Posted 11/29/2003 05:36:44 PM

Rooted To Nowhere
via Beate

"It's a growing demographic. According to the European Council of International Schools, some 350,000 children attend international schools across the globe. These are kids who fly before they walk and sort their friends by continent but can't answer the question 'Where are you from?' without a pause."

Posted 11/29/2003 01:44:39 AM

last night was one of those evenings that sneaks up on you with charm and warmth and unexpected joy.*

we returned from Austin late in the day and found our way into Exposition Park outside the Goodrich building in scarf, coat and winter hats smoking American Spirit and talking in the quiet banter that goes along with such a setting. a man, obviously drunk, lumbered up to us. he was an artist he proudly announced; painting and sculpting.

there was drunk talk for 10 minutes or so in the course of which we learned more about the things that haunt this fellow than we know about many of our friends. he took us up to his loft and ripped out canvas after canvas that lined the walls of his newly acquired quarters. one huge canvas was draped across the north side of the loft floor depicting women lounging in a library with doting men and books all about them. there was a man with a yamika on his head down on his hands and knees looking through an eye glass at the gems in the toe ring of one of the women. the painting was a tribute he painted while his aunt was dying.

bidding audiu to our inebriated, confessing host we made our way back out into the cold to sample some vegetables and flesh at the Meridian Room. over dinner i discovered that tangerine Emer'Gen C makes exceptional gin and tonic even more irresistible. should you have opportunity to sample this top shelf vitamin supplement you certainly should.

dinner slowly digesting in the soup of tangerine and lime we walked up to the Gypsy Tea Room and stood in the line that circled the sidewalks around the corner of Elm and Good Latimer. the standard ritual ID check and arm band behind us we settled into the club with a Shiner or, in my case, another gin and tonic and waited for Pedestrian to take the stage.

Damien Rice was the main event. the whole show was a sweeping experience of singer-song writer and audience conversing about love and god and being pissed--all that Irish folk rock should be. the saying is cliche at this point, but it was definitely church for me. there were moments when the songs were worship and the recording phones lifted aloft with half smoked cigarettes were the worshipping response of a people caught in the cry for story: "come sit on my wall & read me a story of old... tell it like you still believe." sweeping through "Delicate," "Amie" and "Cold Water" Damien began singing in a deep baritone chant, "Lord, you know I love you; Lord, you know I love you; Lord, you know I love you...."

other highlights were the solo cellist covering The White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army" and the encore (that seemed to last forever) that was a chaotic Irish story telling musicians jam that included Joel Shearer from Pedestrian whom they went upstairs and woke up to come down and improvise through a part rock, part folk, part reggae, part Jewish jam...

simple, beautiful, melancholic, brilliant.

cold, cold water surrounds me now
and all i've got is your hand
lord.. can you hear me?
or am i lost?
~

*as things always are this assessment is decidedly perspectival. my compatriot from FL had a less enjoyable time.

Posted 11/28/2003 05:26:47 PM

well, it is Buy Nothing Day and i have purchased the most profane thing one could: tires to run my fossil-fuel burning SUV. oops. we were in Austin and one tire of the Pathfinder was at 10lbs and would not hold air for any length of time... so buy we did... and it was all downhill from there. we ended the day with a wifi booster, a handy headset, a meal at BK and a Daimen Rice concert.

i think that it is OK though. Buy Nothing Day may be like Ramadan: if you are traveling you get an automatic exemption. maybe not.

next year.

Posted 11/28/2003 06:32:28 AM

Big government and international business influence big charity:
How British charity was silenced on Iraq

Money corrupts conscience in all large organizations. That is my brash lead in sentence. Now strike the literal, unilateral reading of those seven words and follow me for a moment.

There are different issues that drive organizations based directly on their celebrity quotient. Remuneration drives celebrity--whether it is an author with a best-selling book or an international charitable organization with a broad donor base. Denominated in capital or influence celebrity has always to consider the constituencies it services. This plays itself out in the inoffensive formal speech that placates the donor or the target group with a soothing communicative marketing narcotic that stands for nothing; that says nothing that is not already expected.

This is why the prophet is never an integral part of the established order. This is why the artist is only post-humously celebrated. They are close enough to be a part of the system, but different enough to call into question that which gives legitimacy to those at the behest of the system that gives them privilege at the expense of others.

There is a way of speaking that differentiates those seeking the remunerative approval of a broad constituency and those speaking to disclose the jagged moment as naked as they have encountered it. In truth we are all betwixt these two--stretched thin along the continuums of acceptance and critique; of governance and rebellion; of community and otherness that identify the stands we take; the strands we weave that make explicit our identity within the larger patterns that have long been marked into the surface of the mobius quilt of our carbon existence.

Posted 11/27/2003 08:00:59 PM

IHT: Iraqi leader meets with cleric who opposes U.S. transfer plan

It is important to distinguish between Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani and other Shi'ite leaders in Iraq such as Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sistani brings a measured voice that the U.S. occupation authority would do well to listen to as a deterrent to the angry rhetoric of al-Sadr and others like him.

Posted 11/27/2003 11:06:23 AM

Chemistry.org: Plastic Memories

Polymer materials store data permanently

In their quest for alternatives to silicon, chip manufacturers are increasingly turning their attention to plastic. Low-cost, easily manufactured polymers that conduct electricity could revolutionize electronics, they say. Now, researchers at Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif., have fabricated a polymer-based memory device for permanent data storage.

...Forrest anticipates that an array of polymer memory cells on a 1- millimeter-square chip could store 1 megabit of information. Because the data are permanently inscribed, such polymer memory devices would be well-suited for storing archival materials, digital photos, and video.

Posted 11/26/2003 05:37:17 PM

My Legacy: George W. Bush
thanks miniette!

* I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.

* I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.

* I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any other president in US history.

* I signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any other US president in history.

* I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.

* I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.

* All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been taken to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

* I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.

* Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.)

* I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

* I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously struggle against bankruptcy.

* The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

* I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.

* I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations to remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.

* I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.

* I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant. I withdrew from the World Court of Law.

* I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

* I took the world's sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world .

* I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

Posted 11/26/2003 05:33:42 PM

slacktivist: Negative energy:

We can thus ask a very simple question. How many gallons of gasoline does it take to produce the ethanol equivalent of the energy provided by one gallon of gasoline?

If the answer is less than one, then ethanol may well hold some promise as a net source of energy. If the answer is one or greater, then ethanol production is a ridiculous waste of time and resources -- a fool's machine that laboriously converts a gallon of gas into half a gallon of gas.

Dr. Tad Patzek, a petroleum and chemical engineer at UC Berkeley, has researched this question. He has carefully studied the amount of energy consumed in producing ethanol versus the amount of energy produced.

Posted 11/26/2003 01:36:57 PM

Check out the interesting developments at the Land Of The Free? blog.

Congressman Richard Pombo has gone to bat for Trev and Beate and the Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Immigration and Border Protection is now investigating the situation.

There have also been many strange and offensive comments by employees of the Department of Homeland Security posted to the comments of many of the blog entries.

First the offensive: Hopefully, it is pretty obvious that such comments as, "Beate YOU SUCK" and "I think you're a fool" should not be coming from DHS Inspectors, while on duty, and from United States Government networks. Inappropriate seems an unsatisfactory word when said comments originate from the very representatives of the United States government who recently interrogated and jailed Beate.

Now for the strange: Barry Carter, the Immigration Official who incarcerated Beate, has posted 13 single-spaced, 8.5x11 pages of comments that address everything from Immigration law to his views on foreign tourists fornicating in the United States. This is a strange view into the mind of one of the government representatives at the United States' border who has a wee bit too much authority.

Posted 11/24/2003 07:23:18 PM

If you are still having problems finishing off your holiday gift list and you are looking for ways to avoid being a consumer whore for Jesus (or the Menorah or the Eid goat or whatever the point of Kwanza is) here are a few homemade gift ideas:

-Get together with a few friends and your PC (or tape recorder) and make a South Park Christmas cover album. Your most discriminating friends will be touched by your thoughtful remakes of any of Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics!

-Chip in with your friends to get some thread and needles and cross stitch your favorite saying for that special, literate someone in your life. If you are short on ideas consider some of the thoughtful patterns created by subversive cross stitch.

-While you might not understand your pre-teen's infatuation with the short, skinny, pasty white girl marketing machine that is Avril Lavigne they will surely thank you for taking the time to make a handmade shirt from the free pattern over at Avrilution. If you are creative, like Emily, you could write fancy words about tourists and the end being at hand...

Posted 11/24/2003 12:57:23 PM

very busy at the moment... sporadic updates only this week.

i nearly smoked daniel and kauser out of the loft last night. new house rule: even if you think the evening fire is out do not close the flue until the morning.

driving south today i saw the oddest thing. it was a tanker truck--like those used to haul petrol or milk--only this one said, "Haulin' Liquid Chicken" on the back. even with the clarification, "Inedible" painted in the lower left corner i sat there wondering what one does with liquid chicken. Trev called from Germany as i was passing the truck and suggested that it was the fuel of the future.