I can’t pick between these two quotes today, so you get both:
“When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.”
-Anne Lamott
-Anne Lamott
“Who can say what ideas, dreams, and hopes are percolating below the surface today that we cannot see or do not recognize, but which will blossom forth?”
-Knoxville Progressive
-Knoxville Progressive
Glaciers melting twice as fast: WashPo
What am I doing in one of those little shaded boxes up there? Now I’m gonna be targeted for a tax audit for sure, not to mention monitoring by various secret government agencies, LOL!
Don’t worry. The IRS and the NSA are already too busy going after Anne Lamott.
They’ll release her with just a warning, because she’s sufficiently “Jesusy.”
(I had to go google her after reading your comment.)
😀
But she’s a VERY liberal Jesus person (yes they exist) and she VERY vocally can’t stand George Bush. She’s featured on Salon (or she used to) regularly.
Her books are wonderful, by the way.
Been a bit out of the loop — what did Anne do this time?
(Really enjoy her writings — and she may be “Jesusy”, but the wrong type for the Religious Reich IIRC…)
I was wondering if you were ever going to notice…
It’s been a “need… more… coffee…” kind of morning. Been up watching the Olympics every night past my usual bedtime.
New warnings on Ortho Evra: AP/Yahoo
My daughter was on Ortho Evra for two years until last month I made her go to my gyn. and ask specific questions about it’s safety. She switched her to low dose pills instead.
Not sure if this is the best place to put this, but I want to know why Canada is on the Abu Ghraib photographs released yesterday by Salon (link).
Photo #17 is a typed document, identifying an arrest/interogation record I’m presuming.
At the very bottom of the document, it states:
SECRET/RELEASABLE TO USA, AUS, CAN AND GBR
wtf?
(via Bourque)
Now I’m wondering too.
.
Record 19
Capture Tag Number 0417247
Interview: Interrogation
Date: 12-31-2003
Time: 11:00:00 A
Duration: 120
Facility JIDC (Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center)
Screener/Interrogator: OGA (Other Government Agency)
Alternate Screener: W0758
Comments: CITF interrogation
The detainee provided a physical description of an individual of interest.
SECRET/RELEASABLE TO USA, AUS, CAN AND GBR
● OGA (Other Government Agency)
● FBI’s Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF)
The Association of Old Crows (AOC), and the GPS Joint Program Office, will sponsor a “NAVWAR Conference” at the Northrop Grumman Air Ground Systems Battle management Systems Integration and Test Facility, Melbourne, Florida on 9-10 February 2005.
The theme of the conference will be “NAVWAR after Afghanistan, and Iraq.” The conference will be at the SECRET, Releasable to USA, AUS, CAN and GBR classification level. The chairman of the conference is Dr. Stanley B. Alterman. The keynote address will be given by General Lance Lord, Commander Air Force Space Command.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
For boran2: MSNBC
I hope he appreciates all the effort made here on his behalf.
Full Article
Great minds. 🙂
Damn, I should refresh before I post and or learn to do my articles faster. Sorry for the duplicate.
No problem. That one bears repeating…I didn’t include it, but the article also mentions that they have also realized that the patch delivers 60% more estrogen than the pill. High estrogen doses are associated with increased clot risk.
Herceptin could be fast-tracked across NHS: Guardian
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TEL AVIV (Trouw Newspaper) February 14th, 2006
A Danish paper publishes a cartoon that mocks Muslims.
An Iranian paper responds with a Holocaust cartoons contest –
Now a group of Israelis announce their own anti-Semitic cartoons contest!
DIMONA - An Israeli Comix GroupAmitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, has followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally he came up with the right answer to all this insanity – and so he announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest – this time drawn by Jews themselves!
“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published! No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”
The contest has been announced today on the http://www.boomka.org website, and the initiator accept submissions of cartoons, caricatures and short comic strips from people all over the world. The deadline is Sunday March 5, and the best works will be displayed in an Exhibition in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
The contest does have one limitation (from the website): “Contest open to Jew creators only! Sorry! This is Jews joking about themselves”
I hate to take what is a humorous response and make something serious out of it but I am disturbed by how common it has become for everybody to make this a Jews vs. Muslims issue. Every time I read a diary or post on this subject, someone says “well what if they did cartoons like this about Jews or the Holocaust” as if the hate of one group should be counterbalanced by the hate of the other. And the response is particularly interesting because one would think that since the paper in question is in a Christian country and had refused to print a cartoon that it found offensive to Christians that if any counter-example were going to be offered be about Christianity, not Judaism.
country, or I should say a country with a majority population that identifies itself at least as cultural Christians.
So the question is one regarding religious minorities, which in Denmark, as in the US, both Jews and Muslims are.
It’s unlikely that any of the cartoons of this group will involve depictions of desecration of a Torah, and unlikely that such a cartoon would be republished by any newspaper in Denmark, or any blogs anywhere in the west, regardless of who drew it.
And I am very glad of that, because it would be just as offensive to me as a picture of the Prophet with a bomb on his head, and my preference would be to see an end to bigotry, not have it become a contest.
Then perhaps everyone could stop making those comparisons and concentrate on the issue of counteracting discrimination and prejudice toward Muslims.
of the woods yet. Sure, Muslims are the acceptable target for whatever anybody feels like hurling today, just as Jews were some decades ago, especially in Germany. But the Neo-Nazi gangs, the David Dukes & ilk who try to hijack the Resistance, are quite there, and while no newspaper would print a cartoon of someone desecrating a Torah, yet be hailed for their bravery and freedom of speech for the one of the Prophet with a bomb on his head, that is skin deep stuff, that is the result of almost sixty years of lobbying, basically.
There is still plenty of anti-Semitism today, just as there is still plenty white supremacy. It may be dressed up in fancy clothes, it may be kept off the surface streets in the name of “political correctness,” but it is still very much there, so when the comparison is made, all we are comparing is what I said earlier, that the Muslims are the acceptable target for whatever poison roils in the hearts of the mainstream west, but what we are comparing is something that is still very superficial.
I made no statement about the prevalence of anti-semtism at all. I am fully aware of just how much anti-semitism there is in the world and much closer than that. But the existence of anti-semitism is not the issue. The prejudice against Muslims is and that’s where the emphasis ought to be. I think that the repeated use of Jews as a comparison makes tolerance looks as if it is a zero-sum game and that helps no one.
I don’t care whether it is intolerance of religion, race, sexual preference, ethnicity, foot width, I don’t have a lot of tolerance for it.
I don’t have to be gay to feel the same terror, the same pain, when I hear of some hate crime against a gay person that I feel about the Imam in Dearborn of all places – Dearborn! That’s the town with all the “pro crusade” Iraqis that the media trots out every now and then to express their gratitude for all US has done for their country.
Muslims feel the same horror, the same agony walking through Auschwich as Jews, as Jains, as agnostics. Because the Jews are our brothers, and it could just as easily, and might well be, next week, any of us.
Intolerance, bigotry, hatred, disrespect of people because of who they are is just as dangerous for every person as it is for the enemy du jour. Because the jour changes, and with it, the “enemy.” It is like fashion. Hell, it *is
fashion. But a suit is a suit whether its lapels are wide or narrow, its lines crisp or “deconstructed,” the pants narrow or wide.
We are all brothers and sisters, whether we are black or beige or white or Catholics or Jews or Hindus or Muslims or Buddhists or yes, even Primitive Foot Washing Baptists. And any time any of us is reviled or spat upon or harmed in any way for who we are, it does the same damage to every one of us, and the worst damage to he who does the reviling.
And I think the comparison will continue to be made, for the reasons stated in my previous post. And also because there is such universal awareness of the Holocaust, and people have to have a hook to hang some things on. It might seem obvious to you and me that bigotry is just plain wrong, and maybe we don’t need that comparison, that hook. But a lot of folks, probably most folks, do need that, and since it is from that most folks that it is liable to come, if the hook helps them understand that it is wrong, and why, I say give them the hook, and welcome.
But the goal, in my view should be that the emphasis on the prejudice against Muslims not be because it is against Muslims, but because it is prejudice.
I do not mean to suggest that everybody in Dearborn shares those sentiments, or even that the Imam does, I have no idea what his views on the subject are, the point of using that example is that this is a community whose mass media claim to fame has come largely from people who do, indicating that it is likely that whoever vandalized the mosque and attacked the Imam was not aware of this, or maybe they were, which would emphasize even more that they would attack anyone simply because they were of a certain faith or ethnicity or looked a certain way, even though in this case it is possible that the views of the individual might not have been far from their own.
In a zero-sum game, one always benefits only at the expense of others which is why I say that tolerance should never be a zero-sum game. Tolerance for Jews doesn’t mean intolerance for Muslims. Tolerance for blacks doesn’t mean intolerance for whites. Tolerance for gays doesn’t mean intolerance for heterosexuals.
I just used a lot more words to say it. I am brevity impaired.
Well your subject said “I guess to me, tolerance is a zero sum game” which made think you were saying that there had to some sort of sacrifice by someone and the implication was that what you were saying was in opposition to what I said.
I don’t think we disagree on the big issues but we definitely disagree on the particular issue of making a comparison using Jews and I am just not convinced by your arguments. I think the comparison reinforces an idea that there is a problem between Jews and Muslims, something which I fervently believe is false. This idea gets traction because of the equally erroneous conflation of the Jews=Israel and Muslims=Middle East countries.
by the people who feel the hatred and bigotry, and do the terrible actions. They sacrifice not only the benefits of getting to know the people they revile, which could be considerable, but worst of all, they sacrifice a very important part of their own souls, or their own humanity. To me, that is the zero sum. None of these acts can occur without damage to he who commits it, and also damage to us all.
And the comparison aspect tells us that the sickness, the evil itself, if you will, is not dead. Just because someone will beat up a gay person but not a Muslim does not make them any better than he who beats up a Muslim. Or a Jew, or a Hindu, etc etc.
That would, to use again the fashion analogy, be like saying someone who only wears last years fashions is naked! Now while there may be some teenagers whose beliefs are not far from that, it is still not the case.
There is no virtue in selective bigotry. 🙂
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I was looking for Dutch humor originals from Max Tailleur, jokes about Sam and Moos. Amsterdam humor during the fifties and sixties when life was much simpler and there was no influx of immigrants and ethnic clashes.
Instead I found these etnic tales —
Narrative repertoires in the multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Lombok in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
Nasreddin Hodja was walking down the Kanaalstraat in Lombok when he suddenly saw his teenage daughter standing at the busstop with a group of girls. It struck him that his daughter – platform-soled shoes, tight jeans, headscarf on – was really blossoming up. That same evening he gave her a lecture: ‘One of these days a boy will come to you and he will invite you for a walk in the park. Remember the family honour! He will whisper sweet nothings in your ear, he will stroke your hair and he will kiss you. Remember the family honour! Finally he will jump you and bring shame upon your family!’ Nasreddins daughter said she understood, but some weeks later he saw her walking around with a strange look in her eyes, and the Hodja decided he had to talk to his daughter again. The daughter said: ‘It all went just like you predicted, father. A boy came to me and he invited me for a walk in the park. He whispered sweet nothings in my ear, stroke my hair en kissed me. I remembered our family honour though. I jumped t h e b o y and brought shame upon h i s family!’
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
It is something of an “old chestnut” but always brings a smile. 🙂
From the Emily Latella Memorial College of Medicine:
A large, seven-year study of healthy women over 50 found no broad benefit from calcium and vitamin D supplements in preventing broken bones, despite widespread endorsement by doctors for the supplements. The study, whose results are being reported today, also found no evidence that the supplements prevented colorectal cancer, and it found an increased risk of kidney stones. …Or as Emily Latella used to say on Saturday Night Live: “Oh… Nevermind.”
From the Capitaine Renault School of Public Administration:
Former space scientist and recovering pro-space activist Jeffrey Bell opines on what NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is really up to – the realpolitik of NASA: He’s laying the political groundwork to axe the Shuttle and Space Station sooner rather than later, to free up funds for “Apollo ver 2.5” – the “back-to-the-future” manned moon program planned by W. He finds it clever, if not shocking…
Scientists find “sleeping on it” really is best for big decisions:
Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven mitt. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say.
This one’s for Egarwaen:
Sustainable farming can help the poorest farmers in developing nations out of poverty, new research suggests. Scientists found that techniques such as crop rotation and organic farming increased crop yields by an average of 79%, without risking future harvests.
From the Knoxville Progressive Faculty of Bioremediation:
New research shows that microbes can help transform discarded polystyrene–including the Styrofoam used extensively for convenience foods–into PHA, a thermoplastic with uses in medicine and other areas.
For our friends in Kansas City:
The Environmental Protection Agency launched an effort Thursday to reduce emissions in a string of central states, in part through [unfunded] voluntary corporate changes.
The Blue Skyways Collaborative focuses on the heavily trafficked Interstate 35, running through the nation’s midsection to two international borders. It aims to cut diesel emissions from trucks, construction equipment and farm machinery, to implement use of alternative energy sources, and to look for innovative ways to curb pollution everywhere from rail yards to airports [finding win-win solutions on the cheap. Call it “voodoo environmental protection.”]
I think we should all just accept that duplications of news bucket and FP/Diary items complement each other more than anything else.
Nice Emily Latella reference, there. 🙂
And it’s good to know that “sleeping on it” is basedon good science…
The folks at GlaxoSmithKlein will not be happy. Now they’ll have to go back to marketing Tums as… just a heartburn medication.
(But the berry flavored ones aren’t bad, if you need a Tums anyway…)
Interesting library happenings from the WaPo:
Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.
The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Homeland Security.” The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.
[…]
Later that afternoon, Montgomery County’s chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, issued a statement calling the incident “unfortunate” and “regrettable” — two words that bureaucrats often deploy when things have gone awry. He said the officers had been reassigned to other duties.
Romer said the officers believed they were enforcing the county’s sexual harassment policy but “overstepped their authority” and had to be reminded that Montgomery “supports the rights of patrons to view the materials of their choice.”
Secure voting? Not according to a new study by the ACM. Via Declan @ CNET. And read the latest in the LWV v. Blackwell case [ElectionLaw]. Blackwell continues to confuse elected with annointed.
OK so preznit said he’s pleased with how Cheney handled it.
Here’s Bush:I’m satisfied with the explanation he gave
So OK. Who are the unhappy campers? For starters, looks top GOPers, on and off record, are asking -“Is Cheney an Asset or Liability? Gawd they’re slooow. Also looks like Scottie may be in the WH dog house.
Via Huffpost is the WSJ article “Deconstructing Cheney’s Role”
excerpt
Fitzgerald won’t buy it.
MSNBC reporting that in papers filed in court on Thursday Fitzgerald said NO to Libby’s attempt at “greymail” Libby can’t have acess to sensitive data– PDBs
Read it here
“the defendant’s effort to make history…is a transparent effort at ‘greymail,’ he said, referring to past attempts by government officials charged with wrongdoing to derail their prosecutions by trying to expose security secrets.”
waaaah.
US govt to give away $7 billion in royalties: NYT
As if their profits weren’t already at record levels. Disgusting.