Posted 2:55 PM by Nathan
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
July 21, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 4; Page 13; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 964 words
HEADLINE: Stocks Are Only Part of the Story
BYLINE: By Alan S. Blinder; Alan S. Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, is a professor of economics at Princeton.
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.

BODY:
King Canute could not command the tides, and apparently neither George W. Bush nor Alan Greenspan can command the stock market. In recent days, both the M.B.A. president and the oracular Federal Reserve chairman have tried to calm the markets with reassuring words about the economy. But the stock market has kept on falling: on Friday it had one of its worst days ever, losing 390 points. Since President Bush addressed Wall Street July 9, the Dow Jones industrial average has declined more than 10 percent, to its lowest level in almost four years.

Those who get their economic news from television may come away with the impression that the economy and the stock market are two sides of the same coin. If the market is heading south, then the economy must be, too. But it's not true. The United States economy is most emphatically not falling right now. The stock market may be the TV star. But it is the economy that generates the jobs and puts the food on our tables. And fortunately, the economy is doing much better than the market. If you want to bolster your confidence, turn off your TV and drive to the mall.

Normally, the economy and the market move consistently, though certainly not in lock step. The reasons are clear. A strong economy generates high and rising corporate profits, which is the traditional basis for high stock values. A rising stock market also gives the economy a boost by creating wealth for consumers and by making it easier for firms to raise capital, both of which were major factors in the boom of the 1990's. When things turn downward, all these mechanisms get reversed: a sagging economy drags profits and stock prices down, and a sagging stock market slows the economy.

Finally, because investors are supposed to look forward, the stock market should be a leading indicator of where the economy is going. And it is -- to a limited extent.

But while it is normal for the economy and the markets to move together, the two sometimes go their separate ways. For example, the Dow fell almost as much, in percentage terms, on a single day in October 1987 than it has in the entire recent bear market. But the economy kept growing strongly. It was such behavior that led to the economist Paul Samuelson's famous quip that the stock market has forecast nine of the last five recessions.

So it would be a mistake to interpret the stock market's current woes as a forecast of a double-dip recession -- a mistake that Alan Greenspan is certainly not making.

Consumers are spending, the housing market remains buoyant, and even business investment is coming back. The economic indicators are simply not signaling a sick economy. The gross domestic product grew at a 6.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter of this year, and something like 2.5 percent is expected for the second quarter. (The Commerce Department will announce the final figures at the end of the month.) That would clock the average growth for the first half at 4.3 percent -- not bad. The Federal Reserve expects growth of about 3 percent in the second half of this year, and the consensus among private forecasters is a bit higher.

It is true that economic forecasting is an imprecise science, to say the least. But it is far more accurate than market forecasting, which is basically impossible. And economic forecasts like this, coming from a wide variety of sources inside and outside government, should give us some comfort that the economy is heading uphill.

So why, then, is the stock market in shambles? While the market never tells you why it does what it does, it's unlikely that worries about the economy are weighing it down. Instead, the best guess is that the stream of scandalous corporate revelations is taking a heavy toll on stock prices, and investors fear there is more to come. Confidence in the earnings reports of American companies, not to mention the ratings of the analysts who follow them, has been damaged if not destroyed.

The key question is whether this illness will be confined to the stock market or spread to the larger economy. If the stock market destroys enough wealth, or if the depressive psychology infects the credit markets, the financial turmoil could become severe enough to damage the economy. The tail could drag down the dog. That is why we must stop the market's downward spiral.

But how? Words, if chosen artfully, may help a bit. But talk is cheap -- which may be why the markets shrugged off even the reassuring words of Mr. Greenspan, their most trusted guru. This just may be one of those moments when both the markets and the body politic are calling for action, some of which must be government action.

Can it be true that financial markets want the government to regulate them more? Paradoxically, the answer is yes. The markets have long had an ambivalent attitude toward government intervention. When things go well, they want to be left alone. But when things start to fall apart, they want Washington's help.

The reaction to President Bush's recent speeches was instructive. If Wall Street were truly opposed to government help, one might have thought that market participants would have breathed a sigh of relief: the president spoke loudly but carried a small stick. Instead, stock prices tanked.

There is a message here. Congress hears it, and even Mr. Greenspan -- who is not normally a proponent of government regulation -- hears it. But does President Bush hear it? The message is this: While changes in private-sector behavior will eventually fix many of today's accounting and corporate governance problems, the markets are clamoring for decisive government actions now.

Speeches have not worked. It is time to see if actions will speak louder than words.

http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Drawing (Milan Trenc)

Posted 2:47 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
Previous Reader

Steven Thomma, Philadelphia Inquirer
Women are poised to take over a record number of governors' offices this year. With strong candidates from Hawaii to Rhode Island, women are good bets to emerge from November elections holding as many as 10 of the 50 governorships, twice the five they now control. Long-shot victories in any of an additional six states could push that number even higher.As governors, women would become the dominant political power brokers in their states. Gaining statehouses would give them a breakthrough in an area of U.S. politics where they have lagged. They have made greater inroads in Congress, where women hold 13 of 100 Senate seats and 60 of 435 seats in the House of Representatives. A growing roster of women governors would increase the chance that the country might get its first female president. Americans tend to look to the executive experience of governors when choosing new presidents, not to the legislative experience of members of Congress. President Bush and three other of the last five presidents – Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton – proved themselves as governors first.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/3888853.htm

Donna Cansfield, Toronto Star
No matter who they are or where they come from, we give students the programs and services they need to learn and succeed in school. This is our job and we do it well, better than any other large, diverse urban school board in the world. We are the largest school board in Canada and the fourth largest in North America. We serve almost 300,000 students in 560 schools. ... One can argue that other cities have similar challenges to Toronto; no one can argue we have more. More causes Toronto to be extremely expensive in comparison with any other jurisdiction in Ontario. One real estate study this year puts the average price of a standard two-storey home in Ottawa at $212,240 but, in Toronto, this type of home averages $327,624. Hidden costs like insurance, vehicle repair, school repair, renovation or building all escalate in Toronto. ... Toronto has always been different from its neighbours. Not better but decidedly different. The funding model must reflect this reality and serve the needs of Toronto's students so they can achieve and succeed in school.
http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer...

David Mendell and Darnell Little, Chicago Tribune
The economic boom of the 1990s bypassed poor minority communities in the city, as many predominantly black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides remained mired in poverty as deeply entrenched as a decade earlier, according to 2000 census data released Tuesday. ... The income stagnation that plagued many Chicago neighborhoods is all the more worrisome to demographers and economists because they had hoped the unprecedented economic expansion of the 1990s would lift many people out of poverty. If people remained incredibly poor after the robust 1990s, they asked, what will become of them through the present bleak economy? ... Experts said various social and economic factors played into regional and race disparities. Geographic isolation from suburban jobs, a beleaguered school system and economic disinvestment have left many impoverished Chicago neighborhoods struggling decade after decade, with little hope for the future.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0208200185aug20.story
The Economist
THE optimists were wrong. Those misled by the American economy's spectacular rebound in the early months of this year were sure that the worst was over. At one point it looked as if America's economy had grown at a blistering 6% annualised rate in the first quarter, and that last year's recession was the mildest on record. Betting types decided that the next move in interest rates—in America and other industrial economies—would be up. John Maynard Keynes once remarked that "when the facts change, I change my mind": and both have been changing rapidly of late. ... What's happening to the American economy is, of course, the key to prospective policy changes not just in Washington but around the globe. The world's largest economy is still the only potential engine of world economic growth: Japan is struggling to recover from its fourth recession in a decade, and Europe's sluggish performance even during the boom years of the 1990s has constantly fallen short of expectations. Now America, too, faces an uncertain economic outlook.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1289545

BY DANIEL EISENBERG, Time magazine
Discount pioneer Southwest is readying its first transcontinental flights, from Baltimore, Md., to Los Angeles, starting this fall, while New York City-based upstart JetBlue is adding more flights on the West Coast and in Florida. These and other discount carriers today account for 20% of domestic air travel, up from 10% in 1992.
So why haven't American, United, US Airways and the three other full-service carriers, which lost $11 billion last year and stand to lose an additional $5 billion this year, followed the lead of the profitable discounters by cutting costs and fares? Because that's not the way their business works. They have made, and lost, their money by providing the frequent departures, quick connections, spacious seats and other amenities that have been demanded by business flyers and charging them dearly for that service — more than five times the cost of a discount fare.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020826-338602,00.html

ALAN RIDING, New York Times
FLORENCE — With the statue of David never without a crowd of worshipers at the Galleria dell'Accademia, it could be said that every year is a Michelangelo year in Florence. But thanks to three exhibitions here this summer, il Divino, as Michelangelo is known to Italian devotees, seems more present than ever. In spirit at least. In reality, taken together, the three shows display fewer than a score of drawings and only a handful of sculptures that are confidently attributed to him.
http://nytimes.com/2002/08/20/arts/design/20MICH.html

Back to Notebook

Posted 3:14 PM by Nathan
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

May 5, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 3; Page 14; Column 1; Money and Business/Financial Desk

LENGTH: 916 words

HEADLINE: LOVE & MONEY;
Full-Time Fathers Are Still Finding Their Way

BYLINE: By ELLYN SPRAGINS; Ellyn Spragins is a freelance writer in Maplewood, N.J. Her column about money's influence on relationships appears the first Sunday of each month. E-mail: loveandmoney@nytimes.com.

BODY:
"DAD, when I grow up I want to be just like you," said the 7-year-old boy. "I want to stay at home to raise my kids."

This may sound like the beginning of one of those stories that self-congratulatory stay-at-home dads tell to prove how progressive they are. But in this case, David Smith, 44, a full-time father from Virginia Beach, reports the comment from his son Alton as evidence that the effects of his decision to stop earning money seven years ago can still surprise him. Alton and his brother, Cameron, 10, have announced their ambition to follow in their father's footsteps. "It's great if that's the way it works out for them, but I never expected to hear them say that," he said. Mariana, his 13-year-old daughter, wants to be a teacher.

Like Mr. Smith, many veteran stay-at-home fathers are finding that the consequences of their choice are still unfolding.

When he stopped working as a banker, Mr. Smith was earning about twice as much as his wife's current income. The loss of income didn't bother him initially. But over time, being financially dependent on his wife, Dr. Marta Satin-Smith, a pediatric endocrinologist, has given him a slight feeling of vulnerability. It began to feel strange, he said, to use "her" money when he wanted to buy Christmas, anniversary or birthday gifts for her. So when his wife recently lost her medical transcriptionist, he took over the job to earn a little spending money.

Jeff Falk, 41, a former research chemist, has noticed that his 12-year stint as an at-home parent has produced significant changes in his relationships with his parents and his community in Danbury, Conn.

When he left his job, his parents and in-laws were shocked. His parents questioned him closely about his choice, pointing out that he had wanted to be a research chemist all his life. Now, he says, his mother believes he is thriving. Having long ago grown comfortable being the only man at many school-related volunteer activities, he has also developed many friendships with the women in town.

It makes all the difference if a man chooses to be a full-time parent or it chooses him. For men who become stay-at-home parents because they can't find a job after their wife is transferred, or because they lose a job, the long haul of child rearing is often colored by the feeling of not counting for anything in the real world of work and money.

A stay-at-home dad since 1987, when his wife, Bonnie, 51, who specializes in business development, was transferred to Atlanta, Peter Humphrey, 56, believes he has a greater degree of intimacy with his four children than many fathers with traditional careers. He has also enjoyed having the time to restore a home in Glen Ridge, N.J., before moving to Jersey City last fall.

But Mr. Humphrey, who last worked as a research analyst for a money-management firm, misses the strong identity offered by a career in the workplace and feels bruised by the reception he has received during periodic job searches. "One recruiter told me he's never placed anybody who's been self-employed," he said. "Compound that with being Mr. Mom, which is the bottom of the barrel as far as employers are concerned."

At first, being out of the mainstream is a simple adjustment. But being out of circulation for more than a decade can incur a cumulative loss -- the sensation of slowly turning invisible.

Mr. Humphrey recalled being asked to speak about being a stay-at-home dad at a Rotary Club meeting in Glen Ridge -- and how great it felt to put on a good suit and a tie.

"I still have suits from 20 years ago that are hardly worn; it's as if they're in a time capsule," he said. He choked up with emotion at the end of his speech when he read an excerpt from a novel in which the main character, a stay-at-home dad, describes the feeling of being present in the world, but transparent and barely visible.

Kevin O'Shea, 39, formerly a practicing attorney who lives in Birmingham, Mich., began full-time parenting after his daughter, Mairen, was born five years ago and has gradually felt the effects of it in some of his most important relationships. "Being out of the work force I don't have much in common with my old friends, even some of my best friends," he said. As time has passed, he sees more clearly that his friends in the legal profession have chosen a different kind of relationship with their kids -- he calls it being an "assistant parent" -- and that they don't know their children very well.

The division of marital duties hasn't changed during his five-year stint, but each partner's feelings about them has. In the beginning, Mr. O'Shea's wife, Molly, was just finishing her medical training as a pediatrician and was eager to work full time.

"Now, it sometimes pains her when she doesn't know who some of our daughter's friends are," he said. "If we were making this decision all over again, we'd probably have an argument about who gets to stay home."

The idea of fathers raising a generation of sons who choose to be stay-at-home dads themselves is a lovely bookend to the long established trend of women entering the work force. But, as we've learned from that, few people can make such an important decision and find it's right for all occasions and all life stages. There's going to be more to this fathering story. So let's not push these men into a new category and call them Mr. Moms. Let's just say they're parents-in-progress, like so many of us.
http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Drawing (Robert Van Nutt)


May 19, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 3; Page 12; Column 3; Money and Business/Financial Desk
To the Editor:
In "Full-Time Fathers Are Still Finding Their Way" (Love & Money, May 5), one such dad said prospective employers regarded Mr. Moms as "the bottom of the barrel." Could it be because corporate America considers full-time parenting a bottom-of-the-barrel choice? Do these prospective employers consider their own parents as bottom-of-the-barrel people, full-time parents or not? It's a shame that parents, like teachers, don't get the same recognition that the Jack Welches or other corporate celebrities receive.

Another stay-at-home dad quoted in the article noted how his two sons, 7 and 10, want to grow up to be just like him. These boys are young and not yet swayed by society's expectations of what they should or shouldn't be when they grow up. But I'm glad they appreciate their dad's role at home.

WANDA KIERNAN
Baldwin, N.Y., May 5

Posted 1:11 PM by Nathan
From: "Rick Shenkman"

Americans are susceptible to myths, always. The myths help define us in ways that other cultures are defined by a common ancestry. Because Americans have such a short history we are united not by history but by common ideals. Naturally, we find living up to these ideals difficult. Nonetheless, we hold them dear, so dear we frequently fall for self-flattering stories that reinforce our most precious beliefs about ourselves, namely that we are a freedom-loving people.

The great post 9-11 myth, it seems to me, was expressed by President Bush at a news conference last fall at which he commented on his inability to understand why so many in the rest of the world hate us. That he is mystified by this is a sign that he is beholden to the myth of American freedom: Because we stand for freedom and are free at home our actions abroad must perforce have helped the forces of freedom. We know that this has not always been the case. President Bush himself surely understands this as well. In numerous places around the world in the post-WW2 period, eager to defeat the communists and contain the Soviet Union, we allied
ourselves with oppressive, inhumane, often cruel regimes. In the name of freedom we found ourselves in league with dictators. In the Arab world we have befriended governments which gas their own people (Iraq), limit civil liberties (Egypt) and ejected Palestinian refugees (Jordan).

Another myth the president has fallen for is American unilateralism. Even now, after 9-11, which demonstrated the necessity of allies and coalitions, the president resists multilateralism. This is a remnant of an older myth from the other side of World War II. In that day it was known as isolationism. The isolationists of yesteryear are today's
unilateralists. The persistence of unlaterialism in the American tradition stems from the deep-seated American conviction that the New World needs to remain aloof
from the battles of the old. Engage and you risk moral contamination. This may be the oldest of all our myths. Evidence of it can be found in the days of the Puritans like John Winthrop, who famously argued that America is a shining city on a hill for pilgrims chosen by god to create a new kind of world order.

Interestingly, as susceptible as Americans are to myths, it has been Europeans and Muslims by the millions who have demonstrated a willingness to
entertain the most bizarre fantasies ever dreamed up by the mind of man. Millions of Muslims of course continue to believe that (1) Osama bin Laden
had nothing to do with the attack on the Pentagon and the WTC, and (2) Jewish capitalists were behind the attack. Meanwhile, the French have turned an outrageous book that claims the military was behind the attack on the Pentagon into a bestseller.

There is no sweepstakes winner in mythmaking. But if there were, surely the people who believe this laundry list of inane beliefs would deserve the
top prize. Americans come in a distant third among mythmakers.

[As for] the greatest American myth of the 20th century: I am unsure. There are so many. Surely one would have to be that the United States single-handedly defeated the Nazis. The Soviet contribution to the defeat of Hitler was more decisive. But this is too big a question for me to
address in an email.

Rick
Associate professor of history, George Mason University and editor of HistoryNewsNetwork.org

Rick Shenkman
Editor
mailto:editor@historynewsnetwork.org

History News Network at George Mason University
http://HNN.us

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Posted 11:31 AM by Nathan
Morning news from

Buffeted by the economic slowdown and the fallout from Sept. 11, US Airways last evening filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. Following the terrorist attacks, the airline industry is facing its most dramatic period of upheaval since deregulation 24 years ago. ... Arlington, Va.-based US Airways, which carried 56 million passengers last year, is the first major carrier to declare bankruptcy since the attacks.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/nation/US_Airways_seeks_Ch_11_protection+.shtml

For years, medical researchers were largely immune from lawsuits. While other doctors faced a wave of malpractice suits, researchers seeking cures for diseases such as cancer found patients eager to participate in experiments and unlikely to hire a lawyer if something went wrong. But the death of Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 changed all that. ...
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/metro/Lawsuits_target_medical_research+.shtml

Calling himself ''the currently designated fall guy,'' the Maryland scientist at the center of the anthrax investigation denied yesterday that he is responsible for the mailings that killed five people and infected 13 others last fall. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army research scientist described by federal investigators as a ''person of interest'' in the anthrax probe, said he had nothing to do with the mailings and decried the intense scrutiny he has been under.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/nation/Scientist_denies_role_in_anthrax+.shtml

Wrestling with Cape Cod's swelling housing costs and local salaries that haven't kept pace, Falmouth public schools this fall will propose reserving a slice of Falmouth High grounds for 12 subsidized apartments for new school employees. It is believed to be one of the first Massachusetts school districts - and one of a handful nationwide - to launch such a bold tactic to lure and keep educators, some of whom can barely afford to pay high rents to live alongside the children they teach.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/metro/Cape_towns_lure_teachers_with_housing_perks+.shtml

Conventional men may not be the glamorous male icons of today's society but, according to a recent study, they have one thing going for them: They make good fathers. And if these men have sons, they may make even better ones. A study released last week shows that men who have strong community and religious ties, have a college diploma, and live within a nuclear family are the most likely to show up at dinner and put their kids to sleep reading ''Goodnight Moon.'' And when it comes to spending time in youth activities, such as sports and school events, fathers with sons pitched in most.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/metro/Good_fathers_It_figures+.shtml

Corruption is routinely cited by China's leaders, the public, and foreign investors as the country's most serious problem, an even more pressing concern than the layoffs that have hit tens of millions of workers at state enterprises, many of them in Shenyang, the heart of China's northern rust belt. How to fight what seems to be an ever-rising tide of dishonesty is expected to be a major topic at the 16th Communist Party Congress this fall.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/nation/China_finds_roots_of_corruption_run_deep+.shtml

Posted 2:05 PM by Nathan
Hildy Johnson NewCity Chicago, 8/7/02
My kind of town, Tribune is

The acquisition of Chicago magazine by Chicago Tribune Company announced last week barely moved the Zeitgeist meter. In part, this reflects the tranquility of the magazine's audience (Who reads it? Your parents.), as well as the insignificance of the deal in the normal scheme of Tribune dealings. (Its $35 million price tag puts it closer to the deal size in its venture capital arm--where ten-million-dollar bills were routinely placed on the Internet roulette wheel--than to the ten-figure game of media monopoly they've become accustomed to lately.) In a rather odd press release, Trib Co. was quick to report that no, it still doesn't like magazines, and that in spite of its core corporate strategy of synergy among its related media entities, it doesn't expect much of that with the magazine. Of course, conquerors always say what their conquests want to hear. But if the deal is so out of sync with Trib strategy--it certainly doesn't address their core problem with reaching younger readers--why'd they buy it? Here are a few ideas. First, it reinforces their unstated yet unambiguous intention to own 99 percent of Chicago's media. Second, the established, high-quality-but-editorially-"safe" magazine reaches an affluent suburban audience very much in line with the Tribune's suburb-oriented strategy. Third, it tweaks the Sun-Times, whose corporate holdings include the less-prominent North Shore magazine. Fourth, the magazine's advertising base of department stores and high-end fashion shops stays in line with the daily newspaper's traditional reliance on Marshall Field's and its ilk for a retail advertising base. Five, um, potential synergies exist. The Tribune Sunday magazine has never lived up to its potential, serving mostly as a depository for the glossy ads that can't run elsewhere, and you've got to believe the wheels are churning a bit on both sides of the deal about this. Also, Chicago magazine's franchise editorial product, its dining guide, is well suited for an Internet product like Tribune's Metromix. Of course, not everything is synergistic. Ironically, the only thing that made Chicago magazine's web site a must-visit, and one of the best things coming out of that shop period for the last year or so, is Steve Rhodes' sharp and lively media column, Press Box. Although Rhodes remains optimistic about his independence in his latest column, he understands that cashing checks from the subject of eight out of ten media stories in this town (and the competitor of the others) will crush his credibility. (2002-08-07)

Posted 1:52 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Friday-Sunday, August 9-11, 2002
Yesterday's Reader

CHRIS McGANN, DAIKHA DRIDI AND SAM SKOLNIK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
A former Seattle man's alleged attempt to profit from a plan to build terrorist training camps in the United States apparently landed members of his family and his mosque in the middle of a global terrorism investigation. After the effort failed, James Ujaama reportedly had to fend off death threats from one of two al-Qaida operatives who arrived expecting to conduct training exercises at a ranch in the Oregon desert, only to discover there were no recruits waiting to join the jihad, or holy war. Now, three years later, the aborted scheme to help advance the cause of Islamic radicals -- while also making a buck -- is a key element in an FBI investigation aimed at proving that London cleric Abu Hamza al Masri recruited al-Qaida members and supported international terrorism.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/82035_abuhamza09.shtml

Tom Pelton, Balitmore Sun
Standing on the dry, rocky shore of a shrinking reservoir, Baltimore's public works director announced mandatory water restrictions yesterday to prevent shortages during the summer drought. George L. Winfield warned that beginning Saturday, police in the city and Baltimore County might begin fining people up to $100 if authorities catch them watering their lawns or washing their cars. ... The Baltimore Police Department, fighting a surge in juvenile homicides this summer, will not organize a "sprinkler task force" to hunt down errant gardeners, said Deputy Police Commissioner John McEntee.
http://www.sunspot.net/news/weather/bal-md.water09aug09.story...

Craig Timberg and Yolanda Woodlee, Washington Post
Mayor Anthony A. Williams took his case for reelection to Washington's airwaves yesterday, while aides focused on the massive logistical challenge of a write-in campaign made necessary by Wednesday's court ruling keeping him off the Democratic primary ballot. Campaign officials are busy crafting mailings, television ads and radio spots to get voters to "Do the Write Thing." Ward organizations are beefing up with new volunteers. And the downtown reelection headquarters is showing increasing -- if uneven -- signs of competence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61679-2002Aug8.html

MATT SCHWARTZ, Houston Chronicle
Houston's Olympic aspirations could get a $5 million boost if City Council approves funding for a marketing campaign to win the 2012 Summer Games. The $5 million being sought by the Houston 2012 group would be contingent on the city's becoming the U.S. selection to host the Olympics. If approved by council next week, the city would contribute $250,000 toward a marketing program targeting the U.S. Olympic Committee, but only if Houston makes it to the next cut. The USOC is scheduled to reduce this country's four remaining bid cities to two on Aug. 27 and announce its final choice in November. The three other cities are San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C. Should Houston be the USOC's final choice, the city would kick in another $4.75 million to be used to market Houston to the International Olympic Committee, scheduled to select the host city in 2005.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1528117

Patrick McMahon, USA TODAY
SEATTLE- A $430 million pro football stadium opens here this weekend, a monument to the go-go days of Seattle that went bye-bye. Gone is the dot-com craze, along with many of its geeks and gizmos. Gone are nearly 60,000 jobs in the Puget Sound region, including 18,720 at Boeing. The aerospace giant still builds planes here but moved its headquarters to Chicago. Gone are the days when Californians moved here by the thousands, lured by splashy media talk of microbrews, grunge music, flannel shirts and mountain hikes. Less is heard about the latest exploits of Microsoft millionaires retiring at 33, and unemployment is no longer 2.8%. But recession-weary Seattle hides its downturn well. Construction cranes tower over the downtown skyline. Work is underway or just completed on more than $1 billion worth of federal, state and city buildings. Microsoft is hiring 5,000 workers. The Seattle area's unemployment rate of 6.5% in June was down from 7.1% in February, although it continues to surpass the national rate of 5.9%. This metropolitan area of 2.5 million, surrounded by lush forests, vast waterways and mountain peaks, may be down — but not out.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-08-seattle-growth_x.htm

Adam Smith, St. Petersburg Times
They munched on paella, drove past Nieman Marcus and admired the gulf view from the Don CeSar. And in the end it might all have been a meaningless exercise in Tampa's bid to land the 2004 Republican National Convention. The decision really comes down to one guy named Bush. Sure, it's essential that the Republican site assessors who surveyed the Tampa Bay area this week left convinced there are enough hotel rooms, buses, cops and money to handle the mega event. But that's the minimum requirement for the Big Guava to stay in the running with the Big Apple and the Big Easy. And those visiting Republicans aren't making the final call. This is not an Amway convention Tampa is trying to land. This is a political show. And despite all the talk from Republican officials Thursday that this will be a business decision, the real decisions will be made in the White House. If President Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, want the convention in Manhattan -- a unifying reminder of the president's finest hour -- all the hotel rooms, pirate beads and white sand Tampa could muster won't mean a thing.
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/08/09/TampaBay/Convention_in_preside.shtml

BBC
China has taken delivery of the first section of a futuristic high-speed train which levitates above the track. The German-built "maglev" train uses powerful magnets to hold the vehicle a fraction of a centimetre (inch) above the lines as it travels at speeds of up to 400 km/h (249 mph). The driverless train will initially run on a 66 kilometre (41 mile) route between Shanghai's Pudong international airport and the city centre. If trials are successful, China is planning to build a 1,250km (777 mile) maglev rail link from the capital, Beijing, to Shanghai and other Chinese cities. ... The transport is likely to open to the general public in late 2003, at 50 yuan ($6) a round trip.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2182975.stm

The Madison Capital Times
Earlier this week Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba blasted the United States - and President George Bush, in particular - for trying to "unilaterally determine the fate of the world." He suggested that the administration's post-Sept. 11 policies were misguided and called for a worldwide ban on weapons of mass destruction in remarks delivered on the 57th anniversary of the atomic bomb being unleashed on the city he governs. Today, on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of another Japanese city, Nagasaki, Akiba's sentiments deserve our serious consideration. Japan, as the only nation to have been attacked with nuclear weapons in war, knows the full extent of what nuclear war means. That experience has been at the heart of their national policy, known as the three non-nuclear principles - no ownership, no production, and no presence of nuclear weapons on Japanese territory. Though the top aide to Japan's prime minister suggested a few months ago it might be time to end the sacrosanct policy, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stressed Japan's "unwavering commitment to its war-renouncing constitution" at this week's ceremonies. And there is no doubt of Akiba's commitment. ... Akiba and the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hosted the World Conference of Mayors for Peace. ... Surprisingly Madison is not one of the more than 500 cities from 103 countries around the world affiliated with Akiba's Mayors for Peace initiative. We are, however, already a "nuclear free zone" and have been since the City Council passed such an ordinance in 1983. The fact that Madison declared itself a nuclear free zone was seen as a joke then and perhaps some folks still think it is amusing. But Akiba is serious about communities working together for peace. Madison has a long history of doing just that and should follow the lead of Miller and Akiba in actively working toward the intertwined goals of peace and an end to nuclear weapons.
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/editorial/30292.php

David Brooks, The Weekly Standard
I DON'T KNOW if you've ever noticed the expression of a man who is about to buy a first-class barbecue grill. He walks into a Home Depot or Lowe's or one of the other mega hardware complexes and his eyes are glistening with a faraway visionary zeal, like one of those old prophets gazing into the promised land. His lips are parted and twitching slightly. Inside the megastore, the grills are just past the racks of affordable- house plan books, in the yard-machinery section. They are arrayed magnificently next to the vehicles that used to be known as rider mowers but are now known as lawn tractors, because to call them rider mowers doesn't really convey the steroid-enhanced M-1 tank power of the things. The man approaches the barbecue grills and his face bears a trance-like expression, suggesting that he has cast aside all the pains and imperfections of this world and is approaching the gateway to a higher dimension. In front of him are a number of massive steel-coated reactors with names like Broilmaster P3, The Thermidor, and the Weber Genesis, because in America it seems perfectly normal to name a backyard barbecue grill after a book of the Bible.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/531wlvng.asp

Mark Starr, Newsweek
FOR 20 YEARS, I lived all over this country, in New York, in Chicago, in the Bay Area, without once wavering in my support for the old home teams. Admittedly, it wasn’t hard to sustain fervor for Larry Bird’s Celtics, the Big Bad Bruins led by Bobby Orr, the slugging Red Sox of Freddy Lynn and Jim Rice, or the ’70s Pats juggernaut that set an NFL record by rushing for more than 3,000 yards. But there were some real dogs, too, like the pre-Bird Celts and the Patriots most every season. Yet I never thought to embrace a local team—the 49ers or the Bulls (the notion of rooting for a New York team was beyond the pale) as a substitute or supplement. In truth, I was far more likely to root against any local teams. For a true believer of my generation, schadenfreude has always gone hand-in-hand with root, root, root for the home team. My attitude was: why should these folks be happy? Such fierce loyalties, in me and so many of my friends from Boston and elsewhere, were engendered and nurtured by the great radio and TV sports announcers of that era, including three that have died recently: Jack Buck, the longtime voice of the St. Louis Cardinals; Ned Martin, an announcer for more than three decades with the Red Sox; and just this week at age 85, Chick Hearn, the original and forever voice of the Los Angeles Lakers. Hearn was impeccable as an announcer, a brilliant wordsmith with a machine-gun delivery who, despite his close identification with the Lakers, could never be tabbed a homer. He was the ultimate professional, who didn’t miss a game for 36 years, more than 3,000 consecutive Lakers broadcasts.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/791638.asp

Back to Notebook

Posted 2:26 PM by Nathan
The ongoing Nigerian e-mail hoaxes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64335-2002Apr28?language=printer
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2609884,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53115,00.html
http://www.motherlandnigeria.com/scam_page.html
http://www.quatloos.com/cm-niger/nigerian_scam_letter_museum.htm
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/naffpub.pdf

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: MR. AUSTEN OBIGWE [austen_obigwe2@lycos.com]
To: Bierma, Nathan [nbierma@tribune.com]
Subject: Please Kindly Assist and be Next of Kin
Sat 6/29/02 11:31 AM

Dear,

I write to request for your assistance to transfer the sum of US$22 Million from our bank, BroadBank of Nigeria Limited. I am Mr. Austen I. N. Obigwe, the District Bank Manager of Broadbank of Nigeria limited. There is an account opened in this bank in 1990 and since 1995 nobody has operated on this account again. After going through some old files in the records I discovered that if I do not remit this money out urgently it would be forfeited to the bank. The owner of this account is Mr. George Williams, a foreigner, an engineer by profession (contractor) died since 1994. No other person knows about this account or any thing concerning it, the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that his company does not exist anymore here having closed down due to his death and the amount involved is Twenty Two Million US Dollars (US$22,000,000.00). I want to transfer this money into a safe foreigners account abroad but I don't know any for
eigner, I am only contacting you as a foreigner because this money can not be approved to a local bank here, but can only be approved to any foreign account because the money is in us dollars and the former owner of the account, Mr. George Williams is a foreigner too. You will be presented as the NEXT OF KIN to Mr. George Williams Account. I know that this message will come to you as a surprise and in disbelief as we don't know our selves before, but be sure that it is REAL and a GENUINE transfer. I only got your contact address from the computer (internet); with believe that you will not disappoint me in this transfer. Please reply urgently so that we can proceed urgently. I will talk to a lawyer who shall procure the necessary documents for you to collect the money.

Note: that in the course of transferring these funds you will likely be required by the bank to affect certain transfer fees. This is important to take note of, as this is part of what informs my giving you 30% of the money after transfer due to your time and money that will be spent in assisting me transfer these funds. The bank shall see you as the Next of Kin and Legal Transferee of the funds immediately your particular is submitted and shall establish contact with you. With your cooperation, I assure you that this transfer will be concluded successfully within 14 working days. I need your full commitment and attention to see to the immediate transfer of the money.

I will fly to your country for withdrawal and sharing and other investments. I am contacting you because of the need to involve a foreigner with foreign account and foreign beneficiary to act as Mr. George Williams’s Next of Kin. I need your co-operation to make this work fine. Because the Management of our BroadBank of Nigeria Limited is ready to approve this payment to any foreigner who has correct information of this account, which I will give to you later immediately, if you are able and with capability to handle such amount in strict confidence and trust according to my instructions and advice for our mutual benefit because this opportunity will never come again in my life. I need you to be honest and truthful in this transfer because I don't want to make mistakes and I need your strong assurance and trust. I will use my position and influence to effect legal approvals and onward transfer of this money to your account with appropriate clearance forms of the ministries and foreign exc
hange departments. At the conclusion of this business, you will be given 30% of the total amount, 65% will be for me, while 5% will be for expenses both parties might have incurred during the process of transferring. I look forward to your earliest reply by email.

The following information are required from you urgently: Your personal telephone and fax numbers, your banking details where the money will be transferred, your full names and contact address and your date of birth (indicate sex and marital status). You shall contract a lawyer here to act as your Attorney if you will not be able to come personally.

Yours truly,
Austen Obigwe

-----------------------------
From: femiwilliams femiwilliams [femiwilliam2@lycos.com]
To: femiwilliam2@lycos.com
Subject: Offer
Tues 8/6/02 8:33 PM

I am a Barrister and a member of Nigeria Bar
Association (NBA). Your contact reached me through the
World Business Encyclopaedia and my insistence on you.
Hence, I made up my mind to introduce this business to
you in confidence for the mutual benefit of both of
us. The sum of USD65M (Sixty Five Million United
States Dollars) was lodged into one of the leading
private Banks here in the Country by the late Head of
State (GEN.SANI ABACHA) this money was lodged in a
DEFACED FORM and in vaults / boxes. The money was
originally meant to be used for his political
campaign. Because I was his family Attorney as such he
confided in me with the relevant document papers
relating to this Bank before he died of cardiac
arrest. As a matter of fact, I have adequately agreed
with some of the key officers of the private Bank to
negotiate with you a trustworthy person to provide an
account where this money could be transferred to
yourcountry through your Bank account, because we
cannot claim the money here in Nigeria. We have
concluded all arrangement with an offshore Security
Company to move this money through diplomatic means a
country where it could be directly transferred to your
nominated account to ensure absolute safety and
risk-free transfer of the money. After a successful
transfer, 30% will be for you for your assistance, 5%
for general expenses, and 65% for us. You are required
to send by e-mail immediately your Telephone and Fax
numbers and Bank particulars where this money will be
lodged and your personal contact address. Once you
notify me your willingness by sending the above
requirement. This transaction will be concluded within
10 (ten) working days. I will be waiting for your
urgent reply.
Best regards,

Bar.Femi Williams.

Posted 12:19 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Thursday, August 8, 2002
Yesterday's Reader

Connie Cass, Associated Press
Dissatisfied with the speed at which the industry is going digital, the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to require television manufacturers to have digital tuners on all sets by July 2007. Commissioners voted 3-1 to require manufacturers to add the tuners to all TV sets with screens of 36 inches and larger by July 2004, while the requirement for smaller sets would be phased in over the following three years. Congress has mandated that the nation switch to digital TV, which offers clearer pictures and better sound. But the transition to this new technology has been delayed by reluctance within the industry to make the switch before most households can receive digital signals.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/showcase/sns-ap-digital-tv0808aug08.story

Elizabeth Hume, Sacramento Bee
Airlines are slashing fares by as much as 80 percent, including offering flights as low as $19 in California, in a push to spark travel in a business still reeling from the Sept.11 attacks. The newround of fare cuts is "indicative of the dire straits the airlines are in," said Kevin Mitchell,editor of the Business Travel Coalition's Web site, BTCTravelogue.com. "They are really lurching from one strategy or tactic to another." The first major price cuts in California were announced last month when JetBlue Airways posted fares of $29 for flights from Long Beach to Oakland, beginning on Sept.6. A day later, Southwest Airlines cut some fares from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to as low as $19.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/3896364p-4922123c.html

William Pack, San Antonio Express-News
San Antonio may get another chance to lure a PGA-backed golf resort to town if it moves quickly and in unison on a new development plan for such a project, Mayor Ed Garza said Wednesday. Back from a quick trip to the Professional Golfers' Association of America headquarters in Florida, Garza was typically cautious but clearly upbeat on the city's ability to reclaim its standing as the site for a PGA golf resort — a position it lost a week ago. "We can't take anything for granted. This is something that is very fragile at this point," Garza said. "But if we do what we need to do over the coming days and weeks, I feel good that PGA will maintain its commitment that this is their preference priority of all the other sites around the country." Garza said he will ask the City Council to support a letter of intent next week to design an incentives plan built around an agreement that could delay annexation of the resort for up to 15 years. In return, resort developers would have to implement strict environmental controls. An annexation delay would allow developers to recoup some of the costs of public improvements but would not provide nearly as much assistance as the $52 million outlined in the discarded plan.
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=151&xlc=779938&xld=151

Kevin Osborne, Cincinnati Post
In an effort to boost the number of police on Cincinnati's streets, a City Council majority wants to vote today on ending the DARE anti-drug education program and transferring those officers to patrol duty. With a record-setting number of shootings and homicides in the past year, council supporters said it's more important that the officers be involved in reducing crime rather than teaching a program that has proved to be ineffective. ... The city spends $351,000 a year on the program, $85,000 of which comes from a federal grant. Seven of the police department's 1,000 sworn officers are assigned to the program, but the number has been as high as 15 in some years. Several national studies, including one done by the University of Kentucky, have found that DARE — Drug Abuse Resistance Education — isn't effective in preventing school children from using illegal drugs and alcohol.
http://www.cincypost.com/2002/aug/07/dare080702.html

BBC
Torrential rain and floodwaters have struck Russia's Black Sea coast, sweeping several people into the sea and forcing the evacuation of more than 400 near the port of Novorossiysk. Details of what happened remain sketchy, but reports say that a wall of water swept through tourist camps and resorts in the region around the city. Rescue workers were able to pick up several people from the sea, but up to 70 others are reported missing. The reports say that the floodwaters submerged six villages near Novorossiysk.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2181169.stm

Tamara Gignac, Calgary Herald
Calgary companies listed on American stock exchanges are scrambling to understand how they will be affected by tough new legislation requiring corporate officers to personally attest to the accuracy of financial reports. The just-minted law, dubbed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, was enacted by U.S. President George W. Bush on July 30 and includes tough criminal sanctions for any false statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The strict measures -- the broadest reform of American business in 70 years -- come on the heels of scandals at WorldCom Inc. and Enron Corp., which have created a crisis of confidence among many investors and cast doubt on the integrity of large corporations. The legislation applies equally to U.S. companies and foreign stock issuers with listings on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq stock market -- a list that includes many of Calgary's biggest and best-known firms. Most, such as EnCana Corp., are struggling to make sense of the rules before they take effect Aug. 29.
http://www.canada.com/calgary/story.asp...

Tom Allard and John Garnaut, Sydney Morning Herald
An Australian-based consortium has won a contract to supply China with liquefied natural gas worth up to $25 billion in what will be the nation's biggest single export deal.
The contract gives Australia a foothold into what promises to become a highly lucrative market. The gas, from the North-West Shelf off Western Australia, will be worth between $700 million and $1 billion a year for 25 years. China's offshore oil company will invest in the project, which promises $1.5 billion of capital works and new jobs in remote Western Australia. The Prime Minister, John Howard, who announced the deal, said the contract to supply China's first liquefied natural gas power station in the rapidly growing Guangdong province would benefit Australia for years.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/08/1028157991016.html

John Roach, National Geographic magazine
Something massive is moving on or within the Earth and causing the planet's gravity field to get wider around the equator and flatter at the poles, according to a pair of scientists studying the field with sensitive satellite instruments. The scientists are uncertain as to the reasons for this phenomenon, which was just the opposite for several decades prior to 1997, but think the answer possibly lies within long-term variation in the oceans. "Starting after 1997, the world that was getting rounder started getting more oblate [flattened at the poles]," said Christopher Cox, a research scientist at the Space Geodesy Branch of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. At first, the scientists had any number of explanations for this observed phenomenon—from changes in the atmosphere to the amount of water in the oceans to ocean tidal effects. But the Earth kept getting fatter at the equator and flatter at the poles. "It has finally gotten so big that we can't explain it with any known mechanism," said Cox, who co-authored a paper in the August 2 issue of the journal Science on this change in shape of the Earth's gravity field. The change in shape since 1997 is very subtle: an increase in equatorial radius of about one 25th of an inch (one millimeter) per year, according to measurements.
"What is interesting is that it tells us that some mass redistribution occurred inside the Earth system, probably the climate system," said Anny Cazenave, an Earth scientist at the National Center for Space Studies in Toulouse, France. "This is an interesting constraint to climate models."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0807_020807_earthgirth.html

Back to Notebook

Posted 5:11 PM by Nathan
CHRISTOPHER YASIEJKO letter to www.medianews.org, 8/7/02:
Newspapers, if their stated intentions of reaching a younger audience are heartfelt, must provide space for writers who share that demographic. Clearly, a person doesn't have to be a particular age or race in order to share an opinion on a topic. But it is self-defeating to reserve columnists' spots for middle-aged journalists of any race simply because they have been in the business longer than some writers have been alive.
You want to reach youth? You want to raise a base of readers from their teen-age years? Put an intelligent young writer in that space. Let him or her write with conviction and flavor about life in that city. Zingy one-liners don't impress young readers. The blunt discussion of most 20-somethings' actual concerns -- self-definition, career, sex, and the constantly shifting priorities of friendships, for example -- will grab and hold young minds. The wise young columnist -- not an oxymoron, mind you -- will have no trouble vigorously addressing political issues in a way that makes people care. (Example: For instant arguments, add one part Government Censorship to one part Provocative Artist. Write, and stir.)
Hire such a writer, and plug him or her with as much energy as the television networks plug their prime-time talking heads. That'll attract new readers.
Newsroom seniority means little to the young men and women who aren't buying your paper.

Posted 1:06 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Wednesday, August 7, 2002
Yesterday's Reader

Kevin Graham, Boston Globe
WELLS, Maine - In this unusual summer of land-walking snakeheads, beaching whales, and a poisonous weed that can blind, along comes another phenomenon of nature to worry New Englanders: sharks. Spotted just offshore for the third day in a row yesterday, the toothy creatures have transformed the popular town beach from a swimming mecca into something more akin to a shoreline sporting complex. On the beach yesterday, vacationers used seashells to build a makeshift pitching mound for baseball, children dug into the ground with their toes creating boundaries to play a game of four-square, and young adults passed the time playing catch. Other beachgoers stood close by, binoculars in hand, keeping an eye out for the predators. The only things making a splash in the water were the sharks. Authorities banned all water activities yesterday, allowing people to wade just up to their ankles, for a third consecutive day after more sightings were reported. The sharks were seen circling in water 4 to 6 feet deep.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe...

Michael Riley, Denver Post
For years, city officials in Thornton have gone to job fairs, placed ads in newspapers, on radio, even in movie theaters, trying unsuccessfully to recruit enough workers to mow, clip and manicure the city's 350 acres of parks and sports fields for the summer. This year, the city is trying a unique solution, importing 24 workers from central Mexico to do a job city officials say Americans don't seem to want. "I'd like to hire U.S. citizens," said Noel Busck, Thornton's mayor, "but the bottom line is I have a responsibility to manage the parks at a level of service people expect. "If I can't do that locally, I'll find the workers wherever I can," he said. The effort is being watched carefully by cities and towns across Colorado, which face similar summer manpower shortages, as well as by critics, who say that in a sagging U.S. economy, there are plenty of Coloradans who need work.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/3812793.htm

Darren Yourk, Canada Globe and Mail
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien rewarded loyalty on Wednesday, shuffling his cabinet for the third time since June. Power is being shifted to Chrétien loyalists at a time when many expect the Prime Minister to loosen the purse strings as he tries to build support for his bid to retain the Liberal leadership. Chrétien supporter and Federal Industry Minister Allan Rock will take over Ottawa's $2-billion infrastructure program from Mr. Manley. Deputy Prime Minister John Manley confirmed changes had been made after a caucus meeting Wednesday in Ottawa. ... Mr. Manley will remain Deputy Prime Minister, as well as Finance Minister. He will still act as senior minister for Ontario and will continue to manage the security relationship with the United States.The shuffle was to be done Tuesday, but squabbling between Mr. Rock and Mr. Manley over how to run the $2-billion infrastructure fund delayed it for a day, sources said.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/front/...

The Economist
GERHARD SCHRÖDER kicked off his general-election campaign this week at the head of a dispirited party with many people in Germany convinced that he will not win re-election as chancellor when voters go to the polls on September 22nd. No one denies that he has a battle ahead of him. The ruling coalition, which comprises Mr Schröder’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party led by foreign minister Joschka Fischer, is trailing in the opinion polls. And then on Wednesday August 7th came the one thing Mr Schröder fears the most—bad economic news. Newly published government figures show another rise in unemployment and an unexpectedly large drop in manufacturing orders. The jobless figures pose a particular problem for Mr Schröder.
http://www.economist.co.uk/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1269991

Katie Menzer, Dallas Morning News
Learning to read and follow directions was just one of the lessons students learned Tuesday during Wester's Cat Camp, a sixth-grade orientation day intended to help students make the sometimes difficult transfer from elementary to middle school. Students in school districts across the area are gearing up for the start of the school year. Plano children will begin school Monday, while students in Frisco, Allen, McKinney and Wylie will begin the following week. The Wester Wildcats spent their orientation day following class schedules, meeting teachers and learning the new rights and responsibilities they will have at their school. Students practiced walking through the halls – always stay to the right – and opening lockers. "This is the first time they've had a locker with a combination," said Kenny Chandler, principal of Wester, one of five new schools Frisco will open this year. "That's a major issue for them."
http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/city/collin/stories/080702dnplaskulsorient.d4e3f.html

Carl Nolte, San Fransisco Chronicle
A group of World War II veterans and the National Park Service are in the middle of a nasty -- and a bit sad -- argument over San Francisco's most battle-scarred war memorial, the bridge of the cruiser San Francisco. The memorial, which overlooks the Pacific at Land's End, the edge of the Golden Gate strait, is hallowed ground for war veterans: it consists of the top deck of the ship, where a Navy admiral was killed in battle at the moment of victory. There are five big holes in the steel plating -- scars from what Fleet Adm. Ernest King called "one of the most furious sea battles ever fought." It happened during a night action against a powerful Japanese fleet near Guadalcanal, 60 years ago this fall. The San Francisco was repaired and went back to the war, but the ruined bridge was saved as a memorial -- and now war veterans and a government agency are fighting over the future of this relic of the past. It is a battle over plaques and memories.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/08/07/BA73622.DTL

Maureen Dowd, New York Times
It's hip to mix high and low. In fashion, women wear Old Navy with new Gucci. On TV, executives schedule classy dramas and cheesy reality shows. In politics, Senator Hillary Clinton is a saint on family issues and a sinner on soft money. At the movies, Steven Soderbergh sandwiches "Full Frontal," a low-budget "sketch," as he calls it, between his glossy big-studio hits "Erin Brockovich" and "Ocean's 11" and his upcoming George Clooney sci-fi thriller, "Solaris." ... When the A-list self-consciously slums in B movies, independence becomes a style accessory. When Hollywood luminaries are less self-indulgent, they are more self-congratulatory. Bad lighting and sloppy dialogue allow them to feel as though they're throwing off the platinum shackles of the studio system that cranks out all that expensive rubbish. Just because something is grainy doesn't mean it's cooler. Just because it's shot in 18 days with a hand-held camera that cost $4,000 doesn't mean it's more creative. Just because it's a neo-Godardian deconstruction of cinematic reality doesn't mean it's more interesting. And just because it has an erotic title doesn't mean it's sexy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/opinion/04DOWD.html

Back to Notebook

Posted 1:02 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Yesterday's Reader

Susie Steckner, The Arizona Republic
Soaring temperatures and a slumping economy are making it harder for thousands of Arizonans to pay their utility bills, and there is little money to help them. Several assistance programs are running out of money, and the shortfalls will force agencies to turn away some of the most vulnerable clients: senior citizens, people with disabilities and families with children.... The county's 13 community aid offices are seeing too many needy residents. Two years ago, the offices gave utility aid to a little more than 3,000 people; the total now is a little more than 4,500.
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0806utilities06.html

Michael A. Lev, Chicago Tribune
BEIJING -- An angry China accused Taiwan on Monday of upsetting the delicate political equilibrium that keeps the two sides at peace, claiming that remarks by Taiwan's president about a referendum on the island's future represented "a serious incident" designed to "split China." While refraining from making a direct military threat, China warned that Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's apparent advocacy of independence would "lead Taiwan to disaster." The estranged political relationship between China and Taiwan is marked by constant tension, even as their economies have become intertwined, but the verbal sparring of the past few days is unusual because Chen appeared to go a step further in defying Beijing.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208060157aug06.story

Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times
The pointed words last weekend between former running mates Al Gore and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) over the Democratic message in 2000 have reopened a long-standing split in the party, but the dispute may only serve to divert attention from the key challenges facing the Democrats in the next elections for Congress and the White House. While the two men are arguing over whether Gore's "people versus the powerful" populism is the right economic message for the party, much evidence indicates that cultural attitudes had a larger effect on the 2000 election—and could present a more formidable hurdle for Democrats in 2002 as well. Indeed, exit polling from the 2000 campaign suggests that Gore's populist appeal neither attracted the working-class voters it targeted nor repelled the more affluent voters that critics believe it alienated. More dramatic was the party's decline in 2000 among culturally conservative rural voters, who will likely prove a decisive group again in many of the most competitive Senate and House races this fall.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-demos06aug06.story?

Howard Gleckman, Business Week magazine
Much has been said about how George W. Bush, self-described conservative, is turning into a Big Government kind of guy. From education reform to a crackdown on securities fraud, Bush is embracing a more powerful and intrusive federal government. He seems, however, to have in mind a very particular kind of national power: a return to what used to be called the Imperial Presidency. ... Thanks to a puppy-like Congress that seems unwilling to stand up for its own prerogatives, Bush is becoming the most powerful chief executive since fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson, who was not otherwise a candidate for a Bush role model.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/aug2002/nf2002086_4438.htm

THOMAS J. BRAY, Wall Street Journal
Farming areas are often the first to feel the unpleasant ticklings of market disruptions and political disasters at the farthest corners of the earth. But a road trip along the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains offers a vivid reminder of the continental scale of the country and the diversity it offers. The vistas are grand, but it is the sheer sense of space that is so overwhelming. One feels enveloped by the land. How could anybody in Washington pretend to know what's best for people in such vast expanses? How could a Beltway denizen possibly know what they are feeling, doing and needing? It was the thesis of historian Frederick Jackson Turner that the American frontier played a critical role in molding the American character: the rugged individual, willing and able to carve self-reliant communities out of wilderness, worthy of the framers' perception that much of the work of civilizing a new world could be left to states and communities.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tbray/?id=110002089

Fenella Saunders, Discover magazine
What do electrical sparks have in common with coral reefs? They both grow branches and spread the same way, says Ute Ebert and her fellow theoretical physicists and mathematicians at the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science and the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Ebert realized this as the group was studying spark discharges like those that occur in lightning, and started creating computer simulations of sparks over short distances as a first step. ... Ebert thinks that their model of spark branching could help explain the growth pattern of sprites, a type of lightning that shoots upwards from clouds, and possibly cloud-to-ground lightning as well.
http://www.discover.com/science_news/newsflash/gthere.html?article=news_fish.html

Steven Winn, San Fransisco Chronicle
It's that thing we say automatically when we love a painting or a poem or a dancer's performance: That was beautiful. But what do we mean? What is beauty in art and how do we receive and comprehend it? How does it register in a culture that has grown increasingly ironic and skeptical about the images and visions it creates? A number of art critics have been beetling their brows over the nature and meaning of beauty for the past decade or so. In the wake of 20th century movements (Minimalism, conceptual art) that stressed a work's emotional and intellectual content over visual allure, writers like Dave Hickey, Arthur C. Danto and poet Kenneth Koch have struggled to reassess and redefine beauty in new contexts. Splendor had become suspect. Beauty demands dissection. "Lovely & Amazing," a beguiling new ensemble film about a yearning mother (Brenda Blethyn) and her three dissatisfied daughters, explores the quest for elusive beauty in a nuanced human key.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/08/06/DD44240.DTL

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Posted 3:25 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Monday, August 5, 2002
Previous Reader

Chryss Cada, Boston Globe
While the government has been using satellite technology for more than 40 years, it has begun to delegate certain tasks to the growing commercial satellite industry to save government satellites for more precise and classified work. The commercial industry can provide a ''big picture'' context in which to place the more-detailed images from government satellites. Although the exact resolution of government satellites is classified, experts estimate it to be up to 10 centimeters, allowing them to detect objects as small as 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Commercial satellites provide 1 meter to 60 centimeters resolution, allowing them to pick up objects about a yard wide. Put another way, commercial satellites could tell you the color, make, and model of a car, while government satellites could pick out the license plate.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/217/nation/...

Philip Johnston, London Daily Telegraph
Britain can expect to receive more than two million immigrants every 10 years for the forseeable future unless curbs are introduced, a report says today. Estimates from the campaign group Migration Watch UK suggest net non-EU immigration levels have doubled in less than a decade, swelled by record numbers of asylum seekers and illegal entrants.In 2000, the last year for which figures are available, 183,000 more people arrived in Britain intending to settle than left the country as emigrants. In total, more than 400,000 arrived but this figure included British citizens returning from overseas. Similar numbers were recorded in the previous two years - double the average for most of the 1990s. The net loss of British citizens is accelerating, with a net gain last year of 230,000 non-British citizens compared with 92,000 in the mid-1990s.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...

Saul Hansell, New York Times
At the blue glass headquarters of America Online here, there is a feeling that a four-year-old coup has finally been overturned. Management turmoil, government investigations and a plunge in the stock price of AOL Time Warner have caused more than a little confusion and consternation. But there is a flurry of activity as designers and programmers ready the annual release of new America Online software in October, one its designers say represents a very important step backward. In recent years, each annual update of the America Online service offered more space devoted to advertisers, more promotions for high-tech gadgets, and more links to other divisions of AOL Time Warner in hopes of impressing Wall Street with the potential for synergy. Last spring, a new group of executives took over running the America Online service. The head, James de Castro, a former radio executive, is new to the company and was named by AOL Time Warner's recently departed chief operating officer, Robert W. Pittman. But many of the rest are America Online veterans, itching to return the service to its old glory, one they saw as focused on the user. And so the center of the new release, called version 8.0, will have a renewed focus on chat rooms and the other forms of interaction and self-expression that AOL calls its community.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/05/technology/05MOOD.html

Steve Gibson, Sacramento Bee
The Port of Sacramento sits at the geographic center of West Sacramento, a growing community that incorporated in 1987, striking out on its own after decades of feeling it was treated as a dumping ground for Yolo County. The port marks a dividing line, of sorts, separating the modest older neighborhoods in the city's north area from a sea of bright, new subdivisions going up in the city's southern end, known as Southport. Linked to San Francisco Bay by a deep-water channel, the port moves packaged and bulk cargo, including grain, wood chips, fertilizer, lumber and machinery. Citing financial difficulties, port officials have been pushing to expand on-site operations to include industrial projects, including cement or asphalt plants that could use the port to ship their products. For the facility, such proposals represent the potential for new lifeblood. But they've prompted revolt among Southport residents, who argue that the industries have no place in a burgeoning bedroom community.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/3860454p-4885805c.html

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In a perfect world, Pittsburgh would be able to replace an aging public arena, build a facility that would strengthen the Penguins hockey team and clear the Mellon Arena site for a new residential neighborhood that would enliven Downtown. In a perfect world, the state, county and city would not be strapped for money, people in a post-industrial region would be willing to invest in public infrastructure and private beneficiaries -- like the Penguins -- would leverage more of their own capital into such a package. In a perfect world, professional athletes would generously extend themselves to their fans, a hockey ticket would not cost a day's pay and the NHL would not be a financial disaster zone. But this, of course, is not a perfect world and the $270 million proposal for a new arena is not a perfect plan.
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20020805edare05p1.asp

Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star
When the final scene of Shakespeare In The Rough's production of Othello began in Withrow Park on Friday night, even nature held its breath. An almost preternatural stillness descended on the place as Othello stood over the bed of his once-beloved Desdemona, knowing he must kill her. Then, as Andrew Moodie spoke the line "Put out the light and then put out the light," a sudden breeze swept across the scene and I felt a chill. It wasn't just the sudden dip in temperature. It was the realization that after nearly a decade of hard work, this worthy group had broken through with a production that faced a great play honestly and well. There are some problems, but they don't detract from the overwhelmingly positive impression.
http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?...

John Horn, Newsweek magazine
About the only way real film lovers can see quality movies these days is to pack your bags and attend a film festival. That kind of excursion used to be as trying as sitting through "The Country Bears," but all that's changing. Fact is, some of the best and least-publicized film festivals gear themselves toward regular moviegoers, not Hollywood hotshots. ... Five top North American festivals not only feature outstanding programming but also stand apart as great holiday destinations even without the movies. So if you're tired of the same old dreck at the multiplex and want to plan a movie vacation more ambitious than visiting the Dyersville, Iowa, "Field of Dreams" ballpark, consider these options:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/788684.asp

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Posted 12:35 PM by Nathan
By Nathan VanderKlippe
***
hed: Herman Bruce should get his money back

Northern News Services
It doesn't matter where you are, people don't like it when
disagreements are made public.
Whether it's some notion of "cabinet solidarity" or an attempt to
squelch possibly "misleading information," we leave in a society where
spokespersons are appointed at every turn to ensure an organization's
unified front and to make certain an issue is given proper spin.
The problem is, this attitude is wrong.
Not only does it prevent legitimate public debate, it also prevents
people from seeing alternative options to whatever decisions are
ultimately made. That's why an open and transparent democratic process
is so important -- it allows the public airing of numerous viewpoints,
and public input into the debate that forms an outcome.
For the most part, we're pretty good about holding our elected
officials to that standard. Anyone can sit in on the legislative
assembly or hamlet council meetings.
But we have an atrocious track record on upholding the same with other
government officials: bureaucrats. Especially among staff members, the
right to free speech is one of the more routinely flouted civil
liberties in Nunavut.
Most territorial departments prevent staff members from speaking with
the media without the consent of the deputy minister. This can become a
logistical nightmare, as staff must always seek time- consuming
permission from higher-ups. More importantly, it stifles vast segments
of intelligent, knowledgeable voices in the government.
Now we hear that the hamlet of Rankin Inlet is doing something
similar. Herman Bruce, a heavy equipment mechanic with the hamlet, was
suspended for three days without pay after discussing several of his
complaints with this publication.
The logic for the discipline was that Bruce should have followed a set
procedure for the complaint process.
But this does not make any sense. Discussions with the media occur
entirely independent of a complaint process. Bruce's complaints were
not state secrets -- he was free to discuss them with fellow employees
or even with family. That means he was free to discuss them with the
public at large. And that's hardly different from discussing them with
the media.
The question here is not whether Bruce's complaints were right or
wrong -- that is for the complaint process to decide.
The question is whether the public should be allowed to make that
judgment for itself. Since the public is the sole shareholder in the
municipality, it must have the right to know what is happening with the
employees its taxes pay.
After all, elected officials are one of the steps in the complaint
process. And surely, the public must be allowed to keep its officials
accountable. It can only do that with sufficient information to make
its own intelligent decisions.
This is an issue of free speech -- or complete lack of it -- and an
issue of public accountability. These are serious questions, and the
hamlet's recent disciplinary decision was wrong.
Herman Bruce should not have been suspended for three days without
pay, and the hamlet should pay him for those hours he was forced away
from work. It's as clear and simple as that.
-30-

Posted 11:49 AM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Friday-Sunday, August 1-3, 2002
Yesterday's Reader

Cynthia Burton, Philadelphia Inquirer
At least $2 million in city pension funds went to 96 people who are definitely dead and 23 others most likely dead, according to an audit released by City Controller Jonathan Saidel yesterday. "I see dead people, and they're collecting city pension checks," he quipped, referring to the movie The Sixth Sense about a boy who communicated with dead Philadelphians. The controller secured death certificates for the 96. His auditors concluded the other 23 were most likely dead because their deaths had been reported to the Social Security Administration. The controller said checks intended for 20 dead people who were either retirees or their designated beneficiaries were cashed. The average payment was $16,500 a year. Saidel called this sampling of checks, which was done from last September until February, "the tip of the iceberg."
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3785145.htm

Dale Anne Freed, Toronto Star
The "sullen, lackadaisical attitude" of Toronto police officers involved with World Youth Day was "a low point" in the week-long celebration of young Catholics from around the world, the head of the Toronto Transit Commission's security service has told his staff in an e-mail. Mike Walker, the TTC's chief security officer, made the comment Tuesday in a note commending his officers for their "professionalism, enthusiasm and good spirits" during the event, which was attended by Pope John Paul II and drew hundreds of thousands of people. "In contrast, the sullen, lackadaisical attitude of the (Toronto Police Service) was a low point and a sign of a continued decline of what was once a proud and professional police service," Walker said in the note. "We are truly better than them."
http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?...

The Japan Times
The government will start replacing 10,000 yen, 5,000 yen and 1,000 yen bills with new notes that include sophisticated features to beat counterfeiters as early as April 2004, Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa announced Friday. It will be the first replacement of bank notes since November 1984. The 2,000 yen bill, first issued in July 2000, will not be affected, Shiokawa told a news conference. The new 5,000 yen bill will carry the portrait of Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896), a Meiji Era female novelist and poet, while the new 1,000 yen bill will feature microbiologist Hideyo Noguchi (1876-1928), who dedicated his life to research on infectious diseases, including yellow fever.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20020803a1.htm

The Washington Post
ONLY NINE months ago the United Nations was racing to avert mass starvation in Afghanistan, where 6 million people were put at risk by years of drought and war and the tyranny of the Taliban. Even now hunger remains a severe problem in North Korea, where millions may have perished from lack of food in recent years despite massive international aid. But already a new crisis has seized center stage: southern Africa, where nearly 13 million people in six countries are said by the U.N. World Food Program to be at risk of famine. As in southern Asia, natural causes, including two years of drought, are a major cause of the problem. But as elsewhere, governments are also to blame, and their unpopularity means that the task of collecting and distributing emergency aid is going too slowly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33998-2002Aug1.html

Anna Raff, The Moscow Times
The United States will fund the exploration of oil and gas fields off the Arctic coast of eastern Siberia, the first show of energy partnership with Russia since the May presidential summit, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Thursday. "Russia will play a pivotal role in ensuring global energy security," Abraham told reporters Thursday after meeting with Russia's largest oil companies. "It is reflected in the growing strength of Russia's energy sector." Abraham also reiterated Washington's opposition to Russia building nuclear reactors in Iran, saying it "remains an issue of utmost concern to us." The United States will fund a study to explore four basins in eastern Siberia and estimate their oil and gas reserves, Abraham said. U.S. and Russian geologists will pinpoint the best candidate for commercial development, after which extraction could begin.
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2002/08/02/002.html

St. Paul Pioneer Press
The grim news from traffic safety officials in both Minnesota and Wisconsin is that 2002 is shaping up as an unusually deadly year on Upper Midwest highways. With the most dangerous months — August and September — now upon us, it's a good time for drivers to commit themselves to extra caution, and for public officials to ponder policy changes that could prevent needless deaths. As it happens, a felony-level offense takes effect today in Minnesota for chronic repeat drunken drivers. It has taken years of political pressure to persuade lawmakers to crack down on the state's most hazardous drivers. But the new law is a welcome addition to Minnesota's comprehensive effort to combat drunken driving, which is involved in roughly four of every 10 fatal crashes. There is more the state could do. Minnesota has still not adopted the tighter .08 percent blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving that numerous other states have enacted and that the federal government strongly recommends. Although such a law wouldn't lead to large numbers of additional arrests, it would strengthen the community's message that driving after any substantial drinking is a mistake that will not be tolerated.
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/editorial/3773907.htm

Craig S. Smith, New York Times
SHANGHAI, China — Jean-Michel Dumont, a public relations executive from France, lives here on Jianguo Xi Lu, or West Nation-Building Street. Yet every few weeks he finds a piece of ghostly mail in his letter box addressed to 47, 506 Pass, Rue Frelupt. The street has not been officially called Frelupt since 1943, during the Japanese occupation, when the city's administration changed the foreign street names to reflect the country's presumed bright pan-Asian future instead of its supposedly dark, quasi-colonial past. But the Frelupt-addressed mail continues to arrive like hesitating clockwork, a small but pleasant event for the Frenchman because it provides a tangible link to the days when his compatriots administered this part of Shanghai, known before the war as the French Concession.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/international/asia/02SHAN.html

David Fairlamb, Business Week magazine
Equity markets are plunging. Corporate bonds are sagging. And as panicky investors rush for the exits, they are unleashing a wave of cash. Almost $800 billion has been generated worldwide by dumping stocks over the past quarter, calculate market experts. Some of that is being reinvested in government bonds, real estate, or hedge funds. But the largest single chunk--some $275 billion--has gone into cash deposits around the world. "Cash is king right now," says David Jeal, marketing manager at the Share Center, a British retail stockbroker. Ordinary investors cannot think of anything safer than cash. But such prudence could vastly complicate life for economic and monetary policymakers. Because those billions are not being channeled back into productive investments, it could spell bad news for the economy. "We foresee trouble ahead," says Stephen King, head of economics at HSBC Investment Bank in London.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_31/b3794099.htm

Nick Gillespie, Reason magazine
It's becoming increasingly difficult not to view President Bush's plans to invade Iraq as a foreign policy bait and switch, a brazen non sequitur to the stated goals of the war on terrorism. Back in his State of the Union address, Bush stressed the need to contain terrorists of "global reach" and to destroy the "global terror network." Those are legitimate and necessary objectives--and they enjoy widespread support, even in some Islamic countries. But what exactly do they have to do with Iraq, a country that has been occupied by U.N. forces for over a decade? That occupation, by virtually all accounts, has successfully managed to clamp down on terrorist activity emanating from Baghdad. In March, CIA Director George Tenet euphemistically told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "the jury's out" on Saddam Hussein's role in 9/11. U.N. reports bolster the case that Hussein may not even have "weapons of mass destruction. In the event he does, the military occupation of Iraq will be an effective barrier to his using them.
http://reason.com/links/links080102.shtml

Mick LaSalle, San Fransisco Chronicle
Years from now, when they're studying Steven Soderbergh's movies in colleges, some enterprising thesis writer will see "Full Frontal" and realize: This is where the director showed his truest face. It's certainly the movie that most captures what Soderbergh is about as a filmmaker. It brings together and emphasizes qualities of audacity and whimsicality, weirdness and glorious confidence that are so much a part of his directorial personality. Indeed, in "Full Frontal" Soderbergh is confident enough not to make perfect sense, to tell a story that's not linear, and to release a film that looks like a home movie. That's fine. Think of the picture as 107 entertaining minutes from a very smart director who has decided to come out and play. Viewers need only a willingness to have fun and not mind when they realize the movie was never intended to be profound. "Full Frontal" is merely human, funny and unusual-- and that's enough.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/08/02/DD227866.DTL&type=movies

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Posted 1:10 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Thursday, August 1, 2002

Robert Schlesinger, The Boston Globe
After months of war drums and tough talk on Iraq from the Bush administration, members of Congress yesterday began formally debating the threat the country poses and whether and how the United States should strike. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, holding the first of two days of hearings, heard military and weapons specialists describe an active and growing Iraqi program to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. But the witnesses, who included the former top UN weapons inspector in Iraq, gave divergent views on the necessity of an immediate move to topple President Saddam Hussein.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/213/...

The Baltimore Sun
WHAT A week. There was the satisfying image of a cable TV magnate being led away in handcuffs, charged with looting his own company. The Dow Jones average racked up its biggest one-day gain since 1987. President Bush got boxed into signing the most sweeping reform of corporate accounting since the Great Depression. Plus, the latest economic data aren't all that bad. So, America's on the mend, right? The political system reacted quickly, plugging those costly leaks in the money ship and pointing the whole vast messy thing back on profitable course again, right? Perhaps -- that is, if you don't tally all the other much-needed repairs that Congress won't accomplish before its August recess, particularly critical proposals on greater pension protections, more accurate accounting for stock options, and preventing firms from avoiding taxes by incorporating offshore.
http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/bal-ed.corporate01aug01...

The Financial Times
Peace is breaking out across Africa. Given the region's dismal record of conflict resolution, it is too early to speak of an African renaissance. Still, the cessation of hostilities in Angola, peace talks in Sudan and this week's accord between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo offer real hope to a continent too long benighted by war. The greatest prize would be an end to the conflict in Congo. Africa's "world war" involves the armies of at least three neighbouring governments, their militia allies and various rebel groups. In a deal secured by South Africa on Tuesday, Rwandan troops will be withdrawn from eastern Congo simultaneously with the disarmament of Rwandan Hutu rebels on Congolese territory. The chances of this happening within the prescribed 90 days are nil. ... Nevertheless, the agreement is an advance on the 1999 Lusaka ceasefire, which failed to stop the fighting. ...
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename...

Sheila Farr, The Seattle Times
Seattle landscape designer Kathryn Gustafson has won a bitterly contested competition to create a London memorial for the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Gustafson’s proposal calls for a large circle of flowing water set among blossoming trees in a grassy plain of Hyde Park near the Serpentine lake. While the scene is meant to be serene, the process that led to its selection wasn’t. After studying 60 entries from around the world, the eight jurors for the competition were locked in a split vote between Gustafson’s classical design and a more provocative one by well-known Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor. ... Finally, England’s Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell stepped in to resolve the issue and announced yesterday that Gustafson had won.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134504519_diana01.html

Jane L. Levere, The New York Times
Dawn, the country's top-selling dishwashing liquid, is introducing an ad campaign [today] that departs from the usual depiction of the product's grease-cleaning power in the kitchen to highlight a rather unusual use — cleaning birds caught in oil spills. The new marketing message from Dawn also has a cause-related component. Through Dec. 31, Procter & Gamble, Dawn's parent, will give 10 cents of the price of each bottle sold to two wildlife rescue groups, to a maximum of $25,000 each. The short-term campaign, which also plays up Dawn's mildness for the first time, is part of the company's attempts to continue the momentum of a market leader. Dawn currently holds 34.3 percent of the United States dishwashing liquid market in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers, according to Information Resources, a market research company based in Chicago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/31/business/media/31ADCO.html

Sandra Barrera, Los Angeles Daily News
Last year's inaugural "A Community of Angels" public art exhibit, placing artist-painted angels all over the city of Los Angeles, saw little support in the San Fernando Valley. Only a few Valley artists and sponsors participated in the countywide fund-raiser for youth programs. But it's not the same story this year.Yes, Vals, you've got angels. More than 20 decorated human-size fiberglass statues are destined for the Valley, seven of which will be unveiled in a ceremony today at the Valley Cultural Center Pavilion at Warner Center Park. The seven angels will remain in the park until noon, when three will relocate to the Sherman Oaks Galleria and the Studio City Library, new home of the lush, camellia-blossomed "Camellia Forest Angel" designed by North Hollywood artist Mary Kay Wilson. Universal CityWalk and Northridge will also host angels for public viewing through the end of September. ...
http://u.dailynews.com/living/articles/0802/01/lif01.asp

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Posted 2:17 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Jack Shafer, Slate
"The disclosure of classified information is damaging our country's ability to stop terrorist acts and is putting American lives at risk," the secretary wrote. The memo was promptly leaked to and published by the Los Angeles Times. The first question to ask about these stories is whether Rumsfeld is right: Are the leaks—and their publication by the Times and other papers—endangering American lives? But beyond that issue, readers must be wondering why these conflicting plans—which would appear to tip our hand to the enemy—keep showing up in the damn newspaper. Do these stories simply reflect the conflicting preferences of different military officials? Or is the Pentagon using the Times to confuse the Iraqis about the impending attack as part of an "information operation" (formerly "disinformation") campaign? More sinisterly, is the Times partnering with the Pentagon to bamboozle the Iraqis?
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2068652

Jill Zuckman, Chicago Tribune
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- In a crowded conference room filled with University of Michigan academics, U.S. Rep. John Dingell moves from one person to the next, draping his long arm around shoulders, gripping hands in a firm clasp and exchanging words with a special intensity. The powerful Michigan Democrat, who boasts a list of legislative accomplishments that could fill a phone book, seems to be trying to envelop each and every voter in a personal embrace as he fights for his political life. A close race is an unaccustomed role for Dingell, whose 47-year tenure makes him the longest-serving member of the House. But the Republican-controlled state Legislature has redrawn Dingell's working-class congressional district, adding the university enclave of Ann Arbor and pitting him against a liberal eight-year incumbent, Rep. Lynn Rivers, who was born a year after Dingell was first elected to Congress, in 1955. With just a few days until the Democratic primary Tuesday, the race is exceedingly emotional, quite personal and surprisingly close. This is one of a few contests across the country that sets two incumbents against each other, and after decades of winning by huge margins, Dingell finds himself in a race that opinion polls suggest is neck and neck.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0207310288jul31.story?coll=chi%2Dprintnews%2Dhed

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
Must Democrats be the party that never takes "yes" for an answer? For the first time since at least Sept. 11, Democrats have a plausible argument to bring to the voters -- that capitalism will go off the rails unless there are clear rules, fairly enforced, and decent protections for outsiders against insiders. It's an argument that has Republicans worried. But some Democrats are afraid their party is about to descend into -- shudder -- "class warfare." They say that arguing in defense of "the people" against "the powerful," as Al Gore did in 2000, will turn off middle-class voters who, as Sen. Joe Lieberman put it over the weekend, "don't see America as us vs. them." In fact, the Democrats may have trouble getting full traction on the corporate issue not because it's unpopular but because Democrats themselves have, over the years, been so eager to grab corporate money themselves.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18563-2002Jul29.html

SUSAN GILL VARDON and ERIKA I. RITCHIE, The Orange County Register
Rob Merrell did what he could to make Different Drummer Books a vibrant gathering place for the gay and lesbian community in the four years he owned it.
He asked customers what kind of books they wanted him to stock. He invited gay and lesbian authors to the Coast Highway bookstore for Thursday night talks and signings. He even flirted with the mainstream, adding best-selling fiction, nonfiction and spiritual titles. All to no avail. Different Drummer Books closes its doors today, a victim, Merrell says, of decreased tourism after the Sept. 11 attacks, a general belt-tightening in a tough economy and a flourishing book market that embraces once-marginalized titles on the Internet and even at chain stores such as Barnes & Noble. ... When it opened in 1987, Different Drummer was the only gay bookstore in Orange County. It was a literary safe haven at a time when gays and lesbians were taking tentative steps out of the closet ...
http://www.ocregister.com/local/drummer00731cci1.shtml

LEWIS W. DIUGUID, The Kansas City Star
Bruce Montgomery pointed to four sets of grooves in the marble floor at Union Station.
Most people overlook these historic marks. They're on the main floor near the elevators and restrooms. The deep grooves were made by the knees of black men who buffed out a living shining shoes. The indentations are all that's left of that way of life. The heavy elevated chairs where customers sat -- and the four pair of metal footrests -- are gone. So is the bootblacks' box of polishes and tools. But the holes through which the chairs were bolted to the marble are still there. An old Union Station bench sits where the shoe shine chairs once were. But people like Montgomery, a tax examiner for the Internal Revenue Service, remember what was there. He wants others to know that history, too.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/news/opinion/3766507.htm

Josh Tyrangiel, Time Magazine
Bruce Springsteen has a songbook that reads like a union membership log. He has written about cops, fire fighters, soldiers, road builders, steelworkers, factory laborers and migrant workers. Springsteen himself has held exactly one real job. For a few weeks in 1968 when he was 18, he worked as a gardener. But his gift is not horticulture. His great gift—the one that makes him the best rock 'n' roll singer of his era—is empathy. Springsteen doesn't know what a 40-hour workweek feels like, but he knows how a 40-hour workweek makes you feel. "If you roll out of bed in the morning," he says, "even if you're the deepest pessimist or cynic, you just took a step into the next day. When I was growing up, we didn't have very much, but I saw by my mom's example that a step into the next day was very important. Hey, some good things might happen. You may even hold off some bad things that could happen." On The Rising, his first album of new material in seven years, Springsteen is again writing about work, hope and American life as it is lived this very moment.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020805/story.html

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Posted 11:57 AM by Nathan
By Michael Miner, Chicago Reader, July 12, 2002

• I would like to admire the Tribune for the principled act of self-denial described last week by public editor Don Wycliff, but it's hard to. Wycliff told the tale of photographer John Smierciak, who with his paper's permission joined a group of Chicago firefighters driving to New York City on September 12 and photographed them searching for survivors at Ground Zero. But none of Smierciak's pictures ever appeared in the Tribune or were even looked at by photo editor William Parker. Though Smierciak had asked the fire chief leading the Chicago group to introduce him in New York as a news photographer, and though he'd refused to wear firefighter gear on the job even though he would have been safer in it, he'd put on a fresh T-shirt a fireman gave him that bore the initials of the Chicago Fire Department. Therefore, in the eyes of the Tribune, he'd left himself open to a charge of misrepresentation.


"Painful as it was to Smierciak and silly as it may appear to outsiders," wrote Wycliff, defending the paper's decision to reject the photos out of hand, "it was the right thing to do. Like a golfer who calls a foul on himself for an offense no one else may have seen, a newspaper may sometimes have to call a foul on itself for an ethical violation that may have been inadvertent and noticed by no one else."


But to whom did Smierciak inadvertently misrepresent himself? Not the Chicagoans he was photographing. Wycliff's column was posted on Jim Romenesko's MediaNews Web site, and a San Franciscan wrote in to say that "outsiders" weren't the only ones who'd consider the Tribune's reaction "silly." This writer recalled something Bill Veeck once said: "Journalism prefers a Simon-pure mediocrity to a touch of tarnished genius."


A case can be made that no one belonged at Ground Zero whose agenda was the least bit ambiguous. A case can also be made that a newspaper should believe a little harder than the Tribune seemed to in the value of what it's doing. The Tribune's obsession with ethics isn't silly, but it makes me think of the alcoholic terrified of a single drop, or the hysterical homemaker so preoccupied with keeping a spotless house she doesn't notice she's made it unlivable.


... The Tribune could do wonders for the public perception of its virtue with a single editorial that calls the Tribune Company's ownership of the Cubs a failure and advises the company to sell the team. Even a column by somebody willing to snicker at those silly outfield screens would help.

Posted 7:25 AM by Nathan
Index for my Blog during Blogathon, July 27-28, 2002

- Welcome to Blogathon

- Guide To My Blog And Blogathon

- Link of the Day: The World Clock

- Today's Notebook Reader

- Intro to Blogging

- Blogging Going Mainstream?

- Reader e-mail

-The Politics of Blogging

- Interview with Cat Connor, founder of Blogathon:/Listen in mp3

- Highlights from other blogs:

- Weblogs and the Academy [1][2][3]

- Will there be a New York Times on paper in 15 years? [1][2]

- Dispatch from Beijing [1][2]

- Weblogs a Waste?

- Going outside for the first time

- Ego and Weblog Waste

- Schultze on the problems with weblogging

- About my format

- Watching ‘Rain Man’

- The Future of Words in a Digital Age [1][2][3] [4][5]

Posted 3:26 PM by Nathan
China & Taiwan: A tale of two regimes
By Will Refvem, Beijing

Recent reports on Taiwan by the Chinese media have chided the US about meddling in China’s “domestic affairs,” the fiction being that Taiwan is still a part of mainland China. It is a fiction that Beijing persists in telling, primarily because Taiwan represents the biggest embarrassment the PRC has suffered.
China’s continued saber-rattling over Taiwan is evidence of a disturbing presence in the PRC, that of nationalism. It is peculiar to the Westerner that in a swell of nationalism a communist regime should come into power, but it is fitting given China’s historic view of itself. The word for China in Mandarin is zhongguo, which literally means “middle kingdom.” While the Chinese have never considered themselves gods, they have historically been possessed of a superiority complex toward other people; thus, China is the middle kingdom: below the gods but above the barbarians (i.e., all non-Chinese). For millenia China was the regional hegemon in Asia, planting its culture everywhere from French Indochina to Japan. China was the birthplace of gunpowder, ice cream, and paper, and – though the Italians dispute this – noodles. There was no other power in Asia, let alone the world, that challenged China’s dominance.
The Renaissance in Europe and its bastard child the Industrial Revolution changed all that. As soon as they had figured out how to navigate the globe, the imperial powers started sniffing around Asia for some juicy bounty. They tried in China and were mildly successful at first, but it wasn’t until the opium wars that things really took off. Throughout, China refused to adapt, to conform to the new Western way of doing things that was slowly conquering the world. Japan, which had long suckled at China’s cultural teet, went the opposite way and industrialized in the mid-1800s. The Opium Wars gave several European countries concessions in several major Chinese ports, and a flood of above-the-law expats began to slowly leech China dry. The result was that by the turn of the century, Japan was on its way to being the economic powerhouse it is now, and it had become the new hegemon in Asia, while China’s pre-industrial ways were putting them increasingly behind the times. The Japanese began to look down their noses at what they saw as the backward Chinese, and when they invaded Taiwan in 1895, and the mainland three decades later, they wreaked unspeakable havoc in China. When Mao came along, he saw an opportunity to cash in on China’s growing inferiority complex. First he aroused nationalism to fight the Japanese off, then he presented communism as the antithesis to the Westernized Japanese, who the Chinese now despised (and despise to this day).
The legacy today is that in China there are two contradictory ideals running concurrently in official PRC ideology. One the one hand, you have typical Marxist rhetoric proclaiming the union of the world’s proletariat, while on the other hand you have nationalist rhetoric proclaiming the uniqueness and superiority of the Chinese nation. Nowhere is this more aptly displayed than at the Forbidden City in Beijing, the former imperial palace. Over the entrance there towers a portrait of the Great Helmsman Chairman Mao, with two slogans on either side. One reads, “Workers of the world unite.” The other reads, “Long live the People’s Republic of China.” The latter employs a different word for China, a synonym of zhongguo: it reads zhonghua, which literally means the creme de la creme of the world.
As you might expect from a nationalist country, the army is revered highly. The People’s Liberation Army, we are told repeatedly by Party propaganda organs, was founded during World War II and was responsible for driving the Japanese out of China. (Rarely is there mention of pressures Japan was facing from a certain country on the other side of the Pacific.) It was also responsible for driving out the corrupt Kuomintang government, led by Chiang Kai-shek. (The bit about the KMT being corrupt is a fair description.) But, since pleasure is always spiked with pain, and since the rainbow always recedes before you get the pot of gold, the KMT managed to pilfer most of the antiques in Beijing, the motherlode being at the Forbidden City, before they split for Taiwan. Taiwan has been the raspberry seed in China’s wisdom tooth ever since.
The issue has not yet boiled over. It has only been since 1999, when Taiwan’s first free elections were held, that things have been particularly tense. The Taiwanese elected the hawkish, pro-independence Chen Shui-bian, who has since alluded many times to Taiwan formally declaring independence, which always gets a hot-headed response from Beijing. The latest happened last Sunday, when Mr. Chen said that unless China agreed to peace talks, Taiwan would have to “go its own way.” China has repeatedly insisted that any Taiwanese delegation must affirm the “one China” policy, effectively affirming China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, for there to be talks. Mr. Chen has said that he will not accept any preconditions for negotiations with the mainland.
Adding to the instability is Washington’s ambivalence toward China. It seems not to be able to decide whether to pursue a policy of engagement or one of deterrence. The most recent bruhaha has been surrounding a report published by a congressionally appointed commission that makes hawkish declarations about China’s military modernization and what it thinks the US response should be. In typical fashion, Chinese newspapers have lambasted the report and have warned the US to stay out of China’s domestic problems, under which Taiwan is included. (Beijing still maintains the fiction that Taiwan is under the mainland’s sovereignty.)
Perhaps the most interesting development to watch in the China-Taiwan issue is the impending PRC leadership shift planned for late this year and early next year. Jiang Zemin and several key officials of his generation are expected to retire from their posts, but there has been scuttlebutt among Western observers that Jiang may not be willing to give up power. His heir apparent, Hu Jintao, was not his choice but that of his predecessor Deng Xiaoping. Along with Jiang and many other top government officials such as premier Zhu Rongji, Mr. Hu was picked in the wake of the Tian’anmen Square massacre, when Beijing’s only priority was maintaining social stability. Messrs. Mao and Deng were charismatic revolutionaries who led China through the most radical changes in its 2,000 year history – China’s prosperity today is the direct legacy of Mr. Deng’s open-door policy – but the crop of leaders groomed for leading China into the new millenium are bland and appear to have been picked for their wishy-washiness.
Messrs. Jiang & Co. have done a good job of not rocking the boat so far, but the latest rumblings suggest that may change. If there is not a smooth changeover – there hasn’t been one yet in the PRC’s 50 year history – things could heat up with Taiwan. Every major instance of social instability in the past 50 years has come as a direct result of high-level Party infighting. What this means for Taiwan, one can only speculate, but it is possible, and not so unlikely, that with Chen at the helm, Taiwan may take advantage of any instability and try to make a formal stab at independence. Most Taiwanese have not been impressed with the “one China, two systems” approach adopted for Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to the mainland. Hong Kong’s unpopular chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, having been essentially hand-picked by Beijing, has shown little willingness to uphold the “two systems” end of the bargain. He recently appointed 14 ministers to head the civil service in what was build as a new “accountability system.” The phrase, meant to imply more government accountability, makes little sense, given that it only makes the government more accountable to Mr. Tung, who is accountable to no one but Beijing. Add to the mix that the press in Hong Kong are increasingly willing to remove their own teeth, and it is clear why many Taiwanese are skeptical about unification with the mainland.

Posted 3:20 PM by Nathan
You boil the caribou's brains. You barbecue its ribs. You savour its
heart and liver. You eat slabs of its rump raw.
But if you're Steven Sateana, it doesn't matter whether you're Inuit
or not: the fatty lining around some of the internal organs is just
plain gross.
"I'm only human, you know," he says as he bundles up a gooey gob of
the delicate internal sheets. When he gets home, he will dry them and
then eat them -- they're good for the heart or the bones, he can't
remember which.
But out here on the tundra, he's not touching the stuff.
We're about 15 kilometres outside of Rankin Inlet, a community of
2,200 on the western shore of Hudson Bay. This is Nunavut, Canada's
newest territory. The borders that surround this huge arctic expanse of
a territory comprise a fifth of Canada's land mass. Its total
population comes to about 22,000, giving it a population density figure
of about 0.01 people per square kilometre.
About 86 per cent of the people who live here are Inuit, or Eskimo as
they sometimes affectionately refer to themselves. "Eskimo" means
eater
of raw meat, a title given to these people by white whalers. "Inuit,"
the preferred term, means simply "the people."
Some people would call this a wasteland. The tundra stretches on to
infinity in every direction, hemmed in only by Hudson Bay to the east
and the Arctic Ocean to the north. By precipitation, most of this area
is a desert, but it's covered in ponds filled with water that is kept
above the surface by the permafrost just inches below.
It's an endless mass of gravel eskers, rocks and tufts of arctic
grass cropped short by roving herds of caribou.
And it's the caribou that I'm out here for. After jolting for hours
in an ATV across a delicate tundra that is surprisingly inhospitable,
the two Inuit I am following around have finally spied a herd. The
tools of their trade are remarkably simple: a pair of high-powered
binoculars, a rifle, a knife, some bug spray and a couple of tarps.
Everything is strapped down tight onto the ATV.
As we crest a low knoll, we spy a huge herd of the graceful animals,
moving slowly so that the ground itself looks like it is shifting.
After determining which direction they are moving in, we roar ahead to
position ourselves in front of them.
But we haven't chosen wisely. As we lie in wait, trying to ward off
what are literally clouds of mosquitoes, a number of shots ring out.
The caribou start moving fast -- and not past our hiding spot. Some
other Inuit have gotten here first.
We hop back on our ATVs. By this time, I've introduced myself to both
Steven and his cousin, Benjamin Hapanak. This could have been
uncomfortable -- earlier in the day, I flagged Benjamin over on the
road and told him I wanted to follow. He nodded his head in confused --
bemused? -- agreement, and I spent the next couple of hours trying to
keep up, a stranger introduced to the hunting party by himself.
But most of the Inuit I have met are warm and hospitable, and Steven
and Benji are no exception. It takes a while for them to warm up to me,
but when they do they start telling me what they know about hunting
caribou: you have to head them off, to avoid them smelling you. Even
while grazing, they move so fast that it's hard to keep up with an ATV.
When you shoot a caribou, you look for one without a calf, one that is
young enough to be tender, big enough to be packed with fat.
The first fruits of the season go to the elders, and they like eating
the fat. When the elders have been fed, you can begin hunting for your
own family. One caribou will feed a good-sized family for three days.
Probably not Steven's family, though. He has eight brothers and five
sisters.
As we drive around to anticipate the herd's next movements, we come
upon two older Inuit, the men whose shots we heard earlier. As we
approach them, I see a caribou struggling for its last breaths in a
small puddle. Its legs wave in the air, beating the air a silent
grapsing for life. One of the older men pokes his knife through the
back of its head, piercing the brain. The movement stops, as blood from
its head and neck glistens in the puddle.
But we still haven't found our own caribou, and I'm getting antsy --
patience is about as necessary a requirement as there is for hunting,
and I don't have it in large supply.
We're only a few moments from success, though. As we climb up another
hill, Steven and Benji separate. I follow Benji. As I catch up to him,
he sits up on his ATV, pressing his rifle into his shoulder. In the
next few minutes, he and Steven squeeze off six shots. The caribou jump
at each shot, but keep filing past us in great rows of wild mammal
life, seemingly nonplussed by their slowly dwindling numbers.
Benji hops back on his ATV. Six shots, five dead. He takes two, while
Steven settles down to butcher three.
What follows is a fascinating biology lesson, as Benji slices through
the caribou's shedding hides. He then pulls them off like great sheets
of sticky leather. What remains is a compact bundle of muscle and
internal organs, which spill out as he begins to slice off slabs of
meat. It's a long process, and a tiring one, as he jabs his knife
through ropes of sinew and flesh. First the legs, then the shoulder
blades, then the rump, then the ribs and internal organs.
Benji and Steven butcher their caribou differently, each according to
techniques taught them by fathers, grandfathers and older brothers.
But even as they slice with literally millennia of tradition, this is
also a glance of the new Nunavut. As he cuts, Steven talks about his
last weekend, which he spent at the Great Northern Arts Festival, in
Inuvik, a town in the Northwest Territories. Steven is a carver as well
as a hunter, and while in Inuvik, he sold one of his pieces of art to
Tom Jackson. Celebrity is no stranger to the North, and neither is
business acumen.
Six hours after we set out on the tundra, we're headed back home. The
caribou have been wrapped in skins and tarps and lashed securely onto
the cargo racks of the ATVs.
We bounce back over the rocks and tundra in a bone-jarring descent
toward town.
Or are we? As I catch up the two Inuit, I find them both peering out
over the landscape with their binoculars, trying to find the way back.
Finally, Steven admits it: "we're lost," he says.
He turns to me and asks if I want to lead the way home.
"No way, this is your country," I say.
And I'm right. But it's also my country, if only to share. As they
finally get their bearings and follow an ATV trail home, I can't help
but think: this truly is a remarkable land.

Posted 10:56 AM by Nathan
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

June 10, 2002, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section C; Page 4; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1115 words

HEADLINE: TECHNOLOGY;
A Rift Among Bloggers

BYLINE: By DAVID F. GALLAGHER

BODY:
It is one of the enduring cycles of the Internet: the techies build a utopia and then complain when noisy crowds crash their party.

This time it is happening to Weblogs. Five years ago a few programmers pioneered this form of hyperlinked online journal, posting their thoughts on technology matters and personal musings. Later they built Weblog publishing tools for nontechies, and a vast spectrum of Weblogs -- blogs for short -- quietly bloomed. Then came the war bloggers. The war-blogging movement took off after Sept. 11 as people used blogs to vent their anger about the terrorist attacks. Though they are still commonly known as war blogs, these sites now address a wide range of news and political topics, usually from right of center.

Thanks in part to the participation of some prominent journalists and academics, the pundit-style blogs quickly reached a level of public and media recognition that other blogs had never achieved. As a result, some latecomers now think Weblogs are inherently political. That has perturbed some Weblog veterans, who say the war bloggers are rewriting history and presenting a distorted view of blogs. They say the diversity of Weblogs is being overshadowed by the attention-getting style of war blogs.

"War blog editors need to make it clear to their audience that they are not the only kind of Weblog out there," said Cameron Barrett, a programmer and Web designer in New York who has been publishing his Camworld blog (camworld.com) since 1997, making him one of the first bloggers.

In response, the war bloggers say they represent the evolution of a medium that might have languished in obscurity without them.

"The Weblog world before Sept. 11 was mostly inward-looking -- mostly tech people talking about tech things," said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee who publishes InstaPundit.com, a popular site in the war blog camp that attracts about 19,000 readers on weekdays. "After 9/11 we got a whole generation of Weblogs that were outward-looking" and written for a general audience, he said.

The war bloggers and veteran bloggers have largely ignored each other, rarely reading or linking to one another's sites. What brought some factional tensions to the surface was a plan, hatched by several war bloggers, to compile the best Web writings about the aftermath of the terrorist attacks into a book to benefit charity. In mid-April two bloggers, Eric Olsen and Ted Frank, took charge of the project, setting up a Weblog (blogbook.blogspot.com) and asking people to nominate their "favorite 9/11-related posts from ANY blogger." Mr. Reynolds agreed to make the final selections for the book, which is not yet titled.

The project was in part a reaction to the release of "September 11 and the U.S. War: Beyond the Curtain of Smoke," a book of left-leaning essays about the attacks. On the project site, Mr. Olsen called on fellow bloggers to crush "Western-civilization-hating, lefty-fascist essayists."

The partisan talk was not out of place in the war blog sphere, but it brought a sharp response from Jason Kottke, a blogger from another sector of the Weblog universe.

Mr. Kottke, a Web designer in San Francisco, has been updating kottke.org for four years, offering tidbits of personal insight on Internet happenings and his favorite movies, among other things. His site is popular within a tech- and design-minded Weblog crowd whose most influential members have some connection to Pyra Labs, the small San Francisco-based company behind the publishing tool Blogger.

On his site, Mr. Kottke mocked the suggestion that all bloggers were hawkish right-wingers and questioned the "us versus them" rhetoric: "How about letting everyone play . . . or at least make folks who may not be right-wing or pro-West feel welcome to contribute?"

A few other bloggers in Mr. Kottke's circle also chimed in. Members of the book team quickly responded on their own site, saying the call to arms had been exaggerated and that all submissions were welcome. They also got in a few digs. "It strikes me that a lot of the backbiting is really a complaint from longtime bloggers that the center of the Weblog universe isn't where it used to be," Mr. Frank wrote.

In an interview, Mr. Frank suggested that the veteran bloggers were also annoyed at how much media attention the war bloggers were getting, and how blog pundits like Andrew Sullivan were being called Weblog pioneers.

Mr. Kottke acknowledged that he felt a little resentment about the rise of war blogs, but said that was natural when an underground phenomenon goes mainstream. "It's like being the punk-rock fan who was into punk rock before everyone else," he said. The criticism of the book project was meant to improve the book by providing some perspective, Mr. Kottke added.

Three other old-school bloggers, all former employees of Pyra Labs, are also trying to convey a broader view of blogs with a site called Blogroots (blogroots.com). The site, introduced on Friday, has discussions of Weblog-related news and issues. It will eventually include the text of the trio's forthcoming book, "We Blog: Publishing Online With Weblogs," which includes a chapter on Weblog history.

Veteran bloggers say they are happy that blogs are catching on with a wider audience, but some challenge the idea that war blogs are somehow more relevant than other kinds. "I talk about things Glenn Reynolds doesn't understand, but that doesn't mean they're not important things to talk about," said Dave Winer, founder and chief executive of UserLand Software, whose Scripting News (scripting.com) is one of the oldest blogs.

At the same time, there are war bloggers who feel little need to pay homage to the tech crew. Ken Layne, a journalist in Los Angeles who publishes a blog at KenLayne.com, argues that he, Matt Drudge and others were writing about current events on the Web long before the term Weblog had been coined. "There's nothing novel about the tech bloggers, beyond the fact that a few of them made simple tools for updating Web sites," he wrote on his site last week.

Mr. Reynolds was more diplomatic, saying he "never would have gotten started without Blogger," Pyra's publishing tool. He cautioned against making too much of labels like war blog, and said he hoped that in the end the Sept. 11 book, which is still accepting submissions, "will represent the best work of the blogger community."

Mr. Reynolds said he was not sure why the old guard should have a problem with war blogs. "The essence of the Internet is constant change, and to get your nose out of joint about that is just silly," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photos: Jason Kottke, with a Webcam he sometimes uses for his Weblog. Mr. Kottke says he is bothered by the "us versus them" ranting that has developed among many bloggers. (Kim Kulish/Saba, for The New York Times); Glenn Reynolds, who publishes InstaPundit, warns about making too much of labels for different types of Web journals. (Earl Carter for The New York Times)

Posted 9:10 AM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Saturday, July 27, 2002

Barbara Starr, CNN
The killings of four military wives in the past six weeks -- allegedly by their husbands who are based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina -- have led commanders to take a new look at whether combat deployments may be causing undue stress.
Sources at Fort Bragg, home to the Army Special Operations Command, say there's no common thread among the cases, and suggest it may simply be an "anomaly" that so many incidents have occurred so close together. Officials acknowledge that three of the men had recently served in Afghanistan, and at least one of them had been brought home early to deal with unspecified family problems. But authorities have not established any connection between their service in Afghanistan and the incidents.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/26/army.wives/index.html

Dennis Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Delores Saintz was keeping the television off. This was not a matter of indifference. Already, she had prayed for the nine strangers trapped beneath a hillside in the next county. "I'll wait," she said. "But I don't want to be hearing it constantly." That space in her head was permanently occupied on Dec. 19, 1984, when, a mile beneath another mountain 2,000 miles west, her daughter, Nannette Saintz Wheeler, was killed in a flash of fire. The Wilberg Mine, just outside Castle Dale, Utah, burst into flame as Nannette Wheeler and 26 others tried to set a world record for the amount of coal pulled from the earth in a single day. "They wanted the best miners working it," said Nannette's father, Ed Saintz. "She was the only woman in the crew." So, as workers placed a prodigious machine above a flooded shaft in Somerset County and confused families huddled behind a police guard at a small fire house, Ed and Delores Saintz sat in a silent room atop a settlement called Benshoff Hill in Cambria County and tried to turn off a certain noise in their heads. Nannette's photograph, her hair in the puffy style of the late 70s, smiled at them from a living room wall. Underneath their house runs an abandoned mine.
http://www.postgazette.com/columnists/20020727roddy3.asp

Tom Heinen, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Applause and laughter bounced off the wooden ceiling of the small Gothic church and came zinging back to Bishop Timothy M. Dolan like a hundred ricocheting handballs. It was his serve, and Milwaukee's archbishop-elect was in fine form. He fielded the youthful crowd's reaction cleanly and set up for his next point. If a stone gargoyle or a church mouse had awakened to the ruckus, it might have been surprised to see that Dolan was talking about some pretty heavy, ancient stuff. Reconciliation. As in, the sacrament of reconciliation. What these kids' parents or grandparents knew as the sacrament of penance. But he not only had these young, 21st-century Catholics awake. He had them interested.Dolan was one of more than 130 bishops and cardinals who taught on that topic Friday morning in churches and halls throughout the Toronto area and the Exhibition Place complex on the fourth day of an event known as World Youth Day.
http://www.jsonline.com/lifestyle/religion/jul02/61987.asp

Wayne McCormick, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The challenge of caring for older Americans can and will be met. We are not the only nation confronting this challenge -- every nation in the world is seeking its own solutions for accommodating the shift in demographics toward a larger older population.
We only need to look around us to see the coherent, sensible measures employed by such nations as Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Taiwan and Australia to see that solutions are at hand. The first myth to debunk is that all older people need medical care, whether from a geriatrician or any practitioner. Certainly, practical, preventive medicine is advisable, but the simple fact is that most older people in the United States are remarkably healthy and don't need "taking care of." A substantial majority of persons over the age of 65 (indeed over 75) have little or no debility in daily activities and consider themselves to be in good or excellent health (see the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging Related Statistics at www.agingstats.gov/ chartbook2000/population.html). A major thrust (perhaps the major thrust) of geriatric medicine is to make this majority a larger fraction of the older population.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/79550_geriatrics.shtml

The Washington Post
CAN PEACE be made with the authors of suicide bombing? The prime minister of Sri Lanka, which has suffered more and costlier suicide attacks than any nation in the world, is making a concerted effort to do so -- and so far the signs are encouraging. For years Sri Lanka's government tried and failed to stamp out the terrorism of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam with brute military force. Sixty thousand people died in the fighting, and a host of senior politicians, including a prime minister of India, were killed by some 200 suicide attacks. Now Ranil Wickremasinghe, who won election as prime minister last December on a pro-peace platform, is getting some results by addressing the root causes of the violence -- deprivation in Sri Lanka's northern and eastern regions and the aspiration of the ethnic Tamil minority there to rule itself. There is no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups have links to Sri Lanka; nevertheless, Mr. Wickremasinghe, who visited Washington this week, has a chance to achieve a major success in the global struggle against terrorism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8095-2002Jul26.html

Chicago Tribune
Robert Pittman attended Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., but it couldn't have been for long. By age 18 he was program director of an FM radio station in Pittsburgh. Before he could legally buy a drink, Pittman was program director of WMAQ-AM in Chicago, and when he sat on the steps of his Goethe Street apartment building, neighbors pointed him out, saying this gifted young man would go far. By age 27 he had developed MTV. And before his precipitous downfall last week at 48, his star had shot up all the way to the post of chief operating officer at the huge media-entertainment-Internet conglomerate AOL Time Warner Inc.Pittman's expertise was marketing. He had a flair for reading the public taste. Before he resigned from the ailing company, he'd never had a failure on his professional report card. But maybe the day-to-day operation of a huge corporation requires more than marketing savvy. ... People lucky enough to have the resources use the full four (or more) years of an undergraduate education to learn about ideas and principles that have shaped civilization for centuries. They learn to get along with people unlike themselves, to absorb new ideas, to appreciate new voices. ... For many young people, college is the place to experiment with interests, knowledge and their own limitations. They have the privilege of maturing in a climate that lets them make tremendous mistakes early in life. They do often fail, yet sometimes succeed. They learn crucial lessons on how to profit from the failures and accept the successes with grace. They learn as much outside the syllabus as within.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/...

Michael Prager, Boston Globe
It's a fair question to ask anyone, especially in a city blessed with a bounty of great art: What's the most important piece of art on public display around here? Anyone's welcome to an opinion, but we went to folks whose business it is to consider such things: Greater Boston's museum directors. We asked three questions: 1. What's the most important piece in your museum? 2. What's the most important piece on public display in Greater Boston that's not in your museum? 3. What's your favorite piece of art in Greater Boston not in your museum? Some said it was akin to asking them to say who their favorite child is. Others said their answers would change the next time someone asks. But in a spirit of fun, most were willing to answer. We thought a consensus would emerge, and it did, around Titian's ''Rape of Europa'' (often called ''Europa''), cited four times when no other work was cited twice. Even better, though, is the cumulative result: Together, the answers are a map of the stars in Greater Boston art.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/208/living/Europa_Europa+.shtml

MARSHALL SELLA, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
Companies like the Ant Farm are under immense pressure to come up with the goods for their Hollywood clients. Competition among ''vendors,'' as trailer companies are known, is fierce. Studios often hire between two and five vendors to work -- simultaneously -- on the same picture, to see who will hit closest to the mark. The saddest fate a trailer-cutter can endure is to see his work ''Frankensteined,'' Hollywood slang for the practice of stitching the work of multiple vendors into one trailer. Moreover, competition doesn't stop at the studio-to-vendor level. At one point, even the Ant Farm had two editors working in adjacent offices on the same ''Signs'' teaser. It was a kind of intramural editing contest, but without the fun. Of course, moviegoers love movie trailers; you can hear it in the vitriol of their complaints. In those 12 minutes before the feature presentation, people enjoy the jolt and flutter of intense imagery, the barrage of different genres, the pleasure of seeing what's next for their favorite stars. But previews often frustrate audiences. Not only are they too loud (and intentionally so), they give away the whole damn picture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/magazine/28TRAILERS.html?8hpid

Jess Cagle, Time Magazine
For the first time in history, women are now running half of the six major movie studios. Sherry Lansing is celebrating her 10th anniversary as chairman of Paramount Pictures, ruling the studio with an iron fiscal fist. And her two younger colleagues — Amy Pascal at Columbia and Stacey Snider at Universal — are known to be every bit as brazen as their male counterparts when it comes to gambling with $200 million production and marketing budgets. All three women are working mothers with decidedly feminine personalities and gentle management styles. And all three are experiencing remarkable success, making them a dominant force in Hollywood at a time when the movie industry is enjoying perhaps its most impressive winning streak ever. "Three women are running companies that make a product that has a huge influence on the culture," says Spider-Man producer Laura Ziskin. "That's historic, because they're going to do it differently than men, and it's going to have an impact." It already has.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020729-322652,00.html

Yesterday's Reader
Back to Notebook

Posted 8:13 AM by Nathan
Blogathon 2002 Guide
NBierma.com Notebook
Saturday, July 27, 2002

What is a blog?
A weblog, or "blog" for short, is an Internet journal made up of links and personal commentary. This free-form format has proliferated over the last couple years.

What is Blogathon?
213 bloggers from around the world are currently blogging for 24 hours straight, from 8 a.m. (Chicago time) Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday, updating their blogs at least every 30 minutes. Each has a sponsor that will donate to a designated charity on his or her behalf.
http://www.blogathon.org

Why are you blogathonning?
I am covering the event for the Chicago Tribune, in an interesting convergence of the establishment media colliding with a (formerly) obscure digital trend. The themes of my weblog and my article will be my experiences as a blogger, the state of blogging, and the future of words in a digital age, but I’ll be blogging about a variety of topics as they cross my mind.

On a non-Blogathon day, what is your blog about?
news, politics, media, culture, history, the arts, movies, sports, and anything else I'm interested in.
I keep my blog 1) as a personal resource for column ideas and links, 2) for writing practice, to keep my writing gears greased, and 3) to try to contribute a little substance to the high-waste world of the blogosphere. There are a few hundred thousand blogs out there, but I’ve only found a few dozen worth reading on a daily basis, and I hope to be one of them.

Are you taking questions and comments by e-mail?
Funny you should ask. Pepper me with feedback at nbierma@yahoo.com

How are we to make heads or tails of this massive weblog you’re keeping?
I’ll be keeping an outline of the main themes and key postings as the day goes along.

Back To My Blog

Posted 2:20 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of notable public discourse
Friday, July 26, 2002

NICK MADIGAN, NEW YORK TIMES
The fires that continued to roar today near hundreds of giant sequoias, the towering trademarks of the area around this central California town, have renewed an argument over how best to manage the Sequoia National Forest's resources while preventing the woodland's destruction. Mirrored in similar cases across the country but particularly acute in the vast forests of the West, the debate pits the competing interests of preservation and business against each other and leads to drawn swords every time a fire makes ash of the landscape. "You know who's getting all the blame for this?" asked David Priest, who runs a bait-and-tackle shop in Lake Isabella, a town 10 miles south of here that has been afflicted by three wildfires in the two months. "Clinton," he replied to his own question, referring to the former president. Mr. Clinton established the Giant Sequoia National Monument during his last year in office, protecting a 328,000-acre piece of the forest from culling, logging and most clearing that involves heavy equipment. Many people here say that protection has added fuel to the fires. ... Forestry officials acknowledge that overly aggressive fire-suppression policies in place since early last century have left forests vulnerable to much larger fires because the natural order, which counts on fires to clear land and promote new growth, has been upset. "Smokey Bear did too good a job," said Matt Mathes, a Forest Service spokesman. "It was a well-meaning policy with unintentional consequences."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/26/national/26FIRE.html

The Sacramento Bee
Throughout history, control of territory has been at the heart of many wars. Obvious current examples are the half-century-old wars of nerves between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and between Israel and the Palestinians over a small area of desert that is either Palestine or Judea and Samaria, depending on which side you're on. But could a rock barely 300 yards long used only by grazing goats trigger a war between two sovereign states? For the moment, the answer appears to be no. Spain and Morocco have pulled back from a confrontation over an islet that the Spanish call Perijil (parsley, which grows wild there) and the Moroccans call Leila (night -- no explanation) and that both claim is theirs. Thanks to U.S. diplomatic intervention, the risk of hostilities has abated and the two countries have agreed to discuss their differences in the wake of a brief Moroccan occupation of the islet, just 200 yards off the Moroccan coast; a Spanish "invasion" that expelled the tiny Moroccan contingent; then, once cooler heads intervened, Spain's withdrawal. That leaves the island, for now, to the goats. ... In an age when many political thinkers argue that national sovereignty is an outmoded concept, the contest of wills between Spain and Morocco over essentially nothing but pride is an example of how human cussedness can trump the best-laid plans of those not directly involved. This melodrama is not over.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/3726990p-4752517c.html

Robert Collier , San Fransisco Chronicle
They may not know it, but 1.3 million California retirees have become major players in the international campaign for human rights. The California Public Employees Retirement System, which handles the pensions for state workers, recently enacted a long-delayed program to screen all its overseas "emerging markets" investments to ensure that they are not contributing to human rights and labor rights violations. Governments from Thailand to Mexico are feeling the pressure.
Sexy it's not, but pension fund activism, an outgrowth of the controversy over globalization, has immense potential ramifications. U.S. pension funds' stock holdings total about $3 trillion, nearly one-quarter of all publicly traded equities. Of that total, about $59 billion is currently invested in firms from emerging-markets nations. CalPERS, with $149 billion in total investments and $2 billion in emerging markets, is the second-largest U.S. pension fund and the third largest in the world.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...

THOMAS BEAUMONT, Des Moines Register
If it seems the campaign for governor is nastier than Iowans are accustomed to, it could be because candidates are advertising as if the election were next month instead of three months away. More than half of the $3.5 million that Democratic incumbent Tom Vilsack and Republican challenger Doug Gross have spent on their campaigns this year has gone to political media firms that produce 30-second spots and paste them on television screens statewide. The ads began well before the June primary and haven't let up, an unusually early start, television executives agree. But it's their tone - slow-motion black-and-white images and foreboding narration usually reserved for horror movies - that has voters and political observers calling the campaigns shrill. "It's disgusting," said David Creighton Sr., a politically active West Des Moines financial broker. "It makes me want to scream." Early attacks are catching on nationally. The Iowa governor's race and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. Senate race are prime examples.
http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c4789004/18804307.html

By Catherine Reagor-Burrough, The Arizona Republic
Mortgage rates are at their lowest levels since 1967 and aren't expected to start climbing until share prices do. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 6.34 percent this week.... Home loan rates have dropped as investors, unsure of stocks, pour money into Treasury notes. That pushes down yields on those investments, which are closely tied to mortgage rates. The mortgage rate drop has kicked off another refinancing boom, economists say. More than 60 percent of home loan applications during the past week were for refinancings. Lower rates also are expected to help keep home buying near the record level it reached in 2001, according to the National Association of Realtors.
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/special37/articles/0726mortgages26.html

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA, TIMES OF INDIA
US Secretary of State Colin Powell returns to the subcontinent this week amid a recurrence of the periodic testiness that has characterised ties between Washington and New Delhi. At the heart of the current sour mood is New Delhi's view that the US is not fully helping the cause of peace in the region with its backing of a militaristic Pakistan. On the other hand, Washington is irked by what it sees as India's cussedness in not responding quickly enough to de-escalate the situation in the region despite "concessions" by Pakistan. Ahead of his trip to the region, Powell told reporters on Thursday that there has been some reduction in infiltrations across the line of control, "but it is still unfortunately the case that...terrorist violence takes place."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?artid=17176802

Ryan Lizza, The New Republic
It isn't the president's softness on corporate reform, or the lingering questions about Harken and Halliburton, or even the economy itself, that has knocked him off his game.
It's the plummeting stock market. Ever since Bush made his July 9 speech about corporate responsibility, his fortunes have been tethered to the gyrations of the Dow. And this linkage is largely the White House's own fault. Bush's aides not only made the mistake of scheduling his big Wall Street speech while the markets were open, but some of them actually told reporters beforehand that one of the purposes of those remarks was to rally stocks skyward--which, of course, they did not. The administration has been desperately trying to de-link Bush's fate from the Dow's ever since. On July 12 White House spokesman Ari Fleischer scolded the Washington press corps for its ignorance about Wall Street, and he has berated the news networks for featuring market tickers showing falling stock prices during Bush's televised comments on the economy. Bush is the first president to face a bear market in the CNBC-obsessed media environment that grew up around the 1990s boom. And he's finding, to his dismay, that the rules have changed.
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020805&s=lizza080502

Back To NBierma.com Notebook
Yesterday's Reader

Posted 5:03 PM by Nathan
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 2002 Chicago Tribune
Buy this article

Date: Friday, June 7, 2002
Edition: North Sports Final
Section: Tempo Page: 7 Zone: C
Source: By Mike Conklin, Tribune staff reporter.
Illustration: PHOTOS 3


That hang-time religion
Mixing Shaq and Meshach: The odd marriage of the Moody Bible Institute and the NBA



When Dwight L. Moody told his followers in 1886 that it was time to train men for missionary work -- a pronouncement that led to the founding of the Moody Bible Institute -- it seems safe to say that the preacher's vision didn't include the presence on his campus of the likes of rap-singing, slam-dunking Shaquille O'Neal and other current or future basketball superstars.

Yet, unfolding again this week on Moody's Near North Side campus is the National Basketball Association's annual pre-draft camp -- creating the odd juxtaposition of earnest, young Bible students and soon-to-be-obscenely-rich, tattoo-covered athletes.

BMW X5s and Ford Escorts, side-by-side in the same parking lot.

The NBA holds its invitation-only camp for draft-eligible players in the school's Solheim Center every June, having moved there from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993 to take advantage of Moody's state-of-the-art training equipment and its proximity to Loop restaurants and hotels, where players, coaches, scouts and others here for the event typically hang their hats.

For four days of workouts that started Wednesday, 70 athletes are trying to improve their standing in the eyes of the league's top scouts and become a first-round pick in the June 26 draft -- a slot guaranteeing a multimillion-dollar contract.

And everywhere the NBA hopefuls turn, about 20 Moody students are at their beck and call, wiping floors, keeping charts, passing out water, serving as ball-boys, giving directions, managing the hospitality room and helping with security at the workout sessions, closed to the public.

And this mingling of the sacred and the profane is only the half of it. Throughout the basketball season, visiting pro teams regularly use the Solheim gym to practice.

The NBA and the Moody Bible Institute have to be one of the oddest couplings in the world of sports since the last time Jerry Krause stood next to Dennis Rodman. But the benefits that accrue to the conservative Christian college and its 1,500 students, 80 percent of whom go into evangelical work, is incalculable, according to Moody officials.

This is professional basketball's 10th year at Moody and, in that time, almost every top NBA star has passed through the doors of Solheim, the school's athletic facility at 930 N. Wells St. (The center is named for Moody donor Karsten Solheim, a golf manufacturer who invented the Ping line of equipment.)

"Chicagoans may not realize it," says John Hammond, the Detroit Pistons' vice president for player personnel, "but the Solheim is Mecca in the basketball world. Everyone in the sport knows it."

Old man Moody, ever the devout Christian, may have used a different word to describe the place, but, as a shrewd businessman who got his start as a crack shoe salesman, no doubt he could appreciate the return -- both in rent and public relations -- realized from the 11-year-old, $7 million fitness center.

Not only is the center the site of the NBA camp, it also fills other roles during the year:

- Practice facility for many of the Chicago Bulls' regular-season opponents.

- Site of the Women's National Basketball Association tryout camp.

- Host of the U.S. Olympic Team basketball workouts and, as such, base for the first three men's Dream Teams, including the original squad with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

- Training site for international teams on U.S. tours.

"Way cool," is the way David Edwards, a recent Moody graduate and former basketball player at the school, describes the environment. "When you're from a small town in Iowa (Johnston) like me, and the gym door opens and the Seattle SuperSonics or Boston Celtics walk in, who wouldn't be impressed?

"When I was a freshman, I'd get on the phone and call my friends and tell them that I talked to Shaquille O'Neal or Kobe Bryant that day."

Of course, sophistication eventually sets in. "By the time you're a senior, you start to take it in stride," Edwards says.


Respect in a `comfort zone'

Moody basketball coach Dan Dunn said it's not unusual to see his players lifting weights or sitting in a whirlpool alongside the NBA stars during the season. "There's always a buzz when Shaq's on the premises, like there used to be with Michael Jordan," he said. "I enjoy seeing some of the people at the camp, like Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, whom I used to watch as a kid."

For the annual June NBA event here, the Moody students are hand-picked "as a sort of reward for their work during the year," according to athletic director Sheldon Bassett. "I tell them simply to treat everyone with respect and expect it in return," he said. "Everyone is addressed by their first name."

The Moody students are also explicitly instructed not to ask for autographs, take pictures or unduly patronize the athletes. The athletic director calls it "creating a comfort zone" to allow the future pros to concentrate on impressing the coaches and scouts.

"We've had players in our gym with combined salaries of something like $500 million, but just because they're well-paid that doesn't make them automatically heroes and that's what we try to teach our students," Bassett said. "We want them to apply excellence in life and what Christ taught us to sports.

"I should probably write a book about everything."Bassett said there is no way to put a dollar figure on what the presence of high-profile sports figures has meant to the college, but he knows it far exceeds the rent collected. Most students are unaware of the school's relationship with high-profile basketball, but he said the scene is life-changing for some.

For example, the school started its first-ever Sports Ministry program three years ago as a result of the interest created by basketball.

The Bible school's relationship with pro basketball started shortly after the Solheim facility opened in 1991. Hammond, then an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers, said he was attending the '91 pre-draft camp at UIC when Bassett, an old friend, invited him to check out Moody's new facilities.

"It was just great -- state-of-the-art in every aspect," the Pistons' vice president says of the 77,000-square-foot center. "I mentioned something to the NBA about it and things just sort of evolved from there."


Spreading the word

Before the NBA camp shifted in '93, the Clippers began using the gym in the '91-'92 season for pre-game workouts whenever they came to town to play the Bulls. Other teams began following suit as the word spread. Coaching luminaries such as Pat Riley, Don Nelson and Larry Brown became early boosters and continue to use it.

Individual players come over on their own during the NBA season. O'Neal, who has a custommade Moody Bible Institute sweatshirt in his wardrobe after bugging Bassett for it, is a regular whenever he's in town with the Lakers. .

Yao Ming, the Chinese superstar, participated in a much-hyped solo workout for the media at Loyola University last month, but a more intense private practice was held for NBA scouts -- with four Moody students providing security -- in Solheim Center the day before. "Everyone on the campus got excited over this," Dunn said.

Moody's own basketball players, who play opponents such as Grace Bible, Cincinnati Bible, Lincoln (Ill.) Christian and Illinois Tech, have learned not to overreact -- though there was some commotion when the Houston Rockets' Steve Francis, wearing a Moody uniform, burst through the gym doors two seasons ago shouting, "I'm the new recruit! I'm the new recruit!"

Pat Williams, former Bulls boss and now president of the Orlando Magic, calls the relationship between the school and basketball a perfect marriage.

"This is one of those sports stories that has a real sweet ring to it," he says, "and, as we know all too well, there are too many today that don't.

"It's just staggering that this small, Christian Bible college has this great facility. It's great for the NBA, but what a lift it gives the campus.

"I'm sure old D.L. Moody would be stunned."


Moody makes major change


For the Moody Bible Institute, the most tangible byproduct from its association with pro basketball may be this: a recently created major at the school called Sports Ministry & Lifetime Fitness.

"We had a number of our Bible majors decide they wanted to get into sports as a result of their experiences with the NBA camps," says Moody's Athletic Director Sheldon Bassett. "Putting together this program was a sort of natural thing over time.

"This is kind of a risk for us, living and talking our faith through sports, but we're an urban setting and this does help the Moody mission of educating, edifying and evangelizing."

Though the three-year-old program still is in its early stages, Bassett sees graduates of the major -- and the first ones are just getting their degrees now -- finding jobs with organizations such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, with churches that have active physical education programs, and with missionary programs overseas.

Dan Gilbert, a Clayton, Ohio, native who just graduated as a Sports Ministry major, said his dream is to eventually build and run a sports complex for youth in rural communities. In the meantime, he is working at Moody part-time. "If my first goal never happens," Gilbert said, "I will be looking for any job involving sports. The possibilities are nearly endless of what I would be willing to do if it involves sports.

"I know that when I talk to youth, I quickly get their attention when I tell them I've spoken to Shaq. That's something that never would've happened if I didn't get the opportunity to meet some of these people at our [NBA] camp."

Among the new major's listed objectives: To understand the potential of sports ministry and its influence on society; to demonstrate a theological foundation for sports ministry; and to analyze sports in relation to cultural values, socialization, gender, ethnicity and economics in various cultural and historical settings.

Dave Edwards graduated from Moody two years ago, before it was possible to be Sports Ministry major, but he said the experiences of being around highly motivated, skilled athletes during the NBA camp and at other times changed his life.

It made him want to go into basketball coaching and he jumped at the chance to become a graduate assistant in the Iowa State University men's program, where he now works.

"I feel this is the plan God meant for me," said Edwards, who played four years for Moody's varsity basketball team. "I didn't know that when I started school, but it's a lot clearer to me now."

-- Mike Conklin


Captions: PHOTO: Temple University basketball star Kevin Lyde (far right) lines up with other prospects to be measured and weighed during the NBA pre-draft camp at Moody Bible Institute on the North Side Wednesday. "This is my way of staying on the right track through basketball," Lyde says of his tattoo.

PHOTO: Joe Sanson (from left), 21, a junior at Moody Bible Institute, stands

on the sidelines with assistant basketball coach Fred Leggin as NBA scouts John Carideo and Evan Pickman check out prospects.

PHOTO: Moody Bible's athletic director Sheldon Bassett greets a coach at the

front door of the Solheim Center as Washington Wizards head coach Doug Collins gives him a pat on the back. Tribune photos by Heather Stone.

Posted 2:48 PM by Nathan
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 2001 Chicago Tribune

Date: Sunday, November 18, 2001
Edition: Chicagoland Final
Section: Perspective Page: 4 Zone: C
Source: By John D. Thomas. Special to the Tribune. John D. Thomas is editor of Playboy.com.

Q&A
David Crystal, author of "Language and the Internet"

Words zip from the screen to the world

Communication over the Internet is largely untamed, unedited and colloquial. This has led many to believe that technology is having a negative impact on language. David Crystal, the editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, argues strongly to the contrary in his new book, "Language and the Internet."

Q. You write that the Internet has been a positive thing for language. How so?

A. Because it shows the ability the human species has to adapt so fast to a new communicative demand.

Q. You describe "Netspeak" as "a new species of communication." Why?

A. Because it does something that neither speaking nor writing can do. Some examples include framing in e-mails, which is a brand-new phenomenon, and holding multiple simultaneous conversations in writing.

Also, the dynamic, non-permanent character of online screen language is new.

Q. Why did you write this book and what do you hope it accomplishes?

A. I wrote it because there wasn't a book like it. That's where most of my book ideas come from.

I was looking for a treatment of language on the Net and I couldn't find one. I hope it starts a new field, one called Internet linguistics.

Q. What are some of your favorite examples of linguistic creativity inspired by the Internet?

A. I don't have any favorites--or rather, every new usage I see is temporarily a favorite.

Q. Most Internet users are young. How has that affected the language used online?

A. They were young, but that's rapidly changing. There are people in their 80s using the Internet now. So the geeky bias of the earlier language, with its in-words, is likely to be balanced by more conservative styles as increasing numbers of older people come online.

Hitherto, though, yes, the playful creative character of much e-style is what you'd expect from a youthful set of users. Their style will remain, but it'll be supplemented by other Net styles.

Q. The Net is used primarily by people who are well-off. As the Net becomes more available to all social classes, how will the language change?

A. The Net holds a mirror up to linguistic nature. We will see a wider range of computer literacies, just as broadcasting, originally very much for the well-off and educated, become increasingly for everyone, with an associated broadening of distinctive styles.

Q. Do men and women communicate differently on the Internet?

A. That's not a well-researched subject, although Pat Wallace in her book "The Psychology of the Internet" thinks yes. I'm sure they do, just as they do elsewhere. But the differences are not as great as people think--just as they aren't in communication as a whole.

Q. Will the rise of better online audio and visual technologies destroy the current text-based language currently used?

A. Well, it won't destroy it, any more than broadcasting destroyed visual literacy. The "death of the book" arguments were premature, evidently. My guess is that text-based usage will find its place on the Internet.

But it won't be for a while, though--it's at least two generations away before we get good speech synthesis and recognition technologies capable of handling the complexity of language.

Q. Has Internet language had a large impact on communication outside the Net?

A. Yes, primarily in the way it has added speed to interaction. New words and usages can whistle around the world now. Also, virtual speech communities look as if they are going to do a lot to help minority and endangered languages. But the total number of Internet words entering English and other languages is still quite small--and of course they are only a tiny proportion of any language's vocabulary.

Q. What are some trends in Netspeak you are noticing?

A. Well, things seem to have settled down a bit, actually. That's why I dared to write this book now. I wouldn't have dared do it five years ago, when everything was moving so fast.

The main trend is one of consolidation, I think. People are now struggling to find house styles for everything they do.

Q. Much of Internet communication is anonymous. How has this affected Netspeak?

A. I'm not sure. It has promoted greater explicitness, of course, and greater openness, in some ways. But this has its obvious downside. But that is actually a social psychological issue rather than a linguistic one.

Q. English is the predominant Internet language. Will that always be so?

A. Certainly not. It looks as if English will be used on less than half of the overall number of Web pages within the next couple of years. Once South America, Africa and China really start using the Net, the proportion will change rapidly.

But the number of pages isn't the whole story, of course. The number of hits is more relevant--and as there is now more online content in English, because of the head start, it may be that there will be a predominance of English in terms of information that is looked up for a longer period. But eventually it will settle down. People much prefer reading stuff in their mother tongue.

I predict that eventually the balance of languages on the Net will reflect that of the outside world, where currently English is used by a quarter of the world's population.

Q. Will there ever be one global Internet language that everyone uses and understands?

A. No more than anywhere else. Varieties, dialects and styles are already very evident on the Net. These are bound to increase. There will be a common core of shared distinctiveness, of course. In other words, the Net will be a new medium with the same range of variation as you find in speech and writing.

Q. What is the best place to get current information on Netspeak terms?

A. Places like Jargon File (www.jargonfile.com) on the Net are quite good, but they contain a lot of idiosyncratic stuff that may not last.

----------

An edited transcript

Column: Q&A.

Posted 1:58 PM by Nathan
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 2002 Chicago Tribune

Date: Thursday, July 25, 2002
Edition: North Sports Final
Section: Metro Page: 2 Zone: N
Source: Associated Press.
Illustration: PHOTO
Dateline: NEW YORK

Salary spat spurs Lowe to take flight from `West Wing'
4Actor Rob Lowe will leave NBC's "The West Wing" during the upcoming season, the network said Wednesday.
The actor decided to leave after finding out that Martin Sheen received a raise that nearly triples his pay to $300,000 an episode, Variety and the New York Post reported, citing anonymous sources.
NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker wouldn't discuss the reasons for Lowe's departure but confirmed he will be written out of the show in March.
"Rob has been a huge and great part of the program," Zucker said. "We're fortunate that he's going to be with us for virtually the entire year and after that, Sam Seaborn will move on to other things."
Seaborn is the White House deputy communications director that Lowe portrays on the Emmy-winning drama.
Lowe has made about $75,000 an episode since the series began in 1999. The other supporting players--Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, John Spencer and Bradley Whitford--banded together last year and negotiated a raise to about $70,000 per show in a deal that keeps them on through the seventh season.
Lowe, 38, has been nominated in the past for an Emmy and two Golden Globes for his portrayal of Seaborn. But last week, he was the only major cast member who didn't get a nomination for this year's Emmys, which will be given out Sept. 22.
Sheen, who portrays President Josiah Bartlet, was nominated for best actor in a drama; Janney is up for best actress; and Schiff, Spencer, Whitford, Dule Hill, Stockard Channing, Janel Moloney and Mary-Louise Parker were nominated in supporting categories.
When the show premiered, Lowe and Martin Sheen were the two cast members who attracted the most attention.
Captions: PHOTO: Veteran actor Rob Lowe will end his tenure as Sam Seaborn on "The West Wing" because of a salary dispute.

Posted 12:50 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
Thursday, July 25, 2002

Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek
THE WILD RIDE of the past decade recalls similar periods in the 19th century, when entrepreneurs, investors and speculators were first captivated by the vast promises of new lands, canals and railroads and then mauled by excessive investments, broken promises and financial panics. Viewed with hindsight, the “new economy” bears an eerie resemblance to these earlier episodes, exhibiting a rawness of ambition, optimism, overconfidence and greed unlike anything since World War II.... It is too early to say how history will judge the present era. Just as the euphoria of the “new economy” was unreliable, so the present obsession with scandal may prove misleading. The first was too optimistic; the second may be too cynical. We may conclude that the freewheeling nature of American capitalism, a system that encourages people to make the most of their ideas and ambitions, confers enormous benefits while exposing us periodically to huge economic mistakes and ethics lapses. It is less premature to suggest that popular judgment may hinge on the answer to a simple question: will the falling stock market drag down the rising “real economy” of jobs and production—or will the rising real economy revive the market?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/783516.asp

The Economist
WHAT do Norwegians do better than anyone else? According to the latest Human Development Report, published on Wednesday July 24th, Norway is again number one on the Human Development Index. This index ranks 173 countries by a composite measure of life expectancy, education and income per person. Australia has dropped from second to fifth place, with America, perhaps surprisingly to some people, at sixth. But these rankings do not really matter much. The differences at the top of the table are tiny. Far more important is what is happening in countries in the bottom half of the rankings. Among the world’s poorer countries, the index makes for depressing reading—as does much of the report, which is produced annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The spread of democracy, so heralded in the 1990s, seems to have stalled; in some places it is even in retreat. And while some emerging-market economies have done well in recent years, with East Asian countries coming rapidly up the table, many other countries are now poorer than they were.
http://www.economist.co.uk/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1246362

The Seattle Times
When African leaders finally pulled the plug on the moribund Organization of African Unity to make way for a more democratic coalition, it was a promising sign for a continent mired in war, poverty, disease and corruption. The African Union marks the first time democratically minded African leaders outnumber the despots. ... The new alliance comes at an opportune time. Ordinary Africans are increasing their calls for democratic leadership. In Zambia, people took to the streets last year when its president, Frederick Chiluba, tried to change the constitution to end presidential term limits. Church leaders and students offered the same response when Malawi President Bakili Muluzi tried a similar tactic. The changes in Africa are reassuring. Western support and aid is necessary and justified to help Africa improve the lives of its citizens.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/134499884_africaed25.html

The New York Times
New Yorkers like to pretend, almost biblically, that there is nothing new under the sun. But then along comes the discovery of a new species — a new genus, in fact — of centipede living in Central Park, a place we thought we knew down to the least of its organisms. This centipede is only about four-tenths of an inch long, making it one of the smallest in the world. The creature is called Nannarrup hoffmani, which honors the man who recognized that he didn't recognize it. It lives in the park's leaf litter, the crumbling organic debris that accumulates under the trees. No one knows how long this species has been living in Central Park, only that like most New Yorkers it came from somewhere else — probably, unlike most New Yorkers, in potted soil. But that it has found its niche is clear. ... This discovery is a reminder of several things. One is that centipedes are inaptly named, since they always have an odd number of pairs of legs — never 100. Another is that no one really knows how many invertebrate species there are, only that we are likely to have identified just a small portion of them. But the real reminder is of nature's ampleness, the abundance with which this earth is populated. In its own very small way, Nannarrup hoffmani helps us remember that there is a habitation, a living, in the most unexpected places. It always comes as a surprise to remember that we share this city with creatures who have made it every bit their own as much as we have. Or rather that they share it with us.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/25/opinion/25THU4.html

The Toronto Star
In the Olympics of life, Canada only managed bronze this year. After sitting in the top spot of the United Nations quality-of-life index from 1994 to 2000, Canada was rated third this year, the same as last year. Norway is again in first place, followed by Sweden. At least we lost out to nice guys, and not say, France or the U.S., who would no doubt have been as insufferable with their bragging as Canadians were for so long.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?...

Sarah Blustain, The New Republic
This kind of feminist consumerism is seductive, since it tells you that the everyday activities of being a modern American woman--reading a magazine or buying lipstick or sneakers--qualifies you for feminist sisterhood. Many women have indeed made the world better by participating in Avon's "Breast Cancer Crusade," which between 1993 and 2001 raised a net $165 million for breast-cancer-related causes, according to company tallies. But what are we to make of the upcoming fall campaign that features "the limited edition Avon Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer Lipsticks, ... [that] come packaged in an elegant, pearlized pink case, symbolic of the breast cancer cause, and are inspirationally named, such as Courageous Coral, Crusade Rose and Determined Red"? This moral masquerade--selling us on the Avon brand in the guise of a higher calling--always feels more than a tad corrupt. Two weeks ago, in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of Title IX, newspapers carried an ad presenting the "thoughts and feelings of many women": "Sport taught me that I have two options in life: either to believe in myself unconditionally or just throw in the towel when things get tough"; "It minimized the insecurities and self-consciousness that too many girls get paranoid and neurotic about"; and so on. Pure feminist jargon, running on the back page of The New York Times' sports section. The only sign of a hidden agenda was the miniscule Nike Swoosh embedded in the text. Indeed, Nike has presumably benefited as much from Title IX as female athletes themselves. Forget about "Just do it." Just buy it.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020729&s=diarist072902

Posted 12:01 PM by Nathan
hed: The morning the sun hid

sub: New report catalogues the last days of the Avataq

by Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services
Kivalliq
It was dark when the Avataq started going down.
August was sinking into September, and the sun hid behind the horizon
as wind- whipped waves of eight degree water lashed across the deck of
the 12 metre-long fishing boat.
On the radio, Cpt. Louis Pilakapsi made one final call at 1:30 a.m.
Speaking on citizen's band radio channel 14, he told family members in
Arviat that the boat was taking water on the bow and stern and was
sinking.
That was Aug. 25, 2000. Almost two years later, a report from the
Transportation Safety Board of Canada has shed new light on the last
hours of the Avataq -- and on reasons why the craft sank and rescue
efforts were unsuccessful.
In total, four men lost their lives that night: Pilakapsi and crew
members Larry Ussak, Sandy Sateana and David Kudjuk. The boat has never
been located.
The sun was already in the sky when the Avataq left Churchill, Man.,
at 5 a.m. on August 24. The boat was on a trip up the coast of Hudson
Bay, to Arviat and then to Rankin, a trip the vessel had made many
times before. In fact, it was fairly common for fishing boats to make
small supply runs -- especially when companies like NTCL in Rankin
needed some last-minute supplies.
The Avataq was owned by Avataq Enterprises in Rankin Inlet. The craft
had been certificated as a small fishing vessel, although that
certification had run out in July 1999. To carry cargo, the boat would
have needed a stability booklet, to guide the crew in how to properly
load the boat.
The crew had no formal training, even though existing regulations said
the captain should have been certified as a master of his ship. He also
needed courses in electronic navigation, marine emergency duties and
radio operation.
But Transport Canada didn't do any regular inspections of boats or
captains in the arctic. Of the 34 boats registered in the Yukon, the
NWT and Nunavut, only two were scheduled for annual inspections.
Besides, Transport Canada's Manitoba and Nunavut office was located in
Ottawa, and the office only employed one inspector who spent a week or
two in Nunavut every year.
So the crew of the Avataq loaded the boat with 15,823 kilograms of
propane and building materials. The crew reported to the port warden
that the boat was carrying 10,160 kilos of cargo.
Some of the cargo was stored below-decks, but most was strapped onto
the top of the boat. Everything was covered with tarpaulins, to
minimize the amount of water that could pool up on deck.
The tarps were necessary, in part, because the aft-deck was below the
water line. Although a wall of bulwarks kept the water from splashing
in, the aft-deck was designed to be above water. It even had a number
of drainage holes to allow water to flow out. The crew plugged those
holes, known as scuppers, to keep the water from flowing back in.
The Avataq left Churchill and began following the 94th meridian due
north.
Winds gained in speed throughout the day. When the Avataq left port,
the marine weather forecast called for a windspeed of just under 30
kilometres an hour, picking up to almost 60 overnight. By 3:03 that
afternoon, Environment Canada issued a gale warning for Churchill and
Arviat.
But the Avataq continued on its course. Winds were light as night
began to descend, blowing from the southwest at just over 20 kilometres
per hour. At 11:30 p.m., the captain made radio contact with a relative
in Arviat. He said the crew was on deck, securing some of the cargo
that had come loose during the journey.
But Pilakapsi fully expected to arrive in Arviat, predicting that he
would sail into port at 2 a.m., just over two hours away.
Soon the winds began to gust. Before 12 a.m., they had increased to 40
kilometres an hour. And the winds were shifting, too, veering westward.
Conditions began to worsen aboard the Avataq. At 12:30 a.m., the
captain broadcast on citizen band channel 14 that the boat's bilge
pumps had stopped working properly. The vessel was taking on water
about 19 kilometres south of Arviat. By now, the winds were over 60
kilometres an hour from the northwest.
At 1:30 a.m., Pilakapsi made his final radio transmission. Before the
boat went completely under, Pilakapsi had rushed to put on his Mustang
personal flotation device. He was in such a hurry that when his body
was found, the hanger was still lodged in the coveralls.
The boat was equipped with a life raft and an aluminum fishing skiff
was strapped to the foredeck. The raft went down with the boat. The
skiff was found later, floating empty.
Not long after, a group of Arviat residents took off on their ATVs,
determined to locate the boat from the shore. By 2:55 a.m., they called
the head of the emergency measures organization in Arviat, who in turn
relayed the distress call to Iqaluit.
In Iqaluit, Nunavut Emergency Services fielded the call. Despite an
unwritten policy that any distress calls would immediately be forwarded
to the rescue coordination centre in Trenton, Iqaluit wanted to first
confirm that there was a foundering ship. Trenton wasn't called until
5:19 a.m.
The first search plane in the air was a Cessna Caravan that took off
at 6 a.m. But by the time it arrived at the Avataq's last known
location, it was too late. The Mustang coveralls would only keep those
treading water alive for five hours in the frigid water.
In the ensuing hours and days, four search and rescue helicopters,
three Hercules aircraft, one private airplane, two commercial ships and
a fleet of private boats joined in the search.
But the search ended in heartbreak for the Kivalliq: only two bodies
were found.
-30-

Posted 11:56 AM by Nathan
Buy article here

Chicago Tribune
Copyright 2000 Chicago Tribune

Date: Wednesday, March 1, 2000
Edition: Chicago Sports Final
Section: Tempo Page: 1 Zone: CN
Illustration: PHOTOS 8

3 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE READING THIS

- Dave Eggers grew up in Lake Forest and now lives with his little brother in Brooklyn. He had been mildly famous in literary circles for founding two magazines, the culture-skewering Might and the uber-hip literary journal McSweeney's. But Eggers, a boyish 29, has become a media sensation with the publication of his hyper-self-conscious and best-selling memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

- Eggers' "Staggering" story: When he was a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both of his parents died of cancer within five weeks of each other. So he quit college. He founded the aforementioned cool magazines. He schemed to get on MTV's "The Real World." And, with some help from his brother and sister, he raised his brother Toph, who is now 17.

- We asked Eggers for a face-to-face interview, and asked if we could tag along as he revisited Lake Forest. Alas, the young literary superstar only agreed to answer our questions via e-mail. Don't get us wrong, we're grateful (he answered Entertainment Weekly's questions with drawings). So what follows is the electronic exchange with freelance writer Sam Jemielity, other relevant information, along with comments from friends, teachers, co-workers and Dave's brother Bill.

:(

Even though the Tribune asked for an in-person interview with Eggers several months ago, he plead media burnout and declined. Hmmm. Reminds us of an article Eggers wrote about the Replacements for the Daily Illini, Feb. 8, 1991: "...they tossed aside pleadings for a phone interview with the lowly Daily Illini."


ELEMENTS OF A `STAGGERING' BOOK SENSATION


1. Pre-publication praise from Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine read by booksellers, reviewers, librarians. PW receives 30,000 galleys a year for consideration but only reviews 7,000.
2. Getting reviewed in prominent places. The chances, you will see, are slim: Approximately 56,000 titles were published in 1998 by American publishers and the New York Times Book Review reviewed 1,857 titles that year, and the Washington Post Book World reviewed 1,400, according to the 1999 Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac.

3. Return trips to the printer. Simon & Schuster, the publisher, has now printed 115,000 copies, according to Victoria Meyer, Director of the Hardback Trade Division.

4. Wacky author appearances. In addition to inviting hecklers to his bookstore readings, Eggers brings experts to talk about fire safety and road rage.

5. Wacky author interaction. McSweeney's had a contest inviting readers to write reviews of "A Heartbreaking Work" for amazon.com that gave it 5 stars but "betrayed the fact" that the writer had not read the book.

6. Web presence. The book got mentions on both Slate.com and Salon.com. "His sensibility is certainly one that appeals to the Wired types," said Simon & Schuster's Meyer.



HYPE


Here's a partial list of the publications that have featured Eggers and his book: Entertainment Weekly, Time, People, The New York Times (two reviews and a feature), U.S. News and World Report, Salon, New York, Spin, Harper's Bazaar, Publisher's Weekly, Vogue, The Village Voice, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News.


JAMES BENTON


Benton, now retired, was director of the computer lab at Lake Forest High School.
"In 1987 and '88, I got involved with the kids who were putting out a literary/art publication from Lake Forest High School called `Young Idea.' ... That was the first time, in 1988, that the magazine had been done on a computer desktop publishing program. So that's where he kind of got his start in publishing and writing."



THE QUESTIONS DAVE DIDN'T ANSWER


2. Can you tell me a little more about your parents, about their differences from each other? I hung on every detail about them. I don't know why exactly ... maybe the focus on their illnesses made me want to know about them when they were healthy, maybe b/c your mom reminded me of mine, a little bit.
9. What's Toph think about all this? Who'd you want to star as you in the movie? Or more fun, who wouldn't you want to star as you?



ALVA LOWEY


Lowey was Eggers' high school creative writing teacher
"I don't think he's ever given up for a minute. I think he's maintained that pace [that he began in high school with Young Idea magazine]. But he was great fun, and not only talented himself, but able to draw talented students into the orbit of the magazine.

"I wasn't the only adult who had a problem understanding [Might]. I remember once we had a maternity tea for somebody, which brought together a lot of the teachers. And everybody was wondering what in the world was the matter with them that they couldn't make any sense out of Dave's product. ... It was completely geared in its philosophy and its references and its cultural ambience to his age group."



MIGHT, 1994-97


David Moodie co-founded Might with Eggers and is now features editor at SPIN: "We were all magazine junkies, and we basically hated all the magazines that were out at the time, especially those that were youth and/or entertainment oriented."
The magazine featured fake ads, fake tables of contents, even fake stories, like the pitch-perfect hoax, "Fare Thee Well, Gentle Friend," a made-up account of the supposed death of "Eight Is Enough" child star Adam Rich. There was the "sellout" issue, where the cover was an ad for Goldschlager liquor, and the final issue, No. 16, had the cover story, "Are Black People Cooler Than White People?"

Marny Requa, who co-founded Might with Moodie and Eggers, is a high-school friend of Eggers mentioned several times in the memoir: "In the very, very beginning, we wanted to show people different ways to live their lives and think about things (based on how we wanted to live our own lives and think about things). This is the over-earnestness that Dave points to in the book."


From: McSweeney's

To: Sam Jemielity

Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 1:25 PM

Subject: Re: Tribune profile:


Sam,

I did what I could. Let me know what else you might need. Also, let me know if it needs to be edited. Ideally, I would get a crack at it, since I'm pretty grumpy when my sentences are cut or altered.

What was it like growing up in Lake Forest? You weren't the true Lake Forest-ites, from what you write in the book.

As I sort of indicate in the book, I have no problem at all saying I loved growing up there. What entertains me, in a perverse way, is when people who have uninformed ideas about that town, or towns like it, want to assume certain things about you given the fact that your parents chose to live there. And they want to, in a very strange way, blame you for the prosperity of your hometown - as if it were your choice to be raised there. As if you should have, once having reached cognizance of one's own financial situation and in contrast to those in less affluent areas, fled Lake Forest, at, say, eleven or twelve years old, and moved yourself to a more economically balanced town. It's ridiculous. Just saying the words Lake Forest, in the Chicago area of course but really anywhere in the country, carries with it all kinds of assumptions, which is a form of prejudice. For a kid, it's just a green and safe place, next to a lake and with lots of ravines and creeks and trees. It's hard not to appreciate that. I was very lucky.

1a. When did you start writing/designing things?

Dave Moodie and I started in high school, together. There were a bunch of unbelievably encouraging teachers there. Jay Criche was the first teacher to really say something outright, when he said, on a short paper I wrote about Macbeth, "I sure hope you become a writer." That killed me, sent me in a whole different direction, given that I had expected since I was about four to grow up to be a painter. So I started writing for the school newspaper - Pete Wisner and I wrote a completely nonsensical, heavily Monty Python/Russell Baker-influenced column - and eventually Moodie and I ended up editing and designing the school literary magazine. We did so under the guidance of Alva Lowey, this amazing, magisterial creative writing teacher, and James Benton, who ran the computer lab and was sort of a Macintosh pioneer and gave us our start in design. We really owe our solvency, during the Might years, to Mr. Benton, because that's how Moodie and I paid all the bills, with the ridiculous - but lucrative - graphic design work we did.

1b. What other things did you do as a kid? And while we're there, any hobbies now, besides Frisbee?

I did the normal things, I guess. Lots of Legos, drawing, soccer. For a while I thought I could become a professional soccer player. I mean, there were great expectations put upon me. But by fourth grade or so, though, I was already washed up. The main preoccupation of my childhood, though, was trying to get my mom to cut my hair. It's hard to believe, I'm sure, but I grew up with long, straight, white-blond hair, and she insisted on keeping it long, which caused more than a few gender-confusion situations.

3. MIGHT to Esquire to McSweeneys: what was your motivation in making these moves? What was up with "Man: The Magazine for Men" - I've heard parts of that story. (If you can give me dates here, that'd be awesome: when did you MIGHT fold (1997?), when did you move to New York, when did you start work on McSweeneys.)

Might folded in the summer of 1997. Started work at Esquire a few months later, in New York. McSweeney's came about while I was stalling on my book, in the summer of 1998.

3a. What's your role at McSweeneys. I know you write some of the stuff ("Todd" is a great idea, don't let anyone tell you different). Lucy Thomas, that's you, right?

I edit McSweeney's. Not sure how else to describe my duties. I edit it and design it and get it printed, pay the bills. It's a very very small operation. Four people, tops, though we're all extremely part-time, and we're all unpaid. As for Lucy, I have owned up to writing that stuff, though I've killed the link to her for now.

3b. Why did you decide to start McSweeney's? What do you think of its sudden cachet?

I started it because I wanted to be able to control all aspects of the publishing of something. I'm not very good at becoming part of some existing entity or team. I was kind of frustrated at not seeing the things I liked get into print - such as it is at a large magazine like Esquire. So the first issue of McSweeney's had a lot of stuff written by me and my friends, which had been killed or overlooked by other magazines. Since then, it's been much less reactive, and hasn't had any overarching goal or plan - we only aim to publish things we hope people will read, and to do so with an attention to the craft of the journal as an object.

And that element goes back to the art school days, studying Joseph Cornell, H.C. Westermann, people like that. As for people liking it and buying it, I have no explanation at all. It's much too weird to be popular.

4. How have you been supporting yourself and Toph since you quit Esquire (or left Esquire, or got bodily removed from Esquire - I don't know the story there)? Freelance writing/design?

Not to be rude and point to the text, but I did get a $100,000 advance to write this book; that's right there in the front matter. So that enabled me to quit Esquire. I also do occasional freelance stuff - book reviews, op-eds, short ha-ha stuff - most of it under pseudonyms. I even consulted for ESPN magazine for a while, which was fun because I had no idea what I was talking about most of the time. But people have been kind, and also charitable. I did a thing for Time about Cuba's hitchhikers, and they allowed me a lot of room, and paid me well, and that went a long way toward paying the (exorbitant) print bill for the current McSweeney's.

5. In your final monologue, you alternate between Frisbee, describing your mom's last hours, and dissolve into a rant, almost, against slackers, of people who don't notice you or work hard. Did I read that right? Can you explain where that anger comes from?

Hmm. I can't explain that passage, and here's why: I grew up drawing and painting, and was a painting major for most of my time in college. And I always had trouble when asked to explain certain things, or my paintings in general. I sort of firmly believe that when someone makes something - a painting or book or movie or whatever - then they're then absolved of the responsibility to explain it. Explaining art is kind of like explaining color, or, say, feelings. We all know exactly what feelings are what, and what these feelings mean and where they come from - if we are honest about it and really look at ourselves - and so the explaining of them is just the confirmation of what we already know. (This line of thinking is why I had a hard time in college Psychology courses, which, since we all knew the essential information as well as we knew our own hearts, became little more than semantic shell games.) So as for interpreting the book's last pages, if I break a passage like that down - this means this, that means that - then it has a diminishing effect. It spoils the fun. Not that I understand all of it myself.

6. Which writers helped you sort out how you wanted to tackle this subject, and doing a memoir in these memoir-glutted days?

I went in completely blind. I had never read a memoir before. I was reading a lot of fiction at the time, but then, after a while, stopped reading anything vaguely close in tone or subject matter, for fear of being influenced by better writers.

7. Is it true you planted hecklers at your first few readings (I had lunch with Nadine Ekrek, who did the Wash. Post piece, and she said something about this ... )? What did they say (planted, or not ...)?

In San Francisco I had a friend of Toph's ask a bunch of stupid questions - "Can you start over?" "Can you talk slower and louder?" He was brilliant, this kid Gabe, all of 16. We traded favors - he did that for me, and a few days later, I spoke to his high school journalism class. In Palo Alto, Zev Borow, an old Might editor and friend who had just flown in from New York for an unrelated reason, was in the middle of performing the same function, but whereas the San Francisco crowd thought Gabe was charming and funny - and understood what was happening - the Palo Alto folks hated Zev, thought he was a real heckler. They actually hissed him (people in the Bay Area do that a lot). In New York, Todd Pruzan, a McSweeney's editor, interrupted the reading to ask a bunch of inane questions, blathering on for a long time, and was almost kicked out by store personnel. It was pretty great.

8. What was it like reviewing your own book for SPIN?

Moodie had me do that. I begged him to just let someone else review it, but he thought, given the self-reflexive nature of the book, that I should review it myself. Unfortunately, I was at a point when I really wasn't liking the book so much, so the review wasn't very positive. But of course I'm the book's worst enemy; always have been.

10. How long did it take you to write this book? What was the challenge to doing it - the Toph dialectic played a part, I'm sure, but did you struggle with the form, or did it just lay out that way?

Parts of it were written years ago. Some came from old journals, some from episodes I wrote shortly after they happened. But in earnest, I spent about 8 months on it. I tend to write pretty quickly, in huge bursts, when I get going, and then edit very slowly. The structure was a huge problem, because I was constantly struggling between wanting to play around with the form of it all, and then having the actual material, the subject matter, overwhelm all the tricks and gimmicks.

That's why the latter half of the book is relatively straightforward ? I couldn't mess around with the structure anymore, because I knew I was getting close to the end, and to all the bad things happening there, and writing about Shalini, for instance, just blindsided me. I could barely put a lot of that stuff down; I avoided it for months and months.

11. You've been compared favorably to James Joyce, Tom Wolfe ... there's been gossip column blurbs about a $2 million offer from New Line. How is all this affecting you? What's next for you?

McSweeney's will start publishing books. The great thing about the success of the book is that, for the first time, there seems to be actual money flowing around, money to make possible some of the weird plans we've had for McSweeney's. So by summer we'll have three or four titles out, not to mention any number of pamphlets, tracts and the like.

One of the first books, by Lawrence Krauser, concerns a man's romantic fascination with a lemon. Another book will be all about the scientists attempting to slow the speed of light, contrasted with those trying to tinker with gravity. All very short-run, extremely quirky projects that would only be produced by people with no business sense.

During the question-and-answer period at Dave Eggers' reading in Quimby's bookstore on the North Side last week, an audience member asked how it feels to be in the media spotlight, one of "the beautiful people," getting asked questions by NPR and Charlie Rose. Eggers invited the questioner to the mike, and had the man stand there for a while. "So, how does it feel?" Eggers asked. After much awkward hesitation, the man responded, "Awkward."

For reasons that remain mysterious, McSweeney's is printed in Iceland. Sean Wilsey, a contributor who also helps edit the journal, traveled with Eggers to Reykjavik to oversee the press run of the latest issue of McSweeney's, which is made up of 14 booklets, each with its own cover (all but one chosen or designed by the writer), and which comes in an intricately printed cardboard box. "It was such a complicated printing job," Wilsey says. "I kept a log of how much we were sleeping, because we were sleeping so minimally. ... which doesn't really matter in Iceland, because it's basically dark all the time anyway that time of year."

From Eggers review of his book in SPIN: "Virtually from the moment I sat down with [A.H.W.O.S.G], I felt a connection with the author that seemed eerily close.... Of course, had I done it, I would have written a far better book, because, as is, `A Heartbreaking Work' is a sprawling, messy thing..."





WHAT IS DAVE EGGERS REALLY LIKE?


Monica Eng, a Tempo writer, knew Eggers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990-91:
He was my editor when I worked on the Daily Illini's weekend entertainment section. He, like a lot of DI geeks, worked really long and really late hours.

I recall a tall skinny guy with an all-American face, baggy jeans and short curly hair squished under a baseball cap. He seemed like your typical 847area-code kid with a slightly surfer-ish way about him but lots of bottled up energy. I seem to remember him chewing the ends of pens and calling me "dude."

Sean Wilsey: "We're all scared of him. He's terrifying. ... No, you read the book, and it sounds like him. It's 300-odd pages of what it's like to talk to Dave."

David Moodie: "Dave is tremendously talented. He has a topsy-turvy-twisty-turny brain that serves him really well."

Neal Pollack, staff writer for The Chicago Reader and contributor to McSweeney's: "What I think epitomizes Dave is, here Dave's book is, it's getting incredible reviews, and it's obvious that it's gonna be a hit and a phenomenon, and what is the first thing he puts up on the Web site? An open call ... saying that he will publish a 5,000-word book about electrical engineering on boats." (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/contest/boats.html)

Marny Requa: "When Dave writes he separates it from thinking about what he should or shouldn't say. What he thinks is on the paper. His brain is kind of on the page."

Bill Eggers, Dave's older brother by three years, is a director of the E-Texas Internet Initiative, the state's transformation initiative to bring government into the digital age; he's also the author of books on public policy, and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other papers.

Question - What's it like seeing your brother's face everywhere in the media?

Answer - It's the irony of ironies that he's in People. Dave's not very much a People kind of guy, and you probably get that from reading his book. ... The funny thing is, he wants to talk about his journal McSweeney's now, rather than the book. He might be at the stage where he's a bit embarrassed by all the attention right now. Knowing Dave, part of him probably likes it, but part of him probably wants to go hide in Iceland for a couple months.

Q - Do you see the story the same way as Dave?

A - It's kinda like that movie "Rashomon." My perspective would be different, and that's what makes for an interesting world. I read some of it, and I was like, "Huh." We always joke about that, because my sister and Dave always have said that I look at the past and I just remember the good things, and I always think that they just remember some of the bad things. But this was Dave's perspective on things. It's his book, and I didn't want to interfere. He's a brilliant writer, and he did a fine job.

Q--What was it like growing up in Lake Forest?

A--We were a middle-class family living in Lake Forest, which is very, very wealthy. My dad was a lawyer, doing OK, but we weren't very wealthy. It was a little like F. Scott Fitzgerald in his novels, where there's the middle-class kid kinda looking in [on the wealthy]. There were a lot of people like us there, and that's what people don't understand about Lake Forest - they think everyone's incredibly wealthy, and that's not really the case.

Q--Where'd Dave get his quirky take on things?

A--We were always a pretty sarcastic family. My mom was very sarcastic. I'll never forget, one of my sister's best friends who was just becoming her friend got in the car and she had asked for a ride home. . . . Mom said, `No, I'd have to go waaay out of my way, and we're gonna be late for dinner.' She was being very sarcastic, and the girl was almost crying. And of course my mom was just kidding around with her. So we had that from an early age. We had a lot of debate in our family, and we were all reading quite a lot at an early age. Three pretty active minds in the kids.

Q--What was Dave like growing up?

A--Dave was really more of the artist type. He went through periods in his youth when he was so involved in his art and the things that were going through his mind. He's really got that creative artist part of the brain. He was probably considered one of the better young artists in the state. He was doing paintings that he was doing in early high school that were brilliant, that you could sell for $500. . . . He went through stages when he could only do a screaming head. I remember, for a whole year, that's about all he could paint. And that just has to do with the artistic mind. I was always much more analytical. I wrote a book for the same publisher [as Dave] which was on public policy revolution. So we're very different in that way. But everyone had big goals and big dreams in our family.

Ever since he was in junior high school, he was always keeping little diaries and notes and ideas and stuff. They'd be sprayed all over the place, not in a clean notebook. He still writes the same way. Some of his best lines will be on paper towels, and toilet paper, and strewn all over his house. It's unbelievable. I couldn't live that way for a second.

Q--What about his hair?

A--My brother [Dave] and I had real long eyelashes, and we had longer hair. And that was before our faces "matured" - as we liked to say, before we went through our ugly stage - and we would get mistaken for three girls. My mom would kind of love that, and Dave and I would just die.... We were so mad. But that was when we were little. I don't think it affected us too much.

Q--How did Dave end up raising Christopher (Toph)?

A--When my parents got sick, I was working in D.C. and then my sister [Beth] had been at Berkeley, and Dave was at U. of I. I was kinda far away at the time. Because Dave grew up with Chris more, he had three more years to spend with him. Dave had developed a longer bond with Chris. Chris is an incredible kid. What he did to our family was unbelievable. He was like a miracle, because he brought everyone closer together and kept everyone together, really. So we're all very, very close to him. But for a number of years Beth and I were at school 3,000 miles away. So Dave was at U. of I., and he'd come back every couple weeks. Especially when my parents died, Dave was the one real constant in Chris's life. . . . It was a given that whatever happened, Chris needed to be with Dave. And we decided there needed to be two of us raising [Chris] on a permanent basis, so Dave got the choice between moving to D.C. or moving to Berkeley and being with my sister. For a young guy who's an artist and being Dave, the San Francisco area was a lot better than the politics of Washington, D.C.


Captions: PHOTO: (Magazines.)

PHOTO: "Young Idea," 1988.

PHOTO: David Kingwell Eggers

``Sleep to dreamier sleep be wed.'' Joyce. Bright Lights. Thanks to the cowboy Fellas and my well-groomed parents, Mom and Dad Swoon. Young Idea 3,4 editor 4; New Artist Guild 4; Founder and Grand Pubah, Yearbook Copy Editor 4; Newspaper 3,4, Features Ed 4; WLFH 1,2,3,4; IM Floor Hockey 3,4; Nat'l Honor Soc 3,4; Nat'l Merit Scholar Commended scholar, Quill and Scroll 3,4; Boys State Rep 3.

PHOTO: From the Feb. 20 N.Y. Times Book Review cover review: ``. . . a profoundly

moving, occasionally angry and often hilarious account of those odd and silly things, usually done in the name of Toph.''

PHOTO: (Might cover.)

PHOTO: Untitled (The Hotel Eden). c. 1945

by Joseph Cornell

Construction, 151/8 x 153/4 x 43/4 in.

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

PHOTO: (McSweeney's.)

PHOTO: (Book cover.)

Posted 10:57 AM by Nathan
A column by the irascible John Leo cheerleading blogging. A little overdone, but an interesting case of a veteran columnist in old media embracing the supposed wave of the future.

Buy the article here

>Copyright 2002 U.S. News & World Report
>U.S. News & World Report
>May 13, 2002 May 13, 2002
>SECTION: CULTURE & IDEAS; ON SOCIETY; Vol. 132 , No. 16; Pg. 48
>
>LENGTH: 793 words
>
>HEADLINE: A blog's bark has bite
>
>BYLINE: By John Leo
>
>BODY:
>One vote here in favor of the blogging revolution. Bloggers (from the
words
>"Web log") write online diaries and commentaries. The best bloggers
weigh in
>on social and political issues, report nuggets of information that the
>national media miss or suppress, and provide links to other bloggers
with
>something sharp to say. Subjects that the mainstream press is skittish
about
>(e.g., the link between abortion and breast cancer, or the mini race
riot
>that occurred in Cincinnati three weeks ago) tend to show up in the
blogging
>world. Since nobody can be fired or intimidated, bloggers skip
politically
>correct language and just write in plain English.
>
>A minor example of the culture in action: The blogging corps got wind
of an
>online poll sponsored by the Council on American Islamic Relations
allegedly
>showing that 94 percent of those surveyed thought Ariel Sharon should
be
>tried for war crimes. By linking to one another's Web sites, the
bloggers
>got more people to cast votes and reversed the numbers. At the end, 94
>percent opposed the idea of trying Sharon. The first commandment of
blogdom
>is that anyone can become a pundit. Nobody is in charge. Bloggers can
say
>anything they want and get their message out with blinding speed. This
is
>unsettling to us lumbering print guys. Six or seven times I had to
abandon a
>column because some upstart blogger beat me to it. Andrew Sullivan,
perhaps
>the most quoted blogger, is surely the fastest gun. His 1,000-word
analysis
>of the State of the Union message appeared 33 minutes after President
Bush
>finished. Sometimes he launches attacks on wayward New York Times
columnists
>around 4 a.m., so blog fans can read his version before they get to
the
>columns.
>
>Free for all. The fairness of blogworld is impressive. Glenn Reynolds,
a
>University of Tennessee law professor whose InstaPundit site is the
>800-pound gorilla of the blogging culture, is strongly pro-cloning.
But he
>recently provided links to a series of mostly anticloning Christian
sites so
>readers could judge for themselves. Another example of blogger
openness: A
>site called Catholic and Enjoying it! posted the sad comment, "There's
>nothing like having the church you love be the butt of the whole
world's
>jokes," and then provided the link to a biting anti-Catholic satire
about
>abusive priests. In the print world, it's safe to say, making sure
that
>one's detractors are heard is much rarer.
>
>The crisis over sex abuse by priests has brought a lot of Catholic
bloggers
>into the field. Some of the commentary has been first-rate,
particularly
>Sursum Corda and Amy Welborn's In Between Naps. Protestants weigh in,
too.
>(A list of 118 Christian blogs is available at MartinRothOnline.)
>
>Political bloggers are overwhelmingly right of center, either
conservative
>or libertarian. The conventional wisdom is that the strong rightward
tilt is
>a reaction against the mandatory liberalism of the modern newsroom.
But
>nobody knows for sure. Bloggers have given encyclopedic and favorable
>analysis to Bernard Goldberg's charge that the "right wing" label in
>journalism is applied much more commonly than the adjective "left
wing."
>Blogworld has strongly supported the war on terrorism and is famously
quick
>to point out logical and moral failings of antiwar relativists.
>
>Out of blogger-induced fairness, I hereby recommend two liberal sites.
One
>is the site of commentator Tom Tomorrow, the cartoonist and
commentator.
>He's fair, funny, and a friend. The Daily Howler is a useful check on
>conservative excess, though sometimes over the top. Be sure to read:
"The
>American way of life has been challenged. But whose side is John Leo
on?"
>
>Now the corporate world seems to be heading blogward. Fox News hired
blogger
>Ken Layne and put him on its Web site. National Review Online, an
>indispensable site, has added a blogging section. ABC.com now runs a
>bloglike political commentary, "The Note," which recently mocked the
>"Forrest Gump-like existence" of Sen. John Kerry and the role of the
Boston
>newspapers in keeping his reputation aloft.
>
>In two cases, bloggers have prepared the way for new newspapers in
major
>cities. Smartertimes.com, a running account of the sins and omissions
of the
>New York Times, led to the founding of the New York Sun, New York
City's new
>conservative daily paper. A similar path is being followed in Los
Angeles,
>where LAExaminer.com regularly snipes at the Los Angeles Times to
prepare
>the way for a new anti-Times daily paper. Check in with blogworld.
It's
>definitely worth your time.
>
>Correction: My April 29 column said CNN gave no coverage to two
teenagers
>blown up by a suicide bomber in Israel in February. CNN covered the
killings
>on TV and on its Web site. My apologies.
>
>GRAPHIC: Picture, No caption; Drawing, No caption (ILLUSTRATION BY HAL
>MAYFORTH FOR USN&WR)

Posted 10:29 AM by Nathan
Ironic that I begin this file with this story about The Great Data Glut of the information age. A fascinating profile of James Billington and the Library of Congress, which is swamped with information to be stored. This site will host similar articles, e-mails, and other excerpts whose links have expired, or who didn't have links to begin with, and whose length would bog down my blog, but whose depth and insight bear a longer read.

This link should work if you want to pay for the article at the Wash. Post archives site, otherwise here's the general link to search the archives.

Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
March 12, 1999, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 3498 words

HEADLINE: The Too-Much-Information Age; Today's Data Glut Jams Libraries and Lives. But Is Anyone Getting Any Wiser?

BYLINE: Joel Achenbach, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:
Tom Mann learned the art of research as a private eye in Louisiana. Now he works at the Library of Congress. He's that restless gentleman at the reference desk, the one who, hearing a question, darts into an alcove, whirls up a tightly spiraled staircase -- years of experience have given him the navigational skills of a bat -- and pops back down with the perfect book, his fingers flying to the right page and paragraph.

These days, Mann is incensed. He's something of an oxymoron, a raging librarian. He's angry about a proposal that, if approved, would shelve books at the library not by subject matter, as is traditional, but by size.

The plan would save space, lots of space. Shelves could be precisely the right height, with no gaps above the shorter volumes. There would be four types of books: small, medium, large and folio (extra large). No longer would books migrate through the stacks over time in a dynamic environment of expanding scholarship and creativity. A book would have an eternal resting place. The computer would know its location.

Such a system, Mann notes, would eliminate browsing -- "discovery by serendipity," as he calls it. "Shelving the books on Capitol Hill by height rather than by subject would be the worst thing that could happen to the basic structure of the Library of Congress," he said. "It would change LC from a library into a warehouse."

What's going on here is something much bigger than a shelving dispute. It goes beyond one library, one librarian. Tom Mann's protest is but a puff of wind in a gathering cultural storm -- the information hurricane.

Institutions and individuals alike are coping with a deluge of books, journals, tapes, legal records, documents, e-mail and uncounted gushers of raw data. All this material is supposed to be stored and preserved. It's supposed to be arranged in some sensible fashion. The problem exists at every level, from small businesses to great archival institutions to the ordinary household. You can't simply cram all this information in a box and stick it in the attic, because the attic is already jammed, as are the basement and all the closets.

Compounding the problem is the fact that information disintegrates. Books turn brittle. Tapes fall apart. Films degrade into gunpowder.

The latest crisis is "digital preservation." The binary code surging through wires all over the world is in danger of turning to gibberish as computer programs become obsolete. The Information Age, the experts warn, could become a blank spot in human history.

The problem speaks to the irony of modern civilization. The success of the species has spawned unforeseen burdens and side effects. The prodigious output of the human mind is a grand and wonderful achievement -- but now what do we do with all this stuff?

History's Pages

The book, the illuminated manuscript, the papyrus scroll, do not merely record the story of civilization. They're a piece of that story.

The historical phenomenon we know as the Renaissance in Europe was essentially driven by the rediscovery of ancient writings. Some were retrieved from the secret vaults of monasteries; some trickled in from the Arab world. Gutenberg's invention of the printing press revolutionized the flow of information. But no one could afford to take a book for granted. A book was so precious and rare a commodity that in a typical library it was kept chained to a desk.

In 1472 the library at Queens' College in Cambridge, England, had precisely 199 books.

At the height of the Renaissance there were people running around who could claim with some plausibility to have read every important book ever written. The essayist and statesman Francis Bacon complained that "the whole stock, numerous as it appears at first view, proves on examination to be but scanty."

He wouldn't be such a big talker today. No one can read everything.

For the modern person with the slightest intellectual ambition, the world of knowledge is overwhelming, a vast ocean, horizonless, plunging to impossible depths. The best you can do is occasionally go for a swim.

More than 50,000 books are published every year in America alone. The number of different journals published globally is estimated at 400,000. The media moguls promise that soon every home will have access to hundreds of television channels. The World Wide Web coalesced in 1992, and now has millions of sites.

The information glut is hardly the apocalypse that some imagined might come about at the millennium. The world's not ending, it's just becoming incomprehensible. The complaint of every university professor is that there is no way to keep up to date with the research even in a narrowly defined field. At academic conferences, people with PhDs find themselves baffled by the lectures of their colleagues. The expertise is too extreme. There is no common body of knowledge, no common language.

"It's the Tower of Babel syndrome."

That's James Billington talking. He's Tom Mann's boss, the Librarian of Congress. Every day Billington must fight the battles of the Too-Much-Information Age. He worries about the nuts-and-bolts issues, such as shelving and digital preservation, and he also worries about broader philosophical matters, such as: Are we truly wiser with all this information?

"It's significant that we call it the Information Age," he said. "We don't talk about the Knowledge Age."

Billington has a professor's reverence for knowledge, viewing it as a kind of temple erected through the ages by the sweat of many a forgotten laborer. He subscribes to a formula: Pieces of raw data, when mildly processed, can turn into information, which then, through much added effort and value, can rise to the level of knowledge -- which finally is the foundation for wisdom.

But he thinks that in this era of Web surfing and chat rooms and data overload we may be going in the wrong direction. He mentions the poem "The Rock" by T.S. Eliot:

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

"Our society is basically motion without memory," Billington said. "Which, of course, is one of the clinical definitions of insanity."

An Avalanche of Data

The archivist of the United States, John Carlin, has the absurdly difficult job of storing all the official records of a large information-obsessed country. The National Archives has billions of pieces of paper, not to mention the Nixon tapes from Watergate.

"There are about half a dozen machines left in the world that can play those tapes," Carlin said.

He's bedeviled, like everyone else, by digital preservation, but what makes the situation particularly acute for Carlin is that countless government agencies are dumping their data on him. Agencies that used to hang on to their paperwork for a quarter-century are now passing along boodles of electronic records after only a few years. Carlin at one point went to NASA and explained that the Archives couldn't handle the profusion of data being beamed down from satellites, about every conceivable aspect of the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, land masses, volcanoes, ice sheets and ozone holes.

The problem of digital preservation has to be addressed, says Carlin's deputy, Lewis Bellardo, "or memory will be lost for the latter half of the 20th century."

Carlin and Bellardo point to an example. They are trying to preserve electronic data from the Reagan and Bush administrations. The computer system used at the White House to handle correspondence during the 1980s and early 1990s -- and even early in the administration of President Clinton -- is already so out of date that the vendor no longer will repair it.

It's a peculiar thought -- that digital information, those little 0s and 1s, are somehow imperiled. But those digits are a form of code, and they require computers -- hardware and software -- to become meaningful. "Unfortunately," writes researcher Jeff Rothenberg of the Rand Corp., "the intended reader of a digital file is a computer program, not a human." And those programs rarely survive more than a few years.

The problem is a bit like the Y2K computer bug, a flaw built into the structure of the computer universe. Most computer programs use proprietary codes instead of an "open standard." Archivists and librarians would love to see a trend toward openness, but in the meantime, from a preservation standpoint, an electronic document may as well have been scrawled with a wet finger on a paper napkin.

"It's an infinite obstacle. Once solved, it won't be a problem at all, but right now it's pandemic," said Abby Smith, director of programs for the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Information that gets lost tends to be stuff that no one thought would ever be of value. Most silent movies are gone forever -- deemed, in their day, a disposable medium. Much of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" is gone, recorded only in the evanescent medium of warm memories.

Lost information is a fact of human existence. Languages get lost, as do cities. The rise of civilization is a story told in rubble and broken pottery. The members of prehistoric societies did not think they lived in prehistoric times; they merely lacked a good preservation medium.

Language itself is a kind of code that does not automatically translate over the centuries. Egyptian hieroglyphics were mystifying for a thousand years, until the discovery in 1799 of the Rosetta Stone, which juxtaposed a passage of hieroglyphics with the same passage in Greek and demotic text.

So much else is lost. There is virtually no documentation of the life of William Shakespeare. Smith points out that in 16th-century England, a piece of paper was a precious object that no one could afford to use just once. They'd scrape the ink off, bleach it, and use it again. Blank paper was more valuable than old information.

The Information Archaeologist

For 20 years, a box of recordings sat unheard in a corner of the Library of Congress. They were interviews with Holocaust survivors, conducted in 1946 by an Illinois professor. The problem: The recording medium, reels of magnetized steel wire, popular in the 1940s, had become obsolete.

Engineer John Howell saved the day. A white-haired veteran of the library staff, he searched for years to find a device that could play the interviews. In the '40s there were many types and sizes of wire recorders, and so he had to find precisely the right machine. Finally he tracked down two Peirce wire recorders, ancient contraptions full of vacuum tubes. Neither worked. So he cannibalized parts from one and managed to get the other to work. Painstakingly the interviews were played and re-recorded on modern equipment.

As Americans reach old age they clean out their attics, he said, and they send the Library of Congress their old tapes, wires, wax cylinders, odd-format record albums, dictation machines and various other outmoded gadgets. He'd like to see all these formats saved, so the information isn't lost.

"It would be nice if we had a couple of technical people we could put into storage, too," he said.

He was joking, but he was precisely on point. Across the country there is information stored on formats that are barely clinging to life, preserved by the know-how of a few white-haired engineers who are not quite ready to retire.

No Tome Unturned

There is another repository for old information: The little bookshop around the corner.

Few are as obscure, and peculiar, as J.F. Ptak Science Books, tucked among the row houses on Volta Place NW in Georgetown. Not many people ever seem to be inside, which is fortunate, since there's hardly any room to maneuver amid the clutter of books, maps, journals, lithographs, laboratory gadgets, test tubes, thermometers and fossils.

In a glass case is a wax model of the interior of a lung. This is information of sorts, in a particularly visceral form.

Look closely at that blob floating in formaldehyde: It's the larynx of an owl.

The proprietor, John Ptak, is as thick and sturdy as a textbook. From the look of his shop he's more collector than salesman. In Alexandria he has a storage facility so packed with books it is impenetrable, essentially a solid cube of paper.

Ptak is particularly pleased with his most recent bonanza: 90,000 pamphlets from the Library of Congress.

The pamphlets are, in library jargon, "ephemera," stuff that's potentially disposable and of no obvious value. They date to World War II and earlier. A quick glance reveals a Depression-era treatise on the dangers of marijuana ("Assassin of Youth"). There's a prospectus for grazing land in Nevada. There's a contract, written in Italian, for the construction of a factory in a Nazi death camp.

This is old information, but to Ptak it is marvelous.

"Why bother saving a 1931 Yugoslavian cigarette export catalogue?" Ptak asked, holding up one of his items. He answered: "Why not? In its own way it's a magnificent thing. It's got to be worth something."

The Library of Congress, after sorting through the material and saving the most valuable items, gave the pamphlets to Ptak in exchange for a collection of rare photographs and other materials. Billington, like several other library officials, didn't know anything about the exchange. When your collection gets big enough, hardly anyone notices when 90,000 pamphlets covering hundreds of feet of shelf space suddenly disappear.

Told that the exchange involved ephemera, Billington said ruefully, "I'm interested in ephemera."

Everything is important, potentially. The trend in history departments throughout academia has been away from the traditional great-men-fighting-wars version of history. "Social history" explores lives of ordinary people, the forgotten classes, the individuals who were not kings or generals or popes.

And this means there is no easy way for the keepers of knowledge to separate the nuggets from the great, surging mass of information.

An Early Precedent

Almost from its origin, the Library of Congress had the ambitious goal of a universal collection. When the British burned the Capitol, they destroyed most of the library's books. Thomas Jefferson offered to sell Congress his own collection of books, many in French, Spanish, German, Latin and Greek.

Cyrus King, a Federalist Party lawmaker, objected.

"The Bill would put 23,900 dollars into Mr. Jefferson's pocket for about 6,000 books -- good, bad and indifferent; old, new and worthless, in languages which many cannot read, and most ought not to."

Jefferson countered that there was "no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer."

Congress bought. Quickly, the Library of Congress became jammed, with books overflowing the shelves.

The Jefferson Building in 1897 provided a new, spacious home, but that, too, filled up. Two courtyards were converted to book stacks. They filled up. The opening in 1939 of the Adams Building, a no-nonsense box with miles of shelves, relieved the problem, but it filled up. The Madison Building came along in 1980, larger than any building in the area save the Pentagon. It filled up. A new warehouse 40 miles from Washington will open next year.

The library has 113 million items already, and every morning 20,000 more items slam into the loading dock. The stacks are so full that in some areas the floor is used as an auxiliary shelf.

"We are not happy with them being on the floor," said Steve Herman, the chief of the general collection. "It's not good from a preservation point of view. Someone could kick them."

Library Evolution

Billington struggles with the problems of running the world's largest book stack.

He has a swank office with a two-dome view -- the Capitol beyond some trees and the gorgeous Jefferson Building just across the street. His desk is cluttered with the multiple media of the modern workplace: newspapers, videos, memos, books, magazines. He can talk on the phone, write on a computer or bang out a letter on the electric typewriter he refuses to relinquish. He's not fond of e-mail. He doesn't surf the Internet.

Billington is in many ways a kindred spirit to Tom Mann. Both are book people in an electronic age. One of Billington's first acts when he took over the library was to save the old card catalogue, the weathered wooden drawers with carefully typed listings of every book in the library.

But although Mann and many other reference librarians are horrified by the idea of shelving by size, Billington does not seem bothered by the proposal. He feels the library must evolve. The dispute, he says, is a sign of a wrenching cultural shift there. It began in 1992 when, as a security measure, the library "closed" the stacks, those sturdy steel shelves holding millions of volumes, the leisurely browsing ground of scholars. Only select staffers can get in now. The shift to computer searches is hard on everyone, Billington said.

The library has purchased a new computerized cataloguing system that will come online in the fall. Only then will Billington and his aides decide whether to start shelving by size. The great advantage of computer-based searching is that it isn't restricted by the physical structure of the library. Billington has a vision of a library without walls, an "active catalyst for civilization," as he once put it, rather than a "passive mausoleum" for old books.

The entry point is the Internet. The library has been putting many of its priceless prints, maps and documents on a searchable Web site. Everyone in the knowledge business is racing to keep up with changing research habits. (Many college students, says Abby Smith, rely entirely on Internet sources for their papers. "There's a whole generation of kids who think that if it ain't on the Web, it doesn't exist.")

The dream of many librarians is that someday the collective knowledge of civilization will be available on the Web. Right now it isn't. It takes time and costs money to scan the pages of a book into a digital format, and no one can afford to plunge into the stacks and do that with the millions of books at the Library of Congress.

A venture called Project Gutenberg has the goal of putting 10,000 texts online by the year 2001. Mann, for one, is dismissive of the effort. The e-texts, he says, will never catch up. The library, he points out, gains 10,000 new books every two weeks. "Not only is the electronic virtual library not catching up to the print world," Mann has written, "it is in fact falling farther and farther behind every day."

Billington believes the library must play a role in saving the Internet from turning into a dumb-bunny domain, a mere offshoot of what he calls the "audiovisual culture." The Internet shortens attention spans, he says. It destroys the sentence, the foundation of the English language, with its diction-mangling chat rooms. And the Internet is heavily skewed toward recent information, the latest data, with little trace of older material. A person might surf the Web for hours and not encounter anything written before 1995.

"It's inherently destructive of memory," Billington said. "You think you're getting lots more [information] until you've found out you've made a bargain with the Devil. You've slowly mutated, and have become an extension of the machine."

Epilogue

The worst fear of a librarian is that knowledge will be lost, that the world will somehow see a repeat of the tragedy of the burning of the great library of Alexandria, in Egypt, by the forces of Julius Caesar in 47 B.C. The library is reputed to have had 600,000 papyrus scrolls. It had the singular collection of the world's knowledge to that point, and it all disappeared in flames.

Except even that story is hard to nail down. It may have been an entirely different building destroyed by the Romans. There are accounts of the Alexandrian library being destroyed in A.D. 273, 391 and finally in 645. The number of scrolls may have been only 40,000. The problem is, the contemporaneous accounts have been lost.

The greatest library in the world left behind virtually no data, and no one is even sure of its precise location.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Throughout this year, Washington Post staff writers will explore some of the major ideas and controversies facing humankind on the eve of the 21st century, from the degradation of the environment to the riddles of the cosmos. "It's significant that we call it the Information Age," says Librarian of Congress James Billington, shown with a rare Russian book. "We don't talk about the Knowledge Age." "We are not happy with them being on the floor," says general collection chief Steve Herman, but the Library of Congress's shelves overflow with books. John Ptak holds a vial from an 1870s homeopath, one of the hard-to-catalogue curiosities in his Georgetown science bookstore.

GRAPHIC: PH,,LUCIAN PERKINS; PH,,BILL O'LEARY; PH,,MICHAEL WILLIAMSON