June 2003 Archives

Some comments on my clothes yesterday:

A few new links in the "Recently Clicked" section of the sidebar. Enjoy!

The Illustrated Catalog Of ACME Products. Found on kottke.

With a score of 44, I'm apparently not.

How to Bomb the SAT. Via Cardhouse.

Never mind the Horrocks, it's Brenda Blethyn who's the real star here. I'm sure this was a good play, but on-screen it's a bit flat, even though Jane Horrocks does some amazing vocal work. But there are better British seaside vaudeville movies, like Funny Bones or The Entertainer.

A thoroughly political blog.

Sex and death on American television.

The Supreme Court finally figured it out - privacy rights protect homosexuals, too. It took them 17 years, but Bowers v. Hardwick is no more. A great day for civil rights.

Here's a video of Bush on 9/11 doing NOTHING for five minutes after finding out the US has been attacked. Sure is a far cry from Bush saying "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!". For more on this, check out an interesting day. Via This Modern World.

We've been relying on take-out food a lot recently -- you know, having kids and all -- but I need your collective advice. Last night my father and stepmother were over visiting Zach and Ben, and we ordered from Lemongrass. The bill was $52.15. I followed my standard cab-fare and delivery tip rule: round up to the nearest dollar, add a dollar, or two if rounding up is less than $0.25. Of course there are exceptions (for cabs, airport and Brooklyn dropoffs, since they likely won't get a return fare; for deliveries, inclement weather, walkups, etc.) but generally that's what I do. So I handed the guy $54.00. (I happened to have only four singles.) He looked at it like I'd just given him 54 cents. "Only a dollar tip?!" I didn't point out that it was $1.85. These are the times when I know that, deep down, I'll always be a New York Transplant: I gave him an extra buck. (This required him to give me $5 and me to give him $60, which confused him.) The question is, was I extorted, or am I cheap? Since this has happened once before (a person delivering Indian expressing outrage over a small tip, citing a supposedly "discounted" meal price) I'm not entirely sure.

The way I see it, delivery is different from the 15% rule applied to waitstaff. They're providing a continuous service throughout the meal. A higher tab means I've spent longer there, or the place has more swankitude. In either case, I'd expect more / better service, and hence a tip that's commensurate with price.

But a delivery is a flat fee-for-service. The guy's gonna bike the 6 blocks regardless of whether I spend $10 or $50. It wasn't raining, and he didn't even have to walk up stairs, since we've got no buzzer in our building. So: am I cheap or something?

In the vein of the Skokie Nazi march decision, it would seem that finding that the city can't fire workers because of their distasteful speech and actions is a favorable one for Free Speech. I'll be the first to admit that at the time, I was all in favor of their firing, but on reflection they can't be fired for being bigots or whatever category they correctly belong to (parody, my eye).

UPDATE: The original link is boinking, so you can go look at the New York Times version (if you are registered), the New York Post version, the New York Daily News version, or the New York Newsday version. (You have to pay a bukandaquater weekly to get the New York Sun online.)

So I'm going to South Africa for 2 weeks for a conference, networking, and a bit of exploration (although I've no idea of the leisure component yet, just the work parts). The travel nurse wrote out a prescription for Cipro, in case I hit travellers diarrhea. I'm not going to fill the prescription though, b/c I'm afraid that if I don't use the cipro while i'm there, if somebody in customs sees it they'll jump to the wrong conclusion and I'll end up being dissapeared while they twiddle their thumbs and dither. The irony here is that the top suspect for the anthrax terrorism event is a white american (and former Government employee), but I'll bet they'll look at my having cipro very differently from somebody else having it. I just have to cross my fingers and hope I don't end up really sick with the runs (it's easy enough to get meds in South Africa, but if you're really sick, then it's hard to crawl out of the hotel bed and to a pharmacy).

So one of the things that's sticking in my craw here is that they use profiling only one way. You never hear of all the white people in a location being stopped when the suspect is white. And even there is some sort of tip concerning a person of arabic descent, why stop only swarthy people ? People of arab descent have a broad range of physical characteristics, including blue-eyed arabs and Afro-Arabs from the Sudan. Yet still, it's the swarthy guys who get stopped while everyone else waltzes on with no scrutiny. That's when I start getting scared.

GRRRRRR

On a more pleasant note, I think that HP&OOP should be just the right length for my 18 hour plane ride !

I am going to tread very, very carefully here. I just finished HP & OOP (about three minutes ago, after having read most of it during one 9-hour binge yesterday, so this isn't exactly a carefully-honed opinion...). What I want to say about the book--in a roundabout, spoiler-free way--is that it wasn't what I expected to have happen at all. I guess what I expected would happen will now happen in Book 6, which is a bit of a let-down. On the other hand, I thought Rowling handled the characters' move into adolescence more deftly than she's being given credit for. And now I will stop talking.

"Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery.

From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond."

I've been meaning to start to celebrate Juneteenth for some time, and I'm going to start in a small way this year. I really do think that we ought have a celebration of Emancipation in some way shape or form as part of confronting and acknowledging our slave-owning past. If people of all Abrahamic faiths can celebrate Moses' liberation of the Jews from Egypt, and we love the slave liberation metaphor in the Matrix, then can't we all celebrate the liberation (however partial) of African-Americans from bondage in the United States ?

I had some more coherent arguments for why I thought this was a good idea, and a very cool holiday, even though I'm not black and my family has never been nor owned slaves in America (or anywhere that I know of), but my mind is a blank now.

" In Texas, Esshassah Fouad, a student from Morocco, was detained after his former wife accused him of plotting terrorism. She was sentenced to a year in prison for making a false charge. But Mr. Fouad was hit anyway with immigration charges, despite his pleas that he had missed school, violating his visa, because he was in jail." (From the NYT on false accusations against terrorism suspects).

Even if one is in favor of extremely zealous prosecution of all tips, the least they can do is to clear the names of people who are not charged, or even suspected. Moreover, punishing people for conditions brought on by prosecution based on false information (as above) is just plain vindictive.

But there is another issue -- this doesn't make us more safe. Chasing down every tip, no matter how poor in quality, even when the tipster has a conflict of interest, is a waste of resources that could be better spent on far higher priority issues. While the Bush administration is involved in vigorous prsecution on this front, they are ignoring industries that use harsh chemicals near major population centers, and therefore are major targets for an attack. I would rather they worked to strenthen our points of structural weaknesses rather than arresting guys based on empty tips from their ex-wives who are embroiled in custody battles with them. As in all things, there is a trade-off, and I think there are trade-offs that would make us feel much safer.

Sorry for the incoherence, soapbox off.

The Matrix Reloaded: The Abridged Script

Not A Sparrow Falls

Last week we took Ben and Zach to the Bronx Zoo. None of the Everett-Lane boys had been (myself included) had ever been, and Ben's mad about baboons lately. (Or, as he calls them "Babooo!") And tigers. ("Rrrrrrar!") Our first stop (after looking at the elephants en route) was the Dancing Crane Cafe for lunch. While Debbie was feeding Zach, Ben and I did some exploring outside. "Bir!" he pointed. Behind a drain pipe was a tiny baby sparrow cheeping for its mother and home.

For some reason, I can't get MSN to stop being my homepage. Every time I change it, it somehow changes back. Dunno if it's some clever Microsoft thing or if it's due to the fact that I'm piggybacking (OK, stealing) bandwidth from my neighbor's WiFi connection. MSN has the worst, lowest-common-denominator stories on it; it makes USA Today look like the International Herald Tribune. But occasionally I'll actually click on a story, and this headline caught my eye: Iraqi man hid 22 years in a wall.

Sayed's face is all cheekbone and beard. He lost his teeth, and stores them in a matchbox. "They fell one by one. I kept them to remember the time I spent. Look at this molar. This one was 1990," he said.

It's a pretty extraordinary story. Maybe if Sayed is lucky, CBS will try to land an interview deal with him and he'll get to host a MTV segment.

What does it mean to be a man?

Two great cases came down this week in criminal law. The first has to do with whether the state can force you to take medication to make you sane enough to stand trial. The court said that forced medication can only be used in "limited circumstances," adding a new wrinkle to the "insanity defense." The defendant in that case will now be able to avoid trial for his crimes - so long as he chooses to not take the drugs that would treat his mental illness.

FYI - These cases generally revolved around psychotics on death row refusing to take anti-psychotic medications at key times - mainly when they are on trial or due for sentencing. The logic is, since you can't convict a crazy person, you can avoid prosecution by refusing to treat your own mental illness. And, since you can't constitutionally execute an insane person. Many mentally ill defendants figure it is better to live with voluntary psychosis than, well . . . not live at all.

But it isn't all sunshine and roses for death-row inmates. In Oregon, the state has denied a kidney transplant to a death-row inmate. The problem, I guess, is that Oregon thought that maybe they should give him a transplant, as they were worried that he would die before they got a chance to kill him. On the flip side, it seemed odd to give him a kidney to keep him going long enough to fry him, especially since the procedure costs $100,000 and donated kidneys, as they say, don't grow on trees. They went with saving the kidney and just crossing their fingers that they can find the time to kill the man before his disease does. Good luck, guys!

Of course, Oregon now faces another difficult question: If it is O.K. to deny a death-row inmate a $100,000 operation to keep him alive long enough to kill him, how do they justify spending $120,000 every year to give the exact same inmate dialysis . . . to keep him alive long enough to kill him?

...and now you, too, can be one of them. You may ask, what's the point? Even if I knew, I would not be at liberty to say...

Will someone please elect Vonnegut as our President? Before it's too late?

P.G. Wodehouse. You can always count on Jeeves to save the day. And Wodehouse to cheer one up.

Hatfields and McCoys sign truce. Peace at last.

From the BBC:
"A bomb found in a van at Londonderry was one of the biggest bombs ever found in the UK, police have said.
The bomb, containing 1200lbs of explosives, was primed and ready for detonation."

This is a group in Northern Uganda which is trying to overthrow the Ugandan government and replace it with one that is based on the Ten Commandments. Their army is made of mainly kidnapped children, and they are supported militarily by the government in the Sudan. They've started to chop of people's noses, ears and sometimes lips as a way of instilling terror in the population. There's a fair amount on them on the web, but here is the latest BBC story, with some horrifying photographs.

Hey, I'm skippin' here...!

Found when I Googled TANSTAAFL. Useful!

Tony Randall does a great David Hyde Pierce imitation. See it on DVD, 'cuz the video lops off the Cinemascope.

Funny and adventurous, but too scary for Ben.

See my review, of sorts.

They sure make them some good teevee over there at Aitch Bee Oh!

.Eerie visuals, a great set (an actual abandoned mental hospital) and a fine performance by Peter Mullan -- but in the end, seems like a bad remake of The Shining.

Colin sent this to me a while back, about Stone Reader. I'm just getting around to posting it:

Prof puts apocalypse odds at 50-50.

This is the 2,000th comment on Ish. Congrats to Ennis -- your toaster is on its way.

I first heard Peter Peterson, Nixon's Secretary of Commerce, at some think tank function several years ago. (His famous comment on resigning from Nixon's administration in '73: "My calves were too fat to click my heels.") He was speaking about the fiscal crisis facing the Social Security system, and I thought what he said made a lot of sense. In case you missed it in last week's Times magazine, you should really check out his article Deficits and Dysfunction, on the ludicrousness of the deficits we're creating, the dysfunctions of the GOP which has abandoned fiscal responsibility and has embraced tax cuts as a new religion, and the dysfunctions of the Dems who won't budge on entitlements at any cost. Read it.

Found on Blake Eskin's Nextbook, which NS pointed out to us, the following article: Egypt bans 'too religious' Matrix.

One Egyptian critic, Wael Abdel Fatah, said: "The press launched a campaign to stop showing the movie, saying that it reflects Zionist ideas, and promotes Jewish and Zionist beliefs."

You know, because the city's called Zion. Right.

So, I notice there has been very little chatter about the effort to extend the Child Tax Credit to "the People," or "the Poor" or "Working-Class America," or whatever noble label you prefer. Interestingly enough, however, if you take a hard look, this noble effort isn't nearly as noble as you might think. I won't even get into the petty squabbling between the House, Senate and White House, all of whom are just dying to pass it in their own way (though I love DeLay sniping at Bush). I just want to stick to some interesting math about this new tax cut. So, for you math and social policy mavens, here is your quiz for today:

I'm too impatient, because the more I look at this newest cut, the worse things look. And remember, I'm only looking at the modest and paid-for Senate version - don't even get me started on what a joke the House version is. But here are a couple of answers, and a couple of new questions . . . .

1. If the Senate Bill was passed (increasing the CTC by $400, effective immediately), the Brookings Institute estimates that approximately 7.1 million tax units (filers) would be affected (meaning, they have at least one child and are in an income bracket where they are eligible for the credit to some extent). What percentage of these recipients will receive an average tax cut of $400 or more?

(a) What kind of stupid question is that? If the credit increases by $400 per child, and since children don't come in fractions, then every eligible tax unit would at least $400. So 100%, moron! (b) Oh, I see the trick - since the credit phases out for the rich, there will be a few people who won't get all of the extra $400, because they didn't get all of the original $600. But I'd still say about 90%, because lots of people have multiple children, and who cares about those phased-out fat-cats anyway? (c) Well, I'm sure there are some nuances to the bill I don't understand, but I'd guess at least 50% of the people affected by this new law would get the full credit. Wouldn't they? I mean, shouldn't they? Isn't that the point? (d) Since this whole "extending the tax credit to the working poor" is really about a weird concept called "refundability," I realize that the average tax benefit will reach $400 for less than 25% of eligible recipients - regardless of the number of children they have.

(d). All these cuts do is increase the "refundability" of the credit by 5% (from 10% to 15%). That means you are STILL excluded or phased out for having too little income or tax liability - it just means the bar has been lowered to include more people. But the bar is moving so modestly, the majority of recipients will still receive less than $400 because they are TOO poor - they don't make enough to get any money back. In fact, 21.8% of all recipients will see $100 or less, and 45.3% will see $200 or less - and yes, that average tax cut accounts for people with multiple children. Only 24% of all recipients will break the $400 mark.

2. If the Senate Bill were passed, which AGI class(es) would enjoy the largest average tax benefit?

(a) People making less than $10,000 a year. (b) People making more than $10,000 a year, but less than $25,000 a year. (c) People making more than $25,000 a year, but less than $50,000 a year. (d) People making more than $50,000 a year.

(d). The average tax cut to a taxpayer making more than $50,000 a year is $597. The average tax cut of people making less than $10,000 a year is $233. The average tax cut of people making from $10,000 to $25,000 a year is $247. The average tax cut of people making from $25,000 to $50,000 is $523.

3. If the Senate Bill were passed, which AGI class would enjoy the smallest average tax benefit?

(a) People making less than $5,000 a year. (b) People making $5,000 - $10,000 a year. (c) People making $10,000 - $15,000 a year. (d) People making $15,000 - $20,000 a year.

(c). The people who make $10,000 - $15,000 a year can expect to take home an average of $123 each - and that average includes families with multiple children. This income bracket is not only the most screwed, but it is the largest, representing 2.7 million families, or 38% of all beneficiaries. But you weren't really wrong no matter which bracket you chose - because these four are the four groups that would be the worst off of any recipients. Combined, their average tax break is $203 dollars. The next lowest bracket? The $20,000 - $25,000 earners (of course), who will take home an average of $445 each.

Depressed yet? Well, that's because you haven't tried the BONUS QUESTION!!!

4. In 2002, our nation had nearly 139 million taxpayers. Of these, nearly 33 million of them survive on an adjusted gross income of less than $10,000 a year (that's about a quarter of our country, in case your counting). How many of these 33 million taxpayers will receive a benefit from the new Senate tax cut?

(a) All of them! This bill was meant to help the poorest of the poor! (b) You tried to trick me again - not all of those taxpayers even have children. Maybe half of people will qualify. (c) Refundability is tricky. And not everybody has kids. And this bill is political propoganda, not true tax relief for the poor. Maybe 10%. (d) 87,000 taxpayers. Those other 32,913,000 people should have more kids if they want tax breaks! TANSTAAFL!

Whee! Tax is fun!

Simulacra, Simulation and Science Fiction.

Donald Barthelme. Fine, but I liked Invisible Cities better.

I am 25.64103% Geek. Should I get extra points because my boss sent me this link?

Almost too beautifully shot.

The Mitchum / Peck version; about 10 times better than the Scorsese remake, and I liked that. Peck shows the dark side of Atticus Finch; and man is Mitchum menacing in this movie.

Last week we took Zach to sleep through his first movie. Wanted to see Finding Nemo (it was playing in the nabe and was one of the few movies out that needed to be seen on the big screen), but the Thursday matinee was sold out. Apprarently every kid in Park Slope was also there to see it. The only other thing playing at that time was Bend it Like Beckham. I'd heard it was formulaic, but good, and it in fact was formulaic, but good. (Probably would have been better if the entire audience had not been composed of kids who also couldn't get in to see Finding Nemo, and their parents who were trying to explain to them why they kept calling soccer "football".) On our way out I remarked to Debbie that it was the best soccer movie I'd seen since Victory in 1984. Of course, it's the only soccer movie I've seen since then (I somehow missed Shaolin Soccer). Now, I haven't seen Victory in nearly 20 years (wow, that's a scary thought), but based on my memory, here's a guide to telling the two movies apart:

	Bend It Like Beckham	Victory
Oppressive regime protagonist is trying to escape	Traditional Sikh household in London	Nazi POW Camp
Event that protagonist misses in order to play the 2nd half of final match	Sister's wedding	Escape into occupied Paris
Stern authority figure in uniform who has heartwarming transformation by film's end	Jess' Dad (Anupam Kher)	Maj. Karl von Steiner (Max von Sydow)
Brunette Player	Jesminder Bharma (Parminder Nagra)	Robert Hatch (Sylvester Stallone)
Blond Player	Juliette Paxton (Keira Knightley)	Capt. John Colby (Michael Caine)
Black Player	Mel (Shaznay Lewis)	Cpl. Luis Fernandez (Pelé)
Memorable locker room scene	Girls help Jess put on her sari after final win	Men dig tunnel with help of French resistance
Mix-up that occurs	Juliette's mother thinks she's a lesbian	John Huston cast Stallone in an acting role
Match vs. Germans?	Yes	Yes
Romantic triangles?	Yes	No
Spice Girl references?	Several	None
French Resistance fighters?	No	Yes
Ultimately Happy Ending?	Of course	It is called Victory...

I was re-reading I Stink! to Ben, a delightful book told by a New York City garbage truck that his grandparents got him. (Trucks are a big deal lately.) I was looking at the Library of Congress cataloging info (hey, when you've re-read a book about garbage for the 27th time, you notice these things) and started to wonder: just how many books are published under the subject heading "Refuse and Refuse Disposal -- Fiction"? Off to the Library of Congress! Apparently, there are 32, all of them children's books. So, if you're into trash, you can read some of these fine works:

Fly Guy. Via my neighbor, Fugue State.

Brilliant.

No, actually I'm not talking about the Blair scandal, or the resignation of Raines and Boyd. Just in case you missed it, our own Matt Fleischer-Black had a front-page byline in yesterday's paper: Company's Vow to Donate Cancer Drug Falls Short. We're so proud!

Or, Welcome Mr. Hobbes!

Those of you who follow the discussions here in the comments may not have noticed that things have gotten more vituperative. Name-calling, ad hominem attacks, general nastiness.

And I say: bring it on.

Because our analysis should be founded on honest discussion of somebody's remarks, I have to say that it seems that Wolfowitz has been misreported. Here I post, nearly verbatim, comments made by a conservative friend in another forum on the subject of Wolfowitz's remarks (brought up by David below):

Fortunately, we do in fact have the full transcript of Wolfowitz's remarks, available on the Department of Defense website:

Here's the relevant excerpt:

"Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different."

Thus, Wolfowitz is saying that Iraq and NK are different because 1) NK is more vulnerable to economic pressure because it has no oil, and 2) NK is less vulnerable to military options because it has a stronger military.

NOWHERE does he say that Iraq was different b/c the US wanted to take the oil for itself, as the Guardian implies. Now perhaps Wolfowitz was merely covering up his real motives, but that is very different from the claim that he was admitting them to be what the Guardian claims.

Finally, I have to ask: if I could find the correct text of the remarks after a 3 minute search on the web, why couldn't the Guardian reporter have done the same in an article published 3 days after Wolfowitz made the statement?

ALSO, HE SAYS THIS ABOUT THE OTHER ARTICLE

Here, FYI, is what he actually said in Vanity Fair:

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but . . . there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people."

Thus, all Wolfowitz meant was that there were 3 reasons for war, but that public statements emphasized one more than the others. Though, of course, the others were also repeatedly stated, so much so that one of the most common criticisms of Bush and Blair before the war was that they had too many and too varied claimed justifications for their policy. Bush, Blair, and Powell all made widely publicized prewar statements citing human rights and links to terrorism as important issues.

The AFI has named its top 50 heroes and top 50 villians. Only 8 women qualified for the "Heroes" list ('heroines need not apply?"). And by saying 8 women, I'm including Lassie (who I believe was played by a real (pardon the phrase) bitch, even though most people probably think of her as a he). Only Clarice Starling and Ellen Ripley made the top 10, showing that for a woman to be considered a real hero, she has to kill someone. Many of the top male heroes were known for less murderous acts of inspiration, such as George Bailey, Atticus Finch, Rick Blaine, Indiana Jones, and Rocky Balboa. Thelma and Louise shared a joint ranking (oh wait, they were killers too!). Marge Gunderson makes the list, and she only wounded people. In fact, there were only four heroines who made the list without shooting or killing someone: Norma Rae Webster, Erin Brockovitch, and Karen Silkwood. And Lassie. Lassie doesn't kill anybody. Good girl!

But don't feel neglected ladies! You make great villains! Why, six of the top ten villians are women! The Wicked Witch of the West, Nurse Ratched, Alex Forrest, Phyllis Dietrichson, Regan MacNeil, and Snow White's Queen are all considered among the worst of all time! In fact, women claimed 15 of the top 50 - nearly twice as many spots as for heroes. And I'm not counting the Martians from War of the Worlds (genderless?), the Shark from Jaws (is there an icthyologist in the house?), "Man" from Bambi ("people?"), or the Alien from Alien (though we later find out she's a queen, so I probably should). Take those out (along with HAL 9000), and you reach 33%! Congrats!

Check out the list yourself at the AFI's Web Site. And watch out for the ladies!

From filter fine.

Ever wonder what Ishbadiddle would be like if Snoop D-O-double-gizzle wrote it? Now you can get a look at Ishba-D-I-double-dizzle-L-E through Tha Shizzolator.
(Props to FilterFine, via Erich Ian)

As a side note, it’s interesting what memes hang around the Web for a long time. I can recall various Perl-based “translators” as far back as 1996 with some sort of redneck translator (when Jeff Foxworthy was popular — remember him?). Since then, I can name off the top of my head the Pig Latin translator and the Ubby Dubby translator, and I think I saw a Ghetto translator once, and I’ve got a bad memory.

I usually disdain on-line petitions, but Lawrence Lessig's Reclaim the Public Domain Petition just makes too damn much sense not to sign: if a work is worth a $1 fee to the copyright holder (after 50 years) its copyright can be renewed; otherwise it goes into the public domain. Everyone wins.

It was, in fact, about the oil.

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

As the article points out, this follows on the heels of admitting that WMD were just a "bureaucratic excuse." Good thing the liberal media's on the case...

At Heathrow Airport yesterday, an individual, later discovered to be a school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a compass, a protractor, and a graphic calculator. Authorities believe he is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement.

He is being charged with carrying weapons of maths instruction.

Supplanting Dollywood for the honor of "world's worst theme park," Habitat for Humanity is proudly opening their International Global Village & Discovery Center this Saturday. This new "tourist attraction" offers you a chance to experience "first-hand the living conditions of poor people in the world today!" Kids can participate in exciting hands-on activities such as brick-making! You can wander 6 acres of park that have been landscaped to demonstrate 15 different poverty-stricken countries in Africa, Asia and Central America! Whee!!! (future 'attractions' are planned to demonstrate poverty-stricken regions of Europe and South America, so if your child starts crying, "but I wanna see how the poor CHILEANS live," you can promise to return later.

"Essentially, it's a theme park for poverty housing," said founder Millard Fuller. "You'll come out of the center and walk right into a slum. You'll see the kind of pitiful living conditions so many people in the world have." While touring mock slums from Africa, Asia and Central America, visitors to the Global Village can imagine children sleeping in shacks infested with scorpions or snakes. With no roller coasters or Ferris wheels, the thrills come from trying your hand at brick making and tile laying. (I think that's a mistake. What is a theme park without rides? How about a "Mr. Toad's Wild Walk?" Or an "It's A Squalid Word" boat ride, complete with a mind-numbing repetitive song? Or at least a "Main Street Lack of Electricity Parade?")

There is also a store where you can buy "Habitat merchandise, crafts, souveniers, books and apparel," presumably to help stave off poverty in Americus, Georgia.

Feel free to peruse the official press release, or go for the cynical summary posted by Yahoo News. If you haven't planned your summer vacation yet, note that kids under 6 are free!

A brutal and powerful movie.

One Leaguer dies; another comes out. Oh, and the Martians are still on the loose.

Colin and I were having a discussion about comment strings on Ish (unrelated), when he called to my attention this article about the agenda of right-wing journalism. It exerpts from an interview with Matt Labash, a senior writer with The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch, and in it, Labash talks about how the point of certain conservative commentators is not to enlighten, but to feed the rage and degrade the discourse.

Labash recently gave an interview to a Web site called Journalismjobs.com, which regularly talks to journalists about their craft. The interviewer asked, "Why have conservative media outlets like The Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel become more popular in the past few years?"

You might expect the answer to come back something about the popularity of President Bush or the rise of nationalism after 9/11. But Labash was honest enough not to spin.

Conservative news organizations are popular, he admitted, "because they feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it's true somewhat.... While these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective.... It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket."

Chilling reading, and get used to more of it, now that Powell's disregarded popular opinion and allowed big media to get bigger--and isn't that the most common complaint you hear about the media, that it's not large enough?

Because the response to my earlier post about taxes has been, in the words of Faux News, so fair and balanced, here's a great flash animation from the Democratic Party about taxes. Enjoy the laughter, because we'll all be sharing the tears.

While you're at it, ask yourself this simple question: would you rather make sure the rich paid less and run the risk that the poor didn't get enough, or would you rather make sure the poor got enough and run the risk that the rich paid too much?

The 3-2 decision (along party lines) by the Republican-led FCC to relax media ownership restrictions was apparently a foregone conclusion, but now that it's a official, it should raise a new question for all Americans. Namely, what would it take for the agency that regulates our all-pervasive mediasphere to actually start acting in the public interest? Over half a million e-mails and postcards in support of media pluralism? La, la, la, we're not listening. Piles of editorials predicting bigger and less public-minded media conglomerates and less debate? Nope, not a factor. I'm left wondering if structural reform of the executive branch is our only hope for responsive government in complex, not soundbite-friendly areas like media policy. Anyone?

Just so I don't go insane, here's a good roundup of how Bush's new tax bill gives all its money to the rich and screws the poor. Or, in more moderate terms, New benefits bypass many taxpayers / Study finds low-income groups ignored.

A new study by groups critical of the tax law that President Bush signed on Wednesday has found that 8 million mostly low-income taxpayers will not receive any benefit from the law.

This is the second time since Bush signed the bill, which Republicans have said was intended to benefit all who pay income taxes, that critics have pointed out that some of its provisions will not help millions of people in the lowest tax brackets.

...

The new analysis says that the taxpayers who get nothing from the tax law are primarily low-income single people who do not have children and lack income from dividends or capital gains. A large number of low- and moderate- income single parents with children over 16 will also get no benefit from the law.

The study was conducted by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which is affiliated with the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group.

Last week, the two groups, along with Citizens for Tax Justice, found that 6.5 million minimum-wage families -- with nearly 12 million children -- would not receive the $400-per-child increase in the child tax credit contained in the new law. The families were left out of the tax law in last-minute congressional negotiations to keep the bill under the Senate limit of $350 billion.

In combination with the children who were cut from the bill's benefits by the congressional negotiators, the study says, there are 50 million households -- 36 percent of all households in the nation -- who will receive no benefit from the tax law. The figure includes people who do not earn enough to owe income tax.

...

A description of the law on the Republican National Committee Web site makes the point that it should benefit "everyone who pays taxes" as it makes effective immediately reductions passed in 2001.

...

But the new study found 5 million taxpayers in the lowest tax bracket who get no benefit from the law, and 2.5 million single parents who also pay taxes but get no breaks.

...

"It's another illustration that the real purpose of this tax bill was not to give a boost to the economy now," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

"The bill really consists of new provisions, like dividend tax cuts, that administration officials and their supporters in Congress have long wanted for other reasons," Greenstein said. "If they were really serious about boosting the economy, they would not have excluded these people, because they're the ones who spend rather than save."

...

... the study's authors noted that there are 40 times as many people who get no benefit from the cuts as there are millionaires who will get 44 percent of the law's tax benefits in 2005.

Found in today's SF Chronicle: "I desire what is good. Therefore, anyone who does not agree with me is a traitor." King George III

Well-known people who happen to be Canadian.

(Fay Wray, Louis B. Mayer, Saul Bellow. Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu... who knew? Kiefer Sutherland, sure. But Jay Silverheels?)