Posted 9:20 AM by Blah blah

More Foreign Affairs on Tiger Cafe. A Liberal Arts Boy at Heart.
Why Some Women Leave Science/Engineering.

More foreign affairs stuff coming up: the ideological roots of Islamic terror, Richard Holbrooke, Thomas Friedman, etc.

It seems like only 3 people reading this blog actually care about and reply to what I post about foreign affairs and politics. Doesn't anyone care about history or current events? It's amazing how people don't care about politics till it kicks them in the butt. After all these fascinating, dramatic issues, it's hard for me to go someplace like Rice Bowl Journals and read the talk. It seems so trivial, so petty. Oh well---I'm posting these things more for myself to read than for anyone else.

During the first Gulf War, I was actually taking an upper division class in Modern Middle East History, taught by this excellent professor from Harvard, Ira Lapidus. We read books like Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem and Fouad Ajami's The Arab Predicament, both excellent, lyrically written tales of Arabs and Jews and their mutual dramas. We learned about the Iranian revolution of 1979, the fall of the Ottoman empire, the formation of Iraq ("created one weekend by the stroke of a pen"), and so on. I remember marvelling at Middle East history, thinking how much it was a huge soap opera packed with deception, passion, intrigue, espionage, diplomacy, business, religion---all there!

And I wasn't even a history major. I was an engineering major and took only three liberal arts classes in college. I regret that. I never took any English class in college. I only took this history class, a Russian literature class, and a Greek classics class by an excellent prof from Cambridge, Mark Griffith. On the side I would write in a diary because I am so addicted to writing and refused to turn off that artistic side of me.

Among history, English, and engineering, I'd pick history and English every time. With the exception of the excellent electrical engineering department, the way they taught engineering at my school was dry, mechanical, formulaic. I was bored stiff. Outside of class I rarely hung out with other engineers, preferring to talk to English, film, business, humanities, science, and law students.

I was dating a scientist, a wonderful girl who gradually shifted from studying physical chemistry to biochemistry. She was very warm and sweet and couldn't see herself going further in physics and math, which she found "cold." She, like MANY girls in science and engineering, ultimately preferred her life to be around something "warmer," as she kept saying. I'm not surprised when they trot out the statistics of how many women leave science and engineering for other fields. It's fun to study it, but to do that kind of work, staring at your test tube or computer day in and day out, working in isolation 12 hours a day, coming in on Friday nights and weekends to run that next experiment or next program---all of that can really suck after a while. And there's the idealism behind it, the question of whether you are really making a difference in society or not. Some people end up realizing that the business world actually helps and affects more of people's lives than they thought, that they can continue their scientific impulses elsewhere or with human beings instead of test tubes or petri dishes.

And they jump ship. Some are lucky enough to find their passion keeps going in science or engineering, and I commend them.

Posted 7:57 AM by Blah blah

Why Everybody Loves Raymond is Special
How Withholding Emotion Causes an Audience to Be Emotional

The other day, my friend Mag told me how much she loves "Everybody Loves Raymond." I've never sat down and watched a whole episode of that show, and I never understood its continuing appeal to America. Being a show about someone with my name, it sounds more intriguing, but in the sound bite glimpses I've had of it, I didn't see why it was funny. Yet the sharp, witty Heather Havrilesky praises it in Salon.com. The creator, Phil Rosenthal, explains what he tries to do and not do, a great article for aspiring TV writers:
_______________________
"Everybody Loves Raymond" (Mondays at 9 p.m. on CBS) is one of those shows you pass for years on your way to some other channel. Oh, here's that grouchy family show, you think. Ray Romano. Annoyed wife. Overbearing mother. Loser brother. Sure, it seems mildly amusing, but ... What else is on?

Then one day, while you're waiting for your spaghetti to boil or your laundry to dry, you sit down and watch an entire episode. After the second or third time you've laughed out loud, it occurs to you that this show is different from the others. Not only is "Everybody Loves Raymond" much more entertaining and weird than the current batch of family sitcoms on the air, it's a hell of a lot funnier. Like a strange mix of "The Cosby Show," "All in the Family" and "Seinfeld," it unflinchingly exposes its characters' worst impulses without veering too far from familiar territory.

And while most sitcoms are packed to the brim with shtick that doesn't suit the characters, punch lines that interrupt the action, and ridiculous situations that are as unbelievable as they are uninteresting, "Everybody Loves Raymond" is grounded in interesting, human stories and incredibly funny but realistic dialogue....

More than anything, "Everybody Loves Raymond" is an exploration of the daily trials and tribulations of marriage....

Q: Did you integrate drama into the show from the beginning?

Yeah. I truly believe dramatic moments help to strengthen the characters, and then make it funnier when that character does something. Like on "The Honeymooners," I remember one where Norton got hurt after a fight with Ralph. Norton is the funniest character ever on television, all he ever did was make you laugh, and if he's hurt, oh, my God! Your heart breaks for him. And then you see how it affects Ralph, and he rushes to the hospital to get a transfusion, and of course, Norton is fine, but Ralph has to give the transfusion anyway now. So you just laugh harder because suddenly, they're more real as people. And you laugh more because it's a heartier laugh, it's not a surface laugh. We believe them as human beings.
_______________________
I remember bumping into this serious episode of "Roseanne" in which John Goodman's character gets sick and is in danger of his life in the hospital. The scene in which he tells Roseanne not to worry and sends her out of the hospital room felt like something out of "ER." Then, alone, he looked up and began a monologue to God, alternately resigned, tearful, and angry, about how he loved Roseanne so much and how he was just not ready to go, how God never replies to him, how he needed more time on earth to help his family.

I was both riveted and very touched. The studio was silent. And this was a "comedy."

I've admired and responded to excellent dramatic moments in "Family Ties," in a series in which Alex Keaton's (Michael J. Fox) friend commits suicide. The writers had Alex talking to himself, one spotlight on a dark empty stage, with some of his family popping in and out like a Greek chorus. Very like a play, and very emotionally powerful.

Do you guys remember the sitcom "Taxi"? Whenever I catch its reruns I always laugh heartily. That show is timeless. The characters are so rich and three-dimensional, so dramatic and flawed that you love them, like in "Cheers." I remember one episode in which Danny DeVito's character, the pain-in-the-ass, selfish boss Louie, starts developing a relationship with Rhea Perlman's character. As you know, the two actors married in 1982, when "Taxi" was close to ending. Louie puts up a tough, cynical, and crude face to the world, but he starts liking Rhea Perlman and trying to break up with her at the same time. He gets nervous and agitated because he starts to really care about her. I loved that episode!

Drama enforces comedy. Reality makes you laugh more. I must take another look at "Everybody Loves Raymond."

Another great article for aspiring drama writers: How do great screen actors portray the truth? By withholding emotion (The Guardian).

The playwright David Mamet gives examples of how watching an actor acting unsentimentally, fighting to hold back emotion, actually causes us to spill over with emotion!

That's one reason The Pianist is so deeply moving. Roman Polanski, a survivor of the Nazi occupation of Krakow, Poland, directs the movie in a cold, unsentimental way, harshly showing people killed, beaten. You are in shock throughout most of the movie, but, like Adrien Brody's character, you don't have time to cry. Only at the end do the tears all come out, and mainly from YOU. I felt the same way with Schindler's List. I cried at the end of both these films.

Whenever I've glimpsed the highly melodramatic Asian drama that's standard schlock with Asian TV and video stores, I cringe. The bad writing and acting keep putting Asian drama in the garbage where it belongs. Asian actors only seem to argue or cry every few minutes, overacting and as shrill as car alarms. All fake looking. Why? Because real people don't argue and cry every five minutes. Real people hide it, try to go on with their lives when hurt, and crack a laugh every now and then. Asian TV keeps showing actresses who never smile. What a waste of a beautiful face.

Posted 6:39 AM by Blah blah

Tales of Joblessness

Commute to Nowhere (NY Times Magazine).

"Cast out by the new economy: Jeff Einstein and his wife, Mara, and daughter, Cayla, at home in Queens.
Lou Casagrande, an information-technology consultant unable to find work in his field since June 2001, and his family at home in Summit, N.J.
Tom Pyle, of Princeton and Harvard Business School and unemployed at 50, with his wife, Molly, on the Princeton campus."

Posted 1:27 PM by Blah blah

Stuart Hughes: BBC Producer in Landmine Accident

By Stuart Hughes: Dangers of war reporting (BBC): "Forty-eight hours ago I was wheeled into an operating theatre, where a surgeon amputated my right foot and lower leg. A week ago, I was involved in a landmine accident at Kifri in northern Iraq in which my friend, the distinguished Iranian cameraman Kaveh Golestan, was tragically killed." (Read the horrifying story of what happened.)

Oh my God. Poor guy! Stuart has been writing this blog since February, and he posts photos of himself before and after amputation. I'm adding him to my must-read list of war blogs.

Posted 12:22 PM by Blah blah

Watch PBS: Avoiding Armageddon

Coming soon: watch the four-part series called Avoiding Armageddon, broadcast from April 14-17 at 9 pm EST on PBS!

This eight-hour documentary took two years to produce. "This timely series from Ted Turner Documentaries explores the explosive intersection between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Viewers are taken to some of the most dangerous places in the world to see dramatic human stories that convey the threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, as well as the hope that the world can still choose to avoid Armageddon." Producers travelled to places such as Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kashmir and throughout the Middle East to gather material for the film. The series is hosted by journalist Walter Cronkite, and each episode concludes with a discussion on the provocative issues raised, moderated by veteran journalist Frank Sesno.

If you missed the Frontline program on Kim Jong-il last night, as I said here, oh my God is it scary. Not only Kim, but Bush and his cowboy diplomacy are scary. It's helping to push the U.S. and N. Korea to the brink of military confrontation. Frontline will post the entire program in streaming video by April 14, so you may watch it fully on the Internet.

Everyone, please watch and read Kim's Nuclear Gamble and Avoiding Armageddon! Also, watch In Search of al-Qaeda.

Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction are some of the biggest threats to our security in this century. We can't afford to be ignorant. I know all this news talk bores some of you, and maybe you'd rather talk American Idol, but the more I learn about these problems, the more I get seriously concerned. Please do all you can to stay connected to the world and stay informed! Our future depends on it.

Posted 10:30 AM by Blah blah

Manager Fired for Refusing to Fire a Saleswoman Who Was "Not Sexy Enough"

This is frickin' outrageous! It happened in my city too. Suit Says Refusal to Fire Unattractive Woman Led to Dismissal (NY Times):

After a top executive of [Elysa Yanowitz's] company, L'Oréal, visited the perfume department of a Macy's store in San Jose, she said, he ordered her to fire a saleswoman for not being sexy enough. In court papers, Ms. Yanowitz said his words were, "Get me somebody hot."

A few weeks later when the executive, John Wiswall, general manager of L'Oréal's designer fragrance division, again visited the store, he discovered that she had not dismissed the saleswoman, and, Ms. Yanowitz said, he told her, "Didn't I tell you to get rid of her?"

Later, Ms. Yanowitz said in a sworn statement, as the two passed an attractive blond woman, Mr. Wiswall said, "Get me one that looks like that."...

Throughout a four-year court battle, Ms. Yanowitz has insisted that L'Oréal improperly retaliated against her and was preparing the groundwork to fire her because she refused to dismiss the saleswoman.

Posted 9:03 AM by Blah blah

Justin Lin: Better Luck Tomorrow. How to Raise Money for a Film?

A movie starring Asian American actors. By an Asian American director. Minus the stereotypes. TODAY!

Go see Better Luck Tomorrow, a film opening in limited release across America today! The director, Justin Lin, comes from Orange County in S. California. He worked like hell, begged for money, and maxed out 10 credit cards to make this movie for the cost of $250,000. Cast and crew worked for no pay and slept on the floor of his parents' home during production. At one point, Justin even got financing from an unlikely source: rapper MC Hammer!

Director Hopes Film Is a Mainstream Hit (Washington Post): "When Justin Lin set out to make a movie about affluent Asian-American teens with a penchant for crime, potential investors loved the idea. But for such an edgy movie to make money, they told him he needed a white cast."

Justin studied film directing at UCLA and has worked for four years to make this labor of love. He got a big break when he learned his film had been accepted by the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

From MTV:

"There was a person who stood up [after a screening] and said, 'How could you make a movie that was so denigrating to your race?'," explained John Cho, who plays Steve, while hanging near a basketball court at L.A.'s Pan Pacific Park. "[Roger Ebert] stood up and said, 'You wouldn't say that to a white filmmaker,' which is probably true."

Once Ebert loudly came to the flick's defense, people started paying attention, as he went on to say that Asian-Americans should be free to take on any types of roles they choose without fear of misrepresenting the entire community.

"What is interesting about this movie is, it doesn't say, 'This is an Asian-American movie,' it just presents Asian-American characters," Cho said, echoing Ebert's sentiments. "The movie gives itself the freedom to paint negative portrayals."

With Roger Ebert's blessing (he gives this movie four stars), actors Parry Shen, Jason J. Tobin, Sung Kang, Roger Fan, John Cho, and Karin Anna Cheung are set to make some movie history. Victor, an Asian Los Angeles blogger on my link list, is friends with people like Parry Shen, and he's been promoting the film like crazy.

Three cheers for Justin Lin!!! Let's go and give support for him and Better Luck Tomorrow! As Ebert says: "Like African-American films that take race for granted and get on with the characters and the story, Lin is making a movie where race is not the point but simply the given."

Camera, action... bankroll (The Guardian): "Whether you are a rookie writer/producer dreaming of making your first movie or an established player, one fact will dominate your life: it is notoriously difficult to find the cash to get a film off the ground. So where do producers go to get funding? And how do they pin it down?"

Posted 11:39 PM by Blah blah

Top Player on BlogShares

Ha! Remember BlogShares, the fantasy blog stock market, where you buy and sell shares in blogs? I played with it for a few days only and just let it sit. Guess what?

My initial $500 investment (all play money) has turned into $8200!!! A return of 1640%! I'm now ranked #67 out of 3785 players in terms of the value of my stock portfolio. Hehe...do I know how to invest or what? I should go to Wall Street...

My own blog is only worth $24 now. Bug in the software, obviously. *WINK* Amusingly, my blog's price has remained at 0 cents. Despite that, a few people have bought up all the 5000 shares in my blog (since it's free). Hehe...

After we all lost money in the stock crash the last few years, this play investing is the only place we'll see such astronomical returns for a loooooong time. Check it out.

Posted 6:04 PM by Blah blah

Frontline TV Programs: Kim Jong-il Documentary Tonight
Also: Where is Al-Qaeda Now? China 2003. American Porn.

The next possible confrontation for the U.S.: North Korea. PBS's Frontline broadcasts an in-depth report at 9 pm PST tonight (KQED) on N. Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Watch it! If you miss it, you may see the whole program in streaming video online by tomorrow. Frontline's website also has in-depth interviews and background material not shown on TV.

Kim's Nuclear Gamble:

"The world is running out of time to strike a peace-preserving deal with North Korea's strange and reclusive leader Kim Jong-il. For 10 years, threats, deceptions and diplomatic ploys have shaped U.S. relations with the Hermit Kingdom. Now, what happens next depends on the outcome of a raging debate within the Bush administration over how best to handle Chairman Kim. Frontline traces the delicate maneuvers and clumsy turns that have brought the world to the brink of a nuclear showdown in Asia."

The award-winning Frontline consistently produces some of the best investigative TV reporting I've ever seen. Check out their other fascinating and worrisome programs. You may watch all three of them online in streaming video.

1. In Search of al-Qaeda was chilling. They investigated what happened to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after the U.S. war in fall 2001. Where al-Qaeda may have fled. The dangerous tribal areas of Pakistan that harbor tons of anti-U.S. feeling. The tons of ordinary people in some parts of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen who rejoiced at the Sept. 11th attack, and why. The woman who wishes her two sons can join al-Qaeda to fight Israel and the U.S. Al-Qaeda and the deep hatred that fuels it is very much alive, and that is scary.

2. China in the Red, about the changes and struggles going on in current day China. Haven't seen this yet.

3. American Porn, behind the scenes of the multiBILLION dollar U.S. porn industry. How porn has grown mainstream and legitimate, especially under Clinton. How Larry Flynt of Hustler runs his business. How companies like Vivid Video, who star people like Asia Carrera and Jenna Jameson, expand into major hotel chains and were even sponsored by AT&T for a while. The CEO of Vivid has a BS from Dartmouth and an MBA from USC. Real standard MBA guys run these companies nowadays. They are so profitable. How new porn producers need to resort to showing more and more extreme types of sex to stand out from the crowd. How they skirt the boundaries of obscenity laws but are careful to obey them.

Posted 11:24 AM by Blah blah

I've added these photos from Leslie Cheung's funeral to my post about his death. Nicole Tan, on his fan club message board, also translated two touching articles from Chinese about what happened at his funeral. Article 1. Article 2.

Jackie Chan's Parents

Enter the parents Did you know Jackie Chan's mother was an opium smuggler and his father was a spy? Neither did he. (The Guardian):

"How could they abandon their kids like that? It's a question that Mabel Cheung has been asked again and again since unveiling her film, Traces of the Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family. The documentary reveals some devastating family secrets that its subject, Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan, has only recently learned himself....Jackie Chan is one of the best-known movie stars in the world. Given the exhaustive attention that fans pay to the private lives of their idols, it seems extraordinary that neither he nor anyone else knew the true story of his own family background.

Rumours had been swirling round Hong Kong for years that Jackie Chan wasn't his real name and that he was adopted, but no one suspected that he would turn out to have two brothers still alive and living impoverished, anonymous lives in mainland China. Nor did they have any inkling that Jackie's mother had once been a legendary gambler in the Shanghai underworld or that his father had been a Nationalist spy and gangland boss....

It struck [Cheung], though, that this was an emblematic tale. 'Every single Chinese family has a story more or less like this,' she observes."

Posted 10:22 AM by Blah blah

Chinese-American Woman Caught Spying for China

She got secret information the old-fashioned way---through sex. Ex-F.B.I. Agent Is Accused of Passing Secrets to Lover (NY Times):

"A Chinese-American woman in Southern California who worked as an informer for the F.B.I. took numerous top-secret documents from her bureau handler, who was also her longtime lover, and she passed secrets on to Chinese government, officials said today. The woman and the agent were arrested this morning in Los Angeles in what could prove to be another major embarrassment for the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it is battling lingering questions about its ability to handle national security investigations.

The woman, Katrina Leung, 49, who was identified by the federal authorities as a double agent, was charged with obtaining a classified national security document for purposes of aiding a foreign nation. The agent, James Smith, who was with the F.B.I. for nearly 30 years and is now retired, was charged with gross negligence for allowing Ms. Leung to obtain the documents....

Officials said that Mr. Smith and Ms. Leung began having a sexual relationship soon after the agent recruited her to act as an informer on the Chinese government in the early 1980's. The F.B.I paid her some $1.7 million over a 20-year period in expenses and service fees to act as an informer....

A second F.B.I agent in the San Francisco field office also admitted that he had an affair with Ms. Leung for as long as 10 years, beginning in the late 1980's, officials said. The second agent, whom officials did not identify, became aware around 1991 that Ms. Leung was having unauthorized contacts with national security officials in Beijing."

Here's a picture of Katrina Leung.

Oh my God: Woman accused of spying for China is prominent SoCal community leader (AP). She was so active and well-connected in S. California politics, as well as the Chinese-American community. Too bad.

Posted 4:52 AM by Blah blah

SARS is Airborne

To Diana and Mat, I don't know what you guys think the word "airborne" means, but I mean that "SARS can travel through the air." If that's true, the virus IS AIRBORNE.
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SARS could be 'airborne' (AFP): "A deadly pneumonia outbreak that has killed at least 62 people and infected some 1,700 more could be spread through the air, making it far more contagious than previously thought, a senior US health official told CNN today.

'Under certain circumstances, at least, it may be airborne,' said Dr Julie Gerberding, director of the Centres for Disease Control in the US.

Health officials previously said that they believed Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was transmitted by coming into contact with 'droplets' from a sneezing or coughing patient.

'We are seeing large outbreaks, for example in an apartment complex in Hong Kong, where airborne transmission certainly is a possibility,' Gerberding said."
____________
I don't know what else you mean by "airborne."

Mat, you refer to this article in the Straits Times. Singapore's Prime Minister Goh says: "But it is not as frightening as it seems, because we know now that the disease is transmitted through close contact, through droplets at close proximity. If you touch certain surfaces which are virus-infected, you may also contract the viral infection if you rub your nose or your eyes after that. It's not airborne as we know now. If it was, more people would have come down with the infection."

Goh is misleading. He shouldn't have said "it's not airborne." Look at the purpose of his speech. He's trying to keep the population calm, to encourage people to keep living their lives. In doing so, he contradicts what doctors, health agencies, and articles have been saying for weeks.

Think of it this way. SARS is transmitted, it seems, very much like a flu or cold. If someone coughs or sneezes when he has the flu or a cold, and you touch it, or touch a doorknob that he touched, and rub your eyes, don't you also get sick? If he coughs or sneezes and you breathe next to him, don't you have a chance of catching his disease? He also coughs or sneezes "droplets."

Droplets. Ok, so at first the virus is liquid, or a spray, when it comes out of a sick person. But these drops still may travel through the air, like mist, no? They still may evaporate and be carried away by a breeze, no?

The point is the flu virus droplets eventually go into the air, and someone may breathe them in. AIRBORNE. We all agree that flu is airborne, right? We may catch it through the air, NOT ONLY by physical touch. We may catch it both ways!

Now look at the FAQ from the Centers for Disease Control:

"How is SARS spread?

The principal way SARS appears to be spread is through droplet transmission; namely, when someone sick with SARS coughs or sneezes droplets into the air and someone else breathes them in. It is possible that SARS can be transmitted more broadly through the air or from objects that have become contaminated."

Time also prints a FAQ on SARS.

Posted 2:57 AM by Blah blah

Thomas Friedman's Latest Column

Hold Your Applause (NY Times):

It's hard to smile when there's no water. It's hard to applaud when you're frightened. It's hard to say, "Thank you for liberating me," when liberation has meant that looters have ransacked everything from the grain silos to the local school, where they even took away the blackboard.

That was what I found when spending the day in Umm Qasr and its hospital, in southern Iraq. Umm Qasr was the first town liberated by coalition forces. But 20 days into the war, it is without running water, security or adequate food supplies. I went in with a Kuwaiti relief team, who, taking pity on the Iraqis, tossed out extra food from a bus window as we left. The Umm Qasr townsfolk scrambled after that food like pigeons jostling for bread crumbs in a park.

This was a scene of humiliation, not liberation. We must do better....

But this is such a broken land. Its spirit was broken by Saddam long before we arrived, and now, because of this war, its major cities and iron-fisted order are being broken as well. Killing Saddam alone will not bring America the thank-yous it expects because Iraqis are not yet feeling free. Only replacing Saddam's order with a better order will do that. "There is no freedom because there is no security," said Dr. Mohammed al-Mansuri, the hospital's director.

We are so caught up with our own story of "America's liberation of Iraq," and the Arab TV networks are so caught up with their own story of "America's occupation of Iraq," that everyone seems to have lost sight of the real lives of Iraqis.

"We are lost," said Zakiya Jassim, a hospital maintenance worker. "The situation is getting worse. I don't care about Saddam. He is far away. I want my country to be normal."

America broke Iraq; now America owns Iraq, and it owns the primary responsibility for normalizing it. If the water doesn't flow, if the food doesn't arrive, if the rains don't come and if the sun doesn't shine, it's now America's fault. We'd better get used to it, we'd better make things right, we'd better do it soon, and we'd better get all the help we can get.

Posted 2:46 AM by Blah blah

Afraid of SARS? Just Stay Home and Have Sex!

Quarantined Singaporeans urged to multiply (The Guardian):

Singaporeans forced to stay home during the outbreak of the mystery illness that has now killed 82 people worldwide should use the time to shore up the country's falling birthrate, a sex therapist said yesterday.

About 1,000 people who may have been exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have been ordered by the government to quarantine themselves at home.

"They should now use this opportunity to stay at home and massage each other," said Wei Siang Yu, a self-proclaimed sex expert who conducts seminars to help couples increase their fertility.

People should transform their bedrooms into "love nests" during the scare.

Singapore has a population of 4 million. Its birth rate sank to a 14-year low last year, when only 40,800 babies were born in the city-state, 3% fewer than in 2001.

The government has tried to encourage Singaporeans to have bigger families with tax breaks, cash bonuses and subsidised childcare. The state even has its own dating agency. [The Social Development Unit (SDU), or as some call it, "Single, Desperate, and Ugly."]

Posted 1:21 AM by Blah blah

The Battle for American Science
________________________
The battle for American science (The Guardian):

Creationists, pro-lifers and conservatives now pose a serious threat to research and science teaching in the US....

Welcome to the new battlegrounds of American science. No conspiracy, nor even one political agenda, links the incidents above. But US scientists say they are indicative of a new climate that has emerged under the Bush administration: one driven partly by close relationships with big business, but just as much by a fiercely moral approach to the business of science. The approach is not exclusively religious, nor exclusively rightwing, but is spreading worry as never before through the nation's laboratories and lecture halls.

As prescient observers of the events north of Atlanta last year realised, these aren't the old wars of science versus religion. The new assaults on the conventional wisdom frame themselves, without exception, as scientific theories, no less deserving of a hearing than any other. Proponents of Intelligent Design---using a strategy previously unheard of among anti-Darwinists---grant almost all the premises of evolution (the idea that species develop; that the world wasn't necessarily created in seven days) in order to better attack it.

"It's not that I don't think Darwinian evolution can't explain anything," says Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, the movement's foremost academic advocate, when asked how he accounts for the very visible evolution of, say, viruses. "It's just that I don't think it can explain everything. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example, is one of the things it can explain."

Similarly, the White House's strategy on global warming is not to scoff at the scientific establishment's warnings on climate change. Rather, it trumpets the importance of their research activities and calls for even more research - years more, in fact - before any action is taken. In the same fashion, one of the most popular arguments currently circulating on anti-condom websites claims not that they encourage promiscuity but that they can't protect against HIV. The reason, it argues, is because the virus is 0.1 microns in diameter, while there are tiny pores in latex measuring 10 microns. (There is no evidence for this.)
________________________
After I fought that 5 Part Debate on Creationism vs. Evolution last year on Rice Bowl Journals, this article is very troubling. It's a sneaky way for Bush and conservatives to disguise moral judgements as scientific fact.

Just like some Iraqi leaders keep clinging to the fantasy that Iraq is still winning the war, people in the 21st Century still embrace the myth that evolution is wrong and "only an opinion." They feel like they are more "open-minded and tolerant" when they say every alternative view is possible, that you shouldn't "impose your beliefs on someone"...blah blah blah. No. You may say that with the question of chocolate ice cream vs. strawberry, or Paris vs. Rome, or Britney vs. Christina Aguilera---but not with science.

One more time: evolution is not just an opinion, but it's a colossal pillar of biology and of science in general! Evolution has been proven scientifically beyond all reasonable doubt, many many times over, with physical and biological evidence. Scientists worldwide, and biology teachers nationally, overwhelmingly agree that while you may call it "theory," Darwinian evolution is, for all practical purposes, a FACT. Now creationism is a whole other story. With zero scientific evidence to support its claims, the belief that God made the heavens and earth should not be taught in school as anything remotely equal to the theory of evolution. That idea should be strictly labeled as FAITH, speculation, legend, a deep wish of mankind---with no factual evidence, and NOT as a viable alternative to or replacement for evolution.

For teachers and school boards, under the new "divinely-inspired" Bush, to teach creationism in schools is a huge slap in the face to about 150 years of painstaking scientific work, to the famous 1925 Scopes Trial and everything it stood for in American history, and to the millions of lives medicine and biology has saved because of drugs and other treatments scientists have developed BECAUSE of using the Theory of Evolution as a starting point for research.

I believe you can be perfectly religious and accept the Theory of Evolution. Since creationism is FAITH, and evolution is FACT, you can always alter your faith to fit the facts. You may believe God caused the physical transformations that led to evolution, to man coming from apes, and all that. Faith is very accommodating. The facts are not. My point is: believe whatever you wish in terms of why we exist, or why the Big Bang was needed, or what started the laws of physics that led to evolution, but DON'T dispute the physical evidence. When all is said and done---that prevails. In other words, if you wish, believe that God caused the universe to change physically so that the earth started about 4.54 billion years ago, but don't argue that the earth is really only 10,000 years old because the Bible says so.

For more, read this: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense (Scientific American).

See the National Association of Biology Teachers' Statement on Teaching Evolution:

As stated in The American Biology Teacher by the eminent scientist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973), "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." This often-quoted assertion accurately illuminates the central, unifying role of evolution in nature, and therefore in biology. Teaching biology in an effective and scientifically-honest manner requires classroom discussions and laboratory experiences on evolution.

Modern biologists constantly study, ponder and deliberate the patterns, mechanisms and pace of evolution, but they do not debate evolution's occurrence. The fossil record and the diversity of extant organisms, combined with modern techniques of molecular biology, taxonomy and geology, provide exhaustive examples and powerful evidence for genetic variation, natural selection, speciation, extinction and other well-established components of current evolutionary theory. Scientific deliberations and modifications of these components clearly demonstrate the vitality and scientific integrity of evolution and the theory that explains it.

This same examination, pondering and possible revision have firmly established evolution as an important natural process explained by valid scientific principles, and clearly differentiate and separate science from various kinds of nonscientific ways of knowing, including those with a supernatural basis such as creationism. Whether called "creation science," "scientific creationism," "intelligent-design theory," "young-earth theory" or some other synonym, creation beliefs have no place in the science classroom. Explanations employing nonnaturalistic or supernatural events, whether or not explicit reference is made to a supernatural being, are outside the realm of science and not part of a valid science curriculum. Evolutionary theory, indeed all of science, is necessarily silent on religion and neither refutes nor supports the existence of a deity or deities.

As I said last year, science cannot prove or disprove religion. Religion is essentially emotional, like love or hope. Where the laws of science do not apply, science must be silent. But where they DO apply, religious people must listen!

Posted 12:22 AM by Blah blah

Numbers and Estimates From Iraq War (AP) Check out the total so far:

"Casualties: Among U.S. troops, 101 dead, 11 missing and seven captured, according to the Pentagon. Among British troops, 30 dead.

Deployed: More than 300,000 allied troops are in the region, with about 255,000 from the United States, 45,000 British troops, 2,000 Australia troops, 400 Czech and Slovak troops and 200 Polish troops. Nearly 100,000 more U.S. forces on the way.

Timeline: Wednesday is the 21st day of the war, which began on March 20 in Iraq.

Iraqi deaths: Neither Iraq nor the coalition has released an estimate of military casualties. Iraq says nearly 600 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded since the war began. In the first Gulf War, estimates ranged from 10,000 to about 100,000 Iraqi military deaths."

Posted 8:38 PM by Blah blah

Next time remember to bring your Fixodent! Nightclub flirt loses dentures down woman's cleavage (Ananova):

A man who tried to chat up a woman in a German nightclub dropped his false teeth down her cleavage.

Shop assistant Tina Lange, 37, who met the man in a disco in Mannheim, said: "I wasn't very interested in him but when I was leaving he whispered in my ear: 'I hope we'll see each other again.'

"He then dropped something down my cleavage, which I thought was his phone number."

But when she later went to fish it from between her breasts, she found it was a plate of three false teeth.

She said: "If he wants his teeth back, he'll have to ring me."

Posted 6:20 PM by Blah blah

Hong Kong tourism officials regret ad campaign (Ananova): "Tourism officials in SARS-hit Hong Kong are regretting running an ad campaign with the slogan: 'Hong Kong will take your breath away.' "

SARS: China

A doctor in China has announced, angrily to the press, that the Chinese government has lied about the real number of people infected with SARS in Beijing.

Here's a whole set of articles in Time on the killer virus, which originally started in Guangzhou:

How Scared Should You Be? Also, Will SARS Strike Here? (the U.S.)

Posted 11:24 AM by Blah blah

Baghdad Falls! Inside Saddam's Terror Regime.

Hooray!!! Freedom at last! Baghdad falls to US forces (BBC). Watch the video on this page of Rageh Omaar reporting on Iraqi citizens whooping and cheering for the fall of Saddam. Watch them topple one of his immense statues. Very emotional. "It was a moment that I'd never ever prepared myself for." This page also has a live webcam from Baghdad you may see.

The toppling of Saddam - an end to 30 years of brutal rule (The Guardian).

Today the U.S. and British soldiers deserve glory and appreciation. Saddam's regime collapses (Reuters).
_______________
Read this disgusting article, from Jan. 2002, about some of the horrors of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Your eyeballs will pop out: Inside Saddam's Terror Regime (Vanity Fair):

The most senior officer ever to defect from Iraq’s Mukhabarat [the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS)], brigadier general Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, was forced into exile in the summer of 2000 when he crossed Saddam Hussein’s son Uday. After a three-day interview in Beirut, DAVID ROSE has the exclusive on al-Qurairy's brutal history of rape, torture, and mass murder, his training of a previously unknown elite force called al-Qare'a---including an untraceable 30-commando unit that left Iraq a year ago, and his strong belief that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks....

It is not until al-Qurairy begins to talk of the terrorist training camp he used to run at Salman Pak, a 45-minute drive south from Baghdad, that he speaks with real feeling---unconcealed pride. "It's got a long-established history and we're proud to be associated with it," he says, "because it's trained the elite---the people who've carried out operations abroad, who are on the Interpol wanted lists. By the time a trainee leaves our school he can protect any V.I.P. or assassinate any V.I.P. In 1979, when Saddam Hussein executed half his Cabinet, they had the honor of executing them at the camp." Alone of all Iraq's myriad security installations, Salman Pak remains directly answerable to Saddam.... As recently as the summer of 2000, al-Qurairy saw the Arab students being taught to hijack aircraft on Salman Pak's own passenger jet, an Old Russian Tupolev. They all took a special course, he says---"how to gain control of the cockpit and passengers without using firearms."...

In one training procedure, regularly repeated, students had to land three helicopters on the roof of a speeding train on Salman Pak's own railroad, and then hijack it. With sudden animation, al-Qurairy gets up from his chair and performs a series of jumps and pirouettes, demonstrating the difficulty of the necessary maneuvers. "Fifty took part; 38 passed," he says. "Twelve failed. They were used as 'passengers' in sub- sequent exercises." Part of the role envisaged for al-Qare'a is to crush future internal rebellion. But the unit's primary ethos remains aggression against enemies abroad....

In London, I met another of Iraq's Mukhabarat defectors, who like al-Qurairy, spent six months at the Mukhabarat's "April 7th" camp at Diyala, northeast of Baghdad. "The fatal-casualty rate was 5 percent," this defector says. "In my course, we lost three men." The graduation ceremony was peculiarly brutal. The new graduates were put in a yard with 200 or 300 dogs. "We had to show what we can do" the defector continues.

"So we catch them with our bare hands and kill them with our teeth, by biting the arteries in their necks. Then we had to jump off a bridge into filthy, sewage-Iaden water, holding another dog. You mustn't let the dog go. If the dog lives, you are out of the Mukhabarat."

Al-Qurairy recalls the same experience. But as far as he is concerned, "to Mukhabarat people that was just a joke. Mukhabarat training was much more serious than that."

In 1990, by now a captain, al-Qurairy joined with the Iraqi forces that invaded Kuwait, and helped administer the seven-month occupation. It was a time for frolics. One day a young Palestinian woman made the mistake of visiting the Mukhabarat office, to complain that her estranged husband was failing to pay child support. In a conversation with Iraqi National Congress officers, al-Qurairy said the woman was beautiful---and that he, along with others in the Mukhabarat, raped her and let her go. Then al-Qurairy told the husband of what they had done, reminding him to pay up.

Posted 9:23 AM by Blah blah

SARS: Centers for Disease Control

Here's the CDC's page on SARS. Make sure to read their FAQ on SARS.

Posted 9:07 AM by Blah blah

How Being Fat Affects Your Life

This is sad. They say that fat kids are as unhappy as those with cancer. We must be very careful how we influence someone's self-image. And boys too, as well as girls! Especially in Asia, and for Asians, where most people are much skinnier on average than in the U.S., the social shame of being overweight is that much more oppressive.

Study Cites Pervasive Effects of Obesity in Children (Washington Post): "The quality of life for severely obese children and adolescents is roughly equivalent to that of pediatric cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, according to a new study. The research compared very overweight children to ones who were healthy and others who had cancer, and found that obesity colored nearly the entire spectrum of physical, social and emotional activities. Most very overweight children have at least one medical complication and miss four times as much school as normal-weight children. They're also more likely to report feeling socially isolated even though they aren't clinically depressed or anxious, which most of them aren't."

Posted 8:59 AM by Blah blah

Space Shuttle Software

More news on the space shuttle Columbia disaster: Shuttle assessment tool was `wrong'. Software couldn't accurately predict damage, investigators find. (Houston Chronicle): " 'Neither NASA nor the board are satisfied with the model. It's essentially an Excel spreadsheet,' not a sophisticated predictive tool, said retired Adm. Harold Gehman, chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board."

That's too bad, because if NASA HAD used or written more accurate software, I'll bet it would have been fantastically high quality. Look at this: They Write the Right Stuff (Fast Company):

"[H]ow much work the [space shuttle] software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats: the last three versions of the program---each 420,000 lines long---had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

This software is the work of 260 women and men based in an anonymous office building across the street from the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake, Texas, southeast of Houston. They work for the 'on-board shuttle group,' a branch of Lockheed Martin Corps space mission systems division, and their prowess is world renowned: the shuttle software group is one of just four outfits in the world to win the coveted Level 5 ranking of the federal government's Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a measure of the sophistication and reliability of the way they do their work. In fact, the SEI based it standards in part from watching the on-board shuttle group do its work. [This is part of the SEI's Capability Maturity Model (CMM). See Assessing a Level 5 Organization, about how they judge a group to be among one of the top software groups in the world.]

The group writes software this good because that's how good it has to be. Every time it fires up the shuttle, their software is controlling a $4 billion piece of equipment, the lives of a half-dozen astronauts, and the dreams of the nation. Even the smallest error in space can have enormous consequences: the orbiting space shuttle travels at 17,500 miles per hour; a bug that causes a timing problem of just two-thirds of a second puts the space shuttle three miles off course....Bill Pate, who's worked on the space flight software over the last 22 years, says the group understands the stakes: 'If the software isn't perfect, some of the people we go to meetings with might die.'

In the history of human technology, nothing has become as essential as fast as software."

Posted 8:47 PM by Blah blah

Do Surgical Masks Stop SARS?

The article from Slate. The short answer: only partially.

Posted 3:28 PM by Blah blah

Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex With You.
Why I've Been So Impersonal Lately.

Ha! Practical advice for guys: Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex With You. Start with the 3/12 entry and move up. The author, Julia Grey, says: "I've been married to the same man for 25 years and we're still getting it on and having fun. We DID have sexual problems, but we worked them out, and a couple of the things I'm talking about or going to talk about here were part of our solution."

My stalker is right: I've been so unoriginal lately. Have been feeling listless, bored, blah. Maybe like a girl feels when she's not in the mood. Haven't even felt the energy to reply to the stalker. Oh well. I still make myself and others laugh when I talk to people directly, though. But on a blog it feels like I'm talking to myself. Harder to be light and amusing. I've been using this place as a bookmark for stuff I want to read later. And talking to myself is not a barrel of laughs. I'd rather be yakking over the phone!

Help wake me up, guys! I'm dozing off here....

By the way, continuing the mode of HACS (Here's a Cool Site!), this guy has a lot more to say than I. Check out Canadian Mind Products! Roedy Green is a walking Francis Bacon, posting essays on everything from gaydom, to politics, to whether God exists, to a big ol' Java programming tutorial. Here's something for techies: How To Write Unmaintainable Code.

Reminds me of The Skeptic's Dictionary, but more upbeat. Can you imagine being married to a professional Skeptic? Take it in small doses.

So sorry, Mr. Stalker, I'm not baring my private life here. I'm at a pretty dull plateau right now as it is. No soap operas to report---not that I ever would say anything. If you want to know me, you gotta put in some EFFORT to talk to me. To see me, to write me.

I don't go around spilling guts in public. First, because it's bad taste and violates the privacy of others. Second, because I never use my blog as therapy and don't need to. Third, because I'd rather talk to my friends the old-fashioned way: in private. Just like you don't go up to a room of strangers and start talking about your sex life, I don't feel comfortable telling thousands of random people a week "he said/she said" stories.

For those who wish I were more personal, I say: be my friend first. Gain my trust. You don't get it for free. That cheapens the value of what might be something serious and deeply affecting for me.

Now back to your regular quirky thoughtful impersonal unoriginal programming!

Posted 2:00 PM by Blah blah

Peter Arnett: Reply from National Geographic

Just got this reply from National Geographic about the firing of reporter Peter Arnett:

"Thank you for your comments about the firing of Peter Arnett.

The National Geographic Society is an ardent supporter of the First Amendment and the right of every individual to speak his or her mind. Mr. Arnett was not terminated for speaking his mind; he was fired because one of the conditions of his service was that he pre-clear interviews with National Geographic. He also violated well-accepted
principles of journalistic responsibility in time of war, which preclude granting interviews to a wholly controlled broadcast agent of one of the parties in the conflict.

He also failed to indicate that his statements on Iraqi television were his personal opinion, thus creating the impression that some of the views expressed were the positions of National Geographic -- which takes no official positions on political or military matters."

Makes sense. I still feel bad for him, though. Over two decades of journalistic accomplishments gone in a 15 minute mistake. Lucky for Peter, he's quickly found work. From the AP: "Fired NBC correspondent Peter Arnett began reporting from Iraq on Monday as a special Baghdad correspondent for Taiwan's TVBS cable news....Since he was fired by NBC [actually, he was directly working for National Geographic], Arnett has also been reporting for pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He has also been hired by the private Belgian TV network VTM, the state-run Greek television channel NET, and The Daily Mirror of London, a tabloid vehemently opposed to the war."

Posted 11:54 AM by Blah blah

Despair of the Educated Arab Moderates

The moderate intellectuals struggle to defend America's actions both to their populations and to themselves. Again, it seems like the extremists on both sides, both in the Arab world and in America, are prevailing, and that's a damned shame for moderates like me. Let's hope Tony Blair knocks more sense into Bush.

Egyptian Intellectual Speaks Of the Arab World's Despair (NY Times):

Never have America's Arab friends, he said, felt so estranged from the United States.

"People in Egypt and many parts of the Arab world used to love America, and now they have a sense of being betrayed, misunderstood, taken lightly," he said. "And when it comes to the central problem of the Middle East — the Arab-Israeli conflict — we feel that even a minimum of American even-handedness is missing."

Mr. Aboulmagd is one of Egypt's best-known intellectuals, a senior aide to former President Anwar el Sadat, consultant to the United Nations and ever-curious polymath whose interests range across the fields of Islamic jurisprudence, comparative religions, literature, history and commercial law.

Like many educated Egyptians of his generation, he is a man whose views on democracy and political values were shaped by reading the United States Constitution, the Federalist papers and the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson.

For him the United States was a "dream," a paragon of liberal values to be emulated by Arabs and Muslims seeking to have a voice in the modern world.

One of his daughters lived in the United States. Mr. Aboulmagd studied there, earning a master's degree in comparative law at the University of Michigan in 1959. He served as president of the administrative tribunal of the World Bank in Washington. And he has spent more than 20 years of his life working on projects aimed at promoting dialogue between the Western, non-Muslim civilization and the Arab-Muslim world.

Yet these days, in his opinion, something has gone terribly wrong.

"Under the present situation, I cannot think of defending the United States," said Mr. Aboulmagd, a small man with thinning white hair who juggles a constant stream of phone calls and invitations to speak about modernizing the Arab world.

"I would not be listened to," he added. "To most people in this area, the United States is the source of evil on planet earth. And whether we like it or not, it is the Bush administration that is to blame."

When speaking of President Bush and his administration, Mr. Aboulmagd uses words like narrow-minded, pathological, obstinate and simplistic. The war on Iraq, he said bluntly, is the act of a "weak person who wants to show toughness" and, quite frankly, seems "deranged."

Such language from a man of Mr. Aboulmagd's stature is a warning sign of the deep distress that has seized the Arab elite, those who preach moderation in the face of rising Islamic radicalism and embrace liberalism over the tired slogans of Arab nationalism.

Similar opinions can also be heard these days from wealthy Arab businessmen, university professors, senior government officials and Western-leaning political analysts — the people whose support could help advance the Bush administration's professed mission: to bring democracy to the Arab world.

Posted 11:54 AM by Blah blah

Is Saddam Finally Dead? Storming Saddam's Palace.

The U.S. says they might have finally struck Saddam and his two sons!

'Saddam caught in blast' (The Guardian):

Accordings to the reports President Saddam and his sons Qusay and Uday were seen walking into a restaurant in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad early yesterday afternoon. The meeting, with up to 50 members of the top Ba'ath leadership is thought to have taken place in a bunker either below the restaurant or in an adjacent building. A voice sounding like President Saddam's had been overheard discussing escape routes out of the city. According to one report, his voice was intercepted because he was using an encrypted communication system sold to him by a British company in the 1980s, which British intelligence has since been able to decode.

The belief that the Iraqi leader was at the meeting was reinforced by US intelligence sources within the Iraqi leadership. The intelligence was relayed almost immediately to central command headquarters in Qatar, who sent the co-ordinates to one of its B-1 stealth bombers, which are constantly patrolling the skies over Iraq in search of such targets of opportunity. The devastating strike took place at 3pm Baghdad time on Monday, and left nothing of the restaurant and the adjacent building, except for a deep smouldering crater, which was shown on Arab TV. The buildings were hit by four 2000lb bunker busting bombs, directed to their target by satellite guidance.

Bomber crew told 'this is the big one':

"The crew of a B-1 bomber, told 'this is the big one,' took 12 minutes to reach Baghdad and release four earth-penetrating 900kg bombs on a building where Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons were believed to be....Baghdad was clouded over so they did not see the four GBU-31 bombs hit their target in a Baghdad residential area, learning only after the mission that the strike was believed to be successful....

The co-ordinates were released from an observer on the ground through the chain of command to the AWACS command plane, a process that took less than an hour. The B-1 was leaving an air refuelling tanker plane over western Iraq when it got the co-ordinates, said Swan.

The first two bombs dropped were satellite-guided weapons with penetrators for hardened targets. They were followed by two more 900kg bombs with a time-delayed fuse designed to detonate 25 milliseconds after impact, Swan said. He said earth penetrator bombs bore three to six metres into the ground, depending on whether they are going through soil or concrete, before exploding."

The military took one of Saddam's "opulent palaces" yesterday (The Guardian). Read what it was like inside. See the slideshow in the New York Times: Storming Saddam's Palace.

Posted 12:04 AM by Blah blah

Hi Leslie Cheung Fans!

Well the Leslie Cheung fans keep coming and coming here. Leslie just had his funeral today, which was televised too. Again, here's all the news and background I've collected on Leslie so far, up through today's news.

Would you be kind enough to say hi, either on my Guestmap (on top) or my Guestbook? Please let me know what you think and how you are feeling. Again, I'm very sorry Leslie was taken away from you. Some of you grew up with him, and he was your first celebrity crush, I know. I hope the memorial service helped ease some of your pain. :)

Posted 3:44 PM by Blah blah

In a related note, my site is now #2 on Yahoo and #3 on Google for the search phrase "Becoming a stripper." Just wanted you to be sure that all kinds of people are getting something worthwhile from coming here. :D
____________
Bush puts God on his side (BBC). Oh please NO! This sounds like something out of a Scientology meeting:

"[Bush] became convinced that God was calling him to engage the forces of evil in battle.... 'We are in a conflict between good and evil. And America will call evil by its name,' Mr Bush told West Point graduates in a speech last year. In this battle, he placed his country firmly on the side of the angels....

'It is by no means certain that we are as pure as the driven snow or that our international policy is so pure,' says Fritz Ritsch, Presbyterian minister in Bethesda, Maryland.

In fact, nearly all the mainland churches in America oppose this war, including Mr Bush's own church, the United Methodists....

One in three American Christians call themselves evangelicals and many evangelicals believe the second coming of Christ will occur in the Middle East after a titanic battle with the anti-Christ.

Does the president believe he is playing a part in the final events of Armageddon? If true, it is an alarming thought. But he would not be alone, as 59% of all Americans believe that what is written in the Bible's Book of Revelations will come to pass.

Tim LeHaye is an evangelical minister who has written 10 best-selling novels based on the Book of Revelations. With exquisite timing, his 11th, called Armageddon, will be published next week. By combining the apocalypse with a Tom Clancy style, Mr LeHaye has found a winning formula.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center, the minister became America's best-selling novelist in 2001, beating even John Grisham. In his latest novel we see the anti-Christ, armed with nuclear weapons, setting up camp at New Babylon in Iraq.

The millions of Americans who believe in the biblical prophecies see this war in a very particular way and among them, George Bush's stark talk of good versus evil plays very well. If America prevails, millions will say it was divinely ordained.

Posted 7:00 AM by Blah blah

Comedian Adam Felber: My Favorite Warblog

Heard this witty and funny show on National Public Radio, called Wait Wait---Don't Tell Me! (you may listen to the show here on RealPlayer). They have a bunch of smart, articulate, and funny people who play a quiz show about the current news. People who actually need to know what's happening in the world, for a game show. What a concept! I love it.

One of the panelists is Adam Felber. According to NPR, he "writes and performs for screens of all sizes and resolutions, and spends almost every night on some stage or another. He comprises exactly one half of the Irwin Smalls Trio, a sketch comedy duo. His writing credits include PBS' Wishbone, and his first screenplay, Women Are From, is currently in development at Paramount/MTV Films. Felber has been improvising comedy all over the world for the past 15 years, but he can quit any time he wants to."

Adam writes this blog, Fanatical Apathy. I've been sick of all the deadly serious, Christian conservative, right-wing Republican blogs out there that seem to dominate most of the shrill discussion about this war. Oh my God---Adam is a breath of fresh air. He's not only witty and sharp about the news, but he's MISCHIEVOUS and FUNNY, like Jon Stewart is on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Adam is my new favorite warblog!

He writes, and I love this post:
__________________
Journalism

I'd thought that the blogosphere was going to be a great place to keep track of the war and follow the debate over its coverage, a place where the actual events in Iraq would be dissected for their political and tactical ramifications. Unfortunately, it looks like the Hour of the Blog has passed, with its finest hour (the fall of Trent Lott) now a footnote.

The problem is that many of the so-called "warblogs" simply won't come to the table. Even the flagships of the genre, like Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan's site seem to be laboring under the weird delusion that the real war is being fought right here in America. They spend their days constructing bizarre longhaired straw men and knocking 'em down with a level of high-handed rhetorical smugness not seen since the Clinton impeachment hearings.

This would be a great service to our country if their cowardly and irrational foes actually existed, or existed as anything larger than a handful of left-fringe freaks. To the warbloggers, the entire anti-war movement is under the misapprehensions that Saddam isn't such a bad guy, that appeasement was the only answer, and (most bizarrely) that America is not going to win this war. Taking easy potshots at these caricatures is their daily focus, fulminating against these phantom anti-American forces, gloating that they'll get what's a-comin' to 'em.

The mainstream right simply refuses to engage in any sort of dialog with the mainstream left, so you'll see little rational discussion of diplomacy's failure, the consequences of over-selling America's military might, the strategy and timetable for war, or the risks inherent in presenting the Islamist world with a single, easily-identifiable target. Perhaps the taxing requirements of daily writing makes fighting cartoon foes the easiest strategy, but the internet's conservatives seem to have alarmingly little interest in the reality of a pro-American left. And only passing interest in the war itself.

For an antidote to this and a look at how blogging on the war ought to be done, drop by Atrios' worthy Eschaton. Note the prevalence of entries about the war and analyses of mass media's coverage thereof. If the pro-unilateralist right could muster up a few guys to deal in this arena, it'd be a boon to all of us. But I suppose that reading and analyzing just isn't as easy and fun as sneering.

The Little Three

CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC are (of course) locked in a struggle for the hearts and minds of concerned Americans, and their daily contortions to find the precise combination of reportage and bias that'll bring in the Nielsens is a glory to behold. The most horrifyingly amusing bloodsport is the hourly race to find the most telegenic relative of an American POW and see if they can moved to tears before the other networks get there. Here's your handy Viewers' Guide:

CNN - "Do you like victims? So do we! Wounded folks on both sides of the battle lines, the families of the dead, the grim tolling of the bell that signifies the awful costs of war... we got 'em right here! Weep along with ever-slower and ever-sadder Aaron Brown (why, sometimes he's too Deeply Affected to even speak!) every night, and keep your clicker on the network that brought you Gulf War I. CNN - We Know War."

Fox News - "Smirk if you got 'em, boys! The technology of 2003 plus the zeitgeist of 1956 equals battlefield boffo! Watch Real American Brit Hume make the simple even simpler for you, and thrill as our men stick it to those Rooskis - er - Iraqis. Don't miss our nightly serious, fair, balanced debate forum, "Screaming at Faggy Eggheads." Fox News - We Report, You Tie 'Em Up and Drag 'Em Behind Your Truck."

MSNBC - "What chance do our primitive foes have against our technical superiority and highly-trained elite forces? We're talking, of course, about CNN and Fox - they don't stand a chance! If you want to hear all about how we're covering the war better than those guys, you've come to the right place! We provide 24 hours a day of the the best, most balanced coverage of our great coverage. How did we get an HDTV feed with Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound onto the front of an American tank outside Basra? Find out! MSNBC - the REAL winner of the second Gulf War."

Posted 5:56 AM by Blah blah

Sigh. Reality

While the government spends millions of dollars a day playing war, the less glamorous but most important problem in America keeps getting worse and bleaker. Yes, Bush, we have more important problems than terrorism:

Workers Who Feel Discarded (NY Times):

"I've gone through a few stages of depression and frustration," said Dina Ziskin, who is 31 and lives in Brooklyn. "Why is it taking me so long? I panic a lot. I did not think it would be this difficult to find a job."

"I can't tell you the number of divorces we hear about," said Janelle Razzino, who runs an executive search firm in Westwood, N.J. "The job loss in these cases was probably the final straw. Nobody needs that kind of pressure, stress, whatever."

"It's like someone ran an electric shock through your system," said Dr. Steve Korner, a psychologist in Cresskill, N.J. "People are anxious, depressed, feeling unwanted, powerless. The job market is really awful for a lot of people."

Among the many things overshadowed by the war is the substantial human toll that is quietly being taken by the faltering U.S. economy. Putting Americans to work is not part of the agenda of the Bush administration, and the fallout from this lack of interest is spreading big time.

The U.S. is hemorrhaging jobs. On Friday the government reported that 108,000 more jobs were lost in March. Some 2.4 million jobs have vanished since the nation's payrolls peaked two years ago.

The jobless rate held steady at 5.8 percent last month, but that is extremely deceptive. People who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work are not counted when the unemployment rate is calculated. This keeps the official rate artificially low. There are five million people in the discouraged category and their ranks are growing....

There doesn't seem to be much awareness in the Bush administration of the terrible distress of the unemployed American worker. This is an ache that does not extend to the gilded towers of the very wealthy, which is where the administration has always focused its concern.

The White House response to the latest job loss figures is the same response it has had all along to bad economic news: more tax cuts are the cure.

Posted 12:24 AM by Blah blah

I've always liked these two poems, from when I first read them as a child. They express both the wistfulness and restlessness I feel:

A Boat Beneath A Sunny Sky

A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear --
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden dream --
Life, what is it but a dream?

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
(Notice combining the first letters of every line in this poem gives you "Alice Pleasance Liddell," who was the real Alice on whom Lewis Carroll modelled his storybook Alice. Last year I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and was lucky enough to see some of Carroll's original photos of Alice and her friends, plus other little girls he adored.)

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

-- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings