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20031018
Posted
10/18/2003 09:56:16 PM
 The Nasher Sculpture Center opens Monday in Dallas.
Renzo Piano designed the buildings that house this priceless family collection. It will be nice to have a reason to go to the Arts District again.
I think that the girls and I are going after school tomorrow. Anyone want to meet us there?
The grand opening is at 10AM and they are open until 8PM. Opening day is free.
Posted
10/18/2003 12:45:58 PM
What is The Message?
...But I also suspect that, possibly because of my several trips to and from a variety of European airports this fall, that I am now on the TSA's watch list....
However, when I checked the referral log to this weblog, I suddenly felt a lot less secure and a lot more spooked. Literally. You see, I noticed that one visitor had arrived at the weblog via a Google search of my name. Who was checking me out, I wondered. Turns out that the visitor's domain was usdoj.gov, the U.S. Department of Justice, J. Ashcroft, prop. And the checking out occurred precisely while I was waiting for my connectiing flight back to Toronto in Cleveland Airport. Fortunately, nothing untoward happened, except for a last minute plane change just before we were to board the aircraft in Cleveland.
Posted
10/18/2003 11:45:00 AM
...more Bright coverage in this November Atlantic Monthly article and an extensive Michael Shermer (Skeptic magazine) piece that also brings out "apatheism" as a possible contender (with many, many more alternatives) to the atheist brand. it all seems somewhat silly and political to me, but interesting nevertheless.
honestly, i am far more interested in "the new face of atheism" (i am going to write an article with that title) coming out of Europe from a philosophical perspective* than i am with the old face of scientific atheism still bandied about by so many Americans stuck in the religious swagger of scientism.
i want to get back to this and flesh it out.
*(post-secular "Marxist" and psychoanalytic thought, studies in the "religious turn," Levinasian Deconstructive Judaism, the Derridian Abrahamic and the like)
Posted
10/18/2003 11:31:26 AM
Global survey reveals religion a bigger priority than politics
"A first-ever worldwide poll on religious beliefs shows that religion outranks politics in importance to individuals and that people think politics, not religion, fuels violence. "
Anecdotally, based on my travels and transcultural childhood, I would say that the first supposed conclusion drawn from this survey data is likely true. The second may be as well, but has more to do with the practice of wielding highly federated power than with politics or religion as such.
My fundamental question regarding any global poll is:
"Can global polls ever be meaningful?"
6 billion+ people on planet Earth.
4000+ surveyed for this Zogby poll.
Using this poll as an example I would say, "Certainly not!"
There is some event horizon, whose boundary crossed, precludes meaningfully drawing actionable ideas from statistical data without becoming a violently homogenizing blunt force. The sheer density of gravitational pulls proceeding from the vast perspectival sea that is the terrestrial homo sapien population is only harrowingly traversed in a narrative craft relying less on interrogation and calculation and more on local meme and idea virus.
20031017
Posted
10/17/2003 02:15:35 PM
 The issues surrounding Trevor and Beate's run in with the Department of Homeland Security are still being pursued with vigor. There have been meetings with Trevor's representatives in Colorado and formal complaints have been issued to DHS. Many other things are going on behind the scenes. If/when it is appropriate I will share them here.
Throughout all of this some interesting dialogue has been brewing in the comments on the Land Of The Free? blog, on Joi Ito's blog and on Dan Gillmor's blog. It looks as if someone in Barry Carter's (the Immigration official who incarcerated Beate) family and/or extended community has posted some thoughts. Please jump in and give the world your 2-cents. We need all of the perspectives we can get.
A special, "Thank you!" to all who have come out in public solidarity with our families in the midst of this. As I commented on Dan Gillmor's blog, we realize that this type of injustice is happening regularly at our ports of entry across America. We do not claim to be a unique case, nor the most pressing example of injustice being foisted on America and the world post-9/11. We are choosing to vigorously act upon this injustice because it has invited itself into our lives. We hope that in doing so real dialogue will begin around the lack of oversight and accountability within DHS and, more generally, around the need for courage to triumph over fear in how we protect our country by choosing to embody our liberty.
If you would take 5 minutes to contact your Senators and Congress persons regarding this we, and the many others who do not have the capability to call DHS to account, would be very thankful.
"They that can give up essential liberty
to purchase a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~ Benjamin Franklin
20031016
Posted
10/16/2003 04:02:32 PM
it would be better for all of us if W had kept to a life of aimless carousing.
The Widening Crusade
In effect, George Bush says, believe in me and I will lead you out of darkness. But he doesn't tell us any details. And it's in the details where the true costs are buried—human costs and the cost to our notion of ourselves as helpers and sharers, not slayers. No one seems to be asking themselves: If in the end the crusade is victorious, what is it we will have won?
...In his new book, Winning Modern Wars, retired general Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, offered a window into the Bush serial-war planning. He writes that serious planning for the Iraq war had already begun only two months after the 9-11 attack, and adds:
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. . . . I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
A five-year military campaign. Seven countries. How far has the White House taken this plan? And how long can the president keep the nation in the dark, emerging from his White House cocoon only to speak to us in slogans and the sterile language of pep rallies?
Posted
10/16/2003 02:26:18 PM
From the new JOHO:
Want to hear something extraordinary?
I was at a small conference/seminar sort of thing where Howard Levy was engaged as the in-house musician. He's a pianist and harmonica player of vast experience. Howard gets a full three octaves — sharps and flats — out of a plain old 20-note harmonica, something no one else does. And it ain't no stinkin' parlor trick: he is a remarkably inventive and expressive musician.
So, after he played a three-minute solo version of Amazing Grace on the harmonica, I asked if he'd let us post the recording the conference had made of it, to be distributed free.
So, here it is, an MP3 of Howard Levy playing Amazing Grace (3.7MB), recorded Sept. 12, 2004.
Posted
10/16/2003 01:09:35 PM
General Casts War in Religious Terms
via Trevor
The top soldier assigned to track down Bin Laden and Hussein is an evangelical Christian who speaks publicly of 'the army of God.'
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has assigned the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an Army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.
Posted
10/16/2003 12:55:10 PM
ok, i'm really tired of the, "War on Terror." how is this backward label not dissimilar from declaring a "War on Aerial Combat" or "War on Unmanned Projectiles" or "War on Those Uncivilized Colonialists Fighting The Civilized Empire Behind Those Rocks and Trees?"
Terror is a tactic. A new definition must be created for what is happening in the world at this moment if we are not to simply spiral further down the abyss of crusade vs. crusade.
Posted
10/16/2003 12:50:23 PM
thanks to sdt for pointing this out. important:
Senior Federal Prosecutors and F.B.I. Officials Fault Ashcroft Over Leak Inquiry
The criticism reflects the first sign of dissension in the department and the F.B.I. as the inquiry nears a critical phase. The attorney general must decide whether to convene a grand jury, which could compel White House officials to testify.
Mr. Ashcroft's relationship with the White House is far closer than Ms. Reno's was with President Clinton. Mr. Ashcroft has closed ranks with President Bush in the war against terrorism, which has altered nearly three decades in which most attorneys general and F.B.I. directors sought to keep a distance from the White House.
Mr. Ashcroft and Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, have also been under fire for their initial handling of the case. The Justice Department allowed the White House to wait overnight on Sept. 28 before sending an electronic message ordering White House employees not to destroy records related to the leak.
Ashley Snee, a spokesman for Mr. Gonzales, said he believed the delay was acceptable because no one in the White House had any idea there was an investigation. But The New York Times and The Washington Post had reported the day before that the C.I.A. had forwarded the matter to the Justice Department for possible investigation.
Posted
10/16/2003 12:45:51 PM
Notes to self:
-don't forget snacks for soccer practice on Thursday, November 13th
-don't forget Over the Rhine at Dada on Wednesday, November 12th
-don't forget that what you do is who you are. period.
Posted
10/16/2003 12:35:14 PM
The Software Architect - The Last Gasp
by Alan Cooper
I read this article in the VSM glossy dead tree edition earlier this week. Re-reading it today many things stuck with me:
As the dotcom bubble inflated during the last few years of the 20th century, truckloads of ink were used to sell the idea that there was a "new economy" on the Internet. The pundits said selling things on the Web was a fundamentally different way of doing business, and the "old economy" was as good as dead. Of course, almost all those new-economy companies are gone, the venture capitalists who backed them are in shock, and the pundits who pitched the new economy have recanted, claiming it was all a hopeless dream. The new, new thinking says we must still be in the old, old economy.
I believe we are in a new economy—and that the dotcoms never even participated in it...
The classic rules of business management are rooted in the industrial age's manufacturing traditions. Unfortunately, they have yet to address the new realities of the information age where products consists mostly of software.
...The absence of variable cost is what makes this a new economy.
...Software production has relatively insignificant variable costs, so little business advantage results from reducing them.
...The only available economic upside comes from making your product more desirable by improving its quality, and you can't do that by reducing the money you spend designing or programming it. You must invest more time and money on the research, thinking, planning, and design to make your product better suited to your customer's needs. Instead of reducing what they spend to build each object, software companies must increase what they spend to build all objects. This is the essence of the real new economy. The intangible but extremely complicated patterns of thought are that software has value only when it's accompanied by the programmers who write it. No company can treat programmers the same as a factory because programmers demand continuous attention and support well beyond any factory.
...The dotcom boom was populated with companies whose entire business model consisted of the reduction of variable costs. Their complete and spectacular failure demonstrates beyond doubt that the information age's economic rules are different from those in the industrial age. Business success in the new economy depends on adding something new and better for the consumer. The actual quality of every part of the transaction—from browsing to comparison shopping to comprehensiveness—must be noticeably better for the end user. Simply lowering costs for the vendor doesn't guarantee success today.
...Treating any aspect of software design and construction as if it were a manufacturing process courts failure. Software design and programming are simply not viable targets for conventional cost-reduction methods. It's certainly possible to spend too much time and money on building software, but the danger of spending too little is far greater.
Such danger is probably not shocking or unfamiliar to you, but it's nearly inconceivable to most big companies' senior business executives. They're still using accounting models popular in the age of steam, yet every aspect of their companies are fully dependent on software for operations, decision-making, communications, and finance. The terms and concepts these executives use simply are not cognizant of the unique nature of doing business in an era when the tools and products of commerce are intangible arrangements of bits instead of railroad carloads of iron. The sock puppets were cool, though.
current mp3:
Over.The.Rhine::What.I'll.Remember.Most
Posted
10/16/2003 09:07:30 AM
I thought the whole country was a free speech area
Keeping dissent invisible
When Bill Neel learned that President George W. Bush was making a Labor Day campaign visit to Pittsburgh last year to support local congressional candidates, the retired Pittsburgh steelworker decided that he would be on hand to protest the president's economic policies. Neel and his sister made a hand-lettered sign reading "The Bushes must love the poor -- they've made so many of us," and headed for a road where the motorcade would pass on the way from the airport to a Carpenters' Union training center.
He never got to display his sign for President Bush to see, though. As he stood among milling groups of Bush supporters, he was approached by a local police detective, who told him and his sister that because they were protesting, they had to move to a "free speech area," on orders of the U.S. Secret Service.
"He pointed out a relatively remote baseball diamond that was enclosed in a chain-link fence," Neel recalled in an interview with Salon. "I could see these people behind the fence, with their faces up against it, and their hands on the wire.... It looked more like a concentration camp than a free speech area to me, so I said, 'I'm not going in there. I thought the whole country was a free speech area.'" The detective asked Neel, 66, to go to the area six or eight times, and when he politely refused, he handcuffed and arrested the retired steelworker on a charge of disorderly conduct. When Neel's sister argued against his arrest, she was cuffed and hauled off as well. The two spent the president's visit in a firehouse that was serving as Secret Service and police headquarters for the event.
via Shanna, who had a letter she sent to Salon regarding this issue posted here:
Bush's last campaign stop just before last November's midterm elections was my alma mater, Southern Methodist University. I left right after work to join my friends in protest. No one, save the well-dressed SMU alums, trustees, administrators, etc., on their way to the rah-rah session, was there. When I asked an officer where the protest was, I was immediately escorted across campus, past the Laura Bush promenade (it was a birthday gift from Dubya), to a remote parking lot way across campus, as though I presented some immediate threat. The Dallas police officers told me I had to stay in the "free-speech area." There I found about 300 people corralled into this dark parking lot, chanting with their signs in the rain -- the turnout really surprised me, given that SMU is generally a "conservative" school populated by apathetic rich kids.
Bush never saw us.
20031015
Posted
10/15/2003 10:15:20 PM
US soldiers bulldoze farmers' crops
Americans accused of brutal 'punishment' tactics against villagers
US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.
The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.
Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: "They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons."
Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.
Posted
10/15/2003 03:27:09 PM
Swiss peace plan irritates Israel
The so-called Geneva Accord was finalised in Jordan at the weekend with support and financial backing from the Swiss government.
It is the result of unofficial talks between members of the Palestinian authority and the Israeli opposition, and is due to be signed in Geneva on November 4....
The alternative peace plan is the result of two years of secret negotiations between members of the Israeli opposition and Palestinian representatives.
Both sides have hailed the accord as a blueprint for ending the Middle East conflict, but some Middle East observers have doubts...
Posted
10/15/2003 03:14:35 PM
yeah, so, um, well... there seems to be a blog crush brewing down under that, until this week, i was completely oblivious to. you know, i've seen livingroom around the blogsphere. we've shot an email back and forth... but i never knew... ;^)
i told someone about this today and they reminded me that it has happened before:
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 11:14 AM
Subject: greetings!
I’m a friend of David Hopkins. He sent me here. I nearly had differance tattooed on my left arm one summer...
20031014
Posted
10/14/2003 03:41:22 PM
Pat Robertson's 'nuke' idea draws protest
Television evangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson's suggestion that a nuclear device should be used to wipe out the State Department was "despicable," department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday.
i don't know that blowing up State is the answer, Pat.
does this overtly militant AmeriChristianity seem odd to anyone else?
Posted
10/14/2003 09:29:59 AM
Army studying high suicide rate among US soldiers in Iraq
The US army has sent mental health specialists to Iraq to determine why so many soldiers are committing suicide there, a US media report said....
20031012
Posted
10/12/2003 09:00:40 AM
This is my brother, Trevor, whose fiancée Beate (Bay-ah-tah) was incarcerated by Homeland Security on Yom Kippur last week. The circumstances are sketchy and hint at both a flawed, Gestapo security culture and functional racism in the Atlanta airport Immigration organization. Beate has been deported to Germany. She has a blog covering her ordeal at: http://LandOfTheFree.blogspot.com.
 Turned Away at Border
The love story of Trevor Hughes and his fiancee began in an elementary school in the Himalayan foothills.
They were "global nomads." He was a diplomat's son. She the daughter of missionaries. They lived in Asia, attended school together, fell in love and want to get married in June.
But when Hughes' fiancee, a German national, tried to visit him on a six-month tourist visa Monday, she was detained in Atlanta, handcuffed, jailed--even stripped of her diamond engagement ring.
Then, after 20 hours without food, she was put on a plane and shipped back to Stuttgart.
"This isn't the America I fought for," said Hughes, who served in the Navy and U.S. diplomatic corps. "You don't expect that from a great country like ours."
Update 10/13: Thanks to everyone for the coverage: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002068.htmlhttp://akma.disseminary.org/archives/000852.htmlhttp://boingboing.net/2003_10_01_archive.html#106597933812142931http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001413.shtml#001413http://www.bitter-girl.com/archives/000931.htmlhttp://www.wendycooper.net/2003_10_01_archive.html#106598671092450927http://www.monkhouse.blogspot.com/http://www.integrationresearch.org/daniel/index.php?file=/2003_10.xml&id=000092http://radio.weblogs.com/0130433/2003/10/12.html#a30http://www.lifebeingbeautiful.blogspot.com/http://keimns.bloggedup.com/archives/000068.htmlhttp://carriage.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_carriage_archive.html#106597349497896551http://www.livejournal.com/users/salmacis/197732.html?mode=replyhttp://www.gamersnook.com/blog/archives/001725.html#001725http://www.thelivinghome.com/http://radio.weblogs.com/0127770/http://randomfoo.net/?p=2003_10_00_archive.inchttp://aurig.us/blog/archives/2003_10.html#000182http://www.confusedkid.com/primer/archives/001385.htmlhttp://www.webmink.net/2003_10_12_oldblog.htm#106599264213008103http://www.whiterose.org/pam/archives/004497.htmlhttp://edgecity.typepad.com/tcs/2003/10/is_this_the_ame.htmlhttp://vario.us/index.php?m=200310#267http://ice-9.gaijin.com/ (look on 10/12 entry) http://dovesandpomegranates.blogspot.comhttp://www.jordoncooper.com/2003_10_01_archives.html#106608157519219851http://accordionguy.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2003/10/13/4399.htmlhttp://kimnet.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_kimnet_archive.html#106602450222019209http://www.idly.org/ (look on 10/12 links) http://hertzlinger.blogspot.com/http://radio.weblogs.com/0100570/2003/10/12.htmlhttp://www.ratcliffe.com/RatcliffeBlog/archives/001255.htmlhttp://www.serendipit-e.com/miasma/archives/000781.htmlhttp://thedarkerside.to/rants/archives/000238.htmlhttp://decafsilicon.blogspot.com/http://grumpus.100megsfree5.com/http://tadspot.typepad.com/tadspot/2003/10/land_of_the_fre_1.htmlhttp://veitchjamo.blogspot.com/http://radio.weblogs.com/0117503/2003/10/12.htmlUpdate 10/14: More coverage... http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/blogger/http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/10/14/homeland_security_at_the_border.htmlhttp://www.wirefarm.com/archives/002272.htmlhttp://www.midnightblue.org/mt/archives/000103.htmlhttp://benedictionblogson.com/archives/000559.phphttp://k.lenz.name/LB/archives/000645.htmlhttp://mylnd.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_mylnd_archive.html#106606065528938241http://morgat.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_morgat_archive.html#106602978840241496http://log.does-not-exist.org/elsewhere/000834.htmlhttp://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/2003/10/13http://blog.zog.org/2003/10/land_of_the_fre.htmlhttp://fivestoriesfalling.blogspot.comhttp://www.photodude.com/index.shtmlhttp://www.dydimustk.com/http://www.redshifter.org/archives/000504.phphttp://www.noloconsentire.com/archives/2003_10.html#000221http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/welcome_to_amer.htmlhttp://stet.typepad.com/stet/2003/10/a_word_to_the_w.htmlhttp://andreallewis.blogspot.com/http://crossroads.net/a/archives/2003_10.php#001393http://www.wortfeld.de/http://www.rojisan.com/blog/2003/10/beate.htmlhttp://www.ringfahndung.de/blog/archives/2003_10.html#000007http://www.afterimages.co.uk/backword/http://www.sixdifferentways.com/http://www.fasteddiesbullet.com/archives/000230.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/webloghttp://www.kanai.net/weblog/archives/001480.html#001480http://noisyragamuffin.blogspot.com/http://www.thisboyistoast.nu/http://www.livingroom.org.au/blog/archives/001066.phphttp://teru.blogspot.com/http://ianwhite.is-a-geek.net/weblogx/Update 10/16: A few more pieces... http://www.discourse.net/ Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law http://tonygoodson.typepad.comhttp://queenkv.org/brain/archives/000469.htmlhttp://expat_in_tokyo.blogspot.com/http://grant.henninger.name/archives/002423.htmlhttp://vitleysingar.blogspot.comhttp://byzantiumshores.blogspot.comhttp://fivestoriesfallinglink.blogspot.comhttp://bridgesbuilder.typepad.com/nw/2003/10/not_good.htmlhttp://radio.weblogs.com/0118771/2003/10/13.html#a66http://radio.weblogs.com/0130433/2003/10/12.html#a30http://www.illuminated.co.uk/blog/archives/000499.htmlhttp://radio.weblogs.com/0117503/http://travishenderson.blogspot.com/http://kyle_k.blogspot.com/http://www.webhits.de/deutsch/netnews.shtml?cnt=4866http://www.intern.de/news/4866.htmlhttp://www.apmforum.com/news-feeds/asia-travel.htmhttp://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy/blog/http://mindismapping.blogspot.comhttp://www.heupel.com/eclectic/2003/10/15/where-are-we-headedhttp://www.rklau.com/tins/002472.htmlhttp://www.ennead.de/blog/archives/000923.phphttp://www.moodindigo.org/blog/archives/000143.htmlhttp://www.btinternet.com/~smallritual/http://www.theyblinked.com/blog/2003_10_12_theyblinked_archive.htmlUpdate: And more... http://britishexpats.com/forum a long dialogue here http://gazette.com/popupNews.php?id=607646http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/10/22/http://www.fgranger.com/misc/archives/000217.htmlhttp://www.wendycooper.net/2003_10_01_archive.html#106676299303359171http://www.theyblinked.com/blog/2003_10_19_theyblinked_archive.htmlhttp://pswansen.typepad.com/paul_w_swansens_weblog/2003/10/the_dialog_abou.htmlhttp://boothead.blogspot.com/2003_10_19_boothead_archive.html#106679533672947916http://bopcity.blogger.de/stories/5576/http://rbwright.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_rbwright_archive.html#10666302111900928http://monkhouse.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_monkhouse_archive.html#106642740584718223http://bicultural.blogspot.com/
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