June 2004 Archives

And speaking of Nader and Dean...

I'm referring, of course, to Ralph Nader. Dear old Ralph is a sensitive topic around my home; Michael voted for him last time, and while he's going to vote for Kerry this time, he still doesn't regret his choice at the time, and resents any implication that he should. Another friend of mine has been pushed to the left, as many of us have, by the sheer horridness of the last few years under Bush; but looking at the leading Democrat in the race, and noticing his lack of appeal, it makes her appreciate the role of a Nader in the election all the more.

Kerry is turning out to be something of a disappointment, after all, and there doesn't seem to be any way to persuade him to be less cautious/more fiery and embrace the liberal side. I heard a soundbite from him on NPR one morning last week, responding to a simple question: would he congratulate the first gay couple to get married in Massachusetts? His response was a carefully parsed, long, windy, and bloodless response. I mean, for g-d's sake. It didn't gain him anything to respond that way, and it certainly turned me off. (I miss Howard Dean more than ever!)

Things should be different. It should be so blindingly obvious to everyone that Bush and his administration are horrible, horrible, no good, very bad for the country. The Democratic candidate should be seizing the moment and laying out a credible alternative and plans for the future. He should be setting the country on fire. The Democratic party should be giving itself a major makeover, not playing it safe. There should be room for a third-party alternative. Things need shaking up.

But I can wish and wish (or, as an ex-boyfriend used to say "Wish in one hand, spit in the other, see which one fills up first!") and things still won't be any different. The choice is still going to be Bush or Kerry. Yes, it's true that third parties will never get anwhere if people don't support them. Yes, I agonize over the idea that candidates may mistake my support for support of their infuriating blandness and evasions of important issues. But the fact remains: Kerry will play nicely with international leaders. Bush has proven he can't. Kerry will make cautious (sometimes infuriatingly so) decisions. Bush has a track record of rash decisions. Kerry believes in a woman's right to choose. Bush doesn't. Kerry supports separation of church and state. Bush sure doesn't. A Kerry administration will do far more to protect the environment than the Bush one has, and we're not even talking about what damage could get done with four more years to do it in.

If all that wasn't enough, there remains the fact that Nader appears to be becoming increasingly eccentric, and not in a good way. What sensible candidate would post this on his website?

Hey, Michael, Where Were Your Friends?

Once upon a time, there was Michael Moore the First. He never forgot his friends. Come time for the Washington, DC premiere of Bowling for Columbine a while back, he invited his old buddies in Washington—gave them good seats and spent the rest of the evening with them. During his other movie's premiere, he affectionately recognized how much those old friends helped him and supported him after he was mistreated and let go by Mother Jones. He was generous with his words and time.

Now there is Michael Moore the Second. Last night he hosted the Washington, DC premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and who was there? The Democratic political establishment, the same people whom he took to such mocking task on the road with us in campaign rally after campaign rally in 2000. Who was not there? His old buddies! Not personally invited, not personally hung out with.

A few weeks ago, Michael, I sent you a message: "Hey, Dude, where's my Buddy?" It is attached. It has gone without reply. It simply asked you to come back to your progressive constituency and take on the two-party monopoly of our rigged election system—to challenge the pro-warlike, corporate party with two heads, wearing different makeup when it comes to playing toady for Big Business. These are the giant multinationals who have no allegiance to our country or to communities like Flint except to control, deplete or abandon them. It is not that your views have changed, with an exception or two. It is that your circles have changed. Too much Clinton, not enough Camejo.

Your old friends remain committed to blazing paths for a just society and world. As they helped you years ago, they can help you now. They are also trim and take care of themselves. Girth they avoid. The more you let them see you, the less they will see of you. That could be their greatest gift to Moore the Second—the gift of health. What say you?

Best wishes,

Ralph Nader

Eyes on the prize, Ralph. What's more important? Defending progressive values or calling Michael Moore a fattie? (And if he had invited you to the screening, would you have still mentioned his weight? I'm curious.)

One of the many reasons I dislike President Bush is that he has a mean streak. Nader's seems to be just as big.

Perhaps taking into account this and other bizarre statements, the Green Party has decided that it has had enough of him this time around (free, registration required), but Nader just says that it's their loss:

A day after not getting the Green Party's endorsement for president, Ralph Nader brushed off the rejection as an inconvenience, described the party as "strange," called the party's national nominating convention "a cabal," and predicted the party would be the big loser.


"The benefit was really for the Green Party," Nader said Sunday of what an endorsement of him would have meant. "I don't want to exaggerate it, so I'll just say massively more."

Endorsing him, Nader said, would have meant higher visibility and better fund-raising opportunities for the party. And because of his vice-presidential running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo, it had the potential to attract Latino voters.

Instead, by nominating Texas attorney David Cobb, Nader said, the party that made him its candidate in 1996 and 2000 will "shrink in its dimension" and "has jettisoned (itself) out of any influence on the Democratic party."

Anyway, it all makes the choice pretty clear to me. I'm disappointed in Camejo, who was one of the most appealing candidates in the crazy goobernatorial (misspelling intended!) race here in California last year. I hope the Green Party does well in local races this year. We need them. We also need Kerry to win the top ticket. I'm really not sure what we need this version of Nader for, anymore.

Edited to add: Maybe I've watched The Producers too many times (as if such a thing were possible) but I keep seeing in my mind Michael Moore as Bialystock and Ralph Nader as Bloom, the latter punching the former and screaming, "Fat!- Fat! - Fat! - Fat! - Fatty!"

Apparently the Justice Department is protecting its data with a special, advanced form of protection. We've all heard of self-destructing messages, thanks to spy movies and novels. I read a while back about email technology which could do much the same thing. But until now, I was unaware that it was possible to safeguard large quantities of information in a database the same way. Apparently, if anyone attempts to download or copy the data contained therein, it will spectacularly destroy itself. It can even detect what kind of data query it should self-destruct in response to — the meltdown sequence is initiated by a Freedom of Information Act request.

McIntyre explained in a May 24 letter that the computer system - operated in the counterespionage section of the Justice Department's criminal division - "was not designed for mass export of all stored images" and said the system experiences "substantial problems."

"It sounds like incredible negligence for an agency that is keeping public records to keep them in such a precarious condition," said Stephen Doig, interim director at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. "I've never heard the excuse that making the equivalent of a backup copy would somehow cause steam to rise out of the computer."

Honestly. Fire them all? Get them a technology grant?

More here

From ABC News:

"Acknowledging a clash of cultures, Bush said, 'Some people in Muslim cultures identify democracy with the worst of Western popular culture and want no part of it. And I assure them, when I speak about the blessings of liberty, coarse videos and crass commercialism are not what I have in mind.'"

Yeah! We'll invade your country and exploit your resources, but we promise not to make (or let) you watch MTV!

If you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11 already, or even if you've just heard about this movie, you know about one of the people in the movie, Lila Lipscomb, resident of Flint, Michigan and mother of a soldier in Iraq. The scenes involving her are some of the rawest and most emotional in the film, and I had wondered afterwards what she thought of the film and how she was portrayed. Turns out she's just fine with it. In fact, she's seen the movie three times as of this interview in the Flint Journal.

Barry Reingold, on the other hand, is in no hurry to see the movie. He was the guy who got a visit from the FBI after he said Bush was an a-hole during a casual discussion in his local gym in Oakland (he lives somewhat near me, in fact). He may hate Bush, but he doesn't love Kerry either, and worries that the film doesn't deal with the bigger picture.

I think Michael Moore's agenda is to get Bush out, but I think it (should be) about more than Bush," said Reingold, an independent, on Saturday. "I think it's about the capitalist system, which is inequitable. They're laying people off, cutting off health care, and the few people on top are getting more rich and powerful."

"Bring 'em on!" said President Bush...

(and when you bring 'em on, we'll "hand over power" two days ahead of schedule and sneak out of the country.)

And where's all the money?

Excellent review and commentary on the movie from Juan Cole, who points out the strengths and weaknesses of Moore's arguments. He thinks the anti-Saudi stuff was overstated ("The Saudis don't own more than a tiny proportion of the privately held wealth in the US. They are not even the major foreign investor in the US — The British, Dutch, and Japanese top them.") and points out that oil pipeline talks with the Taliban go back to Clinton's tenure. (It's true: check out Ahmed Rashid's Taliban for more details.). On the other hand, the war footage and PATRIOT Act stuff is compelling and infuriatingly true. Worth a read.

It was an impulse buy, though not without some premeditation...

After work on Friday, I walked into the Discovery Channel shop near my work, and I bought a Zvue video player. I'd seen articles about this nifty-sounding gadget for months, starting with a mention on Slashdot. At that time, it only worked with proprietary cards and content, which hardly seemed worth it. Now, though, they've added DIVX support (and bumped up the price), and I could no longer resist. Plus, we're going on vacation soon, I rationalized, and could use some method of bringing music and movies along.

I've now been using it for a couple of days, and so far, mostly so good (apart from accidentally hosing my desktop Mac when I tried installing a video encoder — oops). The sound quality is good, the picture quality is surprisingly good, and it definitely has personality (there's a scrolling credits list you can get to from the main menu, and after a long list of names with witty titles, there's a long break, and then up scrolls the line, "OK folks, the show's over!")

It's far from perfect, of course, which I expected at that price and from what I'd read about it. The protective screen that partially blocks your movie view with its embossed logo, the rewind button that unexpectedly jumps all the way back to the beginning of your movie (come on guys, can't you fix it already?), the lack of any way to bookmark your place, absence of playlist management, etc.

But on the other hand? We're talking Sex and the City in the palm of your hand. Pretty darn cool.

The Zvue is in danger, though, along with the iPod and a score of other innovations. The INDUCE act would criminalize manufacturers of technologies which "induce" users to break copyrights. You can read more about it here and here. Infuriating... after all, since the introduction of EMusic and the Itunes Music store, I've probably spent more on music than ever before. It should be easy to buy content, and it shouldn't be illegal to take stuff off a DVD I own and transfer it to a cute little blue player I can bring on vacation.

Edited to add: If you want to learn more, or you already have one and are trying to figure it out, check out this discussion board.

Did you happen to see the new video on the Bush/Cheney website? The one that shows scenes of Hitler shouting (their excuse is that it was imagery used in a contest submission to Moveon.org — never mind that it got voted off the island — and hence it's fair game.)

Not that it's likely to help them much. From Newsweek:

NEWSWEEK asked an interactive content developer for a large New York City advertising firm to view the video and offer his professional opinion. After laughing out loud at the video, he said the picture of Hitler overwhelms any other message and that the entire advertisement seemed poorly conceived. “If you’re not aware of the MoveOn.org campaign, it seems like a ridiculous point. It’s picking up a spitball, polishing it, and throwing it back at them. It’s like saying: 'I’m like Hitler? No you’re like Hitler'.”

Or: "Unlike those evil, Nazi-like, name-calling ugly, angry, ranting liberals whose mamas wear combat boots... we're sunny little daisies!" And when you see the excerpts from fiery Democrat speeches interspersed with Hitler's oratory, well... what conclusion is the viewer supposed to come to?

I'm so sick of Hitler being invoked, too, as I think I've said before on this blog. The left and the right have certainly both dropped the H-bomb many times. It happens so much online, there's even a name for the phenomenon and an FAQ about it. It's all so dumb, really. Can we all just stop it, NOW?

The movie everyone's talking about! In theaters near you! Yep, I saw it last night. It was definitely an overwhelming experience, seeing everything juxtaposed and connected (and if they keep letting John Ashcroft write and sing songs like "Let the Eagle Soar", the terrorists will truly have won.)

This movie was necessary. It's not an impartial documentary; it's a powerful essay with visual documentation attached.

Much of it does indeed use ridicule to skewer Bush administration and the home security industry. But consider what it's responding to: years of propaganda by that administration, including but not limited to the "Mission Accomplished" banner, carefully staged "public" appearances, carefully vetted interviews, etc. and on and on and on. How else to fight that than by undercutting it and showing it from a different angle?

The scene everyone keeps talking about (besides the disgusting bit with Wolfowitz and the comb... ew...) is the one of Bush in the classroom on the morning of September 11. I had always assumed that he was reading to the kids himself, but no — he was just sitting there listening to the teacher and following along. And he keeps doing it for almost seven minutes after he gets the bad news. Now, the Bushies keep huffing "Well, what was he supposed to do — alarm the kids?" as if that was the only option. What the hell? Why couldn't he have simply said, "Excuse me, children, I need to step outside and speak to someone, but you guys are doing great! Keep on reading!" No big deal, is it? I don't think there was anything he could have done with those extra seven minutes, and I don't think his sitting there did any great harm (except to his image), but it speaks volumes about the kind of person he isn't. It's great to get to compare this scene to all the carefully choreographed pap his team puts out (and you do get to see some of that too, including shots of my favorite Republican scottish terrier, Barney.)

Andrew Sullivan says: "I will say this: I will generally go see anything. I even sat through "The Passion of the Christ." But I cannot bring myself to go to this piece of vile, hateful propaganda. I walked out of "Roger and Me" years ago, before Michael Moore was Michael Moore. I know who he is. I refuse to sit in a theater and subject myself to lies and hate."

I wouldn't call it hate. I'd call it "outrage." And why not? Even Andrew Sullivan can't deny that this administration has done some truly outrageous things in the last three-plus years, and they've put a nice sunny face on it. I'm not sure how else you fight back their powerful imagery and appeals to our fears except with more powerful imagery and appeals to our sense of justice.

The movie starts with the 2000 election, and the accusations of the disenfranchisement of black voters. Later in the movie, we see recruiters targeting young men in Flint, and we meet a mother who told her kids to join the military because she didn't have enough money to send them to college. (The results are Not Good.)

At the end of the movie, Moore says something about how the ones who have the least are often the ones who join up to defend our country, and that it is an amazing gift.

Of course, this is all somehow still being spun by the Bushies as "Michael Moore hates America and our soldiers!" but whatever... guys... couldn't you at least, like, see the movie? I know, I know, I didn't see The Passion of the Christ, but I can't handle horror movies. I sure has hell didn't try to get it banned, though, unlike some of you lot!

Edited to add: Oh, and by the way? If you are going to complain about how Michael Moore is a hatemonger... you would do better to not go on about how fat he is. It kind of, like, undermines your point, whatever it is.

From this week's J., an editorial by Ruth Messinger about the genocide happening in Sudan:

As early as March of this year, humanitarian organizations were issuing warnings of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan. For a long time these warnings continued to be ignored by most of the mainstream and Jewish media, and Americans remain virtually unaware of the atrocities occurring there. Are we Jews to do nothing when we know better?

Visit the website of her organization, the American Jewish World Service, to learn more about what's happening and how you can help...

I finally did it. I walked from my house all the way to Jack London Square this morning. I think it was about 4 or 4 1/2 miles, and it took me all of the 80 minutes I'd allotted for it. I did have time to get money at the ATM and coffee, but that was it. Right after I walked onto the ferry, they blew their horn, and we were off.

Anyway, it was pleasant, for the most part, apart from my poor choice of clothing (a layered skirt whose top layer kept rolling up and exposing the slip, so that I was constantly having to adjust it.) People around Lake Merritt are very friendly — many people say "Good morning!" which is not my usual experience walking places. Downtown was, well, downtown, but I passed a cool-looking African/vegan restaurant where a man was sitting outside with an exceedingly adorable small child, as well as a beautiful mural on the side of a building at 14th and Franklin. Then there was the homeless guy who said, "Excuse me... can I ask you a question? I don't mean to be disrespectful..." and I had to cut him off with a plaintive "I've got to hurry." (Sorry, but anything longer than "What time is it?" or "Do you know how to get to the library?" is probably not part of a conversation I want to have with a stranger. I'm funny that way.)

So now I'm sitting at work, and my legs are definitely somewhat sore, and I think I'll be taking the bus home tonight. But I'm glad I did it, and maybe this is something I'll repeat in future as long as it's this light in the morning and the weather is this nice.

From the NY Times

BEIJING, June 23 — The United States today presented North Korea with a proposal for phasing out its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees, as senior Bush administration officials acknowledged softening their hard-line stance to jump-start negotiations with Pyongyang.

Wow, the Bush administration, practicing diplomacy. Who'da thunk it? (More like it, who thunked them over the head and made them see sense?)

From the International Herald Tribune: Bush didn't approve of torture.

In a February 2002 directive that set new rules for handling prisoners captured in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush broadly cited the need for "new thinking in the law of war," and ordered that all people detained as part of the fight against terrorism be treated humanely even if they were deemed by the United States not to be protected by the Geneva conventions, the White House has disclosed.

But Rummy did?

By late 2002, the documents showed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was fleshing out the policy under intense pressure to squeeze more information from people seized in Afghanistan. He briefly approved techniques including the use of dogs, and by April 2003 he had approved the use under some conditions of interrogation techniques including changes in diet, reversing sleep cycles from night to day, and isolation.

A list of the memos, helpfully compiled and posted by the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62516-2004Jun22.html

No, I don't know what this all means yet.

Oh, here's more from SFGate / NY Times.

From today's Chron:

Ultra-trendy fashion retailer H&M, or Hennes & Mauritz AB, also known as the Ikea of clothing stores, will open a 43,000-square-foot West Coast flagship store on Powell Street in San Francisco next year, property owners at the site said.

I read somewhere that Mango is considering opening a store in San Francisco too. Could Zara be far behind?

(For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, these stores specialize in trendy-but-affordable clothing. We have nothing like it here currently.)

Feeling safer yet?

Feeling safer yet?

Feeling safer yet?

"I'm moving to Jerusalem to study for a year sometime in July. I plan on walking around in a t-shirt that says 'Niggas need to chill.'"

Mobius, author of the JewSchool blog, from his interview on JewGoo

Back when I was at UC Santa Cruz, I spent a summer there trying to finish up my coursework so that I could graduate by the end of 1991 (a semester late). One of the requirements which I had previously eluded was for math and science. However, an interesting-sounding course, something like "Introduction to Computer Math", caught my eye, and I signed up.

I was doomed to failure, however. The teacher was brilliant, but he kept saying things like "Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah it's all just common sense, really." At least, that's what it sounded like to me.

I finally decided that I didn't have any common sense, and I dropped the course, replacing it with "The Psychology of Human Sexuality," which was taught by a repulsive hairy little man who wore loud Hawaiian shirts and compared male circumcision at birth to the genital mutilation of adult women in Africa. (That class was an easy pass, at least. But I digress)

Anyway, the teacher of the computer math course was none other than David Huffman, inventor of the Huffman Code, a fact which he proudly mentioned. It meant nothing to me at the time, of course, but it means a great deal to me now, because it's one of the bases for mp3 compression. And I listen to a lot of mp3s.

From Slashdot's comments today:

David Huffman is also the inventor of Huffman coding used in MP3s...

"Let's sue HIM too!!!" -RIAA

I don't know how I missed this before, but it is wonderful. Richard Thompson's "Dear Janet Jackson", downloadable from his site here. Another reminder of why I like him so much!

This article in the New York Times — about how libraries are adapting to the fact that everybody nowadays Googles rather than visiting said libraries — pointed me in the direction of this course at my old grad school, taught by Paul Duguid and Geoffrey Nunberg. I wish I could find some way to play hooky on Wednesday afternoons and sit in on this class, at least once...

Voyage

http://www.boombasticradio.com/index.cfm/load/album%20info/albumID/1160/?cftoken=3063414&cfid=9682974

Heard about this on NPR this morning. Makes me sick.

...on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected a proposal by two Democratic senators, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Dianne Feinstein of California, to subpoena Justice Department documents on the administration's policies regarding the treatment of prisoners. The proposal, which was rejected in a 10-9 vote, identified 23 memos, letters or reports from Sept. 25, 2001, through March of this year on topics that included the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and rules for interrogation.

According to the proposal, the documents include a memo from Mr. Rumsfeld to Gen. James T. Hill, the senior officer of the Southern Command, dated April 2003 and titled, "Coercive interrogation techniques that can be used with approval of the Defense Secretary." Another memo dated Jan. 4, 2004, written by the top legal adviser to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, and sent to military intelligence and police personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, is titled, "New plan to restrict Red Cross access to Abu Ghraib."

Honestly, guys. Don't you think this information needs to come out? Does knee-jerk party loyalty know no bounds? Guess not. Reason #555 Why The Republicans Need to Go Ass-Out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18abus.html

Just what is Putin playing at, anyway? (Emphasis mine)

ASTANA (Reuters) - Russia warned the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks that Iraq's Saddam Hussein planned to hit targets on U.S. soil, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

Putin's remarks looked certain to help President Bush, but officials at the State Department expressed bafflement, saying they knew of no such information from Russia.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5460304

"If people see nothing wrong with doing what was done at Abu Ghraib, then we need to have that debate. And that debate should be public, in front of the world. If the Bush administration wants to defend torture in an election campaign, it can go right ahead. But it has no right to change the rules of U.S. military conduct in secret, through a series of memos and improvisation, and then, when the evidence emerges, pretend it was all concocted by a handful of thugs." So says Andrew Sullivan today.

And a Fox News website columnist says Fahrenheit 9/11 "turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail."

Next up: hell freezes over while monkeys fly out of my hoo-hah... has the world gone mad?

This was what the front page of Google News looked like at 2:45 p.m. or thereabouts today. Note the first two top stories.

Maybe, just maybe, this is a topic Bush and his buddy Karl Rove want to stay away from right now.

(The relevant stories, in case you have trouble with the image, are Bush Touts Afghanistan as Model for Iraq, from Reuters, followed by Senior Afghan official shot dead, from BBC News.)

Yet another lesson on why deregulation was a Really. Bad. Idea.

In the same conversation, Matt and Tom discuss their hope that then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush will win the 2000 presidential election because he opposes price caps.

MATT: When this election comes, Bush'll [expletive] whack that [expletive], man. He won't [expletive] play this price cap. ... I bet they impose a national price cap at a thousand dollars.

-- -- --

Matt and Tom also describe their dislike of President Bill Clinton's energy secretary, Bill Richardson, as well as rumors that Enron's chairman and chief executive officer, Kenneth Lay, will be Bush's pick for the same job.

MATT: Tell you what -- you heard this here first: When Bush wins --

TOM: Caps are gone.

MATT: That [expletive] Bill Richardson, he's [expletive] gone. ...

TOM: Yeah.

MATT: And who's the biggest, ah, single contributor to the Bush campaigners?

TOM: You.

MATT: Enron.

TOM: Enron. What?

MATT: Enron.

TOM: Is it Enron?

MATT: Yeah.

TOM: The biggest single contributor.

MATT: Yeah, the biggest corporate contributor to the --

TOM: Holy -- really? That's huge.

MATT: And No. 1.

TOM: That's huge.

MATT: Ken Lay's going to be secretary of energy.

Would  this be another example of "changing the tone"?

"I will take all the blame. I oversaw those decisions and I accepted them and I approved them."

You think President Bush said that? Ha!!!

At least remember his Presidency accurately.

Read Sleepwalking Through History by Haynes Johnson.

That is all.

(No it's not. What she said.)

For a long time, I've had a news feed on my site from Moreover.com, so I could have news headlines from Iraq. Well, they started inserting adds in the feed, which I can understand; after all, it's a free service. However, when they start inserting ads for the Republican party in at the top, and don't mark them as ads, they get flushed. Buh-bye.

A family friend's daughter got an invitation to the White House to attend a reception in honor of a filmmaker who had made a documentary about September 11. At this event, President Bush was heard to refer to Yassar Arafat as "that big asshole" and Kim Jong Il as "that little asshole". This is not at an intimate private gathering, mind you.

When the conservatives get nostalgic for Reagan, is this the kind of thing that makes them long for the old days?

From Newsday's website:

Paintings of President Bush and ex-President Clinton, accompanied by alarming messages, mysteriously appeared last week on the walls of two major city museums and reportedly at two other museums, in Philadelphia and Washington.

Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said Wednesday that a cartoon-type painting of Bush against a background of shredded dollar bills was found hanging Saturday on the wall near an exit in the museum's Modern Art galleries.

"The Metropolitan is a repository for the greatest works of human creativity over the last 5,000 years," Holzer said. "It is not a bulletin board. For us it is clearly an unwelcome demonstration of self-aggrandizement."

There was also a label: the media used were "acrylic, legal tender and the artist's semen." Ewwww.

As my family says, "It's art."

The mailroom manager at my work just forwarded the staff a notice he received from the postal service informing everybody that they will be closed for business Friday (though Express Mail service will inexplicably be available)

As I just commented to Michael, "all I'm gonna say is...

"THEY'D BETTER DO THIS FOR CLINTON WHEN HE KAKS!"

("Don't count on it." he replied.

"And don't expect it for Kerry either.")

At least where health care is concerned.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. hospitals owned by investors with the aim of making money are less cost-efficient than nonprofits, Canadian researchers said on Monday.

And experts who wrote a commentary on the study said converting all investor-owned hospitals to nonprofit status could have saved $6 billion in 2001.

and

Devereaux and colleagues earlier showed that for-profit hospitals had higher death rates.

"The reality is that for-profits face significant economic challenges. The first is they have to generate revenues that will satisfy shareholders," Devereaux said.

"Second, they have high executive bonuses. Thirdly, they are very top-heavy and have high administrative costs. Also, they have to pay taxes. That is a lot of extra money that they have to come up with," Devereaux added.

"Instead of finding new efficiencies, folks were cutting corners in quality health care, and also people were having to pay more for care."

The Reuters article notes that "the report, published in Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, adds fuel to the debate over whether health care should follow a business model."

I imagine the debate going something like this:

Experts: "Privitizing health care won't save any money. In fact, we found it costs more, and the quality of health care declines."

Privitization zealots: "No, that's not true. That's just socialist propaganda. The market is more efficient than Big Government. So there!"

Experts: "But we have a study right here, and several reports back up our findings."

P.Z.: (sticks fingers in ears) "Lah lah lah lah lah, WE CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

Etc.

Anyway, you can find the relevant articles in the medical journal here and here.

"The Republicans were so desperate to escape Roger DeBris, the cross-dressing buffoon concocted by Mel Brooks, that they have gone and picked two shows set in France," says Frank Rich, according to this article.

Heh, too bad, they're going to miss some of the best plays in years!

There's a great view from the office here (not my office, my boss's). But our usual seagoing fare consists of ferries and container ships, with the occasionally sailboat thrown in. You don't often see a cruiseship, let alone a brand-new one. Actually, this one isn't exactly new; it's been redone and reflagged. I'm not completely sure, but I think I sailed on it in Hawaii when it was the Norwegian Star. Now it's the Pride of Aloha. And... er... that's about it. Procrastinating and wishing I was on a boat!

I grew up in Berkeley in the 70s and 80s, which should tell you everything you need to know about my feelings about the Reagan presidency. (If you need more details, you should know that many of us at Berkeley High donned black armbands in a gesture of protest when he got reelected in 1984.)

But put that aside. This picture of Nancy Reagan broke my heart. There's clearly grief at losing her husband of 52 years, and just as clearly, the exhaustion of caring for him during the last decade when he succumbed to Alzheimer's. Living to 93 isn't worth anything if you aren't even you anymore.

Like I said, heartbreaking. I hope she gets some peace.

...Texas GOP, apparently.

"These are not the words of sane people. This is not "reform," this is not "common sense," and this is not "restraining government growth." This is plain and simple madness and the people behind it have real influence." Read it.

A while back, I saw and commented upon a disagreeable anti-Palestinian piece. Well, here's the flipside: a posting on SFIndymedia which thankfully has slipped off the front page (did someone get wise?)

It's a shame. There's a real case to be made about what's wrong with Israel's current policies and direction. There's a real case to be made that they need regime change like we do. There's a real case to be made that the actions against the Palestinians have caused much death and misery without making Israelis any safer.

This ain't it.

The image to the right is a rather blurry photo of the pendant I made for my mother in this jewelry class I've been taking. It's made of silver... specifically, a silver clay that you can work like any kind of clay, and then when it's fired, it shrinks, the non-silver material burns away, and you've got shiny stuff! Great class.

Yes, he knows how to work the media, yes, he can take cheap shots, yes, he can exaggerate, yes, he's not a subtle thinker...

But the hell with all that. I can't wait to see the new Michael Moore movie. It looks awesome, and it will skewer the Bushies mightily. (I'm sorry, you use a line like "some call you the elite, I call you my base" or "the haves, and the have-mores" at a fundraiser in front of a friggin' camera, you deserve what you get.)

Andrew Sullivan today takes time out from his busy writing schedule to wag a finger at those Bush-hating liberals. "The Bush-haters are beginning to make Clinton-haters look subtle," he solemnly declares (actually, I have no way of knowing if he's being solemn or not, but let's just say that he is.)  

Click on the link, and you are taken to a Flash movie — you've seen a million of 'em. You know the drill. Solemn music in the background, a pan-and-scan shot of President Bush in front of an American flag, an earnest male voice reciting the myriad shortcomings and misdeeds of the President... who is deeply guilty of being an "ass-faced fuckhead"!?! The ending tagline: "Don't be an asshole. VOTE DEMOCRATIC IN 2004."

Oh, and notice the URL: http://www.blackstarsblog.com/bushin41point2.swf. The name of the Flash file is a takeoff on the "Bush in 30 Seconds" Moveon.org contest. In short, it's a friggin' joke! Yes, it's by Liberal Oasis, but come on, can't Andrew recognize liberals making fun of themselves?

Now go get back to saying the Iraq war isn't so bad. (And writing your excellent justifications for same-sex marriage — now there's a subject we can agree on, at least!)

Updated to add: Oh, hell. How can I stay annoyed at the man who also shares with us the Exorcist bunny movie and points out Bush's hypocrisy.

Those lovely Enron folks...

"Do you know when you started overscheduling load and making buckets of money on that?"

and these charmers...

In one transcript a trader asks about "all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers of California."

The Enron trader responds, "Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to (expletive) vote on the butterfly ballot."

"Yeah, now she wants her (expletive) money back for all the power you've charged right up - jammed right up her (expletive) for (expletive) 250 dollars a megawatt hour," the first trader says.

I hope they go to prison. I hope somebody makes them their (expletive) in prison. (Stealing from California customers is bad enough, but confusing California with Florida?)

From Capitol Hill Blue:

Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq.

Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

So while Bush is flying/bussing around the country and telling everyone what a great job he's doing and how he's helping make the economy better or the pie higher, his administration is also making plans to cut spending in 2006. And it's going to hurt.

The programs facing reductions -- should President Bush be re-elected in November -- would also include the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.

Leaked documents first reported by the Washington Post show

--domestic security at the Homeland Security Department and other agencies would go from $30.6 billion in 2005 to $29.6 billion in 2006, a 3 percent drop.

--the Education Department would go from $57.3 billion in 2005 to $55.9 billion in 2006, 2.4 percent less.

--the Veterans Affairs Department would fall 3.4 percent from $29.7 billion in 2005 to $28.7 billion.

--the Environmental Protection Agency would drop from $7.8 billion in 2005 to $7.6 billion, or 2.6 percent.

--the National Institutes of Health, which finances biomedical research and had its budget doubled over a recent five-year period, would fall from $28.6 billion to $28 billion, or 2.1 percent.

--the Interior Department would fall 1.9 percent from $10.8 billion in 2005 to $10.6 billion.

--the Defense Department would grow 5.2 percent to $422.7 billion in 2006, and the Justice Department would increase 4.3 percent to $19.5 billion in 2006.

The story also says

Many of the targeted programs are widely popular. Cuts could carry a political price for a president who has touted his support for schools, the environment and other domestic initiatives.

Oh, and by the way, the source of this particular story is the Fox News website. Yes, Fox News. You know Bush is in real trouble when Fox starts reporting this stuff.

As I think I've mentioned before, every now and again I get an urge to listen to some silly pop song from long ago (meaning, "before the Internet"), and I try to track down the thing. Today it was "Got to Get" by Rob n' Raz, featuring a rapper named Leila K., a song which was on the radio a lot when I was in Leicester in 1990. Don't ask.

Anyway, turns out that if I'm a freak (and I strongly suspect that I am), at least I'm not the only one. A community radio station in Minneapolis offers RealAudio archives from  the aptly named Crap from the Past show, and looky here! They played it. And! They've got the Ace of Bass song "The Sign"... in Russian! And! a bunch of Abba (dubbed "The god-awful medley of the week"). Ooh! And! "The Cars with the Boom!" by L'Trimm!

I tell you, it's bad pop paradise!

Jane's Intelligence Digest says that Al Qaeda may be stronger now than it was in 2001, that it's been recruiting lots of people, and that there's a possibility that it will attempt an attack using weapons of mass destruction.

John Kerry gave a speech today outlining a plan to prevent terrorists getting their hands on nuclear materials.

Oh, and what's President Bush doing today? Giving a speech to these guys. Faith-based defense, anybody?