April 2005 Archives

From Mark Morford's column today.

A music video that renders me simply speechless.

Click, and be afraid... be very afraid!

So, in Bush's "new plan" for Social Security, anybody making over $20,000 would see their payments cut in future years.

When I was in my 20s, I made about $20,000 a year. $22,500, in fact. My parents were helping me, rent was cheaper, and I wasn't spending that much money... and I was still pretty much living from paycheck to paycheck. And I'm sure $20,000 buys less now.

Just what planet does this president "fella" live on, anyway? I'll buy a one-way ticket to send him home. 

From a friend today:

Subject: paranoia

read this:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/
environment/earth_energy.html

and then:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/
04/29/politics/29nasa.html

...?

The first story is about how there's yet more incontrovertible proof that humans are changing the climate. The second is about how the Bush administration is trying to change the subject by cutting funding for NASA to study the earth.

Paranoia is a fairly responsible response at this point, as would be the desire to go find a high cool place to build a one-room shack...

Blarg!

While tongues have been wagging about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes nuzzling and kissing all over Rome, new speculation on marriage is already getting ink only weeks after the two began dating. People.com reports that the relationship might be a fantasy come true for the 26-year-old actress. Holmes once told Seventeen: "I think every little girl dreams about (her wedding). I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise."

Gack!

What seems more shocking than the age difference is the virginity issue. Ananova.com reports that Holmes, who has been dubbed Hollywood's 'mild child', has said that she's actually saving herself for Mr. Right and there'll be no sex before marriage. Sorry Tom.

Not half as sorry I am that I've read this.

Bring me a bucket!

 I know I shouldn't gloat. California is in really serious trouble, and our Governator didn't do it himself  — it took the work of many many people to get us into this horrible situation. (Including we homeowners who are unwilling to give up our precious low property taxes.)

But this guy came galumping in with serious 'tude and arrogance. He appeared to be unwilling to work with people (who weren't Enron top management, anyway) and kept stomping around California mouthing platitudes about "the people" and "action, action, action."

And he says seriously dumb things, like the latest approving comments about the Minutemen.  

So I can't help feeling a certain twinge of glee as the rest of California catches on to what a bozo the guy is. 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap28
apr28,1,513809.column?ctrack=1&cset=true

After Reneging on His Promise to Schools, Schwarzenegger's Marks Slip

George Skelton
Capitol Journal

April 28, 2005

What started out as mere scuff marks on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's battle armor has worsened into damaging corrosion.

The scuff marks were reported here three months ago, based on a statewide poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. It showed that Schwarzenegger still was popular — 60% approved of his job performance, only 33% disapproved — but Democrats were starting to sour on him. They particularly objected to his education policies.

Since then, the governor's overall approval rating has been falling in all public polls.

Now a new survey by the policy institute finds, for the first time, that significantly more people disapprove of Schwarzenegger's job performance than approve of it: 40% approve, 50% disapprove. Even among likely voters, who tend to be more conservative than the overall population, just 45% approve and 47% disapprove.

The poll points to a key reason for Schwarzenegger's slippage: Those education scuff marks have corroded his popularity.

He still gets roughly the same bad marks on education that he got in January: Only 28% approve of the way he is handling K-12 schools; 51% disapprove. But, unlike before, the ed ratings are substantially affecting his overall grade. Of those who flunk his school performance, 79% also disapprove of his overall job-handling. In January, only 51% did.

Several years ago, my dad gave me a copy of an old letter. It was
from my great-uncle Adrien, sent to my dad's cousin Bob, who was doing
a high-school project on his family tree. I never met Adrien, but
he was a real character with
an offbeat sense of humor. Despite having never finished high school,
he was also an excellent writer (not to mention all the things he did
during his lifetime... but that's another story for another day.)

A few years ago, I met a distant relative online, while we were
both looking for information on Adrian. He was a nephew by marriage,
and had very fond memories of the man, mainly from a visit to San
Francisco to stay with Adrien and his wife during the "Summer of
Love"
in 1967.  I promised this relative that I would dig up the letter
and send him a copy.

Well, I'm not a very good correspondent, and
the distant relative and I are no longer in touch... but I've finally
found the letter again! This time, I'm taking no chances. I'm putting
it online!

May 3, 1962

Dear Bob:

I have your note inquiring about our family's background. Complete information would require more time and research than I can spare. Here are a few highlights that come to my mind:

I'm not much on geanealogy, so I can't get far behind my grandparents to describe our family tree. Besides, it would look like something between a Mexican cactus and a poison oak bush. Personally, I consider the line of ascent much more important than that of descent.

Derivation of the name "Falk": It is only in recent centuries that any but the upper classes were permitted to use family names. When that came about, it was customary to take names from one's occupation, from the neighborhood, from physical characteristics, etc. Falk, a common northern European name, is one of the many corruptions of "falcon", a hawk, and probably was taken from the shape of one's schnozzle.

My father, Jerome Falk, came to California right after the Franco-Prussian war because he didn't want to become a German subject. His mother died in middle age: his father, a distinguished looking man, survived her many years. He was a livestock dealer and trader. Dad left behind his youngest brother and three sisters named Palymere, Valerie and Coralie (their names as French as boulanger); their descendents still live in France and Switzerland. His oldest brother had precded him to California nad a younger one came later. Both engaged in general merchandizing in interior towns; their descendants still live in these parts. Your dad should be able to fill in on these details.

Dad came to San Francisco and lived here until his death at the age of 56. He was an expert in fancy imported groceries and a particularly fine judge of wine and liquors. He married my mother, Jennie Lindheimer, and they begot four children -- your grandfather, Emile, the author of this article and Aunts Sadie and Florine. Dad was a sweet, gentle man who had everybody's respect and love. He was a devoted husband and father.

Now the Lindheimers: My maternal grandfather, Meier Lindheimer, was born in Franfort-on-Main in 1829. I only know one thing about his forebears, viz., in the museum at Frankfort there was displayed prior to World War II (it may still be there) the first financial document of record involving the famous House of Rothschild. It was a promissory note, whereby Meyer Rothschild, founder of the famous clan, promised to pay one Meier Lindheimer (my grandfather's grandfather) the sum of one thousand thaler. There is no evidence that note ever was paid; if collectible I would undoubtedly be the richest man in the world (including, of course, compound interest). Long ago I thought of bringing suit, but as the lawyer I consulted required a down payment of $15. I was obliged to abandon the project.

Grandpa Lindheimer was an advenrurer. He ran away from home at the age of 13; shipped as cabin boy on a German sailing ship. He deserted it at Baltimore; found his way to New York and apprenticed to a bootmaker. Later he met my grandmother there (she came over as a child with her parents). Her maiden name was Helena Maier. Her family came from a small town on the Rhine (Kundesblum...probably spelled incorrectly).

Shortly after gold was discovered, my grandparents came to California via the Isthmus of Panama. They shipped from New York to what is now Colon; carried their meager belongings to the Pacific side. It was a long walk, for the straighter, modern Panama Canal is now 50 miles long. They reembarked on another vessel on the Pacific side and came to San Francisco. Grandpa opened a bootmaking shop, making boots for the miners for $75. a pair, gold dust. He did alright but he hated the work -- it was too confining. He wanted action. So he joined the San Francisco police force (he was its 13th man) and served as a peace officer for 45 years, dying at 93.

He was a big, vigorous man with a hasty temper and a heavy hand.. but he did have the biggest heart of any man I ever knew. Money, to him, was just a commodity to be disposed of; he never refused to help anyone in need, even down to his last dollar. He financed meals and  board for more down-an-outers and ex-cons that the National Probation Society does to-day. I believe he had more friends from every walk of life than anyone in San Francisco.

He was a great story teller and would regale his friends with his endless experiences, rarely repeating himself. Like all good tellers of  tales, he drew a long bow; but his actual adventures really were unlimited. Like many early Californians he was a prime whisky drinker, but I have never seen him under the influence. He just could take it.

He had a married sister in San Francisco with a large family. One of his brothers was a successful wholesaler in New York; another even more successful in Chicago. Both had large families.

When grandpa came to judgement, I'm certain his limitless acts of kindess, charity and helpfulness far outweighed his many human failings. He had a good balance to his credit.

My maternal grandmother was a real housefrau. She lived entirely for her family. There were three sons and four daughters; all sons and one daughter died early in life, victims of the many epidemics that swept San Francisco in early days. My mother and the two remaining sisters lived to ripe age; all raised families in San Francisco.

Grandma was scrupously honest; she spent sparingly and abhored the very thought of owing anyone anything. Her single vice was buying lottery tickets in the hope that some day she would hit the jackpot and thus provide the security her husband's extravagances denied. She never cashed in more than $5. She died aged 83.

Grandma had three sisters who lived in San Francisco with their families. One with her husband (they were prosperous) once owned and ran the famous "What Cheer House", a hostelry of Gold Rush days. They acquired it several decades later. Another of the sisters married a rascal. He was treasurer of one of the frontier counties of Nevada, and one day he disappeared with the treasury (reputed $80,000) and beat it for parts unknown. Unfortunately, the lynching party that pursued him was a little late.

My mother was a doll. She was keenly intelligent and had an ever-present sparkling sense of humor. She ran the home and ran it well; loved my father dearly and did her share to outride their many visissitudes. She reared her children carefully -- never harshly but through love and respect. Such virtues as we may possess -- such degrees of sound character, integrity and regard for our fellow are due largely to her teaching and example.

That's the story. No doubt your mother will post you on her fmaily tree and I hope for the sake of color and balance it also discloses an occasional horse thief or the like.

Speaking of horses: my father who loved them taught me to drive almost as soon as I was able to walk. There were no automobiles in those days and horse stealing was a rarity, so we heard much less of juvenile delinquincy. While I drove on every occasion, I could'nt afford to buy or keep a horse until much later in life. But one day I lent my entire savings, $20., to a friend who owned a racehorse who never came in the money. Nevertheless, the horse had to eat and my friend didn't have the wherewithal. When I told my father about my investment, he shook his head doefully and gave to me this sage advice (it was not original) which I pass on to you: "Never lend money on anything that eats".

I hope this will help with your essay. If not, I'll dig further in the archives and endeavor to produce some more exciting characters.

Best wishes.

Uncle Adrien

Also attached to the letter was this very silly little note from 1947,
when Bob was born.

January twenty-third
1 9 4 7

Dear Ann and Ralph:

We received the official notice of the arrival and naming of Ronald Allan Falk. It sounds euphoneous and aristocratic, and I hope he will grow up to all its implications.

You appear to have gone in for quite a series of alliteration, viz., Ralph Alfred Falk, Robert Adrien Falk, and Ronald Allan Falk.

No doubt you will want to perpetuate the custom and, as it must be quite a strain to whip a name with such limitations into shape in a moment of crisis, I offer the following for future use:

    Royal Airforce Falk
    Royal Academician Falk
    Rollo Acheela Falk
    Rosher Aguinaldo Falk
    Rutzer Aqueduct Falk
    Raoul Aschleck Falk

As a further thought, if a new arrival should run to overweight and give indication of either histrionic or sexual impulses, you might name him Roscoe Arbuckle Falk. I haven't mentioned girls because you seem to lean in the opposite direction. However, there is always a chance that a girl may appear on the scene, and in such an emergency I offer:

    Rosie Apple Falk
    Rifka Apoopa Falk

This ought to keep you  busy for awhile, so with best wishes for the health and happiness of your entire family, I am

As ever,

Uncle Adrien

"Rutzer Aqueduct" has got a nice ring to it, no? 

The new head of PBS sounds like he doesn't wear a helmet when he's on his motorcycle:

What PBS shows do you like?

I'm not much of a TV consumer. I like ''Masterpiece Theater'' and some of the ''Frontline'' shows. I like ''Antiques Roadshow'' and ''Nova.'' I don't know. What's your favorite show?

And if you gave money to Kerry, you can take your technological expertise and shove it!

The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations. But for this week's meeting in Guatemala City, politics has barged onto the agenda. At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry's 2004 campaign.

The State Department has traditionally put together a list of industry representatives for these meetings, and anyone in the U.S. telecom industry who had the requisite expertise and wanted to go was generally given a slot, say past participants. Only after the start of Bush's second term did a political litmus test emerge, industry sources say.

I love the Bush administration's explanation...

"We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and--call us nutty--it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that," says White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

 Um... earth to W-worshippers? The representatives' job is to represent the United States positively and to advocate for American interests. Something that can't be done if the best and brightest in the high-tech industry aren't allowed to come to the table.

The Bush adminstration!= America. 

 Typical dumbass-ness.

This is just beyond the pale. I don't think "traitor" is too strong of a word.

 WASHINGTON — Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.

 An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.

 The discussion took place during a Washington conference last month that included addresses by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who discussed efforts to bring a more conservative cast to the courts.

 Frist and DeLay have not publicly endorsed the evangelical groups' proposed actions. But the taped discussion among evangelical leaders provides a glimpse of the road map they are drafting as they work with congressional Republicans to achieve a judiciary that sides with them on abortion, same-sex marriage and other elements of their agenda.

 "There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, according to an audiotape of a March 17 session. The tape was provided to The Times by the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

 DeLay has spoken generally about one of the ideas the leaders discussed in greater detail: using legislative tactics to withhold money from courts.

 "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said at an April 13 question-and-answer session with reporters.

 The leaders present at the March conference, including Perkins and James C. Dobson, founder of the influential group Focus on the Family, have been working with Frist to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations, a legislative tool that has allowed Senate Democrats to stall 10 of President Bush's nominations. Frist is scheduled to appear, via a taped statement, during a satellite broadcast to churches nationwide Sunday that the Family Research Council has organized to build support for the Bush nominees.

 The March conference featuring Dobson and Perkins showed that the evangelical leaders, in addition to working to place conservative nominees on the bench, have been trying to find ways to remove certain judges.

 Perkins said that he had attended a meeting with congressional leaders a week earlier where the strategy of stripping funding from certain courts was "prominently" discussed. "What they're thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and re-creating them the next day but also defunding them," Perkins said.

 He said that instead of undertaking the long process of trying to impeach judges, Congress could use its appropriations authority to "just take away the bench, all of his staff, and he's just sitting out there with nothing to do."

 These curbs on courts are "on the radar screen, especially of conservatives here in Congress," he said.

 Dobson, who emerged last year as one of the evangelical movement's most important political leaders, named one potential target: the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read the whole dang thing...

Also, I was somewhat amused by this:

 Dobson said the beating he took in the media, coming after his appearance on the cover of newsmagazines hailing his prominence in Bush's reelection, proved that the press will only seek to tear him down.

 "This will not be the last thing that you read about that makes me look ridiculous," he said.

Yep, I'd be laughing my fool head off if I wasn't scared to death of this man. 

Bush: You will take my big hard John Bolton and you will like it!

"I welcome you to the nation's capital, where sometimes politics gets in the way of doing the people's business," Mr. Bush said early on. "Take John Bolton, the good man I nominated to represent our country at the United Nations.

"John's distinguished career in service to our nation demonstrates that he is the right man at the right time for this important assignment. I urge the Senate to put aside politics and confirm John Bolton to the United Nations."

I think Bush's definitions of "good man," "distinguished" and are just a teensy little bit different from the way most of us think of it...  and we do know that his understanding of the word "career" is not that of most mortals.

John Bolton should not only not be UN ambassador, he should not be allowed to deal with humans in any capacity whatsoever ever ever ever.

Within hours of sending a letter to US AID officials outlining my concerns, I met John Bolton, whom the prime contractor hired as legal counsel to represent them to US AID. And, so, within hours of dispatching that letter, my hell began.

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

Read the whole thing

So President Bush has an iPod. The White House claims that he has an assistant download all the tracks onto it for him, with the implication that he is too busy and important (or incompetent) to do it himself.

I think there's another explanation.

Consider the exponential growth in the deficit over the last few years.

Consider the exponential growth in track sales at the iTunes music store.

Draw your own conclusions.

By the way, here is a marvelous analysis of Bush's musical tastes. (He likes the Thrills too? Oh no!) 

 
Why is one hand hovering over his crotch? Why is the other hand levitating so high?

Why does Sharon look so nervous?

Mysteries abound...

James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, sez:

I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South and they did great wrong to civil rights to and to morality and now we have black-robed men.

Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were not reported at this juncture to have jumped up and yelled, "Yo! What are we, chopped liver?" but one can imagine it. (The latter would, I'm sure, particularly be thrilled to be lumped in with the KKK.)

Why is this guy a best-selling author/GOP guru again? 

Meet the people who make The Handmaid's Tale look tame. 

Meet the Dominionists -- biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government. As the far-right wing of the evangelical movement, Dominionists are pressing an agenda that makes Newt Gingrich's Contract With America look like the Communist Manifesto. They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation's courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions. In Florida, when the courts ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, it was the Dominionists who organized round-the-clock protests and issued a fiery call for Gov. Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody. Their ultimate goal is to plant the seeds of a "faith-based" government that will endure far longer than Bush's presidency -- all the way until Jesus comes back.

They say stuff like this:

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost," Kennedy says. "As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

 

Just got back from seeing Sin City. Did not enjoy the experience. Oh, the cast was fine, the lighting excellent, the special effects very special, but it all felt like a hollow exercise in I'm-not-sure-what, and was really disgustingly violent, to boot. I'm not familiar with the graphic novels that the movie was based on... I suspect it's just as well. Yuck.

Poor Ahnold. Not having a good week, then?

• Practically chased out of San Francisco by protesters
• Forced to back down on his pension privitization scheme
• Plummeting popularity

No wonder he didn't show up at Bayer this morning! 

Man, I hope none of my college professors ever dislike me this much...

Of course, I don't intend to fc@k up the country either. But then, I was never in business school and I'm no Dubya...

Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.

In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.

Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.

Read the whole thing

Oh, and this is the professor's web page

Zogby is a polling company. They have many customers in the government, the private sector, etc. They'll do polls commissioned by liberals, conservatives, whoever. But who designs the questions themselves? I'd assumed that Zogby wrote them, but now I'm not sure what else to think after seeing this press release about a poll on the Terri Schiavo case.

A poll completed after the controversial death of Terri Schiavo finds that eight-in-ten (80%) likely voters say that a disabled person who is not terminally ill or in a coma, and not being kept alive by life support should not, in the absence of a written directive to the contrary, be denied food and water.  By a three-to-one (44% to 14%) margin, likely voters say that, when there is conflicting evidence on the wishes of a patient, elected officials should order that a feeding tube remain in place.  The survey, conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the Christian Defense Coalition, was conducted March 30 to April 2, 2005 and has a margin of error of +/-3.2 percentage points.

The same poll also finds a majority (56%) agree that Schiavo’s husband Michael should have turned guardianship for the severely-disabled woman over to her parents based on his decision to have a long-term serious relationship with another woman.  By a two-to-one (44% to 24%) margin, with one-in-three (32%) undecided, the survey finds that an incapacitated person should be presumed to want to live in the absence of written instructions such as a “living will".

So that's the summary. What did the questions say?

And here's where it gets really interesting...

If this was a court and not a poll, lawyers would be jumping up and screaming "Objection! Leading the witness!" and the (activist, no doubt) judge would bang his gavel and agree. 

The first two questions aren't even related, but they trigger a feeling of righteous outrage, don't they? Of course minorities' civil rights should be protected!  

The third question is whether Michael Schiavo should have turned custody of his wife over to her parents given the fact that he... no, not that he didn't take care of her, or abused her, but that he got together with someone else and had kids with them! That pushes another button right there for most of us.

The pump having been primed, so to speak, the poll next asks if there should be exceptions to the right of the spouse to make all those heavy decisions for their incapacitated spouse. "Well, if he's been violating her civil rights and cheating on her, hell yeah!" is a very understandable reaction at this point.

Make careful note of that word "incapacitated"... because it's the last time you're going to see it in this poll. Wave goodbye.

The new term of choice is "disabled."

Should the federal government intervene when "disabled people are denied food and water by"... here comes the bad guy "... a state court judge's order?"

Should the representative branch of "governments" (is this like "internets"? intervene when that horrible judicial branch "appears to deny basic rights to the disabled?" 

Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear or read "disabled," I picture someone in a wheelchair. Maybe even someone who is quadraplegic. Or someone who is developmentally disabled. I suspect this is true for most people. The term implies a human being with some of their abilities curtailed or missing, but still someone with their personhood intact.

So when we hear "disabled," most of us sure as hell don't picture someone whose cerebral cortex has been replaced by spinal fluid. Who doesn't have any brainwaves. Yes, technically that state is not "brain-dead" because there is still the brain stem, which controls breathing and reflex and response to some stimuli. But it basically is the living death of the self. There is no there there. But oops, that poll somehow forgot to mention that part.

So if that poll had included an accurate description of Terri Schiavo, and maybe some more background information on the Schiavo family then just those snippy little bits, I wonder if the answers would have been different? I'm guessing the answer is yes.

But that's what you get when you let your client write the questions. I'm pretty sure they did, anyway. Oh, and the client? The Christian Defense Coalition. 

Sadly, the damage is being done. Conservative write Debra Saunders is already all over the story, gleefully citing the poll in today's column. 

If anyone is still interested in this sad story or really understanding what a persistant vegetative state is and how it differs from a coma... and from normal consciousness, I'd like to point them towards this interesting article in the New York Times on April 5. It will probably go away soon (or at least not be free anymore) so here's the key bits:

As in sleep, people in comas may move or make sounds and typically have no memory of either. But they almost always emerge from this state in two to three weeks, doctors say, when the eyes open spontaneously. What follows is critical for the person's recovery.

Those who are lucky, or who have less severe injuries, gradually awaken. "The first thing I remember was telling my ex-boyfriend, who was at the foot of the bed, to shut up," said Trisha Meili, who fell into a coma after being beaten and raped in 1990, and wrote about the experience in the book, "I Am the Central Park Jogger."

In the days after this memory, Ms. Meili said, she slipped in and out of conscious awareness, "as if my body was taking care of the most important things first, and leaving my moment to moment awareness for last."

In fact, researchers say, this is precisely what happens. The primitive brain stem, which controls sleep-wake cycles as well as reflexes, asserts itself first, as the eyes open. Ideally, areas of the cerebral cortex, the seat of conscious thought, soon follow, like lights flicking on in the upper rooms of a darkened house.

But in some cases - Ms. Schiavo's was one of them - the cortical areas fail to engage, and the patient's prognosis becomes dire.

Neurologists were all but unanimous in diagnosing the condition of Ms. Schiavo, whose heart stopped temporarily in 1990, depriving her brain of oxygen. Brain cells and neural connections wither and die without oxygen, like marine life in a drained lake, leaving virtually nothing unharmed.

People with these kinds of injuries - Nancy Cruzan, whose case reached the Supreme Court in 1990 is an example - almost always remain unresponsive if they have not regained awareness in the first months after the injury.

In medical terms, they become persistently vegetative, a diagnosis first described in 1972 by Dr. Fred Plum of Cornell University and Dr. Bryan Jennett, a neurosurgeon at Glasgow University in Scotland. In a sense, the description of the diagnosis began the modern study of disorders of consciousness. "Before 1972 people talked about permanent comas, or irrecoverable comas, but we defined a different state altogether, with the eyes open, some reflex activity, but no sign of meaningful psychological responsiveness," Dr. Jennett, now a professor emeritus, said in an interview.

In an exhaustive review of the medical histories of more than 700 persistently vegetative patients, a team of doctors in 1994 reported that about 15 percent of those who suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation, like Ms. Schiavo, recovered some awareness within three months. After that, however, very few recovered and none did so after two years.

About 52 percent of people with traumatic wounds to the head, often from car accidents, recovered some awareness in the first year after the injury, the study found; very few recovered after that. "It's the difference between taking a blow to the brain, which affects a local area - and taking this global, whole-brain hit," said Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of the medical ethics division of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.

Yes, some people do get better. But...

Dr. Joseph Giacino, a neuropsychologist at the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., has been following a group of brain-damaged patients with both oxygen-deprivation and traumatic injuries, and finds that the group with traumatic injuries - if they become minimally conscious - are far more likely to show signs of recovery than the others. "There is a real separation between these patients and the others in terms of improvement in the first year," Dr. Giacino said.

Ms. Schiavo showed no evidence of having ever entered a minimally conscious state, either in the early 90's or later, neurologists say. An EEG of her cerebral cortex showed almost no electrical activity, said a neurologist who examined her, and a dozen experts interviewed about her case agreed that an M.R.I. scan would have added no information.

So there you go. She was in a persistant vegetative state, with no minimal consciousness. That's not just disability, that's nothingness.

This poll is brain-dead.

Anyway, the complete press release from Zogby is below the cut... 

Hey, if they want me to use their phone lines to advance my shameful liberal agenda, cool!!!

Special Alert: Call Your Senators Toll-Free Wednesday And Thursday

Dear XXX,

 The most important vote in Congress this session will be coming up soon.  The Senate will vote to both abide by the Constitution and require a simple majority to end a filibuster, or to require 60 votes to end a filibuster as liberals desire.

Call your Senators today.  Tell them you want them to vote to end a filibuster by a simple majority as the Constitution requires.  Should the Senate fail to conform to the Constitution's rule of a simple majority, a minority of 40 liberal Senators can use the filibuster to force their agenda on every American.

Get your friends to call.

The toll-free number is 1-866-808-0065.  Ask to speak with your Senator.  When finished leaving your message, call your other Senator.

Here is the agenda the liberals want to achieve.  They want Senators to filibuster any judicial nominee who will not support this agenda.
    1.      Approval of homosexual marriage
    2.      Legalizing euthanasia
    3.      Banning prayer in school
    4.      Banning the public display of the Ten Commandments
    5.      Banning the Pledge of Allegiance
    6.      Basing our laws on the laws of other nations
    7.      Maintaining abortion on demand
    8.      Forcing the Boy Scouts and similar organizations (including churches) to place homosexuals in positions of leadership
    9.      Complete protection for all kinds of pornography
    10.      Creating hate crimes laws to punish those who believe homosexuality is wrong
    11.      Denigrating Christianity to a secondary status
    12.      Making secularism the only legitimate religion

Call today!  Get others to call! The toll-free number is 1-866-808-0065. 

Sincerely,

Don

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

 P.S. Please forward this email to family and friends.

You know what to do. Get to it.

(And if for some horrible reason, these freaks do get their way, it will be amusing to see them begging people to call to reinstate the filibuster, when Democrats have the majority again in a few years...) 

I've been following this online comics contest called StripFight. Every week, the organizers throw down a challenge: draw a comic in one week on a particular theme. This week's topic: "Starting over."

The results are often mixed. So what would you expect with so little time to put a storyline and artwork together? However, this week I was really touched and impressed by one entry in particular. Maybe it was the deceptively simple artwork and the nice colors. Maybe it was the near-absence of dialogue. Maybe it's just because I'm a sucker for cute cats. Anyway, check it out... 

Edited to add: yikes, just scrolled down to the bottom and noticed an utterly chilling piece about the tsunami... 

Paul Krugman poses the question, and answers it...

and somehow resists saying in so many words, "Because today's conservatives are a bunch of bass-ackwards morons who don't want to bother learning any actual facts or trouble themselves with new ideas... and want the rest of us to be stupid too." Or rather, he says it much more tactfully than I.

Then there's this gem:

Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on "leftists" struggling against "mainstream society," professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche." His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.

Hmm! Maybe it's all just a brilliant, sinister plot to make liberals think tort reform is a good idea!

From Jon Carroll's column today:

The doctrine of separation of church and state was originally instituted to protect the church, or churches. The original tourists of the Northeast had come from a Europe that had been divided for a hundred years by an appalling series of state-sponsored religious wars, pogroms, slaughters, torture festivals, stake-burnings and mass banishments.

It is a little ironic that the phrase "whatever happened to the separation of church and state" is now being uttered, not by persecuted ecclesiastics, but by angry citizens, believers and nonbelievers both, who had assumed that the government would not suddenly become the mighty fist of the evangelical Christian movement.

Of course it hasn't, not yet. But a lot of powerful people have indicated that they wouldn't mind if it did.

From AFA this week:

Meet At City Hall Scheduled For May 5

Dear XXX,

 I invite you to participate in the 20th annual Meet At City Hall that will be held on the National Day Of Prayer, May 5, from 12:20 pm to 12:40 pm.  At thousands of city halls across the country, individuals will gather to pray for a moral rebirth in our country.

Your participation in Meet At City Hall is very simple.  Simply show up at your local city hall at 12:20 pm on May 5.   There will be others present.  Spend the 20 minutes in prayer.

If you want to help promote Meet At City Hall, we suggest you invite members of your Sunday School class or church to join together and organize, as you desire.  You can invite some public officials, local pastors, church choirs, etc. to participate.  The amount of organization and promotion is entirely up to you.

We highly recommend that you order Max Lucado's new book Turn, which has been selected as the Official 2005 National Day of Prayer book.  In it, Lucado issues a clarion call to Christians to return to the Source of our personal and national blessings. This book is especially timely in the light of recent events—the tsunami, the Terri Schiavo case and the passing of Pope John Paul II, a devout advocate for life and decency.

To order Turn, click here.

For more information about the National Day Of Prayer, we suggest you visit their web site at NationalDayOfPrayer.org.  Shirley Dobson, wife of Dr. James Dobson, is the National President of the National Day Of Prayer.

Can I just note that this is the first time AFA has even bothered mentioning the tsunami?

Yeah, I'm praying for a moral rebirth in this country too.

Well! How do you like that? I tried using the "Save for later" feature on Emusic to bookmark a band I wanted to download next time my downloads refresh, and got the error message that you can only have 100 items or less in the list! Feh.

So for my own reference, here's what I need to remember...

1. The Moonbabies, The Orange Billboard
   
2. Women's World Voices 2
3. Best of Colourbox: 1982-1987
4. Cocteau Twins, BC Sessions (Disc 1)
5. The Decembrists, Picaresque
6. Jim Boggia, Fidelity Is The Enemy
7. Robin Hitchcock, Spooked

From the New York Times

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon - which has long underwritten open-ended "blue sky" research by the nation's best computer scientists - is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a more immediate payoff.

Hundreds of research projects supported by the agency, known as Darpa, have paid off handsomely in recent decades, leading not only to new weapons, but to commercial technologies from the personal computer to the Internet. The agency has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to basic software research, too, including work that led to such recent advances as the Web search technologies that Google and others have introduced.

The shift away from basic research is alarming many leading computer scientists and electrical engineers, who warn that there will be long-term consequences for the nation's economy. They are accusing the Pentagon of reining in an agency that has played a crucial role in fostering America's lead in computer and communications technologies.

"I'm worried and depressed," said David Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who is president of the Association of Computing Machinery, an industry and academic trade group. "I think there will be great technologies that won't be there down the road when we need them."

University researchers, usually reluctant to speak out, have started quietly challenging the agency's new approach. They assert that Darpa has shifted a lot more work in recent years to military contractors, adopted a focus on short-term projects while cutting support for basic research, classified formerly open projects as secret and placed new restrictions on sharing information.

This week, in responding to a query from the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Darpa officials acknowledged for the first time a shift in focus. They revealed that within a relatively steady budget for computer science research that rose slightly from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million last year, the portion going to university researchers has fallen from $214 million to $123 million.

The agency cited a number of reasons for the decline: increased reliance on corporate research; a need for more classified projects since 9/11; Congress's decision to end controversial projects like Total Information Awareness because of privacy fears; and the shift of some basic research to advanced weapons systems development.

This is all, of course, totally consistent with the Bush administration's MO. They believe so strongly that nothing good comes from the government that they are determined to make that true in every respect. Who cares if it means cutting programs that actually work, that provided the basis for so many technology companies to take off? Who cares if that means that our kids get terrible educations and can't become scientists or engineers? Who cares if that means that all the innovation gets done overseas? Who cares if that means that we concentrate all our research efforts on things like missile defense shields that are never going to work in the real world?

I hope someday an administration with some connection to reality restores funding... but I won't hold my breath. And it's not like the Bush administration will ever have to pay a price for this. 

Michael woke me up at two in the morning last night saying, "Is the heater on?" It was, and it had heated the house to a warm 73 degrees.

We never set the thermostat that high. At most, we turn it up to 66-68 on a really cold night, and usually prefer to sleep with it down around 61. And it certainly never got that cold yesterday.

So we got up, and turned it off.

Nothing. It kept going. Now it was 75 degrees. And getting warmer by the minute.

Michael took the batteries out of it, waited until the control panel screen went blank, and put them back in.  The heater shut off.

"Now can we go back to bed?" he asked. "It's turned off now."

I went into the bathroom. While I was there, I heard the familiar sound of the furnace humming, as it was getting ready to turn the vents back on.

"It's about to turn back on!" I yelled.

"What?"

"The furnace is on again. It's going to start blowing hot air again in a minute!"

And so it did. Now it was approaching the high 70s.

Michael suggested I find the owner's manuals, and I did. They provided a complicated-looking set of instructions for how to turn off the furnace. There's a gas connection to shut off, a switch to flip, and a door to remove. The diagrams (there were two of them) showed arrows pointing every which way.

I found a flashlight and went to investigate the bowels of our house. We don't have a basement, just a crawlspace with a dirt floor. The heater is on the far side of the space, requiring the visitor to wriggle across the dirt on hands and knees. Oh, and there are spiderwebs, of course.

I got about halfway and panicked. I couldn't figure out where the switch was or how to turn off the gas without turning it off to the whole house (bye-bye cooking or showering). I'm not good at opening doors on things like this. I tried looking at the circuit breakers in the front of the house and none of them said "heater". Not surprising, since the heater had been installed since I moved in.

At 2:30 in the morning, we decided to make phone calls.

First, Michael tried the service number listed on the inside of the control panel.

He got an answering machine.

Then I decided it was time to share our pain with our friends.

I got two answering machines. I left panicky messages on both of them. Two minutes later, Lesley called me back, sounding (understandably) sleepy. "Steve's on his way over." 

The temperature in the house was now 81 degrees.

Steve showed up and I escorted him to the side of the house. He wriggled into the crawlspace, then made his way across to the heater.

The door would not come off.

He asked for the manuals. Apparently screwdrivers were needed.

He came back towards the front, reached up...

...and flicked a switch. The furnace immediately shut down.

"Well, that was the switch. The furnace cuts off the gas automatically when it loses power," he said.

Michael came running out. "Something happened! The heater stopped!" We enthusiastically thanked Steve, and are going to have to do something really nice for him to make up for the lost sleep.

We went back in and sat around for half an hour until the temperature dropped to the mid-70s, and then were able to go back to sleep. 

So it appears that our heater is possessed. Or perhaps our house is. Is it something we said? Did we hurt its feelings because we're moving?

Does anyone have an old priest and a young priest we could borrow? 

Maybe something will actually happen now...

UN votes to refer Darfur suspects to international court

[World News] United Nations, April 1 : The UN Security Council has voted to refer alleged perpetrators of war crimes in Sudan's conflict-ridden Darfur region to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Xinhua reported.

After lengthy negotiations until late Thursday, the 15-nation council passed the resolution, tabled by Britain, with an 11-0 vote. China, the US, Brazil and Algeria abstained.

Under the resolution, war crimes and crimes against humanity taking place in Darfur since July 2002 will be dealt with by the ICC, which will begin investigation or prosecution only one year after the adoption of the resolution.

The US, a strong opponent of the ICC, objected to the crimes in Darfur being referred to the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands. Instead, it proposed setting up a new court to try Darfur suspects.

But the U.S. did not succeed in its blocking attempts.

The court is the first permanent tribunal that has the right to try suspects of war crimes and crimes against humanity when a government is unable or unwilling to do so.

It's still going to be another year... sigh

This made me laugh out loud. A little geeky information-management humor... 

Journal of Knowledge Research
Volume 42, 2005, Pages 12-37
        
Copyright © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

INFORMATION DOES NOT EXIST

Jack Napier1, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, Seto Kaiba2 and Yuffie Kisaragi2

1James T. Smith Library, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York 11210, United States
2Kyuzo Institute, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan

Available online 1 April 2005.

Abstract

We proffer an epistemological, ontological, and ecumenical analysis of the informatics zeitgeist surrounding librarians and so-called information scientists. A fuzzy systems tautomerism and transformative hermeneutic lexiae with stemming metadata shows that behind an axiometric normalization of mutually reinforcing moieties, institutionalized metaphors, and naïve liturgical dogmas lies nothing more than gormandized aphorisms and pseudoscientific quanta. This endemic helix permeates the koans of nacirema determinates and quidditative paradigms alike. The operationalized gestalt is collapsed, as with its photonic counterpart, via an interaction among the cromulent a priori of epiphenomenal knowledge management and the parsimonious lorem ipsum of atomistic artificial intelligence and its ilk. Neither the nascent yet positivist hyperliteracy movement nor the transactive pedagogical convergence of jingoistic multiliteracies possess the constituent wherewithal for explicating the existence of information per se or affirming the verstehende of contemporary librarianship; you can't eat your cake and have it too. Ramifications for string theory and consciousness studies are also addressed.