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Sunday, March 31, 2002
Last night, attended the Omnibus Records showcase at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. I wasn't overly impressed, although Track Star, the headliner and only band I had heard previously, was decent. Other acts included Crime In Choir, Electro Group, The Cave Ins, and Ent, who ranged from poor to mediocre. If only I could remember which was which.
06:47 PM PST
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87% Palestinians support martyrdom operations:
Nablus- An opinion poll organized by the press department at the Najah University in Nablus yesterday revealed that majority of the Palestinian people supported martyrdom operations against Zionist occupiers.The poll that included 327 persons from various affiliations pointed out that 87.4% of them supported continuation of Palestinian martyrdom operations.
72.4% even supported expansion of those operations to cover all areas within the Zionist entity and not only in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
The poll showed that 64% also backed martyrdom operations launched by women commandos.
Another 79.5% expressed belief that the only solution to the conflict with the Zionist entity was continuation of resistance and intifada.
The poll displayed Palestinian pessimism towards future of the Middle East conflict and the American role as 64.5% objected to American envoy Anthony Zinni?s demands while 62% said that the Saudi initiative did not serve as a suitable foundation for setting the Palestine cause.
05:01 PM PST
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Saturday, March 30, 2002
Several people have remarked on the increased number of people on the web writing about Israel and the Palestinians. Count me, in. It's not that the Israeli propaganda sleeper cells have been called in to action by the "Zionist controlled American media" (although I'm sure someone's advancing that theory over at indymedia). Rather, we're fed up with suicide bombing as a political tactic and the pathological convulsions of logic which supporters use to justify it. That's why, when I see things like this, it (to use an Americanism) chaps my hide:
Question: "Is this [ed. Israeli action]a specific response to the Netanya operation?"
Arafat: "Great! All this in response to the Netanya operation?..."
Now perhaps it's just a muddled translation, but it seems like a word which might be mistakenly translated as "operation" could not also be translated as "event", or "unfortunate occurrence", or "suicide bombing". So, if Arafat calls it an "operation", then he apparently doesn't think it's an abberation. Now why should we make any effort to keep him in power?
11:39 AM PST
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Friday, March 29, 2002
I still don't get it, but I laughed:
The Institute for complex sociological researches of the Russian Academy of Sciences held a sociological poll among Russian women in 12 territorial areas of Russia, Moscow and St.Petersburg. According to the poll's results, there are four types of Russian women: "home-oriented women", "workers", "career-makers" and "desperate".
Just like anywhere!
10:29 PM PST
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I still don't understand this site, and I desperately want to!
10:25 PM PST
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Thursday, March 28, 2002
I'm never quite so pro-Israeli as when I'm reading an Edward Said anti-Israel piece:
On 8 March, hitherto the bloodiest day for Palestinians of the 16-month Intifada, CNN's main evening news specified the death of 40 "people" and failed even to mention the death of several Red Crescent workers killed while their ambulances were prevented by Israeli tanks from getting to the wounded.
This allegation would bother me more if I hadn't just recently read this at andrewsullivan.com:
Reserve soldiers at a mobile roadblock today captured a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance driver who was caught transporting an explosive belt of the type detonated by suicide bombers, Israel Radio reported. The ambulance was stopped and searched between Nablus and Ramallah, and soldiers found the explosive belt under a stretcher upon which a Palestinian boy was lying. The boy's family was with him in the ambulance. The ambulance driver, Islam Jibril, a resident of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, told interrogators he received the belt from Muhammad Titti, a senior Tanzim activist close to Palestinian Authority West Bank security chief Marwan Barghouti. The belt contained some 10 kilograms of explosives.
11:29 AM PST
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Wednesday, March 27, 2002
10:33 AM PST
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Tuesday, March 26, 2002
I was sifting through islamweb (so that you don't have to), and came across this. Most of it is standard stuff about Israel being evil, but this one caught my eye:
Did you know that despite every Israeli attempt to disrupt Palestinian education, Palestinians have the highest ratio of Ph.Ds per capita in the world?
Despite some of the other dubious facts on the page, let's assume this one is true. Then shouldn't we expect more from the Palestinian people than blown-out Sbarro's?
01:42 PM PST
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Saturday, March 23, 2002
So, I belong to an alumni email list which is primarily used for networking, etc. Today, we got this message from someone:
Subject: XXXXX-XXXXXXX I may be dead very soonWell,
Things have been pretty up and down over the last few months...right now things are very much down and I fear unless a miracle happens...I may not see any of you again after tuesday. I hope as many of you as possible can make it to my funeral...You have all been very good friends to me.
Love always,,
XXXX
I have no idea who this guy is. Then we got this follow-up email:
Thank you to all those who have shown there concern. I am sorry my last email was not very clear. Basically I am a clinically depressed, compulsive gambler dealing with financial crisis from gambling and being layed off a year ago. I don't see any ways out any more and I fear my resiliency is coming to an end. I've been reaching out to good friends and they are alot of help. I may get through this crisis, but I am not sure.
This email list probably goes to over a thousand people, and only some of them are likely to know this guy. I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I feel bad for him. On the other hand, who is he to impose this on a bunch of strangers? If I don't do anything to try and help him, is his blood on my hands now? It's the electronic equivalent of standing on the ledge of a tall building.
07:18 PM PST
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From the "You Learn Something New Everyday" file:
After noticing that not only was there a Coen brother's film, but a Simpson's episode entitled Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, I wondered the origin. My friend Schnitz pointed out that the answer was to be found at the ever-useful IMDB:
The title is taken from the title of the film the director wants to make in Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels (1942).
Shoulda known to check there.
03:12 PM PST
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Thursday, March 21, 2002
In case you don't read one of the million other sites who linked to this, here's Lileks' screed about Michael Moore. It's quite good, as Lileks usually is. I guess my anger toward Michael Moore has subsided slightly recently. Mostly, because I've decided he's a logo, like Nike or Coke. I happen to disagree with pretty much everything he says, and can't believe people think he's the average joe he markets himself as, or even that he's a friend of the average joe like he portrays, but that's not my problem. I've read so much good Moore bashing in the past week that I can't remember where it all came from.
02:07 PM PST
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An interesting article about a subject I was mostly unaware of: deaf activism. It seems so silly to me, but apparently it's got a following. The author doesn't agree with it either, as summed up in the conclusion:
But aside from the question of what the government should do, there is no reason for the news media and other cultural institutions to be deferential toward crackpot beliefs that come with the cachet of "diversity." Perhaps the best way to learn something from the Deaf Pride movement is to see it as a reductio ad ab-surdum of modern identity politics.
11:03 AM PST
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Wednesday, March 20, 2002
In a move that shows a surprising amount of stupidity, Sacramento is considering changing some of the streets downtown from one-way three lane streets to two-way one two-lane streets. Among the benefits: slower traffic. Yes, the supporters want traffic slowed down. The Bicycle Mafia claims it will benefit business:
slowing traffic in the Central City by converting a single one-way street to two-way traffic could be a boon for businesses, said Walt Seifert, executive director of Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates. Motorists who are forced to drive more slowly may notice businesses they might like to visit, he said.
Of course, how reducing the number of lanes by 1/3 affects his calculus is not stated. What it's really all about is imposing the vision of the annointed on the folks who have to work in the city and commute out of it.:
"I walk, shop and dine on J Street . . . It would be a better environment without so much traffic," she said.
In their minds, this is categorically, The Right Move, and inconveniencing countless others, moving traffic into the very neighborhoods they want to protect, and making it harder for people who don't live downtown to go there, don't seem to matter. Bicyclists have 25 other lettered streets in downtown to chose from. Any bicyclist who wants to drive down J street at rush hour is an idiot, and is asking to be culled from the herd.
04:59 PM PST
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"My client is a cyborg, not a terrorist."
I hate stealing links I saw elsewhere, but sometimes they're just too good to pass up. The above statement made by a lawyer for a Canadian professor who had troubles getting on an Air Canada flight. Read the rest for more juicy details.
stolen from opinion journal
02:19 PM PST
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Monday, March 18, 2002
An interesting interview with the man who practically invented tuple spaces! I suppose I knew that before I read the piece, but apparently I had forgotten it. Tuple space is an idea so simple that you wonder why it needed to be invented at all, but there it is. You don't have to know anything about that to read the interview. Here's a good quote:
The operative metaphor is the most important thing in technology. The idea of the desktop, the idea of the file tree, the idea of the Web site. These have been the shaping concepts--the metaphors shape the field. If they're right, the field can be shaped right. But they can be wrong, and then the field is shaped wrong. Coming up with the right image is vastly more important than the technical details.
So new metaphors--not new code, new specs, new business clients--need to be written.
(edited to add:)I guess I should note that I don't agree with him on everything, just that I thought this was a good piece.
01:06 PM PST
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Monday, March 11, 2002
I thought I had already written about this, but apparently I haven't. I thought I was an adventurous eater until a couple of months ago, when I was taken to a place called Hot Pot City. This place, and others like it, seem to be popular in the Bay Area, and I can tell you that each offer you the opportunity to try the Most Dangerous Meal in America. At each table, within reach of everyone, place a super hot grill. This is used to COOK YOUR OWN MEAT! Taking "have it your way" to the next level, these places provide you with lots of raw meat from various tasty animals in various marinades. Then you COOK YOUR OWN MEAT! Of course, this adds ample opportunity for food-borne illness, whether because you're an idiot an undercook, or because you use the same utensils for handling raw and prepared meat, or because your friend dropped a pound of uncooked chicken on top of your almost-done short ribs. Some places, such as Hot Pot City, include a cauldron in the middle of the grill, where you can make a sort of soup. It also presents the opportunity for scalding hot water to jump up and Burn Your Face. And if you manage to not get burned, or scalded--if you manage to avoid trichinosis and salmonella, then you'll be certainly forced to deal with the after effects of a distended stomach and the sense that you ate way too much meat. And if you survive all this, there's still the elevated cholesterol and blood pressure which probably take a year off of your life for one of these meals.
But boy is it good.
12:56 PM PST
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Tuesday, March 5, 2002
02:24 PM PST
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Monday, March 4, 2002
I was flipping through channels this weekend, when I came across a PBS pledge drive. Bill Moyers was on, and he was asking for money.
I approve of this. People who like PBS should give money. People who have no use for PBS, however, should not be required to give money, as they are yearly when they pay their taxes. PBS should have more pledge drives, and give me back my $2, or whatever I'm spending to keep them on the air. If they did this, I'd give the $2 to Antiques Roadshow, ensuring that future generations would be able to find out that their Victorian salt and pepper shakers said "Made in R.O.C." on the bottom, and couldn't they have checked this before they wasted my time?
What I do not approve of is Bill Moyers' elitist sanctimonious spewings about how PBS is above the fray. I don't have exactly what he said (that's why I need a Tivo), but it talked about how everything else out there catered to the lowest common denominator, and some criticism of the market. Not surprisingly, you can find lots of examples of him doing this holier-than-thou act. Apparently, Bill checks the TV lisitings every now and then and discovers things like Glutton Bowl are on and assumes that TV is a vaste wastland. And Bill must not get any of the 5,000 channels with nature shows and history shows and science and technology shows and news analysis programs (and privately funded C-SPAN) that aren't PBS. Nope. It's PBS, the lone voice in the wilderness, saving Americans from ourselves. So cut Bill a check and be thankful he lets you look at him every week.
02:25 PM PST
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Friday, March 1, 2002
If I had a band today, I'd call them Fielder's Choice.
10:06 AM PST
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