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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, November 26

Burning Taliban bodies was 'poor judgment.'

About six weeks ago, we blogged about how US troops burned the bodies of Taliban dead outside a village in Afghanistan and, as the bodies burned, broadcasting taunts at Taliban fighters believed to be hiding in the village. [See posts here and here.]

As we noted at the time, Muslims believe that a body must be buried within 24 hours of death, so the burnings caused more than a bit of consternation in Islamic countries. The burnings also appeared to violate the Geneva Conventions, which require that the burial of people killed in a war 'should be honourable, and, if possible, according to the rites of the religion to which the deceased belonged.'



US soldiers watch Taliban bodies burn this past October. [Image: Stephen Dupont]


The US military has completed its investigation into the incident and, as we certainly expected, the findings are pretty much a whitewash. According to investigators, the troops committed no crime and the claims of the unit's officers that the bodies were burnt for hygienic reasons have been upheld.

Speaking at a news conference in Kandahar, the US-led coalition's operational commander, Maj-Gen Jason Kamiya, said the soldiers involved had not been aware that what they were doing was wrong.

"Our investigation found there was no intent to desecrate the remains, but only to dispose of them for hygienic reasons," he was quoted by AP news agency as saying.

Four soldiers are being reprimanded for their roles in the incident: The two officers who ordered the burnings for 'poor judgement and lack of knowledge and respect of Afghan culture and customs,' and two NCOs for making the taunting broadcasts in violation of military rules.

Can we say 'Sweep the incident under the rug'?

Via BBC.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:31 PM | Get permalink



Editors have so much to answer for.

We recently suggested that Mark Twain stopped too soon when he said that there were two processes that nobody should ever see: making sausage and making laws. To us, at least, the process of writing and publishing is equally as nasty.

As if to prove our point, author John Scalzi shows us the terrible things that editing has done to his current book project.

Definitely not for the weak-stomached.

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



Who gets to be an 'enemy combatant'?

And get packed off to indefinite imprisonment, without charges?

As far as outsiders can tell, it's anyone that Dubya's administration feels like putting on ice.

Via NY Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:22 PM | Get permalink



Friday, November 25

How would you like your laptop?

Rare or well-done?


Toasted laptop

Set the oven to 300 degrees.

So was tragedy averted? And how did Lucky White Girl's laptop get into that oven anyway?

Go here to find out.

Via Philobiblon.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:09 PM | Get permalink



From the 'Life after Death' Department.

From another story that we couldn't make up if we tried:

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

Via AP.

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



Thursday, November 24

Greenhouse gases are at 'unprecedented' levels.

The current levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are at their highest point in the last 650,000 years, according to new data from scientists studying Antarctic ice. They've also found that, during the past 50 years, carbon dioxide levels have risen 200 times faster than during any other time over the last eight ice ages.

These disturbing new findings come from ice cores taken from the Antarctic, which go back 210,000 years further into the past than any cores previously available. Air bubbles preserved in these cores give snapshots of what the earth's atmosphere was like when the ice formed.


Scientists with Antarctice ice core

Scientists extracting an ice core from inside a drill in East Antarctica.
[Photo: British Antarctic Survey]

What's causing the jump in greenhouse gas levels?

According to Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern [Switzerland], the burning of fossil fuels by industry is the culprit, raising the levels of greenhouse gases far higher than anything that could be accounted for by natural causes. Says Stocker, who led the team that analyzed the Antarctic ice: "This is really something unprecedented."

After searching ice spanning the period of 390,000?650,000 years before present, Stocker's team has discovered that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere did not exceed 290 parts per million during that time. Today, that figure is around 375 parts per million.

The situation is similar for methane: during this period, levels hovered around 600 parts per billion. Today's atmospheric methane concentration is well over 1,700.

Via news@nature.com.

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



'Dirty bomber' turns into a bit player.

And a critical constitutional question — that of whether Dubya or any other US president can order a citizen held indefinitely and without charges — remains undecided. Or, as some hold, worse than undecided.

Faced with a looming deadline in a Supreme Court case that could have decided whether Dubya has the legal power to hold as 'enemy combatants,' the feds earlier this week decided to finally charge Jose Padilla with a specific crime.

In taking this change of direction, however, the Justice Department has given up on its portrayal of Padilla as a hard-core al-Qaeda loyalist who planned to set off a 'dirty bomb' in a US city. Instead, this dangerous man has been reduced to being a minor player in the schemes of others to support Islamic terrorists outside the US. Those four others were indicted last year on conspiracy to further murder and kidnapping outside the United States and to provide material aid to terrorists; and with directly providing material aid to terrorists. Padilla faces the same charges, but is now being portrayed as a sort of terrorist wannabee and gofer.

According to a story earlier this week from Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau, the change in the government's approach to dealing with Padilla is another example of how Dubya's administration talks big about its summary powers of detention, but shies away from any Supreme Court test of those powers — in part because a Supreme Court hearing of the issue could expose matters that the administration would rather keep secret.

Scott Silliman, an expert on national security law at Duke University, said the administration's decision on Padilla "clearly is an exercise in damage control to avoid an adverse legal decision."

There's still a chance that the Supreme Court could take the Padilla case to settle the issue, but Silliman said that was unlikely. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the case before the court is now "moot."

"The pattern is they look for ways to minimize the legal challenge in these cases," Silliman said.

The administration also avoids other difficult issues by prosecuting Padilla on charges different from the allegations that led to his enemy combatant status.

One is the use of statements he might have made while in military custody with almost no access to a lawyer. A judge might rule such statements inadmissible at trial. Justice Department officials said the charges filed Tuesday won't require them to use Padilla's statements.

Another is that Tuesday's charges won't involve al-Qaida members who've been subject to harsh interrogation techniques while in custody.

One Guantanamo detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, who was subjected to harsh techniques, "clarified Padilla's relationship with al-Qaida," the Defense Department said in June. Al-Kahtani's interrogation at Guantanamo prompted an FBI agent there to complain about his treatment.

The feds' decision to charge Padilla doesn't just avoid a Supreme Court decision on the question of a president's power to hold citizens indefinitely, without charges. It also leaves intact a decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that Dubya can indeed hold Padilla or other citizen as an 'enemy combatant.' As Jack Balkin points out, this is not good:

That result is particularly worthy of note, for the Fourth Circuit opinion may yet come in handy if the Administration needs to hold another U.S. citizen within the geographical boundaries of that circuit. [Go here for a map showing which states are in the 4th Circuit.] The Administration now knows that the Fourth Circuit is a Constitution-free zone. It can, if it needs to, declare someone an enemy combantant, thrown them into a military prison, and interrogate them at its leisure. It will take years for a citizen to exhaust his appeals and reach the Supreme Court; and when the citizen finally gets to the Supreme Court, the Administration has the option to indict and moot the case (as it did with Padilla) or, if the Court's personnel have changed sufficiently in the interim, risk an appeal to the Supremes.

The lack of a Supreme Court ruling on the question of 'enemy combatants' poses even broader problems. According to former civil liberties litigator Glenn Greenwald, the power claimed by Dubya's administration threatens the very foundations of a democratic state.

Critically, the Administration has not just decreed that they have the power to imprison U.S. citizens without due process, but they are actively exercising this power. No matter how many times one says it, it never ceases to amaze and disgust: There are two U.S. citizens (that we know of) — Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi — who have now spent years languishing in military prisons, put there by a U.S. Federal Government which has refused to even charge them with a crime. They have been kept in solitary confinement and, worse, imprisoned indefinitely, for months even denied the right to speak with any lawyers.

In short, these citizens have been living a totalitarian nightmare which truly does define "tyranny." That word is often overused as political hyperbole, but if it means anything, it applies to a Government that has the power — and which uses that power — to imprison its citizens indefinitely without having to prove that they committed any crime. Having the President have the unchecked power to order the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens without any of these protections simply is the surest sign that the Government is acting tyrannically. If that isn't definitive proof of tyranny, what is?

There is currently debate taking place — spawned by the odious Amendment sponsored by Sen. Lindsay Graham — as to whether non-citizen battlefield combatants who are imprisoned by the U.S. Government at Guantanamo and elsewhere ought to have the right to access to our federal courts in order to bring habeas corpus petitions asking to be freed on the ground that they have been wrongfully imprisoned. And many have noted the profound dangers of denying any individuals, including non-citizen combatants, this critical right to challenge their incarceration in a judicial forum.

But in the Padilla case, and in the case of Hamdi, we are talking about American citizens who have been imprisoned for years now by the U.S. government without any due process of any kind. This should be beyond the pale of debate. It should be unthinkable in the United States for this to occur, and the fact that it is not just occurring, but has the support of the Administration and its slavish enablers, shows just how far we've traveled — or, more accurately, how far we've fallen — with regard to our individual liberties under this Administration.

We are not talking about new or modern or exotic liberties here. The right not to be imprisoned in the absence of due process is a right that was not just recognized upon the Founding of the country, but was one of the first liberties established by 13th Century England when British subjects rejected the notion that the King had absolute, unlimited powers and forced King John to accept the Magna Carta. That 13th Century liberty is what has been abrogated by this Administration.

Greenwald has much more to say about this subject. We highly recommend reading his entire post, and this later post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:21 AM | Get permalink



After three years in a US Navy brig ...

... that infamous 'dirty bomber' Jose Padilla finally gets charged with something. And, as Ted Rall points out, Padilla will get to meet with a lawyer, too.


Padilla gets a lawyer

[Cartoon: © 2005 Ted Rall]

You can see the rest of Rall's cartoon here. And Rall's website is full of more of his political cartoons.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

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



Los Angeles on two wheels.

'Bicycles' and 'Los Angeles' aren't two words usually found in the same sentence. But over at Slate, Andy Bowers puts them together a whole bunch as he describes what a bicycle commuter's life is like in the City of Angels.

Instead of the major thoroughfares I use when driving, I cycled quiet back streets — the kind that infuriate me in a car because of all the stop signs and the impossibility of crossing major streets without a signal. I found my commute so easy that I soon started looking for other short trips I could make on the bike — picking up a few groceries, going to the gym, returning library books — then longer ones. I plotted new stealth routes no driver would ever take. (Tip: The satellite photos on Google Earth are much better for doing this than a road map, because you can see exactly what the streets look like.)

One day, I found myself biking down an empty little access road next to the notorious 405 freeway during the evening commute. The freeway, as usual, was paralyzed, and I noticed I was actually moving faster than the cars. That's when the revelation hit: Over the past few months, I had discovered a different Los Angeles.

It's very easy for an L.A. driver to think that our city is as choked with humanity as Manhattan. From the driver's point of view, that's increasingly true — there are more and more evenings when every major street is stopped dead, and going a few miles can take hours. At work the next day, people grimly shake their heads and lament what's becoming of the city.

Not only has riding my bike enabled me to glide past all this gridlock (in fact, I'm often not even aware it's happening), but it has made me realize that it's an illusion. The city itself is not gridlocked — merely the narrow asphalt ribbons onto which we squeeze all our single-occupant cars. On the back streets I now take, everything is quiet and serene. The main roads may mimic Times Square on New Year's Eve, but the areas between L.A.'s clogged arteries comprise mile after square mile of low-density, low-stress residential bliss (the same is true, I suspect, of most American cities)

Bowers' article brings back memories of our own bike commuting in the early 1970s in the San Gabriel Valley, a big mess of suburbs east of downtown LA. We rode our bike to work at the phone company and to classes at community college, sometimes covering 50 miles a day if we had to go to school more than once. Even using the main streets, as we were often forced to do, our commute was much nicer than the same trip in a car. We actually got to see the neighborhoods we rode through, and if something really caught our eye, it was easy to stop and look at it. And, as Bowers has also discovered, the time it took to get from one place to another when bikings wasn't much differnt than the time it took driving: Our 8-mile trip to school, for example, took fewer than 10 minutes less than driving, largely because we didn't have to circle the college's parking lots looking for a place to put the car.

There were down sides to the bike commute. Drivers weren't much friendlier to bicycles then than they are now. And riding a bike on a smoggy LA day is no fun, let us tell you. But all of that was easily offset each time we rode by those cars waiting in long gas station lines during the first 1970s oil shock.

We've gotten much lazier over the years, sadly, and even though we live in a city that's very bicycle-friendly — Portland, OR — we don't get on our bike that often. We really should change that.

Via Slate.

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



Wednesday, November 23

In living color.

There's a new set of SurveyUSA polls for all fifty states, and Dubya's popularity continues to sag. What's really interesting, though, is if you put all of the polling data into a map of the country.


Bad news for Dubya


As you can see, there are only eight states where Dubya's approval rating even cracks the 45% barrier. While there's still a year to go until the 2006 midterm elections, and the Democrats have lots of chances to bungle things between now and then, this map can't be good news for the GOP.

The data used for the map is here.

The map itself comes from dreaminonempty's diary at Daily Kos.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:21 PM | Get permalink



Curiouser and curiouser.

Sometimes those stories that we decide not to blog come back and make us reconsider. The one that's doing it to us this time appeared in Tuesday's UK Daily Mirror. The story cited a secret memo from PM Tony Blair's office containing the record of an exchange in which Blair attempted to talk Dubya out of bombing the main offices of Aljazeera in Qatar.

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

A source said last night: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do — and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".

But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

We passed on the story because, to put it bluntly, the Daily Mirror is not the most reliable source of news in the world. Since the story didn't quote the memo directly, but only talked to anonymous sources who claimed to have seen the memo, the story's credibility was, in our opinion, pretty low.

Come today and it may be another matter. The UK Guardian is reporting that Tony Blair's government is threatening any newspaper that publishes the memo with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

Richard Wallace, editor of the Daily Mirror, said last night: "We made No 10 fully aware of the intention to publish [the memo] and were given 'no comment' officially or unofficially. Suddenly 24 hours later we are threatened under section 5 [of the secrets act]".

Under section 5 it is an offence to have come into the possession of government information, or a document from a crown servant, if that person discloses it without lawful authority. The prosecution has to prove the disclosure was damaging.

According to the Guardian, Dubya's alleged threat to bomb Aljazeera took place during a conversation in which Blair expressed anger over certain aspects of US operations in Iraq — especially the assault on Fallujah, which was going on at the time the memo was written.

So it appears that the story we dismissed yesterday has more to it than we'd thought. We have to wonder:

  • Why did the UK government allow the Mirror story to go to press?
  • Why did it wait 24 hours to threaten newspapers with prosecution?
  • What does the memo contain that the UK government is so anxious to suppress?
  • Who would be damaged by the revelation of that information?
  • Is the UK government suppressing the memo for its own reasons, or is it acting on behalf of Dubya's administration?

Inquiring magpies want to know.

More: Aljazeera has responded to the Daily Mirror report on the Blair-Dubya memo.

"Before making any conclusions Aljazeera needs to be absolutely sure regarding the authenticity of the memo and would hope for a confirmation from Downing Street as soon as possible.

If the report is correct then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to Aljazeera but to media organisations across the world."

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:33 AM | Get permalink



The rich aren't like the rest of us.

They don't worry much about how much their health care costs.


Where rich peoples' money goes


Via NY Times [original here]. Thanks to The Big Picture for the pointer.

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



US indy magazines in trouble.

We don't usually filch an entire post from another blog, but we don't figure that we could do any better than Jaclyn Friedman already has.

Hey! You! Read Indy Mags?

Then you need to know that BigTop, the last distributor in the country that specializes in distributing independent press magazines, is having serious cash flow problems.

What that means in practical terms is that magazines distributed by BigTop (see list below) aren't getting any payment at all for the newsstand sales BigTop has conducted on their behalf, and it's unclear when they will. And given how tight a shoestring most indymags run on, that spells major trouble for some major publications. As in, they could realistically go under. And we're talking about great mags like:

The American Prospect
Bitch: Feminist Response To Pop Culture
Clamor
ColorLines
Curve
Dollars & Sense
Giant Robot
Index
Heeb
In These Times
Kitchen Sink
LiP
Mother Jones
The Progressive
Punk Planet
Tikkun
Tin House
Z Magazine
Zoetrope: All-Story

Now, this is only a sample of the mags BigTop distributes, and I don't know the particulars of each one's financial situation. Some may be in better shape than others, though I know for certain Bitch and Punk Planet are struggling

The thing to do here, if you care at all about any one of these magazines, is to resist the temptation to imagine your favorite magazine is safe just because it's great. Great magazines go under for just that reason.

Instead, take five minutes right now to find out how they're managing and how you can help, and then spread the word, give and/or ask for gift subscriptions, buy their swag, make a donation — whatever you can do. Take it from a girl who's worked for more than her share of amazing shoestring operations — when we say every dollar counts, we mean it literally.

Read more in the Chicago Reader [PDF file], the Columbia Chronicle, and at Pocket Full of Wishes.

Via PopPolitics.com.

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



Is France is 'back to normal'?

Well, the French ambassador to the US thinks so.

According to ambassdor Jean-David Levitte, religion had little to do with the rioting that swept his country for three weeks. Instead, he told Reuters, the mostly young rioters were angry because of discrimination and lack of economic opportunities.

"We know that jihadists are recruiting teenagers, but this has nothing to do with the general unrest in those neighborhoods," he said. The teenagers want to be considered 100 percent French, he said. "They want full equality.

Levitte's words about the unrest in France are more sensible than much of what has come from the government in Paris, where [among other things] the Interior Minister called the rioters 'scum.'

Levitte's characterization of France's current state as 'normal' is dead-on, although not in the way that the ambassador meant. According to journalist Doug Ireland, the right-center French government has responded to the riots by doing nothing to deal with the problems that caused them, much as the Socialist government that preceded it was content to ignore the inequalities and discrimination faced by citizens of African and Mideastern origin.

The Chirac-Villepin government's response to the root causes of the rebellion was pitiful -- and reflected [conservative essayist] Guy Sorman's diagnosis that, as he put it, the French political classes "believe that nothing should change because France is perfect as she is and perfect as she was." The centerpiece of the paltry social measures announced with great fanfare by Prime Minister Villepin was lowering the legal age for apprenticeships in manual technical trades -- to only 14 (multiple police reports at the height of the violence suggested the average age of arrested rioters was 16). This age-lowering Jules_ferry twist shredded a century and a half of formal French educational policy, which has always been to maximize the educational experience of children; and it now gives an official imprimatur to permitting kids to end their schooling just when it becomes most crucial.

No new measures to improve or desegregate the rotting, impossibly overcrowded ghetto schools were announced by Villepin -- and the government did not explain where it would find employers willing to take on inexperienced, delinquent, non-scholastic, barely post-pubescent kids and train them in plumbing, electrical work, baking, or other not uncomplicated trades. Aside from restoring some of the devastating cuts in subsidies for the locally-run neighborhood associations in the ghettos that work with youth -- budget-slashing which had contributed mightily to causing the rebellion -- Villepin had nothing more than rhetoric and repression to propose. Nor did the government choose to restore the "emploi-jeunes" program of temporary minimum-wage youth jobs, an inadequate invention of the previous Socialist government which [President Jacques] Chirac and the conservatives had completely abolished.

When Chirac himself -- whose invisibility during the violence had been much criticized in the press -- finally went on TV this week to address the nation, he, too, had little more than empty words. His only concrete proposal was the creation of a "youth volunteer service corps" to help prepare kids for careers in the army (half of the program), the police, and health services, with a goal of 50,000 such minimum-wage posts within three years -- a drop in the bucket. But even that was a phony -- within 24 hours, the press reported that Chirac had simply consolidated and given a new name to already-existing programs in the three sectors. No new money was involved.

Perhaps the biggest void in Chirac's and Villepin's proposals was the absence of any new money or enforcement mechanisms to fight racial discrimination in hiring and housing. France has laws on the books against such racial bias -- but spends almost no money to make them stick, so employers and landlords are free to discriminate against people of color with impunity. And they do. Life in the 750 suburban ghettos throughout France will go on as before, except that the already-deep alienation of ghetto kids from the larger society will be intensified by the repressive measures -- earlier this week, even though major violence has ended, the government renewed the state of emergency for another three months. No wonder that a poll for the Journal de Dimanche last week showed that only 29% of the French thought Chirac had anything to offer to cure the causes of the rebellion -- while a new poll released today on France 2 TV said Chirac's overall approval rating had plummeted to just 35%.

Ireland's comments above are part of an excellent article describing how the riots ended, what the French government has been doing since the rioting stopped, and how the riots may affect the electoral fortunes of the opposition Socialist party. We highly recommend reading the whole piece, which you can find here.

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



Tuesday, November 22

Don't whine about all those lemons!

Mikhaela shows us how we can make a sea of lemonade if we just realize that tax cuts for the rich are good for everyone!


It all trickles down

[© 2005 Mikhaela B. Reid]

Check out the rest of the cartoon here.

If you want to see more of Mikhaela's political cartoons, take a look over here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:23 PM | Get permalink



No, it won't make hair grow on your palms.

Your fate will be far, far worse.


Beware self-pollution!

From 'The Fatal Consequences of Masturbation,' in La livre sans titre [The book no title) 2nd edition [Paris 1844]

You can read the whole sordid tale of woe if you go here.


Via Neatorama.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:39 PM | Get permalink



How intelligent is your design?

Find out by answering these suggested questions for the new Kansas science exam, courtesy of commentary writer Eric Ringham of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

  1. Some sources suggest the earth is approximately 4.55 billion years old. Others estimate the earth is 6,012 years old. Without favoring one estimate over the other, calculate the likely age of God. Show your work. [...]

  2. The fossil record contains:

    1. Fossils
    2. Gaps
    3. Skips
    4. A couple of hits, but mostly B-sides
    5. An elaborately, not to say intelligently, designed hoax consisting of pre-aged rocks arranged in the shapes of bones, teeth, footprints and eggs


  3. Evolutionists claim that some moths have changed color to blend in with their background. This is an example of:

    1. Assimilation
    2. Tokenism
    3. Natural selection
    4. Hate speech
    5. Social climbing
    6. Mistaken identity

You'll find the full exam over here.

Via Pharyngula.

[Broken links fixed 11/22]

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



Mamas, don't let your kids grow up to be authors.

Mark Twain once said that there were two things that you never wanted to see being made: sausages and legislation. Pirates & ScientistsWe suspect that there were originally three on Twain's list, but that he dropped the third — writing and publishing books — in order to protect the sensibilities of his posterity.

Here's a case in point: One of the most enjoyable books we've read in the past few months is The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe. It's a Python-esque tale of Charles Darwin's fateful encounter with a shipload of pirates, after the buccaneers attack the Beagle [Darwin's ship] in the mistaken notion that it's full of royal bullion. [If you haven't read it yet and have a taste for the very silly, we commend the book to your attention.]

In the UK Guardian, Oliver Burkeman has the tale of how the book went from being a joke between Defoe and some drunken friends to finding a publisher to showing up in bookstores in the US and UK. It's not pretty.

In the months since Pirates was published, Gideon Defoe has come to loathe — in his characteristically jovial way — a novel called Ireland, by Frank Delaney. It is bigger than his, and on alphabetically ordered shelves it is always stacked close by, face out. Defoe, who is hardly unique among authors in keeping a close personal watch on the physical placement of his book, admits he has been known to loiter in bookshops, surreptitiously moving it into more attention-grabbing spots. "But you can't do that for more than two months, or you start to get sick of it," he says. "I'm sure bookshops are massively used to that. They probably just sit there, watching the really obvious author skulking around." Last September, in a further effort to promote the book, Orion's publicity department also made Defoe dress as a pirate and tour London bookshops by rickshaw, autographing their stock. "It was," he recalls, "the most mortifying day of my life."

In poking around the web, we've discovered that Defoe has written a sequel. We've already put it on hold at our library.

Via LISNews.

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



Monday, November 21

Supporters of the Iraq invasion are getting pretty desperate, aren't they?

Here's how Alaska senator Ted Stevens defended Dubya's decision to invade Iraq on the US Senate floor last Thursday:

"Our troops found 30 Iraqi planes buried in the sands of the al-Taqqadum airfield, west of Baghdad -- 30 planes!" he said in a speech on the Senate floor in which he defended the prewar intelligence and the decision to go to war. "If Saddam Hussein's troops buried one-tenth of their combat aircraft in the desert, who is to say there were no weapons of mass destruction similarly buried?"

Stevens is correct that several Iraqi planes were buried at the al-Taqaddum airbase in 2003. [Go here to see photos of US troops digging some up.] However, it's never been proven that any of the buried planes were still operational. Photos of the planes being unearthed show that no precautions had been taken to protect them from the sand, which couldn't have been good for the aircraft. Their burial probably speaks more to the desperation of the regime hiding them than to any real likelihood that the planes would fly again.

As to whether Saddam buried WMDs in somewhere in the desert, we'll just let the fact that no WMDs have been unearthed in almost three years speak to Sen. Stevens' charges. Besides, we're sure Saddam had a better plan for all those WMDs, anyway. From what we've heard, he had friendly space aliens carry away the WMDs in their flying saucers.

Perhaps we should give Sen. Stevens a call and let him know?

Via Anchorage Daily News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:13 PM | Get permalink



No comment.

CIA director Porter Goss on the his agency's treatment of prisoners:

"This agency does not do torture. Torture does not work. We use lawful capabilities to collect vital information, and we do it in a variety of unique and innovative ways, all of which are legal and none of which are torture."

Via USA Today.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:38 AM | Get permalink



That nonexistent global warming.

What's it going to be bringing to your neck of the woods? Nature's Michael Hopkins has a continent-by-continent look at the climatic challenges in store as the planet's average temperature goes up.


Hurricane Catarina off Brazil, 2004

Warming of the Atlantic Ocean may lead to more tropical cyclones such as Hurricane Catarina — the first verifiable hurricane ever recorded in the South Atlantic — seen here as it spiraled off the coast of Brazil in March, 2004. [Image: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS/NASA]


Europe

As Europe warms, the north of the continent is tipped to gain a more 'Mediterranean' climate, while the Mediterranean countries themselves swelter through increasingly frequent droughts. Potentially good news, then, for British grape-growers, who are starting to focus their attentions on the market for fizz as northern France's Champagne region grows warmer. But bad news for agriculture elsewhere, not to mention the ski resorts of the Alps.

Traditional tourism hot spots such as Spain and Greece could find that their summer temperatures are simply too sizzling, tempting holidaymakers to vacation further north. Extreme heatwaves such as the one that struck western Europe in 2003 are set to increase in frequency in a warming world (see 'Extreme heat on the rise'), causing wildfires, loss of crops, and a rise in summer deaths.

Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, points out that adapting to similar extremes in future will mean wider use of air conditioning. This will boost power use and make it more difficult for governments to meet the greenhouse emission targets set by the Kyoto Protocol.

North America

Industries that rely on melt water from winter snows could be hit hard by temperature rises that cause more of this precipitation to fall as rain. Agriculture on the US west coast, for example, depends on the spring runoff of water from the Rocky Mountains to sustain crops through the parched summer. If this water arrives early as rain, rather than wintering in the mountain tops, then farmers and hydroelectric engineers may have to adapt to marshal these resources.

"Effectively, you could be losing a free reservoir," says Nigel Arnell, who studies water and climate at the University of Southampton, UK.

The melting of Arctic ice is causing concern for ecosystems in the north of the continent. The northern coasts of Canada and neighbouring Greenland spend much of their year mired in the polar ice cap. And environmentalists are worried that polar bears could be big losers if this ice begins to fragment or pull away from the mainland, leaving them unable to patrol large territories in search of food.

Via News@nature.com.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:11 AM | Get permalink



Sunday, November 20

Ladies and gentlemen ....

... the President of the United States!


Dubya tries the door

[Photo: Jason Reed/Reuters]

Now, we could just leave this as a cheap shot at Dubya — and given the total lameness of his expression in the photo, we gotta tell you that taking the cheap shot is really tempting — but there's a story behind this photo.

First, here's the wire service caption:

U.S. President George W. Bush reacts as he tries to open a locked door as he leaves a news conference in Beijing [on] November 20, 2005. Washington and Beijing will cooperate towards making the yuan's exchange rate more responsive to market forces of supply and demand, visiting U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday.

What the caption doesn't tell you is that Dubya had just cut that press conference short because of the following exchange:

"Respectfully, sir -- you know we're always respectful -- in your statement this morning with President Hu, you seemed a little off your game, you seemed to hurry through your statement. There was a lack of enthusiasm. Was something bothering you?" he asked.

"Have you ever heard of jet lag?" Bush responded. "Well, good. That answers your question."

The president then recited a list of things of that he viewed as positive developments from his Beijing meetings, including cooperation on North Korean nuclear disarmament and the ability to have "frank discussions" with his Chinese counterpart.

When the reporter asked for "a very quick follow-up," Bush cut him off by thanking the press corps and telling the reporter "No you may not," as he strode toward a set of double doors leading out of the room.

If you go to the White House transcript of the exchange, you'll notice that the reporter's attempt to ask a follow-up question — and Dubya's refusal to answer it — have been left out, hiding the fact that the press conference ended abruptly.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:14 AM | Get permalink



Do the math.

What do you get when you put together years of underfunding of the National Park Service, even more years of overfunding the increasingly ineffective drug war, and the increased security and militarization along the US border with Mexico?

Illegal marijuana farms in California's national parks, national forests, and other federal lands.

The shift to growing dope on public lands has taken place over the past decade. Previously, almost all of California's massive marijuana crop was grown in the 'traditional' areas on the North Coast: Trinity, Mendocino, and Humboldt counties. In the last few years, however, illegal farms have turned up in federally protected lands including Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the Point Reyes National Seashore, the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Mexican drug cartels now are seizing on the state's mild climate and vast stretches of remote lands to set up pot farms across California. Tightened security on the U.S.-Mexico border has also convinced many drug gangs it is easier to grow marijuana in the state than to smuggle it into the country.

Park service officials said the drug cartels took extreme measures to protect their plants, which can be worth $4,000 each. Growers have been known to set up booby traps with shotguns. Guards armed with knives and military-style weapons have chased away hikers at gunpoint....

"In prior years, guards used to flee from Park Service law enforcement but now stand their ground with leveled guns using intimidation tactics," Laura Whitehouse, the Central Valley program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, told the committee.

The illicit pot farms can also cause environmental damage. Growers often cut trees, dig ditches, create crude dams on streams, and haul in plastic hoses and other equipment to irrigate the plants. Fertilizers and other chemicals used by growers pollute watersheds and kill native species. Last year, the Park Service spent $50,000 to clean up tons of litter, debris and human waste at pot farms that were discovered or abandoned.

An obvious [and cheap] way to deal with the problem would be to legalize marijuana, cutting out much of the financial motivation for the illegal dope farms in national parks. Sadly, National Park Service and law enforcement officials seem to be viewing this problem as another reason to increase drug war and border funding.

Via San Francisco Chronicle.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:28 AM | Get permalink



Another great moment in corporate courage.

Today in New York, a major exhibit about the life and work of Charles Darwin opened its doors for the first time at the American Museum of Natural History. Darwin exhibition entranceMounted in cooperation with four other science museums in the US, Canada, and UK, the exhibit is one of the most comprehensive presentations of the development of Darwin's theory of evolution and how that theory continues to affect the way that scientific research is done. Given the current possibility of an avian flu pandemic — and how evolutionary theory both explains how the flu virus mutates and guides the research into making a vaccine — the Darwin exhibit could hardly come at a better time.

Unfortunately, potential US corporate sponsors haven't been enthusiastic about the exhibit at all. Unlike most museum offerings of its size and scope, the Darwin exhibit doesn't have a single corporate sponsor. Instead, the US$ $3 million cost of the exhibit is coming out of the pockets of individuals and foundations.

Why have there been so many cases of corporate cold feet? Because US corporations are afraid of retaliation from religious fundamentalists if their corporate name is associated with Darwin and evolution.

The AMNH is coy about its failure to find corporate money to mount the exhibition, which will tour the US before moving to London's Natural History Museum in 2009 to mark the bicentenary of Darwin's birth.

Asked which companies had refused to give money, Gary Zarr, the museum's marketing director, said he would have to ask those concerned before he could identify them.

Steve Reichl, a press officer for the AMNH, said a list of forthcoming exhibitions was sent to potential sponsors and none wanted to back the Darwin exhibition. He declined to reveal which companies, or how many, had been approached.

The Bank of America previously sponsored a similar exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and the financial services provider TIAA-CREF funded an Albert Einstein show.

A prominent Metropolitan Museum donor said: "You can understand why the Museum of Natural History might not want to admit such a thing.

"They are concerned about finding corporate funding for exhibitions in the future."

That's right: Not only are corporations afraid to sponsor an exhibit about Darwin out of fear for their bottom lines, but they're getting away with their cowardice because museum officials are afraid of risking future funding. It's nice to know that intellectual freedom is on such solid footing in the US, isn't it?

The AMNH has put up a great website to go with the Darwin exhibition. You'll find it here. We especially recommend the short film [RealVideo] about the importance of evolutionary theory to modern science.

Via UK Sunday Telegraph.

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




Liar, liar, pants on fire!


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