2 weeks ago
Friday, February 22, 2002
RATINGS RANTINGS: Drudge is reporting that figure skating kicked the crap out of everything else, "MORE THAN 4 X AUDIENCE OF NEAREST COMPETITOR" in Drudgespeak. That means figure skating kicked the crud out of The Glutton Bowl, which is a good thing. Not that competitve eating is bad, but thinking that you're going to draw viewers off the highlight of the Olympics by putting on fat guys stuffing their faces is an idiotic programming decision. "Hey, guys won't watch ladies figures skating, let's bring in the hot dog eating contest." Schmucks.
ANOTHER MONONOKE IN STATURE: The latest Hiyao Miyazaki epic, Spirited Away, has bested his previous one, Princess Mononoke, for box office gold in Japan. Both beat Titanic, I think. I'm so there for this one.
MORE ANTHRAX: Blowback has a link to more on the anthrax attack: inside job theory:
An advocate for the control of biological weapons who has been gathering information about last autumn's anthrax attacks said yesterday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a strong hunch about who mailed the deadly letters.
But the FBI might be "dragging its feet" in pressing charges because the suspect is a former government scientist familiar with "secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Chemical and Biological Weapons Program.
Rosenberg goes on:
"We can draw a likely portrait of the perpetrator as a former Fort Detrick scientist who is now working for a contractor in the Washington, D.C., area," Rosenberg said. "He had reason for travel to Florida, New Jersey and the United Kingdom. . . . There is also the likelihood the perpetrator made the anthrax himself. He grew it, probably on a solid medium and weaponized it at a private location where he had accumulated the equipment and the material.
"We know that the FBI is looking at this person, and it's likely that he participated in the past in secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed," Rosenberg said. "And this raises the question of whether the FBI may be dragging its feet somewhat and may not be so anxious to bring to public light the person who did this.
"I know that there are insiders, working for the government, who know this person and who are worried that it could happen that some kind of quiet deal is made that he just disappears from view," Rosenberg said.
"This, I think, would be a really serious outcome that would send a message to other potential terrorists, that (they) would think they could get away with it.
"So I hope that doesn't happen, and that is my motivation to continue to follow this and to try to encourage press coverage and pressure on the FBI to follow up and publicly prosecute the perpetrator."
Here's the Google file on Rosenberg. Why isn't this story being blogged more?
An advocate for the control of biological weapons who has been gathering information about last autumn's anthrax attacks said yesterday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a strong hunch about who mailed the deadly letters.
But the FBI might be "dragging its feet" in pressing charges because the suspect is a former government scientist familiar with "secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Chemical and Biological Weapons Program.
Rosenberg goes on:
"We can draw a likely portrait of the perpetrator as a former Fort Detrick scientist who is now working for a contractor in the Washington, D.C., area," Rosenberg said. "He had reason for travel to Florida, New Jersey and the United Kingdom. . . . There is also the likelihood the perpetrator made the anthrax himself. He grew it, probably on a solid medium and weaponized it at a private location where he had accumulated the equipment and the material.
"We know that the FBI is looking at this person, and it's likely that he participated in the past in secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed," Rosenberg said. "And this raises the question of whether the FBI may be dragging its feet somewhat and may not be so anxious to bring to public light the person who did this.
"I know that there are insiders, working for the government, who know this person and who are worried that it could happen that some kind of quiet deal is made that he just disappears from view," Rosenberg said.
"This, I think, would be a really serious outcome that would send a message to other potential terrorists, that (they) would think they could get away with it.
"So I hope that doesn't happen, and that is my motivation to continue to follow this and to try to encourage press coverage and pressure on the FBI to follow up and publicly prosecute the perpetrator."
Here's the Google file on Rosenberg. Why isn't this story being blogged more?
NORTH KOREA WATCH: Bjorn Staerk is on that beat, providing links to Kim Jong-Il's birthday party and an interview with one of his bodyguards. Kim's, not Bjorn's. Check out the dirt the bodyguard has on the Dear Leader:
Kim's real partying took place at one of his two residences in Pyongyang, where he could drink, act the big shot and get close to pretty girls. The beverage of choice was Paekdu Mountain Bulnoju (or Eternal Youth) a fiery liquor made from rice. Female band members and dancers wore micro-minis and tank tops and the men gave them drinks if they performed well. The women were trained not to drink too much but the men, including Kim, usually ended the evening trashed.
During the working day, the drinking started again, sometimes as early as noon (although Kim didn't get sloshed at the office). Kim became furious if he wasn't the center of attention: he got upset if he saw people shaking hands while he was in the room, scolding them for ignoring him. When Kim was in a good mood, he would shower his guards with gifts: deer and birds he hunted and sometimes pineapples, bananas and mandarin oranges—all rare luxuries.
Dear Leader sounds like a fabulous job, except for the hideous repression of your citizens. What I don't get about the bodyguard is that he's just working a day job in South Korea now. Wouldn't you think Seoul would need him for intelligence on the North or something? Or is North Korea so obviously weird that you don't need intelligence to tell you that? Maybe that's the South's plan, waiting for Pyongyang to topple itself over so there's a minimum of armed conflict. I guess.
Kim's real partying took place at one of his two residences in Pyongyang, where he could drink, act the big shot and get close to pretty girls. The beverage of choice was Paekdu Mountain Bulnoju (or Eternal Youth) a fiery liquor made from rice. Female band members and dancers wore micro-minis and tank tops and the men gave them drinks if they performed well. The women were trained not to drink too much but the men, including Kim, usually ended the evening trashed.
During the working day, the drinking started again, sometimes as early as noon (although Kim didn't get sloshed at the office). Kim became furious if he wasn't the center of attention: he got upset if he saw people shaking hands while he was in the room, scolding them for ignoring him. When Kim was in a good mood, he would shower his guards with gifts: deer and birds he hunted and sometimes pineapples, bananas and mandarin oranges—all rare luxuries.
Dear Leader sounds like a fabulous job, except for the hideous repression of your citizens. What I don't get about the bodyguard is that he's just working a day job in South Korea now. Wouldn't you think Seoul would need him for intelligence on the North or something? Or is North Korea so obviously weird that you don't need intelligence to tell you that? Maybe that's the South's plan, waiting for Pyongyang to topple itself over so there's a minimum of armed conflict. I guess.
THE SPONTANEITY OF CHINESE PRESIDENTS: Funny-cause-it's-true article on Jiang Zemin being totally baffled by having to answer spontaneous questions from foreign reporters. They ask him twice about oppression of Christians within his borders and he just ignores them. "Rather implausibly, he also claimed to have no influence over who is imprisoned in China and why." Smirk. Via Drudge.
Thursday, February 21, 2002
ALL YOU ZOMBIES: Here's this New York Times article of a few days back with the great title Hijacking the Brain Circuits With a Nickel Slot Machine. If you've got an addiction, your dopamine system could be out of whack. And it all happens unconsciously --hence the zombies reference.
WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO BE A PROTESTOR TOO?: Andrea See argues that NGOs need a good marketing strategy if they're ever going to be taken seriously. She says:
If the corporates can co-opt the 'hipness' of the activist counterculture, why can't the activists fight fire with fire? There should, no, must, be a plan to work out the brand image of each movement, and a co-operative effort to link their brands under one cohesive 'best interests of the world' global brand (where the individual brands are seen as discrete but equally important extensions). Maybe it's cool to be part of a subculture, where the mainstream just doesn't get it, but if we truly desire change in our space, we need to be more pacifist-guerilla marketing about it.
It's sort of a practical suggestion for the protest kids (as Matt Welch always calls them) that marketing is a potent and possibly non-evil or at least morally neutral way to reach people. I would add to this Matt's suggestion that protest kids start reading The Economist.
If the corporates can co-opt the 'hipness' of the activist counterculture, why can't the activists fight fire with fire? There should, no, must, be a plan to work out the brand image of each movement, and a co-operative effort to link their brands under one cohesive 'best interests of the world' global brand (where the individual brands are seen as discrete but equally important extensions). Maybe it's cool to be part of a subculture, where the mainstream just doesn't get it, but if we truly desire change in our space, we need to be more pacifist-guerilla marketing about it.
It's sort of a practical suggestion for the protest kids (as Matt Welch always calls them) that marketing is a potent and possibly non-evil or at least morally neutral way to reach people. I would add to this Matt's suggestion that protest kids start reading The Economist.
IMMIGRATION: There's this TNR piece that isn't making a ton of sense to me. Richard Weissbourd writes:
The longer immigrant children live in this country, the worse, on average, their health, their attitude, and their school performance. What's more, with each subsequent generation, immigrant children do worse and worse. On average, first-generation children function at significantly higher levels than do typical American-born children. But, by the third generation, that advantage is gone. To take just one example, the school performance of first-generation Chinese teenagers--one of the highest performing immigrant groups--markedly exceeds white teens. By the third generation, the difference disappears: English proficiency and school performance are inversely related. In other words, while once upon a time people came to the United States expecting to make better lives for their children, today the sad fact is that the more Americanized immigrant children become, the less successful they are.
Once you get outside the first generation you're talking about actual mom-and-apple-pie Americans --so of course they're not going to have the competitive advantage of their forebears' willingness to take a cruddy job because it was better than what they left behind. It's like what the guy's arguing is that Americanization is an insidious process, which, I mean, fine, he can have that opinion and everything, but he doesn't need to tie it in with immigration.
The longer immigrant children live in this country, the worse, on average, their health, their attitude, and their school performance. What's more, with each subsequent generation, immigrant children do worse and worse. On average, first-generation children function at significantly higher levels than do typical American-born children. But, by the third generation, that advantage is gone. To take just one example, the school performance of first-generation Chinese teenagers--one of the highest performing immigrant groups--markedly exceeds white teens. By the third generation, the difference disappears: English proficiency and school performance are inversely related. In other words, while once upon a time people came to the United States expecting to make better lives for their children, today the sad fact is that the more Americanized immigrant children become, the less successful they are.
Once you get outside the first generation you're talking about actual mom-and-apple-pie Americans --so of course they're not going to have the competitive advantage of their forebears' willingness to take a cruddy job because it was better than what they left behind. It's like what the guy's arguing is that Americanization is an insidious process, which, I mean, fine, he can have that opinion and everything, but he doesn't need to tie it in with immigration.
CURLING A GO GO: It has spread to Philadelphia. I'm envisioning a future where curling ice sheets are as commonplace as bowling alleys or pool halls. The article pegs curling as a definite growth sport and you doubt them but then wonder why was curling all over the tv? So maybe that rundown bowling alley on the outskirts of town is going to have a few ice sheets in the future. It could happen.
WHODA THUNK IT: Adam Vinatieri is the Patriots' franchise player. Yes, he's the kicker. That's so great.
DECLINE AND FALLING OF SCIENCE FICTION: Judith Berman issues a genre call to arms. A sample:
Baby boomers--the cohort for whom Golden Age authors evoke fond recollections of childhood--currently dominate sf production and consumption. This supersized slice of the demographic pie has exerted hegemony over the pace and direction of cultural change for decades, but the Age of the Internet and the New Economy have, it seems to me, begun to dethrone them in favor of the 20- and 30-somethings who are as comfortable in the seething, mutating cultural ferment of the web as fish are in the sea. The Internet is perhaps the best symbol of everything disquieting to boomers (and their elders) about the present, including the generational divide with respect to technology. This divide is the subject of the old joke about the 8-year-old being the one who programs the family VCR. Part of what the joke expresses is the fear that members of the younger generation, at ease with all new technology, are growing up strangers to their parents.
Via actual science fiction writer Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.
Baby boomers--the cohort for whom Golden Age authors evoke fond recollections of childhood--currently dominate sf production and consumption. This supersized slice of the demographic pie has exerted hegemony over the pace and direction of cultural change for decades, but the Age of the Internet and the New Economy have, it seems to me, begun to dethrone them in favor of the 20- and 30-somethings who are as comfortable in the seething, mutating cultural ferment of the web as fish are in the sea. The Internet is perhaps the best symbol of everything disquieting to boomers (and their elders) about the present, including the generational divide with respect to technology. This divide is the subject of the old joke about the 8-year-old being the one who programs the family VCR. Part of what the joke expresses is the fear that members of the younger generation, at ease with all new technology, are growing up strangers to their parents.
Via actual science fiction writer Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.
WEIRDNESS: I keep seeing this quote in the short track reports:
''It's absurd that the Korean was disqualified,'' said Italy's Fabio Carta, who placed fourth behind China's Li Jiajun and Canada's Mark Gagnon. ''I don't know what happened. We should use a rifle on Ohno.''
What is he saying? Does he want Ohno shot?
''It's absurd that the Korean was disqualified,'' said Italy's Fabio Carta, who placed fourth behind China's Li Jiajun and Canada's Mark Gagnon. ''I don't know what happened. We should use a rifle on Ohno.''
What is he saying? Does he want Ohno shot?
UTAH WATCH: Via Fark comes the story that Utah leads the nation in prescription antidepressant drug use. The article indulges in the usual sociocultural explanations:
Few here question the veracity of the study, which was a tabulation of prescription orders, said Dr. Curtis Canning, president of the Utah Psychiatric Assn. But trying to understand the "why" has puzzled many, he said.
"The one true answer is we don't know," said Canning, who has a private practice in Logan. "I have some hunches.
"In Mormondom, there is a social expectation--particularly among the females--to put on a mask, say 'Yes' to everything that comes at her and hide the misery and pain. I call it the 'Mother of Zion' syndrome. You are supposed to be perfect because Mrs. Smith across the street can do it and she has three more kids than you and her hair is always in place. I think the cultural issue is very real. There is the expectation that you should be happy, and if you're not happy, you're failing."
The happy thing is an American ideal, but carried to the nth degree by social pressure. But I'm baffled. Mormons can't have alcoholor caffeine but they can have all the CVS pharmacy drugs they want? There's your explanation right there: no caffeine no beer make Homer pester his family practitioner for the sweet sweet legal drugs. There is probably a legalize pot argument here too but its tangental, as if you could prescribe pot Mormons would be able to smoke it. I mean, is that the difference? You can only take scientifically verifiable and approved by the FDA drugs? Or what? Another tidbit:
Utah also leads the nation in the use of narcotic painkillers such as codeine and morphine-based drugs, the study found, and is ranked seventh in total prescriptions overall. Kentucky ranked first.
Church fathers, let them have coffee. They need it.
Few here question the veracity of the study, which was a tabulation of prescription orders, said Dr. Curtis Canning, president of the Utah Psychiatric Assn. But trying to understand the "why" has puzzled many, he said.
"The one true answer is we don't know," said Canning, who has a private practice in Logan. "I have some hunches.
"In Mormondom, there is a social expectation--particularly among the females--to put on a mask, say 'Yes' to everything that comes at her and hide the misery and pain. I call it the 'Mother of Zion' syndrome. You are supposed to be perfect because Mrs. Smith across the street can do it and she has three more kids than you and her hair is always in place. I think the cultural issue is very real. There is the expectation that you should be happy, and if you're not happy, you're failing."
The happy thing is an American ideal, but carried to the nth degree by social pressure. But I'm baffled. Mormons can't have alcoholor caffeine but they can have all the CVS pharmacy drugs they want? There's your explanation right there: no caffeine no beer make Homer pester his family practitioner for the sweet sweet legal drugs. There is probably a legalize pot argument here too but its tangental, as if you could prescribe pot Mormons would be able to smoke it. I mean, is that the difference? You can only take scientifically verifiable and approved by the FDA drugs? Or what? Another tidbit:
Utah also leads the nation in the use of narcotic painkillers such as codeine and morphine-based drugs, the study found, and is ranked seventh in total prescriptions overall. Kentucky ranked first.
Church fathers, let them have coffee. They need it.
AND ANOTHER OLYMPIC POST: We as a nation are really kicking the crap out of those aforementioned economists' predictions. They had us at 21 total this year and we've got 26 and I'm guessing with more short track, hockey and figure skating to come, we've got at least another five medals coming. So why were they wrong this year? Did they fail to anticipate us inventing and rehabbing and getting female versions of sports in place? Sort of a version of that Paul Romer thing about economists failing to appreciate the possibilities of new things being discovered. (Read those articles if you can get past the smirky picture.) Maybe.
OLYMPICS SCANDAL WATCH: The Lithuanian ice dancers had their appeal denied. The South Koreans are up in arms about the Ohno gold, like it'll do any good. If this was wrestling Ohno would make a grandstand challenge to Kim; Kim would come out and either tease another race or get his butt whupped for the majority of the race before pulling off the victory by clearly cheating outside the vision of the referee. Sadly, this is less entertaining than wrestling --though I'm still watching.
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