Shamanism in a nutshell (2)

"We need to use the quilt to fight AIDS, and you do that by displaying the quilt in as many venues as possible," Jones said in an interview. "I want the quilt to be used to fight AIDS, and if this board doesn't know how to do that, I'm quite capable of doing that myself."

originally posted by xowie

The highest grade (an "A+") went to U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who said last May that he supports medical marijuana "without reservation." Following close behind in the grading were former Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) -- receiving an "A" -- and U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) -- with an "A-" -- both of whom indicated support for federal medical marijuana legislation. On the next tier were retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark (D-AR) -- earning a "B+" -- and the Rev. Al Sharpton (D-NY) -- earning a "B" -- who also pledged to stop the raids.

Front-runner and former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT) received a "D-."

originally posted by xowie

Great L.A. Times feature on industrial hemp.

originally posted by xowie

Another time, we were together at a rave in San Francisco and when one of the kids there asked me who he was, I told her that he was Timothy Leary. Word spread fast. Spalding came over looking alarmed and said, "They think I'm Timothy Leary for some reason. What should I do?" "Don't disappoint them," I advised. And he didn't. He spent the rest of the night answering their questions with marvelously oblique answers that Tim would have loved.

originally posted by xowie

I kick it back with a cordless mouse, and thus like the idea of this “mouseboard,” although it doesn’t work terribly well in practice. As it turns out, Windows XP already includes an effective on-screen keyboard. I’m sure OSX has a similar feature, right, gentlemen?

originally posted by xowie

‘The glaciers are melting, the glaciers are melting!’ yelled artist Leo Limón of the L.A. River Cats Project good-naturedly. ‘Get a hybrid! Get some rims on it! A big stereo!’ But the dads in Dockers with well-fed children and pregnant wives could not be persuaded to contemplate torn-up wildlife habitats, toxin-choked air and children with missing limbs. They were here to revel in the glory of cars.

originally posted by xowie

To Major-Label Hell and Back by Alison M. Rosen

originally posted by xowie

Mark Frauenfelder: “My six-year-old daughter is on the CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening) list as a security risk.”

angry asian man:

"Two Wongs don't make a Wright." No, that's not a typo. It's the punchline in an upcoming installment of the comic strip "BC" by Johnny Hart, referring to two Asian characters who fail in their attempt to build a working airplane — a play on words about the first flight of the Wright brothers. Unfunny, stupid, and offensive. A few papers have already decided to not to run it: Two newspapers substitute "B.C." comic strip. It's a lame, cheap pun, at the expense of Asians. AND TOTALLY UNORIGINAL, lifted from a freakin' t-shirt. Been there, done that, with Abercrombie. That's racist!

Speaking of racist Johnny, I'd be interested to see when the ants first appeared in B.C. I can't imagine it's a coincidence that all these jokes with ants are about underperforming public schools. The ant world is a whole separate society generally invisible to the white characters in the strip.

Carl, the first of their children to live past infancy, born on July 26, 1875, in the small town of Kesswil, Switzerland, was an introverted, solitary boy who, in keeping with family tradition, had dual personalities (''a clumsy, awkward, mathematical dunce of a boy living in real time at the end of the 19th century'' and ''an old man living in the 18th century who dressed in high-buckled shoes, wore a powdered wig and drove a fine carriage'') and mystical visions, including one of God dropping excrement on a cathedral.

originally posted by xowie

It's always recognisable, 17 years later. Brooklyn has such a recalcitrance... it wants to be renovated or gentrified, and it tries and tries again, and those changes are enormous, but at the same time there's some deep resistance. The place is so eccentrically and paradoxically itself that it can't ever be completely overturned. So when I walk around here, in my eyes I can see 1972 and 1975, you know, lying around in chunks, where it was left.

Telegraph.co.uk: Brooklyn boy Jonathan Lethem.

His name was Kenneth Howard, and he was born in 1929, the year the stock market crashed. He was the son of the sign painter who is said to have created the Western Exterminator logo that shows a man in sunglasses, top hat and frock coat, bent over with his finger wagging, as if to reason with the rodent at his feet. Behind his back he holds a huge mallet, should reason fail. According to art and pop culture authority Craig Stecyk, Kenneth inherited his dad’s sign-painting box and talent. He was painting and lettering professionally by age 10, gave birth to the flying eyeball—and earned his famous nickname for being "as stubborn as a Dutchman."

originally posted by xowie

It's been said that this year's "Worst. Macworld. Ever." was really about GarageBand, and I agree, although personally I'm most pleased that iPhoto will finally be able to handle my photos as one library rather than seven. The only reason I'll continue using iPhoto Library Manager will be to sequester certain photos from those intended for a general audience.

But George McGovern was right by James Carroll.

originally posted by xowie

The nucleus of Comet Wild 2. w00t! Stardust.

originally posted by xowie

Many, many hundreds of those stars which you could look up and see with the naked eye, most of which are actually very close, would potentially have terrestrial planets similar to the earth and Mars and Venus.

MarsDaily: Australian astronomers identify possible cradle of alien life.

We landed a rover on Mars twenty-five minutes ago; MetaFilter has some good links.

Musicians from a few different punk-related genres are exploring therapy rock: the up-and-coming "emo" genre, which features hyperdramatic, almost mawkish rock delving deeply into personal upheaval; rap-metal, an aggressive hybrid that has lately turned more introspective; and pop-punk, a slick version of punk that's deceptively up-tempo and not generally noted for its profundity. But it is bands in the last category — like the hugely popular Good Charlotte, Sum 41 and Blink-182 — whose songs most often amount to vivid case studies in adolescent mental health issues. The group A Simple Plan, who are also receiving heavy play on MTV, might have expressed pop-punk's attitude most directly: "I'm just a kid/ And life is a nightmare."

originally posted by xowie

Joe Sacco interview and a lot a other cool stuff in LAW’s Comics Issue.

originally posted by daiichi

OUT: Trucker Hats

IN: Intellectualizing The Trucker Hat Dilemma

Washington Post: THE LIST: What's Out and In for 2004?

Today's scientists seeking to combine quantum mechanics with Einstein's theory of gravity (the general theory of relativity) are convinced that we are on the verge of another major upheaval, one that will pinpoint the more elemental concepts from which time and space emerge. Many believe this will involve a radically new formulation of natural law in which scientists will be compelled to trade the space-time matrix within which they have worked for centuries for a more basic "realm" that is itself devoid of time and space.

For decades, I've struggled to bring my experience closer to my understanding. In my everyday routines, I delight in what I know is the individual's power, however imperceptible, to affect time's passage. In my mind's eye, I often conjure a kaleidoscopic image of time in which, with every step, I further fracture Newton's pristine and uniform conception. And in moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition into past, present and future being a useful but subjective organization.

The Elegant Universe author Brian Greene in The New York Times: The Time We Thought We Knew.