AN EXCERPT FROM 1995's EVANGELIUM VITAE (The Gospel of Life) ADDRESSED BY THE SUPREME PONTIFF POPE JOHN PAUL II TO ALL THE BISHOPS, PRIESTS, AND DEACONS, MEN AND WOMEN, RELIGIOUS LAY FAITHFUL, AND ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL ON THE VALUE AND INVIOLABILITY OF HUMAN LIFE

"[A] new cultural climate is developing and taking hold, which gives crimes against life a new and—if possible—even more sinister character, giving rise to further grave concern: broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the rights of individual freedom, and on this basis they claim not only exemption from punishment but even authorization by the State, so that these things can be done with total freedom and indeed with the free assistance of health-care systems.

"All this is causing a profound change in the way in which life and relationships between people are considered. The fact that legislation in many countries, perhaps even departing from basic principles of their Constitutions, has determined not to punish these practices against life, and even to make them altogether legal, is both a disturbing symptom and a significant cause of grave moral decline.

"Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable.

"Even certain sectors of the medical profession, which by its calling is directed to the defence and care of human life, are increasingly willing to carry out these acts against the person.

"In this way the very nature of the medical profession is distorted and contradicted, and the dignity of those who practise it is degraded.

"In such a cultural and legislative situation, the serious demographic, social and family problems which weigh upon many of the world's peoples and which require responsible and effective attention from national and international bodies, are left open to false and deceptive solutions, opposed to the truth and the good of persons and nations.

"The end result of this is tragic: not only is the fact of the destruction of so many human lives still to be born or in their final stage extremely grave and disturbing, but no less grave and disturbing is the fact that conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of human life.

From March 7, 2005: The Passion of the Pope @ AMERICAN DIGEST

SOUND FAMILIAR?

1. Over-abstraction: the literature of the theorists routinely spoke of "differentiation," "autonomization," "privatization," and other abstract, if not abstruse, dynamics disengaged from concrete factors of social change such as interests, ideologies, institutions, and power conflicts.

2. Lack of human agency: the theory was big on process without protagonists. It depicted secularization without secularizers. According to the theory, secularization just happens.

3. Overdeterministic inevitability: "Religion's marginalization from public life is portrayed as a natural or inevitable process like cell mitosis or adolescent puberty." Secularization theory reflects a view of linear social evolution in the tradition of Comte and Spencer. "If there is one truth that history teaches us beyond doubt," wrote the great Durkheim, "it is that religion tends to embrace a smaller and smaller portion of social life." Any questions, class?

4. Idealist intellectual history: here the history of ideas is determinative. "Culture, philosophy, and intellectual systems certainly matter. But they cannot be abstracted from the real historical, social, political, legal, and institutional dynamics through which they worked and were worked upon."

5. Romanticized history: there was in the view of secularization theorists an "age of faith" --for instance, the thirteenth century -- which was succeeded and displaced by the age of reason and modernity. Then everything was religious; now everything, or at least everything that matters in public, is secular.

6. An overemphasis on religious self-destruction: Berger's 1967 The Sacred Canopy suggested that the Judeo-Christian tradition "carried the seeds of secularization within itself."

7. Underspecified causal mechanisms: "Exactly how did industrialization and immigration work to produce religious privatization? Why should we treat these as some kind of 'great gears of history' that inexorably grind their way toward religious privatization? Rather than all nodding our scholarly heads together in what could be premature analytical closure, we need to go back and force ourselves to answer these questions again."

-- -- Richard John Neuhaus, Secularization Doesn't Just Happen

Why is it that John Kerry looks like
Abraham Lincoln after four years of
civil war and he hasn't even been
nominated yet?

LISTEN AS DYLAN THOMAS READS his immortal poem, "And Death Shall Have No Dominion." [Wav file, 1.9 megabytes -- Patience please as it loads, it is worth it.]

May Terri Schindler-Schiavo rest in peace and God have mercy on us all.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

-Dylan Thomas

-- Michelle Malkin: AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION

IN THE COMMENTS SECTION OF: SPORTS: Juiced - Jose Canseco vs. Mark McGwire Jason Stark Turns into Sergeant Shultz @ AMERICAN DIGEST.

I'm stepping back and have no juiced-up dog in this fight.

PETER YARROW CARRIES ON THE CLINTONIAN TRADITION: "Now, I'm here with that history and came to Vietnam ready to get down on my knees as one American and say, 'Please forgive us. We who are a good country - and a great country in many ways - also have made some terrible mistakes,'" he said. -- 60's peace activist apologizes to Vietnam

A very interesting list illuminating American Life in 1900 courtesy of 2blowhards.com on economist Timothy Taylor:

Total U.S. population in 1900 was 76 million people, less than a third the population we have now.

The U.S. was the wealthiest economy in the world. Per capita income was on a level with Britain and Australia, was twice that of France and Germany, and was quadruple the standard of living in Japan and Mexico.

Still, most Americans in 1900 were living in what we today would consider poverty. In present-day dollars, per capita American income in 1900 averaged around $5000, less than a fifth the current level. In other words, the typical American in 1900 had about the same income that a typical Mexican has today.

Only three percent of American homes were lit by electricity.

Only about a third of American homes had running water; only 15% had flush toilets; and half of farm households didn’t even have an outhouse.

Most people lived within a mile of where they worked, and depended on their feet to get them around. Only one urban household in five owned a horse.

Half of all people lived in spaces where they averaged more than one person per room. Taking in lodgers was common.

Half the population drank alcohol; half didn’t. The half that did averaged two hard drinks and two beers a day; wine consumption was minimal. In Europe, by contrast, people drank twice as much beer, and averaged more than four glasses of wine a day.

Life expectancy at birth was 47 years, and infant mortality rates were high. Of every 1000 babies born, 140 died in their first year. These days, fewer than 10 do.

Flu, pneumonia, typhoid, gastritis, and whooping cough were common causes of death.

10% of the American population was completely illiterate, and the average adult had an 8th grade education. Only 7% of students would ever complete high school.

A man’s typical on-the-job work week consisted of 60 hours of work spread over six days. Pensions were rare; men generally worked until they were too feeble to go on doing so. 2/3rds of men over 65 had fulltime jobs.

Women were 18% of the paid work force. They mainly worked in fields like textiles, apparel, shoes, canning -– fields where you were paid according to how much you produced.

At home, women spent around 40 hours a week on meal preparation and meal cleanup, seven hours on laundry, and another seven hours on housecleaning. The average housewife baked a half a ton of bread -- about 1400 loaves -- a year.

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 31, 2004 2:49 PM | QuickLink:

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
-- Wallace Stevens, The Man with the Blue Guitar

Most of our satellites look down, gazing fixedly at the Earth unfolding beneath them, like shepherds or sentinels, like guards atop a high tower, some of them possibly armed.

A handful of our satellites are not fixed upon us but upon all that is beyond ourselves. First among these is the Hubble. And what it shows us both inspires and humbles us. Beyond the Earth, yet of the Earth, the Hubble is perhaps our greatest achievement. The Hubble is our picture window on the universe, yet there are those among us who would let this window shatter into flaming shards long before the end of its useful life.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, If so, the Hubble speaks volumes daily ... indeed, it speaks whole libraries. It is our eye turned to gaze, with all the power at our command, as far out into the deep and as far back towards the origins of the universe as we can look. It is not too much to say that the Hubble reads the face of God, and in small bits and bytes, shows it to us.

Should we allow this eye to be put out, to be blinded? Should we allow it to simply and slowly fall back to earth until it becomes nothing more than a few minutes of fire and a collection of singed junk at the bottom of the ocean or litter on some stretch of land? Should we sacrifice the single government program that can rightly be considered a National Spiritual Strategic Asset on the altars of “too much money” and “too much risk?”

This is the current plan of a rag-tag collection of bought-out bureaucrats and sold-out “scientists” caressing their cold careers on the public dole at NASA. They have a dozen arguments for junking the Hubble that orbit, predictably, around cost and safety, but their goal is take the greatest scientific instrument ever created and junk it.

Whenever a government lackey with a shrunken soul and expanded power decides to destroy some program that does untold and unquestioned good for multitudes of people, the first argument is always “money.” In this case, it is well to remember that the current chief administrator for NASA rose to his position out of the OMB where money is seen as, if not everything, a suitable replacement.

The money argument is thought persuasive since, it is assumed, that all of us want to see government “save money, become more efficient and live within its budget.” This is the argument of fools. What we would like is to see our money, at least in a few cases, spent wisely services we need.

As a nation we need security. We need the roads repaired. We have many needs from the government -- and they have many programs with which to fulfill these needs. For the most part, these programs address our material needs.

But every so often, there is a program which, almost without intending it, comes to address and fill our spiritual needs. This, beyond any denial, is what the Hubble does. It shows us what is “out there.” It gives us a grand context in which to place our brief lives. In a very real sense, since it bears witness to the existence of the universe, it gives purpose to ours.

For the Hubble does not deal in security, health care, or road repair. The Hubble deals in revelation. More than anything else in the history of the world, the Hubble reveals to us not only the unfathomable breadth and depth of the Universe, but the breadth and depth of its impossible beauty. It makes the invisible visible. It makes the mystery manifest.

But they say we can no longer afford beauty and mystery, so let it burn. I would say, that in these times more than in any other, the world needs to be shown the beauty and mystery and purpose of creation daily.

For those that remain unconvinced by this argument, who cite the cost of an aircraft carrier, those that would destroy the Hubble turn to their trump card: “safety.”

“After all,” they ask, “who among us these days would not choose safety over risk?”

“A mission to repair, extend, and boost the Hubble into a higher orbit, would pose “an unacceptable risk” to the crew of whatever shuttle had the assignment. We wouldn’t want to lose one more life or one more shuttle in the exploration of space, would we?”

Here their cynicism depends on Americans’ compassion for the families of the Columbia. Indeed, one reduced soul at NASA has even taken out the bloody shirt and crying towel noting, “My boss is in a different situation, the administrator. He is the only human on Earth that has to look in the families of the astronauts' faces -- their kids, their spouses-- the night before launch and say we have done everything to make this mission safe that your father or mother is flying on .... And what's really scary is that if something goes wrong, he's also the only person on Earth who has to explain that to those same families and kids.”

Even if the emotional upset of “the administrator” is dross compared to the pain of the families, that certainly appeals to the heart. Who among us would want to be among those who have lost loved ones in the conquest of space? But the fact remains that some of us will be. That’s the way of the world and the way of exploring space. Mistakes are made. Deaths occur. No new thing can be done without sacrifice. Without risk, nothing is ever gained. Without risk nothing good can be maintained.

Do people think a fitting memorial to those who have died in the space program is to simply let the Hubble die as well? Or do people think that assuming such a craven posture is the way of cowards, and a means of rendering the sacrifice of lives already lost in space exploration just that much more meaningless?

If they could speak to us, would the crews of those craft lost to space exploration tell us that what they did and where they went and what they saw was not worth their lives? Would they, if they had a say in the matter, tell us to abandon the Hubble? Would those crews yet to go into space tell us that what they wanted most out of their time as astronauts was a safe and easy ride to and from work more than the work itself? Has NASA asked them? Has anyone asked them?

The Hubble speaks volumes daily. It tells us many things and shows us many more. For every answer, it poses a myriad of new questions. So many answers and questions come from the Hubble it is easy to forget its prime lesson: “Some 12 to 13 billion years ago there was nothing. Then there was everything. Now, after all those vast oceans of time have rolled by, there is orbiting instrument ( made by some smart primates on an insignificant ball of mud swirling around a third rate star in the backwaters of a modest galaxy) that has the power to show it’s makers what it looked like just an inch of time after creation.”

If we can remember that lesson, do we really want to destroy this National Spiritual Strategic Asset, or do we want to see more?

When: Today, 3 PM EST
Where: Rightalk Radio
Guests: Glenn Reynolds
Hosts: Bill Ardolino, Jeff Goldstein
Topics: The left / right divide; social cons v. libertarians and the future of the Republican ruling coalition. Nanotech. Gay outings. Pesto.

Continued...

"Okay, I give up. I have no idea which movie I'm in."

by JEREMIAH LEWIS, American Digest Film Editor from Fringe

HOSTAGE OPENS with the kind of credit sequence that makes you think that maybe, just maybe it could be something different from the average "Bruce Willis Action" genre movie. And for a pristine forty minutes or so, it is. Helmed by video game director Florent Emilio Siri (yes, video games have directors too), Hostage is violent in much the same way as the remake of Assault on Precinct 13 --brutal, swift, and gory, but without the strong backing of a story that makes much sense in the long run.

Paying for a ticket to Hostage is a fantastic deal because you're actually getting three movies in one.

Continued...

A Second Term: The argument for.. brief and to the point.

-- via Instapundit

CLICK HERE for my favorite

#6: Nixon for President
In 1992 National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech. Listeners responded viscerally to the announcement, flooding the show with calls expressing shock and outrage.

and the other 99.

More evidence that a clash of civilizations requires two civilizations:

The Gulf Arab monarchies are trying to bring order to the national sport of camel racing in the face of protests over the trafficking of children as jockeys.

The US State Department and human rights groups have raised the alarm over the exploitation of small children by traffickers who pay impoverished parents a paltry sum or simply resort to kidnapping their victims.

The children, mostly from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Pakistan, are then smuggled into the Gulf states.

They are often starved by employers to keep them light and maximise their racing potential. Mounting camels three times their height, the children -- some as young as six -- face the risk of being thrown off or trampled.
-- Qatar trials robot substitute for controversial child camel jockeys

---

The Energizer Body

As our lives are increasingly mediated by technological interventions, the After-life project raises the issue of our increasing faith in technology and our decreasing interest in organized religion. With this in mind the afterlife project offers a technologically mediated service that provides a tangible expression of afterlife for those who have become spiritually disconnected, or require hard evidence in some form of life after death.

The grieving process from an atheist’s perspective can be problematic with the concept of afterlife or other place, by definition being discounted. Fundamental to most religions is a concept of some other state or heaven, offering comfort to the faithful.

What then is there for the aggrieved atheist with regard to reassurance or comfort after the death of a loved one?

There is enough Hydrochloric (Hcl) acid in our bodies to burn a hole in a carpet. If this acid were extracted and refined it may be converted into electricity when combined with zinc and copper acting as anode and cathode.

This bringing together of elements effectively creates a wet cell battery that may be used directly as a source of electricity, or to charge a more useable dry cell battery which may then be placed in a range of electronic products.

This may be interpreted as a form of regeneration especially in the context of batteries, which are often described in terms of life, extra life and now afterlife.

Accepting this electronic state as life after death we are provided with a tangible proof of life after biological expiry.
-- After Life

---

Gore Issue Gored. Internet Tax? “Nyet’ as in “Not Yet.”

I want to talk about one other thing we've got to do to make sure this is a good place for people to realize their dreams and start a business and get well educated, is we've got to make sure this country is on the leading end of broadband technology. You see, new ideas and new businesses and new ways to educate people in Farmington, New Mexico are going to occur when we're able to get information flowing across cables and telephone lines in a fast way. That's what broadband technology is. It means we'll open the highways of knowledge -- new highways of knowledge.

This country needs a national goal for broadband technology, for the spread of broadband technology. We ought to have a universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007, and then we ought to make sure as soon as possible thereafter, consumers have got plenty of choices when it comes to purchasing the broadband carrier. See, the more choices

there are, the more the price will go down. And the more the price goes down, the more users there will be. And the more users there will be, the more likely it is America will stay on the competitive edge of world trade.

The more users there are, the more likely it is people will be able to have interesting new ways to receive doctors' advices in the home. The more affordable broadband technology is, the more innovative we can be with education. It's important that we stay on the cutting edge of technological change, and one way to do so is to have a bold plan for broadband.

Let me say one thing about broadband -- we don't need to tax access to broadband. The Congress must not tax access to broadband technology if we want to spread it around.
--President Bush Meets with First-Time Homebuyers in NM and AZ

---

The 1960s No-Judgment Epidemic Continues

Of course, political complexion is not measured only by party affiliation. Indeed, the fact that faculties on most American campuses are predominantly Democratic is perhaps less significant than their adherence to what one writer called "Left Eclecticism," that intellectual goulash composed of varying bits of Marxism, feminism, racialism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, and other specimens of academic "theory."

The triumph of Left Eclecticism means that campus "diversity" involves not only political but also intellectual conformity. For although Left Eclecticism comes in many modes and levels of toxicity, it revolves around a common core of attitudes. One unalterable tenet is that "everything is political": that the traditional academic ideals of objectivity and disinterestedness are pernicious fictions and therefore that all academic pursuits can be, indeed must be, evaluated in political terms. This is why, for example, you so seldom see the word "truth" without scare quotes in academic writing these days. Truth is what the bourgeois hegemonists preach; any left-wing academic worth his salt rejects "truth" in favor of "'truth,'" its epistemologically challenged but politically adaptable cousin.

As for the practical implications of this approach to pedagogy, they were, we thought, vividly summed up by Keith Moxey, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University. "The abandonment of an epistemological foundation for art history," Professor Moxey has written, means that "historical arguments will be evaluated according to how well they coincide with our political convictions and cultural attitudes." In other words, for Professor Moxey, as for so many of his academic brethren, things like truth, probability, and explanatory value take a distant back seat to politics. We hope that his students keep that in mind when they sit down to write their papers for him.

As we say, all of this is simply business as usual in contemporary academic life. It is a natural coefficient of the reign of political correctness among college faculties today. Still, one might ask, Why? Why are faculties overwhelming left-leaning? Why have so many abandoned the traditional scholarly ideals of objectivity and disinterested inquiry? Why have they embraced the rancid smorgasbord of Left Eclecticism? No doubt there are many factors that go into answering these questions. One answer, we believe, involves the institutionalization of the radicalism of the 1960s. After all, the race-class-gender brigade now ruling in the humanities and social sciences is patently a child of the political imperatives of that unlovely decade. But of course one could pose the question again: Why were faculties so susceptible to that brand of emancipationist rhetoric?
-- Notes & Comments March 2004 by

---

No Evidence, Just a Half-Ton of Fertilizer for the Tomatos on the Window Sill

Explosive material found in terror raids

LONDON (Reuters) - Police have seized a large amount of explosive material and arrested eight men across London and southeast England in Britain's largest anti-terror operation for years.

Peter Clarke, head of the anti-terror branch, told a news conference on Tuesday more than half a tonne of ammonium nitrate fertiliser was discovered in a six-foot (two-metre) high plastic bag in west London.

"Part of the investigation will focus on the purchase, storage and intended use of that material," Clarke said.

An anti-terror source said the fertiliser was similar to explosive materials used in the 2002 Bali bombings, although there was no evidence that a bombing was planned or any possible target.

That would be the British version of the Richard Clarke School of Anti-terror.

---

Life in a Jar

There's a must-read article out today by Ronald Kotulak from which I've condensed the juicy parts below. Kotulak quotes scientists who say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life. "It's certainly true that we are tinkering with something very powerful here," said artificial-life researcher Steen Rasmussen of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "But there's no difference between what we do here and what humans have always done when we invented fire, transistors and ways to split the atom. The more powerful technology you unleash, the more careful you have to be."

Kotulak notes more than 100 laboratories study processes involved in the creation of life, and scientists say for the first time that they have just about all the pieces they need to begin making inanimate chemicals come alive. "The ability to make new forms of life from scratch--molecular living systems from chemicals we get from a chemical supply store--is going to have a profound impact on society, much of it positive, but some of it potentially negative," said Mark Bedau, editor-in-chief of the Artificial Life Journal.
-- SciScoop || And The Scientists Said, Let There Be Life

by William Louis-Dreyfus

It's Early Spring. The sheep will have their young.
The flock then fills with lambs a few weeks old,
Anonymous dots until each mother's call
Brings each lamb back to get its feeding done.

The ewes call out, and by each mother's sound,
Repeated like an echo round the field,
They and the lambs, wherever is the need,
Each by their own are by that calling found.

If you keep sheep and mean to do it well,
You'll try to sell the lambs for Easter night
And get your price and give the flock its blend.

The ewes remaining in the flock don't know
Their lambs are gone and keep on calling out
For three full days; and then the calling ends

-- New Criterion

THAT LINKFEST LALLAPALOOZA growabrain has just racked up 1,000,000 visitors , and asks, "Won' t you tell everybody you know about Grow-a-Brain?"

Okay, I just did.

"Q: Why does Donald Duck wear a towel when getting out of the shower when he usually doesn't even wear pants?"

-- Disney Online Guest Services

The Five Stages of Warcraft

IF YOU LIKE BLOGS, you'll love Jon Garfunkel's funny-because-its-true Bloggers from the A-List to the Z-List @ Civilities

There's been a lot of talk about the "A-List" in the blogosphere-- the top bloggers who et all the attention-- and this often inspires speculation about parallel B-lists and C-lists. What many people don't know is that the designations go all the way to Z.

Kaus: Blogging @ $200/$100/$50/$5/$2.50/$.25 per word?

"Don't be jealous of the glamorous "blogger" lifestyle! It's not all AARP glitz. Behind the facade is a lot of napping."
-- Blogging--It's Not All Glamour! Mickey Kaus

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH SALARIED BLOGGER Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles @ Slate/Washington Post is being paid, but on a per-word basis it has got to be sweeeeeet. Here's his total output for Tuesday, March 29: "Jesse Jackson, pro-tubist."

Gives a whole new meaning to the line from A Thousand Clowns: "Get rich, sleep til noon, screw 'em all."

Don't get me wrong. I like Mickey Kaus, but I'd love his job.

UPDATE: Kaus is back today with an earth-shattering 190 word (Whew!) item on a lunch given in Hollywood yesterday by the AARP for various aging Hollywood types. The point seems to be that the LAT (still) doesn't have the gossip column he told them to get last month. More on this Kausian Quest as it grinds on. But it does bring his two-day Blogging Average up to 97 words per day.

Is there someone with a wicked sense of humor at Columbia University Press? We had to wonder when one of their new titles, Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint, crossed our desk. It is a work of homage, or hagiography, by the doyenne of French feminists, Hélène Cixous. It is a short book, but potent, perhaps the single most emetic exercise in academic sentimentality we have ever encountered. Consider this passage from the prefatory Author’s Note:

”But how to paint or sketch such a genius at substitution? One must, one can only catch him, portray him in flight, live, even as he slips away from us. In these sketches we shall catch glimpses of the book’s young hero rushing past from East to West, -- in appearance both familiar and mythical: here he is for a start sporting the cap of Jackie Derrida Koogan, as Kid, I translate: lamb-child, the sacrificed, the Jewish baby destined to the renowned Circumcision scene. They steal his foreskin for the wedding with God, in those days he was too young to sign, he could only bleed. This is the origin of the immense theme that runs through his work, behind the words signature, countersignature, breast [sein], seing (contract signed but not countersigned), saint --cutting, stitching -- indecisions -- Let us continue.”

Let’s not.

This is one of those books that should come with its own air-sickness bag.

-- New Criterion’s Notes & Comments March 2004 by

"Is the head dead yet?"

RECOGNIZING THE INTENSE suffering and deprivation the Terri Schiavo Death Watch assignment has brought to hundreds of reporters, cameramen, and assorted support staff, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News announced today the rock star Don Henley will play a benefit for Pinellas Media workers. "With the falling ratings as Mrs.Schiavo failed to die," a MSM spokesman said this morning, "we're looking for ways to boost morale among those of us who were forced, by America's Right-To-Know, to be away from their families over Easter."

Continued...

JOEL JOHNSON at Gizmodo -- Sporting such charming names as 'Birdy,' 'Mosquito,' and 'Spy There,' Israel Aircraft Industries has shown four new models of mini- and micro-drone UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for use by Israel's military in "low intensity conflict." Small enough to be worn on a soldier's backpack and to be navigated through open windows, the Mosquito [at right] is only 13 inches wide with a weight of 9 ounces. There is something disconcerting about military equipment that looks and performs almost exactly like the paper gliders we used to make in school to simulate full-sized military aircraft. When do the unmanned flying drone dogfights begin? -- Israeli Micro UAVs

BANANAS NATURALLY DIVIDE INTO 3 PERFECT WEDGES!

Yes, another one of my simple pleasures (See below) can be found via this educational video at The Sneeze.

Watch it and learn something new about bananas.

I'M A MAN OF SIMPLE PLEASURES, such as listening to an elephant do an impression of a truck. You might mock that, but did you ever hear a truck do an impression of an elephant? I thought not.

Researchers have recorded two African elephants (Loxodonta africana) that are adept mimics. One does a decent impression of an Asian elephant, and another is, remarkably, a dead ringer for a passing truck. The skilful impressions are far from the traditional grunts of an average African elephant....

The two elephants in question are Mlaika, an adolescent female living in a semi-captive group in Kenya, and Calimero, an adult male who lived for 18 years with two Asian elephants at a Swiss zoo. Calimero, perhaps unsurprisingly, mimics the typical chirp noises of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). "But Mlaika seemed to be making noises like a truck, of all things," Tyack recalls....

Tyack and his team think Mlaika's habit is due to her upbringing, which was within earshot of a road....

"In both of these cases it seems that they were deprived of proper role models," says elephant expert Katharine Payne of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

-- Elephants do impressions -- Mimicry of trucks and zoo-mates shows range of vocal repertoire.

Well, we all know how important rolling Peterbilt role models can be to elephants. Here's the recording.

Living La Vida Robot

"How four underdogs from the mean streets of Phoenix took on the best from M.I.T. in the national underwater bot championship."

Harvest Mouldering Business Intelligence

"Where do you find all the bits and pieces that comprise your business intelligence? Some of the more interesting snippets are probably trapped in thousands of e-mails languishing in cluttered inboxes or in archived instant messages that no one will ever read..."

Long Tail Meme of the Moment Gets More Jargon Attached

"Functions that have this characteristic are said to exhibit self-similarity at multiple scales. I speculated that this was indeed the case in many industries, and that the Long Tail is in fact made up of many "minitails" (below), all adding up to the powerlaw ("Pareto") shape we know so well."

Become a Human Lie Detector

"When someone's telling the truth, her words, her face and her body language are all congruent. For example, if a person is honestly saying that she likes you, her face is usually relaxed, offering a gentle smile and warm eyes. Her body is calm and open. But when she's lying, something is usually inconsistent. In the most obvious case, she may be saying she likes you, but she's not smiling. She may even have a clenched fist. Better liars can muster a smile, but it doesn't look natural. Even better liars can put on a convincing smile, but their eyes aren't smiling. Still better liars can control their entire face, but their bodies seem closed or cold. Look for mismatches between words and body language."

Hacker's Heart Macs and It Matters

"Who cares if hackers like Apple again? How big is the hacker market, after all? Quite small, but important out of proportion to its size. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing in ten years."

Do It Yourself iPod stand

"You could go shell out for a third-party stand, but I imagine you'd rather spend that hard-earned cash on music to fill your 'pod. Get the template here."

Radio DavidByrne.com

What's Talking Head David Byrne listening to today? Some fine music. Stream along with him.

IN HIS LOW-KEY WAY, Joshua Schachter, creator of del.icio.us issues big news @ [delicious-discuss]

After seeing my little project go from a small hobby to a large one and then consume all my waking hours, I've decided to quit my job and work on del.icio.us full time.

I've given a lot of thought to how to make this happen, and ultimately decided that the best way forward is to take on some outside investment.

I wish him all the best investors.

FILE UNDER: Calling Elvis --

[Dan] Rather sounds almost, well, laid-back on his new voice-mail message. It begins, "Howdy, this is Dan Rather," and ends, "For now, adios." -- Rather says shift from anchor was easier than predicted

[ Note: Site requires registration. Try Email: bgates@hotmail.com / Password: password ]

by CHRIS LYNCH , @ A Large Regular

"Subtract the steroids and Mark McGwire is nothing more than a Jack Clark or a Dave Kingman."

I'M NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST And I don't play one on TV, but you don't be a shrink to recognize that one of the driving motivations behind Jose Canseco's Juiced was both his jealousy of Mark McGwire, and his feeling of being screwed over by a double standard a sport that has one set of criteria for white players and a second set for players of color.

Continued...

More @ The Nameless Dread

The Insight of Allah Strikes Again.

Demonstrating in her wheelchair with a "Feed Terri" sign in Florida this week, Eleanor Smith -- a self-described lesbian, liberal and agnostic -- told Reuters: "At this point I would rather have a right-wing Christian decide my fate than an ACLU member." -- WSJ.com - 'I Want to Live!'

"Cruiser 9670" - The Stewards of Gay Washington

"Gay, gay, gay," Officer Joe Morquecho says. "Why does everything have to be gay?"

"Gee, I don't know, Joe," Parson says, "maybe because we're the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit?"

Sgt. Brett Parson rides in his cruiser, groggy and unshaven, gripping a chai latte between his kneecaps. He will crisscross the city several times before the night is over. More sociological than geographical, his beat is gay Washington.

"Cruiser 9670, request assistance," the dispatcher calls.

Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato, Flower and Vegetable Planter

Feeding and watering is easy. You just pour it in to the top funnel while standing up.

You don't have to worry about tomato cages or stakes because the plants grow upside down with gravity. Plants grown upside down will curl upward, looking for the sun.

D*I*Y Planner 2.0 Released

D*I*Y Planner version 2.0 has finally been released.

The D*I*Y Planner is a set of free do-it-yourself templates, covers, documentation and other gear for creating your own highly customised and tweakable paper planner system. Some highlights:

Over 50 different templates and forms spanning everything from calendars to finances, from project management to reference lists, from notetaking to specialised subjects like web design and story writing.

Let the truth be told -- MGM vs Grokster

"We are a digital company that is platform agnostic. Bits are bits. We dont care how they are distributed, just that they are. We want our content to get to the customer in the way the customer wants to receive it, when they want to receive it, at a price that is of value to them. Simple business.

Unless Grokster loses to MGM in front of the Supreme Court. If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only."

The HTML Hell Page

"Hell is other websmiths." You can read this page or just go to Foxnews.com, CNN.com, or MSNBC.com and see all the junk in action.

Paper Airplanes - the best origami paper planes to fold and fly.

These are paper aircraft made by folding paper in the style of Japanese origami yet they all fly.

The Road to Windows Longhorn 2005

What takes longer than driving a herd of one-legged cows from Texas to Kansas? Bringing Longhorn to market.

Posted by Vanderleun Mar 28, 2004 10:25 AM | Comments (0)  | QuickLink:

HUBER AND MILLS at City Journal note that "our solitary New Yorker on the Upper West Side as a 1,400-watt bulb that never sleeps—that's the national per-capita average demand for electric power from homes, factories, businesses, the lot." It's going up and they cast a cold-eye on where all this new energy is going to have to come from:

Continued...

Restating the Goal in Isreal and Palestine

In a morally hamstrung article replowing Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” turf, LA Times Op-Ed Editor Nicholas Goldberg writes of “The Subtle Shades of Villainy.” Caught between reality and the Left’s fantasy ideology and world view, Goldberg’s conclusion is a question:

I don't feel sympathy for Yassin. He was a soldier in a war of his own choosing, and it killed him. But the cause of peace is not served by provocative, macho and arguably illegal moves, and it's hard to see how Yassin's assassination qualifies as anything else. Peace may seem distant, but it is still the goal, isn't it?

Goldberg means that to be a “rhetorical question” but it seems to me it becomes more interesting if the rhetorical is stripped out.

It is comforting to assume that peace is the goal in the Israel/Palestinian struggle. Indeed, all voices -- right, left, sincere, insincere, Israeli, Palestinian -- speak, as they have spoken for decades now, of "the peace process." This is a process that we are always within, a process that like some sick mobius strip loops infinitely in only one dimension. We are either “moving the peace process forward” or “retarding the peace process.” The “peace process is moribund” or “the peace process is revitalized.” There are dozens of ways to parse “the peace process,” and we have heard them all in heavy rotation for some time. All of this assumes that through “the peace process” “peace is still the goal, isn’t it?”

The last week and the stated policy of Isreal to kill the Hamas leadership seems to me to signal that while peace may still be the goal, it is “the peace process” that has been abandoned. Rightly so and a bit late, but abandoned still.

It seems to me that the new goal is not “peace through process, but “peace through victory;” a clear acknowledgement that Israel will no longer play a role in the neverending story of the peace process which only emeshes it in the neverending war. Isreal seems at last prepared, reluctantly, to seek peace in the manner that all wars become peace -- military victory.

Israel, through the years of the Intifada, has finally been brought to that point where the Big Promise of the Global Palestinian Ad Campaign -- “A Palestinian State Will Be Peaceful” -- is no longer bought. What Israel now understands, and is preparing to act on, is the proposition that only victory through unconditional surrender will bring peace and the possibility of a Palestinian state along with the survival of Isreal itself.

Over the years, the Process Queens who strut on the runway of the International Arena have made successful and comfortable careers out of “The Peace Process.” As long as there is a “process” the vast establishment in the middle east and Europe and the United States that battens of the Neverending Peace Story has secure jobs and access to the fountain of funding from various sources. A Peace Settlement would close this showroom of Process Queens overnight and their next jobs would neither be as lucrative nor as fulfilling. There has been little worry over this as long as the goal has been “Peace Through Process.” Since any peace achieved in this manner would be one that included the obliteration of Israel -- never a secret and glaringly obvious over the last two years -- the “Peace Process” never had to end.

The Belmont Club notes the state of disarray among the Process Queens today when he remarks in “The Smell of Fear:”

Neither Europe's old game of triangulation -- a grand name for unscrupulous scavenging -- nor the Middle Eastern ploy of making America both guarantor and enemy can be continued for much longer. Even if Sharon is ousted from the Israeli leadership, developments since September 11 have doomed the ancien regime. The old elite is out of moves. Even more suicide bombings will represent a continuation of the same old failed policies, a deepening of the pit rather than a way out. They may hope that a John Kerry victory in November will reset the clock to balmy years of Bill Clinton, but perhaps even that will prove too late to stem the tide.

That tide turned on one announcement and a few missiles last week. Israel has changed the goal to one of “Peace Through Victory,” military victory.

This may be why, in a larger sense, police leaves have been canceled throughout Israel and the army remains at a high state of mobilization. Or, it may just be a sane level of high alert as the Palestinians send in their frogmen, their axe-men, their retarded teenagers, and whatever other items from Hell’s shopping list they have left in Gaza General Store.

The new stated goal of Peace Through Victory also explains why Hamas was in such a lather last week to retract, again and again, the initial threats to take revenge against the United States for the killing of Yassin. If you ask yourself what it would take for Israel’s “Peace Through Victory” program to start towards the goal posts, the answer is clear: another terror attack on the United States linked in any way to Hamas. And any attack would, like the force of gravity, link all terrorist organizations into one in the mind of the United States. One attack on US soil would mean that Israel would be free to move against its enemies in any manner and at any level it chose. The United States would be busy elsewhere and welcome the company.

There could be many other incidents that would trigger this, but an attack on the US would be a clear ‘Go-Point’ for a full mobilization of the Israeli Armed Forces, full military operations in the Palestinian Territories, Syria and the Bekka Valley. This would be the start of the next Middle-East War, and it would not stop until the new goal, victory, has been reached. And not just within Israel. Once that goal has been scored, and peace achieved, the stage would be set for a whole new kind of process in the area to begin. One that does not have the obliteration of Isreal as part of "the peace process."

THE SHARP-EYED ACE OF SPADES has made what is, to me at least, an interesting catch and comparison:

Compare the quotes. And compare the dates.

Continued...

Okay, let's review:
The three most useless things in aviation are:
1) Air in the fuel tank.
2) Runway behind.
3) Altitude above.

Ms. Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were unable to convince Michael Schiavo to allow his wife the sacrament of communion during the holiest day of the Catholic year. -- WSJ.com - Parents' Legal Battle Ends In Terri Schiavo Case

UPDATE:

...[T]he woman's parents claimed one Easter victory: Schiavo's husband, Michael, allowed her to receive communion wine.

As her brother, sister and brother-in-law watched, the Rev. Thaddeus Malanowski held Terri's right hand as he and the hospice priest, the Rev. Joseph Braun, placed the droplet on her tongue. Malanowski also anointed her with holy oil, offered a blessing and absolved her of sin.

"She received the blood of Christ," said Malanowski, adding he could not give her a fleck of communion bread because her tongue was too dry.
-- ABC News: Schiavo Receives Last Rites, Communion

Devoto, in the comments here, notes that this is part and parcel of the husband's pattern: "I recall that after the tube was taken out, Michael took her parents off the list of authorized visitors, only to change his mind a few hours later - much the same as seems to have happened here, the ugly decision followed by a turnaround."

In all this, my mind keeps returning to the chilling quote from Eliot's Four Quartets:

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

"... but prevents us everywhere." I am aware of the large and somewhat sensible faction that rails against the intrusion of Congress into this affair, citing the 'Oh-My-God! It's melting, melting!' of the Republican Party as the price paid for the Party's leap into "Really Big Government." Will the Republican Party crack up, crash and burn? It seems to me to be a rather hysterical conclusion. There are times one needs "Really Big Government" if one hopes to check and balance "A Really Big Judiciary " determined to give us all "the absolute paternal care."

It will be interesting to see the Democrat's demolish Bush's current action's and plans to put more Americans into their own home.

Our nation's 68 percent homeownership rate is the highest ever, and our government is taking steps to make owning a home a reality for more Americans, especially minorities and those with low incomes. In June 2002, I set the goal of adding 5.5 million new minority home owners in America by the end of this decade. Since then, more than 1.5 million minority families have moved into houses of their own. And for the first time, most minorities own their own home.

We are building on this progress. I have signed into law the American Dream Down Payment Act, which will help low-income Americans to afford the down payment and closing costs on their first home. I'm asking Congress to provide an annual $200 million for this program. That additional money would help an estimated 40,000 low-income families every year become first-time homeowners. I'm proposing that we make zero down payment loans available to first-time buyers whose mortgages are guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration. And this will help about 150,000 families buy homes in the first year alone.

Another obstacle to homeownership is the often complicated process of buying a home and getting a loan. My budget for 2005 would more than double funding for housing counseling services from 2001 levels.

A house and a mortgage represent a big personal commitment, and we want to prepare more Americans to make that commitment with confidence. To make homeownership attainable for more of our citizens, I have asked Congress to create a tax credit to encourage the construction of affordable homes. Under my proposal, builders will have an incentive to provide an additional 200,000 affordable homes over five years for families with low incomes.
--- President Bush's Weekly Radio Address Emphasis Added

Let's see.
1) Add 5.5 million new minority home owners. 1.5 million already done.
2) Aid on down payment and closing costs. Add $200 million to the fund. Net increase of 40,000 minority or low income home owners per year.
3) Zero down-payment loans to first-time buyers backed by the FHA. 150,000 families in their own home in first year.
4) Double the funding for home-buying counseling services
5) Tax incentives to create 40,000 low income homes per year.

What will be the Kerry campaign response to this? Perhaps he can spin in a promise to so increase taxes on those earning more than $200,000 a year to buy everybody making under $40,000 a year a new house.

It would be an upgrade on the 'chicken in every pot' promise. "Elect Kerry and it will be new houses on the house."

Ex-Netscape-Loud-Cloud "visionary" Marc Andreessen has, ah, with words a way (i.e. "The valley is going to save the valley" ), but his choice of stored video is more dubious:

Q FCC Chairman Michael Powell calls TiVo ``God's machine.'' What's your equivalent?

Andreessen: I have four Replay machines. Each has 360 hours of storage and they are plugged into my home LAN (local area network). I have 1,400 hours of video storage. What's on it? All kinds of stuff, like the last 80 episodes of Charlie Rose.

Well, we were thinking about going long on a lot of open source companies, but now we might just short the whole segment.

London, March 27: Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces after he was betrayed by a relative, who was one of his closest bodyguards.

"After eight months on the run, the hiding place of the ousted Iraqi leader was given away by an aide known as 'the fat man'," the BBC reported.
-- Saddam betrayed by his own bodyguard

It's nice to see the great legal minds of France working on something that will help their international reputation:

PARIS March 27 -- A French lawyer, known for defending terrorists and a Nazi leader, said Saturday he will defend Saddam Hussein.

Jacques Verges told France-Inter radio he had received a letter from Saddam's family requesting him to defend the former Iraqi leader in court.

The letter read: "In my capacity as nephew of President Saddam Hussein, I commission you officially by this letter to assure the defense of my uncle," Verges said. He did not name the person who sent the letter.
.....

Verges has defended Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez. He gained international notoriety during the Cold War for staging a string of deadly bombings, assassinations and hostage seizures.

The French lawyer also defended, Klaus Barbie, a Nazi Gestapo chief in France in World War II, who was convicted of crimes against humanity in Lyon, France.
--French Lawyer Says He Will Defend Saddam

Will he call Chirac, Penn, Anan and a host of others as character witnesses?

FILE UNDER: "Mixed Nuts of America"

"A week or so ago I saw 12 different trails making an * rather than an X. One jet went straight and then turned exactly on one of the lines and paralleled it. If these were commercial flights, I would be really nervous to have so many planes converging on one central axis. I was driving at the time and til I got back they had blended into one grey scummy cloud. I was really sorry I missed that shot.

I'm not convinced they are deliberately trying to spread disease or affect our health, could be a by-product or not happening at all...then again.....
-- BELLACIAO - Conversations on Chemtrails- The truth about what is happening in America - Collective Bellaciao

Then again, perhaps alien octopi are walking along your ceiling hoping for a ghost squid sandwich. Dilute! Ciao!

[HT: THE STEEL DEAL, who really gets around. Check him out.]

This morning, I found out that thousands of dollars of charges had been made on two of my credit cards in the past two days. Now, the identity thieves are sitting in jail. This is how it happened. It involves identity theft, a careless thief, one pissed-off Ovid and lots of luck....
-- publius_ovidius: Don't f**k with Ovid -- the long version

A fascinating minute by minute account.

TUESDAY (SEEMS LIKE MONTHS AGO) I TOOK A LOOK AT HOW The "Higher Beings" were covering the Schiavo issue. Today we thought we'd take another look, via The Blogosphere Ecosystem as the end of Schiavo's life approaches. This time we'll count down from number 10 (BoingBoing) to number 1 (Instapundit):

10. Boing Boing , which had been ignoring the BUZZ-HARSHING Schiavo issue in order to continue their non-stop fascination with "Wonderful Things," got off the dime with "Send Frist photos of your ailments for diagnosis"

Senate Majority Leader and noted jackass Bill Frist is an MD, and he says that he can tell by looking at the Schiavo videos that she's not in a persistent vegetative state. His awesome diagnostic powers demand to be tested, and the interweb provides the perfect means to discover their scope: Take a digital picture or video of your medical problem – tennis elbow, acne, runny nose, hemorrhoids, or whatever ails you - and send it to the doctor in charge of the US Senate and your health care.....

They also provided visibility and linkage for this item:

Terri Schiavo status Firefox extension, Daily Show clip
Boing Boing reader Nik says,
I wrote a Firefox extension that sits in the status bar of Firefox, and tells you at a glance the morbidity status of Terry Schiavo.
Link.

Also, the Daily Show ran a superb segment tonight poking fun at the extreme media weirdness around the Schiavo case.

Those items pretty much tell you all you need to know about Cory and the Kids at BoingBoing.
===
9. Ed at Captain's Quarters continues in his previous position.

I find the forced death by dehydration of a disabled, non-terminal patient at the insistence of an estranged spouse with no support except for the hearsay of a couple of offhand comments heard by the husband and his relatives abhorrent. It smacks of euthanasia and sets a terrible precedent, apart from the inhumanity of forcing Terri's family to watch her die when they've repeatedly requested to be allowed to care for her. It's sadistic, if not to Terri, then to those who love her.

But we have to draw a line here, and that line is the law.

By which he means that the Governor simply cannot walk in and take Schiavo into protective custody.

Continued...

SCHIAVO CASE CAUSES AMERICANS
TO ORDER DEMOCRATIC PARTY
FEEDING TUBE REMOVED

“The big ticket’s the Museum Feed, but the Real Action is the After-Party.”

You can tell a lot about a party by where and how it chooses to party and the stars are falling from the heavens tonight in DC. At least that’s what they tell us in the New York Times. ( Democrats Arrange Rare Convergence of Party’s Stars for Fund-Raiser)

Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Dean, Edwards, McCarthy, McGovern -- the list reads like a Who-Was and Who-Wannabes for the Democrats. In short, Le Tout Democrat will be there -- absent Zell Miller, Dennis Kucinich and other Dems on the outs with the party, and the more notable losers, McGovern and Dukakis (“...absent due to travel” Ahem.)

The reason? Money, of course, and lots of it:

Nearly 2,000 high-dollar donors are expected to attend Thursday's dinner at the National Building Museum, paying $1,000 each for all-you-can-eat barbecue on paper plates with plastic utensils. Others are contributing up to $25,000 each. The haul is expected to be the largest brought in by the Democrats in a single event relying only on so-called hard money, which is the limited, regulated money that is the only kind that the national parties can accept under the new campaign finance law. The record is $4.3 million, set in 2000.

What do you get for $1,000 other than all the ribs you can eat? You get “Entertainment Tonight:”

Welcome, Shriners!

Terry McAuliffe, the party chairman, will introduce Mr. Gore, followed by a video introduction of Mr. Carter, remarks by Mr. Carter, a video introduction of Mr. Clinton, remarks by Mr. Clinton, a video introduction of Mr. Kerry and then Mr. McAuliffe welcoming Mr. Kerry.

Those who have remained conscious will get to hear John Kerry say something as well as reveal his Fab Five Makeover from his Ski vacation:


"This'll work.
It's got to work!"

But the real action of this night of glittering prizes will come at the After-Party.

After the dinner, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Carter and others will head to Dream, a Washington nightclub. There, 5,000 people, paying $50 each, will see them and a bevy of performers, including OutKast, Ginuwine, Kenneth (Babyface) Edmonds and Q-Tip.

Now this is the event worth handy-camming. The Cream of the Dems getting jiggy to the Cream of the Hip Hop.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I’d pay real folding money to see Gore, Clinton, Carter and Kerry getting down to such hits as Q-Tip’s immortal "Higher:"

I don't know what to make of this
Funny brothers on my nerves type ridiculous
I guess I really gotta do it
Put my game down
f---in’ blew it
Put my name down
And it seems you f---ed up like a drug deal gone wrong
Figured out a lot, you won't be that way long
Plus, you n---as is bush leaguers
And I bet y'all ain't get no bush either

Following that stellar performance, I’m hoping for a “Lady’s Choice” in which we see the Clintons reunited on the dance floor as they demonstrate the new unity of the Democrats with a waltz to Ginuwine’s soulful ballad "Sex:"

I gotta show the other freaky side of me
Girl i wanna give you every inch you need
jump up in my truck and let me take you there
let me ride you thru the night
I'm a sexaholic and im cool with it
....the pleasures all mine

Finally, although the Times doesn’t say, I can’t imagine Barbra would miss this hootenanny. I’m sure that during the wee hours of the Deam Party somebody is going break out the blunts and talk her into a duet with OutKast. I’m hoping for a medley that blends “People” with “Memories” with OutKast’s stirring anthem to civil rights "Rosa Parks:"

Ah ha, hush that fuss
Everybody move to the back of the bus
Do you wanna bump and slump with us
We the type of people make the club get crunk...

This is an evening tailor-made for video tapes offered directly to Karl Rove for cash.

Frankly, I’m jealous of this. There’s no place on Earth I’d rather be tonight. I wonder why I wasn’t invited. Was it something I said?

Maybe, if I start now, I can get to Dream in time for its next big party on Saturday. A night with: The XPornStars

Like I said: "You can tell a lot about a party by where and how it chooses to party."

MICKEY KAUS STEPS UP with an obvious question:

Where do you go to sign a living will saying you want them to leave the tube in? I somehow don't think such a document is as readily available in handy preprinted form as the other kind. Nor do I think it would get all that much respect from the courts.

He's right you know.

THE COLUMNIST E. J. Dionne Jr. wraps up a "late-to-the-wake" column in the Washington Post by being the 1,627th person to offer the stunning rationale:

"What does it mean to be pro-life? As far as I can tell, most of those who would keep Schiavo alive favor the death penalty."
-- A Thin View of 'Life'

You see this one offered up about as often as the nerdy guy on TV loses another loan to Ditech. Here though, the loser is the writer who has lost, it would seem, his mind. It takes about 2 nanoseconds of reflection to understand that the first part has to do with keeping an innocent woman alive while the second part has to do with putting a convicted killer to death. We can talk about whether or not the execution of killers is the right thing to do, but being in favor of it in no way means "OH, THE HYPOCRISY!" when it comes to keeping an innocent alive.

Why the Washington Post would pay people who can't think and type at the same time is beyond me, but it was always so.

A LINK TO Alan Sullivan this Good Friday morning, brought this insight to my attention:

This morning I have one new thought, which has been gestating since I read about Constance Felos** and her antics. This culture clash has been represented as sectarian versus secular. If one looks at the principal characters, however, one finds two religions at war. There is nothing secular about 'Kryon channeling' and the other nonsensical beliefs of Ms. Felos. The very traditional Schindler family and its allies have lost their court battle against the New Age elite that dominates many of the nation's institutions, including the Democratic Party. That elite has supported Michael Schiavo. This schism between families aligns with the greater schism in the nation. But let's step back from the public issues for a moment. What sort of people can celebrate putting a handicapped woman to death on Easter?

What sort of people indeed?

**Constance Felos is the wife and co-counsel of Michael Schiavo's lawyer George Felos. Their "religious" beliefs are discussed on this page at Bride of Dracula: George Felos' Wife is Also A "New Age Attorney" , George Felos: Acid Head and Death Lawyer , and George Felos, Lawyer for Michael Schiavo, and Telepath to the Comatose .

Bowling Ball Thrown From Brooklyn High-Rise Nearly Strikes Police

A Brooklyn man is charged with attempted murder for allegedly dropping a bowling ball from the 17th floor of an apartment building Monday, nearly hitting three police officers.

The two police officers and a parole officer were walking past a building on Christopher Avenue in Brownsville when a bowling ball crashed onto the street near them. They were not hurt.

Police arrested a 69-year-old man who lives in the building, Douglas Stiff, and charged him with attempted murder, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon.

Sources tell NY1 that Stiff has another ball on his balcony and that he was wearing binoculars. -- NY1 News: Top Stories

The binoculars are a nice touch. Even money the next person to endeavor to perfect this new New York Mania will use a spotting scope.

I don't know about anyone else, but to me some of the most discouraging words I can read online are: "This Requires RealPlayer." This is a company that has been trying to pick my pocket and ripping time out of my life for years. I don't know what this company's problems are, but they are legion and probably revolved around some founder "not being Bill Gates." At least that's the whiff I get off the site and the app this group produces. That's why it depressed me to see that the EU shakedown of Microsoft was also going to involve the innocent of Europe in even more RealPlayer moments than they have previously had:

Q. What effect will the verdict have on computer users?

A. Some analysts have said in Europe it will mean less choice if Microsoft is forced to take its Media Player software out of Windows. Microsoft says it will mean less functionality for many consumers since the vast majority of all PCs are sold with Windows software. MS rivals say it will give consumers the opportunity to review a number of media players that they can download off the Internet before choosing which one they like.
--CNN.com - Q&A: Why the EU took on Microsoft - Mar 24, 2004

Yet another reason to mourn for Europe. Too bad. She had, long ago, some nice ideals.

Pricewar in NapsterLand! That's what the salvo of: Wal-Mart starts selling 88-cent songs online means.

Retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. officially entered the increasingly crowded online music market Tuesday with a service that offers songs for 11 cents less each than competitors like Apple Computer Inc.

Wal-Mart's online division, which is based in Brisbane, has been testing its Music Downloads store since December, selling tunes for 88 cents each or $8.88 per album. Wal-Mart said the test has been successful enough to formally start the service, at www.walmart.com, with an expanded selection of 300,000 songs and exclusive tracks from artists like Jessica Simpson, Black Eyed Peas and Tim McGraw.

It is only the beginning but I suspect something like Moore's Law is about to take hold as the online music industry races down the price curve to the magic number that will enable them to rebound into stunning levels of profitability.

That number? 25 cents a tune. No more and no less. At that level, everybody, and I mean everybody, will start to amass personal music collections that would sink the Bismark.

It's simple. Would you rather have 10,000 dollars or 100,000 quarters? Alas, for many studio execs, math is hard.

Plus a weekend in Vegas with JayLo.
The Mrs. here doesn't have to know.

Ah, the shameful art of diplomacy begins before the dead are even buried.

MADRID (Reuters) - The United States and Britain bargained with Spain's new prime minister Wednesday over his pledge to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq, hoping to salvage a faltering alliance.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were in Madrid with other world leaders and royalty to mourn the 190 victims of the Madrid train bomb attacks which triggered a voter revolt that brought Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to power.
-- Reuters.com

FROM STEVE H. COMES THIS Comment on Snatching the Trivial from the Profound

With the guiding light of liberal logic shining bright in this case, we can now see clearly how to move forward.

Continued...

It what must be the most brain-dead headline of the week. the BBC has announced.... wait for it ....
BBC NEWS Python film to challenge Passion

It would seem the boobs at the Beeb have missed the part about Gibson's Passion of the Christ heading towards a world box office of around a billion dollars. Such is their shock that a religious film can suceed they have looked to a ex-comedy team's lamest film as a "Challenger." What can we say but, "Jesus wept?"

Monty Python's film The Life of Brian is to return to US cinemas next month following the success of The Passion of the Christ.

That tells us something about the inventory of spirtually uplifting films currently in Hollywood's arsenal. "My God, Jesus is pulling humongous BO! Get something out there. Anything. Who? The Pythons? Don't we have something where they speak American or at least Aramaic?"

The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary.

Make that two other US cities -- Greenwich Village and Santa Monica.

Adverts will challenge Mel Gibson's blockbuster with the lines "Mel or Monty?", "The Passion or the Python?"

Humm, you can spend some time with Jesus, or you can let the studio bozos pick your pocket for a 25 year old movie that last had a copy rented from Blockbuster in the late 20th Century. You decide. Distributor Rainbow said it hoped the film would "serve as an antidote to all the hysteria about Mel's movie"..... Translation: We've got a payment due on the Benz and its going to go to repo if somebody doesn't see this turkey pronto."

Rainbow president Henry Jaglom said: "We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programming to The Passion."

Ah, the high-minded motives of the maker of tiny movies rises to the surface like froth on a cesspool. Wouldn't it be clearer to say, "We decided to re-release this wheezing pile at this time so we wouldn't get run over by the sixteen biblical epics now in turnaround at every major studio from here to Alpha Centauri.

He said the surviving members of the Monty Python comedy team "all agreed this was a good time" to bring back the film and would help promote it.

Let's be clear about this. This film, The Life of Bryan, is a dead parrot. It has passed on. Gone to meet its maker. Joined the choir invisible.... fill in the rest.

I can't wait to see the "surviving" Pythons nattering on to Charlie Rose about their clapped-out old film and how it "had to be released" in order to quell the Mel-steria. Not a bit about scraping a few more dimes off the eyes of this cinematic dead horse. Nope. I like people who stand in water.

The New York Observer has a snippet about the forthcoming core dump concerning his crash-and-burn exit from the NYT titled:"As Howell Raines Readies His Memoir, Times Staff Girds." It is unclear exactly what the staff is girding, but it probably has something to do with installing new surge suppressors in the news room.

Deposed New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, sidelined and mostly silent after his eviction last June from West 43rd Street, is throwing himself back into the action. On March 24, The Atlantic Monthly will begin allowing the press to get a preview look at the cover story of its May issue, a gargantuan piece by Mr. Raines pondering his former place of employment.

The piece will check in at something greater than 20,000 words, according to The Atlantic. That's some 2,500 words longer than Ken Auletta's mammoth New Yorker profile of Raines. Or, by Atlantic standards, it means Raines gets to spend one-third as much space picking through the wreckage of his own career as William Langewiesche spent picking through the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

I've never thought Raines was worth a rivet from the WTC, but, hey, I'm prejudiced against his type.

The squibblet's writer, Scocca, however, gets top marks for the clueless kicker to his item:

Meanwhile, the standards of journalistic scandal have been bumped up considerably. Last week, USA Today revealed that its star reporter, Jack Kelley, had invented several Hong Kong movies’ worth of incident in his dispatches: drowned Cubans, gunned-down Palestinians, bomb-severed heads rolling in the streets.

Mr. Blair’s forged datelines and fake sit-down interviews seem suddenly quaint—and Mr. Raines’ purported white liberal guilt seems unremarkable, as editors’ biases go.

Now, it’s hard to remember exactly why the man got fired.

Somebody shoud get this guy a computer and teach him to Google. I'm sure bloggers could remind him in about three nanoseconds.

Make that three Big Macs, Two Pies, Fries,
and a supersized Hellfire Missile. To go.

Doctor "Deathwish Al" Rantissi, the newly appointed head terrorist of the PLO, confirmed that Hamas has now become so demented it views death as a perk.

Israelis "will know no security", Mr Rantissi told crowds of mourners at Gaza's soccer stadium.

He said he was not afraid of Israeli attempts to kill him.

"If it's cardiac arrest or an Apache (helicopter), I