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WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
Magpie is a former journalist, attempted historian [No, you can't ask how her thesis is going], and full-time corvid of the lesbian persuasion. She keeps herself in birdseed by writing those bad computer manuals that you toss out without bothering to read them. She also blogs too much when she's not on deadline, both here and at Pacific Views.

Magpie roosts in Portland, Oregon, where she annoys her housemates (as well as her cats Medea, Whiskers, and Jane Doe) by attempting to play Irish music on the fiddle and concertina.

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Saturday, March 4, 2006

While the Pentagon's PR flacks are saying that the worst is past in Iraq ...

... the US Air Force is moving a bunch of AC-130 aircraft to Iraq. These, friends, are what were called 'flying gunships' in Vietnam. Just the thing for close support of ground troops in heavy combat.

Things must be going really well in Iraq, eh?

The BBC has more on AC-130s here. The Air Force fact sheet on the aircraft is here.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:40 PM | Get permalink



Time management for anarchists.

What??!?


Smashing the state by breaking down tasks.
[Graphic: Jim Munroe]


We were ready to laugh at this, but Jim Munroe's flash presentation — with Emma [Goldman] and Mike [Bakunin] — makes a pretty good case for what you might call the 'little black book.'

Make sure you have your computer's sound turned on — the sound effects are half the fun.

Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:57 AM | Get permalink



Like we didn't already know.

But just in case, political cartoonist Mike Keefe of the Denver Post draws us a picture.


Truth? What's that?

[Cartoon © 2006 Mike Keefe]

You can see more of Mike Keefe's cartoons here.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:13 AM | Get permalink



Not as hard as you'd think.

Over at Body and Soul, Jeanne's fifth-grade daughter explains the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

I doubt most people in the US could do as well.

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



The Calls of Cthulhu.

Russell Bradbury-Carlin appears to have been smoking something while reading his Lovecraft:

(Phone rings.)

CTHULHU: Hello?

SOLICITOR: Hello, Mr. Cthulhu?

CTHULHU: Yes?

SOLICITOR: Do you have good car insurance?

CTHULHU: I am an Elder God of the Damned. I don't need that simplistic mode of transportation.

SOLICITOR: Well, I understand that you, as an elderly person, must pay a high premium.

CTHULHU: Cthulhu does not pay for anything.

SOLICITOR: I am sure that living on a fixed income can make affording good car insurance a difficulty. What if I told you that I could save you a minimum of 25 percent on your yearly premium?

CTHULHU: I hate human scum like you. You know, I could transport myself through this phone line and reveal myself in all of my horrible grandeur — causing you to live in a world of constant nightmares. You would pray for a swift death at my hands.

SOLICITOR: OK, OK. What about life insurance?

CTHULHU: ... No thanks. (Hangs up.) Arrgh!

It gets much worse.

[The Lovecraft-impaired can bone up on Cthulhu here.]

From McSweeney's, via Blog of a Bookslut.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Friday, March 3, 2006

Vatican rebukes US for treatment of Guantánamo prisoners.

Using sharp language, the Vatican is criticizing the US for its treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo. In an interview with the Italian news agency ANSA, Cardinal Renato Martino charged that 'human dignity is not being fully respected in that prison.' Martino has just returned from a trip to Cuba.

"Is not the trampling of man's dignity a violation of human rights? Everyone has a right to a fair trial. Wherever in the world inmates are being held in such conditions, without even knowing the charges they face, we will not fail to defend them," said the cardinal, who heads the Vatican's Justice and Peace department.

"I would like to stress that even those who have committed crimes are still human beings and as such their dignity must be respected," said the cardinal.

When asked by ANSA whether human rights organizations or the families of Guantánamo prisoners had asked the Vatican to intercede with the US goverment, the cardinal refused comment.

One of the most interesting aspects of this story is that it's now 13 hours since ANSA released its story on the Vatican comments, and no US media outlet that we can find has picked up the story. I only found out about it via the English-language Chilean blog, USA Watch, which posted the text of Agence France Presse's story on the Martino interview.

It's going to be interesting to see whether the story gets any US play at all.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:47 PM | Get permalink



About Dubya's luck.

Paul Krugman's latest column thoroughly debunks the notion that Dubya's current political problems — Iraq, his response to Katrina, Medicare — are just a run of bad luck.

[Our] country is being run by people who assume that things will turn out the way they want. And if someone warns of problems, they shoot the messenger.

Some commentators speak of the series of disasters now afflicting the Bush administration — there seems to be a new one every week — as if it were just a string of bad luck. But it isn't.

If good luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, bad luck is what happens when lack of preparation meets a challenge. And our leaders, who think they can govern through a mix of wishful thinking and intimidation, are never, ever prepared.

You can read the full column over here, courtesy of The Peking Duck. It's worth the trip.

Oh, we just noticed that Krugman managed to write a column calling Dubya and his minions incompetent, without once using the word 'incompetent.' Slick, eh?

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:10 AM | Get permalink



Big Brother is always watching you.

Like if you make a bigger-than-usual payment on your credit card, as Walter and Deanna Soehnge of Rhode Island found out afterthey sent in US $6522 to whittle down an uncomfortably large balance.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said....

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me {Providence Journal reporter Bob Kerr]. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.

"The more I'm on, the scarier it gets," he said. "It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy."

Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill.

Via MetaFilter.

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



Bet you didn't know there was a 'war on rodents.'

You can expect Dubya's administration to announce it any day now, predicts political cartoonist Mike Luckovich.


Last days of the good ship Dubya

[Cartoon © 2006 Mike Luckovich]


You can see more of Luckovich's cartoons here.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Thursday, March 2, 2006

The f'n US Senate.

It's just approved the extension of the Patriot Act by a vote of 89-10. 14 of the 16 temporary provisions of the original act have been made permanent.

We don't know who cast the 10 votes against the bill [other than we're sure Russ Feingold was one of them], but we'll post the names as soon as we have them. [List added — see below]

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives, where passage is a done deal.

Via Paper Chase.

More: The AP's story on the vote, including details on the provisions, is here.

Still more: Here's the list of the senators who voted against extending the Patriot Act:

Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Byrd (D-WV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Murray (D-WA)
Wyden (D-OR)

[Senator Inouye (D-HI) did not vote.]

If your senator is on this list — and one of mine is — you might want to call or email their office to thank them for their vote.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:09 PM | Get permalink



For sale: Observatory with huge telescope. Cheap.

By 2050, ads like that could be common — that is, if the effects of climate change and aircraft exhaust develop as expected.

According to new calculations, almost all ground-based astronomy may be impossible in 40 years due to increased cloud cover and jet contrails. This is much sooner than earlier calculations had suggested.

"It is already clear that the lifetime of large ground-based telescopes is finite and is set by global warming," Professor Gilmore, from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, told reporters recently in London.

"There are two factors. Climate change is increasing the amount of cloud cover globally. The second factor is cheap air travel.

"You get these contrails from the jets. The rate at which they're expanding in terms of their fractional cover of the stratosphere is so large that if predictions are right, in 40 years it won't be worth having telescopes on Earth anymore — it's that soon.

"You either give up your cheap trips to Majorca, or you give up astronomy. You can't do both."

Climate change is also expected to increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere through evaporation, contributing to overall cloudiness. The increase in cloud cover would affect both optical and infrared astronomy, which would have to be carried out from space.

Via BBC.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:19 PM | Get permalink



The mayor's race must be getting real hot in Tulsa, OK.

Because this has got to be one of the most negative negative ads this magpie has seen in a long time. If even part of the charges are true, candidate Kathy Taylor is in big trouble. [RealPlayer req'd to view ad]

From the National Journal via WB42 5:30 Report with Doug Krile.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:37 AM | Get permalink



Don't worry about gay adoption.

As Mikhaela explains, the real threat to our children is GOP adoption:


Save the children!

[© 2006 Mikhaela B. Reid]

Check out the rest of the cartoon here.

And when you're done doing that, you can look at a whole bunch more of Mikhaela's political cartoons over here.

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



Fox News sure is on a roll.

A few days ago, we posted about how those deep thinkers over at Fox News had been looking for the brighter side of an Iraqi civil war.

Now, they've upped the ante by denying that the war is real at all.


Nothing is real to Fox

The media made up Iraq, too, doncha know?


Via Think Progress.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:19 AM | Get permalink



Where are all the good Americans?

Indeed.


The torture never stops

Now that we know what goes on in here, what are we going to do about it?
[Photo: Mark Wilson/AFP/Getty Images]


If President Bush won't halt the abuse of US captives, Congress stands next in line for responsibility. Last December, it passed the so-called McCain amendment, which supposedly abolished all torture by US forces anywhere in the world. But the UN report makes clear that torture is continuing at Guantánamo.

The law's sponsor, Senator John McCain, promised that Congress would establish oversight over Guantánamo and other US prisons abroad to assure enforcement. But where's Senator McCain now? If he really wants to stop torture, why doesn't he fly to Guantánamo immediately and make sure no one is being abused? Isn't that what McCain would have wanted US senators to do when he was being tortured in a prison cell in Vietnam?

If Congress won't act, then it is up to the people. We must make every family dining table, every house of worship and every town meeting a place to stand up and speak out.

Only then will those who come after us know where the "good Americans" were.

Via The Nation.

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



Things in the US could be worse, y' know?

Instead of having Dubya in power for just over five years now, we could have been suffering under the prez for the whole of the last decade.

It would be a lot like what those poor Aussies have been enduring since 1996 under the reign of right-wing PM John Howard.

Count your blessings.

Via New Zealand Herald and Reuters.

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



The world's hardest job?

Our nomination for the title is being in charge of tourism for Somalia. The country has been without a central government since the early 1990s, and hasn't seen an 'official' tourist in almost that long.

Somalia is not without attractions. The sun shines, the beaches are sandy and you can dine on lobster on the roof of the Sharmo Hotel, which commands a splendid view of the capital, Mogadishu. It is not safe, however. The Sharmo advises guests to hire at least ten armed guards to escort them from the airport....

Brave tourists can find unusual bargains in Mogadishu. In the market, a hand grenade sells for $10, a Howitzer for $20,000. For those who remain unconvinced, [tourism minister Abdi Jimale Osman] is reassuring. "I'm sure tourists would leave Somalia alive and I'm hopeful they wouldn't be kidnapped," he says. "At least, we would try to make sure they were not kidnapped, although it can happen."

From The Economist, via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Hail to the chief!

People in India's capital sure know how to make a president feel welcome.



100,000 demonstrators in New Delhi roll out the welcome mat for Dubya.
[Photo: B Mathur/Reuters]


Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:54 PM | Get permalink



Another warning ignored by Dubya's administration: Chapter 532.

The current slide toward civil war in Iraq shouldn't surprise anyone — least of all the prez and Dubya administration officials responsible for crafting what passes for US policy regarding Iraq. According to a report from Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau, US intelligence agencies gave repeated warnings as early as 2003 that the Iraqi insurgency was locally based, and that this insurgency was likely to lead to a civil war.

Dead-on, wouln't you say?

Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions — not foreign terrorists — and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops....

The reports received a cool reception from Bush administration policymakers at the White House and the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to the former officials, who discussed them publicly for the first time.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others continued to describe the insurgency as a containable threat, posed mainly by former supporters of Saddam Hussein, criminals and non-Iraqi terrorists — even as the U.S. intelligence community was warning otherwise.

Robert Hutchings, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005, said the October 2003 study was part of a "steady stream" of dozens of intelligence reports warning Bush and his top lieutenants that the insurgency was intensifying and expanding.

As NIC director, Hutchings oversaw the drafting of the October 2003 report and of other analyses of the insurgency. Despite the continuing flow of these documents to the White House and Pentagon, the intelligence specialists who put those documents together continually had to deal with the rose-colored glasses that Dubya, Rumsfeld, and others insisted on putting on when they looked at Iraq.

"The mindset downtown was that people were willing to accept that things were pretty bad, but not that they were going to get worse, so our analyses tended to get dismissed as 'nay-saying and hand-wringing,' to quote the president's press spokesman," he said.

The result, he said, was that top political and military officials focused on ways of dealing with foreign jihadists and disaffected Saddam loyalists, rather than with other pressing problems, such as growing Iraqi anger at the U.S.-led occupation and the deteriorating economic and security situation.

A former senior U.S. official who participated in the process said that analysts at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department's intelligence bureau all agreed that the insurgency posed a growing threat to stability in Iraq and to U.S. hopes for forming a new government and rebuilding the economy.

"This was stuff the White House and the Pentagon did not want to hear," the former official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They were constantly grumbling that the people who were writing these kind of downbeat assessments 'needed to get on the team,' 'were not team players' and were 'sitting up there (at CIA headquarters) in Langley sucking their thumbs.'"

All of this info leaves this magpie wondering what warnings Dubya and his minions are ignoring right now, and what problems are developing because of the administration's continued pollyanna attitude?

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:08 PM | Get permalink



More Octavia Butler.

As we noted earlier, science fiction writer Octavia Butler died at a too-early age this past weekend. [See this Magpie post for obituaries, quotes, and links.] MIT's program in Comparative Media Studies has posted some great material about Butler culled from a set of discussions on science fiction, media, and imagination that she participated in at MIT back in 1998.

From Butler's essay on why she was a science fiction writer:

Several years ago when I was publicizing Parable of the Sower, I heard on National Public Radio that the population of America could be considered about 46% semi-literate. Now that's scary. This doesn't mean that 46% of people can't read--although there must be a percentage of that semi-literate group who can't read-- but that 46% have difficulty reading or, at least, some of that 46% have real difficulty reading. Probably they don't read for fun, and probably they don't read for information as often as they should, so more than anybody recently in history they must be people who are saying what they hear others say, which is kind of scary.

There's also a profile of Butler [current to 1998] and a discussion on literacy in which she and SF colleague Samuel Delaney were participants.

Via Boing Boing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:47 PM | Get permalink



The Simpsons vs. the 1st Amendment.

Who won? Well, if it was the First Amendment, I wouldn't be writing this post, would I?

A new survey shows that while more than half of those responding can name all five members of TV's Simpsons family, fewer than one in 1,000 people can name the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The survey was commissioned by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago.


Homer wins!

A sad result, but no surprise.
[Graphic: McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum]

The survey found more people could name the three "American Idol" judges than identify three First Amendment rights. They were also more likely to remember popular advertising slogans.

It also showed that people misidentified First Amendment rights. About one in five people thought the right to own a pet was protected, and 38 percent said they believed the right against self-incrimination contained in the Fifth Amendment was a First Amendment right, the survey found.

Given how boring the schools usually make anything to do with the Consitution, government, or history, it's probably amazing that any US adult can tell the First Amendment from, say, a first down. And, given Dubya's contempt for the Constitution, his administration is undoubtedly happy to keep things that way.

By the way, the five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment are freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right of assembly, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

You can download the complete report on the First Amendment survey here [PDF file].

Via AP.

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



Bits & pieces.

There's always a lot of stuff that threatens to slip through the cracks. Here are some stories that I found interesting, but that I don't have time to write a full post about:
    One very big squid
  • Visitors to London's Natural History Museum are gasping over one of the largest giant squids ever caught [right]. The squid was caught by a trawler off the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, and measures 8.62m [28 ft] in length. [BBC]

  • Bills in the US Congress are frequently amended at the last minute, and have been known to get passed without legislators having enough time to read them. [An infamous example is the passage of the Patriot Act.] The Washington Post reports on ReadtheBill.org, an nonprofit group that's leading an effort to make the Congress post the text of bills 72 hours before a vote, so that citizens will have time to read them and identify problems.

  • Chile will be seeing the formation of the first Mapuche political party later this year. The party will seek autonomy and self-government for the Mapuches, who are the country's indigenous people.

    "There is broad consensus among Mapuche groups about the right to self-government, and among Chileans about decentralisation, and that's why we think that the party is working along the right lines," said [Mapuche activist Pedro Gustavo] Quilaqueo.

    In his view, rejection of the Mapuche demand for self-government "stems from Chilean nationalists and politicians who are generally conservative, in favour of highly centralised authority, and in some cases, suspiciously racist."

    Mapuches make up about a quarter of the population of Chile's southernmost district. [Inter Press Service]

  • The US Homeland Security Department has found another grave threat to the nation, in the person of Dr. Robert Johnson, a heart surgeon from New York state. Despite being a veteran of the first Gulf war, Johnson is so dangerous that he's been put on the feds' no-fly list.

    We're sure that Johnson's criticism of the current war in Iraq, and his 2004 campaign to the GOP incumbent in his congressional district had nothing to do with the feds' decision to keep him off the nation's commercial airplanes. [The Nation]

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:41 AM | Get permalink



It's probably not the worst job in Iraq.

But being a reporter for a Western media is definitely not one of the best — or easiest — jobs, either.

Farnaz Fassihi recently ended three years of reporting from Iraq for the Wall Street Journal. Besides the stories she filed, she was also the author of a widely circulated email two years ago, in which she complained in detail about the limitations she had to work under in Iraq. Despite those conditions, however, Fassihi left the country with a firm belief that the presence of the international press in Iraq is essential for the true story of events to get out to the rest of the world.

This past weekend, Fassihi was interviewed by Bob Garfield on the US public radio program On the Media. Here's part of the interview:

Farnaz Fassihi in Afghanistan

Fassihi during an earlier assignment in Afghanistan.
[Photographer unknown]
BOB GARFIELD: As you look back, is it worth it?

FARNAZ FASSIHI: Bob, we're the only independent observers of this war. If it weren't for us, the world would rely on the governments to give them information of how things are going, or the military. I think it's certainly not the most gratifying way of doing our job, but I still think it's hugely important that we maintain as independent observers and try to tell the story of what's happening there, in our best ability.
BOB GARFIELD: You spent, all told, approximately three years in Iraq, from before Saddam was toppled to the present.

FARNAZ FASSIHI: Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

BOB GARFIELD: Is there a possibility that three years working under those conditions somehow colors your journalistic perceptions in a way that you lose your journalistic distance?

FARNAZ FASSIHI: I was fortunate to be there around the first year where I could travel freely and really get to know the country, so I think that really worked to my advantage. I think it was a unique war for journalists because the barrier that separates you as an independent journalist and the war and the danger dissolved in Iraq. We were just as much a target. Where we lived came under target. We were kidnapped. We had no immunity. Sometimes it felt like nobody saw value to having reporters there. So I think that part of it was difficult, to try to work around that challenge.

BOB GARFIELD: When you read criticism of the press in general, that it is somehow so fixated on bad news that it doesn't report the good, that it's essentially suppressing the good news out of Iraq, what do you all say to one another? How do you react?

FARNAZ FASSIHI: I can just say that if there were five car bombs going off in New York and 50 people kidnapped a day, I'm sure that metro reporters would be writing those stories and not talking about the school that was painted. When you're sitting in Iraq and putting your neck on the line to try to bring as balanced a story as possible, it's very frustrating to hear criticism like that, because you know, as a professional reporter, that the only reason you're there is because you want to convey the truth. And I can say that everyone is trying to go out their extra mile to find out exactly what's happening there, good or bad, to try to find progress, obstacles, frustration. And I think, considering, we've done a pretty good job. I'm proud of what my colleagues have achieved. [All emphasis added]

You can listen to the interview with Fassihi here, and read the full transcript here.

Via Romenesko.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 AM | Get permalink



Be very careful if you choose this poison.

Scotland's Bruichladdich distillery has made a powerful dram of whisky from a 1695 recipe. Distillery owners found the recipe in a manuscript by explorer Martin Martin, who encountered a drink he called usquebaugh-baul [perilous whisky].

"The first taste affects all the members of the body. Two spoonfuls of this liquor is a sufficient dose and if any man should exceed this, it would presently stop his breath and endanger his life," read Martin's description.

Given that the readers of the manuscript had a distillery at their disposal, they decided to make a dozen barrels of 'perilous whisky,' which definitely lived up to its reputation.


Getting ready to sip the 'perilous whisky'

Just because it's not smoking doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.
[Photo: Bruichladdich Distillery]


"I tell you, it took my breath away, literally," [distillery manager Mark Reynier] laughed.

"First your knees start trembling. It's very flowery, very floral flavour," he said. "When you swallow the stuff, boy, it just goes 'whomp' straight down to your chest."

The quadruple-distilled whisky is 92 percent alcohol; most single malts run from 40 to 60 percent alcohol.

Via CBC News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 AM | Get permalink



Why the &#!@! don't they support our troops in Iraq?

Because they are our troops in Iraq, that's why!

A Zogby poll of US troops currently serving in Iraq shows that almost three-fourths of them want the US out of the country within the next 12 months. Almost one in four think that US troops should be withdrawn immediately.

The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College?s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq "immediately," while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay "as long as they are needed."

Different branches had quite different sentiments on the question, the poll shows. While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so. Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should leave Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of Marines felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored withdrawal from Iraq in the next six months.

Thanks to The Gadflyer for the heads-up about the poll.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny!

A beautiful and very detailed image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, taken by the Hubble space telescope! The image is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy ever made by Hubble.


The Pinwheel Galaxy

This image of the Pinwheel Galaxy was put together from 51 different exposures,
mostly made by Hubble. [Image: NASA/ESA]



From New Scientist:

About 10 years of observations with Hubble, as well as images from powerful ground-based telescopes such as the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, US, were superimposed to create this image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, or M101.

The galaxy is 170,000 light years across — nearly twice the size of the Milky Way &$151; and takes up an area of the sky equivalent to one-fifth the size of a full Moon. It lies about 25 million light years from Earth — about 10 times as far as our nearest large neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy.

At that distance, Hubble can still resolve individual stars. "But if you get much further away than M101, it can't," says Kip Kuntz, an astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Johns Hopkins University, both in Maryland, US.

You can read the full New Scientist article on the Pinwheel photo here, and you can view a very large version of the image if you go over here.

HubbleSite has more info on the image, plus wallpaper images and a printable version of the Pinwheel image if you go here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Solidarity forever.

That's not just some stale old labor slogan when you're a young woman growing up in a small Wyoming town, and your father's union goes out on a strike that turns out to be four years long. Over at the Daily Kos empire, a diarist using the name writerscramp tells the story of those four years, and more.

I think sometimes, especially in the first couple of years after the strike ended, my parents and the rest of the striking miners and their families probably looked back on the strike and wondered what they'd been fighting for, considering how it all turned out. What had they accomplished, really? All that sacrifice and heartache...for what?

For the future, is the answer. Watching my parents' struggle, this fight that seemed so impossible, we learned first-hand just what it really means to stand up for what you believe in. The words are easy to say and talk, as they say, is cheap. But when it comes down to it, to gambling your future, your family's future, on a principle and a trust in the people who share your beliefs, the actual act of standing up, fist held high, is one of the most courageous things you can ever do.

They had no guarantee that the rest of the people in the union wouldn't chicken out at the last minute, when push came to shove. Some of them did. There was no certainty they'd win. It wasn't money or benefits or anything else that made people like my stepdad vote to strike that September night in 1987. And principle, though laudable, doesn't pay the bills.

But he voted anyway.

I knew at the time that this experience was shaping me and my beliefs. Looking back, I realize just how deeply they shaped me. My parents, always Democrats, always politically active, believed in the responsibility of citizenship, that the price of freedom means participation and vigilance and standing up for what you believe in, no matter who else stands with you. When the unions in Poland and Czechoslovakia and other countries behind the Iron Curtain stood up to their government oppressors, and when that South African woman told us about her union's fight against apartheid, my parents stressed to us, over and over, just how much of a role the labor movement played in upholding democracy. "It wasn't the companies who fought for democracy in this country," they'd say, "it was people like us -- farmers, miners, factory workers. And you see it is this way in these other countries, too."

I've always been an activist at heart, either because of the way I was raised or the way my DNA lined up or a combination of both. But in the years since the strike, my natural tendency to tilt at windmills has been tempered by the understanding of what it means: you fight every day, not because of what you hope to achieve, but because it's the right thing to do. You'll never be guaranteed a win, no matter how righteous your cause; fighting the good fight doesn't mean you get a happy ending. But you fight for what's right anyway, because it's what's right. And if you're very, very lucky, others will stand to fight alongside you. This is how great changes happen.

The whole story is here. Make sure to read the comments — they're extensive and really interesting.

Via NathanNewman.org.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:59 AM | Get permalink



Iraq: Back from the brink?

Maybe not, says Chris Albritton, despite all the report about reconciliation and talks between the various factions. All that talk, writes Albritton from from Baghdad, is just a lot of, well, talk.

For the last 18 months, we've been in a low-grade civil war. The Askariya bombing kicked us up to "medium-grade," I guess you might call it. Both Sunnis and Shi'a I've spoken with are waiting and preparing for it, and that very preparation might make for a self-fulfilling prophecy. For to many Iraqis, it's only a matter of time.

Albritton has a lot of good reasons for being pessimistic, which you can read about here.

Via Back to Iraq.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:06 AM | Get permalink



But there is some good news!

A new CBS News poll shows that Dubya's approval ratings have dropped to their lowest point ever. The poll shows that the prez's job approval has dropped to just 34 percent — it was 42 percent a month ago:


He deserves it

These bad numbers couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. [Graphic: AP/CBS]
For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly — the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

The unfortunate thing about these numbers is that they are coming a year after the presidential election, not just before it. We can all hope that Dubya's poor poll showings continue, and that the prez becomes a drag on the GOP's showing in the congressional elections later this year.

You can download a PDF file with more details of the poll's findings if you go here.

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



You have to wonder what Israel and the US had in mind.

I might be just a magpie, but even my bird brain tells me that pushing the Palestinian Authority over the brink of financial disaster isn't going to do anyone any good. And that's what's about to happen to the PA, warns international envoy James Wolfensohn.

According to Wolfensohn, the Palestinian government will run out of money in two weeks. And that bankruptcy, he says, will plunge Palestine into 'anarchy and chaos.'

Wolfensohn, who will brief [representatives of the UN, Russia, US, and EU] on Wednesday about the Palestinian Authority's cash crunch, said it needed [US]$60 million to $80 million next week to begin paying the February salaries of about 140,000 Palestinian workers, including security personnel.

As many as one in four Palestinians are dependent on wages from the Palestinian Authority, prompting fears of unrest before Israel's March 28 election if payroll is not met on time.

"I know I do not need to tell each of you that the failure to pay salaries may have wide-ranging consequences -- not only for the Palestinian economy but also for security and stability for both the Palestinians and the Israelis," Wolfensohn said.

But, I suspect, punishing the Palestinians for giving Hamas a majority in their parliament will be more important to the US and Israel than avoiding more violence.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Monday, February 27, 2006

Today's civics lesson ...

... is how laws are enacted in the US.

Visiting professor Ted Rall fills us in on the details [some of them, anyway].


But what if they shoot the leaker?

[Cartoon: © 2006 Ted Rall]


To get the rest of the details, you'll need to go here. And if you want to see more of Rall's work, check out his website.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:03 AM | Get permalink



Octavia Butler, 1947 – 2006.


Octavia Butler


You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. It's just so easy to give up!
— Octavia Butler, 2000


Author Octavia Butler died Saturday after falling in front of her Seattle home and striking her head. She was only 58.

Butler was the author numerous science fiction novels and stories, with her most famous work being Kindred. In that novel, an African American woman from mid-1970s California is transported through time back to the pre-Civil War South. Her writing received recognition from within her field, winning Nebula Awards for her novelette 'Blood Child' in 1984 [for which she also won a Hugo Award] and her novel Parable of the Talents in 2000. In 1995, Butler received a MacArthur 'genius grant' — she is still the only science fiction writer to have gotten one.

Not incidentally, Butler was one of the few prominent African American writers in the still overwhelmingly white field of US science fiction.

In 2001, as the UN prepared to hold the World Conference on Racism, US public radio asked Butler to write an essay on a world without racism. You can read the essay and listen to an interview with Butler here.

In 2000, the SF trade journal Locus interviewed Butler. Some excerpts from that interview are posted here.

When I was in college, I began Kindred, and that was the first [novel] that I began, knowing what I wanted to do. The others, I was really too young to think about them in terms of 'What do you have to say in this novel?' I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell. But when I did Kindred, I really had had this experience in college that I talk about all the time, of this Black guy saying, 'I wish I could kill all these old Black people that have been holding us back for so long, but I can't because I have to start with my own parents.' That was a friend of mine. And I realized that, even though he knew a lot more than I did about Black history, it was all cerebral. He wasn't feeling any of it. He was the kind that would have killed and died, as opposed to surviving and hanging on and hoping and working for change. And I thought about my mother, because she used to take me to work with her when she couldn't get a baby sitter and I was too young to be left alone, and I saw her going in the back door, and I saw people saying things to her that she didn't like but couldn't respond to. I heard people say in her hearing, 'Well, I don't really like colored people.' And she kept working, and she put me through school, she bought her house — all the stuff she did. I realized that he didn't understand what heroism was. That's what I want to write about: when you are aware of what it means to be an adult and what choices you have to make, the fact that maybe you're afraid, but you still have to act.

There's a short biography and bibliography [complete through 2004] of Butler here. You can read her short story 'Amnesty' here.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer obituary for Butler is here. The obit in the Seattle Times is here. The AP obit can be found here, among other places.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America [the field's professional organization] has started a page of remembrances of Butler here.

[The photo of Octavia Butler at the top of this post is by Joshua Trujillo of the Seattle P-I. My best guess is that it was taken in 2004.]

More: Nicolas Coukouma has posted a lovely 2005 photo of Octavia Butler at a booksigning here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:19 AM | Get permalink



Sunday, February 26, 2006

'Waiting it out and hoping for the best.'

In all of the stories from Iraq the past few days, we've heard little from what it feels like to be an Iraqi, living in a country that may be heading into a civil war. Riverbend fills some of that void with the latest from her part of Baghdad:

It does not feel like civil war because Sunnis and Shia have been showing solidarity these last few days in a big way. I don't mean the clerics or the religious zealots or the politicians — but the average person. Our neighborhood is mixed and Sunnis and Shia alike have been outraged with the attacks on mosques and shrines....

Yesterday they were showing Sunni and Shia clerics praying together in a mosque and while it looked encouraging, I couldn't help but feel angry. Why don't they simply tell their militias to step down — to stop attacking mosques and husseiniyas — to stop terrorizing people? It's so deceptive and empty on television — like a peaceful vision from another land. The Iraqi government is pretending dismay, but it's doing nothing to curb the violence and the bloodshed beyond a curfew. And where are the Americans in all of this? They are sitting back and letting things happen — sometimes flying a helicopter here or there — but generally not getting involved.

I'm reading, and hearing, about the possibility of civil war. The possibility. Yet I'm sitting here wondering if this is actually what civil war is like. Has it become a reality? Will we look back at this in one year, two years ... ten ... and say, "It began in February 2006 ..."? It is like a nightmare in that you don't realise it's a nightmare while having it — only later, after waking up with your heart throbbing, and your eyes searching the dark for a pinpoint of light, do you realise it was a nightmare ...

Via Baghdad Burning.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:41 PM | Get permalink



The policeman is your friend.

Maybe sometimes, but probably not if you want to make a complaint.

In south Florida, a police watchdog group sent a person into 38 police stations in Dade and Broward counties with a simple task: to test what would happen when someone asks for a complaint form. At all but three stations, the tester found out that the department didn't have a complaint form and would have to make the complaint in person. At some of the stations, police tried to intimidate the tester. More than once, the tester was told to leave.

Unknown to police, all of their interactions with the tester were filmed and recorded. And some of that video was aired on WFOR TV, the CBS affiliate in the Miami area.


Cop behaving badly

A friendly Lauderhill officer points innocently at his sidearm.


At the Lauderhill police department, for example, the tester was asked for ID, accused of being on medication, and then asked to leave. The officer followed the tester out of the building onto the sidewalk, acting beligerently. At one point the officer put his hand on his gun and said 'Take one step forward and we'll see what happens.'


Two cops behaving just as badly

Personable Sea Ranch Lakes cops assist members of the public.


At the Sea Ranch Lakes PD, the tester was told that his showing up at the station at 8 pm to ask for a complaint form was 'suspicious,' and the if the tester 'wanted to play hardball, we'll play hardball.' The tester was then told to 'shut up' and, when the tester asked for his driver's license back so he could leave, the tester was threatened with a ticket.

Strangely, the WFOR report frames the problem more as one of the lack of complaint forms, than of a problem of intimidation and threatening police behavior — despite the teaser for the story. The assumption seems to be that if complaint forms existed, police would behave better. And the report ignores another aspect of the story: What would have happened had the tester not been white? Given how badly a white tester was treated at some of the stations, imagine what would have happened if a person of color had been the one asking for a complaint form.

You can watch all of WFOR's story here [streaming video].

Via Boing Boing.

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




Liar, liar, pants on fire!


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