Gulfstream

http://dearraed.blogspot.com/2003_05_01_dear_raed_archive.html#200360720 Salam responds to claims that his family had ties to the Ba’ath party. (A story in The Guardian contains more backstory, as well as the news that Salam will soon be writing a column for the paper.) 19:44

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/sultaana1.html How very strange! “The Florida woman who’s suing for the right to wear a Muslim headdress in a driver’s licence photograph” was: (a) previously known as Sandra Keller, and converted to Islam in 1997; (b) arrested in 1999 for battering a foster child; and (c) photographed (without headdress) as part of the process; TSG have the photo. (She later pleaded guilty; two children were removed from her care.) 19:24

http://www.rushfordreport.com/WSJArticles/TearingDownTradeBarriers.htm There’s a great article in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review about how Washington—which in 2001 convinced Vietnamese officials (“reared on Marxist-Lenist economics”) to sign a free-trade agreement—are now allowing Vietnam to sell only $US1.7bn of clothing to the U.S. each year. (This because whilst in 2001 Vietnam sold only $50m to the U.S., this increased to $950m in 2002, and was expected to hit $2.4bn this year—the author noted that the Vietnamese were simply doing what poor nations traditionally do: “sew their way out of poverty, as quickly as possible.”)

I hope that article makes it to Rushford’s archive; I haven’t been able to find it online anywhere. Anyway, the above article is good too, and describes how many poor countries pay more in tariffs than many rich countries. For example, last year Cambodia paid $152m in tax on exports of $964m, whilst Singapore paid $96m on $14.8bn of exports. 11:05

http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=27&article_
id=4343&page_number=1 Arianna Huffington’s reasons for being against SUVs—that they fund terrorism—were particularly silly; this is a great take-down. 16:48

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27KILO.html On the search for an abstract definition of the kilogram. (That is, one that isn’t defined by a (unique) physical object, in this case by chunk of heavily guarded metal sitting in a “château” outside Paris.)

Interesting: “One reason the kilogram has lagged behind the other units is that there has been no immediate practical benefit to increasing its precision.”

(The piece also mentions that Japan had to surrender their replica kilogram block after WWII. So only countries in good international standing get a kilogram of their own? And was it physically (and cermonially) taken from them, or did someone just bounce it down the stairs a few times?) 16:06

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030602;s=lazare “The New Yorker Goes to War.” The subtitle—“How a Nice Magazine Talked Itself Into Backing Bush’s Jihad”—neatly captures the tone of this piece. (The author’s first thought, when faced with The New Yorker’s (putative) change of heart, seems to be not that the magazine is wrong, but that it has let him down.)

“The New Yorker may be just one example of a magazine that has lost its bearings, but, given its journalistic track record, its massive circulation (nearly a million) and the remarkable hold it still has on a major chunk of the reading public, it’s an unusually important one. Where once it used its institutional heft to help broaden American politics, now it is helping to narrow them.”

I don’t think Lazare’s problem is that The New Yorker doesn’t broaden like it once did: it’s that the magazine is not as liberal as it once was. 14:33

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0321/goldstein.php “Actually there was something novel about this occasion, but it passed utterly below the radar. Discretion prevented anyone from mentioning that Bush’s outfit gave him a very vivid basket.” 11:11

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/magazine/18TOKYO.html “Katayama’s interiors are purposefully designed to be experienced independent of what is being sold.” “You’re not just buying the product,” Katayama says, “You’re also buying the time you spend.” 17:30

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/11372424.html “A six year old has a crush on me…” 23:16

http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/phi.html Official Matrix website has section on the philosophy of the Matrix, with papers written by real philosophers! James Pryor (Princeton) asks “What’s So Bad about Living in the Matrix?” and gives three reasons for why life in the Matrix would suck (search for “three possibilities”); I’m not convinced! (I remember arguing a similar point with my high-school English teacher over Nineteen Eighty-Four.) 15:27

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/01-02/01_02_
booze_rules.htm “The 86 Rules of Boozing.” 23:48

http://slate.msn.com/id/2082988/ “Why is it so difficult to provide universal health care?” The U.S. apparently spends 14% of G.D.P. on health care, or twice as much as Britain and Japan. The article doesn’t mention it, but this is despite Britain’s N.H.S. being free to all (and therefore supposedly subject to the problem of infinite demand). 21:56

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0305100060may10.story High school senior exhibits life-size self-portrait outside school cafeteria; the painting has her left breast exposed—officials make her take it down. 21:42

http://invisibleshoebox.blogspot.com/2003_05_11_is_archive.html#94292262 “Here’s a terrible confession: sometimes I’ll meet someone and think ‘If you were a character in a book I’d probably feel sorry for you. But as a real person, you’re very annoying and I want you to go away.’ ” 11:51

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner_r-cc.html Richard Posner on liberalism and conscription. A nice observation: “… since the left has been notably unsuccessful in restricting economic liberty, and the right has been largely unsuccessful in restricting personal liberty, what we have in fact, though it is rarely acknowledged, is an approximation, though a very rough one, to a Millian polity.” (This gets a little weird and unconvincing at the end; I don’t believe that “nation’s admiration for [soldiers] helps to bind the different income classes together.”) 23:13

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/04/brooks.htm Two parts to this. (1) A nice riff on Maxim, FHM, etc.: “Have you noticed that male chauvinism is making a comeback?” (2) The observation that one particular threat to society—“misogynistic rap culture”— comes not from the progressive’s traditional enemies of the rich, powerful and wellborn, but from the “urban lower class”—and that they haven’t yet figured out how to deal with this. “How do you react when people further down the social pecking order—whether they are disenfranchised whites or underclass urban minorities—are creating a culture you find degrading? How do you criticize that culture without seeming square, elitist, or even racist?” 22:54

http://wsws.org/articles/2003/may2003/nyt-m12.shtml Curious sort-of defense of Jayson Blair, via charges of hypocrisy and past institutional malfeasance, by the World Socialist Web Site. 11:16

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1830_305/94044079/
print.jhtml Fabulous essay on Milan Kundera. (From Harper’s, Nov 2002.) He’s cashed in on his image as a suffering Czech emigre; why, thirteen years after the Velvet Revolution, has he still not returned to Prague? He humiliates and disfigures his female characters; why has he got a free pass from feminists? (Also: Kundera’s five most recent books are unavailable in Czech!)

(Note that I like Kundera very much—see the Bin Disclaimer!) 19:32

http://www.medact.org/tbx/pages/sub.cfm?id=556 What will war do to Iraq? (PDF summary.) (I approve of specific, falsifiable, predictions in the field of political science; they make it more, well, scientific.)

Many of these predictions did not eventuate: the war did not last three months, nor did it claim “48,000–261,000” lives; nuclear weapons were not used, nor was there a civil war; Iraq’s infrastructure did not suffer “enormous damage”; refugees escaping the conflict did not “die in large numbers”; Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons; oil wells were not set on fire; cities were not destroyed.

My question is (and with reference to a previous entry in which I wondered about the extent to which the disagreement over whether it was right to go to war amounted to a disagreement over the expected results): would Medact have supported the war if the outcome was the outcome the coalition got? Contrariwise, would the coalition have not waged war if the outcome was the outcome described in Medact’s report? 16:05

http://cotrancorp.com/cattleequipment.htm A slaughter-house HR manager interviewed in Gig (wishlisted to me by the delicious Rebekah Jude!) said that at her work everything’s recycled, including the cow magnets. Cow magnets? Apparently, they’re fed to cows to collect the pieces of scrap wire they ingest (which would otherwise slice open their stomachs). (More on cow magnets.) 14:35

http://www.livejournal.com/users/kim_jong_il__/3520.html 18:59

http://www.brandonvedas.com/internet.html Harrowing IRC log of Brandon Vedas’s final moments as he overdoses on methadone, vicodin, klonopin, restoril… 18:09

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030509.html Urinal design/where you should pee. 00:08

http://www.rebekah.org/daily/2003/04/25.shtml The importance of email: “I mean to say, I enjoyed the boy a great deal in person, even if his email skills were lacking.” 15:40

http://www.ksrevenue.org/faqs-abcdrugtax.htm Dealers, don’t forget to purchase your drug tax stamps from the Kansas Department of Revenue! 11:44

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5-669779,00.html Surprising: Warren Buffet “still lives in the grey stucco house he bought in 1956 for $31,500.” (Most of this article is about Buffet’s criticism of Bush’s planned tax cuts—but is the world’s second richest man really a credible champion of the poor?) 22:31

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/opinion/06KRUG.html On Bush’s carrier-top speech: “A U.S.-based British journalist told me that he and his colleagues had laughed through the whole scene. If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel.” 16:28

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/11035938.html “An Open Letter to Myself”: why you might not want to move to NYC. 14:56

http://slate.msn.com/id/2082098/ “A Guide to Menu English.” 12:44

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/magazine/04WTWT.html Interview with an N.B.A. camera operator. (Also: nice introduction to the expression “really bringing it.”) 12:30

http://www.travelsongs.com/music/mp3/chinatown/ShipOutOnTheSea.mp3 The Be Good Tanyas (awful name for a band), “Ship Out on the Sea.” 12:04

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/magazine/04STUDENT.html Should graduate students be unionised? Pro: they’re not treated very well, and competition between universities will only make things worse. Con: they are treated well, and the relationship between graduate students and faculty is not the same as that between sanitation workers and management. 12:01

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,449436,00.html U.N. diplomats loot cafeterias after food workers call wildcat strike! “The mob then moved on to the Viennese Cafe, a popular snack bar in the U.N.’s conference room facility. It was also stripped bare. The takers included some well-known diplomats who finished off the raid with free drinks at the lounge for delegates. When asked how much liquor was lifted from the U.N. bar, one U.S. diplomat responded: ‘I stopped counting the bottles.’ He then excused himself and headed towards the men’s room.” 11:58

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/fashion/27JANE.html Jane Juska’s personal ad: “Before I turn 67—next March—I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” 23:31

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/c/t/ctm132/matrix/neolines.htm “The Rich Dialog of Neo.” 12:49