From the AP:

Washington — The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.

"Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating," wrote Thomas J. McIntyre, chief in the Justice Department's office for information requests.

So, does this mean that the Justice Department doesn't have a backup of that database? Talk about the potential for a devastating loss of data!

The New York Times > Science > Observatory: Running Hot and Cold

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Diversity in the workplace can be a good thing, particularly if that workplace is a beehive. Not a beehive of human activity, Australian scientists report, but a real beehive.
In a study to be published by the journal Science, researchers at the University of Sydney show that genetic diversity among worker bees helps make a hive more stable, by better regulating temperature.
For proper brood development, a hive needs to stay 90 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit and, optimally, about 95. The heating and cooling to maintain temperature is provided by the workers. If the hive is too hot, the bees fan hot air out. If it is too cold, they cluster together to generate warmth.
That is the overall response. But individually, each bee has its own thermostat - a "task threshold," in the researchers' words - that tells it when to start fanning. If all the bees were genetically similar, the progeny of the queen and a single male, then they all might be expected to start fanning at the same temperature. The hive might reach the proper temperature, but the uniform response would make it swing between too hot and too cold

You know those products that are so bad, you wonder how they ever got past the testing phase? But somehow they did make it to market and are being sold to unsuspecting children who could be saved from a horrible fate, if only someone actually tried it out and told the rest of the world to stay away. After reading this gem of a review we’re glad it was them and not us. The product in question is the Hostess Snack Oven, which is shaped like a giant cupcake and uses a lightbulb to cook things that are arguably Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies. That the final product was repugnant comes as no surprise, but the story needed to be told.

We saw Fahrenheit 911. I would compare Moore's movie to This is Spinal Tap, a fake documentary that told more truth about rock and roll than a dozen earnest concert films.

Moore plays loose with the facts, but (to switch movie analogies) he's like Bluto talking about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor -- let him go, he's on a roll.

Virtual Auto Mechanic Library Helps Consumers Avoid Auto Repair RipOffs

"If you've ever been ripped off by an auto repair shop, you'll want to check this out and pass it along to patrons...

'Having been taken to the cleaners to the tune of $2,300 by disreputable auto repair shops, Mike Smith of West Fargo, ND decided to put the power of the Web to work for others who may have had similar experiences.

The new Web-based Virtual Auto Mechanic http://www.vamech.com video library takes consumers inside an auto repair shop to educate them on automotive parts, maintenance and repairs. Consumers learn about specific parts and repair issues for themselves; enabling them to make educated decisions before authorizing any repair work.' Read All About It." [LISNews.com]

In the weird-but-potentially-useful area we find MIT’s latest creation, solar cells that use the photosynthesizing cells of spinach to pull their juice from the sun’s rays. So far they’re hard to make, aren’t terribly efficient and last only three weeks but eventually should be easy and cheap and be good for the environment and self repairing to boot. Our major concern here is the choice of spinach. We really hope it was a result of more than one of the researchers watching a Popeye cartoon and having a eureka moment. Please oh please tell us it was more than that.

“I believe that freedom is the future of the Middle East, because I believe that freedom is the future of all humanity.”
— George W. Bush, June 29, 2004

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
— Kris Kristofferson

1 plenipotentiary
2 gobbledegook
3 serendipity
4 poppycock
5 googly
6 Spam
7 whimsy
8 bumf
9 chuffed
10 kitsch

A guy on a mailing list sent this around saying that it came from a friend of a friend of an n degree friend. It's supposedly the clothing label from a small American company that sells its product in France.

Translation:

Wash with warm water.
Use mild soap.
Dry flat.
Do not use bleach.
Do not dry in the dryer.
Do not iron.
We are sorry that
Our President is an idiot.
We did not vote for him.

 

Via Baptiste Coulmont comes word of an effort to establish a new subfield of Sociology. Jim Pass, who as far as I can tell is an adjunct sociology instructor at Long Beach City College, is trying to get Astrosociology [Warning! Monster Java Zombie Nightmare Website from Beyond 1996], um, off the ground. He has managed to get a paper on this topic accepted at an Informal Roundtable Session at the upcoming ASA meetings in San Francisco. He’s also organizing an Astrosociology Interest Group meeting¹ for the many, many sociologists who will want to join his proposed section-in-formation.

What is Astrosociology? You may well ask. According to Jim’s helpful email,

Generally, astrosociology is the study of astrosocial phenomena (a subset of all social phenomena)

Well, obviously. My initial thought was that the field would be picking up where Elizabeth Tessier left off. Elizabeth managed to extract a Sociology Ph.D from the Sorbonne a few years ago with the argument that Astrology was as good a science as any other, and vice versa. America is always a few years behind the French trend-setters. But this hope was dashed when I read Jim’s clarification that the field dealt mainly with

all human behaviors related in some way to outer space; a neglected area of sociological inquiry.

Now, it’s true that outer space is a neglected area of sociological inquiry. My naive view was that this was explained by the fact that, at any one time, there are are perhaps three or four people in outer space. That’s enough to keep a social psychologist happy for most of their career, but the rest of us might run into problems. As a great sociologist once said, after all, the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. But Jim is not confining himself to outer space. Although this is a wise move, it makes Astrosociology rather less interesting than it first appears. Jim’s programmatic statement on the field at the roundtable (Table 15: New Ideas in the Sciences) is paired with just one other paper, by Juan Miguel Campanario of the Universidad de Alcala. Unlucky for Juan Miguel, you might think, but his paper title is Resistance to New Ideas In Science, so they should be well set up for a good chat. In a creative scheduling decision, Juan Miguel is also supposed to be speaking simultaneously at Table 16, “Media, Sport and Science.”² Bizarrely, his paper title at that Table is Studying the Competence for Space in Sociology Journals. But it’s the wrong kind of space! So near and yet so far!

¹ Monday August 16, 6:30pm, Union Square 24/San Franciso Hilton. I’ll be there!

² It’s a big tent at the informal roundtables, alright.

Kristof: "The ongoing genocide in Darfur is finally, fortunately, making us uncomfortable. At this rate, with only 250,000 more deaths it will achieve the gravitas of the Laci Peterson case."

The second episode of "Jerry Seinfeld and Superman" is posted. It's as good as the first -- maybe even better. If you haven't yet, make sure you watch the first one ("Uniform") before the new one ("Hindsight"), because there are references to it that won't be nearly as funny without the context. ...More

What an excellent submission from site reader Lacy! Seriously, I was so enamored with her writing that I bought a one-way ticket to New Mexico, bar exam be damned. Yo quiero La Choza.

In the world of food, there are regions.  The American South, for example, is a region of food.  France is a region of food with smaller regions, like Provence, contained therein.  Every good amateur gourmet knows this. But I propose that there exist not only regions and sub-regions, but micro-regions, if you will.  Eddies in the flow of gastronomic space-time that create pools of such intensely unique and delightful food experiences that their very existence seems to defy all logic and reason.  I myself have experienced one of these eddies, and the locals call it Santa Fe. 

But the most amazing part of this long winded story is not that the chile was so perfect, nor that the restaurant was so cozy, nor that the price was so reasonable, nor that the art and ambiance were so distinctly "Santa Fe." No.  The most amazing part is that this is just ONE of the dozens of exemplary restaurants that carry on happily in relative anonymity nestled in this small town at the foot of those majestic mountains.  Every cuisine imaginable from New Mexican, to Thai, to pizza, to Indian and back again is represented, and each and every one is a culinary delight.  If you've never found yourself lucky enough to stumble into a concentrated micro-region of cuisine, I honestly implore you to keep searching.  They do exist.  And if all else fails, I know the way to Santa Fe.

Fantastic speech by Gore today about the administration's dangerous consolidation of executive power:

The seductive exercise of unilateral power has led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that would have been the worst nightmare of our framers...

...In the end, for this administration, it is all about power. This lie about the invented connection between al Qaeda and Iraq was and is the key to justifying the current ongoing Constitutional power grab by the President. So long as their big flamboyant lie remains an established fact in the public’s mind, President Bush will be seen as justified in taking for himself the power to make war on his whim. He will be seen as justified in acting to selectively suspend civil liberties – again on his personal discretion – and he will continue to intimidate the press and thereby distort the political reality experienced by the American people during his bid for re-election.

And here I thought The Daily Show was the only place capable of telling the plain truth. Wait ... Gore cites The Daily Show:

Ironically, his [Cheney's] interview ended up being fodder for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Stewart played Cheney’s outright denial that he had ever said that representatives of Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence met in Prague. Then Stewart froze Cheney’s image and played the exact video clip in which Cheney had indeed directly claimed linkage between the two, catching him on videotape in a lie. At that point Stewart said, addressing himself to Cheney’s frozen image on the television screen, “It’s my duty to inform you that your pants are on fire.”

Until I find where this is posted on line officially, I've unofficially posted it here.

Cory Doctorow’s explanation of why Microsoft should resist Digital Rights Management schemes was lucid and brilliant in plain ASCII. It’s all that and also readable in Matt Haughey’s redesigned version. It’s probably great in Jason Kottke’s audio version, too, but I haven’t listened yet.

Be it acknowledged that I’m already sympathetic to Cory’s perspective, this presentation makes it awfully hard for me to imagine a reasoned opposition to his case.

Update: EvilHippy points out that this site has even more media-themed typefaces

Bill Clinton is pushing his book hard, and appeared in New York last night at a screening of a film about the efforts to remove him from office. Jeff Jarvis has by far the best coverage. Interesting stuff.

Thanks to Tyler Cowen, over at Volokh , I came across Jason Brennan’s list of movies with philosophical themes . It’s a good list , though a bit lacking in non-American content. Possible additions? There’s already been some blogospheric discussion of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Christine Korsgaard’s claim that it illustrates Kant on revolutions (scroll down comments). Strictly Ballroom arguably deals with freedom, existentialism, and revolution. Rashomon is about the epistemology of testimony. Dr Strangelove covers the ethics of war and peace and some issues in game theory (remember the doomsday machine?). Suggestions?

UPDATE: I see Matthew Yglesias is also discussing this.

New Mexico Wilderness Alliance - Ojito Wilderness

The approximately 12,000 acres of public land that make up the Proposed Ojito Wilderness Area is characterized by dramatic landforms and rock structures, multi-colored badlands, a high density of cultural and archaeological sites, paleontological resources, and diverse plant and wildlife species. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recommended this area - which is currently referred to as the Ojito Wilderness Study Area - be designated Wilderness by Congress more than a decade ago.
OverviewThis unique area - which the people of the Zia Pueblo call "Puᩦlot; which means "land to the west" - is located only an hour's drive northwest of Albuquerque and five miles southwest of San Ysidro.

This is also the kind of country where the president meets with the members of a radical, far-right millennialist Christian sect three weeks before he counteracts all known international law and opinion regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation. That sect, known as the Apostolic Congress, opposes any deal with the Palestinians because it believes that Christ won't return to Earth until all of Israel belongs to the Jews and Solomon's temple is rebuilt.

If you read Salon, you may have noticed their story yesterday on Bush's psychological profile, which is the subject of no less than three new books. (Actually, the last one covers all the important U.S presidents, but I'm guessing Shrub gets a fat chapter, too.)

As I pointed out the other day, some of the stories going around about 43's mental health are enough to curl the hair on the back of your neck. And it may well be that Bush's "sweetness and light" performance at the unveiling of Clinton's White House portrait can only be explained as the byproduct of some exceptionally potent mood elevators - or maybe a double dose of Ibogaine, the obscure African stimulant that Hunter Thompson famously accused Ed Muskie of ingesting during the 1972 campaign.

Now I personally hate it when Charlie Krauthammer ( the Dr. Kevorkian of American psychiatry) starts putting politicians he barely knows and utterly loathes on the couch - a practice which reveals more about Krauthammer's twisted psyche that it does any of his "patients." It seems like a violation of medical ethics. Or should be, anyway.

So I'm not particularly interested in idle speculations about Shrub's Oedipal complex - although given the other members of that particular menage a trois, I can see where it might be a doozy.

But the Salon piece did remind me of something I read the other day in a book called The Myth of Laziness, by Dr. Mel Levine. While I'm certainly in no position to say whether it actually applies to Bush, the surface resemblance was so strong I made a note of it.

Levine is the reigning guru of the study and treatment of learning disabilities, with a special emphasis on what he calls "output failures" - the mysterious inability of otherwise intelligent, creative students to handle some of the educational basics, particularly those involving the language arts.

Dr. Levine was the subject of a PBS documentary a few years ago called Misundertood Minds, which helped correct some of the ignorant ideas that people (including, up until that point, me) often have about learning and learning disabilities.

My son, who has issues related to long-memory retrieval (spelling, mathematical computation, etc.) is going to Dr. Levine's clinic for evaluation later this month, so I've been reading up on his work. The Myth of Laziness is largely a collection of case studies of students and their problems, including a New York City middle school student who has enormous difficulty finding the right words to express even basic ideas and concepts. Levine writes:

Language is intended to convey ideas. But in some cases too much language is used to convey too few ideas. We call this "low ideational density." On the tape ... Darnell talked for two minutes and said a lot less than a fluent speaker could have communicated in three sentences...

Perhaps the most transparent finding in many individuals with language-output obstructions is their inability to elaborate. Darnell as a classic example. He was a short answer guy. "What do you think of your math teacher?" "He's OK." "Do you agree with him about giving surprise tests?" "Nope." "Why not?" "Not fair." "What's unfair about it?" "Lots of stuff"...

Darnell was failing to use language as a tool for extending, linking or developing ideas.

Now when I read that last sentence, it was like having a flashback. I felt as if I were watching Bush's last chat with the White House press corps all over again:

Look, I'm going to say it one more time. If I - maybe - maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of - from me to the government.

And for Bush that was an exceptionally articulate performance.

Now the idea that the 43rd president of the United States may have a severe, probably undiagnosed, learning disability isn't a very original thought. (In his book, Dr. Levine also mentions that such disabilities sometimes seem inherited. Anyone who remembers 41's own ferocious, but losing, battles with the English language might suspect the same.)

But what really made me sit up and take notice was Levine's casual observation that this particular form of language output failure is closely associated with criminal behavior:

There is strong evidence to show that many incarcerated violent offenders have expressive-language dysfunctions. I was involved myself in one such study of adolescents who had been committed to the Division of Youth Services in Massachussets for having committed violent crimes. We performed complete assessments on these teenagers and discovered that, by far, these teenagers' most common area of dysfunction was language output.

Levine cites evidence that linguistic expression is a key part of what he calls "verbal mediation," which acts as a kind of mental brake on impulsive or self-destructive behavior:

We guide and regulate many of our feelings and behaviors through a kind of internal coaching mechanism. That is, we talk things through to ourselves, which helps to slow us down, so we don't act rashly.

In other words, those who can't articulate their own thoughts may be literally incapable of talking themselves out of doing dangerous and/or illegal things - like, say, trading arms for hostages, or secretly subsidizing a Central American guerrilla army, or invading a large Middle Eastern country. As Levine says: "If you can't talk out your temptations, you capitulate."

Well, it's an interesting theory. And when you combine it with another of Levine's case studies - this time of a wealthy young playboy who's never faced up to his leaning problems because he's never really had to - you end up with a working hypothesis for a lot of things about the Bush family that might otherwise be attributed to sheer stupidity and arrogance.

I mean, you've probably heard it said: Bush may be lazy, but he's not stupid. If Dr. Levine is correct, he not lazy, either. He just has a misunderstood mind.

The arrogance, on the other hand ... well, that's another story, one that probably really does have deep Freudian roots. But I'll let the shrinks handle that one. Who knows? Maybe Krauthammer can work in a few sessions with the POTUS - for the good of the country.

from Whiskey Bar

Sometimes I find my jaw dropping over the brazenness of some business executives. You need to understand that we here at Worthwhile are VERY pro-capitalism, extremely profit-minded. But a story on The Wall Street Journal's front page makes me wonder just what the heck some of these business chieftains could be doing to the best economic system ever created.

The piece (which you can read on Reuters here, since the WSJ is a member-only pay site) says that a KPMG tax shelter that the IRS last year declared abusive generated at least $1.7 billion in tax savings for 29 of the world's biggest companies -- Delta Air Lines, Whirlpool, Clear Channel and others. While the IRS didn't declare the shelter abusive until November 2003, after the companies had bought it, "no one purchases a shelter like this without knowing they're taking significant risks," Stanford University tax-law professor Joseph Bankman is quoted as saying. "It's a classic case of getting something for nothing."

Something for nothing. That's where I can begin my three-part rant:
1. Why do companies expect something for nothing? What if their consumers had the same expectation?
2. The possibly bigger question is what on earth is KPMG -- which is one of the companies signing off on companies' financial statements to protect investors -- doing selling this kind of garbage anyway? What is their fiduciary duty?
3. Are executives really that tone-deaf? Every day, as I go about running my business -- or even in my personal life -- I live by a code of ethics that's my own personal smell test. Oftentimes, it has a simple question attached: What would happen if my neighbors read about this in the local paper, would I be proud or embarrassed? It makes decisions pretty simple. Which gives me a thought: Maybe if I packaged my smell test, sold it as a consultant and charged executives oodles, I could make a bundle.

Anne Applebaum connects some dots in her Washington Post column, saying America could get the full truth of its new torture policy if anyone wanted to do so. But the White House won't tell, for obvious reasons. Congress' Republican majority apparently endorses this moral and legal corruption. The media can only get so much information. Which leaves the American people. Are we collectively so fearful that we will allow our government to make torture the law of the land? Will we demand some answers -- and some changes -- from the people we elected to represent us? If torture is, indeed, the new law of this land, America has sewn some truly evil seeds.

Squirrels use infrared against snakes.

(Thanks to Cherie Priest)

Key Quote Revealing How Weird Scientists Are: To this end, he has designed 'robosquirrel', a stuffed squirrel with a heating element in its tail. "It's nearly ready to go," he says.

On his radio program this afternoon, Rush Limbaugh reacted to the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the Pledge of Allegiance case by saying that the words "under God" will thus remain "in the Constitution." He knows better. Doesn't he?

David Brooks has a provocative piece in today's New York Times about "the civil war within the educated class."

Here's the gist: Professionals or "knowledge-class types" -- architects, lawyers, teachers -- tend to vote Democratic. Managers, those who work in corporate America, tend to vote Republican. No surprises here.

But it gets more interesting when Brooks drills down into the personality characteristics that inform our choice of careers -- and candidates.

Jill Hunter Pellettieri of Slate offers up timely advice in Eat a Peach - How do you choose the sweetest, ripest summer fruit?. Of course all the fruit at our local Publix which is larger than a grape tomato is also rock hard, so this article is more useful for daydreaming than actual shopping, but still…

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has revamped its Web site making it easier than ever before to find interesting and timely reports about people’s Internet uses. They have organized the site by topic so you can jump directly to reports of particular interest. They usually do not go beyond binary analyses when writing up the findings, but it’s a helpful first cut at the material. Moreover, they are making some of their data available for secondary analysis so others can jump in and see what the deeper stories are. There are few data sets that are publicly available with this type of information so the Project has been doing a real service to this research community for quite a while. The Pew Project is run by a group of great folks, do hop on over and check out their work! (Check here for some additional data sources on the topic.)

From ETA's roving food reporter, Steve Domas, comes this gem: Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974. While the food photos are wonderful, the commentary from the person who posted the recipe cards on his/her website is the best part. Bon Appetit.

Howard Rheingold - one of the Heroes of the Net™ - gives a commencement speech to the Stanford Communication Department today. It warns of the forces working to own every idea, and points to wikipedia and ohmynews as positive examples.

Towards the beginning he says:

If your calling is journalism, you enter the job market at the same time that that the long and honorable history of American journalism is traveling through the digestive tract of the disinfotainment industry. But at the same time, you arrive on the scene just at the moment something broader, faster, and perhaps more democratic than the invention of journalism is emerging.

He closes:

I know that your education, the tools you have available, and most of all, your determination and enthusiasm constitute a formidable counter-force to the walls that are being built around creativity and discourse. I count on you to get out there and create. You can – you MUST -- innovate faster than your ability to innovate can be enclosed by laws, regulations, and technological fences.

The whole speech is here.

Simplicity and non-violence are obviously closely related. The optimal pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by means of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live without great pressure and strain and to fulfil the primary injunction of Buddhist teaching: 'Cease to do evil; try to do good.' As physical resources are everywhere limited, people satisfying their needs by means of a modest use of resources are obviously less likely to be at each other's throats than people depending upon a high rate of use. Equally, people who live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on world-wide systems of trade.

The damage is incalculable. When America puts out its annual report on human rights abuses, we will be a laughingstock. I suggest a special commission headed by Sen. John McCain to dig out everyone responsible, root and branch. If the lawyers don't cooperate, perhaps we should try stripping them, anally raping them and dunking their heads under water until they think they're drowning, and see if that helps. And I think it is time for citizens to take some responsibility, as well. Is this what we have come to? Is this what we want our government to do for us? Oh and by way, to my fellow political reporters who keep repeating that Bush is having a wonderful week: Why don't you think about what you stand for?

Henry’s Harry’s post about his only proper job, and the tea breaks which it necessitated, reminded me of the finest weblog devoted to tea and biscuits: A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. This week’s biscuit of the week is is Lidl’s Choco Softies: “In the second of our Lidl’s inspired reviews we couldn’t come away with out my picking up a pack of Lidl’s own brand version of a German classic the Super Dickmann.” I honestly have no idea what any of these things are, but nonetheless it is a very charming site.

Posted by Smoky Joe

Because presbyopic eyes focus more easily at a distance, taller people, who have longer arms, may not need lenses as strong as shorter people do. "Someone who's 6-4 can comfortably hold reading material at a greater distance," Dr. Maloney said. A person who wants to figure out the right power should try on a pair or two and read a magazine or newspaper. "If they're too strong, you'll have to hold the page uncomfortably close," he said. "And if they're too weak, you'll have to stretch your arms way out." After finding the correct power, many people buy more than one pair, so that they can leave them at handy places around the house or in the glove compartment. "You can also go the gold chain route, wear the chain around your neck," Dr. Maloney said. "But that marks you as being over 45." Another strategy is to leave glasses on the nose and peer over the rims to see farther. "But that makes you look at least 60," Dr. Maloney said. By 55 or 60, many people find that they need reading glasses in two strengths - one for the printed page and another for seeing the computer screen and other things at an intermediate distance. "A 55-year-old who uses a 2.25 pair for reading might want a 1 or 1.25 pair for the computer," Dr. Maloney said.

Richard Cohen (Washington Post): A Plunge from the Moral Heights. The Bush administration constantly reminds us that there's a war on. That's wrong. There are two. One is being fought by soldiers in combat, and the other is being fought for the hearts and minds of people who are not yet our enemies. However badly the administration has botched the first war -- where, oh where, is Osama bin Laden? -- it has done even worse with the second. It has jutted its chin to the world, appeared pugnacious and unilateralist, permitted the abuse of POWs and others at Abu Ghraib, and now toyed in some fashion with torture. The Bush administration has shamed us all, reducing us to the level of those governments that also have wonderful laws forbidding torture, but condone it anyway.

(It) sets out a view of an unlimited Presidential power to do anything he wants with “enemy combatants”. The bill of rights is nowhere mentioned. There is no principle suggested which limits this purported authority to non-citizens, or to the battlefield. Under this reasoning, it would be perfectly proper to grab any one of us and torture us if the President determined that the war effort required it. I cannot exaggerate how pernicious this argument is, and how incompatible it is with a free society. The Constitution does not make the President a King. This memo does.

Capitol Hill Blue, an interesting little web site that covers politics and government in, and from, Washington, takes a look at the Bush campaign's plans to turn the electronic ghost of Ronald Reagan into the third man on the Republican Party ticket:

The ads, ordered up by Bush political advisor Karl Rove immediately after Reagan’s death last Saturday, use images of Reagan and excerpts from his speeches in what one angry GOP conservative describes as a “callous attempt to tie George W. Bush to the legacy of Ronald Wilson Reagan.”

One proposed ad even goes so far as to show Reagan saying “George, go out and win one for the Gipper.” The clip comes from Reagan’s speech to the 1988 Republican National Convention where the former President’s request was to Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, in his successful 1988 run for President.

One failed George deserves another, I guess.

But tonight was no ordinary night of snorting and hiding my face in the Feng Shui soy candle display. Tucked away on the shelf below that black velvet UFO portrait of The High ECK Master, I found Dancing With Cats (Chronicle Books, 1999). Been around for years, but I'd never seen it before. Filled with pictures of humans fannying about in tights, striking "I-Wish-I-Were-Baryshnikov" poses -- together with cats who doing the same thing. The text is rich. "Multicat" interspecies dance ensembles as a tool for enlightenment; think Busby Berkeley with hairballs and chakras. Dig the pre-dance exercises:

Before we can begin dancing with our cats, we must first make contact with them. We can't simply put on music and expect that our cats will dance with us. We have to first align our dynamic vibration systems with theirs and bring those systems into a kind of confluence before we can build the energy levels through the dance that are necessary to attain the higher vibrationary states which enable us to channel the infinite power of the universe.

You see, human beings and cats are not simply physical bodies confined within a barrier of skin or fur. We are also made up of dynamic energy systems which extend out, and interact with, every other energy system around us.

There's a simple exercise you can try right now as you sit in front of your computer. It's one of a number of what we call mirroring exercises that will allow you to bring your body into an energy-centered relationship with your cat and prepare you to dance with it... a simple purring technique. Remember that purring is the way a cat modulates its energy reserves in order to restore its psychic equilibrium.

Update: If you like that, check out Catflexing and Why Cats Paint, both of which must be seen to be believed. (Thanks, Matthew Burns and Thomas A. Dennis!).

And BoingBoing reader Cliff Van Eaton of Papamoa, New Zealand says:

"It sounds like you had your tongue firmly implanted in your cheek ... you should, because the website you linked to was another wonderfully disguised creation by one of New Zealand's great merry pranksters, Burton Silver. He used to be a much-loved cartoonist here, with a long running strip called Bogor that featured a hedgehog that craved snails and marijuana leaves, and a sensitive new age logger. Here's a link to a few phone cards featuring the Bogor characters. He was featured on a New Zealand stamp a few years ago.

Silver created his first book ruse with Why Cats Paint. It was considered a big joke in New Zealand (because everyone here was quite familiar with his wit), but overseas lots of gullible people (read: cat lovers) took it seriously, and lo and behold he had a hit on his hands. My favourite Silver scam is a book and ball combination he brought out on the New Zealand market a few years ago at Christmas. It was a combination between golf (a favourite and very egalitarian pastime here) and rugby (the national religion). The golf ball is in the shape of a rugby ball, and you score points by hitting it between goal posts. Well, everyone knew that Silver was having a good joke, and lots of fathers and brothers got "Golf Cross" sets for Christmas. But interestingly, when people took them out in the paddock and had a bit of a hit around, they found that it was actually a very enjoyable game. Here's a link with more info about Golf Cross."

I can never resist a challenge. So when Normblog passed on the folowing put-up-or-shut-up from John Keegan:

I couldn’t resist putting up, even at the cost of perhaps repeating myself

(ahem)

I wish Saddam Hussein was still in power in Baghdad because if this were the case, then about 3,000 Iraqis would have been murdered by his regime and would be dead, the roughly 10,000 Iraqis we killed ourselves would still be alive, and we would most likely be well on our way to formulating a credible, sensible, properly resourced plan for getting rid of him and handling the aftermath.

In other words, this was not a “humanitarian intervention”, in the sense which Human Rights Watch uses the term, and it is entirely defensible to maintain principled opposition to the war without having to be painted as an apologist for mass graves. Norm has his own, somewhat more inclusive standard for what constitutes a humanitarian intervention, which I intend to write something about soon. But I simply don’t believe that this issue is anything like as cut and dried as the Keegan quote suggests; if one is using a standard which makes Saddamites of Human Rights Watch, then one is using a wrong standard.

Posted by Captain Blowtorch in hot pursuit

Thomas Leavett at Seeing the Forest: "If you want an unvarnished look at the right wing's true agenda, take a look at the platform of the U.S. Constitution Party. These people are seriously scary... and then take a look at the Texas Republican Party's platform and ask yourself whether the difference is one of kind or degree (I vote for the latter). That Constitution Party platform is what the Texas Republicans WISH they could write. For the short of time among you, Theocracy Watch has a good summary of the most extreme elements. CalPundit also has a good analysis of the year 2000 version."  See the Damn Yankees wring their Secumlar Humanist hands.

Brad DeLong points to an essay by John Perry called structured procrastination. Who would have imagined there was such a nice name for one of the organizing principles of my life.

In my comments, Westy, in addition to providing some great WEP and networking tips, points to a Slate article by Jack Shafer, E-mail Confidential, in which the author turns his "175-pound Samoan attorney" loose on the "extraordinary 114-word 'disclaimer' sloshing around at the bottom" of an email from a Time, Inc. journalist. Pithy observations abound, such as "[S]ending a confidential or valuable message via insecure e-mail is a funny way to preserve a secret," plus there are links to the disclaimers dubbed the longest, most PC, and most incomprehensible by the Register in 2001.

[Update:] Speaking of disclaimers—

I just now came across this piece of tripe pulled from the mouth of CNN Justice Department "correspondent" Kelly Arena:

ARENA: Neither John Kerry nor the president has said troops pulled out of Iraq any time soon. But there is some speculation that al Qaeda believes it has a better chance of winning in Iraq if John Kerry is in the White House.

You know, she should have at least wiped the Ashcroft spunk off her lips before went on the air. This is broadcast television for Christ's sake!

I've long since grown bored with kicking the morons at Fox Lite in the shins, and I imagine Atrios and the rest of the usual suspects have already given Ms. Arena the trashing she so richly deserves, but her rather flagrant bit of media whoring reminded me of similar, almost equally noxious CNN performance at the World Economic Forum in Jordan....

(You'll have to excuse me - just thinking about that meeting still makes my stomach a little queasy.)

The last day I was there one of the main speakers was Iraq's once and future pseudo-foreign minister, Hoyshar Zebari. He and the moderator, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, did a long, tedious and incredibly self-serving Q&A routine - it seems that essentially everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since "liberation" is because the country wasn't immediately turned over to the Iraqi National Congress. Then Ignatius threw it open to the audience.

Most of the questions from the floor were sharp and skeptical, if not borderline hostile, until I heard this deep, pompous and vaguely familiar voice from the back of the room. It was CNN's Walter Rodgers, one of their international "correspondents," and his question for Zebari was this:

RODGERS: If the American people were to vote George W. Bush out of office in November, would Iraq fall apart? That is, my question is: Does iraq need America or does Iraq need George W. Bush?

That's verbatim, directly from the tape - if not directly from Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters.

Now, given that the president of the Iraqi Governing Council had been blown to bits that very day in Baghdad, I think it was been pretty fucking obvious to everybody that Iraq is doing a perfectly fine job of falling apart with George W. Bush in the Oval Office. But I suppose you can't expect that kind of honesty from the puppet foreign minister of a U.S.-occupied country.

In fact, Zebari didn't particular eager to answer the question - I could almost see the wheels going around behind his piggy little eyes. But in the end I guess he decided endorsing a potential loser was a less direct threat than dissing the Bush Family Mafia in public, so he gave a nice little speech about how Iraq loves America and George W. Bush.

I can't blame Zebari for blowing Shrub little rhetorical kisses - he has his rice bowl to look after. But I really had to wonder (as I have many times before) whether Rodgers dreamed up his little Bush-Cheney infomercial all by himself.

But now, after reading Kelly Arena's stupid little smear, it seems at least possible to me that CNN is emulating Fox News (again) and has started equipping its "reporters" with pre-packaged GOP talking points each day.

I think this should be a great source of comfort to the Al Qaeda high command, which about now might reasonably be worrying that it won't have Shrub, Rummy and company to kick around for another four years.

I have this picture in my head of Osama bin Ladin, somewhere in the Hindu Kush, watching CNN on his satellite TV and yelling the Arabic equivalent of "Go baby, go!"

Update 6/2 12:06 AM: While I'm on the subject of stupid media tricks (and the stupid media whores who pull them) Salon has a little item on the phony patriotic posturing that Tim Russert pulled on Nancy Pelosi Sunday:

Pelosi spoke about dangerous policy blunders and instead of engaging her on those serious issues right away, Russert chose to take a page from Tom DeLay and begin his questioning by asking unanswerable questions that implied she had nerve for making her remarks at all, and that her brazenness is actually giving a hand to al-Qaida.

RUSSERT: What message does this send to the troops in Iraq when the ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives says that the commander in chief is not a leader, has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge? How does that make the troops feel?

RUSSERT: What do you think the people leading the resistance in Iraq or al-Qaeda think when they hear the ranking Democrat in the House say that President Bush has no knowledge, no experience, no judgment?

Blah, blah, blah - i.e. a pretty typical performance by not-so-tiny Tim.

It's funny, but I don't remember Russert being so solicitous about the troops the last time he interviewed Bush or Cheney. Next time, maybe he could ask them what kind of message they think it sends to the troops when they learn they were sent to fight and die by the lies of an Iranian double agent.

Just a thought.

It's funny, but I once had the vague idea that Russert was a Democrat, because he once worked for Mario Cumo. But Nicholas Lehman provided some enlightening information about Tim's career in last week's New Yorker:

He started in journalism relatively late, and initially as an aide to the president of NBC News, not as a reporter or a producer. After General Electric bought NBC, Jack Welch, G.E.’s chairman, personally appointed Russert Washington bureau chief, and it was a couple of years after that that he became a panelist on “Meet the Press” and, later, the host, replacing Garrick Utley.

So it turns out Tim is actually Neutron Jack's corporate protege. So much for keeping the money guys out of the newsroom. Although in Russert's case ideological dependability, not profit, would appear to have been the motive.

What can you say? GE may bring good things to life, but Jack Welch brought nothing but shit to Meet to the Press.

Fake Diebold electronic voting machine ads (via Lex). Funny, in a scary kind of way.

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

-- Bertrand Russell

Thinking about happiness over here today too.

June 1, 2004
Most of the assumptions of the American public about how we are going to be living in the years ahead do not comport with reality. Cases in point:

If you sit in on any planning board meeting in the US these days, the main preoccupation among both citizens and officials is parking. Where are we going to put all these goshdarn cars?!? They expect the future to be a linear extrapolation of what's happening now. The answer is to build multi-million dollar parking structures. Now a big public investment like this ought to have a life-expectency of twenty or thirty years. Are automobiles going to play the same role in our lives twenty years from now? Or even ten? Personally, I doubt it. We're just at the beginning of a permanent global fossil fuel crises. If there's anything the public will really need it is passenger railroad service, and that's absolutely the last thing that anybody wants to talk about.

Everybody involved in rebuilding the World Trade Center -- including the public, elected officials, and the architects -- has assumed that the site requires tall buildings of some kind. In fact that's the one thing they all agree upon. Guess what? We are entering a permanent North American natural gas shortage (as well as a global oil crisis). Exactly how are we going to run all these megastructures? Believe me, you're not going to run the elevators with solar electric or wind turbines.

Every local economic development agency in my part of the country believes that they are going to solve their desperate economic problems by inviting in a WalMart or gearing up tourist attractions for the motoring public. One proposal, ominously called DestiNY (sic), in Syracuse, NY, combined both ideas in a project that would have created the world's biggest mall around a food court "themed" on the Erie Canal. The idea was that people as far away as Scranton and Hartford would drive all the way to Syracuse to buy a new pair of sneakers and eat a slice of Pizza. It almost got built. (Financing sunk it.)

In my travels lecturing at colleges around the country, I tell audiences to expect a future American economy centered around agriculture. They think I am completely insane. They are waiting for the Hydrogen Economy, which, once instituted, will bring about a permanent utopia of leisurely motoring and an endless supply of Cheez Doodles.

FYI: Recently Published in Orion Magazine Online: Cargo Karma