Washington Post: ‘Al-Qaeda 7’ smear campaign is an assault on American values.
“If Cheney and her group object, they should prepare a blanket denunciation of the federal judiciary. Or maybe what they really don’t like is that pesky old Constitution, with all its checks, balances and guarantees of due process. How inconvenient to live in a country that respects the rule of law.” Presumably, they’d oppose Abraham Lincoln, for his creative ‘moonshine’ defense of murder suspect William Armstrong ...
NPR: The Original Fly Girls.
”Now in 1944, it is on the record that women can fly as well as men.” I was lucky enough to have known one of these fine women, who maintained her own cabin up in the Pecos Wilderness (at the end of a rocky 4WD ‘road’).
Boston Globe, The Big Picture: Chile, nine days later.
“Nine days after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake killed hundreds of people in south-central Chile, relief efforts were beginning to reach those in need, rescue missions became recovery missions, and rebuilding is already under way.”
CNN: Texas police warn spring breakers: Stay out of Mexico border towns.
”Recent violent attacks have caused the U.S. Embassy to urge U.S. citizens to delay unnecessary travel to parts of Michoacan, Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua ... and to advise U.S. citizens residing or traveling in those areas to exercise extreme caution.” The situation’s not stellar at the moment, so listen to this advice.
The Nation: Back Talk: Martha C. Nussbaum.
“Disgust, though, is different because it has this singular type of irrationality. It’s not noncognitive; it has an idea. But the idea repudiates some aspect of ourselves. It embodies a kind of self-loathing.”
Mother Jones: Sting’s Uzbek Dictator Problem.
”Famed rockers regularly play private gigs for people you might not enjoy meeting on a street corner. There was the New Year’s gig Beyonce played for Moammar Qaddafi’s son, Hannibal; Jimmy Buffett’s appearance at the infamous orgy of decadence thrown by ex-Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski for his wife; and the intimate affairs Michael Jackson and Celine Dion put on for the Sultan of Brunei (whose regime is not known for its hospitality toward women, or its appreciation of human rights).” Remember the song ’Sun City‘?
New Scientist: What is causing deformities in Fallujah’s children?
“In 2004 Fallujah was the scene of heavy fighting in which the US military eventually regained control of the city. Local people told the BBC they suspect US forces used white phosphorus and depleted uranium (DU), although this has not been proved.” Depleted uranium is already implicated in many health maladies. If America won’t do the research, let’s hope Britain does.
Atlantic, McArdle: Jim Bunning Plays Chicken with Unemployment Benefits.
“If Bunning wants to hold up something, how about finding some useless defense appropriations to complain about?”
The Nation: Big Tobacco and the Historians
“On the stand Proctor began to explain racism in tobacco marketing. He started to say that the companies had marketed products called Nigger-Head Tobacco and Nigger-Hair Tobacco — brands that existed as late as the 1960s. But a Philip Morris attorney, objecting that Proctor had injected racial slurs into the courtroom, demanded a mistrial — and got it. The judge ruled that Proctor’s utterance of those words was ‘prejudicial.’” Revisionist history through litigation. Disgusting.
Creep me out.
New Scientist: Newborns’ blood used to build secret DNA database.
Discover Magazine: Augmented Reality iPhone App Can Identify Strangers on the Street.
Mashable: Google Adds Facebook Pages to Real-time Search. That’s not the bad part; read the last paragraph: “Still, Google’s stream doesn’t include public Facebook profiles, something only rival search engine Bing can access.” A lot of people still can’t figure out Facebook’s privacy settings. Time to walk your friends, relatives and children through it.
CJR: When Government Acts Like Private Industry.
“Calpers was a big part of the notorious Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village purchase, which has the distinction not only of being one of the worst real estate deals of all time, but also one whose business plan was to aggressively dump middle-class tenants out of its apartments and raise rents sharply. Again, this is a government entity doing this, even if not to its own people.” As we know, when governmental bodies get desperate for money, ethics get hidden under a convenient trash bin.
And, Mashable: Google Adds Facebook Pages to Real-time Search. Note on this one, see last paragraph: “Still, Google’s stream doesn’t include public Facebook profiles, something only rival search engine Bingcan access.” Check your privacy settings, kiddies.
Times Online: Gérard Depardieu sparks racism row over role as mixed-race Dumas.
Seems a terrible shame to have not used a mixed-race actor. Race was an issue for Dumas in his lifetime. He had some remarkable comebacks for the ignorant: “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.” Side note: Look into one of his last mistresses, Adah Menken. More.
Related: Guardian.UK, Film reignites literary debate over Alexandre Dumas’ ghostwriter. So Dumas ran a ghostwriting factory. This process is still being used today in many fields. For instance, some modern ‘star’ architects hire young industrial designers, pay them garbage, take their best works, do a couple of tweaks to make it ‘original’, sell them and make tidy sums. We all buy the crap everyday at the big box stores. If you don’t like the process, you must at least be consistent in your condemnation. Good as Maquet might have been, the books would never have flown without Dumas’ particular flair.
Salon: Healthcare Reform.
“It won’t take a lot of investigating for members of Congress to see that these outrageous rate increases are common, and that the WellPoint increase in California is nothing more than business as usual for this industry, which values profits far more than the health and well-being of its customers. If everyone who has received a rate increase notice lets their members of Congress know about it, it just might give lawmakers the motivation they need to get reform passed.”
Guardian.UK: Brick Lane plan for hijab gates angers residents.
“One local Muslim woman has told the council that the stainless-steel, illuminated arches ’create a stereotypical image of Islam, and endorse the practice of the veil that not all of us are happy with. It is a divisive image and one that in the present climate is highly inappropriate.‘“
Atlantic Business: The Simple Genius of Google Buzz.
It’s the interop between all of Google’s services that make Buzz compelling. I think Google may really see privacy as something antiquated, eventually to be discarded.
Reuters: Iran to shut down Google email service.
I hate the sound of this. It is not going to end well.
NY Times: Iran’s Nuclear Move Prompts New Calls for Sanctions.
Seems like a game of cat and mouse. “At issue is a proposal for Iran to swap its uranium stockpile for enriched uranium processed into fuel roads outside the country. Iran was initially reported last October to have accepted the proposal, but later backed away.” I don’t know if it’s purely how the media is characterizing this, but it certainly does seem like Iran’s using parlor etiquette to buy time. I tend to make the obvious conclusion about what, exactly, they’re buying time for.
CNet: Vegetative patients show brain activity, awareness.
“In the meantime, one might consider having another look at one’s will.”
BBC News: Iran president Ahmadinejad accepts nuclear deal terms.
“Iran’s president has said it is ready to send its enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment under a deal to ease concerns about its nuclear programme.” Well, that’s a sudden switch.
In These Times: Our Addiction to Disaster Porn.
“Even now, as the casualty count rises, disaster pornographers barely mention the macabre history. They know that doing so would break unspoken rules against holding up a foreign policy mirror to America and against riling the politicians and business interests that contributed to Haiti’s demise.” Strong opinion, well stated.
NPR: John And Elizabeth Edwards Separate.
BBC News: Auschwitz liberation marked on Holocaust Memorial Day.
It’s been 65 years since liberation.
NPR: Should a photographer take a beautiful pic of tragedy?
Photographing Tragedy: The Line Between Art And Reality? By use of light and composition, we photographers insert symbolism, metaphor and meaning into photographs. Photographs are not just representations of reality, they’re our interpretations of reality. If we choose to interpret tragic death as beautiful, what are we really saying? Worthy of some thought.
Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert’s Journal: Review of two films.
A Superwoman for Kenya, but America is still waiting for Superman. “The most powerful opponents to better teaching are the teachers’ unions. I am a lifelong supporter of unions. But ‘Waiting for Superman’ makes this an inescapable conclusion. A union that protects incompetent and even dangerous teachers is an obscenity.” I recall a certain mathematics course where we were graded on a curve, and the teacher was so inept that we were getting “A’s” for scoring 10 right questions out of 100. I should have complained. Put me behind in calculus the next year.
NY Times: Justice Stevens finds his voice.
Justice John Paul Stevens Voices Frustration With Recent Decisions of Supreme Court. “Justice Stevens, who served in the Navy during World War II, reached back to those days to show the depth of his outrage at the majority’s conclusion that the government may not make legal distinctions based on whether a corporation or a person was doing the speaking. ‘Such an assumption,’ he wrote, ‘would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders.’” Better late than never, I suppose.
