Month: October 2005

Two questions, y’all.

The next BooBooks book club confab is supposed to be the 26-27 of Nov., but damn if that isn’t Thanksgiving weekend. Is it okay with you smarties if we postpone it by a week and do it the first weekend in Dec? Then maybe we’d better skip Dec. altogether and wait until Jan. to do the third one?

What book do you nominate for us to read? Remember our two goals: pick a book that illuminates current events and one that we can buy at Powells, as a way to help this site.

BostonJoe, are you reading this? A whole lot of us would love to read and talk about your book, but I’m thinking that might be a good one for a special, extra book club meeting and that we’d hope you would lead it?

Ready, set, nominate.

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by Andrew Brenner
ePluribus Media

The owner of a Virginia business indicted for paying kickbacks in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq has a reputed history of dealing with the CIA in foreign arms sales.

On October 20, 2005, Midway Trading of Reston, Va., guilty in New York State Supreme Court to grand larceny charges of paying $440,000 in kickbacks to Iraqi officials. The kickbacks had been funneled through the Romanian company Bulf Oil. Midway Trading agreed to pay a $250,000 fine.

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“Wang Yiming, 21, is a self-confessed internet addict, one of a growing number in China. He used to spend hours online each day, often going without food or sleep. His face is drawn and sallow,” writes BBC’s Daniel Griffiths. “He said addiction changed his whole life.”

China has opened its first Internet addiction clinic. Um, what in the hell is that on that kid’s head? (Is this an “either it’ll kill you or cure you” kinda treatment? The caption says: “The clinic provides medical treatment and therapy.”)

Perhaps more pertinent to, um, BooTribbers: “A new study [from AdAge.com] shows that workers will ‘waste’ 551,000 work years reading and posting to blogs,” notes Alternet PEEK’s Evan Derkacz.

Sounding suspiciously defensive, Evan Derkacz adds:

Granted, blogs can be drivel. But they can also be a shining example of participatory democracy; the grand conversation. They can be mindless blather but they can be a pinprick of sanity in a mechanical existence. In other words, they can be anything. It’s just people writing and reading folks.

… But for the number of people I’ve seen who read the comics, do the crossword, chatter on the cell phone, gossip in the kitchenette… Employers ought to be glad their employees may be honing their writing and becoming more knowledgeable about something…

Hip, hip, hooray, Evan! You’ve given me new arguments! My motley bunch of relatives — save my daughter — either don’t care that I blog or think it’s a complete waste of time, refusing to read a single thing I write.

How many of you have avocations or professions that most everyone thinks are rather a waste of time, or of no worth?

I’ve given up on mentioning my blogging to my family, except for my daughter. I finally got the courage to send a URL to my thoughtful, funny next-door neighbor Pat — he who gave me a huge bag of dog food so I could keep feeding the raccoons we all love and enjoy.

Pat came over the other day and gave me a book. He said he’d found it in his closet. It was a novel by longtime Newsweek reporter Arnaud de Borchgrave.

Pat said, “I thought I should give it to you because you’re a journalist.” (I’ll never forget those words.) And so are all of you — including all of you who don’t put up diaries but who post your incredibly interesting and thoughtful comments. What do others think of your blogging?

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The trade deficit has lost power to grab headlines.  Every month, the BEA announces the figure, the markets react to the number for a few days, then everybody goes back to their regularly scheduled program until next month.  In addition, the primary mechanism that brings the trade deficit into the public spotlight – a deterioration of the dollar’s value – hasn’t happened since the first of the year.  Starting in January, dollar has rallied versus other currencies because US interest rates are high relative to other countries.

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At a quarter after five this afternoon (Sunday, October 23), I was driving on Route 222 south of Reading, heading for Lancaster.  The stretch of road I was on is under construction, two lanes instead of four, with a tall concrete barrier on the west side separating us from where a new cement roadway was being poured.  Traffic was heavy, but moving at a good clip, considering that we had all been funneled into the narrow roadway.

There was a gap in traffic heading north, the opposite direction.  The next car coming was a black SUV, a Jeep.  Suddenly, it swerved into our lane.

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