Owner: Carson's Post URL:http://carsonspost.wordpress.com Join Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:36:18 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Two guys talking about politics and society, a generation apart. Site statistics:Click here
Europe: is the glass becoming half-full? 2007-07-25 13:11:50 Is it merely the usual political chimera, or is there an authentic cool, crisp breeze cleansing the old continent and the Middle East?
From afar, a case can be made for authentic change. Gone are the whimsical, mischievous and stylistic leaderships of Shroeder, Blair and Chirac. They have been replaced by a more muscularly determined and perhaps practical trio of Merkel, Brown and Sarkozy which already seems to be paying off.
First, a more sensible US-EU dialogue has restored the checks and balances that make international politics a lot more stable. Add to that the failed Bush Doctrine of Unilateralism + Britain and there is some cause for hope at a time when a Quixote is charging round the world titling at windmills of his own creation.
This authentic change paid off yesterday. The stalemate in Libya would have been a continuum under the old regime but under this new leadership, viola, an unusually happy ending to a highly confusing and controversial story (Bulgarian nurses actually Read more:Europe
No joker in this deck 2007-07-25 11:48:46 See this? Prisoner poker could crack cold cases. It’s reminiscent of Saddam as the ace of spades.
TAMPA, Fla. - Prison inmates are getting a present from the state of Florida: playing cards. For detectives looking to solve dozens of cold cases, it’s the start of a game of Go Fish that might pay off big.
On Tuesday, Florida’s nearly 93,000 state inmates started getting one of two decks that between them highlight 104 of the state’s most troubling unsolved murder and missing persons cases.
“What better way to get them talking than to have cards with the cases on them?” said Special Agent Tommy Ray of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “These are people who have been in there for years. That’s the best source of information. There are a couple of high-profile cases I think we’ll get solved.”
For the state program, authorities printed 85,000 dec
Hag blames the Yukon for her potty mouth 2007-07-25 11:28:21 Can a woman be an old cuss? Literally, yes, but usage? Cuss-dom has always been a man’s domain and he has dwelled in the state with considerable pride.
Then along comes Mary Vaughan and the headline: Old cuss faces eviction from Canada retirement home.
According to Mary she learned to swear in the Yukon. And really took to it:
She practiced swearing and eventually perfected it: “I sat in front of the mirror and I said it over and over and over.”
“I would say it smiling, frowning and laughing. And I finally learned to say it without being offended.”
There are strange things done under the midnight sun but not much stranger than that.
But, her mastery of profanity is finally paying off.
Staff at the independent-living seniors’ residence accused Vaughan of telling them to “fuck off” while refusing to apologize, as well as gossiping and using the common room without proper permission.
Other tenants and their families also complained.
&l Read more:potty
, mouth
Quebec lakes teeming with blue-green algae: Parsing a headline 2007-07-25 11:16:30 Quebec’s famous lakes are teeming with blue-green algae — the banner blares and then we learn just how timid the story really is.
Let’s analyze the headline.
First, ‘teeming?’ The story is about blue-green algae ‘blooms’ growing on the surface of a lake. The fish may be teeming beneath the “putrid shade of green,” but the algae? Does algae teem? Teeming is a swarming motion.
Second, we learn in the article that Quebec has half a million lakes.
Third, we learn that “a pall has fallen over this idyllic paradise.” The “pond scum” can be “toxic, causing skin irritation on contact and liver or nervous system problems when swallowed.” Dreadful stuff.
Fourth — the pay-off:
The Quebec government has posted warnings on the Internet for 72 lakes and rivers people should not drink from — three times the number from last year.
What’s the percentage: 72 of 500,000? Tiny, hardly w Read more:Quebec
Alberta: The University of Gaming 2007-07-25 10:50:50 What’s up with the University
of Alberta
?
Last week we learned that the students designed a computer program that could beat every checkers players in the world.
Today, we learned that the computer programmed at the University to play poker narrowly missed bankrupting some professionals.
Tomorrow?
“In a second round decision, a University of Alberta coed beat Lennox Lewis into submission… with a Wii stick.”
Who knew learning could be so much fun?
Read more:Gaming
Media Corrections We’d Like to See 2007-07-24 23:36:24 Media Corrections We’d Like to See
by Norman Solomon from CommonDreams.com
Former readers of Mad Magazine can remember a regular feature called “Scenes We’d Like to See.” It showed what might happen if candor replaced customary euphemisms and evasions. These days, what media scenes would we like to see?
One aspect of news media that needs a different paradigm is the correction ritual. Newspapers are sometimes willing to acknowledge faulty reporting, but the “correction box” is routinely inadequate — the journalistic equivalent of self-flagellation for jaywalking in the course of serving as an accessory to deadly crimes.
Some daily papers are scrupulous about correcting the smallest factual errors that have made it into print. So, we learn that a first name was misspelled or a date was wrong or a person was misidentified in a photo caption. However, we rarely encounter a correction that addresses a fundamental flaw in what passes for ongoing journalism.
Here are some of th
Paula Zahn, enough already 2007-07-24 21:18:26 I am happy to hear that CNN’s Paula
Zahn is moving on. My perception of her always made me uncomfortable.
She has what I think of as a faux-gravitas with an irritating penchant for ‘gotcha.’ She never gives me the impression that anything touched her pristine, perfect world.
An interview a few months ago with the vilified (though correct) Ward Churchill will stay with me as the signal Zahn moment. Knowing the unpopularity of Churchill and his position, she insulted him with bludgeoning questions and irritated grimaces — she used her position and her piety to pile on rather than find the essential truth. It wasn’t pretty.
Nor are the round table discussions she so imperiously hosts on her programs. She finds three polarized views, lobs in a simplistic question and then moderates with an impression that the whole thing is beneath her.
It is a minor matter, but something else really bothers me about her performance: she is hopeless at the segue, which I take
Your choice: Life after Death vs Heaven and Hell 2007-07-24 17:02:39 Quick. Which would you prefer:
1. Life after death, based on the notion of reincarnation (rising up or falling down the food chain depending on good or bad deeds in this life), or
2. The all or nothing of heaven and hell.
Though of Christian sensibilities, I’ve always much preferred reincarnation for chiefly one reason: it is so inclusionary.
Christianity has always struck me as arrogantly human-centric: my dog hasn’t much of a chance of getting to heaven (but probably as much a chance as I do).
But with reincarnation my dog might be my fallen great-great grandfather who is heading onwards and upwards, and because she’s such a great dog, upwards still. I like that.
I was sent a link to a wonderful Sikh site called Project Naad — Infinity through Simplicity. Nice, ah, Infinity through Simplicity. As good is the meaning of Naad: ‘the essence of all sounds.’ I will read through the site over time.
My first step was to read about the Sikh take on Read more:Heaven
IPhone merely a whisper? 2007-07-24 15:43:39 An iPhone surprise: Opening-day sales were slow.
Apple shares slid almost 5 percent this morning after AT&T disclosed an interesting fact in its earnings report: Only 146,000 people signed up for iPhone service during the device’s first two days of sales. The number is far below previous estimates of iPhone sales; some analysts had guessed that Apple sold more than 400,000 in its opening weekend.
We know better than to believe the hype;
even when we want to believe,
But we shouldn’t believe
because it’s all hype
all the time
always
hype
The Globe to Aileen Siu: “Grovel” 2007-07-24 14:34:38 For those who wreak havoc with a click of the send button, as one Ontario government employee did last week, netiquette experts say there is only one course of action: Beg forgiveness.
All you can do is grovel. Say, ‘I sincerely apologize, and I throw myself on your mercy,’ &rdquo
; says Judith Kallos, author of E-mail Etiquette 101. &ldquo
;I hope you like the taste of humble pie.”
Ontario cabinet staffer Aileen Siu and her bosses have recently swallowed a heaping helping.
In response to an e-mail from a young black man who’d applied for a job, Ms. Siu wrote: “This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before.” Instead of sending it to a co-worker, as she apparently intended, she sent it to the job seeker, Evon Reid.
The apology chain started with Ms. Siu, then quickly worked its way up to her boss (who emphasized that she was a part-time, contract worker), her boss’s boss, and finally Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who called Mr. Reid on Sunday Read more:Globe
What’s in a name? The Dilemma of being Aileen Siu 2007-07-27 14:43:14 Earlier this week, we learned that the Canada had a policy that required Sikhs in India to change their names or risk losing a chance to immigrate to Canada.
Trouble is, many Sikhs assume the names proscribed by their religion: men take Singh and women Kaur, meaning lion and lioness.
But a Canadian official didn’t see it that way: by changing their names “It’s less confusing for everyone,” and “it will also ensure fewer misfiles or mis-mailed pieces of correspondence as well as fewer incidents of mistaken identity.” and “Doing so also allows us to ensure the safety and security of Canadians,” but it is “not a mandatory requirement.”
After the shit hit the fan, Canada dropped the 10-year quasi-policy later in the week.
Because Canada has roughly a half a million Sikhs, there are probably a lot of Singhs and Kaurs in the country. That can be confusing.
And troubling.
The Aileen Siu “Ghetto Dude” story shows just ho
Moore subpoenaed by Bush Admin 2007-07-27 13:51:20 Michael Moore
announced last night on the Leno show that he has been subpoenaed
by the Bush Admin
istration to explain his trip to Cuba with 9/11 rescue workers, which he included in his new documentary film, “Sicko.”
I have a defense for Mr. Moore.
He went to Cuba to be treated by the 8 American doctors who had just graduated from Havana U.
Our posting on this is here: 8 US docs graduate from Havana U
Alberto Gonzales — an update 2007-07-27 12:48:11 If you need a short, smart explanation of the US Attorney General AlbertoGonzales
- Terrorist Surveillance Program brouhaha, Dan Froomkin has it.
Few can demystify as thoroughly as Froomkin.
Read more:mdash
, Alberto Gonzales
“Bottle to throttle” — flying high 2007-07-27 12:32:37 Just as we are getting over the stalking astro, we learn that to some of the Space Pioneers &ldquo
;bottle to throttle&rdquo
; was not a prohibition against booze 12-hours before a flight, but a challenge.
Could this be true? Could astronauts actually have lifted-off pissed? And the very fact that the following question could be asked to A NASA official is positively surreal:
had he ever had to deal with a safety issue involving an inebriated astronaut in space?
Those images, you know the ones, of the selfless dedicated, smart, committed flying-scientists? Remember? It may turn out that astronauts are just like us, lovers of dutch courage and good times &mdash
; which, when you think about it, is probably the message we should be sending to our stratospheric neighbours.
Top 5 reasons why you hate your boss 2007-07-27 11:46:37 Think of it, one of the great advantages of growing up is that you don’t have your damn parents bossing you around any more. Then you get a job and the whole thing starts all over again.
Adults are too old to be told what to do, yet they are forced into an institution that has multi-layers of people managers, many of whom have considerable power over you. The result? As this Globe and Mail article points out: Sorry, boss, but everyone hates you.
Here are the top 5 reasons why you hate your boss:
• Management doesn’t listen. In the surveys, 66 per cent of employees said they don’t believe their concerns are paid attention to by management and 67 per cent said management doesn’t act on their suggestions.
• There’s no respect. About 56 per cent say their personal needs and interests are not acknowledged by managers.
• The fear factor. The surveys find 52 per cent of employees fear that if they make their opinions known they will face retributio
Broadband, ya right 2007-07-27 11:16:49 We here a lot these days about how the internet is going to change the way we watch TV and movies. Indeed, today, the BBC proudly announced a free internet TV service. Sounds great. But, there was this …
It could take 30 minutes to download an hour-long show.
Broadband, like pretty much everything else these days, is more hype than reality. The term gives us a warm and fuzzy feeling that we’re getting lots, like a realllllly broooooad band. And we are, compared to the pioneer days of the internet when a byte came out with labour pains.
But this isn’t your father’s internet, this is the one with all the promises. But it feels to me like riding in a horse and buggy — it will get you there, but don’t be in a hurry and forget the comfort.
What is broadband and why do, for instance, the Japanese have so much more of it than we do?
Up until recently, I was paying top buck for a ‘broadband’ connection that couldn’t play a youTube. Even n
Mastodon tusks, what are they good for? 2007-07-27 10:34:42 The northern Yukon and Alaska, a region referred to as Beringia, was the only area in most of North America that wasn’t glaciated during the last ice age. As a consequence, there are lots of Mastodon
tusks lying beneath the surface.
In a lecture at the Beringia Centre in Whitehorse last year, an expert was asked why mastodons had tusks? His response, “We really don’t know for sure.”
If that was the case for the curling North American types, what are we to make of these Greek?
In this image released by the Museum of Natural History Rotterdam, shows an impression by Dutch artist Remie Bakker, based on Greek fosssil evidence of a prehistoric mastodon in this undated image. Two large mastodon tusks and bone remains were found at the village of Milia in northern Greece. Greek and Dutch researchers at the site said the remains are 2.5 millions years old and could provide insight into how the primitive elephant became extinct. The largest tusk is 5 meters long.
Winning hearts and minds, one bomb after another 2007-07-27 10:24:42 Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in two foreign air strikes in southern Afghanistan, residents and a local member of parliament said on Friday.
One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province on Thursday evening, killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south.
The Reuters story entitled Dozens of Afghan civilians die in air raids: residents is all too common. We seem to hear reports like this coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan every day.
The brutality against the innocent seems even more … brutal given the announced objective of both wars is to “Win the hearts and minds
” of the people.
Clearly, that ain’t happening.
Perhaps the “collateral damage,” the killing of the innocent, is inevitable in these types of wars without uniforms. But that should have been factored into the planning, and had it been, there wou Read more:Winning
Sports are being besmirched 2007-07-27 10:08:54 The sporting arena has seldom looked so bad.
• The Tour de France is in shambles because riders are doping
• The NFL’s star quarterback is alleged to have headed a dog fighting ring
• In last year’s world cup, one star soccer player head-butted another
• A veteran basketball referee is accused of betting on games, even ones he had ref-ed
• Two star hockey playing brothers, to celebrate an impending nuptial, drank so much beer they turned their music volume to high
Read more:Sports
Ethanol — the unintended consequences 2007-07-27 09:54:51 Piecing together accurate information about the potential of ethanol as a viable alternative to petroleum ain’t easy. See earlier post What is the TRUTH about ethanol?
In an article entitled The unintended consequences
of the ethanol quick fix the Christian Science Monitor makes this contribution:
Ethanol is expensive to produce, has contributed to a rise in gasoline prices, and has its own pollution problems. It requires a lot of fertilizer, fresh water, and farm land. And, because of corrosive properties that make pipeline transportation problematic, it takes a lot of trucks to haul it.
And its production is contributing to an alarming rise in price of corn.
With more than 20 percent of corn now dedicated to ethanol production, the US Department of Agriculture is projecting a record US corn crop in 2007 – along with record prices. (The US government intends to boost production of corn-based ethanol with a massive 51-cent-per-gallon subsidy.)
Outside the United State Read more:mdash
Soviet Union’s collapse caused by imminent starvation? 2007-07-30 12:31:24 So, it might have been imminent starvation not Regan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” line that inspired the collapse
of the SovietUnion
.
That is the thesis of a best-seller in Russia, soon to be released in the West, entitled “Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia,” by Yegor Gaidar, an economist who was Russia’s acting prime minister between 1991 and 1994.
As the Christian Science Monitor reports in this article New insights on the Soviet Union’s collapse the book:
… tries to shoot down the “myth” held by most Russians that the Soviet Union was “a dynamically developing world superpower until usurpers initiated disastrous reforms.” It also warns that Russia should avoid the peril of another collapse in oil prices.
What happened, states Mr. Gaidar, is that Soviet grain production stagnated between 1966 and 1990. Meanwhile, 80 million people moved from farms to cities. New Soviet output of oil and
The Tour, doubts and an unanswered question 2007-07-30 12:14:10 One of the myriad unanswered question following the Tour de France — Doubts follow end of ‘07 Tour de France — is an obvious one:
If most of the riders have been taking performance-enhancing drugs on the Tour for so long, how good an athlete must seven-times winner Lance Armstrong have been to have beaten them all and still stayed clean?
What a remarkable athlete he must have been.
Winning over the Muslims: from “shock and awe” to “hearts and minds” 2007-07-30 11:59:03 &ldquo
;Despite the blustery talk from the White House about “all options being on the table&rdquo
; for dealing with Al Qaeda in Pakistan, the thrust of US plans is more about winning “hearts and minds
” and less about unilateral military intervention.” — from the Christian Science Monitor article Can US woo Al Qaeda’s own haven?
Think about that. After all the horrors it has perpetrated with its murderous foreign policy, the Bush Administration, apparently, still believes it can win the “hearts and minds” of Muslims
. So what gives them that confidence? Could it be:
• the illegal war in Iraq were “shock and awe” was the official policy — and still seems to be?
• the policies of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and the policies of rendition?
• the absolute backing of Israel against the Palestinians, no matter what the issue?
• the flooding of the Middle East, and mainly Israel, with the recent Read more:Winning
Is the Iraqi government disintegrating? 2007-07-30 11:01:19 The Iraq government may well collapse before it can meet the benchmarks the Bush Administration is waiting so patiently for.
Reports the Christian Science Monitor in Iraqi
government in deepest crisis:
Iraq is in the throes of its worst political crisis since the fall of Saddam Hussein with the new democratic system, based on national consensus among its ethnic and sectarian groups, appearing dangerously close to collapsing, say several politicians and analysts.
This has brought paralysis to governmental institutions and has left parliament unable to make headway on 18 benchmarks Washington is using to measure progress in Iraq, including legislation on oil revenue sharing and reforming security forces.
And the disconnect between Baghdad and Washington over the urgency for solutions is growing. The Iraqi parliament is set for an August vacation as the Bush administration faces pressure to show progress in time for a September report to Congress.
Said an anonymous caller to a state tele
On cluster bombs, land mines and the USA 2007-07-30 10:44:32 At the Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva last month, Bush administration officials said that the threat to civilians from cluster
munitions is “episodic” and “manageable within current response mechanisms” – presumably unless you’re a child attracted by the bomblets. They said it “only” took two years to clear the high-risk affected areas in Kosovo after 1999, but also admitted that eight years later, unexploded bomblets remain. They cited 10 countries threatened by cluster bombs – Afghanistan, Albania, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vietnam – as well as Kosovo, leaving out another 20 countries so affected.
Separately, the US State Department has said that Israel may have illegally used US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon, but welcomes that it will take “only” a year and a half to largely clean up the remnants. The Bush administration urged the convention to consider voluntary pledge Read more:mines
Ozzy Osbourne treated 2007-07-29 23:58:37 Ozzy Osbourne
treated in Denver hospital the banner blares.
Great!
He’s finally being treated. Doesn’t matter for what. Any is better than none.
Read more:Ozzy Osbourne
On being a post-homosexualist 2007-07-29 23:43:36 From the ‘It’s about time’ file.
Finally, I’ve decided to take the plunge. I’m coming out . . . -Times Online :
Today, a big decision on my sexuality. And in this column the announcement. Something I’ve been wrestling with for months but can see at last that I’m just going to have to come to terms with. So take a deep breath . . . and here goes.
I’m coming out as a post-homosexualist. Forty years (tomorrow) after the 1967 law ending the absolute prohibition of homosexuality, 13 years after the reduction of the age of consent from 21 to 18, six years after the further reduction from 18 to 16, and two years after the arrival of civil partnerships, I have finally become bored with the whole damn thing. Bored, not with being gay, but with talking about it. I blame Tony Blair.
Do cats witter endlessly on about being cats? Do redheads drive us to distraction with their thoughts on being ginger? How many serious comment columns in the editorial pages
Is Musharraf finally taking on the Taliban? 2007-07-29 23:22:55 Is Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf finally going to bow to President Bush and start taking out the Taliban
in Waziristan? It may already be happening.
This article in the London TimesOnline entitled Musharraf risks civil war as he invades the Al-Qaeda badlands reports that Musharraf, spurred on by Washington, “has abandoned a truce with Waziristan’s Islamist guerrillas and ordered his army to root them out.”
There are believed to be about 8,000 gunmen – a mix of foreign Al-Qaeda volunteers, Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Islamists and local Waziris whose families have for centuries fought off any attempt to impose outside rule on this area. In modern times, even map-makers have been shot to hide the region’s mysteries from the outside world.
Last week soldiers sealed all the roads into Miran Shah, the provincial capital, occupied the hills around it and fired the first artillery salvo in what Musharraf’s many critics have called a war on his own peopl
The Sikhs decoded (III) — the kirpan, symbol of peace and truth 2007-07-29 22:57:34 A Sikh’s sword, or Kirpan, is actually a symbol of peace and Truth. And how Sikhs use our Kirpans forces us, under vow, to act with tremendous restraint, writes Kamalla Rose Kaur who contributes to this site.
Our Kirpan can be large or small, worn under our clothes or on the outside, but we never ever pull the blade from the scabbard. Oh we clean and sharpen our Kirpans, as needed, and Kirpans are used passively in Gurdwara for a moment, but beyond these two exceptions, a Khalsa Knight does not pull her/his Kirpan except when we are sure, beyond a doubt, that we are being required under Khalsa vows to defend someone.
So before a Khalsa Knight can pull a gun, s/he will have to first pull the Kirpan. And before you pull the Kirpan you and the Almighty must be absolutely sure that you are not acting out of revenge, fear, or rage. It is a “Zen” moment. It takes No Time. It stops time.
Then, when a Khalsa Knight pulls his or her Kirpan - which again we never do becau Read more:mdash
An unimaginable question: Was Pat Tillman Murdered? 2007-07-29 20:46:00 More than three years after Pat Tillman
, the iconic football-player turned soldier, died on April 22, 2004 a headline asks Was Pat Tillman Murdered?
We’re not talking friendly-fire here and the notion of his heroic death has long since been dispatched. We’re talking deliberate murder: three shots from an M-16 to Tillman’s forehead from 10 yards away.
The medical examiners’ suspicions of deliberate murder were contained in a 2,300 pages testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Among other information contained in the documents:
• In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop “sniveling.”
• Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, pu
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