Tentacles of the communications octopus

Ahh, people ... AdVerbatims (adverbatims.blogspot.com), described as " a hooting good collection of design-related overheards" by India, Ink (indiamos.wordpress.com). She saw it at Graphic Design Bar (www.graphicdesignbar.com), who got it from Veer (blog.veer.com).]

Creek dries

On October 30th, 2006 Chris Clarke put Creek Running North into a posting hiatus. It's sad, but looking the final Gone fishin', and at other recent posts & comments you can see good reasons. More happily, at least for now it's staying online to read. So go & do that while you can.

Tibet: A photo from Flickr

TIBET
Originally uploaded by PEDRO SARAIVA.

Such lovely colours and rhythmn in the accoutrements, and a nice little by-play in the humanity. (from the threeheadedblog)

NZ News: Hide your insulin

Airline's medicine ban leaves passenger in coma
www.nzherald.co.nz/section/print.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=1040860
New Zealand Herald - National News
Wednesday November 1, 2006
By James Ihaka

A diabetic man fell into a coma because airport staff refused to let him take his insulin on board a flight from Auckland to Christchurch.

Qantas yesterday apologised to Tui Peter Russell, who had a severe attack on the plane and was in hospital for two weeks.

Mr Russell said check-in staff at Auckland Airport told him he could not take his medication on board because it was dangerous...

... or maybe not
No hospital records for 'comatose' airline passenger
www.nzherald.co.nz/ section/ story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10408778
Thursday November 2, 2006
By James Ihaka

Doubts have emerged about the coma a diabetic said he suffered on a flight from Auckland to Christchurch...

Halloween special on Astronomy Picture of the Day
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061031.html

Not a good Vegemite substitute

A new fast food is making its debut at U.S. fairs this fall: fried Coke. Abel Gonzales, 36, a computer analyst from Dallas, tried about 15 different varieties before coming up with his perfect recipe — a batter mix made with Coca-Cola syrup, a drizzle of strawberry syrup, and some strawberries.

Balls of the batter are then deep-fried, ending up like ping-pong ball sized doughnuts which are then served in a cup, topped with Coca-Cola syrup, whipped cream, cinnamon sugar and a cherry on the top.

Gonzales said the success of his fried Coke had inspired him. Next year's fair-goers can look forward to fried Sprite or — for those watching their weight — fried diet Coke.

"We are trying to cut a lot of the sugar out of it. It has less calories but it's still very, very sweet," he said. – (Reuters)

Free Trade Agreement?

America bans Vegemite
October 21, 2006, from The Sunday Times
www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20623973-2,00.html
www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,20623014-948,00.html

THE US has banned Vegemite, even to the point of searching Australians for jars of the spread when they enter the country.
... Vegemite has been deemed illegal under US food laws. [It] contains folate, which ... America allows to be added only to breads and cereals.

Evanescence & Solidity (again)

"Bleigiessen", a seven-storey high sculpture by Thomas Heatherwick at the Wellcome Trust, Gibbs Building, 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE
some pictures
www.flickr.com/photos/electricsprout/255666808/
www.flickr.com/photos/loplop/245495378/in/photostream/
www.tom-carden.co.uk/2006/01/28/bleigiessen/

Fluffy, White, not necessarily harmless

Clouding the Mind ...
pic1.funtigo.com/ valuca?g=25544746&cr=1
Many beautiful & fascinating photos here. A few of them are from a World War I German 'Cloud Atlas' produced for pilots, others are from sites around the world. Many of the lenticular clouds look extraordinarily artificial.

... One Way or Another
"one step closer to that marshmallow-armed society we all dream of" [Ed - of which we all dream?]
www.stupid.com/ stat/ MLLW.html

Loss: John M Ford

The writer of the poem below died suddenly, shortly after the equinox, a quarter of the year before Christmas Day at the age of 49. He left a sad gap in my online life, and a much bigger, painful, rent in others' lives. I mourn his passing, condole his family & friends, and cherish the works he left us.

Obituary: tinyurl.com/oeouj — This is a free Usenet posting (groups.google.com/ group/ alt.obituaries/ msg/ 0a7495d51f3af0de) of John Clute's obituary in The Independent (news.independent.co.uk/ people/ obituaries/ article1772294.ece)

Sestina, from a main centre of information and remembrances (nielsenhayden.com/ makinglight/ archives/ 008033.html).

The Turning Year Comes Round Again: Five

110 Stories — some pieces

...
There's dust, and metal. Nothing else at all.
it's airless and it's absolutely black.
I found a wallet. I'm afraid to call.
I'll stay until my little girl comes back.
...
I can't do that for fifty times the fare.
A coronary. Other things went on.
It goes, like, something mighty, and despair.
All those not now accounted for are gone.
...
A taller building? Maybe. I can wait.
I hugged the stranger sitting next to me.
So this is what you call a second chance.
One turn aside, into eternity.
This is New York. We'll find a place to dance.

Multimedia version of John M Ford's 110 Stories
Link 2: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UrMo3TaI8mo
Link 1: 110stories.malibulist.com/ 110Stories.mov

Saline Project's 110 Stories
www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JmhaD6iQZes

The Old Spagetti Factory on the Williamette River

The Old Spagetti Factory on the Williamette River
Originally uploaded by novascotiagal65.

Spot the difference (No 2)

The Old Spagetti Factory

The Old Spagetti Factory
Originally uploaded by Jordon.

spot the difference (No 1)

Another New Word: Planemo

Update: Excellent page listing extrasolar planets exoplanet.eu/ catalog.php, brought up in discussion by Pete Erwin

Strange 'twin' new worlds found
Thursday, 3 August 2006, 20:50 GMT 21:50 UK
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5241774.stm?ls

A pair of strange new worlds that blur the boundaries between planets and stars have been discovered beyond our Solar System ...
The pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos" (an unofficial term), which are not bound to stars ... they circle each other rather than orbiting a star.

"This is a truly remarkable pair of twins - each having only about 1% the mass of our Sun," said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the Science paper ... "We are resisting the temptation to call it a 'double planet' because this pair probably didn't form the way that planets in our Solar System did," said co-researcher Valentin Ivanov of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Santiago, Chile ...

They ... can be found in the Ophiuchus star-forming region some 400 light years away. They go under the official name Oph 162225-240515, or Oph 1622 for short.

Mini-planet system seen in growth
Tuesday, 8 February, 2005, 11:07 GMT
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4246023.stm

Mini-planet systems get stranger
Tuesday, 6 June 2006, 13:34 GMT 14:34 UK
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5051706.stm

Professor Jayawardhana, who also worked on the study, added: "The diversity of worlds out there is truly remarkable. Nature often seems more prolific than our imagination."

Planet hunters target nearby star
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3237575.stm
By Helen Briggs
Friday, 7 November, 2003, 14:48 GMT

Telescope pierces space dust: Photo Gallery (7 Images)
Thursday, 18 December, 2003, 22:04 GMT
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/photo_gallery/3332537.stm

Nasa's new infra-red telescope — now named the Spitzer Telescope — can see through clouds of dust that visible light can't penetrate

Another Online Library/Reference Resource

Digital Domesday
'From parchment to pixels as book hits web'
news.bbc.co.uk/ nolavconsole/ ifs_news/ hi/ newsid_5240000/ newsid_5244300/ nb_wm_5244332.stm

Apostate! Defiler! Prevert!

Such words may have been used to describe someone who installs Windoze on an Apple Mac. Below is a no-holds-barred description of just such a boldly transgressive process.
windows.ittoolbox.com/ news/ display.asp?i=145986

Not sure if everyone can see these, or just the newsletter subscribers — if you're not necessarily interested in the main premise, you might be able to skim the article for a side-issue that links into one of your interests.

BTW, one heading on the 'community content' forums in a sidebar/breakout box is "RE: Linux File server for widows workstations". Sigh, there goes the apostrophe again ... or do you think that could be a typographical error? [/cheektongue]

Knitting for Knit-In (ABC Local Radio)

There's a whole fascinating knitting community online, swapping hints, experiences, ideas and encouragement and many, many, pictures of their knitted objects.
It ranges from very domesticated versions through various degrees of dedicated crafty types to the 'textile art' end. Between — or beyond — are all kinds of tributaries and bayous in the range of expression — some of the less usual manifestations of human creativity.
I thought you might appreciate these pictures of some unusual & challenging knitting projects.

www.flickr.com/ photos/ 72906716@N00/ sets/ 72057594095330901/

The 2006 ABC Sydney 702BL Knit-In
www.abc.net.au/sydney/stories/s1698786.htm

Moebius knitting
www.toroidalsnark.net/mkmb.html — UPDATE: Changed knitting link from 4-jan-06
www.catbordhi.com/free_patterns.html
www.fuzzygalore.biz/articles/moebius.shtml
www.girlfromauntie.com/tech/moebius/outside_in.php

To see a Universe in a grain of sand

There are some spectacular and beautiful images, selected as finalists in the scientific illustration competition in this gallery: www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/bia/gallery.html


Whereas this is an older and far less visual contribution to human culture, available at what look like quite useful sites for online literature.
www.literature.org/ authors/ voltaire/ candide/
www.infidels.org/ library/ historical/ voltaire/ candide.html

There are times words fail

The site and idea of 'Pets In Uniform' is weird enough. Then they just took that step or two more ...

Bearcat ... and related links

Jack the
Cat trees a bear (CNN story)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRcSzqa4cLs

Selection of cats doing strange/funny things -- includes a short clip of another cat/bear confrontation near the end (just before 1 minute).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAE2Kcp0Nt8

Another cat with a dog
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSICRmlZpVM

Kitten & Puppy
youtube.com/watch?v=RO-3Qdogr9w

--------
Assorted cat-related comments in response to the 'cat trees bear' story/video.

Pfui.

Overachiever.

What ees he compensating for? I ask joo.

Tambien, I've chased bigger.

(bathes in feigned disinterest)

so.

El Gato Negro! | Homepage | 06.11.06 - 3:32 pm |

My old man raised running walker and blue-tick hounds for hunting purposes, generally keeping a dozen or so at a time in a big-ol' chicken-wire fence. And though no one in my family were what you'd call "cat people", we usually had at least one mean-eyed yard cat that some jackass dropped off prowling around the yard. When we were kids, one of my cousins - a genuinely mean little s--t that grew up to be one helluva upstanding guy - threw the current yard cat into the dogpen with eleven walker hounds.
Now, walker hounds aren't particularly aggressive dogs. They'll chase something until it kills 'em, but they have no earthly clue what to do with whatever they might catch. Still, being playful and naturally given to chasing critters, they will kill a cat just due to being overly rambunctious.
So, little s--tass cousin throws the cat into the pen, baby brother runs to Momma to tattle, and Momma takes off to rescue the cat. In hardly no time, she runs back to the house, and somewhere in my parents' house is a picture of all 12 of them walker hounds backed into a corner, trying to crawl over each other to get away, and that mean-eyed cat just staring at 'em, flicking that tail back and forth.

I, for one, have no doubt that if they could figure out how to use can openers, house cats would take over the world in about a week.
Matt T. | 06.11.06 - 4:16 pm |

My beautiful Yin Lihn, now resting in the back yard next to her mother, was another such. Had her from three days old till she died in her 22nd year, generally peaceful (except when it came to getting her share of food), but tough when she had to be and an unbelievable purrer, you could hear her from the next room.
She went fifteen pounds, compact too. A neighbour cat, pure white, got into the habit of coming onto her porch and staring through the screen -- that's "f--- you" in cat language apparently. Yin Lihn would go ballistic, almost turn herself inside out like something from a Heinlein novel.
After putting up with this for half an afternoon, we said screw it and opened the screen door. Our girl waited about one eighth of a second, a little surprised, then charged right into the white cat. Actually hitting with paws raised, I swear, it was like snow coming down, all that fine white fur thrown up in the air. She pushed that poor cat down the stairs and there they sat hunkered down staring at each other from a foot away.
For fifteen minutes, not moving a muscle, either one. Then the white one verrrry carefully starts moving away in reverse, one deliberate, backward step at a time. At twenty feet he lights out like no tomorrow. Our gal lazily moved her head to follow his escape, nothing more.

Never saw that cat again.
MikeB | 06.12.06 - 11:11 am |

Cats can be very territorial. My parents' late cat, Frazier, did not like intruders into his territory.
His territory was Houston.
G Jones | 06.11.06 - 9:37 pm |

"I, for one, have no doubt that if they could figure out how to use can openers, house cats would take over the world in about a week."

Housecats already are the dominant species on Earth. They long ago figured out how to control humans and get them to use the can openers for them.

Haven't you noticed? Cats in general are the single most efficient predator on land, but housecats have evolved to where they don't have to bother with such "iffy" propositions of actually hunting for a living. Instead they have tamed people to provide for them.
It is my suspicion that our house cats have selectively bred humans for increased ability to use tools. The early association of house cats and humans was the first human civilization in Egypt, where cats were recognized and worshipped as Gods. Coincidence? I don't think so.
No doubt they felt that they could have more power from a less obvious position than as formal Gods. You will also notice that there has never been an advanced city-based human civilization that was not associated with cats.
Just remember. Contrary to all our myths, God walks on four paws with little switchblades inside each toe. When you please God, God sometimes purrs for you.
When you realize how much work we humans will go to to get that purr, you tell me who is dominant?
Rick B | Homepage | 06.12.06 - 7:15 am |

Old observation bearing repeating here: A dog thinks, wow, these humans feed me, love me, take care of me. They must be gods. The cat of course thinks, wow, these humans love me, feed me, take care of me. I must be God.

Live life well. Fail often.

Live life well. Fail often. And to those who have passed: R.I.P.
www.mrcranky.com/movies/rip.html
Mr Cranky on Life, Death & so on

... my friend asked a question: "Why should I live a life that brings me no joy?" That question, along with the passing of these three people, has produced quite a bit of thought on the topic of life, its meaning, and what the whole point might be. Pondering that question is basically a cliché, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Assorted: Amusing & Big Picture

Elements of Subway-Announcement Style By Ken Krimstein (at McSweeney's — a very good site)
www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/6/13krimstein.html

Video (from YouTube.com) of an earlier event involving Buzz Aldrin of which you may have heard. You may have to view it on a fatter pipe.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQKxAqpjroo

Some thoughts on Pharyngula not altogether orthogonal to discussions about humanity I've had with friends.
scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/start_a_new_life_in_the_offwor.php

A piece of Sequential Art commenting on some of the issues raised in the above discussion.

Torture comes from the Latin word "to twist"

DRAFT
As the LA Times reports:
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention ... the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents [as Abu Ghraib and Haditha] as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars.

“The rest of the world is completely convinced that we are busy torturing people,” said Oona A. Hathaway, an expert in international law at Yale Law School. “Whether that is true or not, the fact we keep refusing to provide these protections in our formal directives puts a lot of fuel on the fire.”

... The move to restore U.S. adherence to Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions] was opposed by officials from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, government sources said ... The military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, or JAGs, have concluded that they will have to wait for a new administration before mounting another push to link Pentagon policy to the standards of Geneva.

James D. Macdonald ::: Torture: It’s the New Black

This argument to practicality is one designed for ... the ones who think that Torture Works...
Even if it did work, which we know it does not [see all below], torture would still be wrong because it coarsens the torturer, betrays our ideals, and hardens the resolve of our enemies.

Some examples:

dir.salon.com/ story/ opinion/ feature/ 2004/ 06/ 21/ torture_algiers/ print.html
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/ Torture/ Torture_We_Trust.html
www.sundayherald.com/ 53162

(You might also Google on "torture warrants".)


June 06, 2006, 11:17 AM:
nielsenhayden.com/ makinglight/ archives/ 007621.html#129490
Remember that the Spanish Inquisition abolished torture in their courts on the grounds that it doesn't yield true information.

Say what you will about the Spanish Inquisition, you have to admit that they had a certain ... expertise ... in the matter.

(Speaking of the Inquisition, for the first twenty years of its existence it wasn't allowed torture at all. When torture was introduced it was under strict guidelines: torture was to be applied only once, it was supposed to be of such a manner and degree that it did not imperil life or limb, and it was only supposed to be applied when manifold and weighty proofs showed that the accused was guilty and was lying. Torture was only supposed to be applied when all other expedients had already been exhausted. Boy does that ever sound familiar....)

June 06, 2006, 04:26 PM:
nielsenhayden.com/ makinglight/ archives/ 007621.html#129617
Recall that the North Vietnamese excuse for torturing our troops was that since we were involved in an illegal war, our troops were unlawful combatants and the Geneva Conventions didn't apply to them.

It was a false argument then (there is no class of person not covered by the Geneva Conventions), and it's a false argument now.

June 06, 2006, 04:47 PM:
nielsenhayden.com/ makinglight/ archives/ 007621.html#129626
Many years ago, I was in SERE School. One of the parts of that was the Prisoner of War sequence. We were questioned (using methods that didn't result in permanent disability). Part of that was teaching us how to resist questioning. The other part was training the interrogators -- they'd been instructed to learn about a certain subject that their prisoners didn't know anything about. They got the information anyway, and constructed an elaborate and self-consistent story. It was all fantasy. This was teaching them the limits of harsh interrogation.

At last my (surfing) arm is complete again!

Invisible Man
A new biography explores the woman who was James Tiptree Jr
by Carter Scholz
BOOKFORUM
Summer 2006

New book about writer of "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (and other stories I've remembered for many years) - www.bookforum.com/scholz.html

In James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (New York, St Martin's Press, 480pp), Julie Phillips skillfully elucidates the relationship between Sheldon — her fascinating life and complex psyche — and Tiptree, the man who didn't exist but nonetheless charmed dozens of correspondents and thousands of readers.

In 1921, six-year-old Alice Hastings Bradley traveled with her parents, Herbert and Mary Bradley, to the Belgian Congo and, as she later wrote, contracted "a case of horror vitae that lasted all my life." This was the setting of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the site of a still-recent genocide — a word that didn't yet exist ... "It was partly from colonial adventure stories like Mary's that science fiction was born," Phillips observes. "The first time Alice saw Star Trek, she recognized it at once as a story about her childhood." The multicultural crew may look like it's been sent by the United Nations, but its gunship could wipe out a planet.

... Young Alice saw the genital mutilation of Kikuyu women, babies dying in the streets of Calcutta, a riot in Shanghai that was the start of the Chinese Revolution. She heard the screams of a man being killed for the cannibal pot. She even saw a crucifixion: "The men had been stripped, tortured, tied to posts, and left to perish in the sun. . . . Auschwitz—My Lai—etc. . . . did not surprise me one bit, later on." Mary wrote that cannibals were "much like other folk," and her daughter, writing as James Tiptree Jr., might have agreed—but her agreement would be based not on cultural relativism, but on the universality of human cruelty, the biological urge to dominate and exterminate.

Phillips's use of the expression "double life" in her subtitle is apt, for there are two stories here. Had Alice never written as Tiptree, her life would still be worth our attention for the milieus it touched, for how it delineates just what a privileged and ambitious woman could and couldn't do at the time, and for its exploration of the extent to which her beauty, social position, intelligence, and ambition created irreconcilable expectations ...
After the war, Alice worked seriously for a time at writing, then complained "I am ... not a civilised human being. I am in this culture but not of it." ... eventually, there was too much unspoken at the heart of Alice's experience that found ready expression in the tropes of science fiction. She had seen cruelty, dominance, and submission as a child; she had served in the war, seen the inside of institutions dedicated to hegemony and power; in the psych lab she and her colleagues had used rats as subjects, another unquestioned power relationship that had disturbed her. (One Tiptree story is called "The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats.") Now the United States was in Vietnam, Ting was supervising the President's Daily Brief, and science fiction gave her a way to address all of it, without having to explain, justify, or excuse herself. Without needing to have a self ...
When an editor asked if Tiptree had served in the military, the answer was "World War II, yeah, mostly locked in a Pentagon sub-basement"; it wouldn't occur to the editor that the writer had been a WAC. Another time, Tiptree insisted to a correspondent, "I am not, retransmit NOT, employed by CIA." True, but for anyone who cared to notice, the ex-employee called it "CIA" and not, like a civilian, "the CIA."
... A generation of Hollywood SF films has made the material of Tiptree's stories more accessible, and a recrudescence of imperial hubris has made some of their themes more immediate...

Cavalier erotica

http://lnhammer.livejournal.com/43002.html
- "tentacle porn" http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/vine.htm
and "wearing underthings on your head" http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/waller/onagirdle.htm
moves on to
"Ye Elizabethan dose of smut", Thomas Nashe's poem 'A Choice of Valentines,' ( http://www.members.tripod.com/sicttasd/choise.html ), and "ye Restoration dose", the Earl of Rochester's 'Signor Dildo' ( http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/dildo.html ) ... "Tho' the text of the latter is a little different from what I remember."
via a quick mention of Pele's detachable vagina (from Hawaiian myth)

THINGS FALL DOWN, GO "BOOM!"

Trojan Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Tower Implosion
[NOTE: There's a long list of other people's youtube videos of this.]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImzanXzAU2o
Added on May 21, 2006, 01:53 PM
by drdougfir

21 May 2006 cooling tower demolition at the decomissioned Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.
The tower WAS located on the south bank of the Columbia River about 20 minutes south of Portland, Oregon near the town of Ranier. My dad and I got up on a bluff directly overlooking the tower. We were just a little bit over 0.5 miles away from the tower when it blew.

There's also a bunch of videos of this event from other places too, such as:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DbWrMJQrLQ
digg.com/links/Trojan_nuclear_cooling_tower_IMPLODED_today_

http://hansv.com/trojan_implosion/
Implosion Montage - hansv.com/trojan_implosion/index.html
Arial View [sic] - http://hansv.com/trojan_implosion/KATUArial.html
Mark Loizeaux Interview - http://hansv.com/trojan_implosion/KATUInterview.html
Multiple Angles - http://hansv.com/trojan_implosion/KGWAll.html
Slow Motion Multiple Angles - http://hansv.com/trojan_implosion/KGWSlowmo.html

Another addition to the Wish List:
The Space Child's Mother Goose
by Frederick Winsor, Marian Parry (illustrator)

... long out-of-print classic [reprinted now]. Winsor's rhyming verses bring a wide variety of scientific theories, thought, and spirit to life.

lnhammer.livejournal.com/43915.html
[W]hat's so good about this book -- the loopy parodies of nursery rhymes? The jaundiced opinions of modern technology? The footnotes in verse, sometimes less than helpful? -- supplemented by a glossary (called "The Answers") that often helps even less? The philosophic fillips? All of those and more.
What impresses me most now, leafing through my battered copy, is Winsor's craft. His verse (as good light verse must be) is spot-on, swift and deft and deadly sharp6. There's a reason many were originally published in The Atlantic. For all this and more, I honour it.

Hamster-Powered Night Light

With Custom Low-RPM Alternator
www.otherpower.com/hamster.html

Though Skippy the Hamster powers this night light by running on his excercise wheel, the same concepts and low-rpm alternator design could be applied to a ... project using different energy sources. A small wind or hydro turbine could easily power this alternator.

[NOT something that could be applied to cat-power. Though putting something into a favourite cushion that could collect napping calories and the kinetic energy of falling asleep <g> might work there ...]

Loading the iPod With Egalitarianism
French Bills Have Firms Singing Blues
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 26, 2006; Page A16
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052502059.html

PARIS — Nicolas Paitre, a salesman at one of Paris's largest electronics stores, hears from customers every day.

Filing into Surcouf, a glitzy French electronics chain where Paitre specializes in digital music gadgets, they have the same bewildered looks and exasperated queries: "I can download digital songs from one company, but I can't play them on another company's machine?"
"My hard drive with all my music files crashed, and I can't transfer the songs from my handheld into a new computer?"

Oui and oui again. The legal and technical issues of protecting music copyrights are so complex, Paitre said, that many music lovers "feel stuck in the middle" and eventually are forced into the business of trying to foil the protections on their own.

Now comes France's National Assembly to the rescue, or so claim lawmakers who have crafted legislation to force compatibility between digital songs and the different machines that play them ...

Two Books: Has much changed since Orwell's Review?

Review:
The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek The Mirror of the Past by K. Zilliacus

Taken together, these two books give grounds for dismay. The first of them is an eloquent defence of laissez-faire capitalism, the other is an even more vehement denunciation of it. They cover to some extent the same ground, they frequently quote the same authorities, and they even start out with the same premise, since each of them assumes that Western civilization depends on the sanctity of the individual. Yet each writer is convinced that the other's policy leads directly to slavery, and the alarming thing is that they may both be right....

Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.

Both of these writers are aware of this, more or less; but since they can show no practicable way of bringing it about the combined effect of their books is a depressing one.

Observer, 9 April 1944

The Brainstem Song

The Brainstem Song, from Pinky and The Brain.
Love it: Great (borrowed) tune, 'real facts', good characters; funny as hell. Just love it. This is a link to the place it's uploaded onto www.youtube.com,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7HnKBjz1B4
below I hope is a successful attempt at embedding it so you can watch directly from here.


I don't know if the cartoon "Pinky & The Brain" is known widely here in Australia. I only heard about it from following links related to this one.

Mistress Masham's Repose

Mistress Masham's Repose: www.nybooks.com/ shop/ product?usca_p=t&product_id=3693
www.readerscatalog.com/ cgi-bin/ shop/ 01-71039.html

What can I say that has not already been said? Even more, what can I say that will adequately convey my love for this book? Common sense dictates that not all books ever written can be perpetually in print and easily available, but I have never understood how this book has been allowed its spotty history. It is truly a book for everyone of all ages, and in my estimation should be considered White's best, even outstripping his famous "The Once and Future King," which for all its beauty is a seriously flawed work. "Mistress Masham's Repose" is didactic, too, but its teaching is not painful, and performs the miraculous feat of sending the reader, whether child or adult, on an eager search for more information. And yet, the work is not slow or tiresome, and White never talks down to anyone, even when his comedy verges on that of the music hall. Books like this should never disappear, and once you fall under its spell you will read it again and again.

LoPiverse (Harry Potter fanfic)

LoPiverse of A.J. Hall:
www.lopiverse.shoesforindustry.net
Welcome to the LoPiverse web site. So what is the LoPiverse? Well, it's really just a convenient short-hand definition for the series of fanfic and cross-over fanfic e-books, based upon J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, by the author A.J. Hall. Namely, two full length novels, Lust Over Pendle and Dissipation and Despair and a series of shorter stories, Mark of the Beast', 'Not a Whisper', 'Queer as Scent', 'The Kindly Ones', 'Time Shall Not Mend', 'Ships that Pass'� and the new short story, 'The Perilous Point.
(The word 'LoPiverse' itself, comes from the abbreviation of the title of the first novel, Lust Over Pendle, or LoP for short.)

Making Light: "Fanfic": force of nature

Making Light: "Fanfic": force of nature: If the fanfic's good enough, it might be "Mistress Masham's Repose"

elsewhere, it's still April Fools' Day

A good distraction from world and personal worries.
10 stories that could be pranks - but aren't
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4400535.stm
April the first is when jokers set out to fool and the rest of us are on our guard. Here is our annual round-up of some of the day's seemingly spoof news stories which are actually true
...

April Fools, 2006 roundup at Making Light
nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007386.html#007386

Richard Branson: Malzberg to Fly Virgin Galactic Free
www.locusmag.com/2006/Features/0401_Malzberg_Flies_Free.html

London, April 1, 2006 —Billionaire Richard Branson, whose space-tourist venture Virgin Galactic is inching closer to takeoff every month, announced today that he would be offering a limited number of free rides to various deserving individuals ... We intend to recognize the ground-breaking accomplishments of these pioneers by granting them a celebratory flight into the final frontier.

"And the first person to whom we owe such a debt is science fiction writer Barry N. Malzberg ... In a very real sense, Barry Malzberg is among the founding fathers of twenty-first-century space travel."

Although Branson was not yet at liberty to confirm further speculations, rumor has it that the second candidate for the program would be British author J. G. Ballard, whose flight would depart from the Martian-sand-swamped ruins of Cape Canaveral.

And in Australia, it's the first day after our Commonwealth-Games-extended Daylight Saving ended. An hour extra in the day; paid back from missing one in October. Something of a gift we try not to squander, or at least enjoy as we do it.

The First War Crime is Starting the War

The Nuremburg trials stated that the crime is starting an aggressive war, because all atrocities of war stem from the fact that a war was started.

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." (Nuremberg judgement)

Hitler, for instance never killed anyone during his rule of Germany; he had people to do that for him. "Cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war"

From Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque (www.chris-floyd.com ).

Children of Abraham: Death in the Desert
www.chris-floyd.com/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=550&Itemid=1
Written by Chris Floyd
Sunday, 19 March 2006

we know that the American troops ... were sent to Iraq on a demonstrably false mission to "disarm" weapons that did not exist and take revenge for 9/11 on a nation that had nothing to do with the attack. And we now know that the White House – and George W. Bush specifically – knew all along that the intelligence did not and could not support the public case he had made for the war.

We know that the only reason that this dead baby has his arm frozen to his lifeless face is that three years ago this week, George W. Bush gave the order to begin the unprovoked, unjust and unnecessary invasion of Iraq. He hasn't fired a single shot or launched a single missile; he hasn't tortured or killed any prisoners; he hasn't kidnapped or beheaded civilians or planted bombs along roadsides, in mosques or marketplaces. Yet every single atrocity of the war – on both sides – and every single death caused by the war, and every act of religious repression perpetrated by the extremist sects empowered by the war, is the direct result of the decision made by George W. Bush three years ago. Nothing he says can change this fact; nothing he does, or causes to be done, for good or ill, can wash the blood of these children – and the tens of thousands of other innocent civilians killed in the war – from his hands.

The Avalon Project, at Yale Law School (www.yale.edu/ lawweb/ avalon/ avalon.htm) is highly recommended, BTW. I thought it was on my link list. Adding. The quote at the beginning is from the "Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals" (www.yale.edu/ lawweb/ avalon/imt/ proc/ judcont.htm), under the heading "The Nazi Regime in Germany" (www.yale.edu/ lawweb/ avalon/ imt/ proc/ judnazi.htm), subheading The Common Plan or Conspiracy and Aggressive War.