Magpie

Saturday, April 2, 2005

This just makes us grin.

Henry David Thoreau's blog. Yes, that Thoreau.

Thoreau's Journal: 1-Apr-1860

I am surprised that my affirmations or utterances come to me ready-made,?not fore-thought,?so that I occasionally awake in the night simply to let fall ripe a statement which I had never consciously considered before, and as surprising and novel and agreeable to me as anything can be. As if we only thought by sympathy with the universal mind, which thought while we were asleep. There is such a necessity to make a definite statement that our minds at length do it without our consciousness, just as we carry our food to our mouths. This occurred to me last night, but I was so surprised by the fact which I have just endeavored to report that I have entirely forgotten what the particular observation was.

If you want to know more about Thoreau, this is a good place to start.

Via Grow-a-Brain.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:20 PM | Get permalink

On finding fingers in chili.

A customer's finding of a finger in her bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant in California was one of the few US news stories that rose above the clamor around Terri Schiavo's approaching death and Michael Jackson's trial. And, as it typical of the US press, pretty much all of the coverage focused on one of the most superficial aspects of the story: the question of whose finger it was and how it got into the chili.

What the press should have been talking about, says Jordan Barab, is what the finger in the chili says about the working conditions of US workers, and about the enforcement of health and safety laws:

Unless this is some sick person?s idea of a practical joke, it?s hard to imagine any scenario in which the fingertip does not belong to a worker. OSHA?s recordkeeping rule is supposed to ensure that if someone is injured on the job and requires more than first aid, the employer will record information about the injury on the OSHA 300 Log. But in this case, investigators have been looking high-and-low for the owner of the displaced finger, with no success. They have been asking employers about entries on their OSHA 300 Logs, including inquiries to all the Wendy?s restaurants in the area, the suppliers of beans, meat, and other Chili fixin' ingredients, but they can?t find any company that will admit to a recent finger-losing incident.

This true tale says many things about the state of workers? safety and health in the US, including that our injury and illness recording system is a JOKE. A serious injury occurred at a workplace---a finger was severed and became part of some unsuspecting person?s lunch---but it apparently isn?t recorded on any company?s log. The fact that these injuries occur thousands of times each day in the US is bad enough, but that we have no reliable system for recording them, and apparently less and less interest in enforcing the system we have, is a disgrace. Somewhere in Louisville, OSHA's former Asst Secretary John Henshaw?s mouth may still be on autopilot bragging about the "triple bottom line" of reducing injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Given that we have no system at all for tracking occupational illnesses, and that the fine for concealing an employee?s injury is currently running at about 0.1% of the fine for uttering a "dirty word" on the radio, shouldn?t that be "triple bottom LIE?"

Via Confined Space.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:18 PM | Get permalink

Breaking up isn't so hard to do.

Now that Mikhaela has provided us with a set of break-up lines for the Dubya era:

Spreading liberty

You can see more of Mikhaela's political cartoons here.

And you can get info on buying tshirts and totebags featuring the 'breakup' cartoon if you go here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:40 AM | Get permalink

They marry horses, don't they?

At a press conference yesterday, a Colorado legislator really went off the deep end.

Rep. Kevin Lundberg is the sponsor of a measure that would bar same-sex marriages in Colorado. He warns that unless the legislature adopts such a law, the state could be facing the dire threat of interspecies marriage. The Loveland Republican on Thursday warned that same-sex marriage could one day lead to interspecies marriage,

"Where do you draw the line?" Rep. Jim Welker asked. "A year ago in India, a woman married her dog."

In any reasonable world, someone this stupid would never be chosen for a position of public trust. And yes, Rep. Lundberg is a Republican.

Via TalkLeft

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:29 AM | Get permalink

Should you plug in your Prius?

One of the characteristics that has made hybrid vehicles more attractive to consumers than their all-electric predecessors is the lack of a plug. Until hybrids, electric vehicles had a very limited range and required frequent recharging. Hybrids switch back and forth from gas to electric power, and recharge as they travel. When Toyota and Honda introduced the first hybrids to the US market, one of their main marketing pitches was that their vehicles didn't have to be plugged in, and that pitch resonated with US auto buyers.

Some hybrid owners have remained intrigued by the plug-in option, however, since it would increase the gas mileage of hybrid vehicles substantially. And, even with a plug, plug-in hybrids would only have to be plugged in when the owner felt like it. These owners have chosen to modify their hybrid vehicles so that they can be plugged in.

"I've gotten anywhere from 65 to over 100 miles per gallon," said Mr. Gremban, an engineer at CalCars, a small nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif. He gets 40 to 45 miles per gallon driving his normal Prius. And EnergyCS, a small company that has collaborated with CalCars, has modified another Prius with more sophisticated batteries; they claim their Prius gets up to 180 m.p.g. and can travel more than 30 miles on battery power.

"If you cover people's daily commute, maybe they'll go to the gas station once a month," said Mr. Kramer, the founder of CalCars. "That's the whole idea."

Conventional hybrid electric cars already save gas. But if one looks at growth projections for oil consumption, hybrids will slow the growth rate of oil imports only marginally, at best, with the amount depending on how many hybrids are sold....

The idea of a plug-in hybrid has support from unusual places, including hawkish defense think tanks which see these vehicles as a way to lessen US dependence on imported oil. That dependence is seen as a threat to national security. Plug-ins are also supported by electric utilities for rather obvious reasons: they'll be selling the electricity that helps power plug-in hybrids.

While many environmentalists support the technology, some say in terms of emissions, electric cars would only be as good as the power plants that produce electricity.

"The concern on plug-in hybrids is that we not substitute addiction to one polluting fuel for addiction to a more polluting fuel," said Dan Becker, the head of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. "Coal is more polluting than gasoline, and nearly 60 percent of U.S. electricity is generated by burning coal."

Via NY Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:57 AM | Get permalink

Friday, April 1, 2005

'Suspended somewhere between meltdown and total hysteria.'

Look out, Ayn Clouter! That Michell Maklin's got herself a blog.

Maklin going off the deep end

Maklin's blog is even funnier if you look at the one it's modelled after. However, we have to admit that when looking at both of them, we have trouble deciding which one is the satire.

Unfortunately, Maklin's blog was a one-shot for April Fool's Day. A pity.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:11 PM | Get permalink

Dubya continues to bring home the economic bacon.

Unless you are a US wage earner, that is.

Data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute's JobWatch show the the real wages of US workers have dropping for almost two years, as shown in the chart below. This continuing erosion of real wages is happening even though the productivity of workers has increased rapidly over the same period of time.

Yearly change in real hourly wages, Q1 2003 to Q1 2005

The economy has been in recovery since late 2001 and has been creating jobs since the fall of 2003. But despite the upward trend for jobs, the hourly wages of most workers (the 80% of workers who are in manufacturing or non-managerial services) have failed to keep up with inflation over the last two years. In the first quarter of 2005, real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) wages were 0.2% below those of the same quarter a year earlier. Real wages have fallen 0.3% over the last two years after rising by 2.0% over the prior two years starting in early 2001.

So much for the competence of Dubya and his economic advisors, eh?

Note: We've had to abridge the table above to keep it readable on Magpie. The original table covers the years 2001–2005, and is available here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:51 PM | Get permalink

Why the WMD commission report didn't slam Dubya.

It's because it was a presidential commission. Dubya got to appoint all the members and, naturally, he chose people who wouldn't rock the boat and who wouldn't point fingers at him.

So despite 600-pages of information in the report, points out David Corn, the question as to whether Dubya and his minions deliberately exaggerated intelligence reports remains unanswered — at least officially.

Corn's article on the inadequacies of the WMD commission's report is well worth reading in its entirety. But in case you don't follow the link, we thought this appraisal by a government non-proliferation expert goes right to the heart of the matter.

[The commission] focuses on how and why the dogs barked [and got it wrong]. The real point, however, is: why didn't someone look out the window? And why have no policymakers taken responsibility, anywhere, for drastically wrong assessments on Iraq?

The Commission's report is a good read and thorough. The recommendations -- to collect better intelligence, do better analysis, and communicate better -- however, reflect the absurdity of having intelligence experts tell each other how to do their job better. The users of intelligence should be involved. The Commission had 60 staff members, but only three have identifiable expertise in nonproliferation and none have nonproliferation policy experience. Why didn't the Commission include more nonproliferation experts?

There are lots of reasons....The Commission was appointed by the president and it is politically easier for this administration to focus on intelligence rather than policy failures, for obvious reasons. Nonproliferation experts might point out that even though the intelligence was flawed, someone with enough nonproliferation experience would have asked more questions. Despite the fascinating details of how and why the intelligence on uranium from Niger was faulty, an expert would point out that there were tons of natural and low-enriched uranium already in Iraq: even if Iraq got uranium from Niger, it wouldn't make a discernible difference in the quantity it could enrich. Iraq's first choice would be to take the safeguarded material (just as it planned to do before the 1991 war) and use that. Faster and less complicated. A nonproliferation expert would also know that the CIA's arguments that Iraq was reconstituting its cadre of nuclear weapons personnel were an old, tired mantra repeated since the early 1990s. In interagency meetings ten years ago, I used to ask them, what evidence do you have? "Well," the analysts would say, "we think he's doing it." Apparently their evidence never got any better.

Not surprisingly, the expert asked Corn not to identify him in the article, out of fear of retribution for going public with his criticisms.

You can read the entire article here.

If you want to read the WMD report itself, you can download a PDF of the full text here.

Via Common Dreams.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:07 PM | Get permalink

We'd be a bit embarrassed ourselves.

If we'd done what someone at BBC-3 did.

The BBC sent an e-mail requesting an interview with reggae star Bob Marley, 24 years after his death.

The publicly funded broadcaster confessed on Friday it was "very embarrassed" by the mix-up which appeared in an e-mail to the Bob Marley Foundation.

"We are obviously very embarrassed that we didn't realise that the letter to the Marley Foundation did not acknowledge that Mr Marley is no longer with us," said a BBC statement....

It said the mistake occurred in a standard letter the BBC sent out to hundreds of "icons and musicians" it wanted to take part in a series on digital channel BBC-3.

The approach followed the success of BBC-3 documentary "The Story of Bohemian Rhapsody" about the classic track by rock group Queen.

A BBC spokeswoman said the statement was not an April Fool hoax.

"It's a genuine mistake ... today of all days," she said.

The BBC-3 program was to focus on the Bob Marley song, 'No Woman, No Cry.'

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:30 PM | Get permalink

Falling to pieces?

This sounds pretty serious:

Pictures captured by an orbiting spacecraft have revealed that the Moon is being heavily eroded. Images of the lunar surface reveal deep cracks and holes that are slowly but surely releasing gas and dust into space.

The scarred lunar orb [Photo © NASA]
"This is serious," says Brad Kawalkowizc, an astrogeologist from the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre in Belgium, who has analysed the pictures. "There really is less Moon up there than there used to be." If the process continues, he adds, the Moon could eventually crumble away to nothing.

Researchers are not yet certain what is causing the erosion. Kawalkowizc suggests that bacteria left behind by the Apollo Moon landings of the 1960s and 1970s may be responsible. These earthly bacteria, exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation on the lunar surface, could have acquired mutations that allow them to digest Moon rocks, he suggests.

"If those guys didn't wipe their feet when they stepped off the craft then, yes, there could be bugs up there eating the rock," he says. "And after three decades there must be tonnes of them."

The April 1 edition of news@nature.com has more here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Ooooooh, shiny!

A really big collection of old postcards!

Going up Mt Lowe, circa 1910

Pacific Electric Railway on Mt. Lowe (California), circa 1910
The collection is so large that we had trouble figuring out which postcard to use here. And all we did was look at the postcards of a few counties in three states.

Via Life in the Present.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:26 PM | Get permalink

Just an oversight, we're sure.

The US Department of Homeland Security apparently doesn't think that domestic right-wing terroists are a serious security problem.

According to a list of internal threats to US security obtained by Congressional Quarterly, the only significant domestic security threats are left-wing groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. This is despite the fact that right-wing groups have been responsible for attacks that have killed scores of people.

The conspirators behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 500, were inspired by radical right-wing movements. Eric Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100, was a member of the radical anti-abortion group Army of God. Initially, Rudolph was the object of a massive North Carolina manhunt in connection with a Birmingham, Ala., abortion-clinic bombing that killed a police officer and seriously maimed a nurse.

Another Army of God member, James Kopp, was convicted in the 1998 shooting of a doctor who performed abortions.

Individuals affiliated with such groups have also been involved in many smaller terrorist acts, including mailing hundreds of bogus anthrax letters to abortion clinics, and in plots to obtain and use conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons against civilians. In 2003, for instance, a Texas man prosecutors say was a white supremacist and anti-government radical pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. Authorities had discovered enough sodium cyanide bombs to kill hundreds of people; machine guns and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition; 60 pipe bombs; and remote-control explosive devices disguised as briefcases in a storage space he rented. The man, William J. Krar, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

CQ says that the experts on domestic terrorism that it contacted were suprised that Homeland Seucity didn't include right-wing groups on its list:

"They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat," said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. "If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that," said German, who left the FBI last year. "Hopefully it?s an oversight."

James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record and should be on the list. "The nature of the history of terrorism is that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the future."

Of course, if the US government did take the threat of right-wing terrorism seriously, Dubya's minions would have to spy on and/or arrest their friends.

We should note that Homeland Security has not responded to repeated requests from CQ for comment or confirmation of the document?s authenticity.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:08 AM | Get permalink

What did the US government know about Iraq before the invasion?

Damn little that bore any relationship to reality, says the report of a presidential commission on intelligence gathering.

After a year of investigation, the commission found that US intelligence on Iraq was 'dead wrong' — a mistake that will hurt US credibility for years. The commission also warned that US intelligence agencies know relatively little about the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, despite the Dubya administration's public pronouncements.

The commission's bluntly written report ... offered a damning assessment of the intelligence that President Bush used to launch the Iraq war two years ago and warned that flaws are still all too common throughout spy agencies.

"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the commissioners wrote.

And at a time when the United States is accusing Iran of nuclear ambitions and pressuring North Korea on its nuclear programs, the report said: "Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors."

The presidential commission, led by appeals court judge Laurence Silberman and former Virginia Democratic Sen. Charles Robb, called for a broad overhaul in the spy community to increase information-sharing and foster dissenting views.

"The flaws we found in the intelligence community's Iraq performance are still all too common," they wrote...

The report had harsh words for the performance of the CIA in the months before the invasion of Iraq, but shied off from direct blame when talking about Dubya and Cheney's acceptance of bad intelligence:

In what amounted to a direct assault on George Tenet, who was CIA director in the run-up to the Iraq war and gave the president his daily intelligence briefing, the commission found that "the daily reports sent to the president and senior policymakers discussing Iraq over many months proved to be disastrously one-sided."

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, accused of hyping the intelligence on Iraq in order to pursue a costly war with a deadly aftermath, escaped direct blame.

"The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments," the report said.

But it added: "It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom."

So far, the White House reaction to the report is to issue the usual lie:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president agreed the intelligence community needs fundamental change. He said its recommendations would be reviewed and acted on "in a fairly quick period of time."

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:59 AM | Get permalink

Happy birthday.

To us!

Two years ago today, we made the first post on Magpie. We wouldn't still be here without the support of all of you who stop by to read and comment.

A big ol' magpie thank-you to everyone who's given us advice, technical help, and shoulders to cry on. You know who you are.

Here's hoping that things will be looking better for all of us by this time next year.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

Do they have to raise their hands to go to the toilet?

Dubya and his handlers are leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to keep control over what members of his administration say and do. The latest wrinkle is a directive that requires all of Dubya's cabinet secretaries to keep office hours in the presidential compound. Under the directive, the secretaries spend up to four hours a week working out of an office in a building next to the White House.

"It allows us to work on a much more regular basis with the Cabinet in helping to manage issues," said Claude A. Allen, Bush's domestic policy adviser. "It also helps us lay the groundwork that is going to be necessary to implement the very aggressive agenda that the president has laid out for his second term...."

Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, sees its purpose differently. "This administration has been very conscious in the second term of the need to control what happens in Cabinet agencies and to make sure Cabinet officers don't get too far out there," he said. "I find it absolutely shocking that they would have regular office hours at the White House. It confirms how little the domestic Cabinet secretaries have to do with making policy."

Some scholars said the new office-hours requirement continues a trend in which Cabinet secretaries have become less architects of policy than purveyors of initiatives hatched by the political and policy officials in the White House. During the Eisenhower administration, for example, officials hashed out national policy during weekly Cabinet meetings. Now, the Cabinet meets irregularly -- maybe once every 45 days, Healy said -- and those sessions are mostly ceremonial.

"Power has gravitated to the White House over the past 50 years, and it keeps going," said Bradley H. Patterson Jr., who served in three administrations and has written two books on the subject. "I would say development of all major issues important to the president are centered in the White House. They have been sucked away from the Cabinet officers and brought to the White House. It was that way under Clinton, and more so under Bush."

Of course, the most important paragraph in the article is buried in the middle:

The new requirement coincides with a series of top personnel moves seen as increasing White House control over the government and minimizing dissent, but also, critics say, means the president does not have the benefit of the widest range of opinion. [emphasis ours]

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

We don't care what the church says.

This is not 'what the world of today needs.'

The LA Times reports that the Roman Catholic church is establishing its first religious society whose sole mission is to fight euthanasia and abortion. The male-only 'Missionaries of the Gospel of Life' will operate out of a vacant Catholic high school and dormitory owned by the Diocese of Amarillo (Texas).

The order will have a decidedly political bent, and will be active rather than contemplative, [founder Father Frank] Pavone said.

Its priests will be trained to conduct voter-registration drives, use the media to get out their antiabortion message and lobby lawmakers to restrict abortion rights.

They also will learn to lead demonstrations outside offices where abortions and family-planning services are provided.

"There is a difference between knowing the teachings and knowing how to effectively advance a movement," Pavone said.

In recent months, Pavone has been focused on marshaling religious conservatives around Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose feeding tube was removed March 18.

Pavone also is director of an association of antiabortion priests called Priests for Life....

The Catholic Church already has similar organizations. In 1991, the late Cardinal John O'Connor of New York established a women's religious community called Sisters of Life, dedicated to "protecting and advancing a sense of the sacredness of human life."

But, Pavone said, this is the first time the church has established an apostolic society for priests who will concentrate exclusively on abortion and euthanasia.

The society will be funded through private donations, Amarillo Bishop John W. Yanta said, and is being established with the knowledge and blessing of the Vatican.

In a statement from Rome, Cardinal Renato Martino, the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said the new order "may be just what the world of today needs."

We'd have something more to say here if the story didn't piss us off so much.

Thanks to Jeanne at Body and Soul.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:38 PM | Get permalink

Grrrrr.

This magpie has not been having a good week with electronics.

First, our laptop just stopped working. No warning messages, no funny sounds. It just switched itself off and wouldn't restart. Not for me. Not for Fujitsu tech support. So we just had to spend US $50 to Fedex the laptop to Fujitsu's repair depot in Tennessee. And we might have it back in 10 days. In the meantime, we have to work on the evil computer provided to us by our employer, which we have been trying to get them to replace for months. It's slow and cranky. And most of our browser bookmarks and email addresses are on the laptop. (Yes, we've learned that you should always back stuff up.)

On top of that, we finally got around to taking our digital camera in for repair today. Or, at least, we thought we'd be getting it repaired. It turns out that digital cameras are yet another of those throwaway items, at least in the low to middle price ranges. The in-the-door cost for a repair was more than half of what the camera cost when we bought it almost three years ago — or what a new, much better camera would cost today — and that's before figuring in the cost of any parts. The result? Our camera is now an expensive paperweight. Someday we might buy another. Maybe.

That's it. We just wanted to whine. Thanks for listening.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:56 PM | Get permalink

Pitching democracy to the Arabs.

Since the second anniversary of the Iraq invasion, Dubya and his minions have been working overtime to take credit for a 'wave of democracy' that's sweeping across the Middle East and other parts of the Islamic world. According to this view of the world, the popular outcry that has forced a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the uprising that ousted a president in Kyrgyzstan are are a direct result of the US invasion of Iraq.

It's a pretty picture if you buy into it, but not one that's well-connected to the facts.

According to Palestinian commentator Fawaz Turki, the 'wave of democracy' cited by Dubya and others on the US right wouldn't be needed if the US and other Western countries didn't prop up undemocratic regimes in the Muslim world.

The Arab world today does indeed, and desperately so, need democracy. Arab societies are broken in back and spirit, and Arab citizens are helpless and adrift, bereft of political cohesion and cut off from all that is vibrant and dynamic in the global dialogue of cultures. And has been for many years.

To explain that phenomenon, some commentators in the West have fallen back on a racist canard: Arab culture, along with Islam itself, is resistant to democratic values, and violence forms a part of the "Arab character."

Humbug. Those of us Arab activists, democrats one and all, who have agitated for meaningful reform all these years, began our campaign, often at great cost, back in the 1950s, when those commentators were in diapers. We had read John Lock[e] and Karl Marx, Montesquieu and Ibn Khaldoun, the "Federalist" and [Plato's] "Republic" in our college days, when American intellectuals, filmmakers and journalists were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee to be grilled about their ideological beliefs. ("Have you no sense of decency, Sir," one of them asked good, old Joe McCarthy.)

There is, of course, more to it than that. To make the long crawl to democratic transition and then democratic consolidation, we have to dig ourselves out from the hole that the Euro-American world had put us in, and clean the mess it left us behind.

The authoritarian regimes that for well over half a century have thrust on us a legacy of lopsided development, that not only left societies unfree but left them in political, moral and cultural decay, were indeed made up of elites native to our world. But these elites were supported, and their survival underwritten, by the "free world," that saw them as a bulwark against the "threat of communism" and as their pliant policemen whose primary job was the suppression of populist movements opposed to Western neocolonial influence and Israeli designs.

So don?t, I say, give us bunk about Iraq being the trigger for democratic movements in the Arab world, as if we?re a bunch of primitives happy for the glass beads handed out to us by Western explorers.

We have an important job ahead of us: Crawling out of that hole, and cleaning that mess, left us by the "free world".

Via Arab News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:16 PM | Get permalink

The call of the wild.

Better listen to it soon, because it won't be long until there's no wild left, calling or otherwise.

According to MIT professor Stephen Meyer, the human impact on Earth's biodiversity has already been so strong that more and more species will become endangered, and little or nothing can be done to save most of them. Even the tools that are used to preserve biodiversity are themselves a driving force in the oncoming extinctions.

Over the next 100 years or so as many as half of the Earth's species, representing a quarter of the planet's genetic stock, will either completely or functionally disappear. The land and the oceans will continue to teem with life, but it will be a peculiarly homogenized assemblage of organisms naturally and unnaturally selected for their compatibility with one fundamental force: us. Nothing?not national or international laws, global bioreserves, local sustainability schemes, nor even "wildlands" fantasies?can change the current course. The path for biological evolution is now set for the next million years. And in this sense "the extinction crisis"?the race to save the composition, structure, and organization of biodiversity as it exists today?is over, and we have lost.

This is not the wide-eyed prophecy of radical Earth First! activists or the doom-and-gloom tale of corporate environmentalists trying to boost fundraising. It is the story that is emerging from the growing mountain of scientific papers that have been published in prestigious scientific journals such as Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences over the past decade.

Meyers' article is a sobering read.

Via Boston Review.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:42 PM | Get permalink

Not like we should worry about this or anything.

But a new UN study shows that population growth and economic development are straining the Earth's ecosystems. According to the study, humans have depleted 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmlands, rivers, and lakes in just 50 years — a trend that threatens efforts to fight poverty and disease that afflict a huge proportion of the world's population.

Unless nations adopt more eco-friendly policies, increased human demands for food, clean water and fuels could speed the disappearance of forests, fish and fresh water reserves and lead to more frequent disease outbreaks over the next 50 years, [the report] said.

"This report is essentially an audit of nature's economy and the audit shows that we have driven most of the accounts into the red, if you drive the economy into the red ultimately there are significant consequences for our capacity to achieve our dreams in terms of poverty reduction and prosperity," Jonathan Lash, a member of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment board, said in London....

The study was compiled by 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who pored over 16,000 satellite photos from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and analyzed reams of statistics and scientific journals.

Their findings, announced in several cities worldwide, highlight the planet's problems at the end of the 20th century, as the human population reached 6 billion.

A fifth of coral reefs and a third of the mangrove forests have been destroyed in recent decades. The diversity of animal and plant species has fallen sharply, and a third of all species are at risk of extinction. Disease outbreaks, floods and fires have become more frequent. Levels of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — in the atmosphere have surged, mostly in the past four decades.

Of course, we can't possibly take seriously any study done by those commies at the UN.

Via SFGate.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:57 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

What a big surprise. Not.

A memo just obtained by the ACLU shows that the former US military chief in Iraq authorized the use of illegal interrogation techniques on Iraqi prisoners. In the memo, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez approved 29 methods of interrogation, a dozen of which 'far exceeded' US military rules and the Geneva Convention on POWs.

The September 14, 2003 memo bearing Lt Gen Sanchez's signature approved using muzzled army dogs in a way that "exploits Arab fear of dogs," and placing detainees in painful "stress positions".

The memo also authorised techniques of isolation and sleep and food deprivation and sensory manipulation to break down prisoners.

"Gen Sanchez authorised interrogation techniques that were in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Army's own standards," Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer, said in a statement.

Mr Singh called for Lt Gen Sanchez and other high-ranking US officials to be held accountable....

The Sanchez memo's existence had been known for some time, but it was only obtained by the ACLU from the Defence Department on Friday following multiple court-supported requests.

The department had refused to release the memo on national security grounds.

The ACLU's press release is here.

You can view or download a copy of the memo here. [Acrobat req'd]

Via AFP and ABC (Australia).

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:41 PM | Get permalink

We've always wondered ...

Just what did Popeye's 'spinach' contain that made him so strong?

What's Popeye smokin'?

Popeye in October 1939 [Artist: David McKay?]
Writing in Canabis Culture, Dana Larsen examines the question of whether Popeye was a dope fiend in some detail:

The best evidence is that during the 1920's and 1930's, the era when Popeye was created, "spinach" was a very common code word for marijuana. One classic example is The Spinach Song, recorded in 1938 by the popular jazz band Julia Lee and her Boyfriends. Performed for years in clubs thick with cannabis smoke, along with other Julia Lee hits like Sweet Marijuana, the popular song used spinach as an obvious metaphor for pot.

Second, anti-marijuana propaganda of the time claimed that marijuana use induced super-strength. Overblown media reports proclaimed that pot smokers became extraordinarily strong, and even immune to bullets. So tying in Popeye's mighty strength with his sucking back some spinach would have seemed like an obvious cannabis connection at the time.

Further, as a "sailor-man," Popeye would be expected to be familiar with exotic herbs from distant locales. Indeed, sailors were among the first to introduce marijuana to American culture, bringing the herb back with them from their voyages overseas.

Via CJR Daily (of all places!).

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:59 AM | Get permalink

'Predictable, if ghoulish.'

According to the NY Times, Terry Schiavo's parents have have authorized a right-wing direct-mail outfit to sell a list of their financial supporters:

"These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri," says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. "These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!"

Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish.

"I think it's amusing," said Robert Gellman, a privacy and information policy consultant. "I think it's absolutely classic America. Everything is for sale in America, every type of personal information."

Personally, this magpie thinks that all those Schiavo supporters on the list deserve the massive amounts of junk mail and spam that they're going to start getting real soon.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:51 AM | Get permalink

Free software, the GDP, and voodoo economics.

Since Brazil's leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office two years ago, his government has moved the South American nation into the forefront of the movement to adopt open-source software. Faced with the huge financial burden of licensing fees paid to Microsoft and others for commercial software, Lula has told federal ministries and government-owned companies to start using Linux and other free operating systems instead of Windows. More importantly, anyone (whether non-profit or for-profit) who gets government funding to develop software must make that software open-source.

Not content to sit on its laurels, however, Brazil's government is about to spread free software even more widely:

By the end of April, the government plans to roll out a much ballyhooed program called PC Conectado, or Connected PC, aimed at helping millions of low-income Brazilians buy their first computers.

And if the president's top technology adviser gets his way, the program may end up offering computers with only free software, including the operating system, handpicked by the government instead of giving consumers the option of paying more for, say, a basic edition of Microsoft Windows.

"For this program to be viable, it has to be with free software," said Sérgio Amadeu, president of Brazil's National Institute of Information Technology, the agency that oversees the government's technology initiatives. "We're not going to spend taxpayers' money on a program so that Microsoft can further consolidate its monopoly...."

You'd think that the widespread use of free software would be a boost to Brazil's economic performance, wouldn't you? Guess again. As Nathan Newman points out, using open-source software has rather strange economic consequences:

By deploying computers with free software, the government de facto expands the wealth of its population, yet beause the software is free, the GDP [gross domestic product] numbers won't show any increase in wealth. In fact, any government action that saves rather than spends money for the population -- from promoting energy conservation to preventive health care -- shows up in its economic rankings as no gain in wealth.

GDP and other traditional measures of wealth are geared to only measuring commerical transactions. For both developed nations and, even more importantly, for developing countries, measures such as GDP wrongly devalue initiatives that don't expand commercialization of daily life.

Free software is therefore a challenge to more than Microsoft. It's a challenge to the whole economics profession.

The inadquacies of using the GDP to measure the health of an economy extend far beyond open-source software. For example, an energy company contributes much more to the economy by pumping an oilfield dry quickly, rather than conserving it. The long-term economic problems caused by reliance on fossil fuels aren't counted.

And things get even crazier when dealing with the pollution caused by the use of oil. Not only does the GDP count the economic activity involved in making the pollution, but it also counts the ecoomic activity generated by cleaning up the pollution. For example, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was an economic plus for the US economy: lots of jobs were created by the clean-up. On top of that, the economic activity related to only count in terms of the number of jobs produced in alleviating the pollution — the damage to people's health or to the environment isn't figured in.

And, as more economists are starting to point out, the tremendous contribution of women's unpaid work makes to the economy isn't counted at all. (Gee, we wonder why that is?)

You might want to keep all of that in mind the next time Dubya or his minions talk about growth in the US economy, or about how some limit on corporate power will cause economic chaos.

More: There's a short, nontechnical explanation of the problems with GDP as an economic yardstick here.

Via NathanNewman.org.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:33 AM | Get permalink

Monday, March 28, 2005

Do you want me to super-size that, Dear Leader?

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, sure does like to eat good. And being the absolute ruler of a country means that price is no object.

In the Korea Times, Andrei Lankov writes about the stream of famous foreign chefs that has gone to North Korea since the early 1980s, just to tickle the Dear Leader's palate:

No efforts or costs were spared to serve the Beloved Leader and his inner circle. The best ingredients were air-lifted from overseas at the first notice, and often against the energetic protest of [Italian pizza chef Ermanno] Furlanis who, being a product of a capitalist society, was used to taking money seriously. "On one occasion, after looking over a brochure I had brought with me, Mr Pak [Furlanis' supervisor] got the sudden bright idea to order a prefabricated kiln. After first inquiring whether I would be able to build such a thing myself, he chose the most expensive model available and asked me to telephone and order it right away. It was only because the company was closed for holidays that we avoided another colossal waste of money."

Every now and then couriers came from some corner of the world, bringing to the royal kitchens all kinds of foreign delicacies. It could be enormous boxes containing very costly French cheeses, or a box of (over) priced French wines. This must be typical, since another sympathetic observer of Kim Jong-il, Russian statesman General Konstantin Pulikovsky, who traveled with Kim on the Trans Siberian Railway in 2001, also wrote in his book how the North Korean leader had live lobsters and cases of French wine flown to his train.

A highlight of Furlanis' adventure was making pizza at sea, on a special pontoon raft on which the North Koreans installed an entire pizzeria, so the pizza could be served fresh to the Beloved Leader when he came back from his seaside excursions.

Via North Korea zone.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:42 PM | Get permalink

Get used to seeing this headline (10).

It's been quite awhile since the last post in this series — October, in fact — but we're doing one again because US gas prices keep doing one thing: going up.

Today, we have this headline:

US Gasoline Prices Rise to Record $2.15 a Gallon

The US price for unleaded gas at the pump hit $2.153 per gallon, which is 4.4 cents higher than last week and 39.5 cents higher than this time last year. And we're not even close to Memorial Day (May 30), which traditionally marks the beginning of the driving season — and the annual spike in gas prices.

As usual, we beg those of you in Europe to try to keep from laughing when we in the US complain about how high our gas prices are.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:55 PM | Get permalink

We don't know about you.

But we think that this is a really creepy idea.

[Shudder]

Via Boing Boing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:14 PM | Get permalink

Planxty.

Back in the early 1970s, a very young magpie was in our favorite record store when the clerk put on some of the most wonderful music we'd ever heard. When we asked about the record, the clerk handed her a black record jacket with an odd name on it: Planxty. While this magpie had heard Irish tunes before in the hands of electric revivalists like Fairport Convention, we'd never heard the music played acoustically, but actual people from Ireland. As should be obvious, we bought that LP quick and devoured it at home, starting what's been a three-decade long love affair with Irish traditional music.

Planxty, 1973-ish

Planxty circa 1973 [Photographer unknown]
Planxty came together in 1972 after its members been involved in recording Christy Moore's second album 'Prosperous.' The original line-up included Moore, Donnal Lunny, Liam O'Flynn, and Andy Irvine. Over the next three years, the group released as many albums (with slight personnel changes) and became hugely popular in Ireland, Britain, and Europe. The group reformed in 1979 and recorded another clutchful of albums over the next few years, each of which was just as good as any made by the group in its first incarnation.

Each of the original Planxty members has become an important figure in Irish music in his own right. Christy Moore's career has straddled traditional and more mainstream music, and he has become known as much for his songwriting as his singing and musicianship. Donnal Lunny went on to be a founding member of the Bothy Band and (with Moore) of Moving Hearts, and has had his hand in numerous musical projects (as player and as producer) since then. Liam O'Flynn is regarded as one of Ireland's best uillean pipers, and is known best for his playing on 'The Brenadan Voyage' and other collaborations with composer Shaun Davey. And Andy Irvine has released a string of well-regarded solo albums and has for many years been a member of Patrick Street.

Planxty, 2004

Planxty at Vicar Street [Photo © Kate Akers, 2004]
The members of the original Planxty line-up kept in touch over the years, and frequently played with each other in sessions. In 2003, Moore, Irvine, Lunny, and O'Flynn began rehearsing with the eye to playing a single gig. That one gig has turned into many, including a series of shows at Dublin's Vicar Street.

Planxty remain an important band for so many reasons. Revitalizing the Irish music scene at the lip of the 70s with a set of folk and traditional songs and tunes performed with an unusual line-up of instruments that included bouzouki, mandolin and guitars with uileann pipes, bodhrán and tin whistle, they brought ensemble playing to new and exciting heights, and traditional music to a whole new audience. At a time when the zeitgeist pointed towards rock music and folkies were turning electric, Planxty proved there was even more exhilarating music to be culled from acoustic sounds....

The musical synthesis these players generated was so strong that the following year they formed a band that literally revolutionised Irish folk music. Their style was influenced by Irvine's obsession with Eastern European musics, O'Flynn's repertoire of traditional dance tunes and 17th century Carolan music, as well as the singing of the great John Reilly and the scoured pages of the PW Joyce Collection. They had many great musical attributes from Christy's soulful voice and the mighty thump of his bodhrán to Dónal and Andy's celebrated bouzouki-mandolin interplay, and Liam?s ability to lift the music into the stratosphere with his virtuoso piping. [Current Planxty press bio]

A substantial portion of the video of the Vicar Street shows is available for free here [click the liveIreland TV button; RealPlayer req'd]. If you had any doubts why Planxty was so important and is remembered so fondly, the group's performance will allay them. We're not sure how long the concert footage will be available, so you might want to catch it now.

Donnal Lunny culled a CD's worth of material from the Vicar Street shows, which is available as 'Planxty Live 2004.' You can find it in a lot of places on the web, such as Custy's , Gael-Linn, or Ossian USA.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:08 AM | Get permalink

Serendipitous photography.

This magpie's favorite blogger in Paris has been ailing lately, so her excellent blog serendipity hasn't had many posts for awhile. Today, however, we see that Chris has put up some lovely photos for the rest of us to look at while she's on hiatus.

Abbey Bookshop, Paris

Abbey Bookshop
You can see more of Chris' photos here on her blog and here on Flickr.

Get well soon, Chris!

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:26 AM | Get permalink

This story is even worse than we thought it was.

This post started out being about the narrow-minded and bigoted actions taken earlier this month by the Central Church of God in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Thanks to Suburban Guerilla for the tip.) In a letter to the Charlotte-based Loaves & Fishes food bank, church evangelism director Shannon Burton explained to the group why the 6000-member-strong church was cutting off its funding to four local charities, including Loaves & Fishes:

"As a Christian church, we feel it is our responsibility to follow closely the (principles) and commands of Scripture," the letter said.

"To do this best, we feel we should abstain from any ministry that partners with or promotes Catholicism, or for that matter, any other denomination promoting a works-based salvation."

Loaves & Fishes isn't the only ministry with which the large church has cut ties, and Catholics have not been the only reason they've given.

The Rev. Tony Marciano, executive director of Charlotte Rescue Mission, said Burton told him the church could no longer support the agency after it allowed three Muslim students from UNC Charlotte to help serve a meal.

Doug Hartjes, director of development for Crisis Assistance Ministry in Charlotte, said Central Church of God told them it will not provide financial support this year. Crisis Assistance provides emergency financial aid and other help to people.

As you might expect, the decisions made by the church blew up in its face when that letter was made public. In his Palm Sunday services last weekend, senior pastor Rev. Loran Livingston tried to save face, apologizing for his church's actions and announcing resumed funding for two of the groups that had been cut off.

Livingston, one of the region's best-known pastors, offered few details from the pulpit about a decision that sparked considerable debate around town this weekend over interfaith cooperation, or lack of it. But when he took the pulpit after the opening hymn, he spoke softly -- his contrition came through loud and clear when he said the church decision made them appear "holier than thou."

"It made us look like we are better than everybody else," he said at the 8:30 a.m. service.

At the 10:30 a.m. service, he said Jesus came into the world to save sinners -- "Not to exclude them, not to rise above them."

Later in the second service, he said, "Zeal without compassion is fanaticism, and no one is drawn to that. ... It's the love of Jesus that will make a Muslim listen to us."

You'll notice that church funding wasn't restored to all of the groups cut off earlier — the Charlotte Rescue Mission is still on the no-money list because it allowed those Muslim students to help serve a meal. It must be that 'love of Jesus' that made Livingston uphold the earlier decision.

So here's what it looks like to this magpie: The Central Church of God had to back down from its position on funding charities that included Catholics because there are a lot of Catholics, and anti-Catholic bigotry isn't well-tolerated — even in North Carolina.

But those Muslims are a different deal. They're jihadists. They attacked America on 9/11. Nobody (and especially not the Central Church of God) has to care about offending or discriminating against them, right?

As Susie of Suburban Guerilla asked in her headline, 'What would Jesus do?'

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Pop quiz!

Quick! Where was the picture below taken?

An unusual spring

[Photo: Judy A Mosby]
You probably didn't say 'Death Valley, California' did you?

It's been an unusually wet spring in the spot that's normally the hottest and driest in the US. Thee valley has received over 6 inches [15 cm] of rain since last July, which makes this the wettest year on record. As a result, the wildflowers are blooming in profusion.

For more info on the picture, go here.

Via Earth Science Picture of the Day.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:40 PM | Get permalink