The Country We Deserve. What form of government is America ready for? Do either Republicans or Democrats hold any hope for saving us from ourselves? Is government best used to protect individuals and less powerful groups from stronger persons and groups, such as protecting working class people from wealthy corporations or the environment we share from selfish, short-sighted corporate polluters? Or is it best... [Indigo Ocean]

Philip G. Hamerton. "Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?" [Quotes of the Day]

Project to Map the Web Creates Image of Global Connectivity. Internet mapping project weaves colourful web See The Opte Project... [beSpacific]

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?. Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow. Hashing out the classic question with Strouhal numbers and simplified flight waveforms. The site also includes other very well presented number crunching articles too. [via The One] [MetaFilter]

An inspiring and beautful photogallery from the Loftan Islands (north of the Artic Circle)  [found via aSquared.beagle.com].

 

What is this, Bizarro-World?. The War on Drugs hasn't been working at all well. So let's make it even less sensible: harsher penalties, invasion of privacy, all that jazz. The proposal is surreal, but fits in with the rest of US Drug Policy: rapists aren't denied federal funds for post-secondary schooling, but pot-heads are; you can spend more time in jail for dealing weed than for murder; gonna deal pot, ya might as well deal speed, it's the same jailtime. And now... let's encourage dealers to sell pot with more carcinogenic tars! [link goes to NORML, possibly NSFW, danger: encourages political activism] [MetaFilter]

Flower Power. Floraphilia... twenty four luscious images from one garden.
via life in the present [MetaFilter]

Adam Curry: "It's interesting to examine a culture that mounts cameras on smart bombs to view the kill on the 6 o'clock news, but freaks out if a nipple of a [female] breast is flashed on TV." [Scripting News]

Crimes Against Nature [TOMPAINE.com - Features]

Hey, why should I worry about what my grandchildren's lives will be like? I'm rich and I am sure they will figure something out byt then. Just as long as I stay rich. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

SAVE A LIFE.

Maureen Dowd writes in the NYT this week about the importance of being an organ donor. You can literally save the life of one of 100,000 people waiting for vital organs in North America alone. It costs you nothing except the time to fill out an organ donor card. If you're American, click on this link, download the card, complete it following the instructions, and talk it over with your family (they can overrule your donation if you don't). If you're Canadian, get the applicable provincial organ donor card here. And if you've already filled out a card, take the next opportunity to make a blood donation. Another great need you can fill, for free.

[How to Save the World]

David Brin. "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power." [Quotes of the Day]

Shows You the Money. Here's a map that shows you where each candidate's money is coming from. Interesting. (Thanks to Darhl Stultz for the link.)... [Joho the Blog]

Can you spot the difference in these two pictures?. In the United States, the cover of Paul Krugman's new book is a little bit different than the cover in England. (from Atrios) [MetaFilter]

CORPORATISM -- THE NEW 'ENEMY WITHIN'.

Yesterday, Salon carried an interview by David Tabot with Robert Kennedy Jr., a long-time environmental campaigner. It's worth a complete read, but here are some key excerpts, emphasis mine: The NRDC Web site lists over 200 environmental rollbacks by the White House in the last two years. If even a fraction of those are actually implemented, we will effectively have no significant federal environmental law left in our country by this time next year. That's not exaggeration, it's not hyperbole, it is a fact. [Bush attaches] stealthy, anti-environmental riders to must-pass budget bills. In that way they can alter statutes without debate or public scrutiny. Furthermore, a lot of the environmental regulations are arcane and highly technical and require strict enforcement by the various agencies. The Bush administration is suspending enforcement or changing agency policies without altering the regulations. A lot of the changes are illegal, and groups like the NRDC will sue them and we will win the lawsuits -- but that litigation process takes 10 or 12 years, and by that time the damage will be done. The National Academy of Sciences predicts that 30,000 Americans a year will die because of the Bush decision [two weeks ago to abandon the 'source performance standards' that regulate air pollution]. [My father's] book on organized crime was titled "The Enemy Within" -- and I think the enemy within is still the greatest threat to our country, but it's no longer the Mafia, it's corporate control of our country and our communities, it's the erosion of democracy. As Teddy Roosevelt said, American democracy will never be destroyed by outside enemies -- but it can be destroyed by the malefactors of great wealth who subtly rob and undermine it from within. And I see that process happening today. And just as there were a lot of people who denied that the Mafia existed at that time, today there's a huge lobby that is denying the fact that our democracy is really threatened by corporate control. I helped Arnold [Schwarzenegger] put together an environmental policy, which Arnold read and then adopted. And it's probably stronger than [Al] Gore's policy.

[How to Save the World]

Joseph Campbell. "You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Because he opens his mouth and words come out.. I had the dubious pleasure today of listening to the speech by George Bush described as the keynote speech to his visit over here

I have to say I cannot work out how this man got elected to anything, he is a terrible speaker! I spent the first half wondering why he was periodically sneering at the audience, before realising this was his idea of projecting warmth!

With respect to the content I can only say this:

I cannot remember ever before hearing so many noble sentiments, wrapped in such powerful rhetoric and so completely devoid of substance or principle. I think what summed it up for me was this gem:


The very fact that lightning did not pour from the sky and incinerate the entire hall is, for me, a final proof of the non-existance of God.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]

Sideways World.

Sideways World

I wrote a blog post about a sideways world last year and I think a lot is happening that supports my notion. I like hyperbole -- exageration that is. I like to float big factual ideas in fictional garments, just to get people thinking.

What this post talks about is a new radical reorganization of the world. It makes the Berlin Wall toppling look like kindergarten kids knocking over blocks. It's about a fundamental realignment of what the notion of community, county, country and cooperation will mean in our lives.

Joi Ito is very annoying.

Over in Japan, he's been writing things about OUR American elections. He's been writing things about OUR country. He's been, as usual, so far ahead of the curve and out in some place where politics and innovation meet, that none of us can figure out what the hell he's thinking or doing or SHOWING US.

He's showing us -- he may not even know this -- a very brave new world.

When he shows us his virtual town square -- the IRC chat channel where a world of people are connected simultaneously and cross all geographic boundaries -- he's showing us a new political way of thinking, living, inhabiting this planet.

When my friends in London or Holland or Japan start talking about voting for or against Bush, I stop and have to grant they have a point. They have a point because THEY get that we're going way beyond global here as a concept. We're going into "think global or think annihilation." Our new globe will feature nations of worldviews -- crossing oceans, hemispheres and time zones.

I don't think Bush misses this. I think his little globe features nations that go way beyond traditional borders -- his globe features big sprawling countries like Shell, Mobil, Yukos.

Strangely, by essentially eliminating the middle class in the US, he's helping many of us align with our sisters and brothers in the third world. Daily, I find I have more in common with other friends internationally than with the royalty in Washington.

We are rushing towards a Sideways World.

[Halley's Comment]

And to think in some countries they eat them.

As Bernie at Deep Fun says,

The World of Dancing Cats is actually quite serious about the whole dancing-with-cats thing.

Follow the links to cat and bird art as well.

Funny as shit. In fact, some of it is shit.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Sidewalk painter Kurt Wenner's 3D illusions. Gallery of amazing sidewalk paintings by Swedish chalk artist Kurt Wenner. Link
[Boing Boing Blog]

The Web is an amazing thing, part 3486
Andrew Leonard cooked up an incredibly feast for a small party over the weekend, as is his wont. One of the things he cooked was Szechuan duck, from a recipe in the still-amazing (and sadly out of print) "Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook." One of the things that made the duck extraordinary was a marinade and stuffing of Sichuan peppercorns.

I wanted to know more about this ingredient, which I'd only used a couple of times in the distant past. The Web had all the answers, and more. No imaginable encyclopedia could ever provide such depth of detail. And instantly!

People sometimes get this spice confused with your basic red-hot chile pepper, since that pepper is so widely used in Sichuan cooking; but this is something different, a dried-up brown thing about the size of a matchhead that has a unique, almost numbing impact on the palate. For reasons I was dimly aware of -- Andrew's explanation was to blurt out something like "citrus infestation vector!" -- these peppercorns are now illegal to import into the U.S. Which is really too bad. But at least I can read about every chemical compound they contain... [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

Losing place. Thoughtful essay by Paul Goldberger (the New Yorker's architecture critic) in Metropolis magazine about how cellphones are uprooting and altering how we connect to the world around us:But the cell phone has changed our sense of place more than faxes and computers and e-mail because of its ability to intrude into every moment in every possible place. When you walk along the street and talk on a cell phone, you are not on the street sharing the communal experience of urban life. You are in some other place--someplace at the other end of your phone conversation. You are there, but you are not there. It reminds me of the title of Lillian Ross's memoir of her life with William Shawn, Here But Not Here. Now that is increasingly true of almost every person on almost every street in almost every city. You are either on the phone or carrying one,... [Gizmodo]

THE WAL-MART DILEMMA.

Please read this thorough and extraordinary article from Fast Company entitled The Wal-Mart You Don't Know. If its length discourages you, read the following excerpt (emphasis mine), and you'll want to go back and read the rest: If Levi [Strauss] clothing is a runaway hit at Wal-Mart, that may indeed rescue Levi as a business. But what will have been rescued? The Signature line--it includes clothing for girls, boys, men, and women--is an odd departure for a company whose brand has long been an American icon. Some of the jeans have the look, the fingertip feel, of pricier Levis. But much of the clothing has the look and feel it must have, given its price (around $23 for adult pants): cheap. Cheap and disappointing to find labeled with Levi Strauss's name. And just five days before the cheery profit news, Levi had another announcement: It is closing its last two U.S. factories, both in San Antonio, and laying off more than 2,500 workers, or 21% of its workforce. A company that 22 years ago had 60 clothing plants in the United States--and that was known as one of the most socially reponsible corporations on the planet--will, by 2004, not make any clothes at all. It will just import them. The article brilliantly describes what I call the 'Wal-Mart Dilemma', which is represented by the cycle diagrammed at right in red. The intervention in blue that can stop this 'race to the bottom' is anathema to 'free' traders. It says simply that if a product can reasonably be produced domestically, then duties and other regulations should be imposed to protect domestic producers. In other words, the alternative to 'free' trade is not no trade, but rather regulated trade, regulated to protect the economy and social fabric of the regulating country. That switches the cycle shown in red to the cycle shown in green. Of course, it's not all black and white, or we would have resisted the globalization extremists and wouldn't be facing this dilemma today at all. In the red vicious cycle, the seduction is: lower prices 'every day' low inflation and the downside is: low wages low product quality high unemployment high poverty levels The green cycle also is not perfect. Its seduction is: high wages high product quality lower unemployment lower poverty levels and its downside is: higher prices higher inflation You pays your money and you takes your choice. In my biased opinion, the vast majority of people are ahead with the green cycle, and the very rich few are ahead with the red cycle. Guess who's lobbying and bribing governments for untrammeled globalization and 'free' trade? Contrary to what most of us are taught in school, modest inflation is the single most effective way to painlessly redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, because it allows debts to be repaid in 'cheaper' future dollars. There are environmental and social advantages to the green cycle as well. The use of slave labour is discouraged. Lax environmental laws in third world countries are not exploited as much. And if the red cycle gets out of control (some would argue it already has), a possible consequence is deflation, a terrible threat to the whole economy that we need to avoid like the plague. The answer is not to blame the Wal-Mart shopper for buying imported goods there, because in the vicious red cycle it's all they can afford -- they're paradoxically forced to perpetuate the cycle and sustain their own and others' poverty. And the answer is not to blame Wal-Mart either: They're doing what their corporate charter dictates, using their immense buying power (they sell a quarter trillion dollars worth of goods each year) to increase earnings per share, and in the process they have introduced some unarguably beneficial innovations into their, and their suppliers', business processes. The answer is to recognize that 'free' trade laws need to be limited to goods and services that cannot be reasonably produced domestically, and pressure politicians to reimpose duties and other regulations on those goods and services that can. That alone would move us from the red cycle to the green, and halt the race to the bottom that threatens our nations' very social fabric, and benefits only a handful who are rich enough already.

[How to Save the World]

Reversive.

Why hasn't someone done this before: The OneLook Reverse Dictionary? [Via Genie Tyburski] (Has someone done this before? It's like a thesaurus, but something about being a "reverse dictionary" elevates the coolness quotient about six ticks.)

[Bag and Baggage]

Eno time: The long and the short of it
I found myself waiting on a long line at Fort Mason Friday night, one that stretched from the doors of the Herbst Pavilion all the way out the Fort Mason parking lot gate. You don't often see a crowd that size at the warren of funky non-profits and arts groups. A man wandered up to the line at one point and asked, a little incredulously, "Are all you people waiting for the Annie Leibovitz exhibit?"

No way. We were waiting to hear Brian Eno, who was giving a free talk to kick off a lecture series by the Long Now Foundation. But the makesift lecture hall proved all too small for the huge crowd, so a lot of people had to listen to the talk piped in over a PA to the bigger room next door. You could mill around and look at Leibovitz's homages to ephemeral celebrity while listening to Eno talk about the value of taking a 10,000 year view.

In the mid-1970s, when Eno's still-amazing solo albums "Here Come the Warm Jets," "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy" and "Another Green World" shaped my teenage musical imagination, an Eno lecture might not have filled a small broom closet. So as I waited Friday night -- while distinguished ushers Danny Hillis and Kevin Kelly handed out programs and warned us we might not get in -- a part of me was thinking, who cares if I get in? I'm just glad to live in a time where Brian Eno has found a following, and a place where he is a bigger draw than Annie Leibovitz.

But I've grown a little old for that sort of in-group pride, and besides, the topic of Eno's talk was one that deserves mass distribution beyond the narrow circles of the Bay Area art-and-science-crossover world. If you haven't already encountered the Long Now perspective, this essay by Eno does a pretty good job of recapitulating his Friday talk.

Lit from below just a little demonically, Eno explained the Long Now Foundation's aim of expanding our frame of reference in thinking about the future: What if we were thinking not just about tomorrow or next year or even "the rest of my life," but about the next 10,000 years? (One thing the foundation does in all of its literature is add a zero in front of the year -- for instance, it's 02003 right now -- to "avoid the Y10K bug" and keep that longer time span in the front of our minds.)

As a longtime devourer of science fiction, I'm probably a bit of a pushover for this vision. I remember reading Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" as a 14-year-old and savoring the sense of temporal vertigo its ever-expanding timelines induced.

But there are perfectly pragmatic and down-to-earth rationales for the Long Now idea -- not just in the obvious ways, like fostering a (literally) more conservative treatment of natural resources and the environment, but in personal, psychological terms. While the kind of long-term thinking Long Now promotes certainly encourages activism today, Eno argued that it also "takes the pressure off" individuals -- "it makes you slightly less precious and tight about your own time on earth." Long Now projects, like the clock for which it is most famous, are inevitably collaborations across time between people today and future generations.

Eno outlined four misapprehensions of the Long Now ideal: "The Realist" sneers, "Do you really think you can predict the future?" (They're not trying to predict anything.) "The Pessimist" snaps, ""What bloody future?" ("If he's wrong," Eno argued, "it would have been a good idea id we had done something about it.") "The Optimist" takes a Panglossian, passive approach: "Everything is working out fine," so why do anything? Finally, "The Designer" believes that "we're smart enough to design the future for you -- we can create a perfect world."

Each of these responses misses the basic point here, Eno said -- one of "encouraging a habit of thought": "We are building the future, whether we like it or not. We can do it with our back to it, or we can turn around and look."

For many people, religion provides a moral framework for this long view -- but if, like me, you are simply not a believer in any organized religion's tenets, the Long Now argument makes a great deal of sense. I'll look forward to the rest of this series. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

Procrastination Research Group. I've been meaning to post this for the longest time. [MetaFilter]

Wal-Mart's Hegemony, and its Troubling Consequences. Fast Company: The Wal-Mart You Don't Know. Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

PublicRadioFan.com. >> (review)  "It's the only resource of its kind on the Internet," says Kevin A. Kelly who teaches mathematics and computer science.  Kevin's also the public radio enthusiast behind today's pick, which he "created as a hobby and a learning exercise."  The site not only provides a comprehensive listing of public radio stations on the web worldwide (with links, of course), but also ongoing, up-to-date program schedules.  Excellent choice of sorting and viewing options – clean, straightforward design with easy-to-find useful information, thank you (as in, thank you Kevin for sharing)...  [Coolstop Daily Pick 11/15/03] [jenett.radio]

3D London Tube. These 3D rendered London Tube maps are pretty mind-blowing. Link (via Blackbelt Jones)
[Boing Boing Blog]

Episcopalians. 

November 13, 2003

Merriam-Webster 0wnz0red by McDonald's. Jonas sez, "It appears that dictionary producer Merriam-Webster's has yielded under pressure from McDonald's. Yesterday, the word 'McJobs' disappeared from their web site's page with "new" words in the new edition. I have links to the google-cached version with the word still there - and a pdf-print of it - , and to the 'cleansed' page (and the code)." Link
[Boing Boing Blog]

The New York Times celebrates 25 years of science reporting with an IBM sponsored, enumerated list of "25 of the most provocative questions facing science."

• Kenneth Chang wonders Do Paranormal Phenomena Exist? Although he leads off with bent spoons, he ends up talking about studies into the effectiveness of prayer, which leads to...
• George Johnson incessantly asking Can Science Prove the Existence of God? He sees all science ultimately leading to one phenomenon, the Big Bang, after which all questions become religion. So...
• Dennis Overbye ponders What Happened Before the Big Bang? Quoting Andrei Linde and assigning the cosmological consequences of uncertainty (Gong Bing Xin not withstanding) to John Wheeler, it all boils down to the classic String Theory vs Grand Unification, I mean quantum gravity, bout. Just for fun, ...
• Andrew Pollack comes right out and asks Can Drugs Make Us Happier, Smarter? I'll drink to that! Pretty soon ...
• Overbye's other question, Where are Those Aliens? makes sense. You need to be smart and happy to boldly go there though. They wrap it all up with a big group hug in ...
• William Broad and James Glanz' Does Science Matter? I don't know if it does or not, because that one's pretty long and kinda boring - I didn't make it to the end.

Let me know how it turns out, K? [101-365]

Glorious, Lovely, Perfect, Must-Read Rant! © 2003, John H. Farr I have little doubt that the author of the following would gladly approve of my reprinting of his words, posted in a public forum at the Daily Kos, and in any case they are surely circulating widely via email as we speak. The ostensible subject concerns the Baseball Hall of Fame's decision to ban Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins because they opposed the Iraq invasion, but as you will see, the comments grow and swell to cover just about everything (no small accomplishment, given the enormity of the outrages piled up against us). This deserves the widest possible distribution and mass recitation in public squares, at least.

I could personally not care less about whether the BHOF hosts Susan Sarandon. The BHOF may be the least important place in the Midwest. What rankles me is the non-stop, continuous nature of this thing. If it's not the Halliburton scandal, the AWOL scandal, "with us or against us", "crusade", "axis of evil", "WMD", cutting veterans benefits on the first day of the war, nominating crazy super-loon judges to important positions, defunding the 911 commission, providing virtually no terror defense funds to blue states, fake rioting to stop vote counting, rewarding the fake rioters with government jobs, trying to drill in protected lands, the fucking patriot act, getting caught lying about the existence of patriot act II, gitmo, 'disappearing' of US citizens, the craven disappearance of any sort of trustable American video media, the hiring of Coulter + Hannity + Savage, the continuous lies of Ari Fleischer, the ties between Bush and Enron, "the free market has to work" (to punish California), the fact that we control about 400 square feet of Afghanistan, Ahmed fucking Chalabi, any sentence ever uttered by Donald Rumsfeld, a rainbow of stupid colored alerts just in case we can't understand English words, the Department of Homeland Security, the continued inability to kill one fucking 6 foot 5 inch crazy man who lives in a cave, the continued inability to find a one eyed muslim cleric who likes to rant loudly, the deforestation of our natural forests in the guise of 'forest fire prevention' by loggers, the loosening in 'acceptable levels' of arsenic in our drinking water, the part ownership of voting machine makers by Republican party hacks, fucking Clear Channel whipping up fake rallies in order to (successfully) buy off the partisan FCC, fucking Scalia suggesting that homosexual teachers are a threat and ought to be illegal because they'll indoctrinate our children, Enron and the rest of the evil bastards getting off scot free because they're Cheney's best friends, Cheney getting US$30,000 A DAY from Halliburton as a golden parachute, massive tax cuts for the rich as a way of forcing Congress to cut programs like Head Start and school lunches, 'No Child Left Behind' except those children who don't get to go to fucking private kindergartens because their daddy doesn't have million-dollar stockbroker connections to the guy who heads CitiBank, the covering up of failed missile tests followed by an attempt to secretly rush through a bill so that we don't have to run the embarrassing tests any more and Star Wars can proceed, the attempt to remove all responsibility for declaring war from Congress and concentrate power in the presidency, the attempts to make the patriot act permanent, our continued violation of the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Convention, our flouting of all international law and the attempted destruction of the United Nations and NATO, the crack about "old Europe" that miraculously didn't get Rumsfeld fired, "Fuck Saddam, we're going to take him out" -- even as Bush 'searched for a peaceful way to resolve the situation', "Mr President, Rumsfeld just threatened Syria and Iran on national television" "Good.", the fucking Project for a New American Century -- a concept so crazy that even Pat Buchanan turned pale, "Freedom Fries", pouring out French wine in protest after buying it, it's just a fucking non stop list of shit which not just Democrats, not just Libertarians, but any human being on this planet who hasn't been totally indoctrinated must LEAP out of their FUCKING CHAIRS AND UPON READING, MUST JUST SCREAM OUT THE GODDAMN WINDOW, "WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS COUNTRY GOING AND WHY DID IT GET HERE? AND WHAT IN THE NAME OF ANYTHING THAT IS EVEN REMOTELY IMPORTANT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS SHIT FROM EVER HAPPENING AGAIN? WHY ARE MY GODDAMN POLITICAL LEADERS PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE TO A BUNCH OF INVISIBLE SUPERMEN WHO LIVE IN OUTER SPACE? IF THEY HAVE TO DO THAT, CAN'T THEY FUCKING READ THE BOOK THE INVISIBLE SUPERMEN ARE SAID TO HAVE LEFT BEHIND, THE ONE ABOUT HELPING THE POOR, NOT BEING BRUTALLY VENAL, YOU KNOW, THAT BOOK? IT'S NOT ABOUT SUSAN SARANDON, IT'S ABOUT THE ENTIRE DISGUSTING MELTING BALL OF PSYCHOLOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE CONTRADICTORY NONSENSICAL BULLSHIT WHICH JABBERS FORTH FROM THE MOUTHS AND MINDS OF THE MILLION-HEADED BEAST THAT EATS OUR FUCKING CIVIC SOUL AND SHITS OUT A NOISOME CONCOCTION OF MONEY, FALLACIES, PROPAGANDA AND LIES, LIES, ENOUGH FUCKING LIES TO FILL THE COFFERS OF A THOUSAND ENRONS, MAKE A THOUSAND VICE PRESIDENTS INTO LORDLY OLIGARCHIC GREY SARCASTIC PRINCES, AND HURL ANY CONCEPT OF REASONABLE PUBLIC DISCOURSE INTO THE SEWERS OF A DOZEN MURDOCHS.

Thank you, sir. My faith in America has now received a healthy booster shot. And by the way, ladies and gentlemen: George Soros has just given MoveOn.org $5 million! Yippee-i-ki-yay, say I. Though sometimes one is inclined to wonder just a bit, I have never really doubted that there is a God. [FarrFeed]

Another five numbers [BBC]

Following on from the original series, exploring numbers from zero to infinity, Simon Singh uncovers the mathematical, social and scientific history and significance of another five numbers, over five exploratory episodes.

If you have an interest in numbers, take a listen to these 15min programmes, available via streamed audio.

[Outwardly Normal 2]

berklee's lessons for everyone. Today, the Berklee College of Music has released Berklee Shares, a site offering free music lessons for downloand. All content is available under a Creative Commons license, including mp3s embedded with CC licenses. Free lessons for musicians, and a valuable lesson for the rest of us. Bravo. [Lessig Blog]

A Great Speech by the Man who was really elected President. Gore discusses the questions many of us have been asking. He runs down almost every single one of the liberties that this Adminstration is in the process of trampling. You can almost make a list of the amendments that are being tossed out the window. Declaring citizens enemy combatants. Sneak and peek entry to homes. Adminstrative subpoenas. Bugging client-lawyer conversations. Running background and credit checks on anyone without any need to demonstrate criminal behavior. He nails this Administration and its Bizarro world view of privacy. In a democracy, the state is open and the people are private. But this Adminstration increasing believes that the state is private and the people are public. As he said:

By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and balances. Because so long as the government[base ']s actions are secret, they cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people must be transparent to the people.

After all the rhetoric from this Adminstration, startingly little has been done to really make us safe. We actually had everything in place to catch the 9-11 plotters, if the anlaysis had been properly done. Putting up more screeners at the airports or getting our credit card numbers is not going to do much to protect us from terrorists. But who will protect us from a feckless government? Well, if this is still a democracy, we will have to protect ourselves. And the first way to do this is to actually demonstrate some courage. Another quote:

Almost eighty years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote 'Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. . . . They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.' Those who won our independence, Brandeis asserted, understood that 'courage [is] the secret of liberty' and 'fear [only] breeds repression.'

We have one of the largest standing armies ever and the most powerful. For a nation that bestrides the globe, we sure are allowing this Administration to cow us and make us afraid. Why is this Adminstration following the well-marked path delineated by Hermann Goering? If this Adminstration continues down the path it is going, if it continues to abuse our rights as it continues to lie, if it continues to provide for its corrupt friends will starving those less fortunate, it will be the beginning of a horrible time in the US, if not the world. Augustus probably felt he was doing the right thing consolidating power but it led to Nero and Caligula. Will the same happen here? I chose to believe that we have made some moral gains over the last 2000 years. We are the power behind the throne and we will not allow this to happen. I just keep having a nightmare that many people in Germany in the early 30s felt the same things. Some of the worst monsters of the 20th century were democratically elected. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

The Administration Takes Advantage of Lie Fatigue. This story should be page one in every major paper, but as far as I can tell from a search on news.yahoo.com, the only paper in the land to carry it is the Ocala [Fl.] Star Banner: Rumsfeld retreats, disclaims earlier rhetoric: Rumsfeld denies he ever made several pre-war statements. Think about it. The Secretary of Defense is either delusional, or a really stupid, clumsy liar. Asked about his claims that the Iraqi people would welcome us with open arms, he didn’t try to argue that most of the country (by area, not population volume) welcomes the US-led invasion, but rather denied he had ever said it: “Never said that,” he said. “Never did. You may remember it well, but you’re thinking of somebody else. You can’t find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said.” But he had. On TV. It used to be that brazen lying was bad for political figures (for example, Gary Hart). Is there some special reason that Rumsfeld gets a free pass? Or is the media, the nation, so saturated with Administration lies that it has stopped caring? Or is it that ‘objective’ journalism as practiced today... [Discourse.net]

More reasons why Bush should be reviled.
From the same article that John quotes:

Nearly half the benefits of Bush's US$1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001 went to the richest 1 percent, while 60 percent of this year's cuts will go to taxpayers with incomes of more than US$100,000, according to the tax policy center run by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Bush also fought hard to repeal an inheritance tax that affected only the wealthiest 2 percent, as well as cutting capital gains tax and trying to abolish the tax on dividends.

The Bush cabinet also stands out for its big money background. Every member is a millionaire and, the Center for Public Integrity says, its total net worth is more than 10 times that of the Clinton cabinet.

President Bush may not be the cause of America's unequal society, but the members of his administration arguably personify a new plutocracy.

Judge a man by his deeds not his rhetoric.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]

IRS has a $1MM tax-refund form.
How much is Dubya's tax-break worth to the hyperrich? Enough that the IRS has a new form for the electronic deposit of a tax refund of $1 million or more. 28k PDF Link [Boing Boing Blog]

 Picture Hunt time! How many women are in this picture? (more inside) [MetaFilter]

clinton knows how to win. i still love this guy [anil dash's daily links]

Antichrist Rising © 2003, John H. Farr I wish I could think of something stronger. I started out with "Goddamn Earth-Raping Sons of Bitches," but I think what we have here goes deeper than that. Although we're really dealing with an endemic spiritual sickness, certain individuals are making things happen. I blame the unelected president, of course. The people pulling the strings in the Bush administration deserve nothing less than lifelong incarceration for what they are allowing to happen to Nature, to our planet, to everything living we all hold near and dear, to that which sustains and nourishes our bodies and spirits. The suicidal assault on the environment continues unabated. Behold the latest misery, as detailed in the L.A. Times:

Bush administration officials have drafted a rule that would significantly narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act, stripping many wetlands and streams of federal pollution controls and making them available to being filled for commercial development.

Described by at least one source quoted in the article as a "worst-case development," the proposed rule change strips the administration bare. No goody two-shoes veneer on these bad guys. This is out-and-out war on Nature. It's like we're being ruled by alien beings. Here's some more from the article:

If implemented, the change would represent one of the most consequential of the actions the Bush administration has taken to ease environmental regulations. "It would dramatically cut back the scope of Clean Water Act jurisdiction," said the official who provided the document on the condition that neither he nor his agency be identified. "It would eliminate protections for ephemeral streams, which could be in the millions of miles of streams, particularly out West where many streams do not flow all year long." Julie Sibbing, a wetlands policy expert at the National Wildlife Federation, said, "It's like writing off the entire Southwest from the Clean Water Act, where water is more precious than in any other region of the country. Up to 80% to 90% of streams in the Southwest would not fall under the Clean Water Act if this rule were to go forward."

See what I mean? Pure madness. Up to 90 % of streams in the Southwest (just part of the overall area affected), where water is utterly vital and in very short supply, could be polluted or filled. This is monumentally psychotic in concept and brutally criminal in execution. We will not survive as a people if this is not stopped. It's that serious. I don't mean that the taps will run dry (although they might), I mean that the implementationn of policies like this will prove that we have permanently, irredeemably lost our connection to the Whole. [FarrFeed]

PBS's new science miniseries, The Elegant Universe, which is narrated, and based on the 1999 book, by Columbia physicist Brian Greene (who doesn't look entirely unlike David Duchovny) is excellent. Informative, artistic and funny. Demonstrating that the public network really does get it, the entire three hours of video are available in QuickTime (and RealVideo) format. Don't worry about clicking on the link, it's done in vid-bite sized chunks. I just finished the first hour (eight chunks) and I think I'll wait 'til tomorrow for the second. Oh yeah, it's on TV too. Thanks to Anthony at Circant for the pointer to this gem. [101-365]