Read That

Flipboard for iPad

2010-08-27T22:23:00.001-07:00

via flipboard.com

Social media benefits from a fortuitous combination of software, services, and gadgets.

Flipboard Flud Google Reader RSS

Trapped Miners in Chile

2010-08-27T04:31:00.001-07:00

via cnn.com

Let's say a prayer for the miners!

People and Terminology - The Redheaded Skeptic

2010-08-25T22:46:00.001-07:00

via redheadedskeptic.com

Quote: John Lithgow: Time sneaks up on... - The Quotations Page

2010-08-25T22:32:00.001-07:00

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.

John Lithgow

via quotationspage.com

Time I am, and I have come to engage all men...
- Sri Krishna (Bhagavad-gita)

Super Cheap Nanotech "Tea Bag" Cleans Water Instantly (Video) : TreeHugger

2010-08-24T15:31:00.001-07:00

via treehugger.com

Beauty Meets Brute Force

2010-08-22T05:48:00.001-07:00

via cdn.wn.com

Tough love

Thomas Beek has forwarded a page to you from Common Craft

2010-08-21T16:37:00.001-07:00

Thomas Beek thought you would like to see this page from the Common Craft web site.

Message from Sender:

Augmented Reality - coming soon to a conscious experience near you.

Augmented Reality - Explained by Common Craft
by leelefever

Click here to read more on our site

My First Blog Post

2010-08-21T16:16:00.001-07:00

Hello Posterous.

Hello

2010-08-21T15:50:00.001-07:00

Quotes of the Day

2010-08-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
- Peter De Vries
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
- Evan Esar
For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.
- Gloria Borger
Image via Wikipedia

The 99 Best Business Books – The Personal MBA - The Personal MBA

2010-07-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

The 99 Best Business Books – The Personal MBA - The Personal MBA

The Singularity is Near

2010-07-04T13:59:00.001-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Go
to Singularity The Movie webpage

Singularity Summit | Summit 2010 > Reading List

2010-06-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

The Singularity Summit 2010 > Reading List

5 Intro Books

Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
Eric Drexler
Global Catastrophic Risks
Sir Martin Rees, Nick Bostrom, Milan Cirkovic
Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future
Gregory Stock
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
Ray Kurzweil
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind
Gary Marcus

10 Intro Publications

Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence
Nick Bostrom
What is Nanotechnology?
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time
Ben Goertzel
Special Report: The Singularity
IEEE Spectrum
Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
Bill Joy
Why Work Toward the Singularity?
Singularity Institute
The Basic AI Drives
Steve Omohundro
The Conversational Interface
John Smart
The Coming Technological Singularity
Vernor Vinge
AI as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk
Eliezer Yudkowsky

Lawmaker Loopholes?

2010-06-16T15:10:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.factcheck.org

Lawmaker Loopholes?

Q: Is Congress exempt from "many" laws including one against sexual harassment?

A: No. The latest e-mail rant against Congress — proposing a "28th Amendment" to the Constitution — is full of false and outdated claims.

FULL QUESTION

A chain e-mail (copy below) claims members of Congress can retire after one term with their same pay and, while serving, pay no Social Security and exempt themselves from some laws, e.g., sexual harassment and health care legislation. A 28th Amendment to the Constitution is proposed barring Congress from enacting laws applying to its members and not equally to the "citizens of the United States."

Are the facts right?

FULL ANSWER

That’s a lot of very old baloney packed into a few words.

Lawmaker Loopholes?

2010-06-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

Lawmaker Loopholes?

Q: Is Congress exempt from "many" laws including one against sexual harassment?

A: No. The latest e-mail rant against Congress — proposing a "28th Amendment" to the Constitution — is full of false and outdated claims.

FULL QUESTION

A chain e-mail (copy below) claims members of Congress can retire after one term with their same pay and, while serving, pay no Social Security and exempt themselves from some laws, e.g., sexual harassment and health care legislation. A 28th Amendment to the Constitution is proposed barring Congress from enacting laws applying to its members and not equally to the "citizens of the United States."

Are the facts right?

Subject: An idea whose time has come

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that Congressmembers could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn’t pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered…in all of its’ forms.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏

Somehow, that doesn’t seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don’t care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ".

Each person contact a minimum of Twenty people on their Address list, in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

Then in three days, all people in The United States of America will have the Message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

FULL ANSWER

That’s a lot of very old baloney packed into a few words.

It never has been true that members of Congress could retire with full pay after one term. That’s a false allegation that has been circulating for at least a decade. As we reported back in 2007, lawmakers can qualify for very good pensions, but nowhere near that good. A lawmaker might qualify for a pension of 80 percent of final salary, and only after many years of service.

An even older Internet myth is the claim that members of Congress don’t pay into Social Security. That was true once — but not for the past quarter-century. They have paid Social Security taxes since 1984, as we reported in a separate article, also in 2007.

The claim that members of Congress would be somehow "exempt" from the now-stalled health care legislation is a more recent absurdity. It’s a twisted claim based on misrepresentations of the House and Senate bills, neither of which exempts lawmakers. We explained how that false notion got started on the Internet rumor mill in an article we posted on Jan. 20.

Finally, the claim that Congress is exempt from "many" of the laws it has passed is 15 years out of date. In the 1980s there were news stories prodding members of Congress for putting themselves "[a]bove their own laws," as a 1988 Time magazine story put it. But following the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, which put Republicans in control of both House and Senate, Congress passed the Congressional Accountability Act (PL 104-1), which applies a dozen civil rights, labor and workplace safety regulations to the legislative branch. Here’s a list compiled by the independent, nonpartisan Office of Compliance, which was set up to enforce the laws in Congress:

Laws Applied to the Legislative Branch by the CAA

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967

The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute

Veterans’ employment and reemployment rights at Chapter 43 of Title 38 of the U.S. Code

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993

Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1989

In addition, the CAA was amended in 1998 to include certain provisions of the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998.

According to the Office of Compliance — and contrary to the claim in this e-mail — sexual harassment is specifically covered by Section 201 of the CAA.

The e-mail complains that Congress shouldn’t be an "elite that is above the law." But that’s not the way the authors of the Constitution saw it. They worried that presidents might try to bully House or Senate members by threatening to arrest them on trumped-up charges. So to preserve the separation of executive and legislative powers, the founders gave elected lawmakers a certain degree of immunity.

U.S. Constitution
Article I, Section 6

They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

There very well may be good reasons for ratifying an amendment to the Constitution as proposed in this message. We take no position on that. But as a matter of fact, just about all the claims this message makes in support of the idea are false.

-Brooks Jackson

Sources

Jackson, Brooks. "Does a United States senator receive his full pay upon retiring?" FactCheck.org. 26 Dec 2007.

Jackson, Brooks. "Do members of Congress pay Social Security taxes?" FactCheck.org. 17 Dec 2007.

Robertson, Lori. "Congress Exempt from Health Bill?" FactCheck.org. 20 Jan 2010.

Cramer, Jerome. "Above Their Own Laws." Time. 23 May 1988.

Congressional Accountability Act of 1995. (PL 104-1) 2 U.S.C 1301 et seq., as amended.

"Office of Compliance Media Fact Sheet." Office of Compliance undated, accessed 29 Jan 2010.

Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 6.

Posted by Brooks Jackson on Friday, January 29, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Filed under Ask FactCheck · Tagged with

Depression Linked with Belly Fat | Psych Central News

2010-06-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Depression Linked with Belly Fat | Psych Central News: "Depression Linked with Belly Fat"

CHICAGO, April 29 (UPI) -- Depression is linked to the accumulation of belly fat, the kind of fat packed between internal organs at the waistline, U.S. researchers said.

Belly fat, also known as visceral fat, has long been known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Amazon Builds Kindle Revolution with Guerilla Tactics vs. Conventional Warfare by Publishers and Competitors

2010-06-03T09:20:00.001-07:00

clipped from kindlehomepage.blogspot.com

There is a revolution taking place in what and how we read. Although it has been fired by movements and changes in technology that have been gathering for decades, it began in earnest on November 19, 2007 with the release of the Kindle. It might therefore be natural to think that this is a revolution about gadgets and technology, and which ebook reader or convergence device will win, but that would seriously miss the point.

In the long run, this revolution will be about what we read, our right of access to what we read, and the right of authors to connect with readers.

Green Lamp Pictures

2010-05-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Green Lamp Pictures

Milk

2010-05-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

The Truth about Dairy

According to Dr. Willett, who has done many studies and reviewed the research on this topic, there are many reasons to pass up milk, including:

1. Milk doesn't reduce fractures.(i) Contrary to popular belief, eating dairy products has never been shown to reduce fracture risk. In fact, according to the Nurses' Health Study dairy may increase risk of fractures by 50 percent!

2. Less dairy, better bones. Countries with lowest rates of dairy and calcium consumption (like those in Africa and Asia) have the lowest rates of osteoporosis.

3. Calcium isn't as bone-protective as we thought.(ii) Studies of calcium supplementation have shown no benefit in reducing fracture risk. Vitamin D appears to be much more important than calcium in preventing fractures.

4. Calcium may raise cancer risk. Research shows that higher intakes of both calcium and dairy products may increase a man's risk of prostate cancer by 30 to 50 percent.(iii) Plus, dairy consumption increases the body's level of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) -- a known cancer promoter.

5. Calcium has benefits that dairy doesn't. Calcium supplements, but not dairy products, may reduce the risk of colon cancer.(iv)

6. Not everyone can stomach dairy.(v) About 75 percent of the world's population is genetically unable to properly digest milk and other dairy products -- a problem called lactose intolerance.

Based on such findings, Dr. Willet has come to some important conclusions:

• Everybody needs calcium -- but probably not as much as our government's recommended daily allowance (RDA) and calcium from diet, including greens and beans is better utilized by the body with less risk than calcium supplements.

• Calcium probably doesn't prevent broken bones. Few people in this country are likely to reduce their fracture risk by getting more calcium.

• Men may not want to take calcium supplements. Supplements of calcium and vitamin D may be reasonable for women.

• Dairy may be unhealthy. Advocating dairy consumption may have negative effects on health.
If all that isn't enough to swear you off milk, there are a few other scientific findings worth noting. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently asked the UDSA to look into the scientific basis of the claims made in the "milk mustache" ads. Their panel of scientists stated the truth clearly:

• Milk doesn't benefit sports performance.

• There's no evidence that dairy is good for your bones or prevents osteoporosis -- in fact, the animal protein it contains may help cause bone loss!

• Dairy is linked to prostate cancer.

• It's full of saturated fat and is linked to heart disease.

• Dairy causes digestive problems for the 75 percent of people with lactose intolerance.

• Dairy aggravates irritable bowel syndrome.

Simply put, the FTC asked the dairy industry, "Got Proof?" -- and the answer was NO!

Plus, dairy may contribute to even more health problems, like:

• Allergies (vi)
• Sinus problems
• Ear infections
• Type 1 diabetes (vii)
• Chronic constipation (viii)
• Anemia (in children)

Due to these concerns, many have begun to consider raw milk an alternative. But that isn't really a healthy form of dairy either ...

Yes, raw, whole, organic milk eliminates concerns like pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and the effects of homogenization and pasteurization -- but to me, these benefits don't outweigh dairy's potential risks.
From an evolutionary point of view, milk is a strange food for humans. Until 10,000 years ago we didn't domesticate animals and weren't able to drink milk (unless some brave hunter-gather milked a wild tiger or buffalo!).

If you don't believe that, consider this: The majority of humans naturally stop producing significant amounts of lactase - the enzyme needed to properly metabolize lactose, the sugar in milk -- sometime between the ages of two and five. In fact, for most mammals, the normal condition is to stop producing the enzymes needed to properly digest and metabolize milk after they have been weaned.

Our bodies just weren't made to digest milk on a regular basis. Instead, most scientists agree that it's better for us to get calcium, potassium, protein, and fats from other food sources, like whole plant foods -- vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and seaweed.

So here is my advice for dealing with dairy.

6 Tips for Dealing with Dairy

• Take your Cow for a Walk. It will do you much more good than drinking milk.

• Don't rely on dairy for healthy bones. If you want healthy bones, get plenty of exercise and supplement with 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily.

• Get your calcium from food. These include dark green leafy vegetables, sesame tahini, sea vegetables, and sardines or salmon with the bones.

• Try giving up all dairy. That means eliminate milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream for two weeks and see if you feel better. You should notice improvements with your sinuses, post-nasal drip, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, energy, and weight. Then start eating dairy again and see how you feel. If you feel worse, you should try to give it up for life.

• If you can tolerate dairy, use only raw, organic dairy products. I suggest focusing on fermented products like unsweetened yogurt and kefir, occasionally.

• If you have to feed your child formula from milk, don't worry. The milk in infant formula is hydrolyzed or broken down and easier to digest (although it can still cause allergies). Once your child is a year old, switch him or her to real food and almond milk.

Still got milk? I hope not! Remember, dairy is not crucial for good health. I encourage you to go dairy-free and see what it does for you.

--
tombeek@gmail.com
Video Call: http://www.tokbox.com/ThomasBeek
Twitter: @thomasbeek
Blog: http://techparade.blogspot.com

Semper Fi!

2010-05-06T14:03:00.001-07:00

Conversation overheard on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai . It's too good not to pass along. (Arthur Lipper)

The conversation went like this...

Iranian Air Defense Radar: 'Unknown aircraft you are in Iranian airspace. Identify yourself.'

Aircraft: 'This is a United States aircraft. I am in Iraqi airspace.'

Air Defense Radar: 'You are in Iranian airspace. If you do not depart our airspace we will launch interceptor aircraft!'

Aircraft: 'This is a United States Marine Corps FA-18 fighter fully armed .. Send 'em up, I'll wait!'

Air Defense Radar: (no response ..... total silence)

Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

2010-04-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

A sheen washed ashore on the Louisiana coastline last night, the Associated Press reported. Oil may hit Mississippi tomorrow, Alabama in two days and Florida in three, according to a government forecast.

2leep.com: Connecting Bloggers

2010-04-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

2leep.com: Connecting Bloggers

Viewpoints: 'Zero fees' could hurt neediest students - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee

2010-02-19T17:30:00.003-08:00

Viewpoints: 'Zero fees' could hurt neediest students - Sacramento Opinion - Sacramento Editorial | Sacramento Bee

Posted using ShareThis

THE FIVE MINUTE MANAGEMENT COURSE - Some valuable lessons

2010-02-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

PONDER THESE:

Lesson 1:
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, 'I'll give you $800 to drop that towel.' After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, 'Who was that?' 'It was Bob the next door neighbor,' she replies. 'Great,' the husband says, 'did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?'
Moral of the story: If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

Lesson 2:
A priest offered a Nun a lift. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg. The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg. The nun said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129' The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129' The priest apologized 'Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.' Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, 'Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.'
Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

Lesson 3:
A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.' 'Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk 'I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.' Puff! She's gone. 'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep. 'I want to be in Hawaii , relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.' Puff! He's gone. 'OK, you're up,' the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, 'I want those two back in the office after lunch'
Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 4
An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, 'Can I also sit like you and do nothing?' The eagle answered: 'Sure, why not.' So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of asudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Lesson 5
A turkey was chatting with a bull. 'I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree' sighed the turkey, 'but I haven't got the energy.' 'Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?' replied the bull. They're packed with nutrients.' The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree. He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.
Moral of the story: Bull Shit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there..

Lesson 6
A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the birdfroze and fell to the ground into a large field. While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.
Morals of the story: (1) Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy. (2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend. (3) And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!

THUS ENDS THE FIVE MINUTE MANAGEMENT COURSE

Oops! - Autism Findings Retracted

2010-02-06T18:28:00.001-08:00

"Autism Findings Retracted"

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/health-care/2894-autism-findings-retracted

Writers

2010-01-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.
- Daphne du Maurier

Who Really Cut Off Van Gogh's Ear?

2010-01-15T14:53:00.000-08:00

Laura Veirs

2010-01-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

Dr. Temple Grandin: The Way I See It

2010-01-15T11:26:00.000-08:00

The Way I See It:A Personal Look atAutism and Asperger's

Oldest Human Footprints Discovered

2010-01-08T20:45:00.001-08:00

http://edition.cnn.com/video/world/2010/01/07/durgahee.uk.fish.footsteps.cnn.640x480.jpg

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/01/07/tetrapods.poland.evolution.discovery/

Blessed are the tempeh and tofu...

2010-01-08T16:32:00.001-08:00

A Vegan Pope? It's Not as Far-Fetched as it First Sounds

Image (c) Digital Vision/Getty Images

This is not just wishful thinking. After all, back in 2002, when Pope Benedict XVI was still known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was asked the following question: "Are we allowed to make use of animals, and even to eat them?" His reply:

"That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures. Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible."--

--
By Mickey Z.
Astoria, NY, USA | Fri Dec 25, 2009 11:35 AM ET

2010-01-08T14:12:00.001-08:00

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
- Stephen King

Interviews with People at the Top of their Field

2009-12-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

Problems viewing this email? View it in your browser.

Catch the latest Digg Dialogg videos

Director Peter Jackson & NFL star Adrian Peterson answer your questions!

Whether you're interested in films or football – or hopefully for this month, both – Digg Dialogg gives you access to some of the world's most interesting people. And this month, we're bringing you exclusive interviews with two guys at the top of their game.

We sat down with Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson & Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson and they tackled your top questions.


After you watch the videos – or heck, before – we'd love it if you'd take a quick (6 question) survey on Digg Dialogg. We're constantly trying to improve the program and interview people you'd most like to hear from, so your feedback is incredibly helpful. Take 2 Minutes to Help Improve Digg Dialogg You can also send any feedback you have about Dialogg directly to dialogg@digg.com Thanks, The Digg Team

What's a
Digg Dialogg?

You submit and vote on the questions you want to see answered. The most popular ones are asked during the video interview. It's like having an all-access pass to some of the most prominent people in the world!

Check out previous
Digg Dialoggs:

HAWK
Oct 27, 2009

Watch the Dialogg

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Sep 11, 2009

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May 27, 2009

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GORE
Nov 6, 2008

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Home page of the Meteor Shower Flux Estimator (FLUXTIMATOR)

2009-11-16T23:30:00.000-08:00

Calculate the meteor shower activity at your site

Speech is conveniently located...

2009-11-15T06:40:00.000-08:00

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
John Andrew Holmes, " Wisdom in Small Doses"

About E-Readers

2009-11-02T15:52:00.000-08:00

Since I got my Kindle I am reading far more, and reading a far more diverse selection of books than ever before. So if you are concerned with getting more people reading, then e-books are a great technology. I am not against regular books, though I do wish their paper came from hemp, or recycled rags, and not trees. But that aside, I love books. My problem with books is that I love them more than my physical abilities will permit their indulgence; I have a bad back, and so the number of books on my Kindle - now over 114 - would be impossible if they were in their traditional paper format.

The recent news about WalMart's plans to slash prices on books affects only a few titles, and not ones that I have any interest in reading, like Sara Palin's memoir, so this appears to be an attempt to drive traffic to their new website more than a serious threat for traditional publishing to sweat about.

Puny Jokes

2009-10-26T14:07:00.001-07:00

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was -- -- Sir
Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island -- -- but it
turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

3. She was only a whiskey maker -- -- but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class -- --
because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder -- -- and got a little
behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, -- -- it'll still be
stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road -- -- and was cited for
littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France -- -- would result in
Linoleum Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race -- -- they ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow -- -- fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall -- -- the police are
looking into it.

12. Atheism --- is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway -- -- One hat
said to the other, 'You stay here, I'll go on a head.'

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger -- -- then, it
hit me

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab centre said -- -- ˜Keep off the
Grass."

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital --
-- his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No
change yet.'

17. A chicken crossing the road -- -- is poultry in motion.

18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison -- -- was a small
medium at large.

19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray -- -- is now
a seasoned veteran.

20. A backward poet -- -- writes inverse.

21. In democracy, it's your vote that counts. -- -- in feudalism, it's
your count that votes.

22. When cannibals ate a missionary -- -- they got a taste of
religion.

23. Don't join dangerous cults -- -- practice safe sects!

Barak Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

The Norwegian Nobel Committee

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'

Oslo, October 9, 2009

Analysis: What they saw during the Gates arrest

2009-07-26T15:18:00.001-07:00

By JESSE WASHINGTON (AP) – 1 hour ago

Henry Louis Gates Jr. felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he looked across the threshold of his home at Sgt. James Crowley. Looking back at Gates, Crowley worried about making it home safely to his wife and three children.

Fear was the only thing the white police officer and black scholar had in common. Soon their many differences would collide, exploding into a colossal misunderstanding.

How could things go so wrong? How could two by all accounts decent men start a fire that drew comparisons to the O.J. Simpson case and knocked President Barack Obama off his racial tightrope?

Part of the answer lies in the truth seen through each man's eyes during the episode, which ended with one of the most influential men in America charged with disorderly conduct.

If this really is to become a "teachable moment," as Obama hopes, then we have to examine what they saw, according to their public statements — and why they saw it that way.

___

It's early afternoon on Ware Street in Cambridge, Mass., a few blocks from the campus of Harvard University. Gates and his car service driver, a large black man, are trying to force open Gates' jammed front door. Lucia Whalen, a 40-year-old white woman who works up the street at the Harvard alumni magazine, is passing by and calls 911.

According to Crowley's police report, he arrived to find Whalen standing on the sidewalk in front of the home. She told Crowley that "she observed what appeared to be two black men with backpacks on the porch ... her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door," the report says.

No one is blaming Whalen, who has not spoken publicly since the story broke.

"It wasn't her fault," Gates said.

We don't know how she sees the world, what types of experiences color her vision.

But had she shared just one or two different details with Crowley — or if the sergeant had gleaned something else from their conversation — things might have happened differently.

Gates, 58 and gray-haired, says he was dressed in a blazer and walking with a cane. He says his driver was wearing a black suit jacket and matching pants. After they forced open the door, Gates says, the driver carried Gates' luggage into the house, then drove off in the vehicle.

None of that was on Crowley's mind when he walked up the steps to Gates home.

"Witnesses are inherently reliable," he said later. "She told me what she saw."

___

Crowley is on the porch, alone; Gates is inside his home. They apparently notice each other through the front door window at about the same time.

Crowley sees the unknown: "I really wasn't sure exactly what I was dealing with," he said later.

The sergeant is 42, a decorated 11-year police veteran who grew up attending diverse public schools in Cambridge. All three of his brothers work in law enforcement. He's an instructor in a police academy class on how to avoid racial profiling.

He asks Gates to step outside.

"I was the only police officer standing there and I got a report that there was people breaking into a house. (The request) was for my safety, because first and foremost I have to go home at night, I have three beautiful children and a wife who depend on me," he said later.

"So I had no other motive other than to ensure my safety, because this gentleman either could have been one of the people breaking in, or he could have been the homeowner who was unaware that there were people in his house unauthorized. I just didn't know."

Gates, meanwhile, is a renowned scholar of black history who has spent most of his life literally cataloguing the sins of the past in volumes like "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience."

"I know every incident in the history of racism from slavery to Jim Crow segregation," he said recently.

He knows some of it firsthand. About 1989, hired by Stanley Fish to teach at Duke University in Durham, N.C., "one of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town," Fish wrote in a recent blog on The New York Times' Web site.

"During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house's owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake."

"The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?" Fish wrote.

So when Gates hears Crowley ask him to step outside, he sees history. How could he not?

"All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger," Gates said later. "And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, 'No, I will not.'"

___

Crowley asks Gates to prove he lives there.

Looking out his front door, Gates sees someone who should be asking, "Is everything all right, sir?" He sees someone who would not doubt that a 58-year-old, gray-haired Harvard professor lived in this home — if he were white.

Gates sees a racist.

Gates leaves the front door to get his identification. Crowley follows him inside. Gates says he provided a driver's license with the address of the home they were standing in; Crowley's police report only mentions a Harvard ID.

"Now it's clear that he had a narrative in his head," Gates said. "A black man was inside someone's house, probably a white person's house, and this black man had broken and entered, and this black man was me."

Gates demands that the sergeant provide HIS identification.

Crowley sees someone who should be grateful, but instead is yelling and falsely accusing him of being a racist. He sees a problem — "something you wouldn't expect from anybody that should be grateful that you're there investigating a report of a crime in progress," he said.

Neither man understood what the other one saw.

___

Gates continues to demand that Crowley provide his name and badge number.

Crowley said in his report that he had already told Gates his name, twice, but Gates was yelling too much to hear him. Gates said Crowley ignored his demands.

Gates doesn't let up. Crowley says he'll talk to Gates outside. Then he says something Crowley understands perfectly, boiling down his 2,095 pages of "Africana" down into one cry of resistance:

"I'll speak with your mama outside," he said, according to the police report.

Gates denies making the remark.

Should Gates have realized that you can't antagonize the police? Should Crowley have understood what it means to suspect a black man of breaking into his own home? Arguments will persist for years.

Once he recovered his balance, backing off his statement that Crowley acted "stupidly," he Obama assumed his traditional position of racial referee and said that both men overreacted.

"My hope," the first black president continued, "is that as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what's called a teachable moment, where all of us, instead of pumping up the volume, spend a little more time listening to each other ... and that instead of flinging accusations, we can all be a little more reflective in terms of what we can do to contribute to more unity."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press.

(This version CORRECTS Gates denies making remark about 'your mama.')

Quotes

2009-06-23T21:25:00.001-07:00

http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=http://www.quotationspage.com/data/qotd.rss&source=imag

Fred Sontag - In Memoriam

2009-06-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

FRED SONTAG
in memoriam

After over fifty-five years of teaching at the Pomona — the longest tenure of any faculty member in the College's history — Fred Sontag died on June 14, 2009 at the age of 84.

Fred touched countless students during his time in the Philosophy Department. He continued to be a devoted teacher, mentor, and researcher until his official retirement from the College, just one month before his death. The Department is saddened and diminshed by his loss. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

For more about Fred, including photos, articles, and tributes from his recent retirement, please see the College's memorial page.

Hacking While Drunk

2009-06-19T10:31:00.001-07:00

"How ethanol can make you a better programmer

Mon, 11 May 2009 22:00"

http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/hacking-while-drunk/#backfoot_3 or

http://snipurl.com/kgdx9

N. Korea warns of 'thousand-fold' military action - USATODAY.com

2009-06-17T10:26:00.001-07:00

N. Korea warns of 'thousand-fold' military action http://usat.me/?35374520

bada bing bada boom

2009-06-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

bada bing bada boom - Wiktionary

Interjection
bada bing bada boom
1. To express that a task was easily completed; simple to accomplish.
2. Used to euphemize what is said, sometimes to the extent that only the initiated will understand what is implied:
Ya know wee go n bada bing bada boom n we ah atta thereah .... day won't know what hit um!

Image via Wikipedia

Under capitalism, man exploits... - ...

2009-05-20T22:20:00.001-07:00

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
John Kenneth Galbraith
US (Canadian-born) administrator & economist (1908 - 2006)

Quote Details: John Kenneth Galbraith: Under capitalism, man exploits... - The Quotations Page (20 May 2009)

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/810.html

Mexico on path to decriminalize personal possession of drugs - Wikinews, the free news source

2009-05-04T14:36:00.001-07:00

Mexico on path to decriminalize personal possession of drugs - Wikinews, the free news source

Test your knowledge of the last week's news with Wikinews' World News Quiz.

Mexico on path to decriminalize personal possession of drugs

Amazon.com: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!: Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith: The Kindle Store

2009-04-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

Cover via Amazon

Amazon.com: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!: Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith: The Kindle Store

Favs

2009-04-10T23:18:00.001-07:00

"A Town Like Alice" was a great read. So was "On the Beach." Nevil Shute is a hidde gem for much of the English speaking world, even though he was Australian.

My two most memorable reads were "Watership Down" by Adams, and "Demian" by Hesse.

But, I'm on a roll, so here are some other books that I really enjoyed:
"The Mysterious Island" by Jules Verne
"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas (who was of African descent, by the way; not many people know that. So were Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Alexander Pushkin.)
"Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (super smart and funny)
"Franny and Zoey" by J. D. Salinger.
These last two are my all time favs.

Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy

2009-04-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy: "The Perennial Philosophy"

The Peekaboo Paradox - washingtonpost.com

2009-03-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Peekaboo Paradox - washingtonpost.com

The Peekaboo Paradox
The strange secrets of humor, fear and a guy who makes big money making little people laugh.

By Gene Weingarten
Sunday, January 22, 2006; W10

The Great Zucchini arrived early, as he is apt to do, and began to make demands, as is his custom. He was too warm, so he wanted the thermostat adjusted. It was. He declared the basement family room adequate for his needs, but there was a problem with the room next door. Something had to be done about it.

Canadian Concentration Camps

2009-03-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

Canadian Concentration Camps: "Unlike the Japanese Americans the Japanese Canadians were not allowed to join the military until after 1945. In spite of the incarceration, the Japanese Canadians volunteered to serve in the Canadian Armed Forces.

In 1945 the Canadian government extended the War Measures Act which allowed the MacKenzie King government to execute the 'final solution' which forced these Japanese Canadian citizens to repatriate to Japan (a country most of the Japanese Canadians had never been to before) or a forced a 'dispersal' to eastern or midwest Canada. Until 1949 it was illegal for the Japanese Canadians to return to Vancouver or western Canada, despite the end of the war.

For the Japanese Canadians there were no homes, farms, and other property left behind before internment. They were forced to start their lives over, with no economic resources, in an estranged and racially repressive environment of midwest and eastern Canada.

In 1988 redress for the Japanese Canadians was passed and the Prime Minister issued an apology for the miscarriage of justice that led to internment and incarceration. Yet the $21,000 of redress money hardly compensates for the lost years of incarceration, property confiscated, family separations and disruptions, and the invisible psychological scars and memories of racial injustices that remain."

That's All She Wrote

2009-03-19T06:57:00.000-07:00

I woke this morning with the question, where does the phrase, "That's all she wrote," come frome?

My first thought was my grandmother's answer to my question after reading Gone with the Wind.

An equally plausible explanation is that it arose from the war time letters to GI's from their girlfriends.

Bush's Signing Statements - Bending or Breaking the Law

2009-03-11T22:35:00.001-07:00

Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

''There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. ''This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.

Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department attorneys available to discuss any of Bush's challenges to the laws he has signed.

Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has ''been used for several administrations" and that ''the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution."

But the words ''in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Military link

Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass -- including the torture ban -- involve the military.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to create armies, to declare war, to make rules for captured enemies, and ''to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." But, citing his role as commander in chief, Bush says he can ignore any act of Congress that seeks to regulate the military.

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.

Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not ''lawfully collected," including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches.

Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program's existence was disclosed in December 2005.

On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.

In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. One provision made clear that military lawyers can give their commanders independent advice on such issues as what would constitute torture. But Bush declared that military lawyers could not contradict his administration's lawyers.

Other provisions required the Pentagon to retrain military prison guards on the requirements for humane treatment of detainees under the Geneva Conventions, to perform background checks on civilian contractors in Iraq, and to ban such contractors from performing ''security, intelligence, law enforcement, and criminal justice functions." Bush reserved the right to ignore any of the requirements.

The new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush wrote in his signing statement that the inspector ''shall refrain" from investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself.

Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq. The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to Congress without permission from the administration.

Oversight questioned

Many laws Bush has asserted he can bypass involve requirements to give information about government activity to congressional oversight committees.

In December 2004, Congress passed an intelligence bill requiring the Justice Department to tell them how often, and in what situations, the FBI was using special national security wiretaps on US soil. The law also required the Justice Department to give oversight committees copies of administration memos outlining any new interpretations of domestic-spying laws. And it contained 11 other requirements for reports about such issues as civil liberties, security clearances, border security, and counternarcotics efforts.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement saying he could withhold all the information sought by Congress.

Likewise, when Congress passed the law creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, it said oversight committees must be given information about vulnerabilities at chemical plants and the screening of checked bags at airports.

It also said Congress must be shown unaltered reports about problems with visa services prepared by a new immigration ombudsman. Bush asserted the right to withhold the information and alter the reports.

On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating ''whistle-blower" job protections for federal employees that would stop any attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about possible government wrongdoing.

When Congress passed a massive energy package in August, for example, it strengthened whistle-blower protections for employees at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The provision was included because lawmakers feared that Bush appointees were intimidating nuclear specialists so they would not testify about safety issues related to a planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada -- a facility the administration supported, but both Republicans and Democrats from Nevada opposed.

When Bush signed the energy bill, he issued a signing statement declaring that the executive branch could ignore the whistle-blower protections.

Bush's statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program, for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over ''the whole idea that there is a rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore.

''Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional," Golove said.

Defying Supreme Court

Bush has also challenged statutes in which Congress gave certain executive branch officials the power to act independently of the president. The Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed the power of Congress to make such arrangements. For example, the court has upheld laws creating special prosecutors free of Justice Department oversight and insulating the board of the Federal Trade Commission from political interference.

Nonetheless, Bush has said in his signing statements that the Constitution lets him control any executive official, no matter what a statute passed by Congress might say.

In November 2002, for example, Congress, seeking to generate independent statistics about student performance, passed a law setting up an educational research institute to conduct studies and publish reports ''without the approval" of the Secretary of Education. Bush, however, decreed that the institute's director would be ''subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education."

Similarly, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld affirmative-action programs, as long as they do not include quotas. Most recently, in 2003, the court upheld a race-conscious university admissions program over the strong objections of Bush, who argued that such programs should be struck down as unconstitutional.

Yet despite the court's rulings, Bush has taken exception at least nine times to provisions that seek to ensure that minorities are represented among recipients of government jobs, contracts, and grants. Each time, he singled out the provisions, declaring that he would construe them ''in a manner consistent with" the Constitution's guarantee of ''equal protection" to all -- which some legal scholars say amounts to an argument that the affirmative-action provisions represent reverse discrimination against whites.

Golove said that to the extent Bush is interpreting the Constitution in defiance of the Supreme Court's precedents, he threatens to ''overturn the existing structures of constitutional law."

A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him, Golove said, can make the Constitution simply ''disappear."

Common practice in '80s

Though Bush has gone further than any previous president, his actions are not unprecedented.

Since the early 19th century, American presidents have occasionally signed a large bill while declaring that they would not enforce a specific provision they believed was unconstitutional. On rare occasions, historians say, presidents also issued signing statements interpreting a law and explaining any concerns about it.

But it was not until the mid-1980s, midway through the tenure of President Reagan, that it became common for the president to issue signing statements. The change came about after then-Attorney General Edwin Meese decided that signing statements could be used to increase the power of the president.

When interpreting an ambiguous law, courts often look at the statute's legislative history, debate and testimony, to see what Congress intended it to mean. Meese realized that recording what the president thought the law meant in a signing statement might increase a president's influence over future court rulings.

Under Meese's direction in 1986, a young Justice Department lawyer named Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a strategy memo about signing statements. It came to light in late 2005, after Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court.

In the memo, Alito predicted that Congress would resent the president's attempt to grab some of its power by seizing ''the last word on questions of interpretation." He suggested that Reagan's legal team should ''concentrate on points of true ambiguity, rather than issuing interpretations that may seem to conflict with those of Congress."

Reagan's successors continued this practice. George H.W. Bush challenged 232 statutes over four years in office, and Bill Clinton objected to 140 laws over his eight years, according to Kelley, the Miami University of Ohio professor.

Many of the challenges involved longstanding legal ambiguities and points of conflict between the president and Congress.

Throughout the past two decades, for example, each president -- including the current one -- has objected to provisions requiring him to get permission from a congressional committee before taking action. The Supreme Court made clear in 1983 that only the full Congress can direct the executive branch to do things, but lawmakers have continued writing laws giving congressional committees such a role.

Still, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton used the presidential veto instead of the signing statement if they had a serious problem with a bill, giving Congress a chance to override their decisions.

But the current President Bush has abandoned the veto entirely, as well as any semblance of the political caution that Alito counseled back in 1986. In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto.

''What we haven't seen until this administration is the sheer number of objections that are being raised on every bill passed through the White House," said Kelley, who has studied presidential signing statements through history. ''That is what is staggering. The numbers are well out of the norm from any previous administration."

Exaggerated fears?

Some administration defenders say that concerns about Bush's signing statements are overblown. Bush's signing statements, they say, should be seen as little more than political chest-thumping by administration lawyers who are dedicated to protecting presidential prerogatives.

Defenders say the fact that Bush is reserving the right to disobey the laws does not necessarily mean he has gone on to disobey them.

Indeed, in some cases, the administration has ended up following laws that Bush said he could bypass. For example, citing his power to ''withhold information" in September 2002, Bush declared that he could ignore a law requiring the State Department to list the number of overseas deaths of US citizens in foreign countries. Nevertheless, the department has still put the list on its website.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who until last year oversaw the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for the administration, said the statements do not change the law; they just let people know how the president is interpreting it.

''Nobody reads them," said Goldsmith. ''They have no significance. Nothing in the world changes by the publication of a signing statement. The statements merely serve as public notice about how the administration is interpreting the law. Criticism of this practice is surprising, since the usual complaint is that the administration is too secretive in its legal interpretations."

But Cooper, the Portland State University professor who has studied Bush's first-term signing statements, said the documents are being read closely by one key group of people: the bureaucrats who are charged with implementing new laws.

Lower-level officials will follow the president's instructions even when his understanding of a law conflicts with the clear intent of Congress, crafting policies that may endure long after Bush leaves office, Cooper said.

''Years down the road, people will not understand why the policy doesn't look like the legislation," he said.

And in many cases, critics contend, there is no way to know whether the administration is violating laws -- or merely preserving the right to do so.

Many of the laws Bush has challenged involve national security, where it is almost impossible to verify what the government is doing. And since the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, many people have expressed alarm about his sweeping claims of the authority to violate laws.

In January, after the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could disobey the torture ban, three Republicans who were the bill's principal sponsors in the Senate -- John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia, and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina -- all publicly rebuked the president.

''We believe the president understands Congress's intent in passing, by very large majorities, legislation governing the treatment of detainees," McCain and Warner said in a joint statement. ''The Congress declined when asked by administration officials to include a presidential waiver of the restrictions included in our legislation."

Added Graham: ''I do not believe that any political figure in the country has the ability to set aside any . . . law of armed conflict that we have adopted or treaties that we have ratified."

And in March, when the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could ignore the oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, several Democrats lodged complaints.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Bush of trying to ''cherry-pick the laws he decides he wants to follow."

And Representatives Jane Harman of California and John Conyers Jr. of Michigan -- the ranking Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, respectively -- sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales demanding that Bush rescind his claim and abide by the law.

''Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight," they wrote. ''The administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such oversight. . . . Once the president signs a bill, he and all of us are bound by it."

Lack of court review

Such political fallout from Congress is likely to be the only check on Bush's claims, legal specialists said.

The courts have little chance of reviewing Bush's assertions, especially in the secret realm of national security matters.

''There can't be judicial review if nobody knows about it," said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who was a Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. ''And if they avoid judicial review, they avoid having their constitutional theories rebuked."

Without court involvement, only Congress can check a president who goes too far. But Bush's fellow Republicans control both chambers, and they have shown limited interest in launching the kind of oversight that could damage their party.

''The president is daring Congress to act against his positions, and they're not taking action because they don't want to appear to be too critical of the president, given that their own fortunes are tied to his because they are all Republicans," said Jack Beermann, a Boston University law professor. ''Oversight gets much reduced in a situation where the president and Congress are controlled by the same party."

Said Golove, the New York University law professor: ''Bush has essentially said that 'We're the executive branch and we're going to carry this law out as we please, and if Congress wants to impeach us, go ahead and try it.' "

Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said the American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch ''to exercise some self-restraint." But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of his own powers, he said, and then ruled for himself every time.

''This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy," Fein said. ''There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

Love

2009-03-07T23:17:00.001-08:00

Character vs. Sanity

2009-03-06T10:38:00.000-08:00

A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name.
- Evan Esar

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.
- E. V. Lucas

Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.
- Janet Long

The Genesis Code -- book review

2009-01-23T11:17:00.000-08:00

The Genesis Code -- book review: "I'm not normally a thriller reader because, quite frankly, these suspense novels just don't thrill me. But as Ballantine Books had sent an advance reader's copy of a new John Case novel, I decided to take a break from my usual fare of character-driven novels and give The Genesis Code a shot.

Curled Up With a Good BookThis book is anything but a no-brainer. 'John Case,' the book says, is 'the pseudonym of an award-winning investigative reporter and the author of two nonfiction books about the U.S. intelligence community... resident of Washington D.C., he is the proprietor of a company that specializes in international investigations for law firms and labor unions.' Take out the 'reporter' and 'author' parts, and you describe perfectly Joe Lassiter, protagonist of The Genesis Code.

The story opens in a small Italian village where a priest hears a confession that nearly stops his heart. What a doctor tells him in the confessional booth is a secret that could rock the Catholic Church, indeed the very world, to its foundations. The reader quickly gets a lesson in Vatican hierarchy and bureaucracy as well as a window into the right-wing reactionary Catholic sect called Umbra Domini, where wheels are set turning.

American Joe Lassiter comes onto the scene when he learns that his sister and her son have died in an apparent case of arson overkill. An investigator by profession, he quickly learns that his sister and nephew were murdered before the fire. Their killer is in custody, but not talking, when the body of Lassiter's nephew is exhumed and reincinerated. Lassiter is galvanized, and off after the story's main intriguing question: Why?

Lassiter's quest for the reason of his sister's death will put him in the crosshairs of an international conspiracy. Along the way, the reader learns a lot about international police agencies, schism within the Catholic Church, fertility procedures, Christian holy relics, and the biological foundations of cloning. One thing I will tell you: no one here is trying to recreate Hitler (that's a pet peeve of mine in suspense thrillers -- neo-Nazis bringing Hitler back to life, whether it be through cloning or by somehow having cryogenically preserved his head. Not here.) As Lassiter begins untangling the knot of conspiracy, he will discover a secret as explosive as it is relevant to recent headlines.

The weakest part of The Genesis Code is the ending. The story's central question is answered, but the character of Joe Lassiter loses some of his integrity. And given the plausible nature of the novel as a whole, the final paragraph of the epilogue seems a wee bit fantastic. All in all, though, The Genesis Code is very readable and entertaining for a book of its genre, well-suited for that time when you just want to escape for a few hours."

© 2009 CurledUp With A Good Book

Marriage and other Traditions

2009-01-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
- Barbara Tober

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates

KQED Book List

2009-01-12T14:01:00.001-08:00

KQED Book List

1/5/2009 3:50 PM

The Savage Detectives: A Novel -- Roberto Bolano
Ben Franklin: An American Life -- Walter Issacson
Gentlemen of the Road -- Michael Chabon
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon -- Tom Spanbauer
Flight: A Novel (young adult) -- Sherman Alexie
On Chesil Beach -- Ian McEwan
The Land of Green Ginger -- Noel Langley and Edward Ardizzone
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health -- L. Ron Hubbard
Back in a Moment: A Look Back at Life and Radio in Minnesota -- Harley and June Hathers
Martyr of the Amazon: The Life of Sister Dorothy Stang -- Roseanne Murphy
Away: A Novel -- Amy Bloom
The General and His Daughter: The War Time Letters of General James M. Gavin to his Daughter Barbara (World War II: The Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension) -- Barbara Gavin Fauntleroy
Tree of Smoke -- Denis Johnson
1984 -- George Orwell
Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild -- Greg Palast
All Over Coffee -- Paul Madonna
Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It -- Brett C. Millier
Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Border -- Joel Hafvenstein
1421: The Year China Discovered America -- Gavin Menzies
The Secret River -- Kate Grenville
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason -- Sam Harris
I Don't Believe in Atheiests -- Chris Hedges
Seige of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda -- Yaroslav Trofimov
Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature -- D. Graham Burnett
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory -- David Ray Griffin
The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life -- Armand M. Nicholi Jr.
Proust Was a Neuroscientist -- Jonah Lehrer
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel -- Alain de Botton
May It Please the Court: Live Recordings and Transcripts of Landmark Oral Arguments Made Before the Supreme Court Since 1955 -- Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court -- Jeffrey Toobin
A History of Reading -- Alberto Manguel
Healing with Heart: Inspirations for Healthcare Professionals -- Terri Moss and Martin Helldorfer (available at mosscommunications.net)
The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness -- Jerome Groopman
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time -- Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life -- Michael Krasny
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain -- Oliver Sachs
Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao -- Junot Diaz
Bel Canto -- Ann Patchett
Ten Years Behind the Mast -- Fritz Damler
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime -- Mark Haddon
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years -- David Talbot
A Fine Balance -- Rohinton Mistry
A Thousand Splendid Suns -- Khaled Hosseini
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close -- Jonathan Safran Foer
The Language of God -- Francis C. Collins
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot -- Naomi Wolf
Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson
Charming Billy -- Alice McDermott
Island in the Sea of Time -- S.M. Stirling
I Am Legend -- Richard Matheson

The Phobia List

2009-01-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

The Phobia List

New Element

2008-12-15T12:28:00.000-08:00

Scientists Discover New Element, the Heaviest Yet Known to Science

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

2008-12-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

'Outliers' Puts Self-Made Success To The Test
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97117414

-----
This program link was provided by Radio Bookmark and KQED 88.5 FM. The small, portable device that makes it simple to follow up on the public radio stories you don't want to forget. FREE for new and renewing members donating at certain membership levels. For more information, visit http://www.radiobookmark.com/static/participating

Copyright - Interesting Fact

2008-12-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”

Quantum Mechanical Approach

2008-11-26T09:19:00.001-08:00

The Principles of Successful Manifesting Ebook - Success & Abundance

Skinny Bitch: Kim Barnouin, Rory Freedman: Books

2008-11-23T20:03:00.001-08:00

With such blunt advice as, "Soda is liquid Satan" and "You are a total moron if you think the Atkins Diet will make you thin," it's a rallying cry for all savvy women to start eating healthy and looking radiant.

Amazon.com: Skinny Bitch: Kim Barnouin, Rory Freedman: Books

Quotes for 11.23.2008

2008-11-23T07:46:00.001-08:00

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.
- Evan Esar

Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness.
- Cullen Hightower

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.
- Casey Stengel

Our Dumb World
(Paperback) :: Onion Store

2008-11-16T20:02:00.001-08:00

Our Dumb World
(Paperback) :: Onion Store

NEW-RELEASE SALE!

The Onion Brings You The World Every Day. Now The Onion Brings You The World—Literally.

Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas Of The Planet Earth, 73rd Edition, The Onion's first original book since the New York Times best-seller Our Dumb Century, is destined to become the most important book of the new century—perhaps the most indispensable volume in your home reference library. In fact, go ahead and throw all of your other books in the garbage right now.

The Onion provides you, the elite consumer who actually reads books, a bound, beautifully illustrated hardcover archive of all the world's accumulated knowledge. Carry it with you when you travel in order to make sense of the strange cultures and frightening cuisine of other nations. 247 pages. Paperback. Maps courtesy of DK Maps.

Also available as an audio book.

Quotations on Perspective

2008-11-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
- Jack Handey

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
- G. K. Chesterton

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

The Enigma in a Nutshell | Quantum Enigma

2008-10-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

The Enigma in a Nutshell | Quantum Enigma: "Connectedness: Quantum theory tells that all things that have ever interacted are forever connected. For example, your friend’s freely made decision of what to do in Moscow (or on Mars) can instantaneously influence what you find in Manhattan. And this happens without any physical force being involved. Einstein called such influences “spooky actions.” They have now been demonstrated to exist. So far just for small things, but they are no less spooky."

Quotes About Quotations and Genius

2008-10-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
- Rudyard Kipling

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.
- Robertson Davies

Elementary Principles of Composition: Use definite, specific, concrete language.

2008-10-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

To show what happens when strong writing is deprived of its vigor, George Orwell once took a passage from the Bible and drained it of its blood. On the left, below, is Orwell's translation; on the right, the verse from Ecclesiastes (King James Version).

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that
success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be
commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the
unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of
understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to
them all.

Poet Kwame Dawes, Pulitzer Center Take on HIV/AIDs in Jamaica

2008-10-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

Poet Kwame Dawes teamed up with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to create a Web site called 'HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.'

The interactive site pairs his poetry with music and essays from people living with the disease and their caretakers.

RELATED INFORMATION
Video Watch a Poetry Reading and Extended Interviews with Dawes and the Pulitzer Center's Jon Sawyer
Resource Visit the Live Hope website

Actually Overheard in the Workplace

2008-10-01T15:43:00.001-07:00

Actually Heard	........	Wished I'd heard
Me and her / Her and me	........	She and I
Me and him / Him and me	........	He and I
name and me	........	name and I
had went	........	had gone
had did	........	had done
I should have did that	........	I should have done that

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean.” | The LA Progressive

2008-09-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean.” | The LA Progressive
September 5, 2008

by Charley James –

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Racial and ethnic slurs may be “just Alaska” and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.

No wonder the vast sea of white, cheering faces at the Republican Convention went wild for Sarah: They adore the type, it’s in their genetic code. So much for McCain’s pledge of a “high road” campaign; Palin is incapable of being part of one.

Tough Getting People Who Know Her to Talk
It’s not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin – especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that “all circuits are busy” or numbers just wouldn’t ring. I should think a state that’s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.

On a more practical level, many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they’re afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.”

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.”

Like most other people interviewed, he didn’t want his name used out of fear of retribution. Maybe it’s the long winter nights where you don’t see the sun for months that makes people feel as if they’re under constant danger from “the authorities.” As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that’s happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration brought on by my getting too little sleep and building too much anger as I worked this article. But there’s ample evidence of Palin’s vindictive willingness to destroy people she sees as opponents. Just ask the Wasilla town administrator she hired before firing him because he rebelled against the way Palin demanded he do his job, or the town librarian who refused to hold the book burning Walpurgisnach Mayor Palin demanded.

Ironically, Palin was pushed into hiring the administrator by the party poobahs who helped get her elected after she got herself into trouble over a number of precipitous firings which gave rise to a recall campaign.

“People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day,” states Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident and one of the few Alaskans willing to speak on-the-record, for attribution, about Palin. In fact, Kilkenny actually circulated an e-mail letter about Palin that was verified and printed by The Nation.

For good measure, Palin booted the Wasilla police chief from office because, she told a local newspaper, he “intimidated” her.

Running on Extreme Fringe Evangelical Views
Sarah Palin drew early attention from state GOP apparatchiks when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties do not get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they are nonpartisan. But once word of her extreme fringe evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans tossed some money behind her campaign.

Once in office, Palin set out to build a machine that chewed up anyone who got in her way. The good, Godly Christian turns out to be anything but.

“She’s doesn’t like different opinions and she refuses to compromise,” Kilkenny notes. “When she was mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t hers. Worse, ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.”

Sound familiar? Palin may well be Dick Cheney’s reincarnate.

Something else has a familiar Republican ring to it: Her tax policies, and a “refund surpluses but borrow for the future” attitude.

According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food. The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall. Two other Wasillian’s with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.

To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22 million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor – especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city’s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant. So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer’s money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?

For starters, she remodelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Then Palin spent $1 million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15 million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.

She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5 million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.

For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

Sarah Barracuda
En route to the governor’s igloo, Palin managed to land what Anne Kilkenny says is the plumb political appointment in the state: Chair of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC), a $122,400 per year patronage slot with no real authority to do anything other than hold meetings. She took the job despite having no background in energy issues and, as it turned out, not liking the work.

“She hated the job,” an OGCC staff member who is not authorized to speak with the news media told me. “She hated the hours and she hated what little work there was to do. But she couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the thing without offending Gov. Murkowski” and the state Republican Party regulars, some of whom were pissed off they didn’t get appointed.

But ever the opportunist, Palin quickly concocted a way. First, she waged a campaign with the local news media claiming that the position was overpaid and should be abolished – despite the fact that she lobbied Murkowski hard to get it. Then, mounting what she saw as a white horse, Palin raised a cloud of dust by resigning from the OGCC and riding away with an undeserved reputation as a “reformer.”

But when a local reporter dared to suggest that the reformer Empress has no clothes, Palin tried to get her fired.

“She came at me like I was trying to steal her kids,” said the targeted reporter, who now works for an oil company in Anchorage. “I heard she had a wild temper and vicious mean streak but it’s nothing like you can imagine until she turns it on you.”

Not surprising since some of her high school classmates still openly call her “Sarah Barracuda,” Kilkenny insists.

Still, as a Republican Party hack Palin managed to get herself elected running under the false flag of a “reformer.”

And what did she bring to the job? No legislative experience other than a city council of a village of 5,000 people, which is smaller than some high schools in Chicago. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; after all, she needed to hire a city administrator to run Wasilla. No executive experience, except for almost being recalled as mayor. A philosophy of setting public policy based on one word: No.

And what has she done since winning the job?

According to Kilkenny, nothing. Well, nothing other than suggesting the state’s multi-multi-million dollar, oil-generated surplus be distributed to residents and finance future state needs by borrowing money. Gee, doesn’t that sound precisely what George Bush did with the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001 and we all know in what great shape Bush’s economic policies left the nation.

It may explain why, when asked by reporters, including me, what she thought about Palin being picked to be McCain’s running mate, her mother-in-law replied with a sardonic, “What has Sarah done to qualify her to be vice president?” Of course, when the woman – said by many I spoke with to be well-respected in Wasilla – was running to succeed Palin as mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her, so that may explain the family tension.

As Governor, Palin gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, according to the chair of a legislative committee. But then she staged a huge grandstand play of line-item vetoing countless projects, calling them pork. “They were restored because of public outcry and legislative action,” the aide said. “She vetoed them mostly because she had no idea what they were or why they were important.”

But it was enough to get the McCain, who is mostly unobservant of the world around him anyway, to think Palin has a reputation as being “anti-pork”.

In fact, Juneau observers note that Palin kept her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork ladled out by indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be politically unwise to keep supporting it, these same insiders assert. Then, Palin fell back on her old habits and publicly humiliated him for pork-barrel politics.

As for being “ready on day one” to be commander in chief, despite the repeated public claims she’s made, the Alaska National Guard commander said that, “she has made no command decisions, other than sending some troops to help fight a few brush fires and march in parades at county fairs.”

“Sambo Beat the Bitch”
“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist, and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

“Juneau is a small town; everybody knows everyone else,” he adds. “These stories about what she calls blacks and Eskimos, well, anyone not white and good looking actually, were around long before she became a glint in John McCain’s rheumy eyes. Why do I know they’re true? Because everyone who isn’t aboriginal or Indian in Alaska talks that way.”

“Sambo beat the bitch” may be everyday language up in the bush. Whether it – and the outlook, politics and worldview Palin reflects when she says such things in public – should be part of a presidential campaign is another thing altogether. The comment says as much about McCain as it does about Palin, and it says a lot of things about Americans who overlook such statements (as well as her record) and vote anyway for McCain.

Communication & Congress

2008-09-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
- John Adams

"I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up."
- Tom Lehrer

Great American Books

2008-09-06T00:23:00.000-07:00

Great American Books: "Great American Books"

Some Worthwhile Reads

2008-09-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

Book List from Caitlin

I have read so many of these books that the ones I haven't read I am sure I will enjoy reading. Thanks Caitlin!

1984
animal farm
the catcher in the rye
a clockwork orange
the great gatsby
lord of the flies
moby dick
the outsiders
the perks of being a wallflower
tender is the night
this side of paradise
dune
children of dune
whipping star
colours of the mountain
heavier than heaven
bob dylan: chronicles
mein kampf
brave new world
romeo and juliet
smashed
doc maynard
when heaven & earth changed places
survival in auschwitz
sons of the profits
angela's ashes
a million little pieces
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
love my rifle more than you
the inheritance of loss
the art of the story
my war
fahrenheit 451
mother night
graceland
after dark
edgar allen poe
shakespeare
cat's cradle
slaughterhouse-five
underground
memoirs of a geisha
transpotting
the bible
catch-22
you are a little bit happier than i am
fools of fortune
crime and punishment
the picture of dorian grey
the secret life of bees
the mermaid chair
siddhartha
uncle tom's cabin
burning bright
the pearl
steppenwolf
cannery row
one hundred years of solitude
one flew over the cuckoo's nest

Diplomat: a definition

2008-08-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

A diplomat... is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
- Caskie Stinnett

Friendship

2008-07-29T15:34:00.000-07:00

"Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other."
- Honore de Balzac

"The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."
- Mark Twain

Reciprocity

2008-07-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

"There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters."
- Alice Thomas Ellis

Acting

2008-07-24T15:42:00.000-07:00

"Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four."
- Katharine Hepburn

Friday 11 July 2008

2008-07-11T08:56:00.000-07:00

"The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority."
- Ralph W. Sockman

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
- JRR Tolkien

"A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized."
- Fred Allen

Quotes for 9 July 2008

2008-07-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

"He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical."
- GK Chesterton

"Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status."
- Laurence J. Peter

"People ask for criticism, but they only want praise."
- W. Somerset Maugham

Quotes for 8 July 2008

2008-07-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

"There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else."
- Cullen Hightower

"Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings."
- George F. Will

"The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it."
- Dudley Moore

Quotes for Monday 7 July 2008

2008-07-07T15:51:00.001-07:00

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her.
- Rodney Dangerfield

You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty.
- Cecil Baxter

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
- Blaise Pascal

Quote Details: Andre Gide: Art is a collaboration... - The Quotations Page

2008-07-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."
Andre Gide
French critic, essayist, & novelist (1869 - 1951)

Quotes for Friday 27 June 2008

2008-06-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

"When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half."
- Gracie Allen

"My work is a game, a very serious game."
- MC Escher

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
- Oscar Wilde

Quotes for 9 May 2008

2008-05-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
- Jonathan Swift
Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.
- Philip Guedalla
There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
- Steven Wright

Quotes for Thursday, 8 May 2008

2008-05-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."
- Garrison Keillor
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Philip K. Dick
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
- Hunter S. Thompson

Profiles in Journalism - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

2008-05-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Profiles in Journalism - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: "Profiles in Journalism

(updated below - updated again)

The Pulitzer Prize Committee today recognized the work of one of America's few truly excellent political journalists:

Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe won for national reporting for his revelations that President Bush often used 'signing statements' to assert his controversial right to bypass provisions of new laws."

Books "Worth Calling in Sick For"

2008-01-14T13:52:00.001-08:00

Fiction
* The Brief History of the Dead, by Kevin Brockmeier. Pantheon, 2006.
* The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt. Vintage, 2002.
* The Girls, by Lori Lansens. Little, Brown, 2006.
* Citizen Vince, by Jess Walter. Regan Books, 2005.
* Oblivion, by Peter Abrahams. William Morrow, 2005.

Nonfiction
* A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, by Robert Sapolsky. Scribner, 2001.
* To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, by Arthur Herman. HarperCollins, 2004.

Young Adult
* The Witch's Boy, by Michael Gruber. HarperTempest, 2005.

Look Out, Here Comes the Y Generation!

2007-12-18T09:21:00.000-08:00

Great article on how the Y Generation may be the best hope for the world and the future of humanity. Well written!

FreeRice: FAQ

2007-12-13T13:45:00.000-08:00

FreeRice: FAQ

Learn words, feed hungry people!

If FreeRice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?
FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 20 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.

Does FreeRice make any money from this?
No, it does not. FreeRice runs the site at no profit."

FreeRice

2007-11-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

If you love words, give rice!

FreeRice: "CORRECT! curvet = leapmephitic means: foul-smelling chaste withered deliberate VOCAB LEVEL: 50 YOUR BEST LEVEL: 50"

Wolfram Research, Inc.

2007-05-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

Wolfram Research, Inc.

This is a really cool program. It used to have a learning curve like an icy cornice bowl. Hopefully the new version will be easier to learn!

Here is what Dr. Stephen Wolfram just said about it:

The most important advance in the 20-year history of Mathematica Building on two decades of world-class algorithm and software development, Mathematica 6 represents a dramatic breakthrough that immensely broadens Mathematica's scope and applicability—and redefines the very way we think about computation. Made possible by Mathematica's unique symbolic architecture, Mathematica 6 introduces a sweeping unification of language and interface concepts that makes possible a new level of automation in algorithmic computation, interactive manipulation and dynamic presentation—as well as a whole new way of interacting with the world of data.

OOP Is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice

2007-04-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

OOP Is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice

Interesting ideas in this article.

Author Note: Mr. B. Jacobs has an excellent Web site devoted to debunking OOP. Take a look.

by Richard Mansfield

Like many ideas that sound good in theory but are clumsy in practice, object-oriented programming (OOP) offers benefits only in a specialized context—namely, group programming. And even in that circumstance the benefits are dubious, though the proponents of OOP would have you believe otherwise. Some shops claim OOP success, but many I've spoken with are still "working on it." Still trying to get OOP right after ten years? Something strange is going on here.

No wonder english is so hard to learn.

2006-11-27T14:05:00.000-08:00

* We polish the Polish furniture.

* He could lead if he would get the lead out.

* A farm can produce produce.

* The dump was so full it had to refuse refuse.

* The soldier decided to desert in the desert.

* The present is a good time to present the present.

* At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.

* The dove dove into the bushes.

* I did not object to the object.

* The insurance for the invalid was invalid.

* The bandage was wound around the wound.

* There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

* They were too close to the door to close it.

* The buck does funny things when the does are present.

* They sent a sewer down to stitch the tear in the sewer line.

* To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

* The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

* After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.

* I shed a tear when I saw the tear in my clothes.

* I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

* How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

* I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.

BubbaQuotes

2006-10-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

BubbaQuotes

* The day I can't do my job drunk is the day I turn in my badge and gun.
* "All's fair that ends well." -- Patrick Sky
* "the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. there's also a negative side." ~ hunter s. thompson
* Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Representative Poetry Online.

2006-06-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

Check out these mainstays of the genres and the cannon at Representative Poetry Online.

Marriage Compatibility by Lunar Nakshatra Conjuctions

2006-05-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

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