AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Saddam On Finding A Good Wife DATE: 12/31/2006 11:40:00 AM ----- BODY:

[Saddam] was particularly phobic about germs. Even top generals summoned to meet him were often ordered to strip to their underwear and their clothes were then washed, ironed and X-rayed before they could get dressed to see him ... [he] ordered mosques constructed around Baghdad on a scale not seen since it was the medieval capital of the Muslim caliphate [one] mosque held a Koran written with 28 gradually donated liters of Mr. Hussein’s blood ... Some of his former American guards ... said he acted in a fatherly way, offering advice on finding a good wife — "neither too smart nor too dumb, not too old nor too young".

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Sic Transit DATE: 12/30/2006 12:35:00 AM ----- BODY:

Prime Minister al-Maliki said in statements released Friday that those who opposed the execution of Saddam were insulting the honor of his victims. His office said he made the remarks in a meeting with families of people who died during Saddam’s rule. “Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him".

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Dolphin Mania DATE: 12/23/2006 11:26:00 PM ----- BODY:

Snaked out in a boat today past mangroves and into ocean. Was tracked by a school of dolphins swimming under the boat and jumping all around. They really do look happy. They remind me of big aquatic cats, hunting. A guy with us jumped in and tried to go swimming with them... I was waiting for a messy dolphin rape scene. Also got into University of Chicago Pritzker medical school. A good day.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Holy Vanishing Magic Foreskin Batman! DATE: 12/20/2006 09:26:00 AM ----- BODY:

Not since the Middle Ages, when lopped-off body parts of divine do-gooders were bought, sold, and traded, has relic theft been big news. But the mysterious disappearance of Calcata's beloved curio is different ... It was the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the snipped-off tip of the savior's penis, the only piece of his body he supposedly left on earth ... Some suspect the village priest sold it for a heavenly sum; others say it was stolen by thieves and ended up on the relics black market; some even suggest Satanists or neo-Nazis are responsible. But the most likely culprit is an unlikely one: the Vatican.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Back Of The Bus DATE: 12/19/2006 04:40:00 PM ----- BODY:

A woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month ... says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus ... Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined ... as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Silicon Dynasty DATE: 12/19/2006 11:23:00 AM ----- BODY:

[YouTube] Chad was also lucky to meet his future wife, Kathy Clark, at a party in 2000. Clark shared his interest in technology and in starting a family. She also turned out to be the daughter of James Clark, the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded or co-founded three billion-dollar-plus companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon. His daughter, 36, is an intensely private person ... She asked that I not reveal the names of the kids. Kathy and Chad have never before publicly discussed her father's identity. Their reluctance is understandable: Jim Clark is one of the valley's most revered figures, and because he runs a media-sharing website—Shutterfly, founded in 1999—it would be tempting to think he was the real force behind the video-sharing site his son-in-law was starting.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Little Miss Moonshine DATE: 12/19/2006 11:03:00 AM ----- BODY:

The Miss Universe Organization, owned by Trump and NBC, scheduled a news conference Tuesday to discuss Miss USA Tara Conner, who has come under fire amid reports she has visited bars, though she is not yet 21 ... Conner, a 5-foot-5 blonde, has been competing in pageants since age 4 ... "I am an easygoing, down-to-earth girl ... Throughout my life, hardships and different experiences have made me a very humbled, yet strong individual. It is because of these life lessons that I have become the person I am today."

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Democracy Is So Messy DATE: 12/19/2006 10:47:00 AM ----- BODY:

Violence has flared since Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday called for new elections, a move the Hamas-led government branded a "coup" ... While Fatah ... controls the presidency, Hamas, which won elections in January, runs the government. Fighting between the factions has paralysed Hamas' administration, which has also been crippled by an international embargo against it. Hamas refuses to renounce violence or recognise Israel - a crucial demand of the international community.

Tony Blair, visiting the West Bank on Monday, declared, "If the international community really means what it says about supporting people who share the vision of a two-state solution, who are moderate, who are prepared to shoulder their responsibilities, then now is the time for the international community to respond."

After talks with Mr Blair, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said "everything should be done" to strengthen the PA leader.

Gunmen opened fire on the convoy of the [Hamas] Palestinian foreign minister ... in the tense aftermath of President Mahmoud Abbas's call for early elections. Hours later a mortar attack on the presidential compound in the Gaza Strip wounded five people and a Palestinian civilian was killed in running gun battles.

[Foreign Minister] Zahar, a surgeon by training, is a Hamas hard-liner whom the Israeli government has tried to assassinate ... For much of the past week, the armed wings of Fatah and Hamas have engaged in reprisal killings following the fatal shooting of the three young sons of a [Fatah] senior Palestinian intelligence officer ... On Thursday evening, gunmen attacked the convoy of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding his son, a political adviser and others.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: K-9! DATE: 12/18/2006 06:51:00 PM ----- BODY:

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Cannibal Nostalgia DATE: 12/14/2006 02:25:00 PM ----- BODY:

Knight, who had worked as a meat slicer in abattoirs, skinned Price with such expertise and a steady hand that his skin, including that of his head, face, nose, ears, neck, torso, genital organs, and legs, was removed to form one pelt. "The excised parts of Mr. Price were then taken to the kitchen and at some stage, after she peeled and prepared various vegetables, she cooked Mr. Price's head in a large pot with a number of vegetables she had prepared so as to produce a sickening stew," he told the court. "The gruesome steaks were then arranged on plates together with the vegetables which she had baked and left as meals for the son and daughter of the deceased accompanied by vindictive notes."

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: I Concur Not DATE: 12/14/2006 12:45:00 PM ----- BODY:

Med school matriculation has been artificially held steady "to keep down competition between doctors", that's also a load of crap Medical School Accepted Applicants 1992-2001

1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001
17,465	17,361	17,318	17,357	17,385	17,313	17,373	17,421	17,536	17,456

Total change: -.5% Medical School Matriculants, 1995-2006

1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
16,252	16,201	16,164	16,170	16,221	16,301	16,365	16,488	16,541	16,648	17,003	17,370

Total change: +2.5% Notice that without the grudging increase in 2005/2006, the net increase in medical school enrollments since 1991 would be essentially zero. What effects does this have? As the US health industry expands, it must suck in more and more foreign medical graduates. This is one of the reasons why the ratio of doctors to population is so low in many countries - a huge proportion of their graduates emigrate to the US. These countries therefore see little incentive to expand spending on educating medical staff because of the high probability that they will simply leave, taking their training elsewhere. The US thus effectively off-books a huge education budget, often shifting the burden onto the poorest countries of the world. As regards continuity of care, this is of course important. But medical journals are now increasingly full of studies analyzing at what point sleep deprivation tends to kill and injure more patients through physician error and lack of empathy than errors introduced through shift handover. And there is the problem of the high mortality and injury rate among interns and residents from vehicular accidents and workplace incidents. I have yet to see many convincing papers that demonstrate that EU interns and residents kill more patients because of increased transfer rates due to their work hours being fixed at a much lower threshold than US interns and residents. Ideally, these are currently 58 hours per week max, and no more than 11 hours per day. One effect of implementing the new short hours (decreasing to 48 hours in 2009-20012) is a committment to a proportionate expansion in matriculating doctors. The Nordic countries have long exceeded these restrictions with much shorter hours-per-week and maximum shift hours. Maybe someone can find out how this affects patient mortality and outcomes?

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Our Snippy 21st Century DATE: 12/14/2006 08:45:00 AM ----- BODY:

Circumcision appears to reduce a man’s risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half, United States government health officials said yesterday, and the directors of the two largest funds for fighting the disease said they would consider paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Pom Pom Pushers DATE: 12/13/2006 10:00:00 AM ----- BODY:

Cassie Napier had all the right moves - flips, tumbles, an ever-flashing America's sweetheart smile - to prepare [to be] a drug saleswoman. Ms. Napier, 26, was a star cheerleader ... a springboard for many careers in pharmaceutical sales. She now plies doctors' offices selling the antacid Prevacid ... Known for their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm, cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Halo Tarnished DATE: 12/12/2006 03:02:00 PM ----- BODY:

Apple's iTunes has experienced a collapse in sales revenues this year according to analyst company Forrester Research ... since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent. The previous spring's rebound wasn't repeated this year ... Nielsen Soundscan has grimmer news for prospective digital download services, indicating three consecutive quarters of flat or declining revenues for the sector as a whole ... Forrester revealed some fascinating details about iTunes purchasing habits. Some 3.2 per cent of online households (around 60 per cent of the wider population) bought at least one download, and these dabblers made on average 5.6 transactions, with the median household making just three a year. The median transaction was slightly under $3.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Tofu Shirt Lifters DATE: 12/12/2006 02:02:00 PM ----- BODY:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: How to be a Cyber-Lovah DATE: 12/12/2006 10:05:00 AM ----- BODY:

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Democracy On The March DATE: 12/11/2006 12:04:00 PM ----- BODY:

Hezbollah and its allies turned out the biggest crowds yet in downtown Beirut, sending hundreds of thousands of followers to the gates of the government headquarters Sunday ... The crisis, Lebanon's worst since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990, has relentlessly deepened since it erupted in October with the demand by Hezbollah and its allies for a greater say in Siniora's cabinet.

The pounding of martial music and the roaring din of the excited crowd floated up a nearby hill to pierce the thick walls of the stately government building, the Grand Serail, as the prime minister, Fouad Siniora, entered a ceremonial room for a news conference. “I don’t understand what is this great cause that is making them create this tense political mess and stage open-ended demonstrations”.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Death Junkies DATE: 12/11/2006 11:43:00 AM ----- BODY:

It's been 70 years since executions in the United States were open to the public. But in Virginia, there is always someone watching ... Virginia has enlisted hundreds of volunteers for the task [and can] maintain a rotating list of about 20 to 30 volunteers, although only six are required to witness each execution. Some come only once. Others repeatedly return. One man, a paint store salesman from Emporia, has seen 15 men executed.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Inside Track DATE: 12/11/2006 08:40:00 AM ----- BODY:

The rate of insider stock sales by company directors on both sides of the Atlantic is the highest since records began 20 years ago, with sales outnumbering purchases by 60:1.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Google Pages DATE: 12/11/2006 08:21:00 AM ----- BODY:

1997 called, it wants its page designer back...

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Dollars and Sense DATE: 12/10/2006 11:15:00 AM ----- BODY:

I listened to this amazing conversation between a person who was quoted a price in cents/kilobyte, and several Verizon representatives, all of whom are so addled by reliance on their computer screens that they are unable to grasp that they are mis-quoting a price by one hundredfold by failing to convert between dollars and cents. Then it got me thinking about why they should find it so difficult to multiply and divide by 100. It's not that that can't perform the trivial arithmetical calculations, it's just that they experience a cognitive disconnect linking this operation with their intuition about how much something should cost. What we call "numbers" are in fact two different things: symbols that we manipulate using mechanical and representative operations (in this case, rational numbers or fractions that are ratios of two integers), and sensations relating to collections or volumes of objects that we intuitively experience and comprehend using body knowledge and experiential memories. Why should it be so difficult for these Verizon people, all apparently USians, to handle such a simple operation as taking powers of ten? I think it's to do with a lack of basic Metric education in the US. It seems obvious to me that in a culture where Metric conversion techniques are not routinely taught to schoolchildren, then the casual manipulation of powers of ten and powers of a hundred must become (when compared to other cultures) significantly less easy, common and apparently mind-numbingly abstruse and esoteric for a significant proportion of adults. The unusual resistance of the U.S. to Metrication is both a symptom of and a driver of adult innumeracy. Metric instills a basic intuition about powers of ten and orders of magnitude. Or at least, it will tend to, relative to indifferently scaled arbitrary measurements. Once you build this mental framework, it can be easily integrated into novel experiential learning. I am unfortunately old enough to have begun primary school in a country using Imperial measurements that then switched to Metric. I can still recall being taught arithmetic as a young child, and being shown how to convert between ounces and pounds, and pounds and stone. That sucked, and made no sense. Being indoctrinated into Metric within a few years reduced my cognitive load apppreciably, while enlarging my ability to estimate weights and measures. By exposing children to tanglible object weights such as 1g, 10g, 100g, 500g, 1kg, 5 kg and so on, one forms a consistent appreciation of mass. The same is true of learning distance. I had to re-take basic physics and chemistry in a US university recently. I was quite shocked at how a significant proportion of the students had little conception of how much 1 ml was, or 10g, or 1m. It makes them even less able to relate the scientific measurements they read about and note down in lab to their own experience. Seriously, it's a problem. Many of them had less cognitive ability to deal with weights and measures than a typical 10-year-old European child. USians now have the worst of both worlds: thanks to globalisation, pretty much all their commodities now carry measurements in grams and litres, but they are not really taught how to think Metric in school and so have little idea of how to work with them. Powers of ten make life easier. I now saying that being taught Metric would have avoided this Verizon arithmetic abortion, but I think it might have increased the probability of finding a rep who got it. Some might say that the basic reason for the communication disconnect is that dollars and cents are "different", but I think comment in and of itself betrays a lack of Metric education. I think the problem is that the Verizon people were incapable of intuiting on a fundamental level that the two are in fact the same thing, currency, but that the $ sign is a 100x multiplier of the ¢ unit. Or that the ¢ sign is a 100 divider of the $ unit. As a pedagogy, Metric is based on the idea of as few fundamental units as possible, and everything else being created through powers of ten. It simplifies peoples' cognitive grasp of the physical basis of their commoditised world, of how things are sliced and diced. I feel that is why, in the Verizon conversation, when the caller attempts to extend through analogy dollars and cents to metres and centimetres, it seems as if he may as well have been talking Etruscan to the representative. As a measurement system, Metric helps people intuitively grasp that a centimetre is 100th of a metre. That a millimetre is 1000th of a metre. That a mL is 1000th of a litre. That a 1 cm³ cube of water (1cm each side) is a cubic centimetre, or cc, which weighs 1 gram and, were it to absorb 1 Calorie of energy, will exhibit a temperature increase of 1 Celsius. That a half-litre (a common unit of beer) is 500 mLs. Volume, length, and mass become inter-related linearly. A cent of something becomes immediately understandable as a 100th fraction of that something. Children are not taught to perform the same arithmetic with Imperial, so they do not gain early cognitive maps of powers of ten, and linear/log scaling. This kind of linearity is how people experience matter in their daily lives: acceleration, momentum/inertia, impulse, etc. When experienced daily, Metric becomes not just an isolated abstraction as it is in the US (a slightly exotic measurement system used in specialised disciplines and for large soda containers), but instead woven into the fabric of experience through body and hand knowledge. It builds a communicative bridge between people in similar and even distant cultures. Try interconverting between ounces and pounds, through a volume measurement, into lengths. Most people have very little idea. I know I couldn't do it without a calculator. My wife, an American, even seems to have trouble occasionally identifying how many ounces are in a pound. 14 or 16? It all gets a little hazy even between people speaking "Imperial". In terms of communication, as well as being forced to learn a new language, USians now increasingly have to learn to speak different measurement languages anywhere outside the US. Even in former English-speaking Imperial holdouts such as Ireland and the UK, with all road signs being replaced as km, and all measurements (except, for now, the sacred pint) replaced as litres, communication has become slightly more complex. I recall reading a National Geographic with my little nephew (8), when he had to stop me to ask what the "strange numbers" were (F and lb). Because of the external push of globalisation and standardised measures, and the internal push of people anxious to understand what the hell a "Celsius" is anyway, the US will eventually go Metric. But just as we see today, it will happen slowly, haltingly, and in a piecemeal and arbitrary fashion... creating anxiety and mis-communication as it progresses. As a side note, upon reading the message on reddit, I immediately called the supervisor. The number was "not in service".

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Cognitive Dissonance DATE: 12/08/2006 12:56:00 PM ----- BODY:

[US] Lawmakers, several of whom enjoy a good cigar, have exempted themselves from [Washington DC]'s smoking ban ... "I don't really smoke," said Rep. Ben Chandler, a Democrat from the tobacco state of Kentucky, as he blew smoke rings from a cigar in the Speaker's Lobby earlier this week.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Superscript Trickery DATE: 12/08/2006 09:06:00 AM ----- BODY:

^{I^{h^{a^{d^{n^{o^{i^{d^{e^{a^{y^{o^{u^{c^{o^{u^{l^{d^{d^{o^{t^{h^{i^s}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}_{B_{r_{i_{l_{l_{i_{a_{n_{t_{_!}}}}}}}}}}

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: A God Of Full Bellies, And Cakes DATE: 12/07/2006 02:18:00 PM ----- BODY:

These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapae, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes ... Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity, and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. See their love-feasts, and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them, and causes a contempt for our gods.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Know Your Enemy DATE: 12/07/2006 09:12:00 AM ----- BODY:

Out of 1,000 people who work at the U.S. embassy in Iraq, only six can speak Arabic fluently.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: V DATE: 12/07/2006 09:00:00 AM ----- BODY:

I saw this clever bit of HTML formatting:

Voilà! In                                                       view, a humble
 vaudevillian                                                  veteran, cast 
  vicariously as both                                         victim and
   villain by the                                            vicissitudes of Fate. This 
    visage, no mere                                         veneer of
     vanity, is a                                          vestige of the
      vox populi, now                                     vacant,
       vanished, as the once                             vital
        voice of the                                    verisimilitude now
         venerates what they once                      vilified. However, this 
          valorous                                    visitation of a bygone
           vexation stands                           vivified, and has
            vowed to                                vanquish these 
             venal and                             virulent                   
              vermin                              vanguarding
               vice and                          vouchsafing the
                violently                       vicious and
                 voracious                     violation of
                  volition. The only          verdict is 
                   vengeance; a              vendetta held as a 
                    votive, not in          vain, for the
                     value and             veracity of such shall one day
                      vindicate the       vigilant and the
                       virtuous.         Verily, this 
                        vichyssoise of  verbiage 
                         veers most    verbose
                          vis-à-vis an introduction,
                           and so it is my
                            very good honor
                             to meet you
                              and you may
                               call me
                                  V.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Chicken Little DATE: 12/05/2006 10:25:00 PM ----- BODY:

2003-03-29, I read about the ferocious Battle of Nasiriya and knew from some of its details that there could be no real victory for the US/UK invasion forces. I wrote

Nasiriya was ugly, and it's far from secure. Destroying several hundred civilian homes and dropping cluster bombs indiscriminately did not quell the guerilla resistance or cause the populace to expel their fighters. This illustrates the poverty of the assumption that removing key Baathist leaders will lead to a quick cessation of partisan resistance against the US/UK invaders.

Today I read that, apparently, Nasiriya demonstrated to at least one other person that the Iraq enterprise was a doomed folly.

If the details of what happened at Nasiriya had been gathered, recognized and analyzed more soberly early on, instead of trampled on in a rush of triumphalism, coalition forces might have learned useful lessons for the reconstruction of Iraq: the limits of military power, the importance of a proper understanding of the complexity of a place and its people, the perils of underestimating an enemy ... The battle of Nasiriya taught that there was, contrary to first appearances, no simple route to Baghdad. It should also serve to remind those in Washington that there will be no simple route out of it.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Age Of Plastics DATE: 12/03/2006 07:03:00 PM ----- BODY:

Poly Styrene/X-Ray Spex's Conscious Consumer album is classic. Junk Food Junkie is a lot of fun. You could also that The Day The World Turned Day Glo is about the age of plastics. The tubes also have Identity as well.

----- -------- AUTHOR: Mike TITLE: Delusional Aspirationalism DATE: 12/03/2006 11:51:00 AM ----- BODY:

Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and a business strategist based in Marin County, California, goes even further. "Squatter cities are ‘vibrant," he writes in a recent article on megacities. "Each narrow street is one long bustling market." He sees in the explosive growth of "aspirational shanty towns" a cure for Third World poverty and an extraordinary profit— making opportunity. "How does all this relate to business people in the developed world?" Brand asks. "One-fourth of humanity trying new things in new cities is a lot of potential customers, collaborators, and competitors."

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