Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc. [Archive] - Page 2

sweetlady

10-02-2004, 03:44 PM

By DAVID BROOKS Published: October 2, 2004

In weak moments, I think the best ticket for this country would be Bush-Kerry. The two men balance each other out so well.

Kerry can't make a decision; Bush makes them too quickly. Kerry changes his mind by the month; Bush almost never changes his mind. Kerry thinks obsessively about process questions, but can't seem to come up with a core conviction; Bush is great at coming up with clear goals, but is not so great about coming up with the process to get there.

That was the striking thing about the debate on Thursday night. It wasn't so much a clash of ideologies, or a clash of cultures. It was a clash of two different sorts of minds.

You could say it was a hedgehog (Bush) debating a fox (Kerry), if you want to use that tired but handy formulation. But I think you'd be getting closer to the truth if you put it this way: The atmosphere of Kerry's mind is rationalistic. He thinks about how to get things done. He talks like a manager or an engineer.

The atmosphere of Bush's mind is more creedal or ethical. He talks about moral challenges. He talks about the sort of personal and national character we need in order to triumph over our enemies. His mind is less coldly secular than Kerry's, but also more abstracted from day-to-day reality.

When John Kerry was asked how he would prevent another attack like 9/11, he reeled off a list of nine concrete policy areas, ranging from intelligence reform to training Iraqi troops, but his answer had no thematic summation. If you glance down a transcript of the debate and you see one set of answers that talks about "logistical capacity" or "a plan that I've laid out in four points," or "a long list" of proposals or "a strict series of things" that need to be done, you know that's Kerry speaking.

If, on the other hand, you see an answer that says, "When we give our word, we will keep our word," you know that is Bush. When you see someone talking about crying with a war widow, you know that's Bush.

These contrasting casts of mind influence how the two men see the world - for example, how they define the enemy. On Thursday night, Bush defined the war on terror as a broad moral and ideological struggle. He said, "We have a solemn duty to defeat this ideology of hate."

Bush believes that Iraq is a crucial battlefield in the war because a free Iraq will be a rebuttal to radical Islam right in the heart of the Arab world.

Kerry, on the other hand, defined the enemy in narrow, concrete terms. He emphasized that it was Osama bin Laden who attacked us. He emphasized the need to defeat Al Qaeda's network. He called Iraq a diversion from defeating that network.

Each cast of mind comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. The mechanically minded Kerry is much better at talking about realities like securing the Iraqi border. On the other hand, he is unable to blend his specific proposals into guiding principles.

That's why he's been fuzzy about the big things over the entire course of his career. That's why he has changed his mind on big issues with such astonishing rapidity. That's why he gets twisted into pretzels, like vowing to continue fighting the Iraq war, which he says was a mistake to begin.

Bush, by contrast, is steadfast and resolute. But his weakness is statecraft. That is the task of relating means to ends, of orchestrating the institutions of government to achieve your desired goals.

Bush sometimes acts as if it's enough for a president to profess his faith. But a coach can't just dream up a game plan. He has to understand what his specific players can and can't do, and adapt to those realities.

Bush launched a pre-emptive war even though his intelligence community was incompetent. He occupied a country even though he didn't really believe in, or work with, the institutions of government he would need to complete the task.

Nonetheless, I suspect that the reason Bush's approval ratings hover around 50 percent, despite a year of carnage in Iraq, is because of the reason many of us in the commentariat don't like to talk about: in a faithful and moralistic nation, Bush's language has a resonance with people who know that he is not always competent, and who know that he doesn't always dominate every argument, but who can sense a shared cast of mind.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/opinion/02brooks.html

(*) (*) Interesting and different take on the debates. I still loved the story about J.F.K. and Charles DeGaul of France regarding honesty. Nobody trusts America anymore.....probably that's way too generic, but it's not like anytime before in history because of mass communications making news and events virtually instantaneously available. :|

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-02-2004, 03:47 PM

Rockers Open Tour in Support of Kerry
By JON PARELES Published: October 2, 2004

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 1 - Bruce Springsteen began stumping the swing states here tonight to support Senator John Kerry. "We're here tonight to fight for a government that is open, rational, forward-looking and humane, and we plan to rock the joint while doing so," he said at the beginning of the concert he was headlining at the Wachovia Center. The concert, which also featured R.E.M., was one of six simultaneous concerts in Pennsylvania for the Vote for Change tour, a week of benefit concerts in battleground states.

For the next 10 days, million-selling musicians including Mr. Springsteen, Dave Matthews, the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt and John Mellencamp will be headlining concerts in closely contested states. The tour features rock musicians, but the lineups also encompass blues, country and hip-hop.

The tour will reach 11 states and 33 cities, winding up with a concert by 13 of the headliners on Oct. 11 at the MCI Center in Washington. That show, to be televised live on the Sundance cable channel, will also include John Fogerty, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Keb Mo', Kenneth Edmonds and the hip-hop group Jurassic 5.

The concerts are benefits for America Coming Together, a voter-mobilization effort, and they are presented by the liberal MoveOn political action committee. Some performers, including Pearl Jam and Ms. Raitt, have done benefits for political candidates through the years. But this tour is the first time in his three-decade career that Mr. Springsteen has made a partisan stand.

"These are people who are the best experts at connecting with the American public, people who have had an emotional connection with millions of people for years,'' said Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn PAC. "Politics is a part of that, and I think it just extends what they do, their art.''

"It does take some courage in this climate to stand up and do what they're doing,'' he continued. "A lot of them have been galvanized by the kind of extremist repressive response that they've seen. They're not going to be silenced.''

The Dixie Chicks, who started their part of the tour in Pittsburgh, faced radio-station boycotts and a talk-show furor last year after their lead singer, Natalie Maines, disparaged President Bush onstage.

"We have nothing to lose at this point, so any sort of fear or inhibition is out the window,'' Ms. Maines said by telephone this week. "We definitely want a regime change, and now that we're getting down to the wire I'm even less afraid to speak out. I just think things are absolutely life or death right now.''

"We sort of weeded out the people who apparently didn't know who we were, though we never felt like we were trying to hide what we thought,'' she added. "Free speech is not free: we paid dearly. But we're more determined and stronger now. And from this point on, what fans we have will be our true fans.''

It is a complex enough undertaking to gather rock stars for a one-day event like Live Aid or Mr. Mellencamp's annual Farm Aid. Arranging six simultaneous weeklong benefit tours by such popular musicians is probably unprecedented. There is no comparable undertaking on the Republican side. The musicians are not playing their standard sets; they are including more political songs and collaborating with the others on the bill. The Dixie Chicks sing backup for Mr. Taylor; Ms. Raitt harmonizes with Mr. Browne.

All shows on the tour go to Ohio on Saturday, Michigan on Sunday and Florida on Friday; shows on Tuesday and Wednesday are in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri. The tour's first show, featuring Ms. Raitt and Mr. Browne, took place on Monday night in Seattle. "It was a very energized, responsive audience,'' Ms. Raitt said by telephone after that concert. "When we sang Little Steven's 'I Am a Patriot' and the whole audience was standing up, it just brought me to tears. It's more fun to do this than it is to do my own shows. It's just so inspirational, and there's so much at stake.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/arts/music/02pare.html

(8) (8) (8) (8) How very cool. (h)
(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-02-2004, 04:09 PM

This is from the transcript of the debate:

Kerry:
"Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle.

And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos."

And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?"

(*) (*) That anecdote speaks volumes, in my view. (*) (*)
(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-03-2004, 04:39 PM

http://www.pro-boxers.com/wbf.html

Animal Rescue Site: http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites.woa

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady
P.S. I would LOVE to have another boxer!

sweetlady

10-03-2004, 04:45 PM

Can provide history. PM me and see.
Love,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-03-2004, 10:04 PM

By EILENE ZIMMERMAN
Both employers and prospective employees are finding that
blogging can be useful in the job search process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/jobs/03BLOG.html?th

(*) Amazing where information resides! (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-04-2004, 02:15 PM

Interview by Hamish Mackintosh Thursday April 15, 2004
The Guardian (U.K.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1191673,00.html

(*) Comprehensive article that covers alot of ground from wireless technology to democracy. Well done. (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-04-2004, 02:22 PM

Art Mobs: Can an online crowd create a poem, a novel, or a painting?
By Clive Thompson

Mobs have been getting unusually good press these days. In his excellent new book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki (a former Slate columnist) argues that groups of people are smarter than any individual member. In Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold showed how a massive gang of citizens connected by mobile phones toppled the president of the Philippines. And every day the unruly stock market, with its zillions of buy-and-sell orders, identifies a hot or cold company long before any individual analyst can spot it. Crowds, it seems, have a truly superhuman intelligence.

Just how inventive can an anonymous group of people be? Could an online mob produce a poem, a novel, or a painting? We like to believe that the blue bolt of artistic inspiration strikes only the individual. "[The] group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man," John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden. Hollywood scriptwriters constantly moan over how their brilliant ideas were mutilated by studio "editing by committee."

But collaboration has a long history in art. Plays are frequently infected with ideas that came from actors or even sound engineers. Some Shakespeare scholars wonder whether some of the Bard's lines came from onstage improvisations by actors. And though many of today's writers and creators would never admit it, editing by committee can rescue an overindulgent work. Collaboration is old hat.

Still, until now it's been limited to a small handful of people, usually face to face. The Internet lets thousands of total strangers collaborate to produce a truly hivelike result. One intriguing example is "Typophile: The Smaller Picture," a project that let an anonymous crowd design a font. Kevan Davis, a British Web developer, created grids of pixels, 20 by 20 in size, one for each letter of the alphabet. He randomly dispersed black-and-white pixels in each. Then he put them online and let people vote on whether a particular pixel should be white or black. As thousands of people voted on each one, letters emerged, forming a democratic consensus of what the alphabet should look like.

Davis created animations that show each letter taking shape, and they're mesmerizing, a time-lapse movie of a collective mind at work. Another designer took the results and produced crisper-edged versions of each letter. The final result looks like a mildly punk version of Helvetica, with occasional flashes of creative weirdness, such as the jaunty serif on the foot of the letter "J."

Yet the process has its flaws. When the mob tried to draw a few simple pictures, it couldn't. Davis told it to draw a television, but the image never congealed. The group agreed that the tube should be represented by empty space, but it couldn't generate any other details. An attempt at drawing a face produced an even more shapeless mess. The only partially successful picture was a goat: At around 4,000 votes, it looked pretty goatlike, and at 5,000 votes the mob revised it to make the horns curvier. But after 7,000 votes the picture decayed into a random jumble of pixels, as if the group could no longer agree on what a goat should look like. Mobs, it seems, can't draw.

Why did letters work, but not pictures? Probably because the second experiment was too free-form. Ask a group of people to draw the letter "E," and most of them will envision something pretty similar. Ask them to draw a face, and they'll have a much broader array of opinions, and thus more disagreement. Truly huge artistic collaboration on the Internet seems to work only if the gang has a well-defined objective.

The Wikipedia people have been discovering this themselves, after launching a project to have people collaboratively write textbooks: Wikibooks. When I spoke to Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, he noted that while some textbooks are evolving nicely, most aren't experiencing the wild success of the Wikipedia. A textbook requires a consistent sense of style and a linear structure, hallmarks of a single authorial presence. An encyclopedia doesn't.

In a sense, the world of online collaboration is discovering what artists have always known: Rigid conventions are often crucial to producing art. Novels, poems, and oil paintings are really just structural devices that take an artist's zillion competing ideas—an internal, self-contradicting mob—and focus them into a coherent work.

Mind you, online collaborators are finding that freedoms are important too. The journalist JD Lasica recently put his unpublished book, Darknet, on a wiki—a type of collaboration Web site where anyone can edit a page or write a new one—and encouraged his readership to edit it. But readers mostly offered only tiny edits, such as grammatical fixes or fact-checks. Nobody plunged in and rewrote an entire section. Lasica suspects his book was too fully formed: People didn't want to mess with something that seemed finished. He thinks a better idea would be to post a much rougher draft of the book to make it seem more like clay that can be molded.

One day, it's likely that an artist will discover the right mix, or some Web designer will invent an online engine that elegantly channels a million contributions into a single compelling artwork. So far, the closest we've yet come is with music, which, thanks to the influence of hip-hop, techno, and applications like GarageBand, is increasingly a cut-and-paste art form. One new collaboration site is MacJams, where people share songs they're writing. The site recently gave birth to a jazz song called "Please Eat." An artist dumped a few tracks onto MacJams, and soon three other musicians—half of the four were complete strangers—contributed a total of 36 tracks to the song. The songwriters worked well together in part because jazz is inherently collaborative and structured, so they knew in advance how to cooperate.

The song emerged from a completely unplanned collaboration. I clicked on the link, and the trippy, witty piece came floating out my speaker: The music of the hive.

(Clive Thompson writes about gaming and technology for Slate)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2104087/

(*) Remote collaboration has been a hot application since pre-Internet days, especilly in television ad and feature film creation. Cool article I thought. (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-04-2004, 02:34 PM

http://www.thelwordonline.com/main.shtml

(*) Maybe the second season will introduce new characters (probably as episodic guest stars). (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-05-2004, 08:18 AM

Truman Calls On Nation To Forego Meat Tuesdays, Poultry, Eggs Thursdays

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1005.html#article

(*) Ah, history. Those who seek to understand it often discover ideas, people and patterns before unimagined. My first book on such a topic just got published, and I'm very excited about it. (SL, 2004) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-06-2004, 11:39 AM

http://www.villagevoice.com/bestof/2004/

Body Pleasures: http://www.villagevoice.com/bestof/2004/contents.php?subject=bodilypleasures :o

(8) Music: http://www.villagevoice.com/bestof/2004/contents.php?subject=music

Food: http://www.villagevoice.com/bestof/2004/contents.php?subject=food

(d) Drinks: http://www.villagevoice.com/bestof/2004/contents.php?subject=food

Best (and only) place to get Armadale vodka 40/40 CLUB
Best bar at which to contract possible STDs from furniture SIBERIA
Best bar at which to start a soccer riot THE RED LION
Best bar in which to hide from ex in a tropical forest of bamboo CROBAR
Best bar light-years from a subway SUNNY'S
Best bar name double entendre LAVA GINA
Best bar to avoid hipsters in Williamsburg R BAR
Best bar to get romantic and play grown-up JOE'S PUB
Best bar to meet a dozen girls named Ileana NO IDEA BAR
Best beer garden CROXLEY ALES
Best bubble tea JENNY'S CAFÉ
Best coffee empire MUD
Best espresso outside of Seattle NINTH STREET ESPRESSO
Best fake indoor trees ZUM SCHNEIDER
Best former Italian social club now open to nonmembers BROOKLYN SOCIAL
Best gay bar you don't have to be gay to enjoy THE BOYSROOM
Best ginger beer guaranteed to blow the top of your head off KEUR N' DEYE
Best glasses in the shape of skulls OTTO'S SHRUNKEN HEAD
Best handmade bar furniture LOUIS
Best mango martini CAFÉ URGE
Best mixologist AUDREY SAUNDERS
Best name for a tea shop SYMPATHY FOR THE KETTLE
Best nasty-hangover specialty drinks ZOMBIE HUT
Best neighborhood wine store BIG NOSE, FULL BODY
Best non-gentrified L.E.S. bar THREE OF CUPS
Best place to be a Philly fan THE DUPLEX
Best place to be a Red Sox fan RIVIERA
Best place to drink on Fridays JEREMY'S ALE HOUSE
Best place to drink with Village Voice alkies SCRATCHER
Best place to ensconce yourself in velvet VILLARD BAR AND LOUNGE
Best place to take a road trip without leaving your barstool TRASH
Best place to watch local actors network EAST 4TH STREET BAR
Best place to watch snow fall ANGEL'S SHARE
Best pyrotechnic drinks WAIKIKI WALLY'S
Best Russian-Mafia bathrooms TATIANA RESTAURANT AND TATIANA CAFÉ
Best suburban-style gay bar EXCELSIOR
Best Sunday-afternoon martinis for the dead of winter FIVE POINTS
Best surprisingly cheap happy hour SUGAR
Best working-class gay bar METROPOLITAN

(*) (*) All of the links "work" on each of the topics' web sites, taking you to other sites. Pretty cool for visitors, in my opinion. And for "locals" or those living within commutable distance to NYC to find places to take out-of-town friends. ;)

(6) (a) Leisure Activities: http://www.villagevoice.com/bestof/2004/contents.php?subject=leisure

A silly one I found is:
Best blog to make you seem smarter at cocktail parties - COLLISIONDETECTION.NET
Which Blur song rocks the Fibonacci Sequence? How do you hack a Furby? And what kind of sound does your face make? Find your crib sheet at COLLISIONDETECTION.NET, the web's go-to site for brainy technobabble-meets-pop-culture references. Tech geeks and Luddites alike will marvel at the daily tidbits from journalist (and M.I.T. alum) Clive Thompson, who writes about techno-arcania with wit and intellectual heft. Live long and prosper.

Too funny and a much needed reading break from research and studying. (o)

Have a delightfully delicious middle of your week! (f)

With a light heart,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-07-2004, 01:47 PM

WAY TOO HILARIOUS!

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=this_land&preplay=1&ratingBar=off

(*) (*) If you enjoy hilarious political satire to lighten this time of year just before the election......this web site is "IT". Just make sure that you aren't drinking anything or it may come out your nose when you laugh.... ;)

Peace and Bai Ling,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-07-2004, 02:04 PM

By MICHELLE SLATALLA October 7, 2004: NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/technology/circuits/07shop.html?oref=login&8cir

MY favorite thing, when I was little, was to rummage in my grandmother's jewelry drawer for one of her oversized rhinestone brooches to pin to my outfit, which in the full spirit of playing dress-up consisted of a tweed suit, black pumps and a patent leather clutch I had looted from her closet.

So it wouldn't take Sigmund Freud to explain why I am so excited about buying clothes this fall. With this season's ladylike fashions in full swing, everywhere I look I see updated versions of my grandmother's 1950's wardrobe.

"For women, this is a really fun time to buy clothes," said Maggie Mason, a fashion writer for the online magazine The Morning News (themorningnews.org). "Clothing is really feminine again. Everything has details. Lace. What a relief that covering up is back in fashion. A full skirt - who doesn't look good in that?"

Luckily, I already have the basics: a closet full of cropped jackets, ballet flats and short, fitted jackets.

So my challenge will be to embrace the best trends that reflect the clothes in my grandmother's closet without actually looking like my grandmother after I get dressed. Shrunken cardigans with rhinestone buttons and three-quarter length sleeves, good. But feathery brooches? Bad. And tweed? It's a minefield to navigate.

Last week I set out to find online the best examples of this fall's fashion trends, checking out everything from fur trim to pencil skirts to separate the classics from the fads.

There's no reason not to buy both, of course, if they look good on you. But I know that when I confront the contents of my closet in the cold, harsh light of next year, I'll be happier if I spent more on classics like Theory's butter-smooth white shirt ($185 at www.saksfifthavenue.com) than on passing fancies like Trina Turk's Dalmatian print capelet ($205 at oliveandbettes.com).

So with the aid of Ms. Mason, who this week launched a new shopping tips site at mightygoods.com, I devised a blueprint for buying the trends without squandering my retirement fund on items I'll rue by spring.

BROOCHES Finally everyone shares my taste for rhinestones. With the ultimate girls' dress-up accessory more popular than they've been for decades, this is the year to revel in the gaudiest pins you can find. Pinning three or four or 40 oversized brooches all over your clothes in places you never before considered accessorizing is considered attractive this year. If you want, you can weigh yourself down so much that you clunk around like a knight in armor.

Or go for a more refined look. "It looks great if you wear a brooch to hold a black cashmere cardigan closed, or if you pin one to an evening clutch," said Ginger Reeder, a spokeswoman for neimanmarcus.com.

You can get the look at online stores like Neiman Marcus, where a glittery, two-inch-round round deco brooch by Sophia Fiore is $145, or you can hedge your bet with a budget-conscious version, the Art Deco Brooch at www.jcpenney.com ($23.99). At www.anthropologie.com, which embraced the vintage look years ago, the $78 Mixed Media Pin ("delicate shells top antique silver and French ribbons") manages to look simultaneously retro and arch by defining stray buttons as a medium.

Says Ms. Mason: "Pin a brooch on a sweater in that hollow where your shoulder meets your chest, or else on the neck of a turtleneck."

TWEED Don't think sensible hikes on the moors. Think about a short, close-cropped jacket that no one will mistake for a vintage relic. One candidate is Cynthia Steffe's velvet-trimmed confetti blazer (now $248) at www.saksfifthavenue.com. A less dramatic approach is the Charles Gray fringed jacket ($260) at nordstrom.com.

"If you buy a tweed jacket, you can wear it with denim forever," said Melissa Payner-Gregor, chief executive at Bluefly.

Pair a tweed jacket with a lacy camisole. Ms. Mason recommends the women's lace-trim camisole at www.oldnavy.com. "Ten bucks, a little bit of lace, bright colors, you can't go wrong," she said.

Tweed suit? You're brave.

Safest is to limit your tweed exposure to accessories. At jcrew.com, the houndstooth check Chelsea tote is $118; tweed loafers with a velvet ribbon bow are $128. At Anthropologie.com, the tweed flat ("an exaggerated mock-tortoise buckle") is tempting even at $258. Must be the buckle.

SHOES AND BOOTS The lament here is: so many cute trends to pick from, so few days to wear them all. Kitten heels, ballet flats, pointy toes, round toes: all are good. All are styles you will wear next year, too. Textures like suede and velvet are versatile; dress them up or wear them with jeans. Some that deserve serious consideration include Irregular Choice's rhinestone-embellished kitten-heel pumps ($92.95 at www.zappos.com), and the beautifully cut Cole Haan ornament ballet flats ($165 at saksfifthavenue.com).

Boots are trickier. Some general rules of thumb: "Knee-high boots are flattering on everyone, but with ankle-length boots, you have to be very careful about where they hit your calf," Ms. Mason said. "Unless you really know what you're doing, buy knee-high."

Buy boots that you can wear for years. "Western, that's huge in Europe and it's going to be big here next year," said Eileen Lewis, the fashion strategist at Zappos. "Frye has been on fire for a couple of years now."

Another question, if you're planning to invest a lot of money in boots, is: what shape toe?

"Get something with a round toe," Ms. Mason said.

That said, the pointy-toed Donna Karan Georgia pull-on boots at Zappos's new designer site, couture.zappos.com, would tempt me to ignore Ms. Mason's advice if I had $898 to spend on boots.

FUR Real fur, faux fur, fuzzy collars - it's hard for me to comment on any of them. Fur is not a successful look on me. When I wear it I always end up looking like a less attractive version of the animal that originally owned the fur.

Ms. Mason's advice is to buy a jacket with a removable faux fur collar; I did that last year and promptly removed the collar. It now lurks in my youngest daughter's dress-up box.

A little fur goes a long way. If I were the sort of person who loved fur, I'd be more likely to buy an authentic vintage accessory like, say, the 1940's blonde mink neck scarf ($125) that was for sale last week at chelsea-girl.com. "What I want to know is, where are the fur earmuffs?" Ms. Mason said. "Wouldn't that be an adorable way to incorporate the trend into your wardrobe?"

CLASSICS Among this year's trends are pieces I'll wear for years. Last week I bought a great black T-shirt at bluefly.com (the Rebecca Beeson thermal, comes in five colors for $34.95); last month I found a blue schoolboy blazer with gold buttons for which I've spent years hunting. The blazer, $228 at jcrew.com, has a fitted, cropped shape that looks equally great with jeans and knee-skimming skirts.

But I still miss my grandmother's brooches and her patent-leather clutch.

(*) (*) <sigh> Me too! I need to get my big box of them all out and start wearing them with some silk scarves now that it's Autumn. (*)

Peace,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 04:04 PM

October 3, 2004 By JAMES FALLOWS NYTimes

ANYONE who has used a computer knows that advanced
technology both saves and squanders time. The Internet is
an obvious example. You can save 10 minutes paying checks
online and blow an hour checking blogs. At the dawn of the
personal computer age, the writer Stephen Manes introduced
the term "fritterware" to describe programs and systems
that let you feel very busy - adjusting fonts and settings,
tweaking color schemes or screen-saver graphics - without
being productive in any normal sense.

It is therefore with both guilt and nervousness that I
mention the existence of programs that can improve on the
usual, built-in ways of getting things done on a computer -
but that take some tinkering to set up, luring the weak
into a cycle of further frittering. Please imagine the rest
of this column being delivered in the tone of an N.R.A.
instructional video about a child's first weapon: "Always
remember, Bobby, a rifle is not a toy."

Consider alternative approaches for three basic functions:
Web browsing, where the standard is Internet Explorer, from
Microsoft; searching, for which Google is the standard for
the Web and there is no real standard for one's own
computer; and day-to-day utilities, where the standard for
Windows machines is the Windows operating system itself.
(For another day: similar programs for the Mac.)

The main problem with Internet Explorer is its own success.
It is used on more than 90 percent of all computers, which
has made it and its codes, especially a feature called
ActiveX, irresistible targets for virus writers.
Microsoft's Outlook has the same problem, for the same
reason. Two months ago, Microsoft released an extensive
security upgrade called Service Pack 2, which contains many
other improvements, is free and is definitely worth
installing on any computer running WindowsXP. But it does
not apply to older versions of Windows or the versions of
IE they include.

There are many other browsers, including the popular Opera.
Two I use every day are Firefox, from Mozilla, and iRider,
from Wymea Bay, a small start-up in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Firefox is an open-source program - noncopyrighted and free
from www.mozilla.org - created by a nonprofit foundation
descended from Microsoft's old rival, Netscape. The browser
doesn't look much different from IE, but it has many
operational improvements - the most noticeable being better
built-in protection against pop-up ads, and a tabbed
browsing system that lets you easily keep several Web pages
open at once.

IRider (www.irider.com), which costs $29, looks nothing
like any other browser. It displays graphic thumbnails of
all open pages down the side of the screen, making it easy
to jump to the one you want, and it has many other unique
ergonomic touches. When you open a page, for example, it
can automatically begin opening all linked pages in the
background, so they come up quickly if you select them.
IRider takes some getting used to, but it has real
advantages - and an excellent tutorial. I also keep using
IE, meanwhile, because parts of the Internet are coded to
accept nothing else. The handy Google toolbar, for example,
works only with IE.

In search, Google remains king, but two recent pretenders
to the throne are interesting enough to try. A9, introduced
last month by Amazon, initially seems an unashamed step
forward in commercialization. It is free, but you have to
have an Amazon account to use its most worthwhile features,
and it encourages searching the Amazon catalog when you are
searching the Web. (Its Web searches simply show Google
results.)

But the more I use it, the more I like it, because of many
small conveniences not available within Google's austere
layout. You can search for text and images simultaneously.
When you come across a Web page you want to remember, you
can attach notes to it - "here's a nice place to stay in
St. Louis" - and then retrieve that page by looking through
your notes. Its appearance is busy, but attractive and
configurable.

Another search system called Copernic Agent Personal, which
sells for $29.95, asserts that it searches the "invisible
Web" - specialized and proprietary information - better
than Google can. I haven't tried this thoroughly enough to
be sure. But Copernic's free Desktop Search application is
a worthy contender in the "Google for my own hard drive"
category - where competition should heat up, now that
Microsoft has announced that Longhorn, its next version of
Windows, will not include the advanced search features the
company had once planned to include. Copernic does not seem
as fast in indexing or retrieval as my current
desktop-search favorite, X1 ($74.95 at www.x1.com), but it
does a few things X1 doesn't, like searching for photos and
music files.

Finally, for those willing to tinker further, there are
programs that improve on the built-in functions of Windows
itself. ExplorerPlus, $39.95 from Novatix, is a much better
way to move, copy, rename, compare, unzip and otherwise
handle files than Windows makes available. ClipMate, $29.95
from Thornsoft, vastly changes the workings of a computer's
clipboard.

Usually the Windows clipboard holds just one item - clip
something else, and the previous item disappears. If you
know how, you can make the normal Window clipboard hold 24
items - but ClipMate holds an almost limitless number,
which means that you can, for instance, spend hours
clipping passages from Web pages or documents and then
paste them in the appropriate places when you are done.

THE most striking improvement in basic computer function
comes with ActiveWords, $19.95 for the basic version and
$49.95 for the advanced, from a small company of the same
name in Winter Park, Fla. Most computer users understand
the concept of macros, or shortcuts - abbreviations the
computer expands into full words or phrases. ActiveWords
applies that concept to nearly everything you would like
the computer to do. It lets you create keyboard shortcuts -
say, typing "WH" to visit the White House's Web site - for
a wide variety of functions. With just a few keystrokes,
you can start a report, edit a specific spreadsheet,
address an e-mail message to your brother, place an
Internet phone call to the home office, go to a particular
Web page or fill out a form. (You press a key to signal
that a shortcut is coming, then type the relevant letters.)

This is especially useful for those who, like me, hate
using the mouse. I had known about this program for years
before trying it seriously; now I regret the lost time. But
I figure that its efficiencies give me enough extra time to
keep tinkering with the list of shortcuts, until it's just
right.

James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic
Monthly. E-mail: tfiles@nytimes.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/business/yourmoney/03techno.html?ex=1097984246&ei=1&en=c71da7a2002019d0

(*) (*) It's nice to have alternatives even with some existing powerful search engines like google. Some of these have been great for graduate and othr research. (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 04:09 PM

October 4, 2004 By SABRINA TAVERNISE

The personalities could not be more different.

Bob Edwards, the radio host whose silky voice meant morning
to millions of listeners across the country, was scheduled
to begin broadcasting again this morning from a Washington,
D.C., studio located an eighth of a mile from his former
employer, National Public Radio.

Just hours before, in a New York studio, the irreverent
radio duo, Opie and Anthony, were due to start a new show,
their first since 2002, when they were forced from their
WNEW-FM program in New York City, after they broadcast a
producer's live account, delivered via cellphone, of a
couple who were purported to be having sex in St. Patrick's
Cathedral.

The new shows have one thing in common: They are being
broadcast only on satellite radio, a new medium that became
broadly available in the United States just three years
ago.

The hope among executives at XM Satellite, the company that
carries the two shows, is that the radio personalities will
motivate some of their devoted fans to pay XM's
subscription rate of $9.99 a month. "Morning Edition," for
example, grew to about 13 million listeners a week over the
24 years that Mr. Edwards was the host.

Sirius Satellite Radio, XM's competitor, charges $12.95 a
month.

The shows highlight a change in the landscape of radio. XM,
started in Washington in 2001, and Sirius, started in New
York in 2002, have sought to grab more of the audience of
conventional radio, but XM's recruitment of well-known
personalities at both ends of the programming spectrum has
been the most aggressive effort to date to win listeners.

It is a fresh start for Mr. Edwards, who was dismissed as
host of "Morning Edition" five months ago because NPR
thought his style had become outdated. His one-hour morning
program, "The Bob Edwards Show," includes live interviews
with journalists and authors, and, according to Hugh
Panero, president and chief executive of XM, has "already
attracted a number of people" who would not ordinarily have
been subscribers.

On Friday, the company reported that its subscribers rose
19 percent to 2.5 million in the third quarter of this
year.

"You wouldn't think, at 57, you could get excited about
much of anything," Mr. Edwards said by telephone from his
home in Virginia. But "I am very excited."

Mr. Edwards's show will be transmitted on a new XM channel
that features public radio-style programming, including
shows from Public Radio International and Minnesota Public
Radio's American Public Media from 8 to 9 a.m. on weekdays.

One competitive advantage satellite radio has over
conventional radio is that, because it charges listeners a
fee, much like cable television, under federal regulations
it is subject to looser rules than stations that are free.

The rapper Eminem cited looser federal restrictions as a
reason he agreed to be the host of shows on Sirius to begin
later this year. Gregg Hughes (the Opie of the shock-jock
duo) and Anthony Cumia also said they were attracted to
satellite radio by the less restrictive rules. Their
program is a premium show costing an additional $1.99 a
month.

"Ten years ago, it was so much easier to discuss adult
subject matter," Mr. Cumia said. "I don't even mean porno,
just what adults talk about when they get together."

"The industry's taken a turn that it has to be safe, and
safe really equals boring," Mr. Cumia added.

The freedom could help the companies win more subscribers
more quickly, analysts said. The two satellite companies
still play a relatively small role in radio. They currently
have about 3.1 million subscribers between them, a tiny
fraction of the more than 200 million listeners who tune
into conventional radio stations every day.

"The paid platform now has an advantage," said Blair Levin,
a managing director at Legg Mason in Baltimore, who served
as chief of staff at the Federal Communications Commission
from 1993 to 1997. "To the extent that there are greater
restrictions, certain kinds of programming will migrate" to
satellite providers.

The satellite radio companies had been producing their own
programming since they started. Their music channels have
themes, like jazz, blues, alternative rock, Christian pop,
country, and even an Elvis Presley channel. Both XM and
Sirius offer more than 60 commercial-free music channels,
in addition to channels dedicated to sports, news, comedy,
traffic and weather.

Sirius has been broadcasting several talk shows, including
those featuring the liberal radio hosts Alex Bennett and
Lynn Samuels. It also carries the liberal talk station Air
America, and the NPR interview program "Fresh Air,"
featuring Terry Gross.

Satellite radio's critics point out that its programming is
calibrated to appeal to specific national audiences, and
that it strays from the public service responsibility of
conventional radio, to provide local news and a connection
between people and their communities.

"The problem with satellite radio is it's not local and
it's not free," said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the
National Association of Broadcasters, which represents the
majority of conventional radio stations in the United
States.

Satellite company executives say that their services do
provide local weather and traffic reports, but acknowledge
that their programming is national. They also say that
commercial radio has become less local since the 1980's,
when larger media companies like Clear Channel and Infinity
Broadcasting increasingly started to dominate the landscape
of commercial radio.

Laura Walker, president and chief executive of the WNYC
public radio stations in New York City, said local public
radio stations pay fees to help create and sustain flagship
programs like "All Things Considered" and "Morning
Edition," and argues those stations' interests should come
first.

Even so, WNYC has sold programming to both satellite
services, including "The Brian Lehrer Show," a news and
talk program, and "Soundcheck," a music show.

Mr. Edwards, who joined NPR in 1974, when it was less than
three years old, is left with a sense of déjà vu. In those
early days, he had to beg and cajole prominent guests to
appear on his shows. He has come back, as he describes it,
to his professional beginnings.

"It will be something someday," he said. "I see it as
public radio in a new place."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/04/technology/04radio.html?ex=1097983993&ei=1&en=71eb325b7f28c689

(*) (*) Satellite radio is currently out of the FCC's reach so to speak...one reason why Stern joined a satellite broadcast services firm for a half billion dollars last week. (not that I'd EVER listed to him :| Once these emerging companies solve the weather-related distortions and drop-outs in services, this will take off. (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 04:12 PM

This is from the studio that did "This Land..."

I saw a blurb on CNN, seems they did this for the "Tonight" show at Leno's request.

http://jibjab.com/

click the "Good to be in DC" tab.

(*) Have a lovely rest of your weekend. (l)

Peace and laughter,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 05:29 PM

Character education is a great topic. I find ethics and morals to be a challenging subject. I would like to share an article that I have read over and over again throughout my military career. The article is by Admiral James Bond Stockdale who in 1965 was shot down over North Vietnam and held a prisoner of war for six and a half years. He describes the importance of ethics, morals and a classical education succinctly:

"Education in the classics teaches you that all organizations since the beginning of time have used the power of guilt; that cycles are repetitive; and that this is the way of the world. It's a naive person who comes in and says, "Let's see, what's good and what's bad?" That' a quagmire. You can get out of that quagmire only by recalling how wise men before you accommodated the same dilemmas. And I believe a good classical education and an understanding of history can best determine the rules you should live by. They also give you the power to analyze reasons for these rules and guide you as to how to apply them to your own situation. In a broader sense, all my education helped me. Naval Academy discipline and body contact sports helped me. But the education which I found myself using most was what I got in graduate school. The messages of history and philosophy I used were simple."

The entire article is excellent (no fantastic) and worth taking the time to read. You can find it at the link below.

http://fhss.byu.edu/history/faculty/holmes/readings/epictetus/epictetus.html

(*) (*) Received the above from a fellow graduate learner like me. Observing how kids act today and how different it is from when I was very young in the early 1960's, this quote resonated for me! (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 08:28 PM

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
-- Gertrude Stein

Live as if you die tomorrow. Learn as if you live forever.
-- Gandhi

My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly
or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was to keep swinging.
-- Hank Aaron

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
-- Philo of Alexandria

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 08:29 PM

1. EVERYONE sent this link at Wearable Dissent.
It's the Florida Electronic Voting screen:
http://www.wearabledissent.com/101/floridavote.html

(*) I'd LOVE to hear from anyone who takes a look and can share hys or her laughter! (l)

(k) or a (f) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 08:31 PM

At the site, you will also find a link to a real electronic voting critique site.
And this serious site is a news article about voting fraud that continues in Florida even now:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=566688

(k) and ({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 08:32 PM

Dan S sends this link to George Bush "medals":

http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/medals/medals.html

(l) (k) Amazing what you can do with product throw-ways.

Peace,
SL (k)

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 08:34 PM

Tony P sends this link regarding ... well, it's actually Hubcap Advertising.
Sadly, it is ... uhm ... real:

http://www.engadget.com/entry/7324321553354176/

(*) (*) Being a girl-propeller-head smart FEMME, of course I LOVED this!! Check it out, I'm sure you'll love it too! (*) (*) (*)

(l) (l) ,
(k) (k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 08:53 PM

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/create.html

You can create your own art! What a delightful way to take a break. (k) (k) (k) (k) (k) (k) (k)

Love,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-09-2004, 09:14 PM

If you'd like to say hello to me, I would LOVE THAT~!!!! Butches and FM's are my favorite friends and potential lovers....... (k) (k) (k) (k)

I love you and pray for you every night. (l) (l) (l)

Love always,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 05:42 AM

By BENEDICT CAREY Published: October 10, 2004

In 2001, two researchers and a Columbia University fertility expert published a startling finding in a respected medical journal: women undergoing fertility treatment who had been prayed for by Christian groups were twice as likely to have a successful pregnancy as those who had not.

Three years later, after one of the researchers pleaded guilty to conspiracy in an unrelated business fraud, Columbia is investigating the study and the journal reportedly pulled the paper from its Web site.

No evidence of manipulation has yet surfaced, and the study's authors stand behind their data.

But the doubts about the study have added to the debate over a deeply controversial area of research: whether prayer can heal illness.

Critics express outrage that the federal government, which has contributed $2.3 million in financing over the last four years for prayer research, would spend taxpayer money to study something they say has nothing to do with science.

"Intercessory prayer presupposes some supernatural intervention that is by definition beyond the reach of science," said Dr. Richard J. McNally, a psychologist at Harvard. "It is just a nonstarter, in my opinion, a total waste of time and money."

Prayer researchers, many themselves believers in prayer's healing powers, say scientists do not need to know how a treatment or intervention works before testing it.

Dr. Richard Nahin, a senior adviser at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in an e-mail message that the studies were meant to answer practical questions, not religious ones.

"We only recently understood how aspirin worked, and the mechanisms of action of various antidepressants and general anesthetics remain under investigation," Dr. Nahin wrote.

He said a recent government study found that 45 percent of adults prayed specifically for health reasons, and suggested that many of them were poor people with limited access to care.

"It is a public health imperative to understand if this prayer offers them any benefit," Dr. Nahin wrote.

Some researchers also point out that praying for the relief of other people's suffering is a deeply human response to disease.

The 'Placebo Effect'

Since 2000, at least 10 studies of intercessory prayer have been carried out by researchers at institutions including the Mind/Body Medical Institute, a nonprofit clinic near Boston run by a Harvard-trained cardiologist, as well as Duke University and the University of Washington. Government financing of intercessory prayer research began in the mid-1990's and has continued under the Bush administration.

In one continuing study, financed by the National Institutes of Health and called "Placebo Effect in Distant Healing of Wounds," doctors at California Pacific Medical Center, a major hospital in San Francisco, inflict a tiny stab wound on the abdomens of women receiving breast reconstruction surgery, with their consent, and then determine whether the "focused intention" of a variety of healers speeds the wound's healing.

Two large trials of the effects of prayer on coronary health are currently under review at prominent medical journals.

Even those who defend prayer research concede that such studies are difficult. For one thing, no one knows what constitutes a "dose": some studies have tested a few prayers a day by individual healers, while others have had entire congregations pray together. Some have involved evangelical Christians; others have engaged rabbis, Buddhist and New Age healers, or some combination.

Another problem concerns the mechanism by which prayer might be supposed to work. Some researchers contend that prayer's effects - if they exist - have little to do with religion or the existence of God. Instead of divine intervention, they propose things like "subtle energies," "mind-to-mind communication" or "extra dimensions of space-time" - concepts that many scientists dismiss as nonsense. Others suggest that prayer may have a soothing effect that works like a placebo for believers who know they are being prayed for.

(*) Rest of article: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/health/10prayer.html?hp&ex=1097467200&en=b3de3a2c07ddbf8e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

(l) (l) Have a delightful Autumn Sunday!

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 05:48 AM

The Mystery of the Bulge in the Jacket
By ELISABETH BUMILLER Published: October 9, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/politics/campaign/09bulge.html?oref=login (*) (*) check out the photo...it *is* a receiver! (or Sony Walkman ;)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 - What was that bulge in the back of President Bush's suit jacket at the presidential debate in Miami last week?

According to rumors racing across the Internet this week, the rectangular bulge visible between Mr. Bush's shoulder blades was a radio receiver, getting answers from an offstage counselor into a hidden presidential earpiece. The prime suspect was Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's powerful political adviser.

When the online magazine Salon published an article about the rumors on Friday, the speculation reached such a pitch that White House and campaign officials were inundated with calls.

First they said that pictures showing the bulge might have been doctored. But then, when the bulge turned out to be clearly visible in the television footage of the evening, they offered a different explanation.

"There was nothing under his suit jacket," said Nicolle Devenish, a campaign spokeswoman.

"It was most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric."

Ms. Devenish could not say why the "rumpling" was rectangular.

Nor was the bulge from a bulletproof vest, according to campaign and White House officials; they said Mr. Bush was not wearing one.

(*) (*) Like they say, what comes out of Dubya's mouth is from other people....either the Veep Cheney or in this case Karl Rove. How can there be one half of Americans registered to vote actually belive in this man? Unbelievable! :| :| :o (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 05:54 AM

October 9, 2004 The Town Hall Debate

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/opinion/9sat1.html

Town hall meetings are one vestige of early American democracy that modern presidential candidates know very well. No one who has survived a New Hampshire primary season needs to be told what it's like to answer questions tossed out by a group of average citizens. It's the democratic process in its most amiable state: earnest Americans asking serious questions about the issues. Last night's format was much more suited to George Bush's talents than the hard-edged debate last week, but John Kerry still managed to goad him to irritable near-shouting at some points.

One of the uncommitted voters in the audience sensibly asked President Bush to name three mistakes he'd made in office, and what he had done to remedy the damage. Mr. Bush declined to list even one, and instead launched into an impassioned defense of the invasion of Iraq as a good idea. The president's insistence on defending his decision to go into Iraq seemed increasingly bizarre in a week when his own investigators reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction there, and when his own secretary of defense acknowledged that there was no serious evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Even worse, the president's refusal to come up with even a minor error - apart from saying that he might have made some unspecified appointments that he now regretted - underscores his inability to respond to failure in any way except by insisting over and over again that his original decision was right.

Unfortunately, for long stretches of the evening, the format did not lead to such telling responses. On occasion, the arguments were impossible to follow. Heaven help any citizen who relied on last night's debate to understand what is going on with North Korea or who tried to understand the fight about tax cuts on Subchapter S corporations.

Mr. Bush was deeply unpersuasive when asked why he had not permitted the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. He claimed that the reason was "I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you." Mr. Kerry cleanly retorted that four years ago in a campaign debate, Mr. Bush had said importing medicine from Canada sounded sensible.

And the president was utterly incoherent when asked about whom he might name to the Supreme Court in a second term. His comment about how he didn't want to offend any judges because he wanted "them all voting for me" was a joke - but an unfortunate one, given the fact that the president owes his job to a Supreme Court vote.

Mr. Kerry was weaker when he had to respond to a woman who wanted to know about spending federal money on abortions. Social issues seem to bring out the senator's worst tendencies to paint a word picture in shades of gray and equivocation.

Both men seemed overly defensive at times, as if they were fighting shadow opponents that were not even in the hall. Mr. Kerry seemed intent, without much prompting by Mr. Bush, on countering the attack ads run by the president's campaign and by other Republican organizations. Mr. Bush sometimes seemed as if he was trying to make up for his weak performance in Debate No. 1.

Mr. Kerry demonstrated, at the very minimum, a stature that was equal to the president's. If Mr. Bush was hoping to recover all the ground he lost last week, he failed in his mission.

The president seemed to fall back frequently on name-calling, denouncing his opponent as a liberal and a tool of the trial lawyers. "The president's just trying to scare," Mr. Kerry said. It will be another few weeks before we see how well that works.

(*) (*) Hopefully the Supreme Court doesn't get involved in choosing the REAL winner rhis year like in 2000. And maybe Dubya's brother in Florida won't be involved as well. (*)

(l) (l) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 05:58 AM

Nuclear Fiction By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 10, 2004

When W. debated Al Gore, it was the Insufficient versus the Insufferable.

When W. debated John Kerry, it was the Obfuscating versus the Oscillating.

We face a choice now between a president who rolled us on Iraq and a senator who got rolled by the president on Iraq.

George Bush is not giving an inch on Iraq. He's toughing out the cascade of confirmation and criticism from his own people about the hyperpower hyperbole that led to an unnecessary war and an unruly occupation. His advisers say it's better for the president to appear out of touch than apologetic. He'd rather seem delusional than deluded.

He can't admit what the Duelfer report says, that Saddam was no threat to the U.S. or any other country. The mushroom cloud was a Fig Newton of Dick Cheney's feverish imagination. That would mean W. didn't fix his father's screw-up, but he screwed up his father's fix. A big Oedipal oops.

After Bush 41's Persian Gulf war, Saddam devolved into the Norma Desmond of vicious dictators, shrinking but pretending to still be big, writing romance novels, trying to order liposuction machines, teeth-whitening material and hair transplant equipment, soaking up American culture like his favorite song, Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night,'' and his favorite book, Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea."

The president may not have gotten his money's worth with the report of Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector. After all, in a vain retroactive attempt to justify his hokum about W.M.D., he had 1,200 people working for 15 months - stretching our scarce supply of Arab linguists - to produce 918 pages at a cost of about a billion dollars just to find out that Saddam would have liked to have had weapons if he could have, but he couldn't, so he didn't.

But at least for his billion, the president got some earnest Introduction to American Literature analysis of the Iraqi dictator and his taste for some Western culture, noting that Saddam felt a kinship with Hemingway's protagonist Santiago, the poor Cuban fisherman (even though the rich Saddam liked to grenade-fish - toss a grenade in the water and then send in scuba divers to fetch the dead fish).

"Saddam's affinity for Hemingway's story is understandable, given the former president's background, rise to power, conception of himself and Hemingway's use of a rustic setting similar to Tikrit to express timeless themes," the report stated. "In Hemingway's story, Santiago hooks a great marlin, which drags his boat out to sea. When the marlin finally dies, Santiago fights a losing battle to defend his prize from sharks, which reduce the great fish, by the time he returns to his village, to a skeleton. The story sheds light on Saddam's view of the world and his place in it. ... to Saddam even a hollow victory was by his reckoning a real one."

Even though his own report stated that U.N. sanctions had worked to defang Saddam, Mr. Bush decided to stand firm on nonsense, insisting in the debate Friday night that "sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein."

When a questioner named Linda asked the president to give three bum decisions he had made in office, Mr. Bush took a pass. Lincoln could admit mistakes. J.F.K. could admit mistakes. But W. thinks admitting mistakes is for powder puffs. Of his decision to invade Iraq, he said: "Sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions because you think they're right." Or you stick to them even after you know they're wrong.

The president's living in a dream world. He kept insisting that 75 percent of Al Qaeda has been "brought to justice," even though such a statistic is misleading, since counterterrorism experts say that the invasion of Iraq was a recruiting boon for Osama and that Al Qaeda has metastasized and spawned other terrorist groups.

Mr. Bush tried to pretend the devastating Duelfer report backed him up, noting after the report came out that Saddam "retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction and could have passed this knowledge to our terrorist enemies."

W. should have followed his father's policy on hypotheticals. As Poppy Bush would say, when someone asked him to be speculative: "If a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its tail on the ground."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/opinion/10dowd.html

(*) (*) Lincoln could admit mistakes. J.F.K. could admit mistakes. But W. thinks admitting mistakes is for powder puffs. (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 06:05 AM

Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway Village Voice
Bush Was Born a Ramblin' Man October 8th, 2004 11:22 PM

WASHINGTON—This time around, President George Bush seemed a bit more alert than during his last debate against John Kerry, although much of what he had to say was vague and hard to follow. In Friday's town-hall format, he rambled and every so often jumped up and said he was angry.

There was more of the incomprehensible Bush argument about our need to invade Iraq even if Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction. "I was not happy when they"—the inspectors—"didn't find any," the president said.

And he further explained the decision to attack: "First of all, we didn't find out they didn't have them"—weapons of mass destruction—"until we got there." He claimed that the administration had indeed sought international support for its actions, but when Kerry pointed out Bush had recently blocked the use of NATO for training Iraqi forces, the president dropped the subject.

Bush repeated the standard conservative line that his tax cuts help the middle class, although Kerry pointed out, as have numerous others, that the tax cuts mainly benefit only the very richest Americans. The president's basic argument is that tax cuts free up money for the economy. He had no answer to Kerry's charge that the Bush administration lost jobs, and nothing whatsoever to say when Kerry pointed out that Bush was the first president ever to cut taxes in the middle of a war. Bush had previously argued that the deficit was the result of spending for Iraq invasion. And he blamed, as he has in the past, the recession on Clinton.

Bush went after Kerry for being a liberal, invoking the name of Teddy Kennedy as the most liberal member of the Senate and claiming Kerry's health plan would be just another case of liberal big-government spending. In fact, both candidates support opening up the federal employees health care plan to the rest of America, and while that plan certainly offers a wider range of insurance options, it's little more than another version of consumer shopping, certainly not big-government spending or even any government spending.

When he ran in 2000, Bush supported letting people import drugs from Canada. On Friday, he said he was opposed to doing that because he feared drugs from the third world might slip into the U.S. from Canada. The big drug companies manufacture all over the world, and as Kerry pointed out, Canadian drugs come from American companies, packaged in American bottles.

And if Bush is so concerned about foreign drugs, why is he causing the government to back the importation of half the American supply of flu vaccine from a British company, when the supply is feared contaminated?

If there ever were a case of third-world drugs getting into the global market, it would be in the collection of blood by big drug companies from diseased prisoners in the Southern part of the U.S., for sale first in Canada and later in Europe and Asia. Thousands of hemophiliacs died as a result of this exportation of contaminated blood—again, not from the third world, but from the United States.

Bush sought to turn the issue of a draft to his advantage by declaiming, "We're not going to have a draft," although when Kerry pointed out that we already have a back-door draft of National Guard and Reserve troops, the president dropped the subject.

He also said with a straight face, "I am a good steward of the environment," although he did not rebut Kerry when the senator said he has cut back the pollution laws.

There were the predictable differences over abortion and stem cell research, with Bush opposing abortion and standing firm behind his stance for limited stem-cell research. Kerry argued for reproductive choice, even for the poor, and for a wider use of stem cell research.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0440/ridgeway6.php

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 06:08 AM

David O. Russell gets to the ♥ of the matter with an existential farce and a Gulf War II doc
by Dennis Lim September 28th, 2004 10:20 AM

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0439/lim.php

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 06:11 AM

Adaptable actor obscures an object of desire, clarifies a cultural icon
by Jessica Winter October 5th, 2004 5:45 PM Village Voice

TORONTO—Given his sympathetic, finely nuanced portrayal of the young Che Guevara in Walter Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries (in release) and his stunning quadruple-edged performance in Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education, Gael García Bernal has proved himself one of the most formidable actors of his young generation. In Almodóvar's lurid, labyrinthine thriller-melodrama (the centerpiece presentation at the New York Film Festival this weekend, and opening November 19), the 25-year-old is a flesh-and-blood Möbius strip, variously embodying an insecure actor-screenwriter, a bodacious drag performer, and a coolly Machiavellian operator.

"The character acknowledges that he's an object of desire, and he plays with that power," says the Mexico City–based Bernal, who sat down with the Voice during the recent Toronto International Film Festival. "I felt a dilemma sometimes—I wasn't sure if this was one character doing all four parts, or if it was four different characters. Like an actor, he changes method and adapts himself to the moment, just to get what he wants."

Almodóvar and Bernal reportedly clashed during filming, though both parties have remained respectfully taciturn about the nature of the conflict. "Pedro is like any good director—the thing that makes them all similar is what makes them all different, which is that they have a very specific point of view. He doesn't compromise his vision for anything or anyone, and he plays with his freedom—he does what he wants exactly the way he wants to do it." He pauses a moment, and adds thoughtfully, "Directing is pretty fucked up and hard."

The son of experimental-theater actors, Bernal is far more effusive about his experience with Salles filming The Motorcycle Diaries all over South America. "We were re-enacting a journey that was done 50 years ago, and what's surprising is that the social problems of Latin America are the same," says Bernal. "Which is heartbreaking in a way, but it also makes you feel how important it is to tell the story."

The actor has played Che twice now, previously in a Showtime biopic of Fidel Castro (Bernal dismisses the TV pic as "pretentious"), and has obviously given some degree of thought to Che's uncertain status as a countercultural icon. "We asked Alberto Granado"—Guevara's traveling companion, now in his eighties—"how would Ernesto feel about having his face all over the world on a T-shirt? He said, 'Well, knowing him, I think he wouldn't mind, especially if it was a girl.' "

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0440/winter4.php

(k) ,
SL

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 06:13 AM

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0440/winter2.php

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-10-2004, 06:14 AM

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-14-2004, 09:07 AM

"Santa Fe Trail hotel echoes with legends"
Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Posted: 12:36 PM EDT (1636 GMT) CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/10/12/cimarron.hotel.ap/index.html

CIMARRON, New Mexico (AP) -- The door to room No. 18 at the St. James Hotel is padlocked and never rented out.

T.J. Wright, a 19th century gunslinger, crawled inside the room and died after winning the hotel in a poker game and getting shot in the back as he left the table.

But the tale of Wright's demise is just one of many colorful stories in the 132-year-old hotel's past.

Some guests swear they smell the rose-scented perfume favored by Mary Lambert, wife of hotel founder Henri Lambert. Others claim an impish ghost occasionally turns up in the bar.

The hotel, which sits off the Santa Fe Trail in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, has 26 bullet holes in the tin ceiling of the dining room, original antiques, and the guest book signature of Jesse James' pseudonym R.H. Howard on display.

The hotel was founded -- originally as a saloon -- by Lambert, who had been President Lincoln's personal chef during the Civil War. By 1880, guests were staying over.

"You walk in the door and you've stepped back in time," said Roger Smith, the hotel's proprietor.

Karen Hudson of Albuquerque stayed at the hotel several times after seeing it featured on the Lifetime cable show "Unsolved Mysteries."

"It's charming, it's enchanting, captivating and haunted," she said.

On their first visit, Hudson said she and her husband stayed in the Zane Grey room. All the rooms are named after former guests, including Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill Cody and Wyatt Earp.

Hudson said that as she explored the hotel, "I could not shake the feeling of being watched or followed." And standing in front of room No. 18, "I could feel something like getting the heebie-jeebies on the back of my neck. My husband said it felt like the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end."

When they returned to their room after dinner, the door was wide open even though her husband recalled locking it. "Something or someone went in that room or at least let us know they were in there," she said. But her husband thinks a hotel employee unlocked it so the couple would believe a ghost had entered.

Murder mystery
"I personally cannot attest to any extraordinary experiences, but I have had employees and other very rational and calm thinkers who have," said Smith. "We've also had enough people come through here who tend to believe and study and chase such things who are convinced there are presences here."

There are no air conditioners, phones or televisions in the rooms, and some rooms lack private bathrooms. Several of the 14 rooms have seen better days, with plaster and wallpaper peeling off, but others have been restored to their original grandeur.

Smith, one of several investors who purchased the hotel in March 2002, said they're working "one room at a time."

For visitors who like the comforts of a typical motel, a two-story annex with 10 rooms was built across the courtyard.

The St. James is also a gathering place for local residents, who join tourists for upscale meals in a dining room that was originally the saloon.

On some weekends -- including Halloween this year -- the hotel lets guests play the roles of James, Earp, Oakley or others in a "Murder on the Santa Fe Trail" drama that begins with hors d'oeuvres Friday and lasts through Sunday brunch.

The hotel with its unusual past isn't the only reason to visit this small town in northeastern New Mexico.

With pristine streams and pine-covered mountains, the area is a favorite of adventurous anglers, hunters, photographers, hikers, motorcyclists and bikers.

Boy Scouts by the thousands spend their summers a couple of miles down the road camped in tents near Villa Philmonte, the former summer home of oil magnate Waite Phillips. It was donated to the Scouts -- along with 127,000 acres that are now home to a training camp and working ranch.

But don't expect to go to any movies or chain restaurants in Cimarron, where a shopping expedition takes only a few hours at the stores off the main drag. There's not even a stoplight along U.S. 64 through town, but there is a well-known speed trap that starts on the outskirts.

"It's a unique corner of the world," Smith said. "It's a quiet little burg with a world of history, and recent history. It's not that long ago there were gunfights in the street."

(*) (*) Anyone been there or game to go? I've been to Santa Fe and Taos numerous times, but never to this historic place. I loved that this town is so small there isn't a stop light! I guess that rules out cable modem access, but maybe satellite access to the Internet, hmmmm...... (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-14-2004, 09:11 AM

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released shortly after the debate indicated that more who watched it gave Kerry the edge. Among the poll's 511 respondents, 53 percent said Kerry did better, and 39 percent said Bush did. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/13/debate.main/index.html

(*) (*) C'mon election day! I'm definitely voting for Kerry. AND those annoying political ads stop! And then back to regularly scheduled drug ads. :(
The Internet sure beats mass media TV......but love those netflix films though for computer breaks. (l)

Bai Ling,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-14-2004, 09:20 AM

My Sister's Keeper (2003) (not rated)
Kathy Bates, Elizabeth Perkins and Lynn Redgrave deliver compelling performances in this Hallmark Hall of Fame family drama based on a true story. Two sisters (Bates and Perkins) have a special yet complicated relationship. They lead completely different lives (Bates has a severe form of bipolar disorder) and must overcome ideological and societal barriers and familial baggage to strengthen and seal their sibling bond.
Starring: Elizabeth Perkins, Kathy Bates
Director: Ron Lagomarsino
Genre: Drama

(*) (*) Nice story and Bates as always shines in her performance. I liked it but wouldn't watch it again. (*)

Solomon & Gaenor (2000) (Rated R)
Two lovers from different backgrounds try to stay together amid religious turmoil. In 1911, anti-Semitism runs rampant in Wales, so Solomon hides his Jewish heritage to make a living as a salesman. Gaenor, unaware of Solomon's ethnicity until she becomes pregnant, stands by him, but her family objects to the relationship. When riots erupt, the couple tries to escape persecution and save their unborn child in this Oscar-nominated romance.
Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Nia Roberts
Director: Paul Morrison
Genre: Drama
Format: Widescreen, More
Language: English (however there was Yiddish and Welsh as well with English subtitles which added to the film rather than "felt like "work" trying to keep up with the action and dialogue.)

(*) (*) (*) (*) I really liked this film. I'd suggest watching it with someone and definitely on a day when you're feeling good so the ending won't make you cry. The cinematography was poignant and sense of 1911 Wales felt real. For lovers of history, other countries and romance, this film is a gem. It was nominated for an Academy Award. (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-14-2004, 09:58 AM

"Addicted to 9/11" By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 14, 2004

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don't know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives.

If I have a choice, I prefer not to live the rest of my life with the difference between a good day and bad day being whether Homeland Security tells me it is "code red" or "code orange" outside. To get inside the Washington office of the International Monetary Fund the other day, I had to show my ID, wait for an escort and fill out a one-page form about myself and my visit. I told my host: "Look, I don't want a loan. I just want an interview." Somewhere along the way we've gone over the top and lost our balance.

That's why Mr. Kerry was actually touching something many Americans are worried about - that this war on terrorism is transforming us and our society, when it was supposed to be about uprooting the terrorists and transforming their societies.

The Bush team's responses to Mr. Kerry's musings are revealing because they go to the very heart of how much this administration has become addicted to 9/11. The president has exploited the terrorism issue for political ends - trying to make it into another wedge issue like abortion, guns or gay rights - to rally the Republican base and push his own political agenda. But it is precisely this exploitation of 9/11 that has gotten him and the country off-track, because it has not only created a wedge between Republicans and Democrats, it's also created a wedge between America and the rest of the world, between America and its own historical identity, and between the president and common sense.

By exploiting the emotions around 9/11, Mr. Bush took a far-right agenda on taxes, the environment and social issues - for which he had no electoral mandate - and drove it into a 9/12 world. In doing so, Mr. Bush made himself the most divisive and polarizing president in modern history.

By using 9/11 to justify launching a war in Iraq without U.N. support, Mr. Bush also created a huge wedge between America and the rest of the world. I sympathize with the president when he says he would never have gotten a U.N. consensus for a strategy of trying to get at the roots of terrorism by reshaping the Arab-Muslim regimes that foster it - starting with Iraq.

But in politicizing 9/11, Mr. Bush drove a wedge between himself and common sense when it came to implementing his Iraq strategy. After failing to find any W.M.D. in Iraq, he became so dependent on justifying the Iraq war as the response to 9/11 - a campaign to bring freedom and democracy to the Arab-Muslim world - that he refused to see reality in Iraq. The president seemed to be saying to himself, "Something so good and right as getting rid of Saddam can't possibly be going so wrong." Long after it was obvious to anyone who visited Iraq that we never had enough troops there to establish order, Mr. Bush simply ignored reality. When pressed on Iraq, he sought cover behind 9/11 and how it required "tough decisions" - as if the tough decision to go to war in Iraq, in the name of 9/11, should make him immune to criticism over how he conducted the war.

Lastly, politicizing 9/11 put a wedge between us and our history. The Bush team has turned this country into "The United States of Fighting Terrorism." "Bush only seems able to express our anger, not our hopes," said the Mideast expert Stephen P. Cohen. "His whole focus is on an America whose role in the world is to negate the negation of the terrorists. But America has always been about the affirmation of something positive. That is missing today. Beyond Afghanistan, they've been much better at destruction than construction."

I wish Mr. Kerry were better able to articulate how America is going to get its groove back. But the point he was raising about wanting to put terrorism back into perspective is correct. I want a president who can one day restore Sept. 11th to its rightful place on the calendar: as the day after Sept. 10th and before Sept. 12th. I do not want it to become a day that defines us. Because ultimately Sept. 11th is about them - the bad guys - not about us. We're about the Fourth of July.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14friedman.html?ex=1255492800&en=04d423310f7e2328&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Maureen Dowd will appear on Friday. (*) (*) I guess that Tom is still out on leave still working on his book. Maureen rocks as a columnist so I don't feel too deprived... ;) Both are great writers and very opinionated, like me. (a) (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-14-2004, 11:15 AM

http://www.retrocrush.com/costumes/

(*) Silly, but a brief break worth the look-see. (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-14-2004, 05:11 PM

Digital data is transient, fragile, and most importantly, difficult for many people to comprehend in its manipulation. They understand the benefits of it, but feel they can't inherently trust something that requires almost occult knowledge of to really alter or adjust. What they do understand is that there are people who have that knowledge and that makes them feel a degree of powerlessness. -- Stephen Crim

Electronic media have wonderful properties (speed, reliability, density, etc.), but paper media have a pair of critical security properties not shared by any electronic media. (1) Paper is a write-once medium, meaning once it is written it cannot be erased or overwritten by software without detection.
(2) Paper is directly human readable, without the need for any hardware or software intermediary. Paper records are important because of these properties, and not because it is a retro technology that we are familiar with. -- David Jefferson

We can let the Perfect be the enemy of the Good by getting rid of the current generation of touch screens while we wait for technologists who, by and large, know very little about the administration of elections, to develop the perfectly secure system. Or we can go with the existing generation of equipment, count more votes and guarantee the secret ballot to millions of Americans who are disabled or whose primary language is not English. -- Jim Dickson

I think that one problem in the communication barrier between elections officials and computer scientists, especially ones specializing in security, is that many of the elections officials do not realize that you cannot "test" security the way you test "accuracy". For example, if I want to test if my house is secure, I can ask my neighbor to try to break in. But, if he is not successful, that does not imply that my house is secure. It may imply that my neighbor is not a very talented burglar. It may also imply that someone professional with the right tools could get in in some way that I never imagined. -- Avi Rubin

(*) (*) Got to love it! Especially the last one about security ;) :| (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-14-2004, 10:09 PM

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/canvas.html?id=92e0357

(*) (*) There are also links to create your own. Enjoy! (*) (*)

(S) (k) .
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-15-2004, 07:31 PM

What Tree Did You Fall From?

Find your birthday and then find your tree. This is really cool and somewhat accurate. Then send it to all your friends, including the one that sent it to you, so they can find out what tree they fell from, but don’t forget to change the subject line to your tree.

Dec 23 to Jan 1 - Apple Tree Jun 25 to Jul 4 - Apple Tree
Jan 1 to Jan 11 - Fir Tree Jul 5 to Jul 14 - Fir Tree
Jan 12 to Jan 24 - Elm Tree Jul 15 to Jul 25 - Elm Tree
Jan 25 to Feb 3 - Cypress Tree Jul 26 to Aug 4 - Cypress Tree
Feb 4 to Feb 8 - Poplar Tree Aug 5 to Aug 13 - Poplar Tree
Feb 9 to Feb 18 - Cedar Tree Aug 14 to Aug 23 - Cedar Tree
Feb 19 to Feb 28 - Pine Tree Aug 24 to Sep 2 - Pine Tree
Mar 1 to Mar 10 -Weeping Willow Tree Sep 3 - Sep 12-Weeping Willow Tree
Mar 11 to Mar 20 - Lime Tree Sep 13 to Sep 22 - Lime Tree
Mar 21 (only) -Oak Tree Sep 23 (only) - Olive Tree
Mar 22 to Mar 31 - Hazelnut Tree Sep 24 to Oct 3 - Hazelnut Tree
Apr 01 to Apr 10 - Rowan Tree Oct 4 to Oct 13 - Rowan Tree
Apr 11 to Apr 20 - Maple Tree Oct 14 to Oct 23 - Maple Tree
Apr 21 to Apr 30 - Walnut Tree Oct 24 to Nov 11 - Walnut Tree
May 1 to May 14 - Poplar Tree Nov 12 to Nov 21 - Chestnut Tree
May 15 to May 24 - Chestnut Tree Nov 22 to Dec 1 - Ash Tree
May 25 to Jun 3 - Ash Tree Dec 2 to Dec 11 - Hornbeam Tree
Jun 4 to Jun 13 - Hornbeam Tree Dec 12 to Dec 21 - Fig Tree
Jun 14 to Jun 23 - Fig Tree Dec 22 (only) - Beech Tree
Jun 24 (only) - Birch Tree

Your Tree (in alpha order)

Apple Tree (Love) – quiet and shy at times, lots of charm, appeal, and attraction, pleasant attitude, flirtatious smile, adventurous, sensitive, loyal in love, wants to love and be loved, faithful and tender partner, very generous, many talents, loves children, needs affectionate partner.

Ash Tree (Ambition) -- extremely attractive, vivacious, impulsive, demanding, does not care for criticism, ambitious, intelligent, restless lover, sometimes money rules over the heart, demands attention, needs love and much emotional support.

Beech Tree (Creative) – has good taste, concerned about its looks, materialistic, good organization of life and career, economical, good leader, takes no unnecessary risks, reasonable, splendid lifetime companion, keen on keeping fit (diets, sports, etc.).

Birch Tree (Inspiration) – vivacious, attractive, elegant, friendly, unpretentious, modest, does not like anything in excess, abhors the vulgar, loves life in nature and in calm, not very passionate, full of imagination, little ambition, creates a calm and content atmosphere.

Cedar Tree (Confidence) – of rare strength, knows how to adapt, likes unexpected presents, of good health, not in the least shy, tends to look down on others, self-confident, a great speaker, determined, often impatient, likes to impress others, has many talents, industrious, healthy optimism, waits for the one true love, able to make quick decisions.

Chestnut Tree (Honesty) – of unusual stature, impressive, well-developed sense of justice, fun to be around, a planner, born diplomat, can be irritated easily, sensitive of others feelings, hard worker, sometimes acts superior, feels not understood at times, fiercely family oriented, very loyal in love, physically fit.

Cypress Tree (Faithfulness) – strong, muscular, adaptable, takes what Life has to give but doesn’t necessarily like it, strives to be content, optimistic, wants to be financially independent, wants love and affection, hates loneliness, passionate lover which cannot be satisfied, faithful, quick-tempered at times, can be unruly and careless, loves to gain knowledge, needs to be needed.

Elm Tree (Noble-mindedness) – pleasant shape, tasteful clothes, modest demands, tends not to forgive mistakes, cheerful, likes to lead but not to obey, honest and faithful partner, likes making decisions for others, noble-minded, generous, good sense of humor, practical.

Fig Tree (Sensibility) – very strong minded, a bit self-willed, honest, loyal, independent, hates contradiction or arguments, hard worker when wants to be, loves life and friends, enjoys children and animals, few sexual relationships, great sense of humor, has artistic talent and great intelligence.

Fir tree (Mysterious) – extraordinary taste, handles stress well, loves anything beautiful, stubborn, tends to care for those close to them, hard to trust others, yet a social butterfly, likes idleness and laziness after long demanding hours at work, rather modest, talented, unselfish, many friends, very reliable.

Hazelnut Tree (Extraordinary) – charming, sense of humor, very demanding but can also be very understanding, knows how to make a lasting impression, active fighter for social causes and politics, popular, quite moody, sexually oriented, honest, a perfectionist, has a precise sense of judgment and expects complete fairness.

Hornbeam Tree (Good Taste) – of cool beauty, cares for its looks and condition, good taste, is not egoistic, makes life as comfortable as possible, leads a reasonable and disciplined life, looks for kindness and acknowledgment in an emotional partner, dreams of unusual lovers, is seldom happy with its feelings, mistrusts most people, is never sure of its decisions, very conscientious.

Lime Tree (Doubt) – intelligent, hard working, accepts what life dishes out, but not before trying to change bad circumstances into good ones, hates fighting and stress, enjoys getaway vacations, may appear tough, but is actually soft and relenting, always willing to make sacrifices for family and friends, has many talents but not always enough time to use them, can become a complainer, great leadership qualities, is jealous at times but extremely loyal.

Maple Tree (Independence of Mind) – no ordinary person, full of imagination and originality, shy and reserved, ambitious, proud, self-confident, hungers for new experiences, sometimes nervous, has many complexities, good memory, learns easily, complicated love life, wants to impress.

Oak Tree (Brave) – robust nature, courageous, strong, unrelenting, independent, sensible, does not like change, keeps its feet on the ground, person of action.

Olive Tree (Wisdom) – loves sun, warmth and kind feelings, reasonable, balanced, avoids aggression and violence, tolerant, cheerful, calm, well-developed sense of justice, sensitive, empathetic, free of jealousy, loves to read and the company of sophisticated people.

Pine Tree (Peacemaker) – loves agreeable company, craves peace and harmony, loves to help others, active imagination, likes to write poetry, not fashion conscious, great compassion, friendly to all, falls strongly in love but will leave if betrayed or lied to, emotionally soft, low self esteem, needs affection and reassurance.

Poplar Tree (Uncertainty) – looks very decorative, talented, not very self-confident, extremely courageous if necessary, needs goodwill and pleasant surroundings, very choosy, often lonely, great animosity, great artistic nature, good organizer, tends to lean toward philosophy, reliable in any situation, takes partnership seriously.

Rowan Tree (Sensitivity) – full of charm, cheerful, gifted without egoism, likes to draw attention, loves life, motion, unrest, and even complications, is both dependent and independent, good taste, extremely generous, artistic, passionate, emotional, good company, does not forgive.

Walnut Tree (Passion) – unrelenting, strange and full of contrasts, often egotistic, aggressive, noble, broad horizon, unexpected reactions, spontaneous, unlimited ambition, no flexibility, difficult and uncommon partner, not always liked but often admired, ingenious strategist, very jealous and passionate, no compromise.

Weeping Willow (Melancholy) – likes to be stress free, loves family life, full of hopes and dreams, attractive, very empathetic, loves anything beautiful, musically inclined, loves to travel to exotic places, restless, capricious, honest, can be influenced but is not easy to live with when pressured, sometimes demanding, good intuition, suffers in love until they find that one loyal, steadfast partner; loves to make others laugh

(*) (*) Enjoy and have a sweet weekend. I'm thinking about taking a trip soon for a break to the WEST coast end of the month. Take care, love, peace and "Bai Ling". (look it up on google.com, that's where I found it.... (*) (*)

Carpe diem,
(k) (k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:27 AM

In the last 10 years, pizza-sized dishes have sprouted on homes all over the country. But how does satellite TV actually work?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/technology/circuits/14howw.html?8cir

(*) (*) Of course it works, and eventually I'll have access the broadband Internet with it form my ranch. Got to love this tech stuff! Had a wonderful, brisk walk with Doc earlier and the Autumn wind is really blowing....<tossing long blonde mane back ;) > This time of year just makes my heart sing on days like this. (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:32 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/technology/15power.html

(*) (*) The physical limits however, will prevent huge multimedia files and associated high data rates. It is good news for folks living in rural areas who already have electricity and telephone service. Still, there are DBS (dirct broadxast satellite) technologies that have been serving Internet for those away from even the suburbs of cities. (*)

Have a delightful Saturday!
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:36 AM

One must bear in mind one thing. It isn't necessary to know what that thing is.
-- John Ashbery

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
-- Chinese Proverb

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
-- Richard Bach

He is able who thinks he is able.
-- Buddha

Nobody ever drowned in sweat.
-- US Marine saying

(*) (*) I'm not sure about that last quote with some of my "summer moments" due to mid-life hormones. :o (f) (*)

Respectfully,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:38 AM

Received in e-mail yesterday and gave me a smile ....

There is a new virus circulating. It is called "WORK."

If you receive WORK from your colleagues, your boss, or from anyone else, DO NOT TOUCH IT under any circumstances. This virus wipes out your private life completely. If you should happen to come in contact with this virus, take two friends and go straight to the nearest bar. Order drinks
immediately and after three rounds you will find that WORK has been completely deleted from your brain.

Forward this virus warning immediately to at least five friends. ;)

Should you realize you do not have five friends, this means you are already infected by this virus and WORK already controls your life. If this is the case, go to the nearest bar and stay until you make at least five friends. Then retry.

If you think you have five friends, but are not entirely positive, head for the bar anyway ... it never hurts to be safe.

(h) (h)

(k) ,
SL

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:40 AM

What economists do all day:

A very nice Flash file (must allow ActiveX controls); I wanted to save it separately, but no dice:

http://www.foulds2000.freeserve.co.uk/economists.htm

(*) (*) Of course the Brits often come up with the most hilarious web sites!

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:42 AM

A while ago, a friend sent this link to a company for which I think (fear?) that I (or all of us) may have worked (or for whom we may all still be working). Can make you laugh and cry at the same time in a way that only our administration's economic policies do:

http://www.massivecorporation.com/about/index.html

Carpe Diem,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:46 AM

Hoax Industries presents ENOON (Energy Out Of Nowhere):

http://www.geocities.com/hoaxindustries/index.html

:| ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:54 AM

BY GE, THAT General Electric: Imagination Cubed. It's a beta test web site not yet published out to the Joe and Jill "public" and it allows instantaneous drawing and painting. I can't draw (words are my "paint") but this is something kids and adults would enjoy, I think.

http://www.imaginationcubed.com/LaunchPage#

(*) (*) Would LOVE to see some nice Autumn drawings of any other kind of nature. (f) Maybe come back and post the web link of your work? I'd love to see some from this or the "Make you own Picasso" site in the next posting below.

Peace,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-16-2004, 10:57 AM

This is my version but click on the create your own and enjoy the process!

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/canvas.html?id=92e0357

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-18-2004, 11:57 AM

One of my favorite sites built in Flash is http://www.homestarrunner.com. (*) (*) Don't forget to turn your speakers up. There is so much here, it would take hours. (*)

Of course, http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/ always has "featured sites" on its site.

Another fun site is http://www.footjoy.com/myjoys/Default.asp?bhcp=1 - you can build your own golf shoe. (for those so inclined.... ;)

(*) (*) Have fun creating your own stuff as a break from work, school or life in general. Have a delicious Autumn Monday! Lots of sunshine and cool temps here. Poor Doc the boxer is under a blanket because his mama doesn't want to turn the heat on yet. It's a bit brisk and feels wonderful. I may have to turn it on tonight......into the 40's.....yummy under the down comforter and quilt. (k) (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-18-2004, 12:05 PM

I thought some B-F members might be interested in the following statistics and the accompanying article. The report was written by some of the highest ranking academics in two of the highest ranking universities in the United States, Caltech and MIT. The report is titled: a Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project entitled Voting: What is, What could be.

This is an intriguing evaluative study that I would suggest for everyone to read, especially for those interested in future of democracy and political institutions. The evaluation was done by teams of researchers from Caltech and MIT and can be read in its entirety by activating the link in the reference below.

In Part One of the Report the authors say that:

"We estimate that between four and six million presidential votes were lost in the 2000 election. These are qualified voters who wanted to vote but could not or were not counted. (Losses occur for two reasons: first, some voters do not, or cannot, participate due to problems with voter registration or polling place practices; second, some votes that are cast are not counted due to problems with ballots.)

Two million ballots, two percent of the 100 million ballots cast for president in 2000, were not counted because they were unmarked, damaged, or ambiguous. Of this two percent it is estimated that 0.5 percent did not intend to vote for president, so 1.5 percent (or 1.5 million people) thought they voted for president but their votes were not counted". (Caltech/MIT, 2001, 8).

In this well planned and conducted 92 page evaluative report there are numerous statistics as well as suggestions as to how to remedy the problems associated with public voting and how to incorporate new available technology to implement their suggestions.

Reference:
Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, California Institute of Technology and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation. (2001). Voting: What is, What could be. Retrieved October 16, 2004 from
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/july01/July01_VTP_%20Voting_Report_Entire.pdf

(*) (*) No surprise here, right? (*) (*)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-18-2004, 12:09 PM

sweetlady

10-18-2004, 03:17 PM

Days of Heaven (1978)
Director Terrence Malick's beautifully shot period piece tells the story of Bill (Richard Gere), an early-1900s Chicago steel mill worker who flees town after accidentally killing a man. He moves his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and younger sister to the wheat fields of Texas to search for a better life. Instead, they run into tragedy when a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard) falls for Abby. The film's cinematography earned an Oscar.
Starring: Richard Gere, Sam Shepard
Director: Terrence Malick Genre: Drama

(*) (*) (*) (*) The cinematography was absolutely breathtaking. I had never heard of this film and it was worth the watch on A&ETV. I really liked it, and saw the early 1900's poytrayed in a poignant manner and historically correct. (l)

Back to the research and reading.....Monday is always "start pushing the boulder up the hill" each week for me. There's light at the end of the tunnel.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-20-2004, 10:37 PM

We're fifty years into the future
Rupert Goodwins ZDNet UK October 18, 2004, 15:10 BST

Fifty years ago today, a revolution started. Let's not stop the party just yet.

Ladies and gentlemen – please raise your glasses and toast the Regency TR-1. On 18 October, 1954, this revolutionary device was announced in America. Fifty years later, it has been blamed for rock and roll, the death of the US consumer electronics industry, the relentless rise of IBM and the shocking state of modern manners. Not a bad score for a transistor radio.

It wasn't just a transistor radio, of course. It was the first. In fact, it was the first transistorised mass-market device, and it symbolised the central role that technology was taking in the post-war world. Never underestimate the power of such symbols – Thomas Watson Jr., head of IBM, gave his senior managers a TR-1 apiece to kick-start the company's transition from valves. That symbolism had a different flavour ten years later as outfits like Sony and Toshiba used the same technology to smoothly wrest control of the market from its inventors. Outsourcing fears are nothing new.

A lot has changed. The TR-1 had four transistors and cost $50; last week I bought a 256MB SD card – for a radio, appropriately enough – at about the same price. That has two billion transistors in it, or four thousand times as many as were used in the entire production run of the Regency. Factoring in devaluation, each transistor costs around four billion times less. We're living through an industrial revolution of unparalleled speed and reach – and it's all borne aloft on a massive tsunami of transistors.

Where will it go? Let's skip forward to 2054. For the same effective price of a TR-1, a straightforward extrapolation promises a memory card with two exabytes – one exabyte being around 10 to the power of 24 (if you don't like those numbers, feel free to substitute your own). Artificial intelligence will have evolved by then, because there's simply nothing else to do with those sorts of numbers – our hypothetical memory chip will have the same number of transistors as the synapses of around ten billion people. That's practically a planetful.
There are some small problems to overcome on the way. Nobody knows how the brain works, although there's lots of fascinating work being done in cognitive neuroscience – last week, researchers at the University of Rochester announced that adult ferrets used 80 percent of their brain's processing power to think about things after being shown clips from The Matrix. Nobody knows what this means (although the figures may be substantially lower for the sequels), but the fact remains that we are developing some very powerful tools to peer into the workings of mind.

It may be coincidence that the human brain appears to be made out of a number of discrete processing units bound together by a complex system of buses, the same direction processor designers are taking in an attempt to use their cornucopia of transistors. Certainly, the commercial pressures are all in place to make chips better at analysing the same sense data with which humans are most comfortable: vision, speech, even touch, smell and taste are areas receiving substantial funding. We know the way we think is intricately linked with the way we sense: it is inconceivable that research here won't feed into more general theories of artificial thought.

Such considerations may seem a thousand light years away from the concerns of today's IT, where we struggle to keep our dull brutes going on a diet of buggy software and tainted data streams. Security and management in large, interconnected systems are hard enough without dreams of hyper-intelligent silicon AIs. Yet evolution created mind because it is a powerful way to analyse threats, co-ordinate groups of individually weak creatures into strong societies, and map the world around us to reflect and control danger and opportunity. If you've been listening to the promises of the major business software vendors, you may recognise these ideas.

It would be trite at this point to say that effective evolution demands an environment where modifications can be freely made to existing systems: you're a smart kid. You draw the analogies. But it's not overly simplistic to point out that if fifty years of lightly moderated innovation can take a four-transistor radio capable of playing Elvis Presley and relaying sports results and turn it into a global network that consumes and generates our culture and businesses, it would be rather short-sighted to put the brakes on just as it's getting interesting.

http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/rupertgoodwins/0,39020691,39170556,00.htm

(*) (*) Sending good thoughts to my friends and all who read this. (o) (S) About time to take Doc outside for the "last walk of the evening and turn in...early day tomorrow for an eye exam and new prescriptions for my computer and reading glasses (h) (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-20-2004, 10:39 PM

14 December 1994: First W3C meeting:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39170459,00.htm

1 January 1983: ARPANET officially switched from the NCP protocol to TCP/IP: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,2128123,00.htm

22 May, 1973: Bob Metcalfe writes a memo at Xerox Parc describing Ethernet: http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/communications/networks/0,39020427,2135049,00.htm

17 July 1968: Intel incorporated in California under the name NM Electronics: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,2137730,00.htm

7 April 1964: IBM launches S/360, the first modern mainframe: http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/rupertgoodwins/0,39020691,39150990,00.htm

1962: Spacewar, the first computer game, runs on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1:http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/emergingtech/0,39020357,2099814,00.htm

(*) (*) Where's the FEMME propeller-head happy face icon when I need it? ;) Have a lovely Wednesday night all, and an enjoyable Autumn day tomorrow wherever you are. (f) <thinking to myself, "where's a leaf when I need one?>

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-20-2004, 10:43 PM

One Canadian's Wireless Neighborhood Network Could Someday Serve Us All

By Robert X. Cringely

Like many of us, Andrew Greig put a WiFi access point in his house so
he could share his broadband Internet connection. But like hardly
any of us, Andrew uses his WiFi network for Internet, television, and
telephone. He cancelled his telephone line and cable TV service.
Then his neighbors dropped-by, saw what Andrew had done, and they
cancelled their telephone and cable TV services, too, many of them
without having a wired broadband connection of their own. They get
their service from Andrew, who added an inline amplifier and put a
better antenna in his attic. Now most of Andrew's neighborhood is
watching digital TV with full PVR capability, making unmetered VoIP
telephone calls, and downloading data at prodigious rates thanks to
shared bandwidth. Is this the future of home communications and
entertainment? It could be, five years from now, if Andrew Greig has
anything to say about it.

The advantage Andrew Greig has over most of the rest of us is that he
works for Starnix, an international Open Source software and services
consultancy in Toronto, Canada. Starnix, which deals with huge
corporate clients, has the brain power to get running what I
described above. And it goes much further than that simple
introduction.

More at: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040930.html

(h) (h) <waving hello across the digital tundra called the Internet.....

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-20-2004, 10:55 PM

(New York Times on Thursdays that is!

David Pogue writes, "In fact, I posted my first one today -- an on-camera review of the Oqo ultrapersonal computer, which I reviewed in print in Circuits today." You can watch the movie at: http://www.nytimes.com/videopages/2004/10/13/technology/20041013_STAT_VIDEO.html

(*) (*) What excited me even more is the following:

All of this stuff is free.

And speaking of free: The entire archive of previous
Circuits articles is now FREE! Not just mine, but also
Basics, Online Shopper, What's Next, Game Theory and more.
The days of having to pay $3 per past article are over.

I'm thrilled by this development for two reasons. First, I've
always wondered why my reviews of new computers, gadgets and
software cost money, when book reviews, movie reviews and
restaurant reviews were a free resource for all. Second, it
means that I can stop having to send out copies of past
columns to readers who can't find them anymore, or bumming
them out by saying, "You'll have to cough up the three
bucks."

To browse a list of past columns, go to NYTimes.com/circuits.
Under my photo on the right side, you'll see links to my six
most recent columns. Or click More Columns to view the entire
list, going all the way back to 2000. (This is the best
method if you want something you remember reading, say, last
month.) From there, you'll find links to archives of all the
other Circuits columns.

Or, to search the full text of all columns, use the Search
box at the top. Fill in the columnist's name plus the product
you want, using plus signs before each word (+pogue +tivo) to
ensure that your search includes both terms.

All of my e-mail columns are also online and free! At the
moment, many of them do not, however, show up in the search
results (The Times is working on it). The e-mail columns DO
show up if you know the date. You just have to know the
formula for the column's Web address.

Forum: David Pogue's Columns:

Share your thoughts on the feedback board.
http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/technology/davidpoguescolumns/index.html?8cir

Go to More Technology Forums:
http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/technology/index.html?8cir

Go to Readers' Opinions
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/readersopinions/index.html?8cir

(*) (*) And to think that I've been paying for NYTimes archived technical articles for my last ten graduate papers, even when they were in digital format.....it IS good news when anyone can access older articles even if just for fun like I love to research. ;) I guess I'm on a roll here because come December I have my Master of Science with a 4.0 average - THAT is indeed one of the best holiday gifts to myself, and at age 49 too. ;) (h) <grin>

G'nite and a smooch (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-20-2004, 11:08 PM

Michael Moore's hard-hitting documentary addresses the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, outlining the reasons the U.S. has become a target for hatred and terrorism. Criticizing President George W. Bush's response to the attacks and reinforcing his theory that the Bush Administration used the tragic event to push its agenda, Moore also traces alleged dealings that connect two generations of the Bush family with Osama bin Laden's clan.
Starring: Michael Moore, Debbie Petriken
Director: Michael Moore Genre: Documentary

(*) (*) (*) (*) I never had any doubt I was voting for "anyone but Bush" now since 2000, but the last several weeks I am convinced that voting for Kerry is an act of one person towards something better and more meaningful. This film really opened my eyes about the connections between the bin Laden family and other Saudi's, the Bush family and many folks in the current administration. Of course it's biased, but since Moore wasn't sued, what is presented is often funny, sometimes incredibly sad, but an epiphany for sure for this rather opinionated film buff.. (h)

Enough of my left brain thoughts for tonight......See you in our dreams. (S) (S)

Bai Ling,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-21-2004, 06:51 PM

Subject: FW: Dr. Seuss on mammograms:

For years and years they told me,
Be careful of your breasts.
Don't ever squeeze or bruise them.
And give them monthly test.
So I heeded all their warnings,
And protected them by law.
Guarded them very carefully,
And I always wore my bra.

After 30 years of astute care,
My gyno, Dr. Pruitt,
Said I should get a Mammogram?
"O.K," I said, "let's do it."
"Stand up here real close" she said,
(She got my boob in line),
"And tell me when it hurts," she said,
"Ah yes! Right there, that's fine."

She stepped upon a pedal,
I could not believe my eyes!
A plastic plate came slamming down,My hooter's in a vise!
My skin was stretched and mangled,
From underneath my chin.
My poor boob was being squashed,
To Swedish Pancake thin.

Excruciating pain I felt,
Within it's vise-like grip.
A prisoner in this vicious thing,
My poor defenseless tit!

"Take a deep breath" she said to me,
Who does she think she's kidding?!?
My chest is mashed in her machine,
And woozy I am getting.

"There, that's good," I heard her say,
(The room was slowly swaying.)"Now, let's have a go at the other one."
Have mercy, I was praying.
It squeezed me from both up and down,
It squeezed me from both sides.
I'll bet SHE'S never had this done,
To HER tender little hide.

Next time that they make me do this,
I will request a blindfold.
I have no wish to see again,
My knockers getting steam rolled.

If I had no problem when I came in,
I surely have one now.
If there had been a cyst in there,
It would have gone "ker-pow!"
This machine was created by a man,
Of this, I have no doubt.
I'd like to stick his balls in there,
And see how THEY come out!

(*) (*) Let me know sometime via PM if my postings are fun, create a fun environment or to let me know what you think.... (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-22-2004, 09:44 PM

Every four years, liberals unhitch the cart and put it in front of the horse, arguing that the only way to a better tomorrow is to vote for the Democratic nominee. But unless the nominee and Congress are pushed forward by social currents too strong for them to ignore or defy, nothing will alter the default path chosen by the country’s supreme commanders and their respective parties. In the American Empire of today, that path is never towards the good. Our task is not to dither in distraction over the lesser of two evil prospects, which will only turn out to be a detour along the same highway.

As now constituted, presidential contests, focused almost exclusively on the candidates of the two major parties, are worse than useless in furnishing any opportunity for national debate. Consider the number of issues on which there is tacit agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that, beyond pro forma sloganeering, these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the cia and other intelligence agencies (almost all military); nuclear disarmament; reduction of the military budget and the allocation of military procurement; roles and policies of the World Bank, imf, wto; crime, punishment and the prison explosion; the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; forest policy; the destruction of small farmers and ranchers; Israel; the corruption of the political system; the occupation of Iraq. The most significant outcome of the electoral process is usually imposed on prospective voters weeks or months ahead of polling day—namely, the consensus between the supposed adversaries as to what is off the agenda.

To be sure, there are the two parties who vituperate against each other in great style, but mostly this is only for show, for purposes of assuaging blocs of voters in the home district while honouring the mandate of those paying for the carousel. In the House, on issues like dumping the us Constitution in the trash can of the Patriot Act, there are perhaps thirty representatives from both sides of the aisle prepared to deviate from establishment policy. The low water mark came on September 14, 2002, when a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the president to ‘use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001’ drew only one No, from Barbara Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from Oakland. A stentorian July 2004 endorsement of Bush’s support for Sharon’s ‘peace plan’ by the House of Representatives elicited 407 ayes and 9 lonely noes. [1]

Imperial entropy

On the calendar of standard-issue American politics, the quadrennial nominations and presidential contests have offered, across the past forty years, a relentlessly shrinking menu. Back in 1964, the Democratic convention that nominated Lyndon Johnson saw the party platform scorn the legitimate claim of Fannie Lou Hamer and her fellow crusaders in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be the lawful Mississippi delegation. The black insurgents went down to defeat in a battle that remained etched in the political consciousness of those who partook in or even observed the fray. There was political division, the bugle blare and sabre slash of genuine struggle. At the Chicago convention of 1968 there was still a run against lbj, albeit more polite in form, with Eugene McCarthy’s challenge. McCarthy’s call for schism was an eminently respectable one, from a man who had risen through the us Senate as an orthodox Democratic Cold War liberal. [2]

Four years later, when George McGovern again kindled the anti-war torch, the party’s established powers, the labour chieftains and the money men, did their best to douse his modest smoulder, deliberately surrendering the field to Richard Nixon, for whom many of them voted. And yet, by today’s standards, that strange man Nixon, under whose aegis the Environmental Protection Agency was founded, the Occupational Safety and Health Act passed, Earth Day first celebrated, diplomatic relations established with Mao’s China and Keynesianism accepted as a fact of life, would have been regarded as impossibly radical. Of course, it was the historical pressures of the time that moulded Nixon’s actions—the Cold War context, the rising tide of Third World struggles (Vietnam foremost among them), labour victories, inner-city insurgencies, the counter-culture. The same goes for judicial appointments, often the last frantic argument of a liberal urging all back under the Big Democratic Tent. The Blacks, Douglases, Marshalls and Brennans were conjured to greatness by decade-long movements for political and cultural change, and only later by the good fortune of confirmed nomination. The decay of liberalism is clearly reflected in the quality of judges now installed in the Federal district courts. At the level of the us Supreme Court, history is captious. The best two of the current bunch, Stevens and Souter, were nominated by Republican presidents, Ford and G. H. W. Bush.

With Jimmy Carter came the omens of neoliberalism, whose hectic growth was a prime feature of the Clinton years under the guiding hand of the Democratic Leadership Council. But in the mid-to-late 1970s Carter had to guard his left flank, whence he sustained eloquent attacks from Barry Commoner and his Citizens’ Party in 1976, and then in 1979–80 from Senator Edward Kennedy, who challenged Carter for the nomination under the battle standard of old-line New Deal liberalism. The fiercest political fighting of the 1980s saw Democratic party leaders and pundits ranged shoulder to shoulder against the last coherent left-populist campaign to be mounted within the framework of the Democratic Party: that of Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition. As JoAnn Wypijewski pithily resumes Clinton’s payback to the Rainbow forces:

By a brisk accounting of 1993 to 2000, the black stripe of the Rainbow got the Crime Bill, women got ‘welfare reform’, labour got nafta, gays and lesbians got the Defence of Marriage Act. Even with a Democratic Congress in the early years, the peace crowd got no cuts in the military; unions got no help on the right to organize; advocates of dc statehood got nothing (though statehood would virtually guarantee two more Democratic Senate seats and more representation in the House); the single-payer crowd got worse than nothing. Between Clinton’s inaugural and the day he left office, 700,000 more persons were incarcerated, mostly minorities; today one in eight black men is barred from voting because of prison, probation or parole. [3]

All for Clinton

By the time Clinton launched his run for the presidency at the start of the 1990s resistance from the left, inside the Democratic Party and beyond, was at a low ebb. It stayed that way throughout his two terms. Battered from his first weeks for any deviation from Wall Street’s agenda, Clinton—like Carter before him, who also had a Democratic majority in Congress—had effectively lost any innovative purchase on the system by the end of the first six months, and there was no pressure from the left to hold him even to his timid campaign pledges. By the end of April 1993, Clinton had sold out the Haitian refugees; handed Africa policy to a Bush appointee, Herman Cohen, thus giving Jonas Savimbi the green light to butcher thousands in Angola; put Israel’s lobbyists in charge of Middle East policy; bolstered the arms industry with a budget in which projected spending for 1993–94 was higher in constant dollars than average spending in the Cold War from 1950 onwards; increased secret intelligence spending; maintained full Drug Enforcement Agency funding; put Wall Street in charge of national economic strategy; sold out on grazing and mineral rights on public lands; pushed nafta forward; plunged into the ‘managed care’ disaster offered as ‘health reform’ by Hillary Rodham Clinton and himself.

Year after year the women’s movement, labour unions, the mainstream environmentalists, civil-liberty watchdogs, liberal advocacy groups and public-interest networks stayed mute, as Clinton triangulated Republican positions and sold poor single mothers, working people, forests, mountains and constitutional protections down the river. A representative figure was Marian Wright Edelman, a friend of the First Lady, head of the Children’s Defence Fund and a Democratic Party loyalist stretching back to the savage wars on Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom people in 1964. In May 1996, Edelman organized a Save the Children rally at the Lincoln Memorial. She pledged commitment to building a just America. She invoked Lincoln and obliquely criticized George Bush Sr. The name of the current occupant of the White House, who had just endorsed a Republican programme in Wisconsin proposing to end welfare as an entitlement and putting a five-year cap on lifetime benefits, never once passed her lips.

The collapse of the liberal advocates for children was matched by kindred surrender across the entire terrain of public policy, from budget balancing to civil liberties, crime to health care. Pressed for explanations for their pusillanimity, the liberal advocates explained that the Republican hordes who had swept into Congress in 1994 were so barbaric, as was the prospect of a Dole presidency, that they had no choice but to circle the wagons round Clinton. [4] Liberals were aghast when, during his 1996 re-election campaign, Clinton took for his own the Republican proposal for ‘welfare reform’—but they did nothing. There was no insurgency, no rocking of the boat, no ‘divisive’ challenge on that or anything else. The Democratic Party, from dlc governors to liberal public-interest groups, mustered around their leader and marched arm-in-arm into the late 1990s, along a path signposted toward the greatest orgy of corporate theft in history, deregulation of banking and food safety, rates of logging six times those achieved in the subsequent Bush years, a vast expansion of the death penalty, re-affirmation of racist drug laws, the foundations of the Patriot Act and the criminal bombardment of Yugoslavia.

Clinton presided over passage of nafta, insulting labour further with the farce of side agreements on ‘rights’ that would never be enforced. End result: half the companies targeted by organizing drives in the us intimidate workers by saying that a union vote will force the company to leave town; 30 per cent of them fire the union activists (about 20,000 workers a year); only one in seven organizing drives has a chance of going to a vote, and of those that do result in a ‘yes’ for the union, less than one in five has any success in getting a contract. Polls suggest that 60 per cent of non-unionized workers would join a union if they had a chance. The Democrats have produced no legislation to help labour organizers; on the contrary, they have campaigned against laws that might have done so. [5]

The incumbent

There is no need to labour the details of Bush’s ghastly incumbency in these pages. His performance and personality have been etched well past caricature by dozens of furious assailants, culminating in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit9/11, the Democrats’ prime campaign offering. [6] He came by his fortune and his presidency dishonestly. Official rebirth in Christ led him not to compassion but to vindictiveness. Genes and education turned into a Mendelian stew of all that is worst and most vulgar in the anthropology of the Northeastern and Texan elites. [7] But despite his unalluring personality and severe limitations Bush does not merit the weight of those hysterical comminations heaped on his head on a daily basis. Reagan was much worse. So, in some significant ways, was Clinton. Bush stands accused of killing some 3,500–4,000 Afghan civilians, and 12,000–14,000 Iraqis. On conservative estimates, Clinton supervised the slaughter, by direct military assault or by sanctions, of nearly ten times that number; many more if you throw in those who died in the Rwandan genocide, in part because Clinton wanted to keep the international spotlight on Yugoslavia. [8]

The other cherished liberal myth, that a vast gulf separates Bush’s foreign policy from what Al Gore’s would have been, is belied by the latter’s own words—replicating his 1992 onslaughts on George Bush Sr for not having finished off Saddam Hussein. Gore proclaimed in the us Senate that Saddam was a threat to regional and even global security . . . The threat he represents is so severe that responding with force is not only legitimate but could be unavoidable . . . Saddam Hussein has more troops than Hitler did in the early years of World War ii.

During the 1992 campaign, Gore wrote in the New York Times that ‘we can no more hope for a constructive relationship with Saddam Hussein than we could hope to housebreak a cobra’, that Saddam Hussein ‘is not an acceptable part of the landscape’ and that ‘his Ba’athist regime must be dismantled as well’. As he put it on Larry King Live: ‘We should have bent every policy—and we should do it now—to overthrow that regime and to make sure that Saddam Hussein is removed from power’.

Ghost senator

The Kerry candidacy in 2004? As an inspirational candidate, he’s a dud, even damper a political squib than Michael Dukakis and, by dint of his chill snobbery, less appealing. Democrats know this in their hearts. Twit them about Kerry’s dreariness, reminiscent of tepid chowder on a damp day in Boston or of Weeping Ed Muskie amid the snows of New Hampshire, and one gets the upraised palm and petulant cry, ‘I don’t want to hear a word against Kerry!’ It is as though the Democratic candidate has been entombed, pending resurrection as president, with an honour guard of the National Organization of Women, the afl-cio, the League of Conservation Voters, Taxpayers for Justice and the naacp. To open the tomb prematurely, to admit the oxygen of life and criticism, is to blaspheme against political propriety. Amid the defilements of the political system, and the collapse of all serious political debate among the liberals and most of the left, the Democratic candidate becomes a kind of Hegelian Anybody, as in Anybody but . . . [9]

Kerry’s inner emptiness is thus peculiarly appropriate. Insecurely positioned from childhood on the margins of the elite, a heavily calculating opportunism has been his life’s guiding compass, whether pursuing wealthy women or plotting his political career. His four months in Vietnam—during which he bagged five medals (see below), enough to get him transferred to a desk job as an admiral’s aide in New York, and to earn the soubriquet Quick John from the crew members he left behind—were followed, after a year and a half’s cautious consideration, by five months of high-profile media coverage as a leading spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the springboard for his first (unsuccessful) Congressional bid. His tour in Vietnam became the target of damaging campaign ads in late August 2004 that clearly rattled Kerry, who fumed at these onslaughts on his martial honour from a president so indifferent to the Call to Arms that he declined even to undergo a routine medical check to maintain his status in the National Guard. But Kerry has only himself to blame, since it was his decision to exploit what he once, with no less opportunism, repudiated, preening at Boston with the medals he so carefully declined to toss away during the anti-war rallies in which he insisted on a starring role back in the early 1970s.

More article:

http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26301.shtml

(*) (*) Just bought a membership! Among other journals online. (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-23-2004, 10:30 AM

http://www.newleftreview.net/AboutNLR.shtml

(*) (*) Fresh views......without the Dubya admin slap! I think this might be as close to Canadian views being expressed in America. ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-23-2004, 10:39 AM

It's the deepest spot in any ocean of the world. It is located in the Pacific Ocean, just east of the Phillippines. What makes the Marianas Trench so interesting is the reason why it exists in the first place. To understand what caused it to be formed will require a little information about plate tectonics, or the movement of pieces of the earth's crust. http://www.geocities.com/thesciencefiles/marianas/trench.html

Marianas trough, or Marianas deep (mâr´´n´z) (KEY) , elongated depression on the Pacific Ocean floor, 210 mi (338 km) SW of Guam. It is the deepest (35,798.6 ft/10,911.5 m at the Challenger Deep) known depression on the earth’s surface. A U.S. navy bathyscape reached its bottom in 1960; a 1995 Japanese probe made what is probably the most accurate measurement of its depth. http://www.bartleby.com/65/ma/Marianas.html

(*) (*) Very cool animations: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/marianas.html

(*) (*) And to think that I have been using "Grand Canyon Deep" as an expression for years! One of my professors mentioned this about a bibliography that I created and gave me feedback on an assignment. I never heard of this and googled it. Pretty cool geologic location and nice compliment. That's DEEP! ;) ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 09:37 AM

Wilde (1997)
Stephen Fry stars in this lush, historical drama, based on the late Richard Ellmann's definitive biography of Oscar Wilde. The story traces his rise to fame as one of London's most prolific writers and orators, to his marriage with Constance (Jennifer Ehle), to his sweeping, torrid affair with a young Oxford graduate, Lord Alfred Douglas (Jude Law), that brought about his imprisonment and downfall.
Starring: Stephen Fry, Jude Law, Jennifer Ehle, Judy Parfitt, Gemma Jones, and Vanessa Redgrave
Director: Brian Gilbert
Genre: Drama

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) I rarely give 5 stars to films but this one was one the best across the board. Vanessa Redgrave is one of my favorites, however Stephen Fry and Jude Law were amazing. I highly recommend watching this gem. (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 11:47 AM

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/election.watch/

http://209.50.195.230/eguide/elecguide.htm

(*) (*) The first URL has more countries that I had time to read about so definitely an "add to favorites" in my web browser.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 11:49 AM

Council on Foreign Relations:

http://www.cfr.org/thesource/index.php

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 11:54 AM

Men become old, but they never become good.
Lady Windermere's Fan

I delight in men over seventy, they always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
A Woman of No Importance.

How many men there are in modern life who would like to see their past burning to white ashes before them!
An Ideal Husband.

A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain.
Lady Windermere's Fan.

Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and all the bachelors live like married men.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.
Lady Windermere's Fan

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
A Woman of No Importance

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.
Lady Windermere's Fan

Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.
A Woman of No Importance

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
The Sphinx Without a Secret

It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing.
Lady Windermere's Fan

I don't know that women are always rewarded for being charming. I think they are usually punished for it!
An Ideal Husband

I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.
A Woman of No Importance

My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.
A Woman of No Importance

Women give to men the very gold of their lives. But they invariably want it back in such very small change.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

I prefer women with a past. They're always so damned amusing to talk to.
Lady Windermere's Fan

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.
Letter from Paris, dated May 1900

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner of later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
The Decay of Lying

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
Vera, of The Nihilists

The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.
A Woman of No Importance

Life is never fair...And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
An Ideal Husband

You must not find symbols in everything you see. It makes life impossible.
Salome

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
The Duchess of Padua

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman - or the want of it in the man.
A Woman of No Importance

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
A Woman of No Importance

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
An Ideal Husband

A kiss may ruin a human life.
A Woman of No Importance

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

(*) (*) Oscar Wilde Home Page: http://www.cmgww.com/historic/wilde/

(l) (l) Have a lovely start of your week enjoying the cool Fall weather and the warmth of loving friends.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 11:57 AM

http://www.biography.com/impressionists/

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 11:59 AM

http://www.cyberpet.com/

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 12:03 PM

A popular breed which is strong and has plenty of stamina. It enjoys human company and is especially good with children. A non-aggressive and reliable guard dog.

Boxers are susceptible to a number of ailments, particularly skin cancers and rheumatism. They also slobber a lot.

Description & History

The Boxer comes from Germany and was virtually unknown outside its own country until after the Second World War.

The Boxer is descended from the Barenbeisser and the Bullenbeisser - both breeds which were closely related to the Mastiff.

These dogs were all-rounders. With fine muscular physiques and strong broad jaws, they were originally used for bear and bull-baiting. They were courageous hunting dogs that were capable of dealing with big game such as wild ox and wild boar. Also they were used on the farms as cattle dogs.

The present day Boxer was developed in Munich towards the end of the nineteenth century. The English Bulldog and the small Mastiff type dogs were used to further develop the breed. The name "Boxer" was established about the same time. In 191O the breed standard was formalised.

The Boxer was one of the first breeds to be used by the German police. Also they were successfully trained as guide dogs for the blind.

The breed had a small but strong following in America before the Second World War, but did not receive the same support in Great Britain until after the war. The British Boxer Club was founded in 1936.

An energetic breed, they tend to retain their youth and thoroughly enjoy an active life for a lot longer than some breeds.

http://www.dog-breeds.co.uk/breeds/a-c.htm

(*) (*) Lots of other breeds on this web site: http://www.dog-breeds.co.uk/breed.htm

(o) Back to work and a nice walk soon with Doc the boxer. (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-25-2004, 12:07 PM

GHOST TOWNS, ABANDONED VILLAGES, AND HISTORICAL SITES
IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA:

http://www.ghosttown.info/

UNITED STATES:
California - Ghost towns, old mines, semi-abandoned villages from the Gold Rush, an old prison, an abandoned train station, and an unusual abandoned duck hunting village. September 2002
Nevada - Remnants of gold and silver mining from the 19th and 20th centuries. September 2002

CANADA:
Ontario - Abandoned farms, old mill towns, logging camps, mining towns, and colonization road villages. June 2002
Quebec - Abandoned farms and semi-deserted villages.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-26-2004, 02:21 PM

A Face That Launched a Thousand Chips
October 24, 2004 By DAVE KEHR

FROM a distance "The Polar Express" might look like just
another holiday movie. Adapted from a much-loved 1985
children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, it is the story of a
nameless boy living in a 1950's American suburb whose
crumbling belief in Santa Claus is bolstered when, one
snowy Christmas Eve, a phantom steam train pulls up in
front of his house and a kindly conductor invites him to
take a ride to the North Pole.

With Tom Hanks again starring under the direction of Robert
Zemeckis - as he did in "Forrest Gump" and "Cast Away" -
"The Polar Express" sounds as safe as safe can be,
guaranteed to warm hearts and sell tickets.

But there is a revolution hiding inside this seemingly
innocuous family film, to be released by Warner Brothers on
Nov. 10. The first star-driven film to cross completely
over to the digital domain, it might change the way movies
are made and seen. Whatever critics and audiences make of
this movie, from a technical perspective it could mark a
turning point in the gradual transition from an analog to a
digital cinema. And though the transition may not be as
dramatic as the shift from silent to sound prompted by "The
Jazz Singer" in 1927, it may have equally significant
consequences.

Neither a traditional live-action film nor a computer
animation of the kind Pixar has perfected with "Finding
Nemo" and "The Incredibles," "The Polar Express" is
something in between, a film that brings a true human
presence into a virtual world by digitizing flesh-and-blood
actors as well as the environments they inhabit. In the
process it does away with many of the most basic elements
of filmmaking: there are no expensive sets to be built, no
elaborate lighting to be rigged, no bulky camera to be
painstakingly hauled into place. In fact, there is no film.
"The Polar Express" will touch celluloid only at the final
stage of production, when the completed feature is
transferred, by laser printer, from computer hard drive to
film stock.

"To everyone's credit at Warner Brothers, they were taking
a giant leap of faith on this," Mr. Zemeckis said during a
recent trip to New York. "It's really tough for anybody to
get their head wrapped around it."

For one thing, Mr. Hanks plays five roles, ranging from a
7-year-old boy to Santa Claus. Not all of these characters
look like Mr. Hanks, but they all contain the spark of his
individuality. The world of the film is manifestly the
world of Mr. Van Allsburg's beautiful oil and pastel
illustrations, a nocturnal landscape punctuated by soft
forms and warm lights. But Mr. Hanks, along with the other
members of the "Polar" cast (including Michael Jeter, Peter
Scolari and Nona Gaye), has not been simply superimposed on
a painted background. He has been absorbed into the lushly
detailed images, almost as if his DNA had been digitized
along with the landscapes. It is a cliché to say that a
film looks like a painting come to life, but applied to
"The Polar Express" that old phrase contains a new truth.

Whether the audience can wrap its collective head around
this approach to filmmaking is only one of the many
questions posed by a new technology that turns the director
into the god of his own virtual universe. Will the new
techniques finally make it possible for directors to be the
sole authors of their films, in the way painters control
their paintings or novelists their novels? Or will the
unprecedented control eliminate the creative turmoil of
what has often been called the most collaborative of art
forms? Will the revolution serve the goals of storytelling
and personal expression, or will it lead to an obsession
with trivial detail and pointless perfectionism? Will
actors embrace the challenge of playing against themselves
in multiple roles, as Mr. Hanks does in "Polar," or will
they become digital puppets, manipulated by unseen others?
Will the new powers liberate visionary filmmakers, or will
they make movies even more vulnerable to the whims of
studio executives, who will be able to endlessly
second-guess directors?

Long a pioneer in special-effects technology (in films like
"Back to the Future," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Death
Becomes Her"), Mr. Zemeckis sees promise and danger.

"It was wonderfully freeing," Mr. Zemeckis said. "This was
like, well, I think we'll have the train come off the
tracks and skid across a frozen lake. All right, great.
Let's write that."

But, he emphasized, the technology must take the back seat.
"It's still about story, as wild as it can be, or as simple
as it can be," he said.

"To write a screenplay under these conditions takes some
getting used to," added William Broyles Jr., who wrote the
adaptation with Mr. Zemeckis. "Usually, as the time for
filming approaches, you adjust your screenplay to what is
possible. But with this, as the time approached, it became
clear than anything was possible. At first, there was an
incredible exhilaration, but then that was followed by the
realization that anything you imagine has to be in the
service of the story."

To watch "The Polar Express" in process and onscreen is to
begin to understand the promise of the new technology and
its potential drawbacks.

There was little that resembled a traditional shoot at a
warehouse in Culver City, Calif., where the film was being
made in April. In place of a soundstage, there was a
domelike structure built of scaffolding that surrounded a
playing area roughly 10 feet square. Attached to the
scaffolding were several dozen infrared sensors, which
could pick up and digitally record the light bounced back
by the dozens of small reflectors on Mr. Hanks's black
bodysuit, as well as by the 150 smaller reflectors attached
to his facial muscles. With his face dotted by the tiny
jewels, as the crew called the reflectors, Mr. Hanks looked
like the pincushion man from the "Hellraiser" series. But
after a few days of working with the reflectors attached,
he said, he no longer noticed them.

"All I really miss are the costumes," he said. "I have to
remember to touch the brim of a hat that isn't there."

When Mr. Hanks entered the playing space - "the volume," as
Mr. Zemeckis likes to call it - his movements were recorded
by a computer as points of light floating in a dark
three-dimensional space. Even in this raw form, the
connect-the-dots figure moving on the computer monitor was
recognizably Mr. Hanks. It walked like him, gestured like
him and, most important, crinkled and smiled and frowned
like him.

Filmmakers have been able to capture full-body motion for
some years using a process called mo-cap, in which a
computer scans sensors attached to a performer's limbs and
records the broad outlines of movements. "It's been around
a long time from video games," Mr. Zemeckis explained.
"They put sensors on the athletes for sports games and
things like that."

The great leap of "The Polar Express" came in the ability
to capture facial expressions: "When we did the first
tests," Mr. Zemeckis said, "we had Tom do the body acting,
and then we put him into a space where he sat in a chair
and had to re-act everything from the neck up. I said, 'You
can't do a movie like this.' So they went back and were
able to figure out how to get both sets of sensors working
at the same time. And once we started the movie, the
technology kept getting better."

Steve Starkey, a producer of the film, calls the process
"performance capture," because it records more than simple
movement. There is individuality and emotion in that blur
of swirling dots, and it becomes the job of the computer
animators - in this case, people at Sony Pictures
Imageworks, led by Mr. Zemeckis's longtime visual-effects
supervisor, Ken Ralston - to retain that individuality
while shaping the clouds of dots into the Boy, the
Conductor, and the other characters.

The process falters, however, when it comes to the
characters' eyes. Because of the impossibility of attaching
sensors to the actors' pupils, eye movements must be
animated independently, and they aren't always as
convincing as one would like. The greatest commercial risk
of "The Polar Express" lies in betting a reported $160
million budget that audiences will still be able to make an
emotional connection through these somewhat glassy orbs,
windows to the soul that seem slightly veiled.

The raw human figures - so bulky and balloon-like before
they are refined that the animators call them Michelin Men
- are dropped into 3-D spaces that have also been created
in the computer by groups of designers and programmers. Mr.
Zemeckis relied on longtime members of his team, including
the production designer Rick Carter ("Forrest Gump") and
the costume designer Joanna Johnston ("Who Framed Roger
Rabbit") to do their usual work, though this time, instead
of being built or sewn, their designs were constructed in
the virtual environment.

"For example, for the big square at Santa's village, the
art department designed it, and they did it just like they
do a movie, except it goes one step further," Mr. Zemeckis
said. "They conceptualize it, they draw blueprints, they
build models, and then, once we sign off on it, they go and
they build it virtually in the computer, just like
architects do now for previews and that sort of thing."

Now, the real fun begins. With his 3-D characters inside a
3-D environment, the filmmaker has a literally infinite
choice of camera angles. He can place his virtual camera at
any point in the 3-D space, much as players of video games,
like the newly released "Sims 2," can do, though the games
have a a restricted range of positions and much less
detail. He can move the virtual camera in any direction,
simulating pans and tracking shots, and even a jittery,
hand-held effect. He can simulate the look of any known
lens (as well as some unknown ones, as the extraordinary
deep-focus effects in "Polar" attest). He can alter the
lighting at will, dropping in shadows and highlights that
would take hours to reset on a traditional shoot. Instead
of having actors sitting in their trailers, waiting for the
crews to set up the next shot, they can stay on stage and
in character and go straight from one scene to the next.
And as Mr. Zemeckis pointed out, he also eliminated the
risk and bother of working with child actors, substituting
the skill of one consummate professional who has the only
acting credit in the film's advertisements.

The process also promises a new level of exhibition. In a
first for a major studio feature, "The Polar Express" will
open both in conventional theaters and in a 3-D Imax format
in some cities, including New York. "And all we had to do
was run it through the computer again, just flip a switch
and put the parallax in," Mr. Zemeckis said. "It's all 3-D
already, so boom, it's just there."

All of these wonders come, inevitably, at a price - and not
just the financial cost, which at the moment exceeds even
the $1 million-a-minute average of Pixar-style animation.
"In the next couple of years," Mr. Zemeckis said, "part of
every film's process is going to be to adjust the images.
And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or
change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth.
Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little
bit. And that will be part of your normal film finishing
process, where your image will be perfected."

Sometimes, though, it is the imperfections that make a
movie come alive. Back in the 1910's, when movies were
beginning to be filmed in studios rather than in streets
and parks, D. W. Griffith famously worried about losing
"the wind in the trees" - the sense of the aleatory that
makes film seem spontaneous and real. Is faultlessness
really a goal?

Mr. Zemeckis said that he believed that the technology's
promise outweighed the risks of any early excesses. It is
so radical that it has actually solved problems that came
with the last breakthroughs in digital magic, he said.

"I found in my big effects movies where I had to do a lot
of major blue-screen work, like in 'Contact' and in
'Forrest Gump,' it's really hard to keep the energy from
flattening out, because the first thing that happens is the
actor now becomes a prop if you're not careful," he said.
"It takes a lot of discipline for the director and the
actor to rise above the tedium of doing this blue-screen
work, but there's none of that here. Performance capture is
different because it's all about the acting. Without the
tyranny of hitting marks and leading the lights and
worrying about the boom shadow and your makeup and your wig
and the line on your wig and all that horrendous stuff that
stifles an actor's performance. Or when they do the
greatest take ever and they miss the focus.''

"You could actually hire a director just to go out and work
with the actors,'' he speculated, "and then you'd take the
raw material back. But if he didn't do it exactly the way
you wanted it, you could change it. And you could get it
the way you wanted without actually having to stand there
in front of the actor and convince him to do it your way.''

But that digital dream could also have a nightmarish
underside. Imagine a movie without any physical reality,
without any human presence or warmth. Imagine, in effect,
even less personal versions of the coldly corporate
digital-effects blockbusters that now dominate the summer.

Mr. Zemeckis acknowledged that danger but argued that he
had already learned to overcome it: "What we did with
'Polar Express' was what we do now in music without anyone
ever thinking about it. We have sophisticated digital sound
equipment that can create any sound, and you can manipulate
a note, sustain it, shorten it, change it.

"And we haven't replaced any musicians,, because the
musician comes in and puts the emotional warmth into the
performance. He sits at a keyboard and he just basically
plays, but he puts that human emotional warmth in there.
Then that goes into the booth and it's expanded and layered
and all those textures are put on it. But basically what's
there is there."

Mr. Zemeckis concluded: "So now what we're doing is the
same thing, but for visual performance. The actor lays it
down and then you just add things onto it or take away from
it - whatever fits the story. That's how I look at it in a
positive way."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/movies/24kehr.html?ex=1099717157&ei=1&en=4d9c7ee5cd288d2f

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-26-2004, 02:23 PM

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp

(k) ;) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-26-2004, 02:24 PM

A Bowl of Cherries?

"Life *isn't* like a bowl of cherries or peaches.

It's more like a jar of jalapenos.

What you do today might burn your ass tomorrow!" :|

(f) (k) ;) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-27-2004, 10:09 PM

October 27, 2004 By NAT IVES

WEB logs have had an astonishing season this year, enough
to freckle the faces of bloggers who do not, as a rule, get
much time outdoors.

Although political blogs have received the most attention,
advertising agencies and communications professionals are
using blogs to create discussion about ideas within their
industries.

Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners in Sausalito, Calif.,
produces a blog, Influx Insights (www.influx.bsands .com),
that includes discussion of video game marketing. Yellowfin
Direct Marketing in Boston has commented on the politics of
emotion and the art of client service on its blog, A Fine
Kettle of Fish (www .afinekettleoffish.blogspot.com).

Urban Advertising in New York has a blog on industry
trends, Urban Intelligence (urbanadvertising.com
/intelligence).

And Richard Edelman, president and chief executive at
Edelman, part of Daniel J. Edelman, began writing his own
blog (www.edelman.com /speak_up/blog) on Sept. 29, most
recently recounting his travels through India.

Agencies with blogs , though, are in a minority. For many,
particularly the large networks, the potential risks still
outweigh the benefits.

"Blogs are in fashion, and it is easy to hop on the
bandwagon and say that every company should have one," said
Linda Sawyer, managing partner and chief operating officer
at Deutsch in New York, a unit of the Interpublic Group of
Companies and an agency without a blog. "The questions any
smart marketer should be asking are, 'Does this provide a
platform to connect with their most relevant audiences and
how will this address business objectives?' "

"That's not to say we would never enter blogland," Ms.
Sawyer said, "but there is a fine line between being
timely, topical and keeping current while making sure that
we are doing what's best for our business long term."

The biggest fear is an uncontrolled message slipping out,
said Steve Rubel, vice president for client services at
CooperKatz & Company in New York, a public relations agency
with clients including the Association of National
Advertisers, J. P. Morgan Chase and Wendy's. "Do they allow
comments or do they not? Is there an implication if it is a
publicly traded firm? Who is the one who should blog for
us? How might that choice be received in the company?"

"Ultimately this will all work out," said Mr. Rubel, who
writes a blog called Micro Persuasion (www
.SteveRubel.typepad.com), focusing on the effects of blogs
and other embodiments of "participatory journalism" on
public relations. He also consults with the Association of
National Advertisers on matters including its two blogs
(www.ana.net/blog).

One is called A.N.A. Marketing Musings and is written by
Robert D. Liodice, president and chief executive at the
association. Dan Jaffe, executive vice president for
government relations and head of the Washington office,
writes the other, called A.N.A. Regulatory Rumblings.

Mr. Jaffe said blogs were popping up everywhere because
people want an improved ability to learn and communicate in
real time. "One of the things I do is represent the
advertiser industry," Mr. Jaffe said. "Most of the time you
can intuit what people's views will be. But in those areas
where that's not the case, then getting feedback is
critical."

Regulatory Rumblings is neither the only tool nor a perfect
one, Mr. Jaffe said, but it maintains dialogue better than
the tools of two or three years ago.

The growing number of professional blogs often lack the
qualities that made earlier blogs big hits: attitude,
irreverence and an apparent interest in kicking up a fuss.
Gawker, the Manhattan gossip and media blog published by
Denton Media, demonstrated the form last night when it
posted, "Kate Winslet Shops for Food but Might Not Eat It."

Agency blogs serve different functions, said Bernard Urban,
president at Urban Advertising. "It's allowing people who
visit our agency site to get a feel for who we are without
even having a conversation with us," he said. "We have a
living point of view."

Steve Hall, editor and publisher of Adrants
(www.adrants.com), a blog commenting on advertising and
media matters, said that blogs open windows for people.
"Most corporate agency Web sites are really just fancy
billboards," he said. "It's pretty much impossible to have
a face-to-face with every single business contact out
there. What better way than to put your voice out there on
a regular basis with a Web log?"

A limited number of blogs, like Daily Kos
(www.dailykos.com), have started collecting advertising
revenue from marketers interested in reaching sharply
defined and tech-savvy audiences. Now advertising itself
could emerge as a potential function of agency blogs, too.

Bob Cargill, senior creative director at Yellowfin and the
originator of its seven-month-old Kettle of Fish blog, said
the broad purposes were sufficient for now. "The idea is to
attract people to our Web site, not to promote our own
agency or even our own clients, but to promote issues,
tactics and techniques."

Down the road, Mr. Cargill said he has bigger ambitions.
"My goal is to make this not just a Yellowfin blog, but an
industry blog all about direct marketing and advertising,
with thousands of subscribers and possibly ads."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/business/media/27adco.html?ex=1099888713&ei=1&en=6203dd34477f6b8f

(*) (*) Some excellent blogs listed. (S) Anyone watcing the lunar eclipse tonight? (S) Full moon too. ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-27-2004, 10:13 PM

Billboard magazine will soon start carrying a Top 20 chart for polyphonic ringtones, including song title, artist, previous week's position and number of weeks on the chart.

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004 at: www.siliconvalleycom

(8) (8) What next? Customizable cellular phone ring tones? I've already downloaded a few that I change from time to time. What fun while waiting in line someplace..... :|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-27-2004, 10:18 PM

October 24, 2004 By KATE MURPHY

ONLINE auction Web sites like eBay conjure images of vast
electronic tag sales where people can unload unwanted
personal items - clothes that don't fit, or that ugly lamp
Aunt Alice gave them last Christmas. But while much of
what's sold on eBay has indeed been purged from someone's
attic or garage, that is only part of the story.

An estimated half-million people make a full- or part-time
living by auctioning everything from macramé to Maseratis
on the Internet. In the online auction world, they are
called power sellers, and they have succeeded by
researching consumer trends, finding reliable sources for
goods and not sparing the bubble wrap.

EBay, of course, is not the only game in town, though it is
clearly the largest and most popular Internet auction site.
It has 114 million users, far more than competitors like
Ubid.com, Bidville.com and ePier, as well as the auction
sections of Amazon.com, Yahoo and Overstock.com.

"They can't compare with eBay," said James Westerman of
Conway, Ark., who earns more than $15,000 annually selling
sports and advertising memorabilia on the site. He tried
selling on other sites but gave up. "It was frustrating
because you'd get like four hits for something on Yahoo,
when on eBay you'd get more like 600," he said, referring
to the number of people who clicked on one of his items to
get a closer look.

Mr. Westerman, who works for the Postal Service, said he
started auctioning products on the Internet in 1999 to make
extra money for vacations on the Gulf Coast with his wife,
Terry. He became serious after he bought a log-cabin cookie
jar at his local Wal-Mart for $9, then sold it on eBay for
$99. "Two people got in a bidding war over it," he said. "I
couldn't believe it." Now Mr. Westerman mostly sells
sports-team neon clocks and vintage Coca-Cola ice chests
under the eBay user name ticktockauctions. (Buyers on
auction sites can enter sellers' user names to see all the
products they have listed, and can check comments posted by
people who have bought from them in the past.)

Like most power sellers, Mr. Westerman says the hardest
part of online auctioneering is finding good things to
sell. "I have three or four sources right now," he said,
"and I'm constantly getting e-mails from people on eBay
trying to find out where I get my stuff."

Many sellers go to thrift shops and estate sales. Jennifer
Karpin-Hobbs of Grafton, Vt., frequents secondhand stores,
country auctions and yard sales for the glass, china, linen
and books she lists on eBay under the user name
morning-glorious. Though she will not disclose her profits,
she is designated by eBay as a power seller, which means
she consistently has sales of more than $1,000 a month. Ms.
Karpin-Hobbs started auctioning items online four years
ago, when she and her husband divorced and they dissolved
the music publishing business they had owned jointly. "It's
just amazing to me that you can create a whole new business
this way," she said. "It's definitely raised my standard of
living."

Paula Amato of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., also goes to
consignment stores and thrift shops, but she says that more
often than not, she finds undervalued items on eBay and
flips them for a tidy profit. An example was a collection
of Oriental ceramics she bought recently on eBay for $19.95
and resold for $2,500 under the user name
eclecticdealer-paula.

"If you'll excuse me for saying it, it's like an orgasm
when that happens," said Ms. Amato, also an official power
seller. But she says that it is proper etiquette to wait 90
days before reselling something on eBay. That is also the
length of time that eBay keeps links to buyers' past
purchases, Ms. Amato said, which means that thereafter, "no
one can tell what you're doing."

In her four years of supporting herself with online
auctions, Ms. Amato has developed such a reputation for
spotting value, she said, that she has to enter "snipe," or
last-second, bids, so other bidders will not bid up the
price after they see that she wants a particular product.
This is made easier by software programs like Auction
Sentry and BidSniper, which users program to enter
last-second bids up to a specified amount, automatically.
"You'll have a heart attack if you try to do it yourself,"
she said, "and the programs also keep you from bidding more
than you intended" in the heat of the moment.

Most power sellers say they have a natural eye for
determining whether a particular product will attract
bidders. But they also acknowledge that they hone their
skills by studying home and fashion magazines, as well as
product catalogs.

"I look for what's hot, like the color jade or something
like that," Ms. Karpin-Hobbs said. Some sellers peruse the
monthly Hot Categories report from eBay, which lists items
that are attracting the most bids. Popular listings in the
September report included antique wooden bowls,
night-vision binoculars and vintage men's hats.

Rather than studying trends, Andrew Mowery said that he and
his wife, Deborah, of Fort Collins, Colo., prefer to buy
bulk quantities from manufacturers of things they want
themselves. Then they keep one and sell the rest. One of
their most popular products is a pet drinking fountain,
which Mrs. Mowery had wanted for their cats. By following
this strategy, the couple, who sell mostly kitchen
appliances, garden tools and pet supplies under the user
name debnroo, sold $518,000 worth of merchandise on eBay
last year and expect to exceed $800,000 this year.

"More than anything, we enjoy the lifestyle of working at
home and for ourselves," Mr. Mowery said. "I can be
negotiating a deal with a manufacturer while picking beans
in the garden."

Not that there isn't a lot of hard work involved. Some
tasks, like listing items, tracking bids and notifying
winners, can be automated because of auction management
software like AuctionHelper and AuctionMate. But the heavy
lifting comes when it's time to pack and ship products.

"You learn to love bubble wrap," said Connie McKitrick of
Steubenville, Ohio, who, with her sister and a friend,
sells homemade cookies on eBay under the user name
threesisterstreats. Most sellers say careful packaging
elicits positive feedback from buyers, which is important
in attracting new bidders the next time.

"You want to wrap things with so much bubble wrap that it
won't break even if an elephant stomps on it," Ms.
Karpin-Hobbs said. She added that extras like thank-you
notes and brightly colored tissue also impressed customers.

BECAUSE feedback is also available on buyers, deadbeats are
not much of a problem in the online auction world. "For
every rotten one, there are a hundred great customers,"
said Ms. Amato in Fort Lauderdale, who accepts personal
checks and money orders as well as payment through PayPal,
the online system owned by eBay. "The only difficulty I
have is falling in love with things I buy and not wanting
to resell them."

But when she thinks of the money she will make, she said,
"I get over it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/business/yourmoney/24ebay.html?ex=1099717029&ei=1&en=cf88170566a35bb1

(*) (*) Any success stories or testimonials similar to these? Now if I only had the time since I certainly have nice artwork, jewelry and other stuff to sell.. :o

(o) (S) Off soon to see the lunar eclipse.....no clouds so it should be clearly seen. I have to wake up the Doc'meister first though. (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-27-2004, 10:22 PM

St. Cecilia
Virgin and martyr, patroness of church music, died at Rome.

This saint, so often glorified in the fine arts and in poetry, is one of the most venerated martyrs of Christian antiquity. The oldest historical account of St. Cecilia is found in the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum"; from this it is evident that her feast was celebrated in the Roman Church in the fourth century. Her name occurs under different dates in the above-mentioned martyrology; its mention under 11 August, the feast of the martyr Tiburtius, is evidently a later and erroneous addition, due to the fact that this Tiburtius, who was buried on the Via Labicana, was wrongly identified with Tiburtius, the brother-in-law of St. Cecilia, mentioned in the Acts of her martyrdom. Perhaps also there was another Roman martyr of the name of Cecilia buried on the Via Labicana. Under the date of 16 September Cecilia is mentioned alone, with the topographical note: "Appiâ viâ in eâdem urbe Româ natale et passio sanctæ Ceciliæ virginis (the text is to be thus corrected). This is evidently the day of the burial of the holy martyr in the Catacomb of Callistus. The feast of the saint mentioned under 22 November, on which day it is still celebrated, was kept in the church in the Trastevere quarter at Rome, dedicated to her. Its origin, therefore, is to be traced most probably to this church. The early medieval guides (Itineraria) to the burial-places of Roman martyrs point out her grave on the Via Appia, next to the crypt of the Roman bishops of the third century (De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, I, 180-181). De Rossi located the burial-place of Cecilia in the Catacomb of Callistus in a crypt immediately adjoining the crypt or chapel of the popes; an empty niche in one of the walls contained, probably, at one time the sarcophagus with the bones of the saint. Among the frescoes of a later time with which the wall of the sepulchre are adorned, the figure of a richly-dressed woman appears twice and Pope Urban, who was brought personal into close relation with the saint by the Acts of her martyrdom, is depicted once. The ancient titular church of Rome, mentioned above was built as early as the fourth century and is still preserved in the Trastevere. This church was certainly dedicated in the fifth century to the saint buried on the Via Appia; it is mentioned in the signatures of the Roman Council of 499 as "titulus sanctae Caeciliae" (Mansi, Coll, Conc. VIII, 236). Like some other ancient Christian churches of Rome, which are the gifts of the saints whose names they bear, it may be inferred that the Roman Church owes this temple to the generosity of the holy martyr herself; in support of this view it is to be noted that the property, under which the oldest part of the true Catacomb of Callistus is constructed, belonged most likely, according to De Rossi's researches, to the family of St. Cecilia (Gens Caecilia), and by donation passed into the possession of the Roman Church. Although her name is not mentioned in the earliest (fourth century) list of feasts (Depositio martyrum), the fact that in the "Sacramentarium Leoniam", a collection of masses completed about the end of the fifth century, are found no less than five different masses in honour of St. Cecilia testifies to the great veneration in which the saint was at that time held in the Roman Church ["Sacram. Leon.", ed. Muratori, in "Opera" (Arezzo, 1771), XIII, I, 737, sqq.].

About the middle of the fifth century originated Acts of the martyrdom of St. Cecilia which have been transmitted in numerous manuscripts; these acts were also translated into Greek. They were utilized in the prefaces of the above-mentioned masses of the "Sacramentarium Leonianum". They inform us, that Cecilia, a virgin of a senatorial family and a Christian from her infancy, was given in marriage by her parents to a noble pagan youth Valerianus. When, after the celebration of the marriage, the couple had retired to the wedding-chamber, Cecilia told Valerianus that she was betrothed to an angel who jealously guarded her body; therefore Valerianus must take care not to violate her virginity. Valerianus wished to see the angel, whereupon Cecilia sent him to the third milestone on the Via Appia where he should meet Bishop (Pope) Urbanus. Valerianus obeyed, was baptized by the pope, and returned a Christian to Cecilia. An angel then appeared to the two and crowned them with roses and lilies. When Tiburtius, the brother of Valerianus, came to them, he too was won over to Christianity. As zealous children of the Faith both brothers distributed rich alms and buried the bodies of the confessors who had died for Christ. The prefect, Turcius Almachius, condemned them to death; an officer of the prefect, Maximus, appointed to execute this sentence, was himself converted and suffered martyrdom with the two brothers. Their remains were buried in one tomb by Cecilia. And now Cecilia herself was sought by the officers of the prefect. Before she was taken prisoner, she arranged that her house should be preserved as a place of worship for the Roman Church. After a glorious profession of faith, she was condemned to be suffocated in the bath of her own house. But as she remained unhurt in the overheated room, the prefect had her decapitated in that place. The executioner let his sword fall three times without separating the head from the trunk, and fled, leaving the virgin bathed in her own blood. She lived three days, made dispositions in favour of the poor, and provided that after her death her house should be dedicated as a church. Urbanus buried her among the bishops and the confessors, i.e. in the Catacomb of Callistus.

In this shape the whole story has no historical value; it is a pious romance, like so many others compiled in the fifth and sixth century. The existence of the aforesaid martyrs, however, is a historical fact. The relation between St. Cecilia and Valerianus, Tiburtius, and Maximus, mentioned in the Acts, has perhaps some historical foundation. These three saints were buried in the Catacomb of Praetextatus on the Via Appia, where their tombs are mentioned in the ancient pilgrim Itineraria. In the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum" their feast is set down under 14 April with the note: "Romae via Appia in cimiterio Prætextati"; and the octave under 21 April, with the comment: "Rome in cimiterio Calesti via Appia". In the opinion of Duchesne the octave was celebrated in the Catacomb of Callistus, because St. Cecilia was buried there. If, therefore, this second notice in the martyrology is older than the aforesaid Acts, and the latter did not give rise to this second feast, it follows that before the Acts were written this group of saints in Rome was brought into relation with St. Cecilia. The time when Cecilia suffered martyrdom is not known. From the mention of Urbanus nothing can be concluded as to the time of composition of the Acts; the author without any authority, simply introduced the confessor of this name (buried in the Catacomb of Praetextatus) on account of the nearness of his tomb to those of the other martyrs and identified him with the pope of the same name. The author of the "Liber Pontificalis" used the Acts for his notice of Urbanus. The Acts offer no other indication of the time of the martyrdom. Venantius Fortunatus (Miscellanea, 1, 20; 8,6) and Ado (Martyrology, 22 November) place the death of the saint in the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus (about 177), and De Rossi tried to prove this view as historically the surest one. In other Western sources of the early Middle Ages and in the Greek "Synaxaria" this martyrdom is placed in the persecution of Diocletian. P.A. Kirsch tried to locate it in the time of Alexander Severus (229-230); Aubé, in the persecution of Decius (249-250); Kellner, in that of Julian the Apostate (362). None of these opinion is sufficiently established, as neither the Acts nor the other sources offer the requisite chronological evidence. The only sure time-indication is the position of the tomb in the Catacomb of Callistus, in the immediate proximity of the very ancient crypt of the popes, in which Urbanus probably, and surely Pontianus and Anterus were buried. The earliest part of this catacomb dates at all events from the end of the second century; from that time, therefore, to the middle of the third century is the period left open for the martyrdom of St. Cecilia.

Her church in the Trastevere quarter of Rome was rebuilt by Paschal I (817-824), on which occasion the pope wished to transfer thither her relics; at first, however, he could not find them and believed that they had been stolen by the Lombards. In a vision he saw St. Cecilia, who exhorted him to continue his search, as he had already been very near to her, i.e. near her grave. He therefore renewed his quest; and soon the body of the martyr, draped in costly stuffs of gold brocade and with the cloths soaked in her blood at her feet, was actually found in the Catacomb of Prætextatus. They may have been transported thither from the Catacomb of Callistus to save them from earlier depredations of the Lombards in the vicinity of Rome. The relics of St. Cecilia with those of Valerianus, Tiburtius, and Maximus, also those of Popes Urbanus and Lucius, were taken up by Pope Paschal, and reburied under the high altar of St. Cecilia in Trastevere. The monks of a convent founded in the neighbourhood by the same pope were charged with the duty of singing the daily Office in this basilica. From this time the veneration of the holy martyr continued to spread, and numerous churches were dedicated to her. During the restoration of the church in the year 1599 Cardinal Sfondrato had the high altar examined and found under it the sarcophagi, with the relics of the saints, that Pope Paschal had transported thither. Recent excavations beneath the church, executed at the instigation and expense of Cardinal Rampolla, disclosed remains of Roman buildings, which have remained accessible. A richly adorned underground chapel was built beneath the middle aisle, and in it a latticed window, opening over the altar, allows a view of the receptacles in which the bones of the saints repose. In a side chapel of the church there have long been shown the remains of the bath in which, according to the Acts, Cecilia was put to death.

The oldest representations of St. Cecilia show her in the attitude usual for martyrs in the Christian art of the earlier centuries, either with the crown of martyrdom in her hand (e.g. at S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, in a sixth-century mosaic) or in the attitude of prayer, as an Orans (e.g. the two sixth and seventh-century pictures in her crypt). In the apse of her church in Trastevere is still preserved the mosaic made under Pope Paschal, wherein she is represented in rich garments as patroness of the pope. Medieval pictures of the saint are very frequent; since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries she is given the organ as an attribute, or is represented as playing on the organ, evidently to express what was often attributed to her in panegyrics and poems based on the Acts, viz., that while the musicians played at her nuptials she sang in her heart to God only ("cantantibus organis illa in corde suo soi domino decantabat"); possibly the cantantibus organis was erroneously interpreted of Cecilia herself as the organist. In this way the saint was brought into closer relation with music. When the Academy of Music was founded at Rome (1584) she was made patroness of the institute, whereupon her veneration as patroness of church music in general became still more universal; today Cecilian societies (musical associations) exist everywhere. The organ is now her ordinary attribute; with it Cecilia was represented by Raphael in a famous picture preserved at Bologna. In another magnificent masterpiece, the marble statute beneath the high altar of the above-mentioned church of St. Cecilia at Rome, Carlo Maderna represented her lying prostrate, just as she had received the death-blow from the executioner's hand. Her feast is celebrated in the Latin and the Greek Church on 22 November. In the "Martyrologium Hieronymainum" are commemorated other martyrs of this name, but of none of them is there any exact historical information. One suffered martyrdom in Carthage with Dativus in 304.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03471b.htm

(a) (f) (f) (l)
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-27-2004, 10:39 PM

POLICIES HOBBLE BROADBAND WEB, GROUP CONTENDS

By John Woolfolk, San Jose Mercury News

Free-market federal policies have led to high prices that have slowed the spread of high-speed Internet service in the United States, according to a report Tuesday by the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union.

The report, "Expanding the Digital Divide and Falling Behind in Broadband,'' blames Bush administration policies for allowing the nation to fall behind other industrial countries in broadband adoption among households.

"We've had this double-barreled failure -- a failure of high-speed Internet to penetrate at the rate that it has around the world, and a failure to close the gap between the haves and have-nots,'' said Mark Cooper, the consumer federation's research director.

A spokeswoman for Verizon, the nation's largest local phone service provider, said the company is aggressively expanding its high-speed Internet digital subscriber line service and that comparisons with countries whose governments may subsidize access are unfair.

`Increased our speeds'

"Over the past year we've lowered our prices, increased our speeds and expanded our deployment,'' said Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson, adding that the company's DSL Internet service has grown 52 percent over the past year to 2.9 million subscribers nationwide. ``Prices have never been lower or value better or deployment higher.''

Among the report's conclusions:

• While broadband adoption in the United States has tripled in the past three years, overall Internet penetration remains flat, with the percentage of households with any kind of Internet access stuck at about 60 percent. The report did not cite a figure for U.S. broadband adoption, but others have put it as high as 40 percent.

• Among 15 nations with the biggest broadband markets, the United States ranked 13th in market penetration in 2003. Leading the pack were South Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, Iceland and Taiwan, according to the ITU World Telecommunication Indicators database.

• Americans pay 20 times as much as the Japanese for broadband access. Quoting Business Week, the report says U.S. consumers pay about $35 a month for a 1.5-megabit-per-second connection, compared with about $25 a month in Japan for a 26 megabits a second. While half of American consumers with incomes over $75,000 a year have broadband access, half of those who earn less than $30,000 have no Internet service at all.

Making broadband access affordable and accessible to more people is important because the Internet is fast becoming an essential part of participation in American society, the report said. Those with narrow-band dial-up connections will be increasingly unable to make effective use of many Internet functions.

"Less able to engage"

"Those without the Internet at home are much less able to engage in information gathering, communications and political activities,'' the report said. Those with dial-up service engage in those activities 1.5 times as often as those who have no Internet connection, it said, while people with broadband service do so twice as often.

The consumer advocates say the Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Michael Powell has failed to apply strategies that were used to promote widespread telephone access to broaden Internet usage.

"Universal service'' policies made telephone usage ubiquitous by assuring affordable low rates for basic access, with higher fees for additional features. But the report said the FCC has "turned this approach on its head,'' allowing basic access costs to remain prohibitively high.

An FCC spokesman did not return phone calls Tuesday.

FCC actions have helped big cable and phone companies, the biggest Internet providers, to close their networks to competitors, keeping consumer costs high, the report said. By failing to treat high-speed Internet access as a regulated telecommunications service, the FCC has been unable to collect universal service funds from it to help make it affordable, it said.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10025760.htm

:( :| Thank goodness coulumists like this one gets the word out. Now if wireless including satellite technologies would get more robust and affordable so those preferring to live in the mountains, and other places way, way away from cities could virtually commute and work in peace and quiet.....gazing out at the lovely woods and creatures in nature..... (l)

(S) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-27-2004, 10:46 PM

By Dan Gillmor Posted on Wed, Oct. 27, 2004
Mercury News Technology Columnist

If you believe that political and social liberty go hand in hand with economic freedom -- and that they form an underpinning of a vibrant free market -- you should be worried about another four years like the four we've just had.

Let's grant that George W. Bush plainly believes in a free market, largely unconstrained by government intervention. But he has made it clear that he doesn't have the same devotion to other kinds of liberty.

He and his allies have used terrorism to launch a massive assault on civil liberties. They are not just indifferent to liberty, they are actively hostile to it.

Bush's first term has been a catalog of encroachments. He has expanded surveillance -- electronic and otherwise -- without adequate safeguards. He has had a mania for secrecy, shielding more and more government information from public view. This amounts to telling Americans they have no right in many cases to know how our money is being used or what government is doing in our names.

This president has curbed dissent through intimidation. His attorney general practically labeled as traitors people who questioned the outrageously named ``Patriot Act,'' for example. More recently, the Bush forces have excluded anyone who is not a declared supporter from being even in the vicinity of campaign events, and have even fenced off protesters in Orwellian ``free speech zones'' far from the scenes.

The Bush years have emboldened rights and privacy invaders everywhere. A national ID card is making a back-door entrance via a scheme by the state agencies that issue driver's licenses, for example.

He has given corporate interests carte blanche to buy, sell, massage and trade our most personal information -- mocking his vows in the 2000 campaign to be a president who would protect privacy.

The federal government now encourages (and buys) all kinds of data collection and ways to manipulate it, and offers barely a hint of safeguards. Do you imagine for even a second that the radio-chip ID implants being sold to track patients inside hospitals won't be used for much broader kinds of surveillance someday? Ditto the radio tags the government says it wants to put into our passports (and soon, no doubt, our driver's licenses). Surveillance is big business now.

Insidiously, the Bush administration has turned the corporate data mongers into partners in the dawning surveillance state. Evading even the most trivial safeguards, including federal laws protecting privacy, it buys or uses data collected by private companies that are under no such restrictions.

An intrusive airline passenger screening system, relying on commercial data and other information, was officially scrapped after protests. But as the Washington Post reported earlier this month, one of the former government officials behind that project has launched a private company that will collect and provide data for the project's new incarnation -- and established the company offshore in Bermuda, ``outside the reach of U.S. regulators.''

The most frightening assault on liberty has had nothing to do with the Patriot Act, surveillance or privacy. Bush has systematically ignored the law when it suited his purpose, treating the Constitution as a suggestion box, not the bedrock of liberty. He asserted the right to declare American citizens as enemy combatants here at home and to jail them indefinitely, with no right even to see a lawyer.

The Supreme Court, thankfully, rejected Bush's dictatorial views in two pivotal decisions earlier this year. But presidents nominate justices, and this one means to nominate the kind who will let the government do pretty much what it pleases.

Early last week, William Rehnquist, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, had surgery for thyroid cancer. His condition reminded people that whoever is president during the next four years will probably nominate three or four justices to the highest court.

A court with two, three or four judges of Bush's preference would not be friendly, on balance, to our rights as individuals. The president has made clear his intention to appoint judges who would overturn abortion rights. That, too, is a question of liberty.

Is John Kerry any better? He voted for the ``Patriot'' law, after all.

But while Bush vows to expand that law's reach over our lives, Kerry has said he would work to repeal some of the more odious provisions, such as the one that lets government agents rifle through our lives -- including what library books we read -- with few safeguards.

I believe that a free economy rests in large part on people's willingness to feel free -- to take chances, to be different from others. The surveillance state is a conformist state, where a fog of fear deadens initiative and the willingness to take risks.

No sane person wants to make law enforcement impotent. But risk is part of a free culture, and the more we clamp down on things that have any element of risk the more we clamp down on freedom itself.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10025762.htm

(*) (*) I hope that the same Navajo "wind talker" WWII verteran who blessed John Kerry at a rally today helps him win Tuesday November 2 like he did when the same Navajo blessed the Boston Red Sox earlier during baseball season before game, and look where they are tonight! Talk about miracles when you pray for and believe in them. (a) (*) (*)

Let's pray for a LANDSLIDE!

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-27-2004, 10:56 PM

ProgressivePunch is a non-partisan searchable database of Congressional voting records from a Progressive perspective. But we're convinced it's extremely useful irrespective of anyone's political positions.

http://www.voterpunch.org/

(*) (*) (*) One of my favorite sites: http://www.moveon.org/front/
Lots and lots of great links.

(S) (S) G'night, sweet dreams and may your biggest worry tomorrow be finding your slippers by the side of your bed. (k)

Bai Ling and Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-31-2004, 02:54 AM

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
-- Eric Hoffer

Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.
-- Frank Kafka

Stand like mountain; move like water.
-- Taoist proverb

To find yourself, you need the greatest possible freedom to drift.
-- Francis Bacon

While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.
-- Jorge Luis Borges

Say yes when nobody asked.
-- Lao proverb

(*) (*) Hello to my friends, (S) (S) yes, I'm up late working on a weekend evening.... (S)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

10-31-2004, 02:56 AM

Something political (although I couldn't figure out if there's a real point):

http://i.euniverse.com/funpages/cms_content/6019/bohemianrhapsody.swf

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:25 PM

Something not political (although I can't figure out why this ad was made):

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/nutrigrainad.html

(S) (S) Late night tonight with fingers crossed. I drove an hour each way to vote for Kerry and a few other Dems early this afternoon. No wait, no line at all, which surprised me.

I'll either be a happy camper tomorrow or start looking for places to live in Canada and elsewhere.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:27 PM

This link goes to a VERY revealing bit of video in which our current (and hopefully outgoing) President demonstrates a "one-fingered victory salute" (that's HIS term):

http://static.vidvote.com/movies/bushuncensored.mov

:o :| :o

(*) (*) Class act.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:28 PM

A more serious site:

http://iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/editorial39.htm

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:30 PM

Banana Republic Meets Politics (my favorite is the Cheney entry):

http://www.jestmag.com/3-5/banana.html

;) ;) (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:32 PM

SILLINESS OF THE WEEK

Rather versus Bush

Dan Rather, CBS News Anchor:

1) given documents he thought were true
2) failed to thoroughly investigate the facts
3) reported documents to the American people as true to make his case
4) when challenged, launched an investigation, quickly apologized
5) substance of the bogus documents appears to have been true anyway
6) cost to the world in lives and money: zero
7) Bush camp conclusion: should be fired as CBS News Anchor

George W. Bush, President of the United States:

1) given documents he thought were true
2) failed to thoroughly investigate the facts
3) reported documents to the American people as true to make his case
4) when challenged, stonewalled an investigation, never apologized
5) substance of the bogus documents appears to have been . . . bogus
6) cost to the world in lives and money: thousands and billions
7) Bush camp conclusion: four more years!

:| :|

Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:37 PM

Isabella d'Este 1474-1539
In the Renaissance times a Renaissance Woman was supposed to marry well, be loyal to her husband and give birth to boys. A Renaissance Man, on the other hand, had to be well-educated, have cultural grace, be a gentleman and understand the arts and sciences. He also had to have refinement, be of noble birth and have courage. Many women did not fit the mold of what they called a "Renaissance Woman." Many of them would fit in as more of a "Renaissance Man" or what we would call a "Renaissance Woman" in our day and age.

A prime example of this exception is Isabella d'Este.

BACKGROUND
Isabella d'Este was born in 1474 into the ruling family of Ferra. At the age of sixteen Isabella married Francesco Gonzaga. She then became the Marchioness of Mantua because Francesco was the Prince.
After the death of her husband, Isabella ruled Mantua alone. Isabella's father believed in the equality of men and women and so Isabella and her siblings were very well-educated. Isabella died at the age of sixty-four in 1539.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
At the age of sixteen, Isabella d'Este was able to speak Greek and Latin as well as play the lute, sing, dance and debate with people much older than her. She was very well-educated and her political talent benefited Mantua while she was ruling. When her husband left, Isabella governed the city on her own, and after he died she took over his whole job. She showed great leadership skills in 1509 when she became Chief of State in Mantua.

At this time she also founded a school for young women where they had to observe a strict code of morals. She was a patron of the Arts and she also set artistic fashions and standards. Isabella collected many paintings and statues. She also wrote over two thousand letters and in these she commented on everything from politics to war. That was the closest that any woman at that time ever got to writing history.

IMPACT
Isabella patronized and promoted the arts. She allowed writers, artists and poets to exchange their ideas in her home. While she was ruling, she set an example for women to break away from the traditional role of what women were supposed to be like. By doing this and many other things she was known as the "First Lady of the Renaissance."

http://www.yesnet.yk.ca/schools/projects/renaissance/renaissancewomen.html

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:40 PM

1519-1589
Catherine de Medici was born in Florence, Italy, 1519. She had a very troubled childhood. At only the young age of one, both of Catherine's parents died from a disease. The nuns where she lived, trained and disciplined her and as she grew older she became very well-educated. Catherine filled her library with numerous rare manuscripts. In 1533 her uncle, the Pope, arranged her marriage. For the first ten years of her marriage, Catherine was unable to produce children but finally she was able to. At the age of ten, one of her children became the King of France so she became the King's Regent, which enabled her to be Queen Regent. In January of the year,1589, Catherine died at the age of seventy.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Catherine de Medici was a major force in French politics, especially during the thirty years of the Roman Catholic-Huguenot wars. She ruled as a regent to her son and when he reached majority in 1563, Catherine dominated him.

Catherine was a Roman Catholic but when trying to create a balance with religions she sometimes agreed with the Huguenots. By doing this she created a policy of peace between the Catholics and the Protestants.

Under her influence, three of Catherine's sons became kings and she also arranged for her daughter to be married to the King of Spain in 1560.

Catherine had a great interest in architecture and she demonstrated this with her authority over the building of the new wing of the Louvre Museum, the construction of the Tuilleries Gardens, and the building of the Chateau Monceau.

IMPACT
Catherine de Medici was a great patron of the arts. In being this she helped the Renaissance flourish.

Isabella d'Este and Catherine de Medici had some female qualities that people of that era believed were necessary, but are also examples of what we call true "Renaissance Women."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. "Catherine de Medici." Encarta 1996 Encyclopedia CD-ROM. Microsoft Corporation, 1995.
2. [http://www.est.gov.bc.ca/equity/ac5.html]. "Catherine de Medici." 1997.

3. Swanson, Charles. "Catherine de Medici." Encyclopedia Britannica, 1768, vol. 2, pp. 954-955.

4. Trager, James. The Women's Chronology. New York, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1994, pp. 115.

5. Yoder, Carolyn. Introducton To The Renaissance

(*) (*) The Renaissance Period (1350-1550) was the transition period between the Medieval Era and the modern world. The word renaissance means "revival" or "rebirth".

This was a period of great achievements in the arts and sciences combined with deep religious concerns.

The Renaissance became one of the most productive periods in all history. (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:42 PM

The RWO collection is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of a larger project which is documented on this site in detail. We would like to thank all the scholars who have helped us with this project and given generously of their time and expertise.

http://www.wwp.brown.edu/texts/rwoentry.html

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-02-2004, 09:52 PM

http://www.baronage.co.uk/bphtm-02/moa-09.html

(o) Well, this lady is off to take Doc for his walk and find that book I've been reading on the Continental Divide and rad for a few hours yet tonight. May tonorrow's morning's news be music to your ears. (8) (8)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-03-2004, 09:00 AM

Same-sex marriage bans winning on state ballots
Wednesday, November 3, 2004 Posted: 2:07 AM EST (0707 GMT)

(CNN) -- Six months after gay and lesbian couples won the right to marry in Massachusetts, opponents of same-sex marriage struck back Tuesday, with voters in 11 states approving constitutional amendments codifying marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution.

Voters in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah all approved anti-same-sex marriage amendments by double-digit margins.

The closest race came in Oregon, where gay rights groups concentrated much of their effort and money and thought they had the best chance of winning. Opponents of the amendment raised about $2.8 million, enough to run TV and radio ads in the Beaver State and outspend pro-amendment forces, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Yet, in the end, the amendment passed by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent.

In the remaining states, the amendments passed with 60 percent of the vote or more, with the margin at a whopping 86 percent in Mississippi.

The push to amend state constitutions to ban same-sex marriage gained steam in May, after gay men and lesbians were granted the right to marry in Massachusetts, thanks to the state's Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled that laws restricting marriage to heterosexuals violated the state constitution.

In the wake of that ruling, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered his city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, saying the California constitution also did not allow such distinctions to be made. Local officials in a number of other states, including Oregon and New York, followed his controversial lead.

The California Supreme Court later ruled that Newsom had overstepped his authority, although the legal fight over the larger constitutional question has yet to be resolved.

As the backlash grew, opponents of gay and lesbian marriage, including many religious conservatives, moved quickly to put amendments on state ballots to short-circuit similar rulings from courts sympathetic to the argument that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples was discriminatory.

"Millions of people understand that it's not bigotry to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and it's not right-wing to think that children need a mother and a father, not two mothers and two fathers," said Gary Bauer, president of American Values, a group opposed to same-sex marriage.

Opponents of gay and lesbian marriage are also pushing a federal constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage nationwide, though it failed to gain the needed two-thirds majority to pass when it came up for votes in both the House and Senate.

The federal amendment became an issue in the presidential race, with President Bush supporting the measure and Sen. John Kerry opposing it. Despite their differences over the amendment, both Kerry and Bush were on record opposing same-sex marriage and supporting civil unions, and Kerry has said he is not opposed to state constitutional bans.

With polls showing strong public opposition to same-sex marriage, groups fighting Tuesday's ballot measures conceded from the beginning that theirs was an uphill fight -- but they embraced the silver lining that the ballot measures were at least an opportunity to debate the issue.

"Public opinion does not change overnight," said Joan Garry, executive director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "We all know from personal experience you do not change somebody's mind on something they feel personally about without arguing about it."

In eight of the 11 states that voted Tuesday, the constitutional amendments contain additional language that opponents said could also ban civil unions and other legal protections for gay and lesbian people, though proponents in some of those states disputed those claims. The states are Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah.

The measure approved in Oklahoma Tuesday went one step further by making it a misdemeanor crime to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, a pre-emptive shot against any local officials who might want to follow in Newsom's footsteps.

Earlier this year, voters in Missouri and Louisiana also approved amendments banning same-sex marriage, although a judge in Louisiana later struck down that state's measure because of flawed ballot language. The state has appealed that ruling.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/02/ballot.samesex.marriage/index.html

(*) (*) Got the save the list of states so I know where *not* to move. Also, Alaska is still on my list of places to visit, but it's such a red state as in republican, I couldn't live there. <sigh> Thinking about a visit again to Canada and maybe a summer visit to see how cold the Australian winters are in various places down-under! (l) (*) (*)

Sadly,
:( Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-03-2004, 09:02 AM

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/bop/

(w) (w) :( ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-03-2004, 09:09 AM

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010985.shtml#010985
posted by Dan Gillmor 01:21 AM www.siliconvalley.com

The networks, falling into line under pressure from the Republicans, have all but declared a Bush victory. If the numbers hold up, as they seem likely to do, that will be accurate.

The Republicans have almost certainly expanded their congressional majority. (As I write, the Republican in South Dakota has declared himself victor without all the votes all being counted.) There is nothing good about this election for the Democrats.

More tomorrow. But I sign off with this thought: We will not recognize America in four more years. That will make half of America giddy. It will terrify the other half.

(*) (*) (*) "We will not recognize America in four more years. That will make half of America giddy.It will terrify the other half." (*) (*) (*)

:| Well said Dan. Now what does the one-half who voted for Kerry and other liberal DEmocrats yesterday need to do to live in such a divided nation? :|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-03-2004, 09:17 AM

November 03, 2004

Unhappy with the way the polls are going tonight in the US? Dismayed at the thought of another four years of Bush? Ok, that's fine and understandable, I'm still hoping for all of the uncalled states to pull Democrat myself, just to get a change.

All said and done, if you're unhappy with the federal results, make a difference locally then. Concentrate on who is representing you in your state legislature, your county commission, your town hall, your schools. That will have much more of an impact on you than federal. If you want change, it needs to start locally and build nationally - swap out Congress & the Senate, that will make more of a difference than the chief executive.

Write your congressman and senators, explain clearly and politely what concerns you have over our national policies - they are the ones that change the course of this country. Encourage your friends and such to do the same. Make your voices heard. Be polite, be civil. Shrill and over the top will only lose you credibility with people who don't share your opinions. Polite and civil will bring more people to think about what you're trying to say and possibly change their own minds instead of concentrating on the over the top messenger instead of the actual message.

Don't whine that someone who does not share your opinion was able to make their voice heard, don't dismiss their opinions as being invalid just because you don't agree with them. Don't be an elitist fuckwad who insists that only their viewpoint is valid and anyone who feels otherwise is just a sheep following propaganda blindly. Respect others viewpoints until you've heard them out, then decide whether they're valid or not. I've spoken with airheads from both sides of the political spectrum, who don't think for themselves but follow blindly what whomever is speaking at the moment says.

Right now we need to have more respect for each other, no matter what our differences of opinion. I truly feel we've lost that in the last few years. Both sides do their best to demonize the other without acknowledging that different viewpoints can still be valid. I truly believe that the majority of our society still understands compromise and respect for other viewpoints, the need to be civil and agree to be different. A common complaint is that 'the blablablahs started it' - it doesn't matter who began it, we do not need to follow the slide into mud. We can be better than that.

Change happens slowly. Don't give up hope, and don't give up civility. Don't turn a blind eye to the wrongs the people on "your side" are doing by justifying that the other side is doing worse. Slime is slime and the people of this country deserve better than to be coated in it.

(*) (*) This has to be one of the most stable, calm and best-written replies to Dan's post (my previous post here on this B-F thread). I don't feel like the writer of the above suggestions does (yet), but the ideas seem to be the right things to do in order to start moving on, in my view. (*) (*)

(o) Got to go. Have a smooth Wednesday everyone. (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-04-2004, 05:30 PM

After the election results were final, I, like many Americans, felt a
profound sense of despair and hopelessness. How could this have
happened?

This was not about fighting some evil cabal in the White House. It was
not about Bush/Cheney/Rove. It was about the American people choosing to
leave power with a clearly corrupt government, in spite of the debacle of the
last four years.

And then I saw the exit polls: the two top reasons people voted for
Bush were terrorism and “moral values.” It became clear to me that a
significant reason for Bush’s victory was the rise of fundamentalist religions in
this country.

At first I didn’t know how to respond – if so many in this country are
casting their vote based on what I consider to be primitive belief
systems, maybe it was time for me to move elsewhere. Many friends echoed that feeling. Part of me felt like throwing in the towel: "You made your
bed, America, now sleep in it."

But then I thought that perhaps this election was a wake-up call. It
suddenly became clear to me that battle lines had been drawn. Those of
us who feel that government, (indeed, people in general), should make
decisions based on reason and enlightenment are being challenged by those who think decisions should be based almost entirely on religious beliefs.

And it goes beyond that. I also believe that fundamentalist belief
systems are inherently damaging to the individual and to society. I know this
because I once was a born-again Christian (I even prayed in tongues).
I know that when you lead your life based on a rigid set of beliefs that
allow for no questioning or individual thought, things become “clear” in
dangerous ways – it’s one of the reasons Islamic fundamentalists have been able to recruit terrorists to do the horrible things they’ve done. And make no
mistake: fundamentalists in America are enacting their own form of
terrorism, albeit without physical violence.

We all know that the fundamentalist movement is growing in America:
we’ve seen creationism being debated again, after it was consigned to the ash heap decades ago; powerful political organizations being formed by the likes of Pat Robertson; media “watchdog” groups like Focus on the Family having a huge impact on what we are allowed to see on TV; Halloween “Hell
Houses” around the country that use high-tech theater to scare teens into
thinking that homosexuality and abortion rights lead to eternal hellfire; the
list goes on and on.

A 1997 poll found that 43% of Americans who believe in heaven also
believe there are harps in heaven:

http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/never.html

The possibility that those people are taking over our country is
frightening. If this movement continues to snowball, it could throw us
back into another Dark Ages. The Age of Reason could be coming to an end,
replaced by an Age of “Faith” – rigid, uncompromising, intolerant faith
that leaves no room for enlightened debate or discussion.

So what do we do?

I know what I’ve decided. From this day forward, a major portion of my
activism will be dedicated toward stopping the march of fundamentalism
in this country, because that movement affects all the activism we work
on: AIDS, abortion rights, women’s rights, anti-war movements, homophobia,
racism, etc.

Those of us in the other half of the country need to realize that this
is war. They’ve known it for years and have even said as much. But we’ve
been too timid to call it as we see it, for fear of sounding elitist and
trampling on people’s right to their beliefs.

But I’m saying it now: fundamentalism, whether Christian, Jewish or
Muslim, is dangerous and wrong. It prevents people from doing what we are all here to do: to learn, to grow, to become more enlightened. Rigid,
confining, strict belief systems are strangling individuals and this country. We haveto fight back.

And while I have no desire to outlaw or suppress any religion, I have a
deep desire to promote clear thinking and reason, and I now dedicate myself
to fighting any belief system that prevents the human race from moving
forward. Anything less, and we risk a return to the Dark Ages, when
superstition and magic prevailed over science and reasoning.

This is not a call for a war on spirituality or organized religion. It
is a call to stop the kind of fundamentalism that reduces people to sins
rather than seeing them as human beings. It is a call to arms against the
same kind of "moralism" that used the bible to support slavery and the
oppression of women.

Where do we start? I don't know. But we have to start talking about
it, even though we know the response will be swift and strong. If you
agree with me, please forward this email to friends and email lists - add
yourcomments at the beginning if you like.

Let’s start the discussion - maybe we can turn this increasingly
"faith-based" country back into a reality-based one.

(*) (*) BRAVO to the author!! I have felt so completely down about Kerry's loss and that while at the vet's late yesterday afternoon, that Doc has cancer (this time it *is* cancer) yesterday - this email gave me some much needed hope. He'll have surgery, but geez, he had a lump and surgery this past April.... :( And now another one in two weeks. He is my life preserver and keeps me sane. I feel very afraid of losing him.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-05-2004, 02:23 PM

I highly recommend reading Michael Moore's November 5th note, "17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists":

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

(*) (*) Stay with it to the end, Michael Moore lists ALL of the dead from Irag, and then created a photo of our village idiot in the White House from photos of those dead military people. (f) (f)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-05-2004, 06:45 PM

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
-- Langston Hughes

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
-- Henry David Thoreau

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end -- but not necessarily in that order.
-- Jean-Luc Godard

What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside you.
-- Wayne Dyer

Marlys sends this quote from an unknown sage:
Time flies like an arrow,
Fruit flies like a banana.

(*) (*) ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-05-2004, 06:58 PM

http://www.columbia.edu/~rhee/

(*) (*) TOO FUNNY!! (h) For all of those familiar with Adobe Photoshop? What a field day! Enjoy.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-05-2004, 07:23 PM

A bus carrying only ugly people crashes into an oncoming truck and
everyone inside dies. When they get to meet their Maker, because of
the grief they have experienced, He decides to grant them one wish each
before they enter Heaven.

They're all lined up, and God asks the first one what her wish is. "I
want to be gorgeous." So God snaps His fingers, and it is done. The second
one in line hears this and says, "I want to be gorgeous too." Another snap
of His fingers and the wish is granted.

This goes on for a while with each one asking to be gorgeous but when
God is halfway down the line, the last guy in the line starts laughing.
When there are only ten people left, this guy is rolling on the floor,
laughing his head off..

Finally, God reaches this last guy and asks him what his wish will be.
The guy eventually calms down and says: "Make 'em all ugly again."

So, the next time you are last in line...smile!

(*) (*) :o :| Isn't that the best??

Love,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-07-2004, 09:29 AM

Barry Ritholtz has compiled a great collection of election maps. The most important message: Land area does not equate to people.

At left, for example, is a reduced version of another useful way to look at the polling results. The Republicans won, but this is more evenly divided nation than the geographic county and state maps suggest.

Barry has collected links to lots of other informative maps as well. It's useful to have perspective.

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010996.shtml#010996

(*) (*) WE all knew that the northeast, Great Lakes states and WA, OR and CA were "blue". Interesting map and links. (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-07-2004, 09:31 AM

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2004/11/weve_gone_map_c.html

(*) (*) (*) Talk about links to all kinds of maps, video, music, etc. (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-07-2004, 09:41 AM

posted by Dan Gillmor 07:18 AM

Kerry has conceded, properly so. And now we're onto the next four years.

The Republicans have an even stronger congressional majority. They have shown how gladly ruthless they can be in using their power. Bush and his allies have never believed in compromise. They have even less incentive to govern from the middle now, even though the nation remains bitterly divided.

There's no secret about what's coming. We don't have that excuse this time.

Here comes more fiscal recklessness -- as we widen the chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, cementing a plutocracy into our national fiber, we'll pay our national bills on the Treasury Bill credit card for the next few years. Many economists expect a Brazil-like financial crisis to hit the U.S. before the end of the decade. If we muddle our way though the near term, we'll still have left our kids with the bill.

Here comes an expansion of the American empire abroad, a fueling of fear and loathing elsewhere on the globe. This is also unsustainable in the end. Empire breeds disrespect.

Our civil liberties will shrink drastically. This president and his top allies in Congress fully support just one amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Say goodbye to abortion rights in most states. Roe v. Wade will fall after this president pushes three or four Scalia and Thomas legal clones onto the Supreme Court. Say hello, meanwhile, to a much more intrusive blending of church and state.

The environment? We'll be nostalgic for Ronald Reagan's time in office.

This is not sour grapes. This is reality.

I hope, but doubt, that the Democrats re-discover enough of their collective spine to block the most extreme moves. If they do it'll be a change for a party that stands for so little these days.

People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three.

One is Bush's America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian "conservatives," corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state.

Another is the Democratic "left": wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking.

I suspect there's a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored -- or made worse -- by those in power today.

That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010986.shtml#010986

(*) (*) Bravo to Dan! The San Jose Mercury News definitely has brave editors and publisher. I hope this columnists voice is never silenced. There should be more like him.....and not up at the Canadian Globe and Mail. HERE is the U.S. (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-07-2004, 09:56 AM

Different for Girls (1996) Rated R
Karl Foyle (Steven Mackintosh) and Paul Prentice (Rupert Graves) were boyhood friends back in the 1970s, but when they run into each other in present-day London, they learn that a lot has changed since then. Karl has become Kim and has no desire to go back to her past, while Paul is just an aging punk with a dead-end job. As they rekindle their friendship and romantic sparks begin to fly, their relationship becomes much deeper than they expected.
Starring: Rupert Graves, Steven Mackintosh
Director: Richard Spence
Genre: Comedy

(*) (*) (*) (*) I REALLY liked this marvelous comedy. I not only enjoyed the storyline and characters, but was surprised at how careful Kim needed to be. Don't want to spoil the movie by saying more. This one is a gem that I'd love to watch again with someone. (*) (*)

Antonia's Line (1995) Rated R
Winner of the 1995 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and many other prestigious international honors, Antonio's Line is the remarkable story of a woman who builds a new life with her daughter in a quiet Dutch village after World War II. Earthy, sexy, romantic and filled with laughter and warmth, it's a joyous, multi-generational celebration of simple pleasures and enduring passions.
Starring: Willeke Van Ammelroy, Els Dottermans
Director: Marleen Gorris
Genre: Foreign
Format: Full Screen, More
Language: Dutch
Subtitles: English
Awards: Academy Award Winner

(*) (*) (*) Excellent story, definitely can see why it won an Academy Award. There's a lesbian subplot between two characters as well as several very strong women characters. (*) (*)

Little Voice (1998) Rated R
Telephone repairman Ewan McGregor and music promoter Michael Caine play second fiddle to Little Voice (Jane Horrocks), a young woman whose beautiful pipes could pack a thousand cabarets. Trouble is, she can only sing along to records in her room. This British charmer was a sleeper hit among the indie set thanks to its winning mix of romance, hope and humor.
Starring: Brenda Blethyn, Jane Horrocks, Michael Caine
Director: Mark Herman
Genre: Comedy
Format: Widescreen, More
Awards: Academy Award Nominee

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) What blew me away was that Little Voice or LV played by Jane Horrocks actually DID the impressions of Judy Garland, Marlilyn and others. I thought she was lip-synching until the end where the credits say that Jane did all of the singing and impressions herself. THAT's amazing especially when she plays such a meek character who hardly ever speaks. Another one to see again with someone. (*) (*) (*)

(o) Well, to the New York Times for awhile and then out for a drive with Doc the boxer. Not too many leaves left after the wind the past two days.

({) (}) Have a lovely Sunday afternoon.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-08-2004, 09:45 PM

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
Widower Tao Chu, Taiwan's most famous chef, struggles with accepting his three daughters' newfound appetite for boys, an interest that begins to break the family apart with hilarious and often touching results.
Starring: Sihung Lung, Yu-Wen Wang, More
Director: Ang Lee
Genre: Foreign
Format: Widescreen
Language: Mandarin
Subtitles: English
Awards: Academy Award Nominee

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) If you loved "Tortilla Soup", this was the film that it was based on, and although it had subtitles, it was exquisite! Another film to add someday to my collection and watch with someone special. The food preparation was lush and sensual. (k) (k) <fanning myself> ;)

(o) <sigh> Long day today with writing and got some assignments posted. Got a big paper to finish and post hopefully by Wednesday sometime. I posted a 12 page presentation today, so at least that's out of the way for the week, except for replying to feedback.

I have to say that netflix's films have turned out to be a sensational way to take breaks from work and graduate work. Especically when I pick some absolute winners!

Have a warm, cozy evening all.

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-10-2004, 10:41 AM

THE "F" WORD: WHEN IS @#$% ACCEPTABLE?

There are only eleven times in history where the "F" word has been considered
acceptable for use.

They are as follows:

11. "What the @#$% do you mean we are sinking?"
-- Capt. E.J. Smith of RMS Titanic, 1912

10. "What the @#$% was that?" -- Mayor Of Hiroshima, 1945

9. "Where did all those @#$%ing Indians come from?" -- Custer, 1877

8. "Any @#$%ing idiot could understand that." -- Einstein, 1938

7. "It does so @#$%ing look like her!" -- Picasso, 1926

6. "How the @#$% did you work that out?" --Pythagorus, 126 B.C.

5. "You want WHAT! on the @#$%ing ceiling? -- Michelangelo, 1566

4. "Where the @#$% are we?" -- Amelia Earhart, 1937

3. "Scattered @#$%ing showers, my ass!" -- Noah, 4314 BC

2. "Aw c'mon. Who the @#$% is going to find out?" --Bill Clinton, 1999

and............. (a drum roll)...................finally......

1. "Geez, I didn't think they'd get this @%#*ing mad."
-- Sadaam Hussein, 2003

(*) (*) (*) ;) ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-10-2004, 10:45 AM

Is that a bananna in your pocket or are you just happy to see me. Nevermind ... If you're travelling to London in the coming months, stay away from Heathrow's Terminal 4. Otherwise you risk being paraded through a body scanner that creates a "naked" image of those who pass through it. According to travellers, the clarity of the image the device produces is a bit unsettling. "I was quite shocked by what I saw," said one traveller. "I felt a bit embarrassed looking at the image.""It was really horrible," said another. "It doesn't leave much to the imagination because you're virtually naked, but I guess it's less intrusive than being hand searched."

www.siliconvalley.com
Published: Monday November 8, 2004

(*) (*) What next? ;)

Stay warm,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-10-2004, 10:49 AM

In Mourning Slain Filmmaker, Dutch Confront Limitations of Their Tolerance

November 10, 2004 By CRAIG S. SMITH

AMSTERDAM, Nov. 9 - Anger percolated through the crowd
gathered Tuesday night outside the funeral for the Dutch
filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed a week ago on an
Amsterdam street by a man the police described as a Muslim
extremist.

That anger is adding new fuel to a public debate over
conservative Islam in Europe's most liberal society, one
that had already become a no-holds-barred affair even
before the killing of Mr. van Gogh, who had repeatedly used
epithets against Muslims. His killing has polarized the
country, giving the rest of Europe a disturbing glimpse of
what may be in store if relations with the Continent's
growing immigrant communities are not managed more adeptly.

Officials suspect that a fire at an Islamic elementary
school on Tuesday in Uden, in the south, was arson, part of
what the Dutch authorities fear are reprisals after Mr. van
Gogh's killing, The Associated Press reported. It said the
authorities had reported that Muslim sites had been the
target of a half-dozen attacks in the past week.

In what seemed to be retaliation, arsonists tried to burn
down Protestant churches in Rotterdam, Utrecht and
Amersfoort for the bombing of a Muslim elementary school in
Eindhoven on Monday, The Associated Press quoted the police
as saying.

The attacks have scratched the patina of tolerance on which
the Dutch have long prided themselves, particularly here,
in a city where the scent of hashish trails in the air,
prostitutes beckon from red-lighted storefront brothels and
Hells Angels live side by side with Hare Krishnas. But many
Dutch now say that for years that the tradition of
tolerance had suppressed an open debate about the
challenges of integrating conservative Muslims.

Jan Colijn, 46, a bookkeeper from the central Dutch town of
Gorinchem, who was at the funeral, complained that the
generous Dutch social welfare system had allowed Muslim
immigrants to isolate themselves. Because of that trend,
"there is a kind of Muslim fascism emerging here," he said.
"The government must find a way to break these communities
open."

Another man, who declined to give his name, was more
succinct: "Now, it's war."

For many years, such criticism of Islam and Islamic
customs, even among Dutch extremists, was considered taboo,
despite deep frustrations that had built up against
conservative Islam.

Many here say this began to change after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, when the Netherlands, like many
countries, began seriously to consider the dangers of
political Islam. The debate fueled an anti-immigration
movement and helped propel the career of Pim Fortuyn, a
populist politician who was killed by an environmental
activist shortly before national elections in 2002.

By all accounts here, Mr. Fortuyn's killing removed any
remaining brakes on the debate surrounding immigrants.

"After Pim Fortuyn's murder, there were no limitations on
what you could say," said Edwin Bakker, a terrorism expert
at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations in
The Hague. "It has become a climate in which insulting
people is the norm."

He and others said the public discourse, even among members
of government, had reached an extraordinary pitch and
included language that went far beyond the limits set for
public forums in the United States.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, member of Parliament and one of a handful
of politicians threatened with death by Islamic extremists,
publicly called the Prophet Muhammad a "pervert" and a
"tyrant." She made a film with Mr. van Gogh condemning
sexual abuse among Muslim women, who were portrayed with
Koranic verses written on their bare skin.

Mr. van Gogh himself was one of the most outspoken critics
of fundamentalist Muslims and favored an epithet for
conservative Muslims that referred to bestiality with a
goat. He used the term often in his public statements,
including a column he wrote for a widely read free
newspaper and during radio broadcasts and television
appearances.

The cumulative effect made Mr. van Gogh, a distant relation
of Vincent van Gogh, a kind of cult clown on one side of
the debate, and a reviled hatemonger on the other. The
debate became so caustic that the Dutch intelligence
service issued a report in March warning that the
unrestrained language could encourage radicalization of the
country's Muslim youth and drive people into the arms of
terrorist recruiters. The conservative Islamic revival that
has swept the Arab world from the Middle East to North
Africa in recent years has reached Europe, where frustrated
second- and third-generation Arab immigrants frequently say
they feel rejected by European society.

While only about 20 percent of the estimated 900,000
Muslims in the Netherlands practice their religion,
according to one government study, officials say as many as
5 percent of Muslims in the country follow a conservative
form of Islam. Most, like Muhammad Bouyeri, the 26-year-old
arrested by police in Mr. van Gogh's killing, are from the
country's Moroccan community.

There are about 300,000 people of Moroccan descent in the
Netherlands today. The ratcheting up of the
anti-immigration debate has alienated many of them from
Dutch society and, many people argue, helped fragment
Muslims here.

Jean Tillie, a professor of political science at the
University of Amsterdam, said the debate had broken down a
network that connected even the most extremist Muslim
groups to the more moderate Muslim voices. He cited an
Amsterdam government advisory board that brought together
Moroccans and fostered communication and cohesion among all
Muslims.

"Those groups participating didn't agree with each other,
but they met together with the collective mission of
advising the city government," he said.

The board was abolished a year ago, he said, as a result of
the anti-immigration debate. He said that financing for
other ethnic organizations had shrunk and that outreach
policies had also been abandoned.

As a result, Mr. Tillie said, there has been a sharp
decline in political participation and trust among Muslims
in the Netherlands and between Muslims and the broader
Dutch society.

"That worries me," he said. "When you break the networks,
the extremists within these communities become isolated and
become more radical and more violent."

At El Tawheed mosque, considered by many people here to be
the epicenter of militancy in Amsterdam, Farid Zaari, the
mosque's spokesman, argued that pressure from the debate
has hindered the Muslim community's ability to control its
militant youth.

"If we bring these people into the mosque, it is possible
to change their thoughts, but few mosques dare to because
if you do, you're branded," he said.

Dutch news reports say that Mr. van Gogh's killer attended
the mosque, and though Mr. Zaari said the mosque has no
record of him ever being there, he said that political
leaders and the news media should encourage the mosque to
reach out to militant Muslim youth, rather than
stigmatizing it for doing so.

"If they come now," he added, "everyone says, 'Look, the
mosque is extremist, and they are plotting something
there.' "

Bearded, robed men file in and out of the lobby of the
modest brick building that once housed a school. The mosque
has been under intense scrutiny for years, suspected of
harboring an anti-Western agenda.

It was previously associated with a Saudi-based charity, Al
Haramain, which American and Saudi Arabian officials
accused earlier this year of aiding Islamic terrorists. The
mosque has since severed its ties with the charity, but
more recently it has been criticized for selling books
espousing extremist views, including female genital cutting
and the punishment of homosexuals by throwing them off tall
buildings.

Several legislators have called for the mosque to be shut
down, but under the Dutch Constitution it is difficult to
do.

Mr. Zaari admits Muslims have been slow to respond to the
fears within Dutch society. "We didn't feel it was our
responsibility to bridge the gap, but now, with the murder,
the gap has gotten wider," he said.

"All of us want to begin a dialogue now, but the language
of the political right is too extreme, and that's
preventing discussion," he said. "We all have to cool down
and be careful what we say."

The problem is how to bridge a gap that has yawned
dangerously since Mr. van Gogh's killing.

The Amsterdam Council of Churches published paid notices in
some Dutch newspapers pledging solidarity with Muslims. But
the government's response has been to promise more money to
fight terrorism and to adopt stronger immigration laws.

"Islam is the most hated word in the country at this
point," said Mr. Bakker, the terrorism expert.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/international/europe/10dutch.html?ex=1101102322&ei=1&en=1640bc278bbb60d0

(*) My goodness, even the most openly tolerant country in the world.....and I imagined moving there or an extended visit would be the perfect antidote to the village idiot getting relected here in the U.S. Hmmm, maybe Australia? :|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-14-2004, 05:10 PM

Shadowlands (1993)
A divorced New York woman (Debra Winger) and well-known children's author CS Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) become romantically entwined in this story about their ill-fated May-December love affair. This big-screen adaptation of William Nicholson's play -- based on Lewis's real life -- is a true tearjerker.
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger
Director: Richard Attenborough
Genre: Drama
Format: Widescreen
Language: French, English

(*) (*) (*) (*) I REALLY liked this one. Sir Anthony is always a favorite, and the English countryside at Oxford and elsewhere are breathtaking. I really liked the story. Wish I could teach at a such an old (built during medieval times) university! (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-14-2004, 05:13 PM

The Whole World is Watching!

http://72.3.131.10/gallery/141/

(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) This is truly one of the absolutely BEST five star URLs that I have found to date. There are so many photos there, it will take you hours to see them all. I promise many smiles when you take a trip to this virtual destination... ;) Especially to folks like me who voted and were so bummed out two weeks ago. This will make you better for sure. (l) (l) It is way, way cool.

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-15-2004, 05:30 PM

By Michael Bazeley

Mercury News

Remember the Hollywood dot-coms?

DEN, Pop.com, Z.com. During the boom, everyone in Hollywood wanted a piece of the Internet, convinced it was the next incubator and distribution channel for short films, animation and other original content.

It didn't happen. Most Hollywood new media ventures flopped like bad movies.

Now, though, Hollywood and the Internet might be ready to resume their love affair.

Sunnyvale Internet portal Yahoo hired former ABC chairman Lloyd Braun -- the man behind the hit show ``Desperate Housewives'' -- two weeks ago and asked him to develop stronger relationships with Hollywood. Yahoo is reportedly talking to producers and others about making original content that could be shown exclusively on its network of Web sites.

One hurdle that doomed the Hollywood-Internet convergence in 1990s -- the dearth of high-speed Internet connections in homes -- has largely been cleared, with broadband reaching at least 20 percent of households and growing. But Hollywood has yet to prove its products can leap straight to the Internet, broadband notwithstanding.

If companies such as Yahoo are going make it pay off, they will need to be more clever than their predecessors. One unanswered question is whether to charge users for content or try to attract enough viewers to appeal to advertisers.

``To me, a lot of this feels like 1998 all over again,'' said Richard Wolpert, chief strategy officer at RealNetworks and former president of Disney Online. ``Everybody was pushing this, thinking it was the next frontier. I think it's still premature.''

Few outsiders know the content-acquisition strategy Yahoo is pursuing. So far it has refused to talk about its plans.

But Yahoo's executive ranks are filled with Hollywood refugees. Chief Executive Terry Semel was a Warner Bros. executive for two decades. Jim Moloshok, Yahoo's senior vice president of entertainment and content acquisition, also came from Warner Bros., as did Jeff Weiner, a senior vice president who heads the company's Internet search efforts.

Yahoo has forged marketing alliances with several entertainment companies, such as Walt Disney, Artisan Pictures and NBC Universal. And it operates the Web site for the show ``Entertainment Tonight.''

But those kinds of deals are far different from providing robust, original content on the Web. If Yahoo is indeed trying to cut deals for original content, it is doing so against a backdrop of failures and false starts, including its own.

One of the more spectacular disasters involved a company called Digital Entertainment Network, which attracted Hollywood executives and directors to work there creating original Web-based programming. Companies such as Microsoft invested millions, but it folded in 2000.

Another high-profile effort in 2000 to get Web users to pay to watch short programs and films -- Pop.com -- fizzled before it got its first mouse-click, even with backing from star directors Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard and a $50 million investment by billionaire Paul Allen.

Yahoo has had some flubs of its own, including an online business channel called Finance Vision and Yahoo Platinum, which featured video and audio content from TV shows. Both services are defunct.

``The ideas were right, the timing was just wrong,'' said David Wertheimer, who started an online media company called WireBreak Networks that no longer exists. ``We were just too early.''

But the tide could be turning. One area where Yahoo appears to have been successful is offering original content that complements television shows or movies.

Yahoo announced Friday a cross-promotional deal with Warner Bros. for the upcoming movie ``Oceans Twelve'' that embeds contest clues into several of the portal's Web pages.

And earlier this year, Yahoo created a ``microsite'' built around ``The Apprentice,'' the reality show starring Donald Trump. The site contains interactive polls, contestant profiles and outtakes. NBC promotes Yahoo's HotJobs service during its show, and Yahoo promotes the show on its site.

``That's the kind of stuff that plays to their strengths. That's the kind of stuff that works,'' said JupiterResearch analyst David Card. ``That's complementary to TV. That's probably a prototype for a lot of deals.''

A more aggressive foray by Yahoo into original programming could be trickier. One lesson from the entertainment industry's failed online ventures is that content for TV and movies doesn't typically translate well to a desktop PC.

``Online is not television,'' said Jim Banister, managing director at Spectrum MediaWorks in Los Angeles. ``The nature of the narrative is different.''

Banister partnered with Moloshok and Weiner at Warner Bros. in the late 1990s to create a Web site called Entertaindom.com. Its goal was to use the Internet as an incubator for original content, such as short films and animation. AOL folded the site after it acquired Time Warner.

``People in television are used to dealing with a three-act structure,'' said Banister, who wrote a book about media convergence called ``Word of Mouse -- The New Age of Networked Media.''

``It's different for the Internet. The idea was to find the three-act story structure and find what it was for online. No one has really done that.''

Wolpert, of RealNetworks, agrees.

``TV still works really, really well, and with TiVo, it works even better,'' he said. ``To simply take a linear entertainment experience and put it online does not do much to enhance the experience. Just taking highlights or samples of an episode and posting it on the Web is not that interesting.''

There are other types of original content, however, that might work for Yahoo. It could air exclusive videos or animated shorts -- perhaps featuring celebrities -- that promote movies, TV shows or other products across its vast network of sites and services, leveraging the popularity of existing brands. Video interviews with celebrities could promote its entertainment site. Live online events that tie into TV shows could draw users.

Yahoo already does this to a degree with its movies section, which features sometimes exclusive trailers and clips.

Banister says companies need to realize that the way people consume entertainment has changed: They expect a less-passive, more-interactive experience. He points to the Subservient Chicken, an edgy, interactive video produced for Burger King earlier this year, as the kind of original content that excels on the Internet. Viewers could ask the chicken -- a man in a costume -- to perform stunts.

Online shopping site Amazon.com has repeatedly milked the entertainment industry for content. Last week, it introduced Amazon Theater, a series of short films starring celebrities that are being broadcast exclusively on the company's Web site through the holidays.

``Is now the time?'' Wertheimer said. ``Time will tell. You've got to select the right content. You've got to build buzz around it and sell advertising. Now could be the time. The thing about the Internet is that things spread virally very quickly. The field could explode overnight with the right content.''

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/10186686.htm

(*) (*) One for these days, In would LOVE to hear via PM from someone who thinks and feels like me..... ;) (l) (l)

God/dess bless,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-15-2004, 05:36 PM

Q U O T E D

"I'm gutted about being kicked out. I've done nothing wrong. The agency said they received complaints because women were travelling to meet me and wanted commitment, but I didn't. But it's just that I haven't met the right woman yet."

-- Serial dater Clive Worth, who will have to find other fields to plow after an unsuccessful but very thorough five-year search for Ms. Right on DatingDirect.com

(*) (*) NO FORGIVING these folks. I have been taken in the past, have you? What IS it about the Internet that provides a forum for sick folks to vent their evil on others? I don't think I will ever know. I do know that those who claim to be in some sort of recovery are the worst offenders......in my humble opinion. STAY AWAY from those types! (o) Back to my studies and taking Doc outside. (l) (l)

Love, Peace and Bai Ling,
(k) (k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-15-2004, 05:39 PM

Fri November 05, 2004 01:30 PM ET

By David Ljunggren
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site has shot up six-fold as Americans flirt with the idea of abandoning their homeland after President George W. Bush's election win this week.

"When we looked at the first day after the election, November 3, our Web site hit a new high, almost double the previous record high," immigration ministry spokeswoman Maria Iadinardi said on Friday.

On an average day some 20,000 people in the United States log onto the Web site, www.cic.gc.ca -- a figure which rocketed to 115,016 on Wednesday. The number of U.S. visits settled down to 65,803 on Thursday, still well above the norm.

Bush's victory sparked speculation that disconsolate Democrats and others might decide to start a new life in Canada, a land that tilts more to the left than the United States.

Would-be immigrants to Canada can apply to become permanent resident, a process that often takes a year. The other main way to move north on a long-term basis is to find a job, which requires a work permit.

But please spare the sob stories.

Asked whether an applicant would be looked upon more sympathetically if they claimed to be a sad Democrat seeking to escape four more years of Bush, Iadinardi replied: "There would be no weight given to statements of feelings."

Canada is one of the few major nations with an large-scale immigration policy. Ottawa is seeking to attract between 220,000 and 240,000 newcomers next year.

"Let's face it, we have a population of a little over 32 million and we definitely need permanent residents to come to Canada," said Iadinardi. "If we could meet (the 2005) target and go above it, the more the merrier."

But right now it is too early to say whether the increased interest will result in more applications.

"There is no unusual activity occurring at our visa missions (in the United States). Having someone who intends to come to Canada is not the same as someone actually putting in an application," said Iadinardi.

"We'll only find out whether there has been an increase in applications in six months."

The waiting time to become a citizen is shorter for people married to Canadians, which prompted the birth of a satirical Web site called www.marryanamerican.ca.

The idea of increased immigration by unhappy Americans is triggering some amusement in Canada. Commentator Thane Burnett of the Ottawa Sun newspaper wrote a tongue-in-cheek guide to would-be new citizens on Friday.

"As Canadians, you'll have to learn to embrace and use all the products and culture of Americans, while bad-mouthing their way of life," he said.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=616225

(*) (*) (*) Anyone interested in going with me??

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-15-2004, 05:42 PM

by Ben Thompson 365Gay.com Ottawa Bureau
Posted: November 4, 2004 5:01 pm ET

(Ottawa) The Canadian government is preparing for a gay migration from the US following Tuesday's election. Already Canadian consulates in Chicago and New York have been approached by dozens of same-sex couples enquiring about immigration.

Same-sex marriage is legal in five of Canada's ten provinces and in the Yukon territory. Judges in two other provinces are considering petitions to allow gay marriages.

A spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Judy Sgro said that it is difficult to say how many of the gay and lesbian couples inquiring about moving to Canada will actually do it.

"We're seeing a lot of anxiety by gay Americans," Lucille Way told 365Gay.com. "But, asking about immigration and actually leaving your homeland are two different things."

It is estimated there are about a million Americans living in Canada about a quarter of them in Ontario. The number of gays and lesbians is not known. In addition many Americans who began eying a more liberal life in Canada that began with the draft dodgers of the 1960s are not registered.

Moving to Canada, though, it is not as easy as packing up the camper and heading north.

Unregistered foreign nationals could be deported and Canadian immigration law has some stringent requirements. Because the country is seen as a haven for refugees there is a long lineup of people trying to get in. Gays and lesbians, said Way, would have to lineup like everyone else.

Perspective immigrants must apply at a visa mission outside the country, usually at a Canadian embassy or consulate.

You also would need a work permit and to get it, you would need to show you have a skill, trade, or profession that is needed in Canada.

Without a guaranteed job from a Canadian company it could take up to a year to get a permit. In order to remain in the country while you wait to work you would need to prove to the government you have enough money to survive.

And, work permits are based on a point system. You get higher points if you have special skills, such as a medical or law degree, or are fluent in French, Canada's second official language.

If you want to move up the line faster, it helps to be rich. Immigrants wanting to live and invest in Canada must have a net worth of $662,000 and be ready to put up at least $331,000. Those wishing to start a business must have a net worth of $248,000.

But, some immigration lawyers are suggesting a different approach: Applying for refugee status. It is one which has not been tested. But the government is suggesting it could be tried. The test would be is it dangerous for gay and lesbian couples to live in the US under laws which do not recognize them. Usually, people who come to Canada claiming refugee status are from regimes where their lives would be in jeopardy.

But, Citizenship and Immigration says that any same-sex couple arriving at the Canada US border and claiming refugee status would have their case heard.

"Anyone who seeks Canada's protection is eligible to have their case examined by a refugee board official," department spokesperson Maria Iadimardi told 365Gay.com.

Iadimardi said that under the immigration law same-sex couples have the same rights as opposite-sex couples and are considered "family class".

If a refugee board official decided that an American same-sex couple had a legitimate argument the case would then be turned over to a refugee tribunal.

"They would then go to a hearing which makes a case by case decision," said Iadinardi.

If the tribunal ruled the couple ineligible they would have to return to the US.

Iadinardi said that since the US election Tuesday the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website has had unusually high traffic from the US. On Wednesday it hit an all time high she said.

©365Gay.com 2004

(l) (l) (l) (l) What else can I say?

Love,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-15-2004, 05:50 PM

Before You Move to Canada:
Take a Look at Progressive Christianity in America

By Jim Burklo [website]

Any remaining doubt about the significance of religious commitment in America was erased on 11/2. The influence of faith on the outcome of the election was enormous. There were unusually frequent references to the Bible during the campaign. Christianity stepped out of the church doors and took a very visible stand in the public square.

Visible, but just how does it look? There are more faces of the faith than the most commonly cited “moral issues” of this election might suggest. The diversity within Christianity defies categorizations of “right” and “left”.

How shall we characterize the Christian religion? How shall we describe it, in this moment when it begs to be understood? As a wedge dividing some Americans from others, or as a positive force for the common good?

Jesus said that in his Father’s house were many rooms (John 14: 2). The progressive Christian movement takes seriously this welcoming promise. We identify Christianity not by barriers that could separate some people from it, but by the good news that attracts people toward it. We identify Christianity as the faith of Jesus, not just a religion about Jesus. He is the door that leads us to God, but we recognize that other religions offer spiritual openings that may be just as valid. Ours is a pluralistic religion that claims no superiority over others.

Christianity is about deeds much more than it is about creeds. It’s about personal morality and it is equally about the social morality of justice and peace and environmental consciousness. It is rooted in a Bible that we take seriously because we don’t have to take it literally, a Bible we keep reading because we have the God-given ability to interpret it afresh in every age. Christianity has survived for two thousand years because it has evolved, and it will continue to survive because the Spirit moves it to keep changing. God is love. And love trumps any outdated Christian dogma that might obscure it. Christianity doesn’t have to be complicated with the elaborate theology that some Christians prefer. It can be simple. But it isn’t easy. Jesus loved even his enemies, and following that path can cost you your life, even as it cost him his own.

We practice a faith with lots of room in it, and new rooms are being added to it all the time. Christianity makes room for the orthodox and unorthodox, the firm believers and the questioning skeptics. It makes room for people of very many political persuasions. It makes room for gays, lesbians, and straight people alike – just as they are. There are Christians who think homosexuality is a natural and acceptable form of sexuality. There are others who believe it to be a sin. Christianity makes room for those of us who call ourselves progressive as well as for those who do not. The church has no fixed boundary between those who are “in” and those who are “out”, though there are some Christians who think such a boundary exists.

So before moving to Canada, check out the movement that practices open, pluralistic, and ever-evolving Christianity here at home in America. The Center for Progressive Christianity is a network through which people can find churches that make explicit a “roomy” welcome for all kinds and conditions of people. It’s a welcome especially to those who have felt shut out, turned off or disrespected by Christianity in the past. Whether you are frightened by the aftermath of 11/2, or delighted by its prospects, this could be a good time to find an expression of Christianity that bridges the divisions left in the wake of the election.

(*) (*) (*) Let's think and FEEL before we move to Canada! Theyn offer many things but maybe the Netherlands would be more appropriate? (k) (k)

Love to all MTFs, FTMs, Butches, Femmes and any other "queer-identified" wonderful people!!!!!

I love you all!!!!! (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l)
(k) (k) (k) (k) SWEETLADY

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 09:54 AM

Slapping the Other Cheek
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: November 14, 2004 New York Times

You'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like "love thy neighbor," "turn the other cheek," "good will toward men," "blessed be the peacemakers" and "judge not lest you be judged."

Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office.

I'm getting more the feel of a vengeful mob - revved up by rectitude - running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.

One fiery Southern senator actually accused a nice Catholic columnist of having horns coming up out of her head!

Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist college of the same name, has written a letter to the president telling him that "Christ has allowed you to be his servant" so he could "leave an imprint for righteousness," by appointing conservative judges and approving legislation "defined by biblical norm."

"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn't deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism," Mr. Jones wrote. "Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ." Way harsh.

The Christian avengers and inquisitors, hearts hard as marble, are chasing poor 74-year-old Arlen Specter through the Capitol's marble halls, determined to flagellate him and deny him his cherished goal of taking over the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Not only are they irate at his fairly innocuous comment after the election that anti-Roe v. Wade judges would have a hard time getting through the Senate. They are also full of bloodthirsty feelings of revenge against the senator for championing stem cell research and for voting against Robert Bork - who denounces Mr. Specter as "a bit shifty" - 17 years ago.

"He is a problem, and he must be derailed," Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, told George Stephanopoulos.

Sounding more like the head of a mob family than a ministry, Dr. Dobson told Mr. Stephanopoulos about a warning he issued a White House staffer after the election that the president and Republicans had better deliver on issues like abortion, gay marriage and conservative judges or "I believe they'll pay a price in the next election."

Certainly Mr. Specter has done his part for the conservative cause. He accused Anita Hill of "flat-out perjury" for a minor inconsistency in her testimony against Clarence Thomas, that good Christian jurist who once had a taste for porn films.

Some in the White House thought of giving Mr. Specter the post and then keeping him on a short leash. But the power puritans have no mercy. They say he's a mealy-mouthed impediment to the crusade of evangelicals and conservative Catholic bishops - who delivered their vote with ruthless efficacy - to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Dr. Dobson about his comment to The Daily Oklahoman that "Patrick Leahy is a 'God's people-hater.' I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people," noting that it was not a particularly Christian thing to say about the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. (Especially after that vulgar un-Christian thing Dick Cheney spat at Mr. Leahy last summer.)

"George," Dr. Dobson haughtily snapped back, "do you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about?" Why not? The TV host is the son of a Greek Orthodox priest.

Acting as though Mr. Bush's decisions should be taken on faith, John Ashcroft lashed into judges for not giving Mr. Bush unbridled power in his war against terror.

Speaking Friday before an adulatory Federalist Society, a group of conservative lawyers, Mr. Ashcroft echoed remarks he made to the Senate soon after 9/11 arguing that objecting to the president's antiterror proposals could give "ammunition to America's enemies."

He asserted that judges who interfere in or second guess the president's constitutional authority to make decisions during war can jeopardize the "very security of our nation in a time of war."

And since the president has no end in sight to his war on terror, that makes him infallible ad infini- tum?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/opinion/14dowd.html

(*) (*) :o We liberals and other left wingers better watch our butts. :|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 10:03 AM

In the Battle of the Browsers '04, Firefox Aims at Microsoft
By STEVE LOHR and JOHN MARKOFF
Published: November 15, 2004 New York Times

Does anyone remember the browser wars?

In the rapid-fire pace of the technology business, Microsoft's successful, though illegal, campaign to thwart competition in the market for Web browsing software during the 1990's seems to be ancient history.

The corporate target, Netscape Communications, is all but a memory today, a tiny unit of Time Warner. And the last thread of the epic federal antitrust suit - a case focused on the browser market - fell away last week when a longtime Microsoft foe made peace with its old adversary.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association said it would not request a Supreme Court review of the remedies against Microsoft, which it had believed to be too lenient, and instead would welcome Microsoft as a member of the trade group.

Yet a few refugees from the original Netscape and a new generation of software developers believe that browser software - the gateway to information and commerce on the Internet - still matters.

They are the ones behind the freely available, open-source Firefox browser, which was officially released last Tuesday, and they are committed to providing competition in the browser market.

"This is really about taking back the Web and not having to rely on the technology and technology standards of one company," said Brendan Eich, a former Netscape engineer who is the chief software architect of the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit group that has coordinated the development of Firefox.

Firefox has won praise from some Internet experts for being more innovative than Microsoft's Internet Explorer and less susceptible to malicious programs that routinely attack the Microsoft browser.

Firefox, they say, is a compact, free-standing browser designed to display Web pages rapidly while blocking pop-up ads and other unsolicited windows. Downloads of the new browser were running at the rate of a million a day last week.

Before its official release, an estimated eight million people downloaded a preview version of Firefox over the past five months.

There are other non-Microsoft browsers, like Safari from Apple Computer and Opera, created by a Norwegian company, Opera Software. But the early enthusiasm for the preview version of Firefox is a big reason that Internet Explorer's market share has slipped more than 2.5 percentage points in the last five months, to 92.9 percent at the end of October, its first decline since 1999, according to WebSideStory, a firm that tracks Web traffic.

The release of Firefox 1.0 last week could put more pressure on Microsoft. "Firefox is a real competitor," said David M. Smith, an analyst at Gartner, a research firm. "Anything that is growing is a competitor, and it is growing at Microsoft's expense."

The incipient rise of Firefox, some analysts say, points to an inherent weakness in a fundamental Microsoft business strategy: tying more and more products and features to its monopoly product, the Windows operating system. Internet Explorer is tightly bound to Windows, a move that Microsoft says improves the browser's performance.

This strategy, the analysts say, means that innovation in much of the company's software tends to move in lockstep with Windows development, and that pace has slowed as the operating system has become larger and increasingly complex.

"Microsoft has not done any fundamental innovation in the browser for years," said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. "It doesn't surprise me that there are openings for smaller, lighter products that are separate from the operating system like Mozilla's Firefox."

Firefox also has been given a lift by the security vulnerabilities of Internet Explorer. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a group overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, took the unusual step last summer of suggesting a switch to browsers other than Internet Explorer as one way to reduce vulnerability to computer viruses.

Microsoft's strategy of tightly linking its browser to Windows, computer security experts say, does not necessarily make Internet Explorer more vulnerable. But Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a security company, said the added complexity of that design increases the risk of security flaws.

Microsoft says it is moving ahead with browser development and has a team of more than 100 programmers working on advances to Internet Explorer. Security, company executives say, has improved considerably with the release in August with an update to Windows.

Despite its huge market share, Microsoft has ample motivation to keep enhancing Internet Explorer, they say. "Browsing the Web is a core experience," said Gary Share, a director of product management for Windows. "And if we want people to continue to use Windows, we have to make sure the browsing experience is as rich and as secure as we possibly can."

The Firefox development is being led, said Mr. Eich, 43, by a "new generation of hackers," like Ben Goodger, a 24-year-old native of New Zealand. Mr. Goodger, the lead engineer on Firefox, is one of the Mozilla Foundation's full-time staff of 12 people, working from informal offices in Mountain View, Calif.

Mr. Goodger headed a team of more than 80 mostly volunteer programmers. His motivation, he said, was mainly the engineer's satisfaction of crafting tight, coherent code that others can build on and that is easy for ordinary people to use.

"People really like using software that is polished," he said.

For Mitchell Baker, a former Netscape lawyer and president of the foundation, the warm reception for Firefox carries a measure of vindication. "The Mozilla project has been characterized by a level of relentless, dogged passion," Ms. Baker said.

"We got through the dark days when people thought we were a failure," she added, "Now I have a lot of optimism."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/15/technology/15browser.html

(*) (*) This may make me sound crazy but what the heck? Gates has an evil empire and I hope he also fails at replacing google.com for Internet searches too. When the time comes for using other (stable) operating systems supported by many, many developers and vendors developing applications for this "other" operating system (Apple comes to mind - however their software is still quite expensive). If OpenSource and other programs like it can get the financial and marketing clout that it needs, there would be a mass exodus from folks handcuffed to a Microsoft-enabled PC. :@ It's only a matter of time. ;) (I hope (a) )

(8) (8) At least Apple has the iPod market for now. (8)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 10:14 AM

E-trends: The scoop on Internet trends.

Blogging
Broadband
Dotbomb
eBay
E-commerce
Googling
IMing
Internet Access
Online Dating
Online Marketing
Spamnesia
Text Camouflage
Viral Marketing
Wi-Fi

Trends 2004 Preview:
http://www.trendsetters.com/trendscape/pdf/TS_2004_Preview.pdf

(*) (*) Interesting few pages, but not worth the purchase of the entire report. Just one of many datapoints out there and available to those who research for a living and/or for graduate work...... ;) (h)

(f) (f) Have a warm, smooth, and most enjoyable Tuesday!

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 10:33 AM

Not only are cauliflowers, brains and landscapes fractal - the entire universe is too !

Fractals are the abstract made gloriously visible. And now they're becoming useful shrinking images,diagnosing madness,even finding gold. It turns out that fractals are the very stuff of the universe.

http://www.geocities.com/Omegaman_UK/fractal.html

(*) (*) This is a delightful web site filled with many images and profound facts for those interested in learning about fractals. I've actually worked with some of the mathmeticians mentioned, what an amazing gift that was! (*) (*)

Benoît B. Mandelbrot (born November 20, 1924) is a Polish-born French mathematician and leading proponent of fractal geometry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoit_Mandelbrot

Although Mandelbrot invented the word fractal, many of the objects featured in The Fractal Geometry of Nature had been previously described by other mathematicians (the Mandelbrot set being a notable exception). However, they had been regarded as isolated curiosities with unnatural and non-intuitive properties. Mandelbrot brought these objects together for the first time and highlighted their common properties, such as self-similarity (sometimes partial or statistical), scale invariance and (usually) non-integer Hausdorff dimension.

He also emphasised the use of fractals as realistic and useful models of many natural phenomena, including the shape of coastlines and river basins; the structure of plants, blood vessels and lungs; the clustering of galaxies; Brownian motion; and stock market prices. Far from being unnatural, Mandelbrot held the view that fractals were, in many ways, more intuitive and natural than the artificially smooth objects of traditional Euclidean geometry. As he says in the Introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature:

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
Mandelbrot's informal and passionate style of writing and his emphasis on visual and geometric intuition (supported by the inclusion of numerous illustrations) made The Fractal Geometry of Nature accessible to non-specialists. It sparked a widespread popular interest in fractals as well as contributing to new fields of science such as chaos theory.

Mandelbrot Quotes:
"All my life, I have enjoyed the reputation of being someone who disrupted prevailing ideas. Now that I'm in my 80th year, I can play on my age and provoke people even more."
(from a November 2004 interview with New Scientist):

(http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp;jsessionid=LHJCGEKJLFPH?id=ns24731 )

"The first night I saw the set, it was just wild. The second night, I became used to it. After a few nights, I became familiar with it."
(from a November 2004 interview with New Scientist, referring to the Mandelbrot set)

"There is no single rule that governs the use of geometry. I don't think that one exists."
"from a November 2004 interview with New Scientist)

"There is a problem that is specific to financial markets. In most fields of research, when someone makes an important finding, they publish it. In the case of prices, they set up a firm and sell advice about their discovery. If they can make money from it, they will. So the research into market dynamics is a closed field."
(from a November 2004 interview with New Scientist)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Mandelbrot

http://www.math.yale.edu/mandelbrot/ (His web page at Yale University)

(o) Off to the world of virtual ones and zeros. (o)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 03:28 PM

NEW DRUGS FOR WOMEN

DAMNITOL
Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up to 8 full hours.

ST. M O M M A'S W O R T
Plant extract that treats mom's depression by rendering preschoolers
unconscious for up to two days

E M P T Y N E S T R O G E N
Suppository that eliminates melancholy and loneliness by reminding you of
how awful they were as teenagers and how you couldn't wait till they moved
out.

P E P T O B I M B O
Liquid silicone drink for single women. Two full cups swallowed before an
evening out increases breast size, decreases intelligence, and prevents
conception.

D U M B E R O L
When taken with Peptobimbo, can cause dangerously low IQ, resulting in
enjoyment of country music and pickup trucks.

F L I P I T O R
Increases life expectancy of commuters by controlling road rage and the
urge to flip off other drivers.

M E N I C I L L I N
Potent anti-boy-otic for older women. Increases resistance to such lethal
lines as, "You make me want to be a better person . Can we get naked now?"

B U Y A G R A
Injectable stimulant ! taken prior to shopping. Increases potency,
duration, and credit limit of spending spree.

J A C K A S S P I R I N
Relieves headache caused by a man who can't remember your birthday,
anniversary or phone number.

A N T I-T A L K S I D E N T!
A spray carried in a purse or wallet to be used on anyone too eager to
share their life stories with total strangers in elevators or on airplanes.

N A G A M E T
When administered to a husband, provides the same irritation level as
nagging him all weekend, saving the wife the time and trouble of doing it
herself.

(*) (*) I really liked the first one myself.... ;)

(k) ,
Swweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 03:32 PM

Posted on Tue, Nov. 16, 2004
By Steve Johnson

Mercury News

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/10195899.htm

Mercury News columnist, author and SiliconValley.com blogger Dan Gillmor has won this year's top honor for the nation's best online commentary among small Internet sites.

The award for Gillmor's e-Journal -- also accessible at www.dangillmor.com/blog -- was presented Saturday by the Online News Association and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

Calling e-Journal ``one of the original blogs covering news of the tech industry and topics beyond,'' the judges praised it as ``a quick read that fits the medium, responds quickly to the news of the day and generates lots of comments from readers.''

The winner for online commentary among large Internet sites was Nicholas D. Kristof for his op-ed pieces on NYTimes.com.

Gillmor, whose new book, ``We, The Media,'' examines technology-enabled participatory journalism, also recently won the 2004 World Technology Award for Media & Journalism, presented by the World Technology Network for `` work as an outstanding innovator in technology journalism.''

The annual Online Journalism Awards, launched in 2000, are open to all English-language Web sites around the world.

The Online News Association has more than 600 members who produce news for the Internet or other digital venues, as well as academic members and others interested in the development of online journalism.

The Annenberg School for Communication, which has more than 1,700 graduate and undergraduate students, offers degrees in journalism, communication and public relations.

Awards also were presented for general excellence in online journalism, breaking news, specialty journalism, enterprise journalism, service journalism, creative use of the medium, student journalism and best student Web site.

Information about all of the awards is available at http://journalist.org/2004conference/archives/000087.php.

(*) (h) (h) Very cool for one of my favorite columnists. Go Dan! (b) (b)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 03:35 PM

Posted on Tue, Nov. 09, 2004
By Matt Marshall

Mercury News

Silicon Valley venture capitalists are desperate to take part in the biggest economic bonanza going on right now: China. That's why China newbies are hunting down Lip-bu Tan, chairman of Walden International and one of the first U.S.-based VCs to begin investing in China.

Back in 2002, we wrote about the risks of investing in China, and how Tan's early efforts met with failure. But slowly, all that early work building up contacts and experience is paying off.

He was one of the early backers of Chinese semiconductor company SMIC, which recently became the fastest company ever to hit $1 billion in annual sales. And he helped bring other VCs into that deal.

Now, as China opens up its economy to free trade and foreign investment, its fast-growing tech companies, including SMIC, are going public -- adding to the drive by VCs to participate in the gold rush. And Tan is benefiting as the linchpin.

Take the $11 million investment in a Chinese semiconductor-equipment company, which has yet to be announced. Tan is leading the deal, bringing in a group that includes a few first-time Silicon Valley investors in China: Interwest Partners, Lightspeed and Bay Partners.

China novice Robert Chaplinsky, of Mohr Davidow Ventures, teamed up with Tan to invest in a different fabless chip design company, also to be announced. David Britts, over at ComVentures, found another fabless-semiconductor deal, but sought out Tan for help in doing it. Tan took six days interviewing contacts at state ministries and at potential customers to make sure it was sound.

At a recent investor meeting in Beijing, Britts said he was taken aback by the throng of people seeking out Tan: ``It seems like the world is coming to Lip-bu Tan. He's the go-to guy.''

Tan and New Enterprise Associates are investing $15 million into Telegent Systems, another fabless-chip company that enables TV broadcasting on mobile devices -- also yet to be announced. The list goes on.

All these VCs are lining up at his door for a good reason: hand-holding. They want a trusted partner in doing deals, meeting Chinese entrepreneurs and checking with government sources. Tan's contacts run to the highest level. He hates to talk about who he knows, calling them his secret ``trump cards.'' Let's just say one contact is related to a very high official in China, and a former partner at Walden is very well placed.

It's still a communist country, Tan says. ``You have to know where to land.'' He has learned the hard way. There's so much risk in China that he has hired his own accountant to double-check the books of the companies he invests in.

``For the last 10, 15 years, I've been building my China network. It was pretty lonely,'' he says, with his easy smile. ``Now, if other venture firms find a good Chinese deal, we're the partner of choice.''

Tan agrees there's too much hype around China's Internet-related companies. Some shares are trading at 20 to 30 times revenue, ``crazy levels,'' he says. Online gaming company Shanda has anl estimated market of $1 billion, but its stock-market valuation is $2.4 billion. ``You know something's wrong,'' Tan says.

That Internet bubble is why he's focused on the chip sector. China's huge tech-friendly and increasingly wealthy population is gobbling up TVs, cell phones and DVD players, driving demand for chips that make them work. ``That's why I decided to invest big time,'' he says in a conversation at his office overlooking San Francisco Bay.

He predicts a fourth of the world's consumer-electronics consumption will be in China within a few years. Besides chips, he's also interested in what he calls ``software/services.''

Tan speaks Mandarin and Cantonese, having learned them at school in Malaysia and Singapore before coming to the United States. He travels to China every month, and has a penthouse in Shanghai. But he wants to keep his base here, saying his wife and kids like it too much to leave. Besides, he's on the board of the San Francisco Opera; is a fan, with his sons, of the Giants, Raiders and Warriors; and is involved in a church group here.

No, he's not going anywhere. He doesn't need to: The VCs are coming to him.

Check out Matt Marshall and Michael Bazeley's new blog on the Internet and venture capital at www.Silicon Beat.com.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/10134790.htm

(*) (*) China will eclipse the U.S. soon. Lots of opportunities in high tech and other industries. Even Microsoft set up a huge R&D center there. :|
:|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 03:43 PM

Asked in on www.ireland.com:

http://scripts.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/regularvote.cfm

66 percent said "yes".

Do you think George Bush is committed to finding a solution to the conflict in the Middle East?

74 percent said "no". http://scripts.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/regularvote.cfm?pollid=1715

Should cohabiting couples be given legal recognition?
72 precent said "yes!"
http://scripts.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/regularvote.cfm?pollid=1710

Do you think George W Bush will be able to unite the American people after his election success?
85 precent said "no"!
http://scripts.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/regularvote.cfm?pollid=1708

Should the Constitution be changed to allow for gay marriage in Ireland?
59 percent said "yes"!
http://scripts.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/regularvote.cfm?pollid=1688

(*) (*) It gives me hope when I read the dozens and dozens of other countries' news and other web sites. Seems as if the majority of other countries see America like liberal Dems do. :|

Carpe diem,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 03:48 PM

The Depressed Democrats' Guide to Recovery
by Mark Fiore November 11th, 2004 4:15 PM Village Voice:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0445/fiore.php

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-16-2004, 03:54 PM

Anti-American Cartoons on the Middle East Research Institute's Web site:

http://www.memri.org/bin/cartoons.cgi?cat4

(*) (*) WE read many similar cartoons in liberal media newspapers and web sites. Suffuce to say that they don't like us. When the Village Idiot leaves in four years, IF we're still here, there will always be cartoons to poke at whoever and whatever America stands for as seen by those abroad. (*) (*)

<sigh> I'm off for a walk with Doc. Have a nice Tuesday evening.

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-17-2004, 11:06 AM

From Nov. 16th www.siliconvalley.com, "Stop, or I'll give you an unpleasant burning sensation! Among the inventory of kinder, gentler weaponry being developed by the Department of Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate is the Active Denial System -- a microwave "pain beam" designed to heat skin to intolerable levels without burning it. The folks at the DoD must be quite pleased with the weapon's progress, because they just gave a company called Communications & Power Industries $7 million to figure out a way to build it into aircraft. Talk about terror from above.... "

(*) (*) I went to the link and it IS the Air Force Research Laboratory official web site in New Mexico! Holy cats! Cooked from the inside and tax dollars paid for the development and deployment? (*) (*)

http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/activedenial.html

ACTIVE DENIAL SYSTEM
Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration

The Active Denial System (ADS) is a non-lethal, counter-personnel directed energy weapon. It uses breakthrough technologies to provide un-precedented, standoff, non-lethal capabilities at ranges beyond effective small arms range.

ADS projects a focused, speed-of-light milli-meter-wave energy beam to induce an intolerable heating sensation on an adversary’s skin and cause that individual to be repelled without injury. The picture on the right depicts the prototype currently in development. ADS will enable U.S. forces to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary without applying lethal force. This capability is expected to save countless lives by providing a means to stop individuals without causing injury, before a deadly confrontation develops.

The technology was originally developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and matured under the sponsorship of the Department of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. Approximately $51 million has been invested over the past eleven years. The technology was developed in response to Department of Defense needs for troops to have options short of deadly force. Non-lethal technologies can be used for protection of defense resources, peacekeeping, humanitarian missions and other situations in which the use of lethal force is undesirable. ADS will provide these capabilities close in as well as at longer standoff ranges.

How It Works

Active Denial Technology uses a transmitter producing energy at a frequency of 95Ghz and an antenna to direct a focused, invisible beam towards a designated subject. Traveling at the speed of light, the energy reaches the subject and penetrates the skin to a depth of less than 1/64 of an inch. Almost instantaneously it produces a heating sensation that within seconds becomes intolerable and forces the subject to flee. The sensation immediately ceases when the individual moves out of the beam or when the system operator turns it off.
Despite this sensation, the beam does not cause injury because of the shallow penetration depth of energy at this wavelength and the low energy levels used. It exploits the body’s natural defense mechanism that induces pain as a warning to help protect it from injury.

Human Effects Testing
A large portion of the investment, about $9 million, has been devoted to characterizing the effects of this technology on the human body. This is to ensure the technology produces the desired response and is militarily effective, while at the same time providing a large margin of safety against injury and long-term effects. Animals and humans are being used in the test program, which is being conducted in strict compliance with the procedures, laws and regulations governing animal and human experimentation. The tests are reviewed and approved by a formal Institutional Review Board with oversight from the Air Force Surgeon General’s Office. An independent panel of medical experts from outside the government also periodically reviews and advises on the planning aspects and results of the research and test activities. Their 2002 review of the program concluded there is low probability of serious injury from exposure to the ADS beam. Additionally, the panel concludes that the probability of thermal eye injury is low and the probability of long-term health effects such as cancer is extremely low.

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Human Effectiveness Directorate at Brooks City Base, Texas, conducted several years of successful and safe laboratory testing with small spot sizes. In 2000, testing began at Kirtland Air Force Base, south of Albuquerque, New Mexico, using the new, full-scale technology hardware demonstration system shown at right. It enabled larger areas of a volunteer test subject’s body to be exposed to the energy beam and pro-vided for more realistic, military field conditions.

System Evolution

The Active Denial technology hardware demonstration system shown above represents a rudimentary first integration of the key technology elements such as the millimeter-wave source, cooling system, and planar array antenna, among others. In 2001, it successfully demonstrated the hardware technology necessary to achieve the desired effect at full weapon power and distance, and set the stage for the next evolution of the system.

This next step is on-going and involves the integration and packaging of all the system’s components into a mobile, nearly militarized system. The configuration chosen is the High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle, commonly referred to as a Humvee. This activity is being conducted under an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program, which is the process used by the Department of Defense to rapidly move mature technologies into the hands of the warfighter for military evaluation.

Under the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration, the Air Force Research Laboratory will produce a Humvee-mounted prototype and provide it to operational forces from all the services in late 2004. The services will first develop concepts for employing the system and then evaluate its utility in representative military environments and scenarios. Depending on the results of this evaluation, which is projected to be completed at the end of 2005, a decision will be made to produce and operationally deploy the system. Since this is the first time this leading edge technology will be evaluated for military utility, it is possible that some of the services will find they need considerably different system configurations of the ADS which would be tailored for specific missions and operating environments, such as on-board a ship or on an aircraft. Planning for an airborne system prototype has already begun under a separate effort.

The employment of Active Denial Technology has successfully undergone a preliminary weapons legal review. A interim, comprehensive legal review, including treaty compliance, is in process and is projected to be completed this year.

Organizations Involved
The ADS Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program is being sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Advanced Systems and Concepts, the Department of Defense Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate and U.S. Joint Forces Command.

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, is the technical manager and responsible for the ADS prototype development. The Laboratory’s Human Effectiveness Directorate at Brooks City Base manages the human effects characterization research and test program.

Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, is the operational manager and is leading the military services in developing the concepts of operation and managing the formal military utility assessment.

The Air Force’s Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts, is the transition manager, charged with leading the planning activities necessary to transition the system into the formal Department of Defense acquisition process, should the decision be made to equip U.S. forces with ADS.

The Raytheon Company is the lead integrator of the prototype.

:| :| Good for Raytheon and its investors. I think high tech is cool but this one seems off in the weeds in my view..... :| :|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-17-2004, 11:11 AM

November 17, 2004
By GARY RIVLIN San Jose Mercury News and New York Times

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 15 - Silicon Valley is back,
and it's wearing makeup.

Or at least its executive luminaries were wearing it on
Monday, as the Valley's stars assembled for a series of
"Charlie Rose" TV interviews whose theme seemed to be that
the region is once again buzzworthy - whether in the guise
of old-line silicon mainstays like Intel, newer Web powers
like Google or biotech leaders like Genentech.

Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, who had
been observing a self-imposed moratorium on media
appearances since his company's stock offering in August,
seemed ebullient to be once again out in public, praising
technology and crowing about the continued potential of
Silicon Valley.

"We stopped doing this after the burst of the bubble," Mr.
Schmidt said after the Rose segment, with stage makeup
still coating his face. "It feels good to be up here again,
talking about the Valley. We don't do as much of this as we
should do."

Other heavy-hitters included the chief executives of Cisco
Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo, who turned out for a
series of group sessions with Mr. Rose in a makeshift sound
studio created on Google's campus here.

Some seemed more media-trained than others.

"Makeup?"asked an incredulous Paul S. Otellini, Intel's president,
who will become its chief executive in May. "Men don't wear
makeup."

Several minutes later, though, there sat Mr. Otellini, in
front of a backstage mirror as a stylist daubed
peach-colored foundation on his face. And a bit later he
was before the camera on a panel with Mr. Schmidt, John T.
Chambers of Cisco and Terry S. Semel of Yahoo.

Taking in the corporate wattage arrayed before him, Mr.
Rose said, jokingly, before the taping, "We can rule the
world."

Another power broker who was evidently happy to be back in
the key light was the venture capitalist L. John Doerr.
Through the second half of the 1990's, Mr. Doerr, a partner
at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, cut a high profile in
Silicon Valley, saying yes to virtually every media
request. Then, after the Internet bubble burst in early
2000, a video lens seldom saw him.

With the "Charlie Rose" taping, Mr. Doerr found it safe to
come in from the cold. "I think it's time to say again how
important research and innovation and Silicon Valley is to
the competitiveness of the American economy," Mr. Doerr
said.

Other good omens in the Valley include the rebound of the
technology-laden Nasdaq stock index, which is near a
four-year high, and the fact that California voters have
just approved a ballot measure that will pump $3 billion
into stem-cell research. The panel on biotech included
Brook H. Byers, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers, and Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, the president of
product development at Genentech.

Monday's event proved an odd mix of high-brow television
and advocacy. Mr. Rose, whose late-night PBS talk show is
based in New York, traveled west in search of good
television, taping an hour or so with each group of guests
he described as "visionaries" for a wide-ranging discussion
on the future of technology. Each of the four sessions will
be pared down into snappier segments that will appear over
the next week, according to the show's executive producer,
Yvette Vega.

Yet Mr. Otellini and the dozen other luminaries who agreed
to appear on Mr. Rose's show were there at the behest of
TechNet, an industry advocacy group with a strong lobbying
presence in Washington. The group's chief executive, Rick
White, said that each fall the group held a policy
discussion in Silicon Valley so that technology leaders
could lay out their legislative priorities for the upcoming
year. In past years, reporters had shown up to cover the
event - but never two trucks packed with broadcast
equipment, accompanied by a sizable production crew that
included four cameramen.

Asked if she was worried that the broadcasts would end up
little more than a series of infomercials for the tech
lobby, Ms. Vega said, "That's why I can't say right now
what will be airing and what won't be."

For TechNet, however, Mr. Rose's assent to play host
presented a golden opportunity to advance its goal of
persuading Washington to grant Silicon Valley's wish list
on the ground that a robust technology sector is essential
to America's status as an economic powerhouse. That list
includes a more aggressive national policy on the
deployment of broadband access and increased funding for
applied research.

"We wanted to get across our policy agenda for the next
year to as broad an audience as possible," Mr. White, said
in an interview before Monday's taping. "We thought Charlie
Rose would give us more of a public profile."

Mr. White noted that his organization still faced an uphill
battle to beat back a federal accounting proposal to count
stock options as a normal business expense - a plan whose
defeat TechNet has declared its top legislative priority
because it would make it more expensive to offer stock
options, one of the main ways that technology companies,
especially start-ups, compensate employees.

"Maybe we haven't done as good a job as we should have
talking about the importance of innovation and technology
to our country's future," Mr. White said.

Stock options proved a leitmotif for the day. Among those
raising the topic was Mr. Chambers, who noted that there
was no move afoot to require the expensing of options in
countries that had been fonts of innovation in recent
years, including China and India. Expensing stock options,
Mr. Chambers said, "would put us at a competitive
disadvantage."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/technology/17silicon.html?ex=1101702809&ei=1&en=9c3362e3d0d5795a

(*) (*) Intel's former chief Andy Grove used to wear makeup for public and especially TV appearances, and at COMDEX's so what was the bog deal with Intel's current chief? Thou doest protest too much? ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-17-2004, 11:17 AM

"I've done my time. I've got a brand new baby and a wife, and I haven't touched the controls of an aircraft in seven years. I'm 47 years old. How could they be calling me? How could they even want me?"
- RICK HOWELL, former Army helicopter pilot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/national/16reserves.html?th

(*) (*) I'm with the protestors who say that they have already served their country, and that they are older and can't serve. :@ It's goiing to be a very long, excruciating four more years.....with Colin resigning and another Village Idiot takng what I considered a good man's place - the Cabinet's chess moves are most certainly towards a deeply conservative second term. :|
:( Well, there's always saving up about $50K and moving to Canada or Australia. Or waiting it out and staying below the radar in helping Dems and Independents try for the midterm elections in 2006. (*) (*)

:| ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-17-2004, 05:53 PM

02:00 AM Nov. 17, 2004 PT
Space scientists and entrepreneurs are envisioning much more than tourists taking pictures, and planting flags and footprints, as they plan humanity's off-world future.

http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,65729,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

(*) (*) Worth the read. (*)

(k) , Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-17-2004, 05:57 PM

November 17, 2004
Health of the nation, Times Online, Britain

By Robin Young

THE old Scouts’ motto, Be Prepared, will shortly have to be adapted to fit the needs of pubs which want to retain their customers’ right to smoke on the premises. For them food will have to “be pre-prepared”.

The Government’s determination to ban smoking from pubs and bars where prepared food is served will apply to all premises serving restaurant meals or freshly cooked bar food. Within those pubs which opt to retain the right to smoke, smoking will still not be allowed in what the Government calls “the bar area”.

Quite what the future smokers’ pubs will still be able to serve by way of food is predicted to become the subject of detailed debate, with the phrase “nanny state” never far from the lips of those anxious to maintain smokers’ rights.

In truth the distinction that John Reid, the Health Secretary, proposes between pubs in which food is prepared, and those where non-liquid nutrition is limited to packeted snacks such as crisps, nuts and pork scratchings, should not present legislators or law enforcement officers any insurmountable problems.

They key test will be whether any preparation of the food is carried out in the premises. If it is, the smoking ban applies. If not, pubs where the management want to continue to serve smokers will still be able to feed their customers a limited diet in which preparation their staff have played no part.

Pre-packeted sandwiches, bought in from outside suppliers and sold unopened, might therefore be made available in smokers’ pubs. Pasties and pies bought in and sold in their packets without further interference should be permissible too.

But by the same test pasties and pies taken out of their packets and popped in the pub’s microwave to be reheated would be disqualified from the smokers’ menu, because they had been prepared for consumption on the premises.

What then of pies and pasties reheated on the premises while still in their unopened packaging? A moot point, though any penetration of the packet, or provision of a plate and cutlery with which to eat the reheated item would probably play a part in the decision.

In French bars hard-boiled eggs are often provided as a breakfast snack. If in Britain they were boiled before opening time, could they be said to be “prepared” on the premises and thus prohibited to smokers, or are they “pre-prepared” and thus still available?

Pickled eggs might be an alternative. But would staff be “preparing” them by scooping them from a jar and presenting them on a plate? Probably yes. Whereas if customers could help themselves with spoons or tongs, that might be all right.

How about raw vegetables such as sweet peppers, carrots, celery sticks or radishes? Possibly, if pre-packed and not cut up or plated on the premises; but not if arranged with a dip.

It seems that those who keep an unhealthy smoking habit are to be condemned to an unhealthy diet of public house food as well. Perhaps, unlike the perennial poor, they will not be much longer with us.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1361995,00.html

(*) (*) Where *DO* I find these things?...... ;) (o) Out for Doc's walk and his mama needs a REST. Maybe the chilly air will clear those mental cobwebs from stress and course assignments and learner feedback this afternoon and early evening. :o <aahhh>

Sweet dreams friends,
(k) (k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-17-2004, 06:02 PM

"Writing is the hardest way to earn a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators"

-Olin Miller

(*) (*) I respectually disagree having 30 published articles....but then this person might HAVE to write everyday. Then again, writing on deadlines for the past 15 years and now with graduate school online IS kind of wrestling with something or someone..... ;) ;)

I need to get out more and PLAY!!!! (6)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-17-2004, 06:04 PM

from forbes.com:

Old Movies, New Profits
David Ng, 11.17.04, 3:00 PM ET

NEW YORK - When it comes to understanding the retro DVD market, the devil is in the extras.

Consider the upcoming re-releases of two very different 80s touchstones: Top Gun, the Tom Cruise mega-blockbuster, and Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders' existential road movie that was a critical, and art-house, hit.

Top Gun (which was previously released on VHS and DVD) is being re-released in a Special Collector's Edition from Paramount Home Video, a division of Viacom (nyse: VIAb - news - people ). The two-disc edition includes five special features: audio commentary from the director and producer, a six-part documentary on the making of the movie, never-before-seen footage, four music videos and a storyboard gallery.

Meanwhile, Paris, Texas (previously released only on VHS) makes its DVD debut from Fox Home Entertainment, a division of News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ). The one-disc set comes with three extras: director commentary, deleted scenes and trailers.

The amount of extras on a DVD is directly proportional to the number of units studios think they can sell," says Brett Sporich of The Hollywood Reporter. "Studios need a guaranteed revenue stream to cover the costs of producing extras." Thus Paramount's feature-rich Top Gun re-release indicates a high level of confidence that the DVD will be a success. In the case of Paris, Texas, Fox's slimmer DVD package signals more modest expectations (the movie's theatrical gross in the U.S. was 1% of Top Gun's).

The demand for older movies on DVD represents a growing portion of the home video market. In 2003, revenue from "catalogue" DVD titles (films whose theatrical releases were before 1997) reached $2.85 billion, or 29% of total DVD sales, according to Adams Media Research. That amount is up from $1.92 billion, or 26% of total DVD sales, in 2002.

Heading the pack is Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ), with 22% of the DVD catalogue market, according to DVD Exclusive, an industry publication. The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ) comes in second with 12.8% of the market, and Fox places third with 11.5%.

What exactly makes DVDs such a popular format for old favorites? Navigation menus allow viewers to skip to their favorite scenes (or to watch those scenes over and over). Widescreen and Dolby options can recreate the theater-going experience. And the infinite re-watchability of DVDs means not having to worry about picture or sound degradation--a particularly important point for children's movies, which analysts say make up as much as 20% of the DVD catalogue market.

But the extras are the real hook. Among this year's top sellers, the re-release of the Star Wars trilogy includes three commentary tracks, a new 150-minute making-of documentary, deleted scenes, an Xbox demo of the new Star Wars Battlefront game and a preview of the upcoming Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith.

The recent re-release of Disney's Aladdin also has plenty of bells and whistles: two commentary tracks (an indicator that children's DVDs aren't just for children), music videos, a making-of documentary, a 3-D featurette and interactive games.

Other retro favorites scheduled for release this holiday season include the Rocky anthology, Mary Poppins 40th anniversary edition and Godzilla three-pack collection.

Neil Mitchell, of entertainment information company Muze, says that unlike the theatrical film market, the DVD industry is relatively flop-proof. "Films that performed well at the box office are likely to do well on DVD," he says. "A movie like [Brian De Palma's] Scarface has become such a part of the popular culture that there's a built-in home video audience for it."

Sometimes, a movie doesn't find its audience until it reaches DVD. "Recent titles like Open Range [starring Kevin Costner] and Gothika [starring Halle Berry] performed average at the box office but have done well on DVD," Mitchell says. In fact, Gothika may already be "retro." The 2003 thriller is on its second DVD incarnation--a two-disc special edition released in October, just seven months after its home video debut.

http://www.forbes.com/home/services/2004/11/17/cx_dn_1117flashback.html

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 10:07 AM

What do Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, Bob Newhart, Barbara Sinatra, Elvis Costello, Harry Dean Stanton, Dick Martin, Rebecca DeMornay, Larry Gelbart and Angie Dickinson all have in common? They were all backstage on the same night after seeing British comedian, actor and executive transvestite EDDIE IZZARD perform in Los Angeles on his last tour. They are all a part of Eddie's eclectic fan base.

IZZARD's surreal gift for "talking crap," as he describes his one-man shows, appeals to humans from vast parts of the globe and all walks of life. One only had to be lucky enough to be exposed to his unique brand of humor, it seemed, before becoming an instant convert. With the debut of his double Emmy Award-winning special "DRESS TO KILL" on HBO in the summer of 1999, many North Americans were introduced to IZZARD for the first time. Others were lucky enough to witness his one-man shows "GLORIOUS" and "DEFINITE ARTICLE" live in NYC in 1997 and 1996, respectively, while more individuals caught his "DRESS TO KILL" mini tour in 1998, which played to sold-out audiences in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2000, IZZARD returned to North America with a new show-"CIRCLE"-which took him to packed houses in NY, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. IZZARD's profile was raised yet again later that same year when he received three Emmy nominations, going on to win two--"Outstanding Writing In A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program" and "Outstanding Individual Performance In A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program" at the 52nd Annual Emmy Awards. Now with the DVD release of "DRESS TO KILL"--with bonus features "DRESS TO CIRCLE" (Eddie performs in French in Paris), "America 1998" (photo documentary), subtitles in Spanish, French and English and show commentaries--on Anti/Epitaph in North America, those with a player can finally watch IZZARD at their convenience.

Back in his native England, IZZARD--"the greatest British stand-up comedian...of his generation," according to a London Sunday Times magazine cover story-first made an impression in 1993 after debuting his first one-man show LIVE AT THE AMBASSADORS in London's West End. He hasn't looked back since. UNREPEATABLE followed in 1994, DEFINITE ARTICLE in 1996, GLORIOUS in 1997, DRESS TO KILL in 1998 (playing to over 11,000 in one gig at Wembley Arena) and CIRCLE in 1999/2000. The first five have all been released on video in the UK, with each charting in the Top 15, while his latest show CIRCLE which was filmed at NYC's Town Hall in the summer of 2000, will be released soon in the UK on DVD. In addition to the UK and North America, IZZARD's shows have taken him to Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Sweden, Denmark and France, where he performs his shows en Francais.

Since 1994, IZZARD has also maintained a presence in the world of theatre and film. On stage, he has tackled serious drama beginning with the lead role in the world premiere of David Mamet's "THE CRYPTOGRAM," followed by 衔 ONEONTA," Marlowe's "EDWARD II," a Sir Peter Hall production of "LENNY," and most recently Peter Nichols' "A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG"-"starring Eddie Izzard in a role he was born to play," according to the New York Times.

1996 was the year IZZARD began to work in films, beginning with THE SECRET AGENT starring Robin Williams and Bob Hoskins, he's continued to make films ever since, including VELVET GOLDMINE with Ewan McGregor; the Academy Award-nominated SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE with Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich; THE CAT'S MEOW where Eddie plays Charlie Chaplin ("Izzard brings a sly sexuality to the role," Associated Press) opposite Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies in his most critically acclaimed film role to date; and ALL THE QUEEN'S MEN co-starring Matt LeBlanc. Future films to be released next year are THE REVENGERS TRAGEDY directed by Alex Cox (Sid & Nancy) and MURAYA-EXPANDED REALITY co-starring Vincent Cassel, Michael Madsen and Juliette Lewis.

THE EVOLUTION OF EDDIE

EDDIE IZZARD was born on 7th February 1962 to English parents in Aden, Yemen. His mother and father worked for BP (British Petroleum) at the refinery there, his father as an accountant and his mother as a nurse and midwife at the refinery hospital. The family moved to Bangor, near Belfast, in Northern Ireland for four years (the happiest part of his childhood) and then in 1967 to Skewen in South Wales. Sadly, the following year, his mother died of cancer. He was six years old. His parents, prior to his mum's passing, had decided that the best way for the family to survive, was for IZZARD and his older brother to go to boarding school.

At seven, now at school in Eastbourne, IZZARD saw a boy in a play getting a great reaction from the audience. It was there and then he (and his ego) decided that acting was his future. He auditioned for many roles, in many school plays and got cast in few. Aged 12, in a class show, IZZARD got his first laughs in a mimed sketch. Still he couldn't get into school plays. Then, at 15, he landed a role in Shakespeare's "COMEDY OF ERRORS," as 'the jailer.' Whilst it was a bit part, the plot demanded that he was handcuffed to the lead role. As a result, he got noticed by becoming a fast student in the art of upstaging. The teacher who directed the show (Andrew Boxer) gave him two more good roles and his career finally started.

In 1980, IZZARD began staging shows at Sheffield University, although he only lasted a year in his degree of 'Accounting and Financial Management with Mathematics.' Instead he began writing, producing and acting in comedy shows at the University, and in 1981 he took his first show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He staged shows in Sheffield and Edinburgh again in 1982 and 83 (sleeping on people's floors because he was no longer at the University), but professionally he still couldn't get arrested. In 1984 he moved to London and did absolutely nothing, but watch television for a year. He couldn't work out how to go professional--how to get started. In the beginning of the next year, he came out as being a Transvestite.

IZZARD knew he was different from a very young age, but he didn't have a word for it at the time. He first remembers being interested in wearing a dress when he was four, but he also felt this predilection wasn't something to be told to the other kids. At 15 he was caught stealing make-up, but lied and said it was for a girlfriend in France. In 1985, aged 23, he came out for the first time. That went okay, but it took him until 1989 to tell his father, after worrying about his reaction. His dad was very relaxed about it, so IZZARD started talking about being TV on stage, two days later. In 1992 he performed his first gig in a dress. But this is not drag. He will wear a dress or trousers onstage, offstage or anywhere he wants to--just like women. It is his sexuality--not a costume.

"Transgender is a difficult area to explain and understand and even the actual members of the transgender community will come up with different definitions and interpretations. But," according to IZZARD, "these are the loose facts. There are straight, bi-sexual and gay transvestites (and transsexuals). They are probably of both sexes (thought female transvestites are kind of invisible in western society). The proportions of straight to bi to gay are difficult to work out but you may as well work with one third of each until more people in the transgender community come out."

'Coming out' for IZZARD, was a good and a difficult thing to do. IZZARD knew he didn't want to perform in a dress (at this stage) and at the end of 1985 he started street performing in London's Covent Garden (in trousers with no make-up) with a fellow mate from Sheffield. They started doing a comedy stunts double act (escaping from a woolly jumper etc), which wasn't very good. In 1986 they got better when they started a sword-fighting act. The next year saw IZZARD going solo, doing an escapology act whilst on a 5ft unicycle. The act itself was not really important (although it was insane enough to hold a street audience in bad weather), but it was the start of IZZARD developing the solo improvising and audience skills that would become the foundations of his stand up.

In 1988, IZZARD began performing stand up comedy in the London clubs (of which there are about 80). Two years later, all this experience in sketch comedy and street performing merged with his new stand up skills and things began to take off. In Christmas 1991 he did his final performances at the Comedy Store in London, after which he played larger and larger theatres around London. In February 1993 he took his stand up show into The Ambassadors theatre in the London's West End.

And IZZARD continues to evolve as an actor and comedian. In his native England, he has been called, "the greatest British stand-up comedian...of his generation," by Bryan Appleyard in the cover story of the London Sunday Times, while Darryl H. Miller noted in The Los Angeles Times in his review of "CIRCLE" at the Henry Fonda Theater: "He walks onstage to the roaring tumult usually reserved for rock stars and soon has the audience busting a gut about the Spanish Inquisition and chaos theory. Such is the phenomenon of Eddie Izzard, funniest man, in, well, pretty much all of the known universe."

http://www.anti.com/artist.php?id=4

(*) (*) I really needed a laugh this morning and Eddie always makes me smile if not laugh my butt off! He is absolutely one of the most hilarious people I've ever watched.....his often subtle expressions and Brit accent along with the totally irreverent list of topics.....I love this guy! (*) (*)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 10:15 AM

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

(*) (*) These quotes are more universally true & so shouldn't be offensive to any one party or group:

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
-- Sir Winston Churchill

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
-- Dr. Robert Anthony

Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.
-- Charles Dickens

(*) (*) And finally -- for those who yet feel any lingering discouragement from the election -- just keep this in mind:

If you think you're too small to make a difference, you've never been in bed with a mosquito.
-- source unknown; received from our dear friend Lady Edith LaQ.

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 10:16 AM

This week's Stupid News comes from the Associated Press. Below, I've truncated & lightly copyedited the story. It is true. Really, it is.

Ebay Cancels Bids for Virgin Mary Sandwich

MIAMI (Nov. 16) (AP) - Internet auction house eBay Inc. has canceled bids for half of a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich that its owner said bore the image of the Virgin Mary.

52-year-old Diana Duyser of Hollywood put the sandwich up for sale last week, drawing bids as high as $22,000 before eBay pulled the item Sunday night. The page was viewed almost 100,000 times before being taken down.

eBay said the sandwich broke its policy, which "does not allow listings that are intended as jokes." But Duyser says the grilled sandwich (plain white bread and American cheese, cooked with no oil or butter) wasn't a joke.

After making the sandwich 10 years ago, Duyser took a bite and saw a face staring back at her from the bread. She put the sandwich in a clear plastic box with cotton balls and kept it on her night stand.

At first, she was scared by the image, "but now that I realize how unique it is, I wanted to share it with the world," Duyser told The Miami Herald.

She said the sandwich has never sprouted a spore of mold.

:| :|

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 10:21 AM

(h) There's an entertaining Flash introduction to Yiddish translation at:

http://www.vidlit.com/yidlit/yidlit.html

(h) Within the same general site you can view this uplifting review of several recent books (also in Flash format):

http://www.vidlit.com/bookmarket/bookmarket001.html

;) :| :( This link (also listed at Michael Moore's site, http://www.michaelmoore.com) for anyone who wants to apologize to the rest of the world for the election of George W. Bush:
http://www.sorryeverybody.com/

(*) (*) It's pretty funny, and also pretty sad in what it tells us. Nice detail: you can contribute your own picture to the list. (*) (*)

:o :o :| :| And last but not least, this link to Fanatical Apathy's "Headlines From The Second Term" -- where you can contribute your own addition to the list:

http://www.felbers.net/mt/archives/000946.html

(*) (*) Enjoy the links and have a relaxing holiday filled with love, warmth and surrounded by good friends, especially canine and other furry ones. (l) (l)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 07:28 PM

http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/ken/huhebi/g58

(k) (k) ,
(l) (l) SW and Doc the boxer (l) (l)

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 07:30 PM

http://groups.msn.com/CowgirlsCorral/signaturesmadeforsweetlady.msnw

(*) (*) I'm sure butches, FTM, and others will enjoy!!! Hold on to you libido! ;)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 07:32 PM

Here is a poem to get you all in the mood for Thanksgiving.

`T was the night of Thanksgiving, But I just couldn't sleep.
I tried counting backwards, I tried counting sheep.
The leftovers beckoned, The dark meat and white,
But I fought the temptation With all of my might.

Tossing and turning With anticipation,
The thought of a snack Became infatuation.
So I raced to the kitchen, Flung open the door,
And gazed in the fridge Full of goodies galore.

I gobbled up turkey And buttered potatoes,
Pickles and carrots, Beans and tomatoes.
I felt myself swelling So plump and so round,
Till all of a sudden, I rose off the ground!
I crashed through the ceiling, Floating into the sky
With a mouthful of pudding And a handful of pie.
But I managed to yell As I soared past the trees...

Author Unknown

http://www.nightlady.nl/thanksg.html

(*) (*) lOVE TO MY FRIENDS AND OTHERS TOO.

(k) (k) ,
SWEETLADY

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 07:38 PM

OPERATION GRATITUDE (SM) - Copyright © 2004
Operation Gratitude (SM)- Carolyn Blashek.
16444 Refugio Road; Encino, California 91436 USA
fax: 818-789-0563 email: cblashek@aol.com

http://opgratitude.com/website/html/index.php

(*) (*) Let's send a package, despite how we voted, eh? (l) (l) (l) The soldiers have NO vote in where and when they go, so I suggest let's try to create a "Bob Hope" moment.....I can tap dance and sing, but I think that maybe warm socks and other practical (and chocolate!) gifts would be appreciated especially when accompanied with brief letters of appreciation!

(l) (l) (l) (l) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-22-2004, 07:43 PM

http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/1769/webring.html

Women Loving Women in Herstory:
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/1769/nl2.html

http://k.webring.com/hub?ring=wlw

http://www.mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/1986/02feb1986/taboo.htm\

(*) (*) (*) Nice photos! http://www.djdee.com/posters/hot_1.htm

(*) (*) I'm off to try to sleep for the first time in three nights. Doc is resting fine I hope.

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 09:15 AM

Editorial: Rolling Back Women's Rights

November 23, 2004 NYTimes

Dispensing with legislative niceties like holding hearings
or full and open debate, President Bush and the Republican
Congress have used the cover of a must-pass spending bill
to mount a disgraceful sneak attack on women's health and
freedom.

(*) (*) Tucked into the $388 billion budget measure just approved
by the House and Senate is a sweeping provision that has
nothing to do with the task Congress had at hand -
providing money for the government. In essence, it tells
health care companies, hospitals and insurance companies
they are free to ignore Roe v. Wade and state and local
laws and regulations currently on the books to make certain
that women's access to reproductive health services
includes access to abortion.

It remains to be seen exactly how the measure will work in
practice. But the intention, plainly, is to curtail further
already dwindling access to abortion and even to counseling
that mentions abortion as a legal option. It denies federal
financing to government agencies that "discriminate"
against health care providers who choose for any reason to
disregard state mandates to offer abortion-related
services. This represents a vast expansion of the
"conscience protection" that federal law currently gives to
individual doctors who do not want to undergo abortion
training.

The affront to women's rights, moreover, should not obscure
the serious threat to the First Amendment involved in
enacting what is likely to evolve into a domestic "gag
rule" as, one by one, health care providers order doctors
they employ not to provide patients with information about
the abortion option. This echoes the way Mr. Bush reimposed
a blanket Reagan-era gag rule for providers of reproductive
health services abroad on his first full day in office back
in 2001.

Unfortunately, vocal opposition from Democrats and a
handful of Republican moderates was not enough to stop the
pernicious assault on the rights of millions of women from
becoming law in the rush to pass the spending bill. At
least Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, won a
promise from the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, to
permit a direct vote on a bill repealing this measure not
long into the new Congressional session. In the meantime,
Americans, and American women in particular, are officially
on notice that post-election, the Republican war on
reproductive rights has entered an ominous new phase.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/opinion/23tue2.html?ex=1102307378&ei=1&en=20a32d384bbaad53

(*) (*) :( :(

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 09:18 AM

(*) (*) This week you all should be recuperating from tryptophan overdoses on Friday, so the Friday Stuff must therefore be delivered on Wednesday, as you will all be stuffed with Thursday's Stuffing by the time the Friday Stuff would roll around your way. (I think that makes some sense, but Doc the boxer was up most of the past five nights so I'm a bit groggy ....)

Anyway, this week will be thinner than usual -- but that also makes sense, since you all should be leaving your offices BY MID-DAY WEDNESDAY to avoid the holiday rush's Worst Traffic Of The Year. (*) (*)

QUOTATIONS

Miscellaneous ones, but they seemed to fall together.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
-- Helen Keller

Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
-- Barbara Johnson

To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight -- and never stop fighting.
-- e.e. cummings

Attach yourself to your passion, but not to your plan. Adversity is your most honest friend on the path to success.
-- Yehoshua Eliovson [quoted by Inspire.com]

Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers

"Whale Flatulence Stuns Scientists"
-- Sydney (Australia) Telegraph headline

(l) (l) (o) SAFE TRAVELS TODAY. (l)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 09:23 AM

LINKS OF THE WEEK

Easter eggs in November!
This is a well traveled site that contains instructions for finding oodles of secret "Easter Eggs" in various software, as well as little-known movie and TV connections (kind of the linear media equivalent of eggs, I suppose):

http://www.eeggs.com

Spelling with Phones!
What does YOUR phone number spell? At this site you simply type in your number, and PhoneSpell checks it against a dictionary, spitting out a bunch of possibilities. Another useless internet toy!

http://www.PhoneSpell.org

Election Stuff -- Way Late!
This is nifty link where they use cartography in different ways in order to correct the inherent misrepresentation of "Red versus Blue" states and more accurately depict the shape of the electorate. Nope, this isn't a joke site -- it's an excellent analysis of the complexity of the vote FAR better than our dumbed-down "network news analysis" and its simpletons (e.g. Tucker Carlson & Dan Rather) normally convey:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/

(l) (l) ({) (}) I'm grateful for many things this year including my friends here on B-F! Happy Thanksgiving to those in the U.S. and a lovely Thursday for those in Canada and elsewhere. (f) (k)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 09:26 AM

Canada busy sending back Bush-dodgers
by Joe Blundo
Columbus Dispatch, morning edition of 16 November 2004

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.

The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O'Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. "Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.

"A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR.

In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border.

Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers.

"If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating and organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.

"I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

:o :o Indeed! I thought this was pretty hilarious. Hopefully we liberals can sneak through next year when the post-election rush is over.... (h)

({) (}) (b) (d) Eat, drink and be merry this holiday. Safe real-world and virtual travels, all. (l)

Peace and love,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 09:57 AM

Cows With Guns Flash Movie:

http://www.3dweb.no/galleri/stuestolbm/bilder/anim1.swf

Turn your speakers up and be prepared to laugh your a** off!

(*) (*) Take a look at some of this great web site's T-shirts. I want the one with "Fighting Terrorists.....Since 1492", with a black and white photo of four Native Americans. How true. (l) :o

(o) Off with Doc to the vet and then to pick up some turkey dinner for tomorrow. Too bad I have papers to write that are due Sunday night. :| :| Make lots of my favorite: fresh coffee with cinnimon in it. That'll keep my mental motor running. ;)

(*) (*) I hope that you enjoy the Cows with Guns Flash animation as much as I did. I saw it before.... can't remember how long ago it was, but I still LMAO this morning as much as I did the first time. (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 10:09 AM

Posted on Sun, Nov. 21, 2004 San Jose Mercury News
"In China, blogs waiting to bloom:

WITH LIMITS ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH, POLITICS STILL TRUMPS TECHNOLOGY

By Dan Gillmor

Mercury News Technology Columnist

SHANGHAI - They play a key role in a medium made to order for debating the issues of our times. And in the United States, Web logs spout forth a torrent of news and often scalding opinions on just about everything.
Not so in China, where a certain timidity reigns.

Economic freedoms are expanding in this nation of 1.3 billion people, nowhere more powerfully than here in Shanghai, an amazing city that seems to grow a new skyline every year and has become the commercial center of a vast land. Freedom of expression, the heart of political freedom, is making considerably less progress.

The government continues its paranoid surveillance and steering of the traditional media and Internet. Dissidents are still being jailed for online activities. Yet technological trends may be working in favor of freer speech. It won't happen overnight, needless to say, but if a free-speech media arises in China it might well start with bloggers.

Estimates of the number of Chinese bloggers range as high as 600,000 -- not a trivial number. That's far fewer per capita among computer users, however, than in the United States. But blogs, the leading kind of personal Web site, are likely to have an outsized impact -- when and if people feel more free to say what's actually on their minds.

Last week, I visited Fudan University, one of China's leading institutions of higher education and home to the nation's first journalism school. I spoke in a graduate-level class about the rise of citizen-journalists who use increasingly low-cost and powerful digital media tools, and then met with some student bloggers.

As they had been in my visit to the same university a few years ago, the students were exceedingly bright. They asked pointed questions. Their ambition to do genuine journalism seemed strong, even in a society where expressing the wrong opinion can get people in trouble.
When I asked the youthful bloggers what kind of things they wrote about online, the answers reflected today's reality. ``Personal things,'' one student responded, and others in the room nodded in agreement. Another student, a computer-science major, also writes about technologies such as software architecture. But politics? Uh, no thanks.

Don't be surprised, says Isaac Mao, a 32-year-old technologist, investor and one of the first Chinese bloggers (www.isaacmao.com and www.cnblog.com). Some things are just considered too risky.

Before posting anything on a blog, he says, ``people think first if it's dangerous.''

One person who didn't seem to care much about the risks was a young woman known as Muzimei. Her blog, which became perhaps the most widely followed personal Internet site in China last year, featured her self-described, graphic sexual exploits. The straight-laced government was not amused, and shut her down. She then wrote a book.

Her blogging provider, one of several Chinese Web-hosting companies focusing on blogs, also has come under government pressure, though more for political items than other matters. In fact, says Mao, all of the major Chinese blog-hosting operations were shut down, albeit briefly, at one point earlier this year. Access to several U.S.-based blog providers also was briefly blocked.

Even a student-run blogging site was ordered to behave. Fell Jin, a Fudan student and blogger, is one of the founders of Ycuyl Blog (www.yculblog.com), a blog-hosting site that has been popular with students. Last January, he says, ``the police came to us and said we have to stop.'' The site, like others, was restored to operation, but the message had been delivered loud and clear.

Fons Tuinstra, a foreign correspondent from Europe who has lived in Shanghai for a decade, has high hopes for free speech here but thinks Americans have a somewhat naive view of how fast Chinese society can change. A blogger himself (www.chinaherald.net), he notes that blogging software is just a tool, not a road to political or social paradise.

The government's shutdown of blogging sites was ``a sign of panic'' over a new kind of medium, Tuinstra says. The panic subsided, but few Internet sites are pushing any speech boundaries at this point, by most accounts. Several sites are said to be discussing China's endemic corruption problems; that's a step in the right direction.

Blogging isn't big business here, at least not yet. At least three blog software providers and Internet hosting operations serve the Chinese-language market, along with several U.S. companies that have created local language versions. Google's Blogger unit just announced a Chinese version, among several other languages.

Mao, the investor and blogger, has intriguing ideas on how blogging could penetrate further into Chinese society. One vital improvement, he says, will be blogging software that lets people make postings visible only to a selected audience, not to society (and government monitors) at large.

Another useful technology, he says, would be a more decentralized blog-hosting system. When centralized server computers host the majority of blogs, they are inevitably vulnerable to government pressure, as China's bloggers have discovered.

China is a welter of contradictions. There are free local Internet dial-up phone numbers in big cities, where anyone can get onto the Net anonymously. But the Great Firewall Internet filtering system -- built by the government but assisted by U.S. tech companies (including San Jose's own Cisco) that only see dollar signs -- blocks so much useful and thought-provoking information from the people.
I hope China's regime will loosen up in more than economic ways. It really has to. In the end, freedom to say what you want is a prerequisite for genuine economic freedom.

Blogs are part of an emergent global conversation. They are individualistic, human voices. They will emerge as a vital set of Chinese voices, too -- if they're given the chance.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/10238306.htm

(l) (l) Yet another reason to feel grateful this holiday. (l)

Peace, love and Bai Ling,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 12:07 PM

November 20, 2004 · Creators at Carnegie presents an hour of music from alt-country superstar k.d. lang. The talented singer and songwriter who has blurred distinctions between traditional and modern music performed a program of songs from her latest CD, Hymns of the 49th Parallel. For the concert, lang combined the sweeping sounds of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra with steel guitar and other rootsy elements of her touring band.

49th Parallel is lang's tribute to great Canadian songwriters, from Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell to Neil Young and Jane Siberry, among others. The Carnegie performance was immediately applauded by audiences and critics -- both for its content and its acoustical clarity.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4173389

k.d. lang's home web site: http://www.kdlang.com/

(*) (*) Enjoy!

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-24-2004, 12:10 PM

Doug Fine: 'Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man'
September 26, 2004 on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3934125

After traveling the world as a journalist and adventure writer, Doug Fine moved to Alaska in 1998, intent on learning survival skills and self-reliance.

He describes the experience in a new book, Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man. Fine, who grew up in the suburbs of New York, had several difficult adjustments to make in enjoying his new life, from harsh, dark winters to the unique ways of Alaskan life.
NPR's Jennifer Ludden talks with Fine, an occasional NPR contributor, about his new book and life above the Lower 48.

Book Excerpt: Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man

Free-Ranging
page 13:
Even with my inability to master basic rural skills, I'm sure I won't shatter the aura of legend that elevates all Alaskans to near-superhuman status at Lower 48 cocktail parties. That's because we Alaskans have perfected a method of speaking to Outsiders (and to each other) that I call Free-Range BS-ing. You've all heard it. The exaggerated tales of brown bear encounters we tell at cocktail parties are the quintessential Free-Range stories that perpetuate the Alaska legend and ensure that there is no such thing as a Cheechako to most of the world. One becomes a Mountain Man merely by the geographical decision to live in Alaska.

Free-Range BS-ing is not the same as regular BS-ing, as it generally contains the seeds of truth, uttered without filters by someone with enough bravado to paint the story just the way he or she sees it. Free-Ranging is more like improv over the chord changes called the facts. Think of it as artistic embellishment. Alaskans practice it so widely because there simply aren't enough witnesses to dispute their version of the facts. It's a very liberating phenomenon. I first learned Free-Ranging, I now realize, the way a lion cub learns behavior from the members of its pride: from the bear tales of the people I met on my own early trips to Alaska.

But Free-Ranging aside, in rural Alaska today, there's still no one to hire to do your wood-cutting or snowmachine repair for you if you lack the financial resources to maintain a staff of servants. And yet winter still comes.

Your only recourses are friends, strangers who quickly become friends, and your own ability to learn on the spot. When I reflect on this, the fact that I have survived to this point makes me wonder how so many of the pilgrims died that first winter in Massachusetts.

Avoiding Jugular Disconnect
page 20:
It was time for my first chainsaw lesson. A placebo effect of inner warmth which had begun to flow through my belly at this realization was interrupted by what sounded like Biblical wind and rain emanating from beyond the rickety deck outside. Undaunted, I fitted my yellow-tinted Smith ski goggles on my forehead as I stepped out into the Alaskan afternoon, feeling a little rugged.

That feeling lasted for about a second. My friend was giving me a funny look.

"What?" I asked, shivering at the threshold of the cabin. My voice erupted a bit louder and higher pitched than I had intended. I had forgotten that I was nearly deaf from the bright yellow earplugs jutting out of my head.

Mountain Man Roger Longhenry’s mouth was formed into the unmistakable 'O' of laughter suppression on the deck steps outside my only door. The 'O' is what I was questioning. I hadn’t done anything overly-Cheechakoey since a near-fatal soldering incident late in the stove installation process nearly an hour earlier. All I had done just now was step inside to "grab some gear" for the chainsaw demonstration. That’s what he had suggested I do. "Grab some gear."

Roger was still almost laughing at me.

"What?" I asked again.

"Um, look at yourself," Roger choked behind a fog of carbon dioxide and tobacco smoke. He was surrounded by the tools we had used to affix the stove to my living quarters.

For cordiality's sake, I looked down at my right thigh area.

"What?" I asked a third time, a little uncertain insistence in my voice this time. I threw the acutely skeletal chainsaw instructor a shrug with my palms up as though in supplication. I meant to imply, "Defend your posture." We had been working together all afternoon, and informality comes quickly in Alaska.

"You... ah, planning on hitting the slopes?" Roger sort of guffawed, rubbing his hand in a downward motion over his mouth to erase his smile.

Ah, yes. The ski goggles. They were on sitting atop a full black-knit mask of the Subcomandante Marcos variety, and they puzzled this friend of mine, who spent pretty much all of his life doing things like throwing in wood stoves and firing up chainsaws. For him to observe me coming to this process cold at age 28 must have been like Bernie Williams being forced to watch Mister Rogers face his first Roger Clemens fastball.

Chainsaws
page 41:
. . . "I can do this," I thought scoffingly. "My Cheechako days are numbered."
Chainsaws are deceptive this way. When the grain is amenable, you feel like the king of all fiber. This helps explain the absence of forests after the first hundred years of chainsaws.

I spent nearly 40 minutes shredding two 120-foot-spruce into gnome chairs. When the first spruce dotted the forest floor around me in a perforated line, I felt a surge of gratitude for these trees, which had given their lives to sustain first 14 million beetles and then me. I paused for a moment to give this appreciation the emphasis it deserved. Then I sunk the bar in again, savagely. My unlaced boot was wedged under a rock, my cheeks burned, and the forest air around me was speckled with fragrant suspended sawdust particles.

I was nearing the end of the second spruce when the delusions of grandeur started kicking in. "Maybe I can carve my entire winter wood supply tonight," I aggrandized.

As if to editorialize on that strategy, the chainsaw bar at that moment shot back like a razor-sharp pendulum on speed. It did this along an axis that ran a solid two millimeters wide of my right ear. It had evidently boomeranged off an impenetrable softball-sized knot. Its motion actually gave me a slightly layered haircut. What happened is, as Roger warned, called "kick-back." It kills people. All the time. Everything went down so fast. I barely had time to reflect that, "This saw isn’t working anymore" before my head nearly filed for divorce from my torso.

My body, reacting as fast as the nervous system felt it was capable (and far too slowly), arched back, and I dropped the saw in terror in a nearby pile of bear scat. It continued to cycle for a second or two like the proverbial decapitated chicken, chopping up a moss mound and sending ursine defecation onto my chest in a paisley pattern. Embarrassed at its slow reaction to the saw's assault, my spinal cord tried to compensate now by turning my legs into the gooey material inside Stretch Armstrong dolls.

(*) (*) Whose ready to head NORTH?? (l) (l)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-25-2004, 10:38 AM

November 25, 2004
By MICHEL MARRIOTT NYTimes

WHEN Melody Wilt, a new grandmother, made the 10-hour drive
from her home near Reading, Pa., to her daughter's house in
Chapin, S.C., for Thanksgiving, she took along more than a
20-pound smoked turkey.

She went bearing a U.S.B. Web camera, sophisticated
teleconferencing software and an Internet-inspired vision
that will allow her to continue visiting even after she
returns home. "I want him to be able to see me, to hear my
voice," she said of her 3-week-old grandson, Joseph
Sinclair Lewis. "I want to be able to read stories to him
and share some of his firsts."

Mrs. Wilt, a manager at a regional educational services
agency, said videoconferencing technology had gotten so
good, so affordable and so easy to install and use that she
is comfortable using it to open a two-way video window
between her and her grandson when she is unable to visit in
person.

"It's great timing that this technology has gotten to this
point," Mrs. Wilt, 52, said shortly before making the drive
south with her husband, Arthur. "It seems like the perfect
way for me to see all the many changes he is going to go
through."

There are no definitive numbers on how many people use
Web-based videoconferencing. But there is anecdotal
evidence that face-to-face electronic communication is
gaining a foothold beyond the executive suite, and that the
typical home users are no longer the stereotypical geeks
straining to see each other over crude Webcams connected by
sluggish modems.

"It was in a novelty phase," John Carey, a professor of
communications and media management at the Fordham
University Graduate School of Business Administration, said
of the first wave of Webcam use. "It was mostly techies and
exhibitionists, people who show themselves, and pornography
and all of that."

Today's consumers have more options. A high-end system can
cost as much as a flat-screen plasma television. Some
modestly priced units, including the Packet8 VideoPhone,
plug into an electrical outlet and use the Internet.

Long a mainstay of science fiction, the concept of being
able to see and speak with someone over a vast distance, or
even a short one, languished for decades in laboratories
and tangles of technological choke points. Chief among them
was adequate bandwidth, said Robert C. Hagerty, chief
executive of Polycom, the market leader in
videoconferencing, which makes the $149 PVX system that
Mrs. Wilt has in Pennsylvania and is installing for her
grandson in South Carolina.

"You need a good connection," he said, acknowledging that
broadband adoption in North America is rapidly increasing.
He noted that today's typical high-speed connection is
capable of carrying, in both directions, at least the 128
kilobits of data per second that "rich media" requires. In
other words, that is the baseline for television-quality
color images that sync reasonably well with equally clear
audio.

Additionally, Mr. Hagerty said, significant improvements in
videoconferencing software, like the new H.264 video
compression standard, are helping to make the technology
more efficient and accessible.

"We talk with our hands; we show our body language," he
said. "We lose all those things in a phone call."

With improved videoconferencing, he added, "we get them all
back."

Professor Carey said consumers' desire for
videoconferencing had been partly stoked by the popularity
of instant text messaging, which has been adding video
capabilities. Even blogs, he said, are including video.

"What didn't work three years ago now works reasonably
well," he said.

Professor Carey also noted that early tests of videophones
found that many people, particularly women, were put off by
the prospect of being seen by callers before they were
prepared to be seen. "A lot of people were concerned that
they'd get a videophone call and they'd be in a bathrobe or
their underwear."

Those concerns have been eased by technology, he said. Most
modern systems give users the option of transmitting their
images.

In Eagan, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, Greg Scott, the
unofficial information technician for the Eagan Hills
Alliance Church, is setting up high-speed videoconferencing
to help local families electronically visit loved ones
stationed in Iraq.

Mr. Scott, a member of the church and operator of an
information technology company in the area, said he
conducted a fairly successful test of the system a month
ago using limited bandwidth. But his expectations rose
recently when a local telecommunications company donated a
T1 connection for the project.

"This is going to let lots of soldiers in Iraq with
families here talk face-to-face," Mr. Scott said.

Bryan Martin, the chief executive of 8x8 in Santa Clara,
Calif., the maker of the Packet8 videophones, said it was
not surprising that face-voice communication had a powerful
hold on people. The box in which its phones are sold is
covered with almost a dozen words that mean hello in
various languages. More telling, perhaps, is the invitation
printed on the box to "speak in color."

The Packet8 phone has a five-inch liquid-crystal display so
callers can look at each other as they chat. Mr. Martin
said he did not have to look any farther than his own home
to observe the warmth that screen-to-screen communication
can create. He also said he had ample in-house proof that
the system was extremely easy to use.

"We're finding that my 4-year-old son knows how to use the
videophone," he said. "Even his grandmother knows how to
use the videophone, which is impressive. This is not just
for early adopters, geeks and techno folks like myself."

Convinced that almost anyone who can use a telephone can
use his videophones, Mr. Martin said he planned to set up
call centers in the coming weeks, including at hospitals
where children can talk to (and see) hired "Santas at the
North Pole."

Christopher Swann, 34, an investment analyst from Atlanta,
said his 1-year-old son got a kick out of the phones. Mr.
Swann's biggest complaint about the Packet8 phones is that
they are not compatible with other Web-based
videoconferencing systems. "It would be great if everyone
in the family had one," he said.

He also noted that costs were not limited to the hardware.
He said he spends about $60 a month for his broadband
service, a requirement to use the Packet8 phones, and less
than $40 a month for the phone's service, which includes
unlimited videoconferencing and Voice Over Internet
Protocol, or VoIP.

"It's little more than a gadget right now," Mr. Swann said
of his pair of videophones. Because of the firewall
protecting his company's computer system, he cannot use one
in his main office as he had intended, he said, "but it is
a very cool gadget."

Packet8 phones also do not use the new H.264 video encoding
and decoding scheme, which provides high-quality,
30-frames-a-second images with half the bandwidth
requirements. In some ways, Mr. Hagerty of Polycom said,
the new codec may mean to video what the MP3 compression
format has meant to audio.

The Packet8 videophones use the older H.263 compression,
Mr. Martin said, but they are likely to be upgraded to the
new standard next year. Images using the older compression
are more prone to breaking up. Nonetheless, Mr. Swann said,
his videophones' images are "better than I expected."

Once equipped, the next step - as in the early days of the
telephone - is to find those similarly equipped. Jason
Katz, founder and chief executive of PalTalk, a site that
fosters online video messaging, said innovation and falling
telecommunications costs allowed him to offer his basic
service free. This lets users who install his software to
speak to up to six people at a time (they appear as still
images). For $40 a year, users can broadcast video images
as well as see them, for two-way video conversations.

In the last six years, Mr. Katz said, there have been 30
million downloads of the free PalTalk software. Today, he
said, there are some three million users on his system
speaking to and seeing friends and family members. Some are
even meeting new friends, as is the case with Dennis
Ludwig, a "40-something" communications technician in
Dayton, Ohio, who has been using the service for four
years.

"It's almost like being in a room with someone," said Mr.
Ludwig, who routinely juggles six video windows at a time
on his computer screen. Friendships he has made on PalTalk
are so genuine, he said, that he thinks of many of the
people he knows only over the Internet as his extended
family.

"My mom had open heart surgery three weeks ago," Mr. Ludwig
said. "People in my room from nine different countries are
praying for her."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/technology/circuits/25fami.html?ex=1102398578&ei=1&en=ff1c0124384265c1

(*) (*) What wonderful fun for family members and friends and providing significantly increased image quality at a much lower cost. Definitely a timely article on a day making the start of the holiday season. (l) (l) (l)
Seasons' Greetings Everyone! (l) (l)

Peace and Bai Ling,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-25-2004, 10:47 AM

Iraq: Luis Sinco: Photographs from Fallujah

Luis Sinco, a photographer for the Los Angeles Times, has just returned from Fallujah, where he was attached to a Marine unit that saw some of the worst fighting of the Iraq war.

http://www.latimes.com/la-111704sofallouja-fl.flash

http://www.latimes.com/la-111204fallouja-f.flash

http://www.latimes.com/la-111204fallouja-fl.flash

http://www.latimes.com/la-111004fallouja-fl.flash

(*) (*) Make sure to turn your speakers up since Luis, the photographer does voice-overs for each of the photographs that he took during his trip. It's rather sobering, but absolutely made me feel grateful as well as respectful of the soldiers stationed overseas and are not with their families today. ({) (}) ({) (}) to all of them. (l) (l)

Sincerest gratitude to friends here and outside of the digital tundra. (AKA the Internet). ({) (}) May your day be filled with love even it's from your canine or other animal angels. (k) (k)

Warmest wishes,
SWeetlady

sweetlady

11-28-2004, 03:41 PM

Vermont's Country Stores Organize to Face Threats
November 28, 2004 By KATIE ZEZIMA

BRIDGEWATER CORNERS, Vt. - With its ample selection of
Australian wines and shelves filled with DVD's and
garlic-flavored pita chips, the country store in this tiny
south-central Vermont town might appear to have come a long
way since it opened in 1839.

But its creaky wood-plank floor, its wall of 19th-century
mailboxes cater-cornered to a jar of Marshmallow Fluff and
the proudly displayed town hunting ledger suggest that it
has not really changed much.

Independent country stores like this one, the Bridgewater
Corners Country Store, where customers are urged to sit
outside at the wooden tables with a cup of coffee from a
bottomless urn and where regulars run tabs, have long been
a Vermont way of life. Now, threatened by the minimarts and
large grocery chains that have driven some of them out of
business in recent years, they have been banding together
to help protect themselves.

Of the 100 independent country stores in the state, 55 have
become members of the Vermont Alliance of Independent
Country Stores. The organization, founded about two years
ago, serves primarily as a support network, a sounding
board and a marketing tool for owners. It promotes both the
vitality and the history of the stores, limiting membership
to those built before 1927, when the Winooski River
flooded, decimating the state and killing 88 people.

"It's strength in numbers," said Charlie Wilson, owner of
the Taftsville Country Store, which opened in 1840.

The alliance, started with state grant money and sustained
by annual dues of $50, holds meetings every few months and
is supported by the Vermont Grocers Association, a lobbying
group. It is urging its members to market themselves with a
detailed Web page on the alliance's site, www.vaics.org,
and is working toward selling its own brand of products
like salsa and jams.

"They represent, both in terms of the present and past,
Vermont's communities," Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, executive
director of the alliance, said of the stores. "They contain
things that people want to buy, and they are a place that
people want to go talk and meet friends. They are just a
real example of those traditions in Vermont that survive
not because they're cute but because they're necessary."
But the key to surviving in the market, members of the
group say, is being able to adapt to changing times and
falling prices with new products and amenities while
retaining old-fashioned charm and friendly service.

"Country stores are struggling," Mr. Bathory-Kitsz said.
"They've had three hits over the course of the 20th
century. The first was the supermarket, the second the
convenience store and third the big box store. Each took
away part of the day-to-day operation that kept that store
alive. Now they've had to substitute items and come up with
ways to keep up. These changes have required a lot of
imagination. Now there's A.T.M.'s in a lot of stores."

Mr. Wilson's red brick store, where his two dogs, Emily and
Annie, greet customers, is a hodgepodge of tourist
knickknacks, maple sugar candy, goat cheeses and basic
sundries. The post office serving his town's 283 residents
is in the back, past the ice cream freezer and beyond the
substantial high-end wine collection. On a recent late
afternoon, one man came into the post office and grabbed a
soda, waving to Mr. Wilson, who put it on his tab.

"What we've become is a convenience store," Mr. Wilson
said. "I carry all this stuff out of convenience for
people. If someone runs out of flour or sugar or milk, they
can come pick it up here."

Not that he is entirely happy about it. "I can't keep the
store open and pay the light bills just to sell one box of
sugar," he said.

Bob Hammond, owner of the store here in Bridgewater
Corners, said: "It's hard to run a place like this. It's
not always easy to stay competitive, to stay afloat."

Still, Mr. Wilson said that with the creation of the
alliance, owners were now able to help one another in ways
that were earlier unheard of, as when one owner lost his
milk contract because his store was too small and another
member of the group put him in touch with a distributor who
was willing to deliver only a few gallons at a time. That,
members say, would never have happened before the alliance,
whose stores are sprinkled throughout the state.

"To be alone is one thing; to be among 50 or 60 people you
know is another," Mr. Bathory-Kitsz said.

To customers like Sandy Sawyer, who shopped at the
Bridgewater Corners store with her 8-year-old daughter the
other day, convenience trumped all. The store is right
around the corner from her house, and she needed to pick up
some things for dinner.

But Pete Oldenburg, who stopped in on a work break for a
cup of coffee, enjoyed the personal touch.

"You come in a little country store and you know all the
people," Mr. Oldenburg said. "You try to keep the money
local. It's not the fast-paced in and out of a big chain."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/national/28vermont.html?ex=1102656695&ei=1&en=3f0687ad08b2ef38

(*) (*) Ah, I can just smell the aromas and hear the creaking floor boards in really old country stores. They have a few of these old country places in SE PA that are well over a couple of hundred years old and they have survived - probably because they are in historic districts such as New Hope, PA and Lawrenceville, NJ with lots of tourists visiting especially in the summer and around the holidays. I buy my groceries from a three-store family-owned store nearby. I try to stay out of those big box stores and buy from the small mom and pop (or mom and mom or pop and pop ;) stores ;) <shaking head.....maybe taking Doc for a walk to blow those mental cobwebs away.....> Three papers due plus at least THREE other learner feedback postings due by midnight tonight. I'm done except for the other learner feedback..... (h) :| It's getting down to 32 degrees here tonight and I can't wait! Love that cold weather - and cuddling up with a great film or book to relax the mind from grad work and "work" work. (o) Off for a little bit for some fresh air. (f)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-28-2004, 03:51 PM

Op-Ed Contributor: Blood Is Thicker Than Gravy
November 28, 2004 By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON - I've been surprised, out on the road, how
often I get asked about my family. They're beyond red -
more like crimson. My sister flew to West Virginia in
October to work a phone bank for W.

People often wonder what our Thanksgiving is like.

It's lovely - if you enjoy hearing about how brilliant Ann
Coulter is, how misguided The New York Times's editorial
page is, and how valiant the president is as he tries to
stop America's slide into paganism.

This year, my brothers were on the warpath about news
reports that Maryland public schools did not teach about
Thanksgiving from a religious perspective. "Who do they
think the Pilgrims thanked?" demanded Martin. "God."

There are moments - when my brothers are sharing some
snarky thing Rush Limbaugh said about me, or the latest bon
mot from Pat Buchanan, with whom they grew up - that I'm
tempted to stuff my ears with my mom's potato stuffing, or
go off and read a book by David Sedaris about normal family
life.

People often ask me why President Bush inspires such
passionate support. My brother Kevin, a salesman who lives
in Montgomery County, Md., can answer that; here is a
recent e-mail message, trimmed for space, he sent to
friends:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

Now, just as four years ago, I breathe a huge sigh of
relief and rejoice in the common sense of the American
voting public. Congratulations to President Bush for
winning re-election in a poker game played with a stacked
deck. No candidate, including Richard Nixon, ever had to
endure the biased and unfair tactics of our major media in
their attempt to influence the outcome of an election. ...
He never complained, just systematically set about
delivering the same consistent message. You may remember
that four years ago, I felt physically ill watching the
Democrats try to legislate their way to the presidency. ...

A very big thank you to Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Rob
Reiner, Bill Maher, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Al
Franken and Jon Stewart for your involvement. You certainly
energized the base. Now, please have the courage of your
convictions and leave the country.

To Bob Shrum - Cut your fee.

To Mike McCurry, Joe
Lockhart and Paul Begala - You don't seem quite as smart
without a great candidate.

To The New York Times and The Washington Post - If Bush and
Reagan were so stupid, how did they both go four for four
in elections involving two of our biggest states and the
presidency without your endorsement?

We do not live in a secular country. There are all sorts of
people of faith that place moral values over personal
freedoms. They are not all 'wacky evangelicals.' They are
people who don't like Howard Stern piping a hard porn show
over the airwaves and wrapping himself in the freedom of
the First Amendment. They don't like being told that a
young girl does not have to seek her mother's counsel about
an abortion. They don't like seeing an eight-month-old
fetus having his head punctured and his brains sucked out.
They don't like being told the Pledge of Allegiance, a
moment of silent prayer and the words 'under God' are
offensive to an enlightened few so nobody should be allowed
to use them. ... My wife and I picked our sons' schools
based on three criteria: 1) moral values 2) discipline 3)
religious maintenance - in that order. We have spent an
obscene amount of money doing this and never regretted a
penny. Last week on the news, I heard that the Montgomery
County school board voted to include a class with a
10th-grade girl demonstrating how to put a condom on a
cucumber and a study of the homosexual lifestyle. The vote
was 6-0. I feel better about the money all the time.

To Dan Rather - Good luck in your retirement.

To Gavin
Newsom - Thanks for all of the great shots of the San
Francisco couples embracing their mates at City Hall in
direct defiance of the law.

To P. Diddy - 'Vote or Die' might need a little work.

To
John Edwards - Thanks for being there.

To my friends - only 1,460 days until the next election.
Stay vigilant. The Democrats, CBS, the NY Times and the
Post may think Hillary is the perfect antidote for all
those 'stupid' voters out there.

Best regards, Kevin"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/opinion/28dowd.html?ex=1102657103&ei=1&en=278a15f53ebf7431

(*) (*) I'd prefer family not speaking to listening to this pro-Dubya and morals and values crap. That way there's no stress, no biting one's tongue or putting up with ANY amount of B.S. from one certain sister-in-law b**ch.
I cannot believe that Maureen Dowd, who writes for a very liberal (and great) newspaper (New York Times) would even spend the holidays with her redneck brothers - no matter how well educated and in what profession they were in. My Thanksgiving was really, really quiet, and this will be the first xmas that I am not driving, flying or sleigh-riding to my parents' for xmas eve. Who needs it? I'm moving away from here next year anyway and this whole holiday stuff will be a non-issue when I'm living in some remote corner of the north and west. ;) (h) <big sigh of relief.......THAT felt GOOD!> (*) (*)

({) (}) ,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-28-2004, 04:01 PM

Annapurna: http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/peaks/annapurna.htm

Annapurna is an enormous Himalayan massif, the tenth highest mountain in the world. In 1950, it became the first 8,000 meter mountain to be successfully climbed. It is located east of a great gorge cut through the Himalaya by the Kali Gandaki river. The mountain has glaciers on its western and northwestern slopes which drain into this gorge.

Annapurna is a Sanskrit name that can be translated as Goddess of the Harvests or more simply The Provider. Of Annapurna's many high peaks, five are labeled using some variation of the name Annapurna. Of these, the two highest (Annapurna I and II), stand like bookends at the western and eastern ends of the massif.

Photos:

http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/peaks/photos/annapurna.htm

http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/peaks/photos/annapurna3.htm

http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/peaks/photos/annapurna4.htm

http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/peaks/photos/annapurna5.htm

Annapurna Circuit, Nepal - Oct 1995: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/whites/nepal/

(*) (*) Aren't cable modems or other broadband Internet modems just the best for going anyplace in the world in seconds? Ah!!!!! Now when they have small, water-proof LCD screens that I can sit in a hot tub and surf like this? Relax in the hot water and look at gorgeous images from web cams or photos of places like this? Hmmmm....... ;) Well, maybe share the screen.... ;)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-29-2004, 03:12 PM

Craving sweet things on your plate -- and at the next table? When the food and the clientele just have to be piping hot, work up an appetite for these restaurants that we promise deliver both. Whether in Seattle or San Francisco, New York or New Orleans, cut straight to the chase and sample the best these 10 delicious gay-popular restaurants can cook up.

1. New York City

Food Bar ($10-24)
Firmly back in place as Chelsea's gayest and most popular spot, with the original name reinstated, Food Bar is diminutive and supercool. A generous window reveals the clientele -- a succulent selection of Chelsea's finest denizens.

2. Los Angeles

Mark's ($12-28)
Long L.A.'s gay restaurant of choice, Mark's presents good food amid a head-swiveling array of eye candy and an atmosphere that's almost good enough to eat. Sunday brunch and half-price Monday nights are nights to book ahead for. Views are best from the booths up front or patio tables. The warm flourless chocolate cake is legendary.

3. Santa Fe

Geronimo ($20-48)
Gay-owned and enthusiastically gay-frequented Geronimo is the first, second and third choice for any visit to New Mexico. Inventive takes on Southwestern dishes are delivered to your table by a deliciously handsome, attentive and charming waitstaff. Flavors range from sumptuous to stunning. Presentation is immaculate. Reservations are recommended.

4. San Francisco

Mecca ($17-29)
Certainly the chi-chiest spot of the Castro's numerous tantalizing options, Mecca offers opportunities to eat at the friendly bar, imbibe some of the many wines by the glass and maybe make a few new friends in the process. Although not an exclusively gay dining destination, Mecca is often a mere sliver away from being so. Thursday night is lesbian night.

5. Ft. Lauderdale

Galanga ($15-25)
This Asian fusion palace in the heart of Wilton Manors is gay-owned and operated. A predominantly gay clientele congregates for sushi and Thai food on the lovely romantic outdoor patio, which is also an excellent people-watching spot. Galanga also offers delivery for those who wish to dine in their hotel room.

6. Austin

El Sol Y La Luna ($6-8)
Great all-day breakfasts are merely part of the attraction at this distinctive lesbian-owned restaurant. Delicious and reliable fare features in this small, funky venue -- a pregentrification original amidst all the hip development of SoCo. Dishes from the interior of Mexico, including many vegetarian options, entice local diners and visiting women staying at the nearby lesbian-owned Hotel San Jose.

7. Chicago

The Pepper Lounge($17-25)
The Pepper Lounge, two blocks west of Halsted, is the restaurant of choice for late-night gay diners. The small dining room, decked out in crimson, is the scene of killer drinks and an eclectic Italian cuisine. The Pepper Lounge started concocting thrilling brunches, including such lures as shiitake hash and pumpkin waffles, in October 2004. Reservations recommended.
Chicago trip planning

8. Atlanta

Einstein's ($7-19)
Einstein's in Midtown offers good food, outdoor dining and a good gay crowd all the time. Eclectic menu influences range from Cajun to Jamaican, and hip décor and presentation complement excellent food. An attractive staff adds to the visual delights on offer.

9. Seattle

1200 Bistro & Lounge ($17-27)
The 1200's walls are bright, bold and confident -- as are the spectacular creations that grace the menu in this upscale spot. Very much the first choice for residents of the gayborhood, this refined bistro is sleek, sure and delicious, with an electric atmosphere and an enticing list of wines by the glass.

10. New Orleans

Irene's Cuisine ($12-24)
Irene herself oversees the excellent traditional Italian cooking at this gay-adored address, tucked away in the French Quarter. Prices are very reasonable and portions are vast. Live piano adds a little something to the dining experience Monday through Saturday. A relaxed atmosphere and finely crafted meals -- with wine to match -- are the stars.

(*) (*) Whjo wants to head for Sante Fe, NM? Chilly but warm people who live there who are very welcoming. That, plus the kivas are stiked with pinyon pine and other wonderful-smelling firewood. <good sigh> (*) (*)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-29-2004, 03:25 PM

(*) (*) And it WAS the BEST visit! These guides are absolutely walking encyclopedias! (h) I took a private all-day tour and it was marvelous! (l) (*)

Bringing London's History Alive
November 28, 2004 By RICHARD LOURIE
MANY Americans have heard of the Knowledge, the rigorous
training that London cabbies undergo to learn all the
city's streets. Fewer are aware of the Blue Badge Guides,
whose knowledge is both historical and geographical,
temporal as well as spatial. Blue Badge Guides train for 18
months, and take 8 exams, both written and practical,
meaning that the teacher can take the student down some
London alley and ask, "Anything of note happen here in the
mid-17th century?"

Chances are that the prospective guide will respond quickly
and in detail because for these people guiding is as much a
passion as it is a profession. Among the 2,000 official
Blue Badge Guides in England and Wales, 44 languages are
spoken. They are constantly updating their knowledge by a
wide variety of means, including guide bulletins, one of
which recently reported on the discovery in 1996 of the
bones of the first woman to be a gladiator, who sallied
forth into the arena 2,000 years ago in what was then the
Roman city of Londinium. (Two questions immediately spring
to mind: Who was she? And who should be cast to play her?)

Other than in-house guides, Blue Badgers are the only
guides authorized to work in the Tower of London,
Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral and Windsor Castle
among other such places. Blue Badge Guides are happy to
deal with large groups and to hit the must-see spots. But
many prefer the intimacy and creativity afforded by smaller
groups and subjects closer to their hearts.

There are two principal advantages to securing the services
of a Blue Badge Guide. (The group's Web site is
www.blue-badge-guides.com; its telephone number is 44-20
7403 1115). First, a tourist is delivered from the
embarrassment of being part of a mass group clomping
dutifully behind a banner or umbrella-wielding leader or
from the lesser discomfiture of being the foreigner on the
corner peering at a map that refuses to conform to reality
while exchanging barbed recriminations with a companion.
That deliverance can be had for $183 at $1.85 to the pound
for a half day, $270 for a whole day, no trivial sum given
the current exchange rate but quite possible if split
among, say, four people. And, some of the specialized walks
cost as little as $18 a person.

And it is in the specialized tours that the talents and
passions of the Blue Badge Guide come to the fore. For
example, Guide No. 1609, the effervescent, erudite,
eccentric Simon Rodway, not only creates his own tours but
will, with reasonable notice, also tailor one to a client's
own tastes and interests. His walks last from an hour to an
hour and a half and adhere to his principle that the
distance covered should not exceed that between subway
stops.

The walks are all colorfully named and some are long enough
to be self-explanatory: "Whores, Rakes and Greasepaint:
London's Theaterland, Covent Garden, through the eyes of
Nell Gwynne, 16th-century actress and mistress to the
Merrie Monarch, Charles II. (Definitely X rated!)" Mr.
Rodway, who runs Silver Cane Tours (44 7720 715 295), is so
at home in England's past that antique gossip and
centuries-old catty remarks seem scandalously fresh in his
rendition.

On the more contemporary side "An Omelette and a Glass of
Wine: Walk Elizabeth David's Chelsea" is a tribute to the
Julia Child of England. Mr. Rodway says that before Ms.
David came along in the 1950's, the only place in Britain
where you could buy olive oil was in drug stores, for
loosening ear wax. Even though Mr. Rodway's chatter tends
to the chipper, his voice takes on more solemn tones when
dealing with the war as in "Blast, It's the Blitz!" The
Germans had learned that Field Marshal Bernard Law
Montgomery was planning D-Day in St. Paul's School in
Hammersmith, West London, and went after him. Where others
would see only dreary blocks of postwar brick, Mr. Rodway
points out the footprints of Nazi bombs.

Walks such as these can change an overall feeling for a
place, yet it is the odd detail that tends to stick in the
mind. London becomes a different city when you learn that
it used to have 21 rivers, of which only 2 remain: the
Thames, and, beneath the city, but still able to be
visited, the Fleet. Mr. Rodway's walk entitled "Will on the
Hill" brings Shakespeare's success to life by saying that
he was rich enough to have a hedgehog in his kitchen to eat
the cockroaches.

But will technology make Blue Badge Guides obsolete?
Lately, Mr. Rodway has been taping his spiels (but without
his impromptu asides) so they will be available for a fee
via cellphones. I'd say rush to England before the man puts
himself out of business except that I'm sure that even
Simon Rodway can't replace Simon Rodway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/travel/28bluebadge.html?ex=1102754694&ei=1&en=c5b57855d2086

(*) (*) London is such as civilized place, as are the surrounding towns. I could live there for awhile - well, perhaps within two-hours commute to London anyway. London flats are expensive. There are so many tea parlor type places to catch your breath and relax for an hour mid-afternoon. (f)

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-29-2004, 03:29 PM

Internet Access, Delivered From Above
November 29, 2004 By KEN BELSON

Jeff Thompson may be afraid of heights, but he appears to
be at home on the 81st-floor terrace of the Empire State
Building.

Overlooking the 1,000-foot drop, Mr. Thompson said he saw
the entire New York metropolitan area as the battleground
where his company, TowerStream, will challenge phone
companies for high-speed Internet business customers by
delivering fast, cheap service without digging up streets
to install cables.

Next to him, a TowerStream antenna, perched on the parapet,
beamed high-powered wireless Internet connections to
companies several miles away. This kind of aerial system,
many technology experts say, could uncork the most
nettlesome bottleneck in the telecommunications industry:
the phone companies' control of the "last mile" of wire
that travels from their switching stations to homes and
offices.

"We're competing against the Bells," Mr. Thompson said, "so
we have to work quickly." Waving his arm toward the blaze
of buildings and potential customers below, he said with a
laugh, "This is when I get excited by heights."

With 700 customers in five cities, TowerStream is the most
active player in an emerging industry that sells a
technology known as WiMax, or worldwide interoperability
for microwave access. Unlike WiFi, the radio wave
technology in airports and cafes that allows users to log
on to the Internet from their laptop computers within 150
feet of an antenna, WiMax delivers broadband Internet
connections through fixed antennas that send and receive
signals across entire cities.

Using the most powerful equipment, a single antenna atop a
tall building can provide high-speed data transmission to
users as far as 30 miles away, although the optimal range
is less than half of that. The radio signals and antennas
are unaffected by bad weather and provide an alternative to
data cables that are sunk below sidewalks and can
accidentally be cut by construction crews.

The price is another advantage of the system. TowerStream
charges $500 a month for a 1.54-megabits-a-second
connection, about one-third to one-half less than the cost
of service on comparable T1 lines that phone companies sell
to businesses for data transmission. TowerStream can charge
less because it does not have to rent connections from
Verizon or another former Bell company that runs local
switching stations.

Getting businesses to buy WiMax is a challenge because the
technology is new. But TowerStream, which was formed in
2000 and, according to the company, has been profitable
since June, is finding that securing rooftop space on
skyscrapers is a hurdle, too.

TowerStream spent more than two years negotiating a lease
with the Empire State Building. But from that perch, and
similar ones atop the MetLife Building and a phone company
office in downtown Manhattan, TowerStream can reach
virtually every office in the city, including those that
are out of sight of the towers.

"The real estate is the hard part of the business," said
Mr. Thompson, who serves as chief operating officer at
TowerStream. "When you tell people you can reach 10,000
clients, they don't believe you. But everything I see could
be a customer."

Mr. Thompson's optimism is warranted, many analysts said.
The business of delivering wireless high-speed Internet
service is worth about $400 million globally and could
quadruple in the next few years, according to the WiMax
Forum, a group of WiMax providers and equipment makers.

Businesses in urban centers are the primary focus. But
customers in rural areas where there are no broadband
connections to cable or phone companies are also targets.
In those places, antennas can be placed on radio or
cellular towers. WiMax is also being introduced in
developing countries where Internet access through fiber or
copper cable is hard to come by.

WiMax and wireless broadband connections may dent behemoths
like Verizon Communications and SBC Communications, but
they are unlikely to put them out of business. Large
companies, particularly brokerage firms and banks, place
the highest premium on secure data lines with backup power.
Small companies may use WiMax as their primary data line,
but for most companies WiMax will remain a dependable
alternative to, not a replacement for, fixed lines.

"There's a very good market selling to small businesses,"
said Monica Paolini, president at Senza Fili Consulting, a
wireless service company in Seattle. "Businesses don't have
much choice in ordering data lines and they love the
flexibility of wireless."

FreshDirect, an online grocery store based in New York
City, for example, ordered a wireless connection from
TowerStream in March. FreshDirect already leased superfast
DS-3 lines to power its service center in Manhattan and its
300,000-square-foot warehouse in Queens, just across the
East River. Now an antenna the size of a pizza box sits on
top of the warehouse roof, facing the Empire State Building
a few miles west.

The company has been expanding rapidly and needs backup
Internet access to make sure its Web site and inventory,
billing and management systems keep humming in the event
any of its primary data lines fail. "In this business, it's
not a matter of if, but when, something will go wrong,"
said Myles Trachtenberg, FreshDirect's chief technology
officer.

Level 3 Communications provides FreshDirect's primary data
connection, and its backup line is from Globix. But Verizon
operates only one switching station near the company's
warehouse in Queens, and all Internet providers, including
Level 3 and Globix, must go through that location. So
FreshDirect was still vulnerable if the switching station
had problems.

Mr. Trachtenberg heard about TowerStream, which began
service in New York in June 2003, through a friend, then
learned he could get a WiMax connection set up in less than
a week.

By contrast, ordering a fixed wire line can turn into a
logistical nightmare, Mr. Trachtenberg said. While phone
companies say they typically install data lines within a
few weeks, it can take months if Internet service
providers, phone companies and union workers who handle the
installation have to coordinate schedules.

The biggest problem for FreshDirect in installing
TowerStream's service, it turned out, was stringing a
quarter-mile cable from the rooftop antenna to the
company's servers.

That cable plugs into servers that provide access to
computers in the offices and on the floor of the plant that
keeps FreshDirect's inventory, shipping and billing records
up to date. The TowerStream connection also helps power 30
WiFi "hot spots" spread through the warehouse that provide
additional Internet access.

TowerStream's connection has worked without a hitch, Mr.
Trachtenberg said. In time, he plans to use it for Internet
phone service as well.

Still, there are limits to WiMax's expansion. Because it
uses public airwaves rather than a licensed spectrum,
signals are vulnerable to interference if providers
overload a frequency in a market. (TowerStream says that it
has acquired the right to force latecomers who install
antennas near theirs to move if interference is created.
The company also says that its connections are encrypted
and not vulnerable to eavesdroppers.) Mobile phone
companies, which are investing billions of dollars in
third-generation cellular networks, may also increase the
speeds of their data connections to compete with WiMax.

WiMax technology is too expensive for residential use. The
antennas on a customer's premises cost about $500 each, and
phone companies and cable providers already sell cheap
high-speed Internet connections for as little as $20 a
month.

For now, TowerStream and other providers use proprietary
equipment and can beam signals only to antennas on
rooftops. The WiMax Forum, which helps set industry
standards, has endorsed the technology to deliver broadband
to fixed antennas, but there is still no consensus on a
standard for users to receive WiMax links on laptops and
other mobile devices.

The biggest player in the push for this standard is Intel,
which makes chips used for fixed wireless equipment. When a
mobile standard is approved, WiMax providers will be able
to give users the same Internet access while they are on
the go as when they are attached to a superfast data line,
said Sean Maloney, Intel's executive vice president in
charge of its wireless business.

An approved standard for mobile WiMax will allow Intel and
equipment makers to raise production and cut prices, which
may fuel demand. Analysts, though, expect opposition to
deployment of a mobile version of WiMax, particularly from
cellphone carriers who are still pushing WiFi and their own
third-generation networks.

In the meantime, TowerStream continues its look for
skyscrapers where it can plant antennas. This month, the
company added service in Los Angeles, and it plans to move
into San Francisco in the first quarter of 2005, to go with
current service in New York, Boston, Chicago and
Providence, R.I. Mr. Thompson said TowerStream planned to
be in 10 cities by 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/technology/29max.html?ex=1102755742&ei=1&en=975b8e2f0f24a7dd

(*) (*) :o :o (h) (h) Very cool. (h)

({) (}) ,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-29-2004, 03:34 PM

Ever have the problem of catching a ride with someone whose car doesn't have much of a back seat? At times like these, it is important to know the rules of calling shotgun. Never again will you let someone take advantage of you because you don't know the rules.

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~starbug/shotgunguide.htm

;) ;) Too funnny.

(k) (k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-29-2004, 03:42 PM

(*) (*) And this guy is for real. Scroll down for a list of links of VERY FUNNY songs on this site: http://foodsafe.ucdavis.edu/music.html#songsgeneral

(*) (o) Well, that's my two cents for this afternoon. I'm still left-brain-tired from a marathon-paper-writing series of days....the end is near though. Three weeks tops. (S) Maybe I'll be able to sleep through the night again :| although I doubt it since I've always been a night person as opposed to lady of the evening. ;) Love those quiet night hours when the only sound is tapping keys while I write and the smell of wood burning. :| (*) (*)

Have a lovely week, all.

({) (}) ,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 10:12 AM

'West of Then': Addicted to Mom
November 28, 2004 By JEANNE SAFER New York Times Book Review

IT'S hard to imagine a childhood less paradisiacal than the
Hawaiian upbringing Tara Bray Smith depicts in her
devastating memoir, ''West of Then.'' Despite the trade
winds, the flowers, the lilting place names and the
gorgeous weather, her account of her drug-addicted mother's
descent into homelessness and Smith's desperate efforts to
find and save her could have happened anywhere. The only
things that distinguish a Needle Park in Honolulu from one
in New York City are the ethnic mix and the fact that
nobody freezes to death in the tropics.

The narrative switches back and forth in time, as chaotic
and disorienting as the author's early life with her
mother, Karen, who started out as a lovely if shockingly
irresponsible hippie - she abandoned Tara when she was 7 -
and ended up as a prostitute/junkie/bum/ thief sleeping
under a piece of cardboard. Interspersed among the
flashbacks of their encounters are photographs; chapters on
the history of Karen's bizarre, formerly wealthy family of
sugar barons; and episodes from the history of the islands.
There is lots of local color and enough Hawaiian
terminology to merit a glossary, but the exoticism feels
stuck on, a travelogue with track marks.

We learn almost nothing about Tara's adult life as a writer
in New York, which she drops every time her mother calls.
She rushes back home to Honolulu to bail Karen out of one
disaster after another. They have a few decent moments,
things predictably fall apart, and Karen leaves her all
over again.

Smith's language is matter-of-fact and spare, with an
understated intensity and compelling similes (Karen's feet
are ''horned like a lizard's''). But there is a numbing
sameness to scenes loaded with repellent details, which
reach a peak of degradation when Tara sees Karen, stinking
and stoned, urinating in the street. Thankfully, there is
no photograph. Exhibiting her doomed mother to strangers is
an implicit act of revenge. Karen had expressly told Tara
she was ''embarrassed'' and had not wanted her daughter
''to see me like that.'' Their dialogues are the most
riveting thing in the book; excruciating as they are, they
have the ring of truth.

Other than feeling better about one's own mother, no matter
how dysfunctional, what does a reader get from being
exposed to all this? We learn more than anyone wants to
know about life at the bottom. We experience viscerally the
intense currents of love and hate that bind this mother and
daughter. Like the author, we long to flee, but cannot turn
away.

But a book with a section entitled ''Reckoning'' must also
reckon. In the first chapter, Smith says, ''I don't know
why I think my mother is my responsibility, but I do.''
''What explains us? Nothing,'' she concludes in the
epilogue. Declaring the task impossible absolves her from
having to attempt it.

THE explanation is actually hiding in plain sight: Tara is
addicted to Karen's recovery. She must save her mother to
have a mother, to prove how different she herself is, and
to assuage the unbearable guilt of having a better life.
She never fully accepts that her mother is beyond
redemption, though the reader can't help reaching that
conclusion; the author's unexamined hope is a kind of
magnet binding them together. But an accumulation of
details, however compellingly presented, doesn't compensate
for an author's failure to illuminate her subject and
confront herself. Only then can writing about trauma help
make sense and make peace.

Jeanne Safer is a psychoanalyst and author, most recently,
of ''The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged
Sibling.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/books/review/28SAFER.html?ex=1102755496&ei=1&en=cd054d5d2cba58a3

(*) (*) My mom has not spoken to me since I started my last quarter with grad school Oct. 4th - because I couldn't take her to a alumni nursing lunch. I've taken her to this lunch a few times in the past and she yells at me in front of others when I have trouble with her wheel chair. I hurt my back trying to get it in and out of her Lincoln's trunk. :( :| My folks went to my sister's last Christmas Day for dinner, and plan to go again like last year. :( (I was there as I stayed overnight xmas eve, and was alone all day on xmas while my parents went to my sister's home.) I'm not going down there this year - Doc is great company, and I have books and films to enjoy. Why be alone at someone else's home? "Because they have a tree to watch and food that prepared in their fridge" as my mom told me last year? :$ I have to say that this book review was an epiphany of how far that I've come in stopping the running down there every week to "help" and being mom's unpaid servant at whom she yells at all the time. Poor pop. Wish I could see him more. Maybe when my courses end in three weeks, my dad and I can go to lunch! ({) (})

(k) (k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 10:17 AM

How cool is that!? URL's are in the article. ;)

My Old School, or Somebody's
November 28, 2004 By BARBARA WALLRAFF

TSALE KIRZNER, of Reeuwijk, the Netherlands, wanted to take
his college-age son, Arye, to see Machu Picchu and the
archaeological treasures of Peru, so they signed up with
the Association of Yale Alumni for a two-week land and air
tour last August. The trip's leaders, Richard Burger, a
Yale professor, and his wife, Lucy Salazar-Burger, a
curator at the Peabody Museum at Yale, are archaeologists
who have also curated a museum exhibition about Machu
Picchu that's now traveling around the United States.

On the tour, the leaders gave lectures, answered
participants' frequent questions and arranged for some of
their distinguished friends - museum directors and
archaeologists - to talk with the group. When,
occasionally, local guides told pretty stories instead of
the scientifically established truth, the Burgers whispered
behind their hands to their charges. Travelers eager to
learn about the Incas and their predecessors couldn't have
asked for better company.

Which of the Kirzners is affiliated with Yale? Neither.
Arye studies at Amsterdam University. Tsale was educated at
George Washington University and the Harvard Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences. In fact, throughout the trip
Arye carried a Harvard backpack, which quickly became a
group joke.

The Kirzners weren't breaking, or even bending, any rules.
Nor were any of the other trip participants whose
connection to Yale was tenuous, including a former member
of the medical school faculty and his fiancée. They were
simply taking advantage of a little-known fact about Yale
alumni trips: they are open to everyone.

Yale is hardly the only school to welcome outsiders on its
alumni trips. Many of the most rewarding university travel
programs don't require participants to have any school
affiliation whatsoever. Some of their Web sites or trip
brochures say so explicitly. To travel with the California
Alumni Association, for instance, you do have to be a
member of the association - but you don't have to be an
alumnus or related to one to join it. A year's membership
costs $50.

What's more, some tour operators that organize alumni trips
promote them to the public as well as to the alumni of one
or more schools. It's a good idea to ask about these,
because sometimes only participants who signed up through a
school are invited to attend the talks by faculty members
or other experts. One tour operator that does give all
participants the benefit of eminent speakers is Travel
Dynamics International. Some offerings from Intrav have
this advantage as well. The prices the tour operators offer
to the public and those the schools offer to alumni are the
same.

The main way some alumni trips differ from regular tours is
that the participants can expect to have their university
affiliation in common. Alumni will probably be invited to a
private cocktail party or two, but the group won't have a
university-related leader or lecturer. There's no sense in
joining these trips as an outsider. Other tours, though,
have a lot to offer any intellectually curious traveler.

Almost all alumni associations have Web sites, and ones
with travel programs tend to promote them on the site.
Start with an Internet search for the schools to which you
do have a connection, either your own or that of a spouse,
former spouse, parent or child.

If you can't tell whether nonaffiliated participants are
welcome on a given trip, don't be shy about asking. Again,
some trips are meant to be bonding experiences. Welcome or
not, if you aren't affiliated with the school, you'll
probably want to steer clear of those. And keep in mind
that sometimes different groups on a trip will have
different speakers. Here is a sampling of the many alumni
trips available to anyone (space permitting). Rates are for
one person in double occupancy and don't include air fare
to and from the starting point. Study up!

Feb. 7 to 22, Patagonia's Majestic Fjords is a cruise
around southern South America aboard the 106-passenger
Orion, with James Gustave Speth, dean of Yale's School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies; and Marcia McNutt,
president and chief executive of the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute, as speakers. Rates start at $7,995. The
trip may be booked through Columbia, (212) 472-4365 or
www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/uar; Yale, (203) 432-1950 or
www.aya.yale.edu/yet/chile05; and through Travel Dynamics
International, (800) 257-5767 or

www.traveldynamicsinternational.com/patagonia.

Feb. 23 to March 10, Beauty and Wonder Down Under is a land
and air tour of Australia and New Zealand, led by the Rev.
William D. Miscamble, a native Australian and a member of
the University of Notre Dame history faculty. Rates start
at $5,745. The trip may be booked through Notre Dame, (800)
634-2631 or at

alumni.nd.edu/travel/down_under.html.

March 5 to 21 or March 20 to April 5, Libya will explore
that country's archaeological antiquities; the group will
travel by bus and private plane. On the March 5 departure,
the lecturer will be Stephen G. Miller, a University of
California at Berkeley professor of classics whose focus is
classical archaeology. On the March 20 trip, the lecturer
will be Laurence O. Michalak, a cultural anthropologist
retired from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at
Berkeley. Rates start at $6,885 plus $50 for a year's
membership in the California Alumni Association. The trip
may be booked through the association, (888) 225-2586;

www.alumni.berkeley.edu/alumni/bear_treks/main.asp.

March 12 to 26, Mesoamerica A.D. 700, a land and air tour
of central and southern Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras,
will be led by James A. Fox, professor of anthropological
sciences and the director of Latin American Studies at
Stanford. Rates start at $5,495, plus a $100 surcharge for
nonmembers of the Stanford Alumni Association. The trip may
be booked through the association, (650) 725-1093

www.stanfordalumni.org/learningtravel/travelstudy.

March 28 to April 8, Coexistence of Cultures and Faiths is
a cruise to ports in Spain and Morocco aboard the
88-passenger Clelia II. Harvey Cox, the Hollis professor of
divinity at Harvard, will lecture. Rates start at $6,995.
The trip may be booked through Harvard, (800) 422-1636,
www.haa.harvard.edu; Yale, (203) 432-1950, www.aya.yale
.edu/yet/coexist05; the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, (800) 944-6847 or
www.nationaltrust.org/study_tours; and at Travel Dynamics
International, (800) 257-5767 or

www.traveldynamicsinternational.com/coexistence.

April 10 to 20, Historic Villas and Glorious Gardens of
Naples and Rome will include talks by the author Jamaica
Kincaid and the horticulturalist Patrick Bowe. Rates start
at $5,995. The trip may be booked through Harvard.

July 30 to Aug. 5, Family Dinosaur Discovery: A Journey
Through Red Rock Country includes a stay in Grand Junction,
Colo., and activities in the nearby desert and canyons.
Participants hike, ride horses, river raft and work with
paleontologists in a quarry where eight species of
dinosaurs have been found. The trip will be led by Annabeth
Headrick, assistant professor of art history and
anthropology at Vanderbilt University. Rates start at
$2,760 and $1,660 per child. The trip may be booked through
Vanderbilt, (615) 322-2929;

www.vanderbilt.edu/alumni/alumtours.

BARBARA WALLRAFF is a senior editor of The Atlantic
Monthly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/travel/28alumni.html?ex=1102754752&ei=1&en=b709f728083d7f54

(*) (h) (h) (h) Way cool.

Carpe diem,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 03:02 PM

American Women! A Celebration of Our History
April 22 -- October 29, 2000

"Remember the ladies," Abigail Adams had admonished her husband when our forefathers wrote the Declaration of Independence. This advice was ignored not only by John Adams but also by many subsequent generations. Now, over 200 years later, we see an encouraging transformation toward equal rights for women and a new curiosity about women's history.

A fascinating array of female personalities have shaped our American experience,106 of whom are featured in our exhibit. Our opening gallery showcases unforgettable women who represent many qualities worthy of our appreciation. Then journey through time as women's struggles and progress from colonial times to the present are told through historical narratives and short biographies.

Both famous and infamous women are featured in this exhibit, and their individual stories may inspire admiration or even dismay! Just remember one thing:

Never underestimate the power of American Women!

http://www.hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/AmericanWomen/index.html

(*) (*) Lots and lots of links on this web site to some remarkable women, some whom I never heard of. Worth the virtual trip. ;)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 03:11 PM

http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/index.html

http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/index.html

(*) (*) What an amazing four year project! It took $6.4 million over those four years to develop and showcase samplings of recordings, documents, videos, films and photographs selected from more than 6 billion pieces of paper and 11 million pictures housed in the National Archives. :|
"Public Vaults" with its declassified top-secret spy files, photos of presidents and first ladies as children, and historical treaties and communications, will provide plenty for history buffs and novices! ;)
Talk about a on-line goldmine. (h)

Stay warm tonight, I hear some bad weather in coming to the northeast tonight and tomorrow. (S)

({) (}) ,
(k) Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 03:20 PM

Sign the Declaration of Independence:

http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/declaration_sign.html

Creating the Declaration of Independence - A Time Line:

http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/declaration_timeline.html

The Signers' Galler. Who was the oldest? Who was a muscian? :o

http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/declaration_signers_gallery.html

(*) (*) Nice user interface. Easy. What a great way to get folks to learn more about American history. I'm really impressed with the whole effort. (*)

Peace,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 03:28 PM

What an amazingly cool tool!

http://www.frogdesign.com/

frog rethinks education through a dynamic hybrid of technology and adaptive interfaces to encourage user-centered learning.

frog believes that the purpose of education is to instantiate a well-rounded cultural knowledge, to develop analytical and creative thinking skills, and to encourage social development and interaction.

THE HARDWARE The gelfrog is made with a super-pliable elastomer that is rugged and lightweight. The flexibility of this material enables it to be used in the urban classroom or on the nature trail -* and everywhere in between. The gelfrog is encased in a smart skin, which can be configured by the student to display an array of visual images; it can act as a mobile mirror, a photo slide show, or a video projector. Most notably * for the fashion-conscious teen * through its micro-camera, gelfrog can run a cloning algorithm that scans the teen’s outfit and re-projects a matching and complementary pattern on its surface. frog recognizes that new technology can act as an extension and marker of personal identity * the gelfrog’s chameleon-like functionality actively addresses this by creating a symbiosis of form and function. All elements of the gelfrog, from its mercurial skin to its cognitive mapping software, are designed to engage and involve its users * truly creating the next-generation learning.

THE SOFTWARE

Rethinking thinking
The Knowledge Tree is a network of educational themes and topics. Both the type of subjects shown and their connections to each other are based on the individual student’s needs, level, and interests. The 'Brain Slider' controls provide a simple system through which the student can 'tune' the content feed and arrangement based on what part of their mind they prefer to stimulate. The ability to dynamically reconfigure school subject matter fulfills a compelling need for personal attention for all type of students.

Creating personal relevance
frog believes in using technology not only to facilitate the gathering of relevant information, but to help the user retain and act on that information. In our ìobject-oriented education" model, the student scans an image from their surroundings. Through this object, a multiplicity of topics (history, molecular biology, architecture, music, etc) can be studied in the same interface. This model is the antithesis of traditional parallel track-based education, which uses objects only as illustrations. Those traditional object illustrations are often not related or relevant to the student's life and therefore the message is often not internalized. Object-based education enlivens learning by contextualizing knowledge in real time.

Communicate socially
frog believes every surface is a blackboard, every environment and object an opportunity to learn. Well-designed technology can democratize education. Through the flexibility of gelfrog, students can interact in a dynamic global workspace, working with creative tools in both a multi-media and multi-cultural context. Through wireless technology, learning can extend beyond the bricks and mortar school. More importantly though, encouraging students to participate in their education through a personal and engaging model changes the very time and space constructs of traditional education.

http://www.frogdesign.com/inside/history/index.html (For those interested like I was)

Clients and industries: http://www.frogdesign.com/client/index.html

(*) (h) (h) (h)

(k) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 03:32 PM

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0412/online_extra.html

By Cassandra Franklin-Barbajosa

"It's a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling," sings Jimmy Buffett of parents' dismay over their daughter's tattoo. Yet those indelible body markings are more than a trend embraced by merchant marines, bikers, and goths in basic black. Tattoos arise from a rich cultural history dating back 5,000 years.

The earliest record of tattoos, to date, was found in 1991 on the frozen remains of the Copper Age "Iceman" scientists have named Ötzi. His lower back, ankles, knees, and a foot were marked with a series of small lines, made by rubbing powdered charcoal into vertical cuts. X-rays revealed bone degeneration at the site of each tattoo, leading researchers to believe that Ötzi's people, ancestors of contemporary central and northern Europeans, may have used tattoos as medical treatment to reduce pain.

As civilizations developed, tattoos took on other meanings. Egyptian funerary figures of female dancers from around 2000 B.C. display the same abstract dot-and-dash tattoos on their bodies as those found on female mummies from that time period. Later images represent Bes, god of fertility and revelry.

Ancient Romans found no reason to celebrate tattoos, believing in the purity of the human form. Except as brands for criminals and the condemned, tattoos were banned. But over time, the Roman attitudes toward tattoos changed. Fighting an army of Britons who wore their tattoos as badges of honor, some Romans came to admire their enemies' ferocity as well as the symbols that represented it. Soon Roman soldiers were wearing their own body marks; Roman doctors even perfected the art of application and removal.

During the Crusades of the 11th and 12th centuries, warriors identified themselves with the mark of the Jerusalem cross so that they could be given a proper Christian burial if they died in battle. After the Crusades, tattooing largely disappeared in the West for a time, but continued to flourish in other places.

By the early 18th century, European sailors encountered the inhabitants of the South and Central Pacific islands. There, tattoos were an important part of the culture. When a Tahitian girl reached the age of sexual maturity, her buttocks were tattooed black, a tradition that continues among some today. When in mourning, Hawaiians tattooed their tongues with three dots. In Borneo, natives tattooed an eye on the palm of their hands as a spiritual guide that would lead them to the next life.

In 1769, Capt. James Cook landed in Tahiti, where the word "tattoo" originated from tatau, which means to tap the mark into the body. One method island practitioners used for working their designs into the skin was with a razor-edged shell attached to the end of a stick. In New Zealand, Maori leaders signed treaties by drawing precise replicas of their moko, or personal facial tattoo. Such designs are still used to identify the wearer as a member of a certain family and to symbolize a person's achievements in life.

In the 1820s, Europeans began the macabre practice of trading guns for tattooed heads of Maori warriors. To keep up with demand, Maori traders took slaves and commoners captured in battle, tattooed them, killed them, and sold their heads. The practice ended in 1831 when the British government made the importation of human heads illegal.

Tattooing has been practiced in Japan—for beautification, magic, and to mark criminals—since around the 5th century B.C. Repressive laws gave rise to the exquisite Japanese designs known today. Restricted from wearing the ornate kimonos that adorned royalty and the elite, outraged merchants and the lower classes rebelled by wearing tattooed body suits. Covering their torsos with illustrations that began at the neck and extended to the elbow and above the knee, wearers hid the intricate designs beneath their clothing. Viewing the practice as subversive, the government outlawed tattoos in 1870 as it entered a new era of international relationships. As a result, tattooists went underground, where the art flourished as an expression of the wearer's inner longings and impulses.

The yakuza, the Japanese gangster class, embraced the body suits—even more so because they were illegal. Their elaborate designs usually represented an unresolved conflict and also included symbols of character traits the wearer wanted to emulate. A carp represented strength and perseverance. A lion stood for courage. Such tattoos required long periods of pain from the artist's bundles of needles, endured by wearers as a show of allegiance to their beliefs. Today, Japanese tattoo wearers are devoted to the most colorful, complete, and exotic expression of the art.

New York inventor Samuel O'Reilly patented the first electric tattoo machine in 1891, making traditional tools a thing of the past in the West. By the end of the 1920s, American circuses employed more than 300 people with full-body tattoos who could earn an unprecedented $200 per week.

For the next 50 years, tattoos gained a reputation as a mark of American fringe cultures, sailors, and World War II veterans. But today, tattoo connoisseurs take the spotlight at international fairs and conventions with Japanese body suits, Celtic symbols, black tribal motifs, and portraits of favorite celebrities.

"Tattooing is enjoying a big renaissance around the world," says Chuck Eldridge of the Tattoo Archive in Berkeley, California. "Native American women in the Northwest are wearing chin tattoos again, reviving a cultural practice from centuries before the white man arrived. And, in answer to health concerns, artists in the South Pacific are slowly changing to modern equipment."

"The melting pot that is the United States has no rites of passage as a single American culture," says Ken Brown, a tattoo artist in Fredericksburg, Virginia, who finds inspiration in National Geographic photographs (see "My Seven"). "On some levels, getting a tattoo is like a milestone that marks a certain moment in a person's life." Ken still remembers one customer, an 80-year-old former marine who had always wanted a tattoo but had been too afraid to get one. "He came to me for his first tattoo," Ken says, "and he told me, 'I figure I got five or six good years left in me, and I'm not going out without one.' "

National Geographic Stories That Inspire a Tattoo Artist

Ackerman, Jennifer. "Japan's Winter Wildlife." National Geographic (January 2003), 88-113.
A frosted stage gathers red-crowned cranes, whooper swans, sika deer, and snow monkeys. Can Japan turn an ancient reverence for its animals into modern conservation?

Eliot, John L. "Bald Eagles Come Back From the Brink." National Geographic (July 2002), 34-53.
Our majestic national bird is flying high over much of its former range and may soon be off the endangered list.

Warren, Lynne. "Uncommon Vision." National Geographic (May 2002), 52-67.
Captivated by the beauty of moths, an artist uses digital scans to transform backyard fliers into fine art.

Conniff, Richard. "Deadly Silk." National Geographic (August 2001), 30-45.
Spinning complex webs of incredible strength, the versatile spider makes things sticky for unsuspecting prey.

Cave, Ronald D. "Jewel Scarabs." National Geographic (February 2001), 52-61.
Gleaming beetles from Central America attract insect enthusiasts and offer hope for saving a priceless habitat.

Chadwick, Douglas H. "Kingdom of Coral: Australia's Great Barrier Reef." National Geographic (January 2001), 30-57.
Largest structure on the planet built by living organisms, Australia's coral rampart hosts a carnival of sea life.

Hart Hansen, Jens P., and others. "The Mummies of Qilakitsoq." National Geographic (February 1985), 191-207.
Startlingly well-preserved, 800-year-old Inuit bodies offer new insights into the life of the early Greenlanders.

(*) (*) Nice work. ;) (h) Not that Ihave any.....yet. ;)

({) (}) ,
Sweetlady

sweetlady

11-30-2004, 03:37 PM

by Linda Shiner Air and Space Magazine

For pilots who tow advertisements, it must be annoying that their most public professional moments are spent droning along in a flight path that a house plant could manage, while the deft displays of timing and control that their trade requires are usually performed for an audience of none. If you have spent five minutes on a beach during peak season, you are probably already inured to the sight and sound of a small airplane humming by with banner in tow, as much a part of the background as the smell of Coppertone. But unless you've visited the ground base of a banner towing operation--usually an isolated corner of a small municipal airport or a flat piece of grassy field near a seaside resort--you've never seen the little dance that banner pilots have to do to pick up their reasons for flying.

"There's a lot of voodoo to it; there's not a lot of science," says Paul Richter, a reticent 31-year-old New Englander who has been flying for National Aerial Advertising for seven years. Take the tow rope, for instance. Some like to tow their banners with a nylon rope; others prefer polypropylene. The length of the rope can also vary, ranging anywhere from 100 to 500 feet. "A lot depends on the airplane you're flying that day and the person," Richter says.

Richter flies a Stearman biplane from National Aerial's base in North Andover, Massachusetts. Aerial Sign Company, which operates out of a five-acre grassy square at North Perry Airport in Hollywood, Florida, has a fleet of some three dozen 50-year-old Piper Cubs and slightly younger Super Cubs. These vintage 1940s airplanes are popular with banner towers because they were built before long, paved runways became common, so they can get off the ground quickly. "Another reason we use Cubs is we're interested in going slow," explains Aerial Sign's David Collette, "and they have good controllability at slow speed."
According to Collette, Aerial Sign has developed its own technique for picking up a banner, which requires hours of training. To hook a banner, a pilot comes in as low as 10 feet off the ground at around 80 mph and aims for a pair of flimsy poles that are only about four feet tall and eight feet apart. Draped across the poles is a loop, which is formed at the end of the banner's tow rope. The pilot attempts to catch this loop with a two-pound steel grappling hook, which is suspended from a rope attached to the tail of the fuselage. The pilot unties the hook from a strut before he makes his descent. As he approaches the poles, which at this point he senses rather than sees, the pilot pulls up so that the hook swings forward, pendulum-like, and under the loop.
The philosophy at Aerial Sign is that the more difficult it is to hook the rope, the more difficult it is to get it caught around a tail wheel or landing gear. It takes practice, and even the most experienced banner pilot will sometimes come up empty. "The only people who don't miss the rope are people who don't tow banners," says Collette.

Banners come in all shapes and sizes, with letters ranging from three to 12 feet. To pull the banners, which are usually made of nylon and weigh an average of 35 pounds, most aircraft have been modified into hard-pulling tractors. Even in his Stearman, which is modified with a 600-hp engine, Richter feels "a pretty good tug" when he hooks a 30- by 100-foot "Super Skyboard."
It's not uncommon for banner towing airplanes to have been rebuilt several times, as is the case with the Piper J-3 Cub that Jim Butler's father used to start Aerial Sign Company in 1945. "He painted C-O-T-T on the side and flew signs for the Cott Bottling Company, who were looking for ways to reach rural New England with their soft drink," says his son. You can still hear a little New England in his voice. "That one's on its seventh or eighth rebuild. It has over 50,000 hours of flying time." He chuckles. "That's gotta be an all-time money-maker. I've probably made two and half million dollars with that airplane," he says.
The banner towing industry brings in somewhere around $10 million a year, but the big money is in national campaigns. Last Memorial Day weekend National Aerial Advertising flew a campaign to advertise the Fox movie Hot Shots Part Deux in eight cities and Universal Pictures' Jurassic Park in five more. National Aerial Advertising also has clients overseas. In 1982 Nigerian president Shehu Shagari hired the company to fly banners during his reelection campaign (he won), and this summer Wayne Mansfield, National Aerial Advertising's president, made sales calls in Copenhagen, London, and Prague. "Mansfield is the intergalactic banner towing guy," say Peter Riordan of New York's BBDO ad agency.

Whenever a crowd gathers outdoors, there's likely to be at least a banner pilot or two. Last October four banner towers (as well as three helicopters and three blimps) flew over Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium during the National League baseball playoffs. During spring break, Daytona Beach also draws banner towers. As a matter of fact, at Daytona in 1990, Aerial Sign won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for towing a 5,000-square-foot Reebok billboard--the sign that has spent the longest amount of time airborne.

College students are a prime target for all sorts of banner advertising. Hoping to boost flagging enrollment in an introductory course, a group of Harvard astronomy professors once hired National Aerial Advertising to fly over campus with a banner that read: "SCI A-17 NOON MWF SCIENCE CENTER HALL D TRY IT!"

While corporate advertising is an increasingly popular trend in banner towing, a large part of the business still involves towing messages for a smaller audience--usually it's a birthday, anniversary, or valentine greeting. The most memorable one that David Collette can recall proclaimed: "JOHN, I LOVE YOU. GET A DIVORCE." The next day hundreds of women with husbands named John called Aerial Sign wanting to know who the client was.

Sometimes delivering the message isn't as easy as it looks. "When I first started back in '76," says Tom King of southern California's Tom King Aerial Enterprises, "I was flying out of Flabob airport [near Los Angeles] and I had a personal job over in Banning, 30 miles east." The client said the pilot should look for a house with a swimming pool and tennis court, where he would see a birthday party in full swing. King found a house and party, circled three times, and came back to the base, only to get a phone call asking when he was coming. "Swimming pools and tennis courts are so common out here that I had flown the wrong party," he says, "but we got the job done."

In small operations pilot and ground crew are the same person, but a large outfit like Aerial Sign employs some 35 pilots who fly all over the country but concentrate primarily on the Florida coast "from the Keys to Vero Beach." It's a family operation, and president Jim Butler, a ruddy-faced, jovial man, jokes that he will "deny any charges of nepotism" in its personnel matters. His 30-year-old son Todd is a pilot and also in charge of ground operations. Jim Jr., 25, specializes in flying the specialty signs: a big three-dimensional replica of a beer can or a 75-foot-high computer-generated photograph of rapper Marky Mark in his underwear. Butler's wife Alice has also flown banners. Butler himself, "Mr. B" to most of his employees, has "done every job in the shop." He says he can operate a sewing machine to make the signs as well as the airplane to tow them. "And when daughter Jodi isn't in college," says Butler, "she's the bill collector."

David Collette, director of flight operations, almost seems part of the family. He's been with the company going on 28 years, ever since he was 15 and, while riding a motor scooter on a Florida back road, came upon a man stretching out a long string of big cotton letters. He stopped to see what was happening and ended up joining the ground crew. He never intended to stay with the company so long, but he got hooked when Jim Butler taught him to fly. Now he has 23,000 hours as a banner pilot.
Today Collette is a suntanned 42-year-old whose own 18-year-old son has been rolling out the day's banners and readying them for pickup. The temperature is 82 degrees, and only in Florida could there be such a sky in late December. Last year, Aerial Sign flew banners every day save seven. Most of those they lost to hurricane Andrew.

From the northeast a Super Cub skirts the Cadillac dealership on the airport's west flank, then circles back to drop off a banner advertising BARGAINS AT THE BAZAAR. "We always fly patterns around the Cadillac dealer," says Collette. "In case a hook drops or something, we don't want to buy a new Cadillac."

With the Super Cub at an altitude of 200 feet, the pilot pulls a handle in the cockpit, releasing the tow rope. The banner buckles and flops uneventfully down, tow rope, hook, and all. The airplane, additional ropes and hooks already attached, circles the dealership again and makes a low pass, as the pilot searches the field for his marker and his next job. Each pilot has his own marker--a blue traffic cone, a pirate's flag, perhaps an old airplane tire painted fluorescent orange--to identify which banner to snag. Today's banners have been rolled out in a north-south direction so that the pilot is heading into the wind for the pickup.
The Super Cub approaches again from the south, descending toward the banner and the loop at the end of its tow rope. It looks as though the pilot intends to land, but seconds before his wings pass over the loop, the Cub pulls up, and sure enough, the hook swings forward, claws the rope, and "GET LUCKY AT DANAI JAI ALAI" peels smoothly off the ground and heads northeast. If all goes well during the rest of the flight, one of the few highlights of that pilot's day is over.

"It takes a lot of judgment to determine the height of the airplane above the ground," says John Wensel, a general aviation safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration, which requires new banner tow operations to apply for authorization to fly an airplane towing something other than a glider.

Collette concurs. "There's a safe way to do it," he says. "We have 40 years of experience that taught us how." He and Aerial Sign flight instructor Dennis Lord both emphasize the importance of speed. They tell their pilots to get the airplane's speed up at the bottom of their descent so the pilot will have enough speed remaining at the top of the climb. "A slow airplane is the number-one getter of banner pilots," says Collette.

In the last decade, 24 pilots have been gotten, according to records of the 130 banner flying accidents investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board. Many were attributed to "inadvertent stall."

But the hazards of banner towing generally tend to be far more benign. The one that gets every pilot is boredom. What makes a person want to fly a small tailwheel airplane at 50 mph back and forth for hours with a banner in tow? "It's one of the few jobs left in aviation where you can still fly the airplane," says Collette. "It's stick and rudder. You want to see the houses get smaller? You pull back on the stick. You want to see them get bigger? You pull back on the stick some more."

To those who fly for a living, banner towing may be the equivalent of file clerking, but it's also one of the fastest ways to qualify for the next rung on the ladder--an airline transport rating. Granted, the next rung is a long step. For an airline transport license, the FAA requires 1,200 hours of flight time. That's a lot of trips up and down the beach.

David Collette squints into the noon sun over North Perry Airport and watches another banner pilot charge in low and pull up at just the right moment to hook another sign. While he observes the pickup, he describes the early days when the five-foot letters were made from cotton instead of nylon and spaced between bamboo poles instead of aluminum rods. "You could only tow 25 letters then, and they were heavy," Collette says, "and if you got caught in the rain you could hardly fly the thing." Another pilot dips, climbs, and heads for the beach, where, above an audience of thousands, "FESTIVAL FLEA MARKET: EVERYDAY'S A FESTIVAL OF SAVING. SAMPLE ROAD & TURNPIKE" will trail behind him straight and level for hours. Some things in this business never change.

http://www.airspacemag.com/ASM/Mag/Index/1993/AS/this.html

(*) (*) I helped rebuild and paint a 1946 Boeing Stearman and other antique planes back in the 1980's. And yes, I got my private license back in 1982. I've flown mostly antique bi-planes (2 wings and open cockpit) and other planes. Was that ever fun. Of course most of my flying was done out west - it's way too crowded here. Hmmm, maybe become a bush pilot ;) in Alaska. (h)

(f) ,
Sweetlady