There’s Still Nothing Better
Sliced bread is 75 years old. And if it’s Wonder™, it’s probably still fresh. (via Manic, at Bloggerheads.)

Nothing Better to Do
What, exactly, is wrong with George II? I understand why his cowardice would exhibit itself by perpetuating the terror threat and perpetrating illegal warfare (he is a failed oilman, after all, whose self-worth is based at least in part on legitimizing his father’s term in office and portraying himself as a capable businessman), but why is he so afraid of homosexuals? On the other hand, because this is being proposed as a Constitutional amendment, it’s unlikely to pass.

Update: Making abstinence the primary focus of AIDS prevention further demonstrates our idiot president's homophobia, as it suggests that gays wouldn't contract HIV if they weren't gay, a result that could be achieved by not having sex.

SPF 30+
I have my doubts about going out in the summer without a hat and “sunnies” this year, but NASA’s telling me the ozone hole’s getting smaller. Well, it’s not getting bigger at the same rate, anyway. While the reduction in the use of CFCs is being credited, scientists are also indicating that the rise of greenhouse gases may also be acting to restore the ozone layer. So it’s getting hotter and less breathable, but we’re better protected from UV rays? That’s not a viable trade-off to me. Maybe if more people signed up with Skyfish and signed the recognition of responsibility, we’d get some action around here. Maybe a few more First World nations could sign the Kyoto Accords, too.

Lobbying to Prevent Change
It is simply a part of doing business that corporations will form or ally themselves with lobbying groups to push forward their agenda by influencing legislators to protect entrenched practices even in the face of public opposition. As we witness giant mergers taking place year after year, we also see these business giants becoming increasingly dominant in society, to the point where they wield a measure of influence comparable to small countries. They ensure their position by campaign finance programs so that short-sighted politicians act on their behalf. Even before the events of September 11, legislation was sought in the Senate – sponsored by Jesse Helms – to enshrine animal experimentation in law. That effort pretty much died in committee, but a new effort is underway by the American Legislative Exchange Council: the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, a measure by all indications even more draconian than the USA Patriot Act. This time the campaign appears to be more insidious, not only because ALEC has a pretty good lobbying record at getting bills voted on, but also in that their efforts are being directed toward the States, effectively bypassing the national news sources (as well as providing the federal government with the appearance of a national public-based groundswell). Texas and New York have already introduced bills modelled on ALEC’s proposal, and there are indications other States legislators are interested in seeing a positive outcome. It appears patently unconstitutional to me, as – using language from the Texas bill – defining an animal rights group as “two or more persons organized for the purpose of supporting any politically motivated activity intended to obstruct or deter any person from participating in an activity involving animals or... natural resources” would seem to violate the Bill of Rights’ protection of free association. And making out such a group to be terrorists is exploitive of the climate of fear the Bush Administration has sought to impose on the country. Organizations such as Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front have been reported as having acted in a manner classifiable as criminal under existing statutes, but laws as broadly written as this could put you in jeopardy for signing a World Wildlife Fund petition. While the political focus is on Washington for the most part, State legislation like this can make progress. I usually feel I can rely on the courts to ensure such acts do not last on the books, but while they are there, they can do more damage to our freedoms and to our progress as thoughtful, caring beings with a commitment to the environment and to ethical behavior than is often realized. Keep an eye on these people: they’re dangerous.

Flash Animation
I use the term “Flash” both in the Registered Trademark sense and the Britishism denoting something as particularly notable in a stylish fashion. Samorost is an animated on-line game, in which you attempt to save the character’s planet (or whatever) from destruction by a blithe group of tea-pickers (whose foreman is a Fred Schneider look-alike stoned caterpillar). You’ve got to mouse around to find the click-points, sort of like Myst, and then figure out how to make things work the way you want them to. Hours of fun for those with broadband.

Reforestation
Plant a tree on Kangaroo Island. You’ll need 99 friends to join you (NEC plants one tree for every 100 “leaves” posted). Ecological, but.

If Man Was Meant to Fly . . .
He’d have a flying suit. Add this to the list of superhero clothes: imagine swooping down like Daredevil from a rooftop you ascended like Spiderman, but with more control, and zapping your opponent at a touch, and he or she never even saw you coming. Yea!

Update: Did I say Daredevil? I meant Crossfire.

The View from Here
I’ve only worked in 6 different buildings in NYC and most were more often characterized by the lack of a view than an inspiring or panoramic vista as the movies would have you believe. That had as much to do with being located on lower floors than were available as it did with the close proximity of other, larger buildings blocking the windows from across the street. When I worked at 140 Broadway, the view was of apartments across Liberty Street – entertaining in its way, especially early in the morning, when residents were still at home. At Scholastic, in Soho, we had a dance studio across the way, the one used in Center Stage during an especially egregious scene involving what looks more like aerobics than modern dance, but also there was a rooftop garden, which later figured in providing the single most indelible witnessing of my tenure in that city. The World Trade Center offered extensive views of the Jersey shoreline swamps and petroleum processing stations, but also the Tappen Zee bridge on especially clear days and clouds at your feet some rainy mornings. It was also the most unobstructed view I ever had, although that sometimes made it somehow less interesting than those with some art deco monolith in the way, such as when I worked at Chase Plaza, just off Wall Street. One view I never had was the kind I get now: trees. And birds. (The birds are a bit of a worry sometimes, as they’ll get pretty noisy, and it can sound like you’re in a Tarzan movie as a result – except for the kookaburras, which sound like nothing else.) Now that I live in a country where deciduous trees are the exception, I get lush verdure all year ‘round, admittedly as a result of being out in the suburbs in a landscaped industrial park (not the prettiest one I’ve ever seen, which was about an hour north of Atlanta, Georgia, where office blocks towered up from the edges of heavily wooded State Park land). My preference is for the dynamism of the city, and even more for a view of the water. Unlike NYC’s harbor, Sydney’s is dominated by the Bridge, and pictures don’t do it justice. Yesterday morning, running down the last stretch of Macquarie Street onto the Opera House plaza, the Harbour Bridge’s arc ended in a bit of obscuring cloud tinged pink with the sunrise. As massive as the structure is, it’s like a frame to the Harbour (always capitalized), one of those heavy, ornate frames you’ll see appearing to swallow up an impressionist painting, except that, as with the painting, the frame removes itself from conscious perception without actually disappearing, thereby setting the painting off from all else around it. For such a simple seeming structure, the Harbour Bridge is a visionary piece of architecture, imposing without being an imposition. Perhaps it is a function of life in Sydney that I should find myself mediating on a job change just to get closer to the Harbour; something to explore later.

Etymology & Anthropology
People have been asking me for years what my last name means in the original German, and I have never had a clue. Well, we always thought the first syllable means “old” or “other,” but since I don’t speak German and never met anyone who does – funny, isn’t it? – there was no way to be sure. Vitalog is a compendium of names that allows you to search for the meaning of your surname. Mine, of course, remains obscure, but there are at least hints toward a meaning, the first syllable potentially being a prefix used to designate the younger of two persons otherwise similar, and the last two being German for “plowman.” I admit to hoping for better.

Is It Drafty in Here?
I suppose that since open criticism of Bush II’s Imperium is cause for disciplinary action (but probably not discharge) in the military, plans to increase the size of the standing armed forces shouldn’t be unexpected. I am admittedly somewhat torn in my sympathies for those who are presently in the National Guard (some I know joined specifically because they needed the extra paycheck, but didn’t they have to know it could come to this?), but I am grinding my teeth to nubs over the prospect of Bush’s oil greed getting the U.S. in so deep that we have to return to the draft. I may not be the only one thinking this way.

Afro-Beat King
The Times has always loved Fela, so it’s no wonder they make such a point of reporting on the latest exhibit at the New Museum, “Black President.” I remember reading about him in the Times long before I actually found any of his music. I got to see him perform only once; although concerts were scheduled more often than you’d expect, the Nigerian government would toss him in jail or deny exit visas to his wives or band members, so I count myself lucky. In the two hours of that one concert, I think he played maybe five songs, an example of one of the things I love most about the music: he never gave up on a swinging groove. Hypnotic isn’t descriptive enough; Fela’s music is compelling.

Eulogy
John Clayton, M.’s grandfather, died on Saturday morning. We had been warned by his doctors that it could happen soon, but they also said he could last for months, even a year, and we thought we’d have more time, and weren’t really prepared. I don’t suppose anyone ever is. John and M. were very close; he’d been the most stable and reliably present grown-up male in her life, and they’d doted on one another. I only got to spend time with him on visits out to Windsor over these last eight months or so, and didn’t get to hear half the stories he’d have had to tell: his childhood in Burma, which his family left when we was still little, fleeing the Japanese invasion prior to World War II; his years driving taxis on the Central Coast. . . . There’d have been more, besides. He was a bit of a rake in his day, sporting an Elvis pompadour and getting in a little trouble here and there as a young man. Like many Australians, his love for sports had its particular focal points, not least being horse racing, but also Aussie Rules. The night he died, his team, the Sydney Swans, trounced St. Kilda. The first half would have been an anxious one for him, as the score was pretty tight, but the second would have been very satisfying, as the Saints never got close to the spread again. It’s silly, but it’s sort of comforting that it worked out that way. Rest in Peace, Johnny.

Art of Noise
Album cover graphics have long been at the pinnacle of effective marketing techniques, and the better the art, the better the music. Well that’s one idea. Sometimes, the opposite holds true. But album covers have been more than just songs-and-sidemen listings, with multitudes of coffee-table books for sale and web sites devoted to them. CDs spoiled all that, although there are hints of a come-back, now that digital manipulations are making even the small-scale glossies in the jewel boxes more distinct and more distinctive. I’m trying to think of a new CD I’ve purchased where the cover art wouldn’t be improved by being a square foot of cardboard, and only Sigur Ros’s ( ) comes to mind. Exit Art, in Soho, NYC, had a show devoted to album covers, and covered not only history but an entire aesthetic range as well, and it was worth attending, so I’ll recommend the show at Punch, in San Francisco, sight unseen.

I Got the Music in Me
You are what you listen to according to researchers at the University of Texas. Well, I’m no fan of Jennifer Lopez and don’t think I’ve ever heard Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, but they all sound a bit like newspaper horoscope analyses to me anyway.

Mob
A bit more information on the Insta-Mob phenomenon. “Bill” sounds like a clever and sociable person, but I need 150 people to run an event of my own, plus a couple of digital camcorders. I probably should have a collaborator experienced in such things, too. And more friends. Cheese Bikini, where the group is referred to as a “Flash Mob,” cribbing from science fiction author Larry Niven, has transcripts of the invitations, and photos of Mob 3. (See also The Official Record.)

Can’t You See I’m Winning?
The Horn & Hardart Automat was a wonderful place, although my experience of them was brief and very late in the game. Steve Stollman’s collection of information and images of those dining facilities is a nice little resource, whether your interest is in recipes, getting the parts to build one, or just nostalgia, and, hey, I think that’s my dad getting some pie in that picture! (Thanks to Lester Norton, a.k.a. Solonor Rasreth, at Solonor’s Ink Well, where you can also see the joke referred to in the title here.)

Free Speech Zone
Following Lester Norton’s lead, I’m declaring this ‘blog as a Free Speech Zone. It’s stupid, I know, but John Ashcroft is the devil’s minion and I support the right of every American to speak in public on whatever issue they choose wherever they choose. We don’t need no Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner, this is America, baby! Free Brett Bursey! Maybe it’ll become a trend.

Rendering Unto Caesar
I’ve spent hours working over the forms and reading the instructions and after ranging from a whopping tax bill to a whoo-hoo refund and everything in between, it looks like Australia’s gonna owe me a nice bit of dough, which result I’ve come to after loading up the e-tax software, stepping through all the questions, filling in all the fields, and letting the program figure it out for me, which is the second best part of using the software (because I don’t actually have to do math). The third best part is that they pay within 3 weeks of filing. I’ll bet the IRS can’t beat that.

Meta
My Five is a ‘blog content project not unlike the Friday Five, except that it’s more open-ended regarding when you post, it updates on Mondays, and it isn’t topical. Instead, you’re only required to use the five suggested words in a single post. I think this may be a little more creative than the Friday Five, since my habits of a given week generally lead to enough posts that I’m not at a loss for material, even if I only reflect on some news item, or someone else’s ‘blog – which may be very boring for some, sorry – so I like the challenge, like the one presented to Ravel, that he use a single strand of melody to construct a symphonic composition, and which produced the “Bolero.” (Got ‘em.) (Found at Witty Banter.)

The Nigerian Banking Fraud Email Scam
I’ve only gotten one email of this kind, although people I know have had dozens. They are beyond belief, as is that anyone would fall for one. On the other hand, recent revelations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq suggest there’s a patsy in the White House, just waiting to be bilked. (Eschaton, via Kenneth Miles, the Unaustralian.)

Partially Hydrogenated
The latest development in the food wars is the FDA’s requirement that nutrition labels include information on trans fats, which are the result of processing vegetable oils in such a way as to increase their self-life. I can see this affecting the fast food fat fight. McDonald’s, for example, uses partially hydrogenated vegetable oil to cook its fries (when it isn’t using lard, a practice they only recently stopped following a Hindu class action lawsuit), although just last year they announced they would use a trans fat-free oil instead, indicating to me at least that they saw the writing on the wall. I remained in blissful ignorance of these issues for many years, unlike most vegetarians and vegans. I still don’t particularly care personally, but I do see these developments as positive in the long-term overall. Meanwhile, if you read the labels carefully, you don’t have to wait until 2006 to find the trans fats.

Watching the Watchers
The events of September 11 were not only horrifying, they were frightening, and one group that became very frightened indeed is the politically incestuous elite presently holding office in the White House. George Bush was so severely affected that he now regards everyone in the world as a potential threat to his continued wealth and ability to hold power. This is a problem for America and the world because even before that day, Bush had gathered around himself a group of political extremists fully prepared to put into effect any measures they could conceive of to ensure their own participation and pre-eminence in the power and wealth structure the Bush administration promised. It is in the nature of the military and intelligence organizations that act as the enforcement arms of American policy that they should ensure the continued well-being of the administration regardless of their overall political tenor. The Pentagon and CIA will act according to whatever restraints or lack thereof is established by the liberalism or conservatism of the Executive in office. It is also in the nature of these branches of government that they should seek to maintain the level of public funding to which they are accustomed, and this is done the same way it is in any enterprise: by spending as much or more of any budget as possible. Spending money justifies spending more. If the expenditures exceed the budget, then the following fiscal period’s budget must need to be increased. If funding increases, spending will rise to meet it. George Bush’s fear and the military’s compulsion to justify their existence and spending levels meet in CTS, the Combat Zones That See technology currently under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and which is discussed in an admittedly hyperbolic article in the Village Voice. It’s probably too late, but cowards like Bush don’t belong in the Oval Office, because they will make things worse instead of better.

Happenings Happening
They’re called Insta-mobs these days, but they sound like happenings to me. A little planning and an SMS/email list of willing participants is all that appears to be needed to create these performance pieces. Sydney artists may want to check in with Flocksmart.com, although it appears they need some encouragement towards an international resourcing commitment. (Via Arts Journal.com.)

As Lovely as a Tree
There is a Literature Nobel waiting for the author of Wocky Jivvy. Excuse me while I set out to write the next winning entry for the Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest. (Via Making Light.)

Consumerism
Which do I buy first, the CD or the book?

Love It or Leave It
I’ve been seeing a bit about America in the various journals and weblogs I read, and it prompts some amount of reflection on my part as well. I am, after all, living in a different country than I was born in without being an ex-pat or an exile. I don’t regard myself particularly as an immigrant either, if only because I do not intend to relinquish my citizenship. I moved to a country where I already spoke the language and arrived with a work permit – how lucky is that? When I was travelling up to Connecticut for work, I’d see a dozen or so Mexican or South American itinerants on a dozen or so various street corners waiting to be selected for a day’s labor, a common enough sight across the U.S. The English available to those men or to the shopkeepers in Queens and elsewhere is limited, and how many across the country have sufficient Spanish or Korean to make a conversation? Across Europe, though, how many have enough Turkish or Ibo to speak to the laborers who come to live in those countries? Arabic may be a common linguistic currency among the Arab nations, but I seriously question how far that will get anyone below a certain level of privilege and the education that comes with it. Koranic instruction in a madrassa will only get you so far, if you even manage that much. And how many of these immigrant laborers actually have government-issued visas? In Germany, France, and Britain you can read in the papers about the trials and discrimination against immigrants that sometimes erupt into violence. The same thing happens in the U.S. It happens in Australia, too. When it happens anywhere, there is an outcry, and rightly so. When it happens in the U.S. there’s an outcry everywhere. Fair enough, because the U.S. touts its tolerance, it’s welcome to immigrants, its status as the best place on earth. I sometimes think the other Western nations do a better job, except of course for the National Front and the Holocaust deniers, both of whom have their incarnations in the States, but who have an easier time being heard in Europe, just as the Islamofascists apparently do in the Middle East and Indonesia. Certainly the U.S. stands as a paradise compared to Africa and South America, and much of the South Pacific is incapable of sustaining itself as fully functioning nations. Yes, the President of my country is an idiot and his administration is intent upon enriching a selected few (I didn’t vote for him, really, and I won’t when he stands for re-election either), but look at some of the other world leaders and tell me you don’t have any complaints. The days of “love it or leave it” are long past, or should be, so I worry when I see abusive legislation like the US Patriots Act, especially when I don’t feel I can entirely trust the Supreme Court. Similarly, it concerns me when I see ASIO get expanded powers of arrest and detention, here in Australia, especially when the treatment of immigrants, refugees among them, is so troubling. Whether it’s John Ashcroft of Phillip Ruddock, I’m concerned by what I see. But again, I’m lucky. I’m a citizen of a country where I am free to speak out, to gather with like-minded others and to speak collectively, and I live in another country where I have the same rights, among people who act on those rights, just as they do in the country I left. There are surveillance cameras everywhere – in Sydney, New York, Hamburg, Glasgow . . . – and there are city leaders who deny permits to protest marchers, employing police to contain rallies, subjecting Nobel Prize winners to house arrest, but in the nations of the West, that isn’t the end of the story. We all focus on the negative events, and we should – eternal vigilance, remember – but we should also remember and hold firmly to the principles that make up our freedoms and those that allow us to enshrine them. Laws are made by people; they do not exist separately from us in some distinct, ethereal sphere. The Rule of Law is a collective agreement, and it’s a good one, but only insofar as the laws are also good. That’s why Constitutional amendments banning flag desecration or Gay marriage are so offensive. That the U.S. Constitution is drawn broadly enough to allow such amendments is dangerous only insofar as there are those who would abuse the Rule of Law to impose their own limited scope of vision out of selfishness – that’s tyranny, the other kind of Rule of Law. But Prohibition was repealed, and the amendments necessary to ensure civil rights for all still stand. Look, it’s not perfect. I can’t point to a single government or system that is. Compulsory voting sounds good, and maybe it mostly works; there are as many systems as there are democratic governments. Parliaments and Prime Ministers seem to manage to get things done (or not) just as much as the U.S. Congress and President. At the time, back in 1776, America was ruled from overseas by a government not significantly different from that of any other European power. Jefferson and Adams and Franklin and the rest sought to supply a better option, a “more perfect union.” A lot of other countries followed suit over the ensuing decades, either by evolution or by revolution and we’ve been making improvements ever since, not without mistakes, but not without progress either. It’s when the errors are born of hubris that we stumble worst, just like anybody else.

Meta
I note that Rana has added us to her list of Fellow Travellers, a gratifying development. And I’m going to try that method of dosing the cat. (I think only sweaters take a verb form of "pill," and as for bathing her, my preferred method – other than letting the beast do it herself – is to get a pack of “cat wipes” and rub her down. It becomes a battle for supremacy, but I’ll take the hits.)

Hamburglars
Is Fast Food addictive? If it is, I suppose there’s an argument to be made that the burger mills bear some measure of responsibility for making you fat, but what’s the difference between fast food and short order cooking? Should Jacques Pepin pull his cloche down over his face like a balaclava and run for cover? (Probably not, as it’s the deep pockets that get targeted in these situations, and Michelin stars aren’t enough of a portfolio to get you in trouble just yet.) Food is essential. We can’t get by on vitamin pills and space sticks. Butter and eggs are just ingredients, of course, and from the range of products, soy has pretty much supplanted most meat and dairy food items quite successfully. Well, maybe not so much dairy, but it’s getting there. But the lawsuits are moving ahead, attempting to assign blame the way the anti-smoking suits did. The difference I see is that the cigarette companies spent years denying and hiding the truth about their products: not that smoking would kill you – the packets have the warnings, and everyone who smoked read them and believed them – but that tobacco had no addictive quality. So smokers read the warnings and didn’t care too much, because they had to have a cigarette. I quit a couple of years ago now, thanks to M., who provided an inarguable incentive and also Allen Carr’s “Easy Way” (which uses a very forthright method of deprogramming you into a mindset from which it is, indeed, easy to quit), and I’m a little amazed at how simple it was to just ignore the addiction even while acknowledging it. It’s a pretty minor jones, but it’s no less real. Do hamburgers have a similar addictive component, or french fries? Is it all that sugar? Good luck to the plaintiffs; it’s going to be a long time before they see a dime. On the other hand, PETA is suing KFC, and this seems a more honest approach and more likely to prevail. Now, just mentioning PETA is enough to set some people off, but they are consistent and determined, and there’s more than a little in favor of their argument. Animals are cruelly treated as they are processed into food, and there’s no excuse for it. Peter Singer (another red flag for many people indeed, and someone who is inevitably trotted out in these discussions –see, I’m doing it, too) argues we can have it both ways, promoting as he does the “quality of life” method of raising animals for food, and both McDonalds and Burger King have been moving lately toward something like this approach, although the scale of production they require makes it more than just difficult for them to pursue their business model and follow Singer’s proposed methodology. KFC’s promises, whether fulfilled or not, as the lawsuit may yet prove, are also a step in this direction. I’ll be very interested in how this turns out: credit where credit’s due, we seem to come closer all the time toward PETA’s vision of the world every day, so while this will probably be tossed out or settled, I expect the litigation will have an effect, unlike the obesity suits.

Be Careful What You Ask For
”Give me a sign” seems more usually to be met with silence than the requested overt indication requested, but not this time. I’d think about retiring.

Holden Caulfield, ‘03
Igby Goes Down is a nice enough contemporization of Catcher in the Rye, but a bit disordered and cluttered finally. It inspired no great nostalgia for NYC, even though much of the film was set in neighborhoods M. and I frequented. There wasn’t a shot in the film we didn’t recognize, and that was entertaining, although I did mistake Georgetown for Brooklyn Heights. Honest mistake.

There are quite a few other movies yet to be seen this winter, other than the “blockbusters,” such as Lost in LaMancha, 25th Hour, Man Without a Past, maybe even Travelling Birds (Winged Migration in the States, which is a sillier title), though that one may be an Imax kind of film.

Health & Fitness
I’ve begun a new regimen: get up early and run down to the Opera House and back. It’s a bit chilly out there right now, but if I can turn this into a routine, it will stand me in good stead for summer. It’s also a bit dark, at least at first: the sun’s well up in the sky by the time I get to the harbour. Still, as I crest the final hill, the sails of the Opera House appear, poking up above the palms in the conservatory gardens, and I can well imagine them as the sails of a tremendous vessel from the earliest days of exploration and colonization of this continent. They offer an uncanny moment for me each time. The spread of the harbour and the vast scale of the Harbour Bridge also cause me to reflect on Sydney vis a vis other cities I have seen. Like most downtowns, Sydney’s CBD is an agglomeration of skyscrapers, with smaller buildings scattered among them as well. Open public spaces are not unusual either, offering welcome greenery. But the vast cut of the harbour into the city seems to have provided and prevailed upon the city builders to continue an openness that strikes me as quite unique. Remember the first time you ate in a restaurant with an open kitchen? It seemed bigger than the rooms you’d been in previously, and the dining experience seemed more integrated – you could feel that you were truly a part of the entire enterprise, its intent. As I enter the plaza spread along the harbour and in front of the Opera House, even dominated by the “Coat Hanger” as it is, that openness and integration is very much the experience, carried visually, but sensed and felt, not as if you are being embraced by the city, but that you are embracing it. I can’t say I ever got this feeling in NYC, neither at Battery Park nor on the Brooklyn Promenade. Looking out over New York Harbor from the Battery, I would get a sense of possibility, but turning around or standing on the Promenade I would more usually feel the weight of the city, its density, and its power. I rather like the feeling I get here, that I provide the definition of Sydney that I want. It isn’t so much about me, about what possibilities are on offer for me to be or do, but rather about what the place will be because of me. Of course, then I have to swing around and head back uphill. . . .

Geeks to the Rescue
The ”Soft Walls” anti-hijacking concept sounds like the kind of workable solution that would eventually have quite a range of possible applications, but I don’t understand the reported resistance from pilots. It certainly sounds better than being shot down to me.

Macaroni
I never did understand the lyrics to Yankee Doodle, but leaving that aside, Happy Fourth of July, my fellow Americans. And don’t forget the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Marketing
I read with interest about Jason Wilson, who sells what he writes directly, taking up position on King Street in Newtown, Sydney (although I wouldn’t have normally characterized a writer as a “busker”; it’s not like he does a little dance if you buy a story). It’s catching on, apparently, as pointed on in the International Herald Tribune’s recent piece on Adrian Brune, who’s doing the same thing in New York (occupying the usual venue for these activities: the subway). It reminds of me the early 80’s, back in the day when I harbored some literary pretentions, which were usually satisfied by the desperate struggle to keep up with the underground literary scene, one that was exploding out from everywhere, not just the Lower East Side and East Village neighborhoods they’d retreated to following the initial yuppie boom. I wonder if this doesn’t now constitute a trend, and if so, does that have implications for understanding the time we are now a-livin’ in? (Sorry, Mr. Dylan.) The Beats had the initial throes of the Cold War and the buttoned-down social mores to drum against, and the hippie/Yippie factions were electrified by Vietnam and political malfeasance well into the 1970’s. I’m not sure precisely what drivers were at work during the 80’s, when I was chasing down long-gone journals of bad poetry (usually; there was some good stuff, too, but as always when there’s a bit of a glut going on, there’s more bad than good). Perhaps we’re on the verge of a new exciting time in literature, although I admit to having been looking lately more to the internet as a (re)source than to the street. (Props to Gianna at She Sells Sanctuary for the IHT link.)

Liberty & Liberia
I note with some trepidation that the photo accompanying the Times article on intervening in Liberia, that GWB is standing in front of a mural depicting the Rough Rider himself, Theodore Roosevelt. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most violently troubled region on the face of the earth – yes, even more than the Middle East – and as such it has been one of the most grievous failures of U.S. foreign policy that all we’ve ever done is supply foreign aid to undeserving governments or impose economic sanctions on the countries best able to endure them. Non-intervention in Rwanda was a moral failure, and the Somalia pull-out was a failure of courage. Liberia is the nearest thing in Africa to a state created by the U.S., although it is not so in the imperialist sense the rest of the continent was subdivided into nations by the Europeans, an ethical distinction offering some relief to our national conscience. Nevertheless, as such, and also in light of previous inaction, the situation there, as in the former Zimbabwe, requires out response. We are undeniably stretched thin as a result of The Idiot’s Iraqi adventurism, coupled with the dangerous militarist foreign policies espoused toward North Korea and Iran. Unfortunately, having alienated most the United Nations, it will likely be difficult for the U.S. to move that body’s constituents toward standing up for peace. The world becomes more dangerous, a situation that is only exacerbated by the words and actions of the Bush scion. My support for action in Liberia is therefore tempered by my dismay at the international undertakings so far committed by this administration.

Does Whatever a Spider Can
Spiderman Gloves that really work. Well, someday, and only if they can get the price down a bit. Meanwhile, I guess we can't expect to accessorize with gecko tape gloves just yet. I wonder if they're taking pre-sales orders?