Prometheus 6

That may seem like a weird question, but it's an important one. How LONG is "now"...does that make it clearer?

Didn't think so.

Technically there's no such thing as now. It's like the point at which possibility (which doesn't exist yet) collapses into events and pass away. Future and past don't exist, now is too transitory to identify. So we work in a window of time: intelligence grasping possibilities, perception passing the moment into memory; functionally, 'now' is this joining of intelligence, perception and memory and the size of your 'now' is determined by how much intelligence and memory you invoke.

The first one I linked in Deep, deep, deep, deep, DEEP into "People of the Word" space. This one is amazing...people really need to decide not to do anything on the net that they wouldn't do in front of their open front window.

Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds

Recently, a blogger named Simon Owens ran a social experiment on Craigslist. He wandered into the "Casual Encounters" section of the personal ads where countless men and women were soliticing for no-strings-attached sex and wondered, Is it really that easy? As a test, he composed several ads with different permutations of assumed identity and sexual orientation: straight/bi men/women looking for the opposite/same sex. He then posted it to New York, Chicago, and Houston, and tallied the results.

Overwhelmingly and instantly, the ads from the fake women looking for male partners were inundated with responses, sometimes several per minute. All the other ads received lukewarm responses, at best. These results weren't surprising, but some of the observations were... Many of these men used their real names and included personally identifiable information, including work email addresses and home phone numbers. Several admitted they were married and cheating on their spouses. Many included photos, often nude.

His first conclusion was very reasonable: "If a really malicious person wanted to get on craigslist and ruin a lot of people's lives, he easily could."

For example, the funny and personable Adele Givens does a routine making liberal use of a colorful obscenity that was a mainstay of the series in its 1990’s heyday...[w]hat distinguishes Ms. Givens’s bit is that it doesn’t just use the word; it is actually about the word. Specifically, it is about a clergyman who chastises her for using the word onstage, and whose self-righteousness leads to a hilarious comeuppance. It’s dirty, it’s clever and it has something to say. What a concept.

A young comedian named Vince Morris provides an even bigger departure from the “Def Comedy Jam” norm. Bespectacled and soft-spoken, he neither looks nor sounds like the stereotypical black comic, and that in a way is the point of his very smart act.

An Old Show Returns, With Just a Little News About Race and Sex
By PETER KEEPNEWS

...A lot has changed since “Def Comedy Jam” was last on the air, but you wouldn’t know it from the first two shows of its new incarnation. There is the occasional topical reference: three of the six performers have jokes about the high price of gas. But otherwise, the subject matter, the humor and the attitude are essentially the same as they were back in the day: usually irreverent, often vulgar and, as the euphemism has it, urban.

And yet amid the punch lines about sodomy and sagging breasts, amid the ritual repetition of “bitch” and even ruder words, there are a few self-referential moments that suggest that something new is in the air.

Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War author: Nicholas Lemann asin: 0374248559 binding: Hardcover list price: $24.00 USD amazon price: $19.20 USD

A Less Perfect Union
By SEAN WILENTZ

Ten years after Appomattox, Northern support for the newly enfranchised ex-slaves and their white allies had faded. Recalcitrant Southern whites, whose Ku Klux Klan night-riding had been aggressively repressed by the federal government in the early 1870’s, regrouped under the political aegis of the Democratic Party. By mid-decade, most of the Reconstruction state governments had fallen at the ballot box to the forces of white supremacy, the self-proclaimed “redeemers.”

Mississippi, with a large black voting majority, resisted longer than other states, but redemption finally came there too, in 1875, sealed by a new frenzy of paramilitary carnage and intimidation. Two years later, after a disputed national election, the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes finally won the White House by agreeing to remove from the South the last of the federal troops who had upheld Reconstruction at the points of their bayonets. The troubled effort to build a Southern interracial democracy out of the ashes of the Civil War was over.

John Tierney's [TS] Waiting for Al-Qaeda is correct in every particular.

The Bush administration likes to take credit for stopping domestic plots, but it’s hard to gauge whether these are much more than the fantasies of a few klutzes. Bush also claims that the war in Iraq has diverted terrorists’ attention there, but why wouldn’t global jihadists want the added publicity from attacking America at home, too? Al Qaeda’s leaders threatened in 2003 to attack America — along with a half dozen other countries that haven’t been attacked either.

Mueller’s conclusion is that there just aren’t that many terrorists out there with the zeal and the competence to attack the United States. In his forthcoming book, “Overblown,” he argues that the risk of terrorism didn’t increase after Sept. 11 — if anything, it declined because of a backlash against Al Qaeda, making it a smaller and less capable threat than before. But the terrorism industry has been too busy hyping Sept. 11 and several other attacks to notice.

It has found a new audience for old dangers. For more than half a century, experts have warned that terrorists could destroy a city with a weapon of mass destruction. They still might, but their failure so far suggests it isn’t easy to do, and it didn’t suddenly become easier on Sept. 11.

(having chosen the two more polite-sounding possibilities over options such as "whore"...)

It is a carefully calibrated strategy that will continue in coming days, first with an appearance Sunday morning by Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the vehicle he used to advantage at key moments after Sept. 11 and then Mr. Bush’s appearance that night at ground zero in New York and a prayer service at St. Paul’s Chapel.

Before Speeches, a Bush Strategy to Regain Edge
By DAVID E. SANGER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — When President Bush and his top aides gathered in July to sketch out a strategy for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was clear to all that they had to try to reset the clock — back to a time, before Iraq, when portraying Mr. Bush as a steely commander in chief was a far simpler task, and before Hurricane Katrina, when questions about the administration’s competence did not weigh so heavily.

...is here.

It's really a "what else is new" moment for me, but whatever.

You probably won't see many posts from me between Sept. 27 and Oct. 1. I'll be at ASALH's 91st Annual Convention in Atlanta. In fact, I'll be on a panel...a little more detail a little later.

There's a lot of stuff going on in and around the Convention. Some of you may remember when I used to go out every Friday to a lecture, usually at Columbia University, usually on something sociological. This is almost a week of the stuff, a broad array of subjects, and I just found the scheduling tool that lets me browse the sessions and mark the ones I'm interested in. This is vacation time for me too...it is conceivable the Convention may not fill my whole day. Which is to say I'll have plenty of opportunities to get online and post but probably won't.

Trio accused of gunpoint prayer session
September 8, 2006

ATHENS, Ala. --A woman and two roommates are accused of holding her brother at gunpoint as she prayed for his repentance, even firing a shot into the ceiling to keep his attention.

Randy Doss, 46, of Athens said he fled the house when his captors got distracted and later went to police, who were skeptical at first because his story was so bizarre. But police said it checked out, including the bullet hole in the ceiling.

"We found where they patched the hole with caulk," said Sgt. Trevor Harris.

Police said the sister, Tammie Lee Doss, 43, Donna Leigh Bianca, 37, and Ronald David Richie, 45, who live at the Athens house, were charged with unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor. The two women were also charged with menacing, a misdemeanor. All were released on bond.

"It's more about protection and control in the way he goes about using his infamy," said Polak, director and chairman of the Intellectual Property Group at Indianapolis law firm Sommer Barnard. 

Obviously some white folks were more deeply scarred by the OJ verdict than 9/11.

If you a relative, I suggest with respect it's past time to let go and move on. I've dealt with several deaths, I know how that works. And if you're not a relative, get a life and shut up.

Men offer twist to Simpson case
Pair's legal maneuver could force ex-football star to pay for slayings
By Erika D. Smith
September 6, 2006

Hopefully the almost-half the country that still thinks otherwise will get the message now (though I fully expect the first half hour of Washington Journal to be filled with denials).  The primary defense they'll have will be, "Everyone thought Saddam had WMD," irrelevant as that is.

But it's occurred to me that the USofA probably owns, what, three out of four sattelites in operation? I'm trying to lowball my guestimate. GPS is ours, I think Europe's competitor is only a couple months old. It really strikes me that most Western nations' intelligence agencies would be analysing information provided to them through their partnerships with the USofA, and supplementing that with their own work.

Senate Panel Releases Report on Iraq Intelligence
By MARK MAZZETTI

via Waveflux  

"Very often I tell him, 'Look, I am a hot-blooded Latina.' I label myself a hot-blooded Latina that is very passionate about the issues, and this is kind of an inside joke that I have with the governor."

I'm not really taking this seriously. It's just too stupid.

Schwarzenegger: Cubans, Puerto Ricans 'all very hot'

SANTA MONICA, California (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized Friday for saying during a closed-door meeting that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of their combination of "black blood" and "Latino blood."

So Darkstar and I had this conversation on a mailing list. It harkened back to this post, and my position was, give me substance rather than political rumor and I'll be judgemental as hell. I suppose I should wait for him to post about it, but he says he's confirmed the political rumor to his satisfaction. A couple of rounds of email later we found our compromise: the minimum data he could provide that I would react to.

I suppose he won't mind if I share.

OK, if you have a high school with dismall scores and a school administration that has no ideas to improve the scores, and you have an active alumni association of the high school who wants the scores improved, isn't there a need to try to change how things are doing because what is currently happening is not working.

Some people, seeing the effectiveness of Coppin working with Rosemont to improve their scores, talked with the Coppin president to come up with a working partnership to help improve the scores.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is on a tour of schools in the state to help come up with ideas to improve school performance, state wide. He gets the details of how Coppin helped improve Rosemont Elementary School scores. At a press conference, he stated that he wants to work with Coppin and Douglass to improve scores by changing the ciriculum. Some people see this as a "take over" and object right away. The Black Dem politician was one of them. The pol goes to Coppin's president and states objections to a "take over" and voices objections to the link with Michael Steele.

The president states that there is no take over, in fact it's not allowed. He wants to help improve the ciriculum. That misunderstanding gets cleared up but the pol is still against Coppin getting involved
and mentions Coppin funding.

Meanwhile, multiple Maryland State University Regents are telling the president of Coppin that he needs to back off.

The president of Coppin backs off because he's not a political animal and doesn't like what is going on.

If that's not enough, then I don't understand.

Eavesdropping case gains steam
National security: - A judge gives a defunct Oregon charity the go-ahead on a lawsuit over private conversations
Friday, September 08, 2006
ASHBEL S. GREEN

A Portland-based federal judge on Thursday refused to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- just as President Bush was urging Congress to authorize it.

U.S. District Judge Garr M. King ruled that a lawsuit by an Oregon-based Islamic charity could go forward without revealing state secrets, rebuffing the government's attempt to dispose of the case swiftly.

King left for another day the ultimate question: Does the warrantless eavesdropping program, administered by the National Security Agency and authorized by Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, violate the law?

Scholastic's press release says

“After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues,” said Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic. “At the same time, we believe that developing critical thinking and media literacy skills is crucial for students in today’s society in order to participate fully in our democracy and that a program such as ‘The Path to 9/11’ provides a very ‘teachable moment’ for developing these skills at the high school level. We encourage teachers not to shy away from the controversy surrounding the program, but rather to engage their students in meaningful, in-depth discussion.”

The new guide clearly states that Scholastic had no involvement with developing the ABC docudrama, and that the company is not promoting the program, but that the program can provide a springboard to discussion about the issues leading up to 9/11, terrorism and the Middle East. The guide will focus on three issues:

1. Media Literacy - what is a docudrama; how does it differ from a documentary; what are the differences between factual reporting and a dramatization?

2. Background to 9/11 - what are some of the causes of unrest in the Middle East and other parts of the world that give rise to attacks on the U.S. and other countries?

3. Geography and Culture -- there is a long history of conflict in the Middle East. How well do students understand each of the countries involved and what influences their behavior?
Scholastic has been providing free educational materials for use in the classroom in conjunction with television programs and films since the 1950’s. Classroom discussion guides have also been created in the past to support discussion of major events such as the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters, the shootings at Columbine and many others.

There is exactly one topic this propaganda movie support the study of: media literacy. And that can still be studied if they pull the damn thing. Seriously, why present false information, then explain it? Why not teach the background, geography and culture from cleaner sources?

Steele and Mfume are black. If each prevails, it will be the first time voters in both parties have nominated black candidates for the Senate.

What is remarkable is how little remarked upon this is.

Come to think of it, there are several exceptions that leap to mind, left and right. But since I got some Steele stuff coming up later today, what the heck...

"Without question it would be the most powerful era of African-American leadership on the Hill, and with the growing influence of Sen. Obama, there would be the possibility of a golden era of African-American politics in D.C.," said Peter Groff, the Colorado Senate's first black president pro-tem and executive director of the Center for African American Policy at the University of Denver. "Add a Ford or Steele or Mfume to that mix and it would really be something."

Totally stolen from Michael Froomkin. I'm even going to steal a comment.

I think that the mouse has an even bigger problem. They are planning to show their fiction in Bermuda where the UK libel laws apply. There is no public figure defense and damages can be very significant indeed.

ABC's '9/11' Libel By Fiction Exposure

In all the ink, real and virtual, that's being spilled over ABC's fictionalization of the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, it seems to me that one aspect of ABC/Disney's position has been missed: if the public descriptions of the show are accurate, then the people who made it and those who plan to show it have some serious libel exposure.

First of all, Thomas H. Kean is STILL full of crap.

"These are people of integrity," Kean said of the filmmakers. "I know there are some scenes where words are put in characters' mouths. But the whole thing is true to the spirit of 9/11."

What, exactly, is "the spirit of 9/11"? Grief? Terror? Pain over the death of loved ones?

When even ABC tells you their propaganda movie is a docudrama, and Kean says otherwise, I'm no longer taking him seriously.

Secondly, minor props only to Scholastic, because they already helped create the crap. It will be used, so they can't escape responsibility for some of the damage caused when people's actions are "supported" in their own minds by what they "learned" from the material Scholastic helped develop.

The network's move came as the children's publishing company Scholastic deleted from its Web site materials about "The Path to 9/11," developed in partnership with ABC, that were being offered to 25,000 high school teachers. "We determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues," Chairman Dick Robinson said.

The minor props are enough for me to wait to see if they do this shit again.

Finally, Kurtz is still a tool.

ABC to Alter Show on Pre-9/11 Run-Up
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; A02

ABC plans to make minor changes to its docudrama on the run-up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in response to heated complaints from former Clinton administration officials that a number of scenes are fabricated, a network executive said yesterday.

Link of note is to [ caught in between ], because

If you can't guess from the general tilt of the posting on my blog, I work in the advertising industry. (A related interest of mine is propaganda, a sister of advertising, and how it's used to alternately seduce and dupe the populace.)

City Ad Firms Agree to Hire More Black Managers
By DIANE CARDWELL and STUART ELLIOTT

Finding that just 2 percent of the upper echelon of the advertising industry is black, New York City officials said yesterday that they had reached agreements with several of the nation’s biggest ad firms forcing them to bring more black managers into this crucial sector of the city’s economy.

David Brooks' reality:

The haves exercise more power over the have-nots. As a result, corporate profits soar, while wages stagnate. Money-drenched politicians push through shareholder-friendly trade deals that outsource American jobs while job insecurity skyrockets. C.E.O.’s get absurd salaries while the 99 percent of earners enjoy few benefits from productivity gains. Unions are weakened while manufacturing wages tumble and the middle class suffers.

In short, populists argue, the market is broken. The rules are rigged. The reigning ideology in Washington must be upended. Unions must be revived. Globalization needs to be reorganized.

The problem with this narrative is that it doesn’t really fit the facts.

Everyone else's reality:

The moral is this: Businesses will slash jobs when they deem it wise and build plants when they think it’s cost effective. All the Jobs Creation Act accomplished was to hand companies a nice little present with a big, fat price tag and a misleading name.

Cashing Their Chips

This week, Intel announced that it would be cutting 10,500 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force. The company’s chief executive, Paul Otellini, said that while it was a difficult decision, the move was “essential to Intel becoming a more agile and efficient company.”

That kind of cutback is par for the course in today’s business environment. What’s notable about it is that Intel was also one of the major corporations that took advantage of the American Jobs Creation Act, a one-year tax holiday for American businesses operating overseas that lawmakers claimed was going to act as an engine for job growth. By reducing taxes on repatriated profits, it was supposed to generate cash for companies to use in underwriting new hiring at home.

In reality, it was little more than a multibillion-dollar giveaway. Intel repatriated $6.2 billion under the program, which taxed foreign profits at a rate of just 5.25 percent, compared with the normal rate of 35 percent. Now, instead of creating new jobs, it is cutting existing ones.

I swear ta gawd, in [TS] WhiningOver Discontent he goes after the same Brooksian nonsense I hated on yesterday.

We are, finally, having a national discussion about inequality, and right-wing commentators are in full panic mode. Statistics, most of them irrelevant or misleading, are flying; straw men are under furious attack. It’s all very confusing — deliberately so. So let me offer a few clarifying comments...

Political analysts tried all sorts of explanations for popular discontent with the “Bush boom” — it’s the price of gasoline; no, people are in a bad mood because of Iraq — before finally acknowledging that most Americans think it’s a bad economy because for them, it is...

Man, there's a lotta-lotta stuff I want to get to today and I don't know how much I'll get to. I got income inequality stuff, education stuff, Disney propaganda stuff, race and politics stuff...

Not one bit of it has any 9/11 rememberances.

The funniest is that Republicans have taken their "Party of Lincoln" bullshit to its (il)logical extreme: Bush AS Lincoln. Which makes the Party of Lincoln the Party of Bush.

Think about that for a minute.

The meme was officially launched yesterday on the Huffington Post and OpinionJournal/WSJ Op-Ed pages. Steve Gilliard ran across Lincoln Lied and Thousands Died on the Huffington Post and asked the musical question

So, Seth, are you claiming that opposition to the war is racism or treason or both?

I saw ol' Newt Gingrich's Bush and Lincoln piece in OpinionJournal.

I'm watching this thing on The Science Channel

What If: The Oil Runs Out

Slowly a consensus has emerged. Oil, the lifeblood of modern societies, is going to peak then decline irreversibly. Oil will be used for decades to come, but the era of surplus, conventional oil is ending, and we are not prepared.

Quite amusing...it's set in 2016.

This bothers me in the same way the meeting to discuss hurricane procedures in New York City bothered me. It did more to convince me folks know disruptive climate change is a real problem than all the preceding articles and editorials I had read.

I guess that's why they're Conservative...

Crooks and Liars:

Video-WMP Video-QT (rough transcript)

Control Room: Norah–we just got statement from ABC that we have been waiting for. I’ll read it right now–"The Path to 9/11″ is not a documentary of the events leading up to 9/11. It is a dramatization, drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report, other published materials, and personal interviews. As such–for dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes-–composite and representative characters and dialogue–and time compression.

No one has seen the final version of the film–because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible. [P6: emphasis added] The attacks of 9/11 were a pivotal moment in our history–and it is fitting that the debate about the events related to the attacks continue. However, we hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast of the finished film before forming an opinion about it"–So bottom line they’ve just released a statement about it. They’re not going to change this movie at all…

It appears the VECO donations came after Alaska Senator Stevens threw his support to McGavick in his race against Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell. This came after Cantwell stymied Steven's plans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling....VECO has made no secret of what it hopes to gain from their donations. "VECO is ready to assist efforts in every way possible to make new mega projects happen - specifically, an Alaskan gas pipeline and the opening of ANWR," the company said in a 2003 newsletter. In an October 2004 newsletter to VECO employees, executives wrote, "The right people in the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the Alaska State Legislature make a huge impact on oil and gas resource development and on the economy of Alaska."