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Iraq: Another Vietnam for the US?

By Jonathan Charles BBC News, Baghdad Fierce opposition to Iraq's draft constitution looks set to ensure there will be no withdrawal of US troops in the near future, and as the violence continues, the Vietnam comparisons return. August has been one of the bloodiest months of the conflict "Can you go to Baghdad?" Five words which send a shiver down the stiffest journalistic spine. After covering more than a dozen conflicts during the past couple of decades, I was in no doubt as to what a trip to one of the world's most dangerous capitals would be like. Two and a half years on from the war which brought down Saddam Hussein, death is still part of daily life in Baghdad. The past few weeks in Iraq have been particularly bloody. Twice in recent days my breakfast has been interrupted by the crump of nearby explosions and the crack of rifle fire. The continuing violence is fuelling yet more comparisons about whether what is happening here - with American troops bogged down in a seemingly endless battle against the insurgents - is similar to the United States' terrible experience in Vietnam. Demoralised forces When I was growing up as a kid in the early 1970s, I remember watching BBC reporters in Vietnam talking about the demoralised American forces, unable to defeat their enemy. It was seeing these glamorous figures on television that made me want to be a foreign correspondent. Half a million American troops spent 10 years in Vietnam fighting the communists It is an easy analogy for critics of the American presence here to bandy about, and the truth is that there are both similarities and differences. Half a million American troops spent 10 years in Vietnam fighting the communists before suffering their humiliating withdrawal. This time the United States' commitment is much smaller, casualties have been fewer and the aim is to leave heads-held-high much sooner. But in some other ways, the conflicts are alike. Losing control The American troops - just like their predecessors in Vietnam - do appear to have low morale. So far, almost 1,900 have been killed and the number rises every day. The soldiers can sense that life isn't improving here. One captain I spoke to said he feels as though his men are moving around Baghdad with their backs against the walls. He told me they can feel what control they had slipping from their grasp. He said in his unit, part of an infantry division, many of his soldiers are beginning to lose faith in their mission. Falling morale goes hand-in-hand with a lack of discipline. There was a vivid example of that here earlier this week when an Iraqi working as a TV sound recordist for the Reuters news agency was shot dead by an American soldier. His only mistake was to have approached an area where there had been a shooting incident. Innocent civilian Waleed Khaled appears to have been fired on without any warning. He leaves behind a wife who is four months pregnant and a seven-year-old daughter. The Reuters cameraman with him was injured and, although the main witness to what had happened, he was promptly arrested by the Americans. Before he was taken away, the cameraman was able to tell colleagues what had occurred. A senior British official admitted there was now a problem with American troops They were also refusing to give the injured cameraman any water. The security adviser - a former British soldier - said it was apparent to him that the American troops wanted to clear away any evidence before there could be an outside inquiry. He said what was most worrying was that the unit did not seem to care that they had shot dead an innocent civilian. The American military authorities say their investigations are continuing. Disastrous consequences When I raised the matter with a senior British official in Baghdad, he admitted there was now a problem with American troops. The US needs the backing of the ordinary Iraqi population Every civilian death means that another family turns against the Americans, he said. In Vietnam too, America lost the "hearts and minds" campaign with disastrous consequences. During the final years in Vietnam, the Americans started handing over more and more military responsibility to local troops - the policy of "Vietnamisation" - but they proved ineffective, unable to stop the communist onslaught. In Iraq today, there is a policy of "Iraqisation". Frightened army Driving around Baghdad, I have seen more and more checkpoints manned by Iraqi troops, but they too appear badly led and trained. It is critical for the US that the Iraqi security forces are effective At one roadblock this week, I saw Iraqi troops with black woollen balaclavas over their heads, a bizarre sight in the stifling heat of the Baghdad summer. They did not want to be recognised, worried that they and their families would be targeted. It shows what little belief they have in their abilities. Even members of the country's new army are frightened of the insurgents. Mention Vietnam and Iraq in the same breath here and American officers raise their eyes despairingly to the skies. It is premature to make a real comparison but some of the similarities are becoming too close for comfort. The last thing the Americans want is another humiliating pullout. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 1 September, 2005 at 1100 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

Daring Fireball: The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme

A Lexus SC 430 convertible speeds down a sunny street in Cupertino. The top is down. Brushed Metal is behind the wheel, stabbing at the buttons on his mobile phone. We hear the connection ringing. Brushed Metal’s agent, Mike, answers. Mike: B.M. Speak to me, baby. Brushed Metal: Don’t bullshit me, Mike. What’s going on? Mike: What do you mean? Brushed Metal: What do you think I mean? The Special Event. It starts in 30 minutes and no one has called me yet. I’ve been calling Steve’s office all morning, they won’t take my calls. Are they yanking iTunes 5? Mike: Uh… Brushed Metal: No? iTunes 5 is still on? Then why the fuck am I not there? Mike: B.M., calm down. Brushed Metal: Stop calling me “B.M.” Mike: They’ve gone with someone else for iTunes 5. I thought you knew. Brushed Metal: You’re my agent. How the fuck am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me? Mike: This is not a big deal, Brushed. Brushed Metal: How can you say this is not a big deal? It’s fucking iTunes! The most popular app in the world. It runs on Windows. Windows! Fuckfuckfuck! Mike: — Brushed Metal: This has got to be a mistake of some sort. Someone just forgot to call us. You’ve got to get me Steve on the phone, Mike. Mike: It’s not a mistake, Brushed. Trust me. Brushed Metal: Whatever happened to “Once you go metal, you never go back?” Mike: Times change, my friend. Brushed Metal: Who did they go with for iTunes? Not that Unified Title and Toolbar cocksucker… Mike: No, they got someone new. Brushed Metal: New? Mike: Yeah, and he’s hot. Very hot. He looks like Unified with a tan. Brushed Metal: Beige?! Mike: No, not tan colored. Like suntanned. He’s like Unified but darker. His color is a lot like yours, but smooth and shaded like Unified. And thinner. No borders. It’s a very chic look. Reminds me of you, back in the day. Brushed Metal: Back in the day? This is the day. This is still my day. I can do thin! What the fuck. What’s this guy’s name? Mike: (laughs) Man, he doesn’t even have a name. How’s that for bad-ass? Brushed Metal: I’m the bad-ass theme. I’m the one who flouts the Human Interface Guidelines. Mike: This guy trashes the HIG the way Johnny Depp trashes a hotel room. He even sports a custom radius on his window corners. No other window on the system has a shape like this. It’s wild. Just wait until the HIG zealots get a load of this guy. Brushed Metal: I told you something was fucked up when the new version of Mail didn’t go with me. Mike: You’ve got a nice long-term deal with the Finder… Brushed Metal: That two-timing piece of crap? Mike: …iChat, Calculator… Brushed Metal: Calculator? I’m out of iTunes and you tell me I’ve still got Calculator? When is the Special Event scheduled for the next version of Calculator? Oh, that’s right, there is none, because no one gives a shit about Calculator. Mike: QuickTime Player still loves you, man. You got some real history there. Don’t forget iCal. Brushed Metal: Can you get me on the phone with Steve or not? Mike: No-can-do. Steve loves this new guy. He’s even got him staying at his house. This is a done deal. Brushed Metal: The new theme is living at Jobs’s house? Mike: They’re tight. Brushed Metal pauses to think. Brushed Metal: Are you representing this guy? Mike: Listen, man, I’ve got to go. Brushed Metal: Are you at the Special Event? You backstabbing cocksucker! If I knew where this event was I’d come over there and kick your fucking ass. Mike: Gotta run, B.M. — I need to return a call to Safari before this show starts. We hear the click as Mike hangs up. Brushed Metal throws his phone into the passenger side door. He punches the padded center of his steering wheel. A few seconds later, the phone rings. Brushed Metal picks it off the passenger seat and looks at the caller ID. It reads: AQUA. Brushed Metal takes the call. Brushed Metal: What do you want? (It’s not yet 10 a.m., but Aqua is drunk.) Aqua: Howdya fuckin’ like it now, bee-yotch? WHOO HOO! Brushed Metal: Fuck you, Aqua. Aqua: WHOOO! Cut to black.

Terrorists Don't Do Movie Plots

Sometimes it seems like the people in charge of homeland security spend too much time watching action movies. They defend against specific movie plots instead of against the broad threats of terrorism. We all do it. Our imaginations run wild with detailed and specific threats. We imagine anthrax spread from crop dusters. Or a contaminated milk supply. Or terrorist scuba divers armed with almanacs. Before long, we're envisioning an entire movie plot, without Bruce Willis saving the day. And we're scared. Psychologically, this all makes sense. Humans have good imaginations. Box cutters and shoe bombs conjure vivid mental images. "We must protect the Super Bowl" packs more emotional punch than the vague "we should defend ourselves against terrorism." The 9/11 terrorists used small pointy things to take over airplanes, so we ban small pointy things from airplanes. Richard Reid tried to hide a bomb in his shoes, so now we all have to take off our shoes. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security said that it might relax airplane security rules. It's not that there's a lessened risk of shoes, or that small pointy things are suddenly less dangerous. It's that those movie plots no longer capture the imagination like they did in the months after 9/11, and everyone is beginning to see how silly (or pointless) they always were. Commuter terrorism is the new movie plot. The London bombers carried bombs into the subway, so now we search people entering the subways. They used cell phones, so we're talking about ways to shut down the cell-phone network. It's too early to tell if hurricanes are the next movie-plot threat that captures the imagination. The problem with movie plot security is that it only works if we guess right. If we spend billions defending our subways, and the terrorists bomb a bus, we've wasted our money. To be sure, defending the subways makes commuting safer. But focusing on subways also has the effect of shifting attacks toward less-defended targets, and the result is that we're no safer overall. Terrorists don't care if they blow up subways, buses, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, nightclubs, schools, churches, crowded markets or busy intersections. Reasonable arguments can be made that some targets are more attractive than others: airplanes because a small bomb can result in the death of everyone aboard, monuments because of their national significance, national events because of television coverage, and transportation because most people commute daily. But the United States is a big country; we can't defend everything. One problem is that our nation's leaders are giving us what we want. Party affiliation notwithstanding, appearing tough on terrorism is important. Voting for missile defense makes for better campaigning than increasing intelligence funding. Elected officials want to do something visible, even if it turns out to be ineffective. The other problem is that many security decisions are made at too low a level. The decision to turn off cell phones in some tunnels was made by those in charge of the tunnels. Even if terrorists then bomb a different tunnel elsewhere in the country, that person did his job. And anyone in charge of security knows that he'll be judged in hindsight. If the next terrorist attack targets a chemical plant, we'll demand to know why more wasn't done to protect chemical plants. If it targets schoolchildren, we'll demand to know why that threat was ignored. We won't accept "we didn't know the target" as an answer. Defending particular targets protects reputations and careers. We need to defend against the broad threat of terrorism, not against specific movie plots. Security is most effective when it doesn't make arbitrary assumptions about the next terrorist act. We need to spend more money on intelligence and investigation: identifying the terrorists themselves, cutting off their funding, and stopping them regardless of what their plans are. We need to spend more money on emergency response: lessening the impact of a terrorist attack, regardless of what it is. And we need to face the geopolitical consequences of our foreign policy and how it helps or hinders terrorism. These vague things are less visible, and don't make for good political grandstanding. But they will make us safer. Throwing money at this year's movie plot threat won't. - - - Bruce Schneier is the CTO of Counterpane Internet Security and the author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. You can contact him through his website.

Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint

They report that with microcephalin, a new allele arose about 37,000 years ago, although it could have appeared as early as 60,000 or as late as 14,000 years ago. About 70 percent of people in most European and East Asian populations carry this allele of the gene, but it is much rarer in most sub-Saharan Africans. With the other gene, ASPM, a new allele emerged 14,100 to 500 years ago, the researchers favoring a midway date of 5,800 years. The allele has attained a frequency of about 50 percent in populations of the Middle East and Europe, is less common in East Asia, and is found at low frequency in some sub-Saharan Africa peoples. The Chicago team suggests that the new microcephalin allele may have arisen in Eurasia or as the first modern humans emigrated from Africa some 50,000 years ago. They note that the ASPM allele emerged about the same time as the spread of agriculture in the Middle East 10,000 years ago and the emergence of the civilizations of the Middle East some 5,000 years ago, but say that any connection is not yet clear. Dr. Lahn said there might be a fair number of genes that affect the size of the brain, each making a small difference yet one that can be acted on by natural selection. "It's likely that different populations would have a different makeup of these genes, so it may all come out in the wash," he said. In other words, East Asians and Africans probably have other brain-enhancing alleles, not yet discovered, that have spread to high frequency in their populations. He said he expected that more such allele differences between populations would come to light, as have differences in patterns of genetic disease. "I do think this kind of study is a harbinger for what might become a rather controversial issue in human population research," Dr. Lahn said. But he said his data and other such findings "do not necessarily lead to prejudice for or against any particular population." A greater degree of concern was expressed by Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Collins said that even if the alleles were indeed under selection, it was still far from clear why they had risen to high frequency, and that "one should resist strongly the conclusion that it has to do with brain size, because the selection could be operating on any other not yet defined feature." He said he was worried about the way these papers will be interpreted. Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Maryland and a co-author of both studies, said the statistical signature of selection on the two genes was "one of the strongest that I've seen." But she, like Dr. Collins, said that "we don't know what these alleles are doing" and that specific tests were required to show that they in fact influenced brain development or were selected for that reason.

Microsoft tries to recruit me

The following is, verbatim, a letter I received a few minutes ago from a Microsoft recruiter. From: "Mike Walters (Search Wizards)" <v-mikewa@microsoft.com> To: <esr@thyrsus.com> Eric, I am a member of the Microsoft Central Sourcing Team. Microsoft is seeking world class engineers to help create products that help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. Your name and contact info was brought to my attention as someone who could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft. I would love an opportunity to speak with you in detail about your interest in a career at Microsoft, along with your experience, background and qualifications. I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have and can also provide you with any information I have available in regard to the position s and work life at Microsoft. Please take a moment to visit My Calendar <http://www.appointmentquest.com/provider/2010224927> online to schedule a convenient time for me to contact you. You can learn more about our vision for the New World of Work at <http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail> http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail. Additionally, if you are aware of any current or previous colleagues who might also be interested in opportunities at Microsoft, I would be happy to speak with them as well. Referrals are always welcome, and are greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance and I look forward to an opportunity to speak to you in the near future Best regards, Mike <http://members.microsoft.com/careers/default.mspx> How far will you go? Mike Walters CST Senior Recruiter Microsoft One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052 <http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap&addr=One+Microsoft+Way&csz=Re dmond%2C+WA+98052&country=us> I called Mike Walters, who told me my name had been passed to him by his research team. I indicated to him that I thought somebody was probably having a little joke at his expense, and promised him an email reply. Here is my reply in its entirety: To: "Mike Walters (Search Wizards)" <v-mikewa@microsoft.com> From: <esr@thyrsus.com> I'd thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both) couldn't get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats. What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy? If you had bothered to do five seconds of background checking, you might have discovered that I am the guy who responded to Craig Mundie's "Who are you?" with "I'm your worst nightmare", and that I've in fact been something pretty close to your company's worst nightmare since about 1997. You've maybe heard about this "open source" thing? You get one guess who wrote most of the theory and propaganda for it and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in. But don't think I'm trying to destroy your company. Oh, no; I'd be just as determined to do in any other proprietary-software monopoly, and the community I helped found is well on its way to accomplishing that goal. On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone will go superconductive. But I must thank you for dropping a good joke on my afternoon. On that hopefully not too far distant day that I piss on Microsoft's grave, I sincerely hope none of it will splash on you. Cordially yours, Eric S. Raymond My wife, upon hearing of this, suggested that if something like this could happen maybe I haven’t made enough trouble for Microsoft lately, and I’m slipping off their radar. She might have a point… UPDATE: For those of you who missed the subtlety (which was a surprising lot of you) I was quite polite to this guy on the phone. FURTHER UPDATE: I had my serious, constructive converstation with Microsoft last year, when a midlevel exec named Steven Walli took me out to dinner at OSCON 2004 and asked, in so many words, “How can we not be evil?” And I told him — open up your file formats (including Word and multimedia), support open technical standards instead of sabotaging them, license your patents under royalty-free, paperwork-free terms. I believe Steve Walli went back to his bosses and told them that truth. He is no longer with Microsoft, and what little he’ll say about it hints that they canned him for trying to change their culture. This didn’t surprise me. Microsoft’s profit margins require a monopoly lock on the market; thus, they’re stuck with being predatory evil bastards. The moment they stop being predatory evil bastards, their stock price will tank and their options pyramid will crash and it will be all over. That being the case, negotiation is pointless. Microsoft is not reformable. Jeering at offers like this is actually the most constructive thing we can do.

Guilty burglars detected by glow

Anyone sprayed with SmartWater glows under an ultra-violet light SmartWater, which shows up under ultra-violet light, contains a unique DNA-style code. When a break-in happens the thief is sprayed with the liquid, which cannot be washed off and lasts for months. Custody offices are now fitted with ultra-violet arches which every prisoner will pass through to show if they have been sprayed. Those who have been will glow under the lights and the liquid's "code" can be used to place them at the scene of a particular burglary. Police have invested in a number of sprinkler systems which can easily be installed in homes or commercial premises. Peter Fay, a community inspector with Northumbria Police, said: "Every person arrested in Newcastle is now passing underneath the arches which will show up immediately if they have been in contact with SmartWater. "We are also starting to work with second-hand shops in Newcastle to educate them on SmartWater and will be providing them with portable scanners so they can test items themselves."

Clever artificial hand developed

The artificial hand has an opposing thumb At present, prosthetic hands either do not move at all or have a simple single-motor grip. But the University of Southampton team has designed a prototype that uses six sets of motors and gears so each of the five fingers can move independently. Details of their design were presented at an Institute of Physics conference. The aim is to create a hand with the sort of functionality a human hand has but also a sense of touch Dr Paul Chappell Every year 200 people in the UK lose their hands. Common causes include motorbike accidents and industrial incidents. It is hard for scientists to replicate hand movement, as the real thing has 27 bones and can make a huge number of complex movements and actions. The Southampton team believe their prototype is able to make movements and grip objects in the same way that a real hand does. The new hand - called the Southampton Remedi-Hand - can be connected to muscles in the arm via a small processing unit and is controlled by small contractions of the muscles which move the wrist. Clutching small objects Researcher Dr Paul Chappell, a medical physicist who worked on the device, said: "With this hand you can clutch objects such as a ball, you can move the thumb out to one side and grip objects with the index finger in the way you do when opening a lock with a key, and you can wrap your fingers around an object in what we call the power grip - like the one you use when you hold a hammer or a microphone." The latest design is also very light - at 400g it is lighter than the average human hand. Heavy prosthetics can be extremely uncomfortable and cause injury to the area where it joins with the arm. The hand was built in three parts - the three middle fingers are very similar in size and movement so those were made identical. The little finger is a smaller version of the same. Each of these four fingers are made up of a motor attached to a gearbox attached to a carbon fibre finger. All of this is fitted to a carbon fibre palm. Thumb technology But the thumb was much more complicated. The human thumb can move in special ways the fingers cannot. It can rotate as well as flex and also move in a variety of different directions. It can also oppose (touch) each of the fingers in the hand to form a 'pinch'. To mimic this, the Remedi-Hand uses two motors - one to allow it to rotate and one to allow it to flex. The researchers say it has the first artificially-made opposable thumb. Dr Chappell said: "The real thumb can move in five types of way, we've managed to create a thumb that can mimic at least two of these which is a really exciting achievement. "It's a thumb that has really good flexibility and functionality." The next stage will be to integrate the latest sensor technology to create a 'clever' hand which can sense how strongly it is gripping an object, or whether an object is slipping. Dr Chappell said: "The aim is to create a hand with the sort of functionality a human hand has but also a sense of touch." Jared O'Mara, of the British Council of Disabled People, welcomed the Southampton work. He said: "We are eager to see how such a device will work in practice and are hopeful that it will help many disabled people to lead easier lives, in particular during the course of day to day remedial tasks."

Firefox is more than a browser

It’s a whole family of products designed to keep you safer and smarter online. Firefox Monitor See if your personal information has been compromised in a corporate data breach, and sign up for future alerts. Check for breaches Sign up for breach alerts Firefox browsers Get the browsers that block 2000+ data trackers automatically. Enhanced Tracking Protection comes standard in every Firefox browser. Download Desktop Android iOS See all browsers Firefox Lockwise Keep your passwords safe, and access them across all your synced devices. Download Lockwise Open in Firefox Android iOS Learn more about Lockwise

Untitled Document

2017 It's been six years since I've done anything with this site, so I should probably do something about that. Maybe in July. Until then (and even after then), you can go visit GoComics.com for new comics and all the ones that weren't posted here the past half a decade or so. If you are so inclined, you can follow a practically neglected twitter account for Tiny. For the few who visit this relic of websites past, thanks for dropping by. If you have a question for the little guy please send it in. Thanks for reading. <K3

Women MPs speak up against sexism

Feature by Jackie Storer BBC News Website There are now 128 women MPs in Westminster The women MPs who swept into the House of Commons in 1997, swelling their numbers to 120, say life at the heart of democracy has been anything but easy. Some even claim they have had to resort to ancient art of "nagging" to get their voices heard and laws changed. Their struggle to win equality in the chamber and to crack the code of its "Old Boys' Club" mentality there is detailed in a new book about female MPs, along with an accompanying radio programme. "Women in Parliament - The New Suffragettes", written by Boni Sones, with Margaret Moran and Joni Lovenduski, and BBC Radio 4's "A Monstrous Regiment", produced by Deborah McGurran, are based on a series of frank interviews with dozens of past and present female MPs. 'Strip search' offer Labour's Barbara Follett - one of the 1997 intake and one of "Blair's Babes" - says it is not just verbal abuse the female MPs have had to deal with. "Sometimes when women got up to speak, some of the men - not thankfully on our side of the House - would put their hands on their chests, wiggle them around and go 'melons'. It was like a school boy type of humour," she said. It's all willy jousting and there is much more of that in the British Parliament than in the European Parliament Oona King Ex-women's minister Joan Ruddock says she became a particular target when she tried to address the issue of strip-searching of women in Northern Ireland in a debate on the army. "I heard completely audibly in the chamber one of the men on the Tory side say 'oh, I'd like to strip search you any day'," she said. And Tory ex-Cabinet minister Gillian Shepherd said one Tory MP "called us all Betty" because "you are all the same". Labour's Margaret Moran said women MPs had noted a number of male colleagues who were "particularly prevalent in their kind of abusive behaviour, words and gestures and barracked women during the course of their speeches". Jibes Ex-Labour MP Oona King uses her own terminology to denounce the adversarial nature of the still male-dominated Commons chamber. "It's all willy jousting and there is much more of that in the British Parliament than in the European Parliament," she says. Miss Widdecombe says female MPs are being 'over sensitive' "You really didn't know how to crack the code of the club." However, the former teacher said she did find humour one method of defence against jibes by Tory John Bercow, who made constant references to her schooling at Cheltenham Ladies' College, whenever she spoke about education. "I said: 'I have no more influence over where I went to school than the honourable gentleman had over your lack of inches - I imagine we have both been affected by our experiences'," she said. "He's a complete short arse - and since I did that he stopped it." 'Pathetic' But former Cabinet minister Ann Widdecombe says she believes some of her female colleagues are just being "sensitive" to comments made about them, particularly those made by the media. She said ex-Tory leader William Hague's baldness and Tory leadership hopeful Ken Clarke's Hush Puppies had also been fair game. I look now at the new intake coming in - to be frank I fear for them because many marriages will go Barbara Follett "Come on, once again it's women being sensitive, saying 'it's just because I'm a woman that the press are saying this'. Oh, it's so pathetic ... I'd like to bang their heads together," she says. And Tory Theresa May, she of the stiletto shoes fame, said she did not mind the comments made about them because it showed "MPs can be human and like shoes". It also drew people into politics who might otherwise have not been interested, she said. Bitterness However, the change from family friendly hours in the Commons, back to a late night sitting on a Tuesday, is one topic that has angered many of the female MPs. Ms King said she "lost it" when she heard of the changes. "I started shouting and swearing. The point is it's one thing if they want to be held hostage there, but why should they need to hold me hostage too?" Ms King likens the adversarial nature of the Commons to 'willy jousting' Ms Follett says that kind of pressure can take its toll on MPs' families and personal life. "I look now at the new intake coming in - to be frank I fear for them because many marriages will go." Achievements One marriage that ended precipitously was that of Tory MP Eleanor Laing, who had a baby shortly after the 2001 election and was back at the dispatch box only 10 days after the birth. She said not only had it been "incredibly difficult" fighting an election while pregnant, but coping with a young baby at that time. Ms MacTaggart says humour can diffuse tension in the Commons "I think if they are constantly being described by their clothes, their weight and their hair styles, it does belittle what they do and what they achieve. "They really enjoy the job of being an MP and they particularly enjoy their constituency work. "When you ask them what achievements they are proudest of, it's their constituency work." 'Persistent voice' Deborah McGurran, producer of A Monstrous Regiment, in which 17 MPs feature, said she was surprised how they failed to blow their own trumpet, yet used the domestic wile of "nagging" to get their own way. "A lot of the women quietly, behind the scenes, in select committees and standing committees, and in the House - wherever they could, keep pushing and pushing to get things done," she said. "A number of them talk about persistence to get what they want." :: Archive Hour - A Monstrous Regiment will be broadcast on Saturday, 10 September, on BBC Radio 4, 8-10pm BST.

Key Points In Brain Evolution Identified

A research team from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, led by Bruce T. Lahn, has uncovered some fascinating genetic pointers to the human brain’s evolution. Their findings, in the journal Science, relate to sequence variations in two genes that regulate the size of the brain in humans. Interestingly, the major variants in these genes arose at key points in human history. The team focused on detecting sequence changes in two genes – Microcephalin and ASPM in different human populations. Mutations in either of these genes can render the gene nonfunctional and cause microcephaly – a syndrome in which the brain develops to a much smaller size than normal. Lahn and his colleagues had previously determined that both Microcephalin and ASPM showed significant changes under the pressure of natural selection during the making of the human species. “Our earlier studies showed that Microcephalin showed evidence of accelerated evolution along the entire primate lineage leading to humans, for the entire thirty to thirty-five million years that we sampled,” Lahn said. “However, it seemed to have evolved slightly slower later on. By contrast, ASPM has evolved most rapidly in the last six million years of hominid evolution, after the divergence of humans and chimpanzees.” In order to identify the sequence changes that occurred in the evolutionary lineage leading to humans, the researchers determined the DNA sequences of the two genes among a large number of primate species and searched for sequence differences between humans and nonhuman primates. Statistical analysis then revealed the differences that drove significant sequence changes in the lineage leading to humans. Presumably, these changes accumulated because they conferred some competitive advantage. The evidence that Microcephalin and ASPM were evolving under strong natural selection led Lahn and his colleagues to consider exploring whether these two genes are still evolving under selection in modern human populations. “In the earlier studies, we looked at differences that had already been set in the human genome,” he said. “The next logical question was to ask whether the same process is still going on today, given that these genes have been under such strong selective pressure, leading to the accumulation of advantageous changes in the human lineage. If that is the case, we reasoned we might be able to see variants within the human population that are rising in frequency due to positive selection, but haven’t gone to completion yet.” To explore this hypothesis, the researchers first sequenced the two genes in an ethnically diverse selection of about 90 individuals. Then, the researchers sequenced the genes in the chimpanzee, to determine the “ancestral” state of polymorphisms in the genes and to assess the extent of human-chimpanzee divergence. In each gene, the researchers found distinctive sets of polymorphisms (sequence differences between different individuals). Blocks of linked polymorphisms are known as haplotypes and each haplotype represents a distinct genetic variant of the gene. They found that they could further break the haplotypes down into related variants called haplogroups. Their analysis indicated that for each of the two genes, one haplogroup occurs at a frequency far higher than that expected by chance, indicating that natural selection has driven up the frequency of the haplogroup. They referred to the high-frequency haplogroup as haplogroup D. The researchers found that haplogroup D of ASPM occurred more frequently in European and related populations, including Iberians, Basques, Russians, North Africans, Middle Easterners and South Asians. It was found at a lower incidence in East Asians, sub-Saharan Africans and New World Indians. For Microcephalin, the researchers found that haplogroup D is more abundant in populations outside of Africa than in populations from sub-Saharan Africa. To improve the reliability of their data, the researchers applied their methods to a larger population sample of more than one thousand people. Confirming their earlier findings, that analysis also showed the same distribution of haplogroups. It appears from the findings that the Microcephalin haplogroup D appeared about 37,000 years ago, and the ASPM about 5,800 years ago – both well after the emergence of modern humans 200,000 years ago. “In the case of Microcephalin, the origin of the new variant coincides with the emergence of culturally modern humans,” said Lahn. “And theASPM new variant originated at a time that coincides with the spread of agriculture, settled cities, and the first record of written language. So, a major question is whether the coincidence between the genetic evolution that we see and the cultural evolution of humans was causative, or did they synergize with each other?” The researchers can only guess at the geographic origin and circumstances surrounding the spread of the haplogroups. “They may have arisen in Europe or the Middle East and spread more readily east and west due to human migrations, as opposed to south to Africa because of geographic barriers. Or, they could have arisen in Africa, and increased in frequency once early humans migrated out of Africa,” said Lahn. Could selective pressure on the new variants relate to cognition? “What we can say is that our findings provide evidence that the human brain, the most important organ that distinguishes our species, is evolutionarily plastic,” Lahn explained. “Here we have two microcephaly genes that show evidence of selection in the evolutionary history of the human species and that also show evidence of ongoing selection in humans.” It would be wrong to suppose that some ethnic groups are more “evolved” than others, Lahn emphasized. Any differences among groups would be minor compared to the large differences in such traits as intelligence within those groups. “We’re talking about the average impact of such variants,” he said. “Just because you have one gene that makes you more likely to be a little taller, doesn’t mean you will be tall, given the complex effect of all your other genes and of environment.” Lahn said that the findings suggest that the human brain will continue to evolve under the pressure of natural selection. “Our studies indicate that the trend that is the defining characteristic of human evolution – the growth of brain size and complexity – is likely still going on. If our species survives for another million years or so, I would imagine that the brain by then would show significant structural differences from the human brain of today.” Source: Media release – Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Rare White Giraffe Photographed

A researcher in Africa has finally spotted the rare white giraffe that he's been seeking for twelve years, and he's got a photograph to prove it. Charles Foley, a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) researcher, first heard rumors of the white giraffe in 1993 when he was working in Tanzania's Tarangire National Park doing research on savanna elephants. Intrigued, Foley set out to find the animal, but by the next year, the sightings had stopped coming in. "I assumed it had died, either at the hand of man or best," he said. "I never stopped looking though." Foley's persistence paid off this summer. While conducting a routine aerial survey of a group of the park's elephants, he spotted a white speck in the distance. "I looked…blinked…looked again…and it was still there," Foley said. Foley told his pilot to make another pass over the spot and managed to snap a photograph of the white giraffe just as they flew over the trees. "The proof is there to see—a mostly white giraffe with small dark blotches on its body," Foley said. "Only the bottom half of its legs were the more traditional brown color." Foley doubts the giraffe he photographed is the same giraffe sighted in 1993, and that it is probably not a pure albino animal. Albino animals lack the pigments that give their skin color. Rather, Foley thinks the giraffe was probably just lighter than normal.

Burj Dubai Tower Update: Science Fiction in the News

Burj Dubai Tower Update The Burj Dubai tower in the United Arab Emirates is quietly progressing on its goal of being the tallest building in the world. I thought their website was a bit over the top ("only a few structures have had the power to change history"), but then I read this interesting statement: "At the crossroads of India and the Middle East, equidistant between Europe and Asia, Dubai is fast becoming the financial and cultural hub for over a billion people. At the centre of that hub stands the most exclusive address in the world." You can't say they don't have a vision. Remarkably, the inspiration for the tower comes from - a flower. The Hymenocallis is a plant widely cultivated in Dubai, India and around the region. It's harmonious structure is one of the organizing principles for the design. The building is now springing upward from its foundation, which consists of 192 piles constructed to depths of more than 50 meters, bound together by a 3.7 meter thick concrete raft across 8,000 square metres, and encompasses the tower’s entire footprint. The total concrete poured into the foundation (over 45,000 cubic meters) weighs more than 110,000 tons. The high performance exterior cladding system will be employed to withstand the extreme temperatures during the summer months in Dubai. Primary materials include reflective glazing, aluminum and textured stainless steel spandrel panels and the vertical stainless tubular fins accentuating the height and the slenderness of the tower. When completed Burj Dubai will hold the record in all four categories as recognized by the New York-based global authority - Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat – highest structure, roof, antenna and occupied floor. Science fiction writers have created vast structures; for example, in Tower of Glass, a 1970 novel by Robert Silverberg, a six kilometer-high tower is constructed. (This novel also has the first use of the cyberpunk term "jack in."). SF writers also create structures that are not only based on animals or plants, but which actually incorporate living animals or plants. The float-home from Frank Herbert's 1969 novel Whipping Star is actually constructed using a very large mammalian lifeform. See also the earlier article Burj Tower in Dubai to be World's Tallest Building. Thanks also to Jeff for his comments. Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/27/2005) Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy. | Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Would you like to contribute a story tip? It's easy: Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add it here. Comment/Join discussion ( 27 ) Related News Stories - (" Living Space ") 3D Printed Dubai Building Is World's Largest 'This thing will start at one end of ...a house and build it complete to the other end, following drawings only.' - Murray Leinster, 1945. Driverless Hotel Rooms Predicted In 1828 'Did you never see a moving house before?' - Jane Webb Loudon, 1828. Humans Could Take Up A LOT Less Space We'd have a lot more room for gardening... Oh Yes, We're Building The Rotating Tower In Dubai 'Give me an old-fashioned tetragon on a central pivot every time.' - Frank Herbert, 1972. Web TechNovelgy.com

The 'Flying Carpet' of Seyed Alavi: Science Fiction in the News

The 'Flying Carpet' of Seyed Alavi Can you imagine walking the route that your plane will take - on your way into the airport from the parking lot? Artist Seyed Alavi has created a 150 foot 'flying carpet' that has a digital copy of the course of the Sacramento River woven into it. The carpet shows approximately fifty miles of the river, starting just outside Colusa, CA and ending about six miles south of Chico. If I'm doing my math right, that means that a six foot tall person walking on the carpet is seeing the carpet 'landscape' from an apparent height of about two miles. Science fiction fans could have great fun with this carpet, which was installed this past summer in the Sacramento airport. It might remind you of the view of Larry Niven's Ringworld from space. The same novel offers teleportation pads called stepping discs that allow you to literally cover miles with each step, like the twenty-league boots of old; walking on this carpet would feel like that. Another thing that fascinates me with this idea is that it is the opposite of the micro-miniaturized displays, like the data goggles of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash or the somewhat retro eyephones from William Gibson's Idoru. Seyed Alavi remarks "it was my intention with this project to present a fun and humorous situation for laughter and play, where travelers will feel rejuvenated and reminded of the magic of flight." I'll bet it works. Read more about the 'flying carpet' at Seyed Alavi's website. Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/30/2005) Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy. | Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Would you like to contribute a story tip? It's easy: Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add it here. Comment/Join discussion ( 2 ) Related News Stories - (" Display ") LG Wing Twisting Smartphone Might Be Fun 'A polycarbon screen unfurled...' - William Gibson, 1986. Mi TV LUX Transparent Edition OLED TV The Look of Things To Come. HG Wells, 1936. AirTouch Panels Means No More Dirty Touchscreens! Useful interfaces now appear in thin air. Bosch Smartglasses Laser Paints AR Image On Your Retina 'Soon we'll be testing a system that projects directly on the retina of the eye.' - Pohl and Kornbluth, 1952. Web TechNovelgy.com

The Long Tail: Long Tail 101

[Note: I've updated my About page, which is where I've got the most concise definition of The Long Tail. This post is just a cleaned-up and easily linkable version of that.] The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. One example of this is the theory's prediction that demand for products not available in traditional bricks and mortar stores is potentially as big as for those that are. But the same is true for video not available on broadcast TV on any given day, and songs not played on radio. In other words, the potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don't individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may rival that of the existing large market in goods that do cross that economic bar. The term refers specifically to the yellow part of the sales chart above, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The red part of the curve is the hits, which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century. The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth is coming from now and in the future. Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumber the hits by several orders of magnitude. Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits. When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed. And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not). Our research project has attempted to quantify the Long Tail in three ways, comparing data from online and offline retailers in music, movies, and books. What's the size of the Long Tail (defined as inventory typically not available offline? How does the availability of so many niche products change the shape of demand? Does it shift it away from hits? What tools and techniques drive that shift, and which are most effective? The Long Tail article (and the forthcoming book) is about the big-picture consequence of this: how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches. It chronicles the effect of the technologies that have made it easier for consumers to find and buy niche products, thanks to the "infinite shelf-space effect"--the new distribution mechanisms, from digital downloading to peer-to-peer markets, that break through the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar retail. The Wikipedia entry on the Long Tail does an excellent job of expanding on this.

The tip of the anti-Turkish iceberg

Turkey's date with destiny, October 3 - the same day, coincidentally, that Germany was reunited in 1990 - was set last year when the then 15-member EU was finalising its historic 10-country enlargement. It has been a very long time coming: Turkey has been a stalwart member of Nato since 1952 and was first recognised as a potential member of the European club as long ago as 1963, only a few years after the creation of the EEC. Britain is a keen advocate of its EU membership, as is the US. Both see the secular Muslim democracy as a key regional ally, a beacon for Islamic and Arab countries and proof that a "clash of civilisations" with the west is not inevitable. But mounting anti-Turkish feeling in several European countries and last summer's shock rejections of the new EU constitution in France and the Netherlands - part of a wider political and economic malaise - have created grave doubts. Hence this week's alarm call by Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, who is now in the hot seat of the EU's rotating presidency, that it is vital to stick to the October 3 start date even if, as is widely expected, the actual negotiations drag on for many years. The immediate problem is the vexed question of Cyprus, one of last May's new entrants. The hope had been that a long-standing UN drive to reunite the divided island would bear fruit before it joined. But since it did not (though more because of the Greek than the Turkish side) and because Ankara is refusing to recognise the Nicosia government (which for the EU legally represents the entire country), the launch of accession talks is in jeopardy. Recognition is extremely difficult because without a comprehensive peace settlement it would undermine Turkey's own 30-year military presence and the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. But by flaunting its position at this highly delicate moment, Turkey has given ammunition to its enemies. Chief amongst these is France, where polls show much of the anti-Turkish prejudice expressed by the former president and author of the constitution, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, whose circumlocutions about "cultural differences" are only slightly less offensive than the cruder view of another clever Frenchman, Voltaire: the 18th-century thinker called the Turks "a reminder to Christians to atone for their sins". But there is an even bigger obstacle looming in Germany - assuming Angela Merkel's centre-right CDU wins this month's election: Ms Merkel wants Turkey - which supplied so many of the gastarbeiter who created the German economic miracle of the 1960s - to be offered only a "privileged partnership", not the full membership that has awaited all other candidates, from Estonia to Bulgaria, at the end of their negotiations. Another key opponent is Austria, where it sometimes seems that Ottoman janissaries are still besieging Vienna as they did back in the 17th century. Its chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel, also favours a halfway house and "open-ended" negotiations for the Turks. The problem is that offering something different only for Turkey would appear to prove the resentful charge that the EU is a "Christian club" and risk a dangerous anti-European, and perhaps fundamentalist, backlash. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has warned that he will "walk away for good" if the talks do not go ahead on schedule. If they do start on time, it will be a very big deal indeed: no country that has begun negotiations on joining the EU has failed eventually to make the grade. Although actual membership could be 10 or 15 years away, by then there will be more than 80 million Turks, probably outnumbering Germans. And with voting power tied to population size, Ankara will be as important a player as Berlin, Paris and London - a key reason for the mounting opposition. Another is the fear of large numbers of poor Turkish migrant workers flooding western European labour markets, though restrictions could be imposed for a transition period. Turkey and its supporters are understandably worried, though they have a strong case when they argue that the magnet of EU membership has already generated huge advances under Mr Erdogan's conservative, moderate Islamist government. The country's old Midnight Express image has faded and torture has been banned. There are now Kurdish language broadcasts, and the grip of the powerful military, keepers of the Ataturk flame, has been weakened. The economy is in good shape after years of crisis and inflation under the generals. It is an increasingly attractive market for foreign investment. Not everything is perfect. Implementation of some new laws has been patchy, and some worry about minority rights. Until recently there was greater openness on the ever-neuralgic question of the Armenian genocide of the first world war. That, however, has faded, and there is now embarrassment about the case of the internationally renowned novelist Orhan Pamuk, facing charges of "belittling Turkishness" over his brave comments about that dark period. Hectic diplomacy is likely across Europe over the coming days, perhaps going down to the wire on the eve of October 3. There will be brinkmanship and haggling over the precise terms of the negotiations,and attempts to square the circle of Ankara's non-recognition of Cyprus. Obscure and complex it may all be, but the stakes are very high. As Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, put it: "The last 100 metres of the marathon should be run very carefully."

Cheney told to 'go fuck yourself' in Gulfport, Mississippi

Cheney told to 'go fuck yourself' in Gulfport, Mississippi RAW STORY Vice President Dick Cheney, in Gulfport, Mississippi on a tour of the Katrina hurricane zone, was told to "go fuck yourself" twice on live television, RAW STORY has learned. During a discussion on hurricane relief efforts, an off camera protester shouts, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go fuck yourself." The camera remains on Cheney while we hear scuffling in the background. Cheney continues speaking. Advertisement CNN's reporter asks Cheney, "Are you getting a lot of that Mr. Vice President?" Cheney replies, "First time I've heard it., Must be a friend of John..., er, ah - never mind." Laughter ensues from the VP and reporters. Directly aftward, Cheney continues an ongoing monologue on what to do about hurricane debris: "But it's a question about what you do with the debris in terms of your toxic waste problem you've got to worry about in terms of where you're going to put it..." The exchange was carried live on CNN and MSNBC. The video is now available here. Originally published on Thursday September 8, 2005.

shfs kernel module

About shfs Shfs is a simple and easy to use Linux kernel module which allows you to mount remote filesystems using a plain shell (ssh) connection. When using shfs, you can access all remote files just like the local ones, only the access is governed through the transport security of ssh. Shfs supports some nice features: file cache for access speedup perl and shell code for the remote (server) side could preserve uid/gid (root connection) number of remote host platforms (Linux, Solaris, Cygwin, ...) Linux kernel 2.4.10+ and 2.6 arbitrary command used for connection (instead of ssh) persistent connection (reconnect after ssh dies) The code was originally developed as an assignment for an Operating Systems course at the Charles University, Prague.

Developing Firefox Extensions with GNU/Linux

Introduction I'm sure many of you are excited about today's GNOME release and the release of Firefox 1.5 beta 1. Kris and I decided to write Linux.Ars sections about GNOME and Firefox customization in order to celebrate the releases. In this edition of Linux.Ars, Kris will teach you how to use command line build tools to construct a complete Firefox extension, I will teach you how to add context menu items to Nautilus using the Nautilus Actions extension, and Ian introduces an LDAP utility called Luma. I want to personally thank those of you who sent me e-mails with comments and suggestions! Linux.Ars is all about you, so don't be afraid to get involved! Want to do a section for a future edition? Have a suggestion for a topic that you want us to write about? I would love some feedback. Feel free to send me or post in the discussion thread comments, complaints, suggestions, requests, free hardware, death threats, or disparaging remarks about my assorted deficiencies. Keep those comments coming! Developers Corner Developing Firefox Extensions with GNU/Linux In '89, an ancient Sumerian deity named Zuul razed downtown New York with her avatar, a flaming, Stay-puft Mallowzilla. In related news, the aptly named "Mozilla Foundation" has released Firefox 1.5 Beta, a web browser built on an easily extended, cross-platform application framework called XUL (pronounced "Zuul"). In this article, I will provide insight into how to professionally develop a Firefox Extension with GNU/Linux. For demonstration, I'll develop an application called Stantz. This article is directed to anybody who wants to extend Firefox. Experience writing HTML, Javascript, and CSS should be all you need to understand XUL. Some knowledge about the Linux command line and the Python programming language are desirable, but not necessary. You may want to play with an Apache web server's configuration, and experience handling a neutron accelerator pack would certainly help. Thankfully, you won't need to build Mozilla and you won't have to compile any C or C++. What can you do with a Firefox Extension? Firefox extensions can modify the Firefox user interface. This includes adding buttons to tool bars and menus; changing fonts, colors, and icons; capturing events in the client interface like page loads and clicks; and modifying web pages after the browser loads them and before the user sees them. All of this functionality comes with the aspect-oriented facility of overlays. Extensions also have as much access to the file system as the user running Firefox. Extensions can add protocol handlers, hooking actions to URLs like icq:// , aim:// , or stantz:// . Extensions have UniversalXPConnect privileges, allowing them to harness any XPCOM component. Firefox comes with a rich library of XPCOM components that permit your extension to drive very low-level functionality like sockets from Javascript. You can also augment the XPCOM library with Firefox extensions by adding Javascript, linkable libraries, or XPIDL. What can you do without a Firefox Extension? Any web page can be a rich application by using Ajax and even XUL. Just as DHTML is the hip word for creatively applying HTML, Javascript, DOM, and CSS, Ajax is the hip word for what you could always do with DHTML, plus XMLHttpRequest . Using XMLHttpRequest s, any web page can query a dynamically created web page and replace all or any part of a web page, for example, populating a selection box or updating a stock quote ticker. Normal Javascript can dispatch XMLHttpRequest s. Also, XUL does not require any special privileges to render in Firefox. Web pages can ask permission for UniversalXPConnect privileges and use any XPCOM components they like, but this permission only affects the function and thread that asks, rendering the exercise impractical. When should you use a Firefox Extension? Only when you must. Installation of a Firefox extension has a substantial "barrier of entry" since extensions require draconian permission from the user to deter the web's criminal element from using them as a virus delivery platform. Here follows stantz.xpi Starting from the top, the vibrant denizens of the web will install Stantz by clicking on a link to stantz.xpi , a cross platform installer, pronounced "zippy." XPI files are no more complicated than a way to organize a common zip archive. Broadly, stantz.xpi has the following structure: stantz.xpi install.rdf is an XML file that contains information about the Stantz application. chrome.manifest is a flat text file that directs Firefox to use the overlays, stylesheets and locales Stantz provides, as applicable. chrome/stantz.jar contains all of the files that will appear on the chrome:// URL. components/ contains any XPCOM components that Stantz provides. defaults/ contains a default preferences file. Creating extensions for growing applications, of course, requires some scaffolding to support agéd versions. The new, 1.5 release of Firefox, code named Deer Park, supports the plain text chrome.manifest format for declaring where your extension's overlays, locales, and skins are. Firefox 1.0 requires bulky contents.rdf files in content/ , locale/ , and skin/ , as applicable. Very early releases of Firefox and the Mozilla Suite require an install.js script instead of an install.rdf , but that is beyond the scope of this article. Stantz will support all browsers that use install.rdf and chrome.manifest or **/contents.rdf . Anybody can publish their Firefox extension at https://addons.mozilla.org/. This avoids quite a bit of hassle on your part and your users'. However, I intend to publish Stantz on my own web server. If you plan to do the same, you will need to add a MIME type to your apache configuration. While this may be possible with a .htaccess file, it is this developer's experience that this does not work, so you will need root access on your distribution server. My server's configuration allows me to add mini configuration files in /etc/apache2/conf.d , so I've added xpi.conf to enable XPI. Without this line, the client browsers will not recognize the file as an installer. /etc/apache2/conf.d/xpi.conf AddType application/x-xpinstall .xpi Here Follows chrome/stantz.jar chrome/stantz.jar is a zip archive, as well. Per the instructions in chrome.manifest and contents.rdf files, Firefox will map directories in chrome/stantz.jar to chrome:// URL's. The chrome:// protocol provides access to all of Firefox's internal user interface and that of all installed extensions. For example the XUL file, chrome://browser/content/browser.xul , defines Firefox's main interface window. You can unpack this file from your Firefox installation directory (perhaps /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox ). The archive, chrome/browser.jar , contains the browser interface file, content/browser/browser.xul . chrome/stantz.jar content/ will contain your XUL and Javascript. It may also contain any other "content" your extension will need. Agile developers, hackers, and academics who have lost their grant money and have a penchant for entrepreneurship will be inclined to, at least at first, write all of the user-readable text in their native language and put all of their images and style sheets in the content section as well. However, Firefox is a pro-social platform and provides easy means for locales and skins. The skin/ directory will contain images and style sheets that define the appearance of your user interface. locale/ will contain a directory for each language and locale your extension supports. Supporting these facilities makes it easy for you, or other extension developers, to tailor your extension's functionality to their favorite language and appearance using overlays. The project directory, stantz/ Your project should be laid out with all of the directories that will appear in the chrome jar and the installer xpi . If you are publishing this project on your own, you should also have a www/ directory. stantz/ For this project, I used a Subversion repository. You can use svn if you choose, or you could go with the very capable Concurrent Version System, CVS. My own preference is for Subversion, so the tutorial is Subversion-centric; as always, your mileage may vary. While managing a Subversion repository is beyond the scope of this article, Stantz's publish script makes use of svn commands to version stantz.xpi and update.rdf . Even if you work alone, a version management system provides a very big "Undo" button for your entire project that will remember how your project looked every time you committed changes. To get you started, here are some Subversion commands you will need. svnadmin create /svn/stantz # done once to create the repository svn co file://svn/stantz # done once to obtain a "working copy" cd stantz # a typical session svn up # done before you start working to acquire the most recent changes svn stat # see what files have changed since you last updated svn ci -m " Fixed bug 0 " # to "check in" or commit changes # when you're done and everything works Here's the entire layout for Stantz. stantz/ Build scripts generate the files denoted in bold. You should not add these files to your version management system. Download the PDF (This feature for Premier subscribers only.)

Civilization IV coming in October

2K Games and FIRAXIS have announced that Civilization 4 will be shipping in October, more or less confirming the early shipping time I told you about back in July. They've not narrowed down a more definite date, but when I hear of it, I'll be sure to let everyone know. They've also announced a special pre-order edition of the game, which nabs you plenty of goodies. Shipping on the same day as the regular version of the game, the Sid Meier's Civilization IV Pre-Order Edition will feature: collector's packaging, a CD soundtrack of the game, a keyboard template, a tech tree map and a spiral bound version of the manual. The Pre-Order Edition will be offered through participating retailers while supplies last. Not too shabby. I can tell you this much, October is going to be a great month for world domination types. Not only will we have Civ IV, but Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion will be coming out, as well as Age of Empires 3. A word of caution: right now there are a few "pre-orders" out there, but none of them seem to be aware of this special edition. I'd hold off on orders for the time being.

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see www.gethuman.com instead

Yes. If the application administrator has specified default calendar and timeline settings for an application, you can easily create a calendar or timeline from a table report just by clicking a link. Quick Base uses the default settings as a basis for creating the calendar or timeline. To create a calendar or timeline from a table report: Display a table report. In the menu at the top of the report, click Other, and then click Report Table as a Calendar or Report Table as a Timeline. Save the calendar or timeline by clicking Save this report. Note: If calendar or timeline defaults have not been set, then Report as Calendar and Report as Timeline won't appear as options. Read how to set defaults for calendars and for timelines.

The Killing Machine: News: The Independent Institute

Che Guevara, who did so much (or was it so little?) to destroy capitalism, is now a quintessential capitalist brand. His likeness adorns mugs, hoodies, lighters, key chains, wallets, baseball caps, toques, bandannas, tank tops, club shirts, couture bags, denim jeans, herbal tea, and of course those omnipresent T-shirts with the photograph, taken by Alberto Korda, of the socialist heartthrob in his beret during the early years of the revolution, as Che happened to walk into the photographer’s viewfinder—and into the image that, thirty-eight years after his death, is still the logo of revolutionary (or is it capitalist?) chic. Sean O’Hagan claimed in The Observer that there is even a soap powder with the slogan “Che washes whiter.” Che products are marketed by big corporations and small businesses, such as the Burlington Coat Factory, which put out a television commercial depicting a youth in fatigue pants wearing a Che T-shirt, or Flamingo’s Boutique in Union City, New Jersey, whose owner responded to the fury of local Cuban exiles with this devastating argument: “I sell whatever people want to buy.” Revolutionaries join the merchandising frenzy, too—from “The Che Store,” catering to “all your revolutionary needs” on the Internet, to the Italian writer Gianni Minà, who sold Robert Redford the movie rights to Che’s diary of his juvenile trip around South America in 1952 in exchange for access to the shooting of the film The Motorcycle Diaries so that Minà could produce his own documentary. Not to mention Alberto Granado, who accompanied Che on his youthful trip and advises documentarists, and now complains in Madrid, according to El País, over Rioja wine and duck magret, that the American embargo against Cuba makes it hard for him to collect royalties. To take the irony further: the building where Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina, a splendid early twentieth-century edifice at the corner of Urquiza and Entre Ríos Streets, was until recently occupied by the private pension fund AFJP Máxima, a child of Argentina’s privatization of social security in the 1990s. The metamorphosis of Che Guevara into a capitalist brand is not new, but the brand has been enjoying a revival of late—an especially remarkable revival, since it comes years after the political and ideological collapse of all that Guevara represented. This windfall is owed substantially to The Motorcycle Diaries, the film produced by Robert Redford and directed by Walter Salles. (It is one of three major motion pictures on Che either made or in the process of being made in the last two years; the other two have been directed by Josh Evans and Steven Soderbergh.) Beautifully shot against landscapes that have clearly eluded the eroding effects of polluting capitalism, the film shows the young man on a voyage of self-discovery as his budding social conscience encounters social and economic exploitation—laying the ground for a New Wave re-invention of the man whom Sartre once called the most complete human being of our era. But to be more precise, the current Che revival started in 1997, on the thirtieth anniversary of his death, when five biographies hit the bookstores, and his remains were discovered near an airstrip at Bolivia’s Vallegrande airport, after a retired Bolivian general, in a spectacularly timed revelation, disclosed the exact location. The anniversary refocused attention on Freddy Alborta’s famous photograph of Che’s corpse laid out on a table, foreshortened and dead and romantic, looking like Christ in a Mantegna painting. It is customary for followers of a cult not to know the real life story of their hero, the historical truth. (Many Rastafarians would renounce Haile Selassie if they had any notion of who he really was.) It is not surprising that Guevara’s contemporary followers, his new post-communist admirers, also delude themselves by clinging to a myth—except the young Argentines who have come up with an expression that rhymes perfectly in Spanish: “Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué,” or “I have a Che T-shirt and I don’t know why.” Consider some of the people who have recently brandished or invoked Guevara’s likeness as a beacon of justice and rebellion against the abuse of power. In Lebanon, demonstrators protesting against Syria at the grave of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri carried Che’s image. Thierry Henry, a French soccer player who plays for Arsenal, in England, showed up at a major gala organized by FIFA, the world’s soccer body, wearing a red and black Che T-shirt. In a recent review in The New York Times of George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, Manohla Dargis noted that “the greatest shock here may be the transformation of a black zombie into a righteous revolutionary leader,” and added, “I guess Che really does live, after all.” The soccer hero Maradona showed off the emblematic Che tattoo on his right arm during a trip where he met Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. In Stavropol, in southern Russia, protesters denouncing cash payments of welfare concessions took to the central square with Che flags. In San Francisco, City Lights Books, the legendary home of beat literature, treats visitors to a section devoted to Latin America in which half the shelves are taken up by Che books. José Luis Montoya, a Mexican police officer who battles drug crime in Mexicali, wears a Che sweatband because it makes him feel stronger. At the Dheisheh refugee camp on the West Bank, Che posters adorn a wall that pays tribute to the Intifada. A Sunday magazine devoted to social life in Sydney, Australia, lists the three dream guests at a dinner party: Alvar Aalto, Richard Branson, and Che Guevara. Leung Kwok-hung, the rebel elected to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, defies Beijing by wearing a Che T-shirt. In Brazil, Frei Betto, President Lula da Silva’s adviser in charge of the high-profile “Zero Hunger” program, says that “we should have paid less attention to Trotsky and much more to Che Guevara.” And most famously, at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony Carlos Santana and Antonio Banderas performed the theme song from The Motorcycle Diaries, and Santana showed up wearing a Che T-shirt and a crucifix. The manifestations of the new cult of Che are everywhere. Once again the myth is firing up people whose causes for the most part represent the exact opposite of what Guevara was. No man is without some redeeming qualities. In the case of Che Guevara, those qualities may help us to measure the gulf that separates reality from myth. His honesty (well, partial honesty) meant that he left written testimony of his cruelties, including the really ugly, though not the ugliest, stuff. His courage—what Castro described as “his way, in every difficult and dangerous moment, of doing the most difficult and dangerous thing”—meant that he did not live to take full responsibility for Cuba’s hell. Myth can tell you as much about an era as truth. And so it is that thanks to Che’s own testimonials to his thoughts and his deeds, and thanks also to his premature departure, we may know exactly how deluded so many of our contemporaries are about so much. Guevara might have been enamored of his own death, but he was much more enamored of other people’s deaths. In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his “Message to the Tricontinental”: “hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.” His earlier writings are also peppered with this rhetorical and ideological violence. Although his former girlfriend Chichina Ferreyra doubts that the original version of the diaries of his motorcycle trip contains the observation that “I feel my nostrils dilate savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood of the enemy,” Guevara did share with Granado at that very young age this exclamation: “Revolution without firing a shot? You’re crazy.” At other times the young bohemian seemed unable to distinguish between the levity of death as a spectacle and the tragedy of a revolution’s victims. In a letter to his mother in 1954, written in Guatemala, where he witnessed the overthrow of the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz, he wrote: “It was all a lot of fun, what with the bombs, speeches, and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in.” Guevara’s disposition when he traveled with Castro from Mexico to Cuba aboard the Granma is captured in a phrase in a letter to his wife that he penned on January 28, 1957, not long after disembarking, which was published in her book Ernesto: A Memoir of Che Guevara in Sierra Maestra: “Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and bloodthirsty.” This mentality had been reinforced by his conviction that Arbenz had lost power because he had failed to execute his potential enemies. An earlier letter to his former girlfriend Tita Infante had observed that “if there had been some executions, the government would have maintained the capacity to return the blows.” It is hardly a surprise that during the armed struggle against Batista, and then after the triumphant entry into Havana, Guevara murdered or oversaw the executions in summary trials of scores of people—proven enemies, suspected enemies, and those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine.” Later he shot Aristidio, a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on. While he wondered whether this particular victim “was really guilty enough to deserve death,” he had no qualms about ordering the death of Echevarría, a brother of one of his comrades, because of unspecified crimes: “He had to pay the price.” At other times he would simulate executions without carrying them out, as a method of psychological torture. Luis Guardia and Pedro Corzo, two researchers in Florida who are working on a documentary about Guevara, have obtained the testimony of Jaime Costa Vázquez, a former commander in the revolutionary army known as “El Catalán,” who maintains that many of the executions attributed to Ramiro Valdés, a future interior minister of Cuba, were Guevara’s direct responsibility, because Valdés was under his orders in the mountains. “If in doubt, kill him” were Che’s instructions. On the eve of victory, according to Costa, Che ordered the execution of a couple dozen people in Santa Clara, in central Cuba, where his column had gone as part of a final assault on the island. Some of them were shot in a hotel, as Marcelo Fernándes-Zayas, another former revolutionary who later became a journalist, has written—adding that among those executed, known as casquitos, were peasants who had joined the army simply to escape unemployment. But the “cold-blooded killing machine” did not show the full extent of his rigor until, immediately after the collapse of the Batista regime, Castro put him in charge of La Cabaña prison. (Castro had a clinically good eye for picking the right person to guard the revolution against infection.) San Carlos de La Cabaña was a stone fortress used to defend Havana against English pirates in the eighteenth century; later it became a military barracks. In a manner chillingly reminiscent of Lavrenti Beria, Guevara presided during the first half of 1959 over one of the darkest periods of the revolution. José Vilasuso, a lawyer and a professor at Universidad Interamericana de Bayamón in Puerto Rico, who belonged to the body in charge of the summary judicial process at La Cabaña, told me recently that Che was in charge of the Comisión Depuradora. The process followed the law of the Sierra: there was a military court and Che’s guidelines to us were that we should act with conviction, meaning that they were all murderers and the revolutionary way to proceed was to be implacable. My direct superior was Miguel Duque Estrada. My duty was to legalize the files before they were sent on to the Ministry. Executions took place from Monday to Friday, in the middle of the night, just after the sentence was given and automatically confirmed by the appellate body. On the most gruesome night I remember, seven men were executed. Javier Arzuaga, the Basque chaplain who gave comfort to those sentenced to die and personally witnessed dozens of executions, spoke to me recently from his home in Puerto Rico. A former Catholic priest, now seventy-five, who describes himself as “closer to Leonardo Boff and Liberation Theology than to the former Cardinal Ratzinger,” he recalls that there were about eight hundred prisoners in a space fit for no more than three hundred: former Batista military and police personnel, some journalists, a few businessmen and merchants. The revolutionary tribunal was made of militiamen. Che Guevara presided over the appellate court. He never overturned a sentence. I would visit those on death row at the galera de la muerte. A rumor went around that I hypnotized prisoners because many remained calm, so Che ordered that I be present at the executions. After I left in May, they executed many more, but I personally witnessed fifty-five executions. There was an American, Herman Marks, apparently a former convict. We called him “the butcher” because he enjoyed giving the order to shoot. I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge. Nor did Fidel, whom I visited. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish of Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located and where I had held Mass for three years. I went to Mexico for treatment. The day I left, Che told me we had both tried to bring one another to each other’s side and had failed. His last words were: “When we take our masks off, we will be enemies.” How many people were killed at La Cabaña? Pedro Corzo offers a figure of some two hundred, similar to that given by Armando Lago, a retired economics professor who has compiled a list of 179 names as part of an eight-year study on executions in Cuba. Vilasuso told me that four hundred people were executed between January and the end of June in 1959 (at which point Che ceased to be in charge of La Cabaña). Secret cables sent by the American Embassy in Havana to the State Department in Washington spoke of “over 500.” According to Jorge Castañeda, one of Guevara’s biographers, a Basque Catholic sympathetic to the revolution, the late Father Iñaki de Aspiazú, spoke of seven hundred victims. Félix Rodríguez, a CIA agent who was part of the team in charge of the hunt for Guevara in Bolivia, told me that he confronted Che after his capture about “the two thousand or so” executions for which he was responsible during his lifetime. “He said they were all CIA agents and did not address the figure,” Rodríguez recalls. The higher figures may include executions that took place in the months after Che ceased to be in charge of the prison. Which brings us back to Carlos Santana and his chic Che gear. In an open letter published in El Nuevo Herald on March 31 of this year, the great jazz musician Paquito D’Rivera castigated Santana for his costume at the Oscars, and added: “One of those Cubans [at La Cabaña] was my cousin Bebo, who was imprisoned there precisely for being a Christian. He recounts to me with infinite bitterness how he could hear from his cell in the early hours of dawn the executions, without trial or process of law, of the many who died shouting, ‘Long live Christ the King!’” Che’s lust for power had other ways of expressing itself besides murder. The contradiction between his passion for travel—a protest of sorts against the constraints of the nation-State—and his impulse to become himself an enslaving state over others is poignant. In writing about Pedro Valdivia, the conquistador of Chile, Guevara reflected: “He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural.” He might have been describing himself. At every stage of his adult life, his megalomania manifested itself in the predatory urge to take over other people’s lives and property, and to abolish their free will. In 1958, after taking the city of Sancti Spiritus, Guevara unsuccessfully tried to impose a kind of sharia, regulating relations between men and women, the use of alcohol, and informal gambling—a puritanism that did not exactly characterize his own way of life. He also ordered his men to rob banks, a decision that he justified in a letter to Enrique Oltuski, a subordinate, in November of that year: “The struggling masses agree to robbing banks because none of them has a penny in them.” This idea of revolution as a license to re-allocate property as he saw fit led the Marxist Puritan to take over the mansion of an emigrant after the triumph of the revolution. The urge to dispossess others of their property and to claim ownership of others’ territory was central to Guevara’s politics of raw power. In his memoirs, the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser records that Guevara asked him how many people had left his country because of land reform. When Nasser replied that no one had left, Che countered in anger that the way to measure the depth of change is by the number of people “who feel there is no place for them in the new society.” This predatory instinct reached a pinnacle in 1965, when he started talking, God-like, about the “New Man” that he and his revolution would create. Che’s obsession with collectivist control led him to collaborate on the formation of the security apparatus that was set up to subjugate six and a half million Cubans. In early 1959, a series of secret meetings took place in Tarará, near Havana, at the mansion to which Che temporarily withdrew to recover from an illness. That is where the top leaders, including Castro, designed the Cuban police state. Ramiro Valdés, Che’s subordinate during the guerrilla war, was put in charge of G-2, a body modeled on the Cheka. Angel Ciutah, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War sent by the Soviets who had been very close to Ramón Mercader, Trotsky’s assassin, and later befriended Che, played a key role in organizing the system, together with Luis Alberto Lavandeira, who had served the boss at La Cabaña. Guevara himself took charge of G-6, the body tasked with the ideological indoctrination of the armed forces. The U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 became the perfect occasion to consolidate the new police state, with the rounding up of tens of thousands of Cubans and a new series of executions. As Guevara himself told the Soviet ambassador Sergei Kudriavtsev, counterrevolutionaries were never “to raise their head again.” “Counterrevolutionary” is the term that was applied to anyone who departed from dogma. It was the communist synonym for “heretic.” Concentration camps were one form in which dogmatic power was employed to suppress dissent. History attributes to the Spanish general Valeriano Weyler, the captain-general of Cuba at the end of the nineteenth century, the first use of the word “concentration” to describe the policy of surrounding masses of potential opponents—in his case, supporters of the Cuban independence movement—with barbed wire and fences. How fitting that Cuba’s revolutionaries more than half a century later were to take up this indigenous tradition. In the beginning, the revolution mobilized volunteers to build schools and to work in ports, plantations, and factories—all exquisite photo-ops for Che the stevedore, Che the cane-cutter, Che the clothmaker. It was not long before volunteer work became a little less voluntary: the first forced labor camp, Guanahacabibes, was set up in western Cuba at the end of 1960. This is how Che explained the function performed by this method of confinement: “[We] only send to Guanahacabibes those doubtful cases where we are not sure people should go to jail ... people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals, to a lesser or greater degree.... It is hard labor, not brute labor, rather the working conditions there are hard.” This camp was the precursor to the eventual systematic confinement, starting in 1965 in the province of Camaguey, of dissidents, homosexuals, AIDS victims, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests, and other such scum, under the banner of Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción, or Military Units to Help Production. Herded into buses and trucks, the “unfit” would be transported at gunpoint into concentration camps organized on the Guanahacabibes mold. Some would never return; others would be raped, beaten, or mutilated; and most would be traumatized for life, as Néstor Almendros’s wrenching documentary Improper Conduct showed the world a couple of decades ago. So Time magazine may have been less than accurate in August 1960 when it described the revolution’s division of labor with a cover story featuring Che Guevara as the “brain” and Fidel Castro as the “heart” and Raúl Castro as the “fist.” But the perception reflected Guevara’s crucial role in turning Cuba into a bastion of totalitarianism. Che was a somewhat unlikely candidate for ideological purity, given his bohemian spirit, but during the years of training in Mexico and in the ensuing period of armed struggle in Cuba he emerged as the communist ideologue infatuated with the Soviet Union, much to the discomfort of Castro and others who were essentially opportunists using whatever means were necessary to gain power. When the would-be revolutionaries were arrested in Mexico in 1956, Guevara was the only one who admitted that he was a communist and was studying Russian. (He spoke openly about his relationship with Nikolai Leonov from the Soviet Embassy.) During the armed struggle in Cuba, he forged a strong alliance with the Popular Socialist Party (the island’s Communist Party) and with Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, a key player in the conversion of Castro’s regime to communism. This fanatical disposition made Che into a linchpin of the “Sovietization” of the revolution that had repeatedly boasted about its independent character. Very soon after the barbudos came to power, Guevara took part in negotiations with Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet deputy prime minister, who visited Cuba. He was entrusted with the mission of furthering Soviet-Cuban negotiations during a visit to Moscow in late 1960. (It was part of a long trip in which Kim Il Sung’s North Korea was the country that impressed him “the most.”) Guevara’s second trip to Russia, in August 1962, was even more significant, because it sealed the deal to turn Cuba into a Soviet nuclear beachhead. He met Khrushchev in Yalta to finalize details on an operation that had already begun and involved the introduction of forty-two Soviet missiles, half of which were armed with nuclear warheads, as well as launchers and some forty-two thousand soldiers. After pressing his Soviet allies on the danger that the United States might find out what was happening, Guevara obtained assurances that the Soviet navy would intervene—in other words, that Moscow was ready to go to war. According to Philippe Gavi’s biography of Guevara, the revolutionary had bragged that “this country is willing to risk everything in an atomic war of unimaginable destructiveness to defend a principle.” Just after the Cuban missile crisis ended—with Khrushchev reneging on the promise made in Yalta and negotiating a deal with the United States behind Castro’s back that included the removal of American missiles from Turkey—Guevara told a British communist daily: “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression.” And a couple of years later, at the United Nations, he was true to form: “As Marxists we have maintained that peaceful coexistence among nations does not include coexistence between exploiters and the exploited.” Guevara distanced himself from the Soviet Union in the last years of his life. He did so for the wrong reasons, blaming Moscow for being too soft ideologically and diplomatically, for making too many concessions—unlike Maoist China, which he came to see as a haven of orthodoxy. In October 1964, a memo written by Oleg Daroussenkov, a Soviet official close to him, quotes Guevara as saying: “We asked the Czechoslovaks for arms; they turned us down. Then we asked the Chinese; they said yes in a few days, and did not even charge us, stating that one does not sell arms to a friend.” In fact, Guevara resented the fact that Moscow was asking other members of the communist bloc, including Cuba, for something in return for its colossal aid and political support. His final attack on Moscow came in Algiers, in February 1965, at an international conference, where he accused the Soviets of adopting the “law of value,” that is, capitalism. His break with the Soviets, in sum, was not a cry for independence. It was an Enver Hoxha–like howl for the total subordination of reality to blind ideological orthodoxy. The great revolutionary had a chance to put into practice his economic vision—his idea of social justice—as head of the National Bank of Cuba and of the Department of Industry of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform at the end of 1959, and, starting in early 1961, as minister of industry. The period in which Guevara was in charge of most of the Cuban economy saw the near-collapse of sugar production, the failure of industrialization, and the introduction of rationing—all this in what had been one of Latin America’s four most economically successful countries since before the Batista dictatorship. His stint as head of the National Bank, during which he printed bills signed “Che,” has been summarized by his deputy, Ernesto Betancourt: “[He] was ignorant of the most elementary economic principles.” Guevara’s powers of perception regarding the world economy were famously expressed in 1961, at a hemispheric conference in Uruguay, where he predicted a 10 percent rate of growth for Cuba “without the slightest fear,” and, by 1980, a per capita income greater than that of “the U.S. today.” In fact, by 1997, the thirtieth anniversary of his death, Cubans were dieting on a ration of five pounds of rice and one pound of beans per month; four ounces of meat twice a year; four ounces of soybean paste per week; and four eggs per month. Land reform took land away from the rich, but gave it to the bureaucrats, not to the peasants. (The decree was written in Che’s house.) In the name of diversification, the cultivated area was reduced and manpower distracted toward other activities. The result was that between 1961 and 1963, the harvest was down by half, to a mere 3.8 million metric tons. Was this sacrifice justified by progress in Cuban industrialization? Unfortunately, Cuba had no raw materials for heavy industry, and, as a consequence of the revolutionary redistribution, it had no hard currency with which to buy them—or even basic goods. By 1961, Guevara was having to give embarrassing explanations to the workers at the office: “Our technical comrades at the companies have made a toothpaste ... which is as good as the previous one; it cleans just the same, though after a while it turns to stone.” By 1963, all hopes of industrializing Cuba were abandoned, and the revolution accepted its role as a colonial provider of sugar to the Soviet bloc in exchange for oil to cover its needs and to re-sell to other countries. For the next three decades, Cuba would survive on a Soviet subsidy of somewhere between $65 billion and $100 billion. Having failed as a hero of social justice, does Guevara deserve a place in the history books as a genius of guerrilla warfare? His greatest military achievement in the fight against Batista—taking the city of Santa Clara after ambushing a train with heavy reinforcements—is seriously disputed. Numerous testimonies indicate that the commander of the train surrendered in advance, perhaps after taking bribes. (Gutiérrez Menoyo, who led a different guerrilla group in that area, is among those who have decried Cuba’s official account of Guevara’s victory.) Immediately after the triumph of the revolution, Guevara organized guerrilla armies in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Haiti—all of which were crushed. In 1964, he sent the Argentine revolutionary Jorge Ricardo Masetti to his death by persuading him to mount an attack on his native country from Bolivia, just after representative democracy had been restored to Argentina. Particularly disastrous was the Congo expedition in 1965. Guevara sided with two rebels—Pierre Mulele in the west and Laurent Kabila in the east—against the ugly Congolese government, which was sustained by the United States as well as by South African and exiled Cuban mercenaries. Mulele had taken over Stanleyville earlier before being driven back. During his reign of terror, as V.S. Naipaul has written, he murdered all the people who could read and all those who wore a tie. As for Guevara’s other ally, Laurent Kabila, he was merely lazy and corrupt at the time; but the world would find out in the 1990s that he, too, was a killing machine. In any event, Guevara spent most of 1965 helping the rebels in the east before fleeing the country ignominiously. Soon afterward, Mobutu came to power and installed a decades-long tyranny. (In Latin American countries too, from Argentina to Peru, Che-inspired revolutions had the practical result of reinforcing brutal militarism for many years.) In Bolivia, Che was defeated again, and for the last time. He misread the local situation. There had been an agrarian reform years before; the government had respected many of the peasant communities’ institutions; and the army was close to the United States despite its nationalism. “The peasant masses don’t help us at all” was Guevara’s melancholy conclusion in his Bolivian diary. Even worse, Mario Monje, the local communist leader, who had no stomach for guerrilla warfare after having been humiliated at the elections, led Guevara to a vulnerable location in the southeast of the country. The circumstances of Che’s capture at Yuro ravine, soon after meeting the French intellectual Régis Debray and the Argentine painter Ciro Bustos, both of whom were arrested as they left the camp, was, like most of the Bolivian expedition, an amateur’s affair. Guevara was certainly bold and courageous, and quick at organizing life on a military basis in the territories under his control, but he was no General Giap. His book Guerrilla Warfare teaches that popular forces can beat an army, that it is not necessary to wait for the right conditions because an insurrectional foco (or small group of revolutionaries) can bring them about, and that the fight must primarily take place in the countryside. (In his prescription for guerrilla warfare, he also reserves for women the roles of cooks and nurses.) However, Batista’s army was not an army, but a corrupt bunch of thugs with no motivation and not much organization; and guerrilla focos, with the exception of Nicaragua, all ended up in ashes for the foquistas; and Latin America has turned 70 percent urban in these last four decades. In this regard, too, Che Guevara was a callous fool. In the last few decades of the nineteenth century, Argentina had the second-highest growth rate in the world. By the 1890s, the real income of Argentine workers was greater than that of Swiss, German, and French workers. By 1928, that country had the twelfth-highest per capita GDP in the world. That achievement, which later generations would ruin, was in large measure due to Juan Bautista Alberdi. Like Guevara, Alberdi liked to travel: he walked through the pampas and deserts from north to south at the age of fourteen, all the way to Buenos Aires. Like Guevara, Alberdi opposed a tyrant, Juan Manuel Rosas. Like Guevara, Alberdi got a chance to influence a revolutionary leader in power—Justo José de Urquiza, who toppled Rosas in 1852. And like Guevara, Alberdi represented the new government on world tours, and died abroad. But unlike the old and new darling of the left, Alberdi never killed a fly. His book, Bases y puntos de partida para la organización de la República Argentina, was the foundation of the Constitution of 1853 that limited government, opened trade, encouraged immigration, and secured property rights, thereby inaugurating a seventy-year period of astonishing prosperity. He did not meddle in the affairs of other nations, opposing his country’s war against Paraguay. His likeness does not adorn Mike Tyson’s abdomen.

How ta tawk rite

I was raised in a bilingual family in New Orleans -- we spoke both English and New Orleans-ese. French didn't really enter into it, although I'm sure some families were trilingual and included that language as well. The local language is well-suited to the local person. You may now be wondering ... What's a Yat? "Yat" is a term for the quintessential neighborhood New Orleanian. It's derived from the local greeting, "Where y'at!", although it tends not to be used by locals in the way it's used by outsiders. I never really heard the term while growing up, and neither did many of my fellow New Orleanians. It's come into casual acceptance, although the acknowledged expert on local speech, Bunny Matthews, hates the word and considers it a pejorative. Bunny told me he though that it's "the kind of thing that a Tulane student from the Northeast would come up with." Personally, I don't think Tulane students from the Northeast were that clever, but I respect Bunny's thoughts on the matter. Many if not most New Orleanians will use a few, some or all of the terms below, but not all New Orleanians employ the truly hardcore local pronunciations. A brief explanation of what constitutes the true essence of local speech and its users is offered here, excerpted from Tim Lyman's introduction to Bunny Matthews' wonderful first book of comic strips featuring New Orleans dialogue, F'Sure!: Actual Dialogue Heard on the Streets of New Orleans, now sadly out of print. In a bit of double irony, not only is Tim not a local (Bunny describes him as a "Yankee"), but Bunny himself refuses to use the word "Yat" to describe either locals or their speech. Still, it's one of the best descriptions of localness I've ever read: For those of you unfamiliar with New Orleans culture, a good place to start is that there are basically only two kinds of people in New Orleans. The first is those folks that live, as one [of Bunny's] cartoon characters puts it, in Gatorland -- "Yeah, you know ... ova dere across Magazine where dey all wear dem shoits wid lil' gators on 'em." Otherwise knows as Uptown, you can tell folks from Gatorland in the cartoons because they speak English. Another clue is that all skinny people are from Gatorland, although not all people from Gatorland are skinny. And they often have 59 rows of teeth. The other kind of New Orleanian is Everyone Else, dose folks dat talk normal. Be they Black, White or Creole, whether they live right in the backyards of Uptown or way out in da Ninth Ward, Chalmette, or even across da River, they are united in the fact that their homes and lives have not been renovated, that life is the same as it's always been, only worse. The best generic term for Everyone Else is "Yat", a word too often limited by its etymology so that it refers merely to those who greet you with "Where y'at?" most often. Yat is actually much broader than this; it is a state of mind. Unlike the Gatorlander, who is always consumed with the particulars of trying to live the modern life, the Yat is convinced that modernity is a disaster. Naturally enough then, the Yat feels most alive in the most disastrous of circumstances. The average New Orleanian housewife, as Bunny once noted, has an internist's working knowledge of every possible disease that can be caught in these parts. The man who holds the attention of the barroom is the guy who can top everyone else's hard luck stories. The Great Flood of May 3, 1978 was the most exciting of recent times, at least until another Hurricane comes. Even Carnival is talked of by the Yat in the most matter-of-fact ways, only the abominations of tradition being noteworthy. A few words on New Orleansese: in a city whose very name is pronounced in nearly 100 different ways by its citizens, all the way from the filigreed, nearly five-syllable "Nyoo Ahhlyins" to the monosyllabic grunt of "Nawln'", it takes a very sensitive ear, not to mention years of practice, to pinpoint the incredible binds the native speaker encounters, those specific words where the slow tongue gives up and makes a leap of faith. For those who have never heard it, you must begin by imagining Brooklynese on Quaaludes. The dialect changes, too, within the City, from Schwegmann's to Schwegmann's. Each neighborhood has its own input to the living language. But mostly, the local dialect is one of inflection. Whether it's a "you" or a "ya" or a "y'", whether there is time for a "th" or only a "d", all depends on the placement of the word in the phrase, where the accents fall. Some folks wonder aloud why [Bunny's cartoon] characters are often so fat and ugly. Strange question to ask when a little neutral observation reveals that 99 percent of native New Orleanians are both overweight and unpleasant to look at. Of course, it's the diet. The food in New Orleans is the best in the world, but light it ain't. Like the character who exclaims, "It ain't da seafood dat makes ya fat anyway -- it's da batta!" ... carefully ignoring the fact that he eats the better part of a whole loaf of French bread with every half-dozen oysters. Obesity and facial dots seem a small price to pay for such pleasure -- me, I'll take the food. -- by Tim Lyman Now that you've had a peek into the heart and soul of what makes us locals tick when we talk, I offer you this lexicon of local speech, so when you visit New Orleans you won't wonder, "What in the hell is he/she talking about?" I hope that this brings back memories for natives, and I also hope that it may enlighten visitors to the Crescent City. It may help make the difference between a mere tourist and a truly interested visitor, and I think that's an important distinction. You don't want to look like an idiot, saying "Huh?", when the lady behind the counter at the po-boy shop asks you, "Ya want dat dressed, dawlin'?" My thanks to the oodles of members of the old New Orleans Internet Mailing List, other New Orleanians (expatriate and still livin' at home) on the 'Net, family and friends for their invaluable aid and the contributions they made to this list. A note on pronunciation I've tried to reproduce phonetic spelling of New Orleanian words and places as best as I could, without being able to reproduce the IPA alphabet online. In my phonetic spelling, the "@" character will be used to represent the schwa, or neutral vowel sound (represented in dictionaries and IPA as the upside-down "e"). The syllable of major stress will be capitalized, and the syllable of secondary stress will be preceded by an apostrophe. Also remember a general rule of thumb: New Orleanians tend to stress the first syllable of most words and place names.There are also certain standard English words (other than the articles and pronouns) which are pronounced in very special ways in New Orleans, and these will also be included below. One major point of pronunciation with locals is to never pronounce words that end in "er" or "ing" as spelled. Examples: trailer = trailuh (or "traila"), border = borduh, driver = drivuh, etc.. The "ing" words are always pronounced without the "g". Examples: swimming = swimmin, looking = lookin, walking = walkin, etc. See the movie! Award-winning filmakers Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker of the Center for New American Media have made an absolutely marvelous half-hour documentary film entitled "Yeah You Rite", which is a lively look at the at the unique language of New Orleans. Not only is it a lot of fun, and very enjoyable for both native and visitor alike, but it's also a tremendous and serious study and perfect example and portrayal of a unique regional dialect. A very good friend of mine is a linguist, and has taught this film to his Intro to Linguistics students. It's available for a fairly high institutional price through the above link; you might ask them if they have a home video version available. If enough people ask, they might make it happen. A Lexicon of New Orleans Speech ALLIGATOR PEAR - Avocado. ANYWAYS - And, then; and, so. ARABIAN - Someone from Arabi, in St. Bernard Parish. See "Algerian". AWRITE - The appropriate response to the greeting "Where y'at?" Also, a greeting in and of itself: "Awrite, Ed!" AWRITE, HAWT - A female response of agreement. AX - Ask. BACKATOWN - (i.e., "back of town") the section of New Orleans from the River to North Claiborne, popularly used in the 6th adn 7th wards (submitted by caljazz98-at-aol.com) BANQUETTE - The sidewalk. Pronounced <BANK-it>. Usage fairly rare nowadays. BAT'TROOM - A room in the house where one doesn't find bats, but where one bathes, attends to the elimination of bodily waste, or locks oneself in and cries until one gets one's way. BERL - To cook by surrounding something in hot, bubbling 212°F liquid; the preferred method for cooking shellfish. BINHAVIN, BEEN HAVIN' - To have had something for a long time, as in ... Q: "How long ya had dat dress? A: "Oh, I binhavin dat." BINLOOKIN, BEEN LOOKIN' - To have searched for something for a long time, as in "I binlookin f'dat book." BOBO - A small injury or wound. BOO - A term of endearment, frequently used by parents and grandparents for small children, even small children who happen to be 40 years old ... Believed to be Cajun in origin. BRA - A form of address for men, usually one with whom you are not acquainted. Usually used in this manner: "Say, bra ..." Ostensibly an abbreviation for "brother." Often heard in amusing contexts, such as the question "Say bra, what time da midnight movie starts?" asked of me when I was an usher at the Village Aurora Cinema 6 in Algiers. Another good one was contributed by Gumbo Pages reader Larry Beron: "A friend of mine went to the Rally's at Vets and Bonnabel in Metairie and overheard the driver of the car ahead of him ask the drive-up clerk, 'Say bra ... how many meats y'all put on them double-cheeseburgers?'") BRAKE TAG - An inspection sticker on your car, proof that you've passed the required annual safety inspection. It encompasses several areas of your car (e.g., horn, wipers, etc.) but is primarily concerned with the integrity of your brakes. Given the fact that New Orleans is surrounded by various lakes, rivers and canals, a bad set of brakes could mean that you might end up at the bottom of one of those bodies of water at the very least. Throughout New Orleans (although I'm not sure about other parts of Louisiana), the inspection sticker is called a "brake tag". If it's expired and you get pulled over, you're guaranteed to get a ticket. (Believe me, I know.) BY MY HOUSE, BY YOUR HOUSE, etc. - Analogous to the French terms "chez moi", "chez toi", etc. Usage: "He slept by my house last night." "At" is never used in this sense. CAP - A form of address for men, usually ones with whom you are not acquainted. Women generally do not use this term. See also PODNA and BRA. CATLICK - The predominant religion in New Orleans. And, according to some Baptists, all Hell-bound. CEMENT - A standard English word, but with a special pronunciation. Locals say <SEE-ment>, not <s@-MENT>. CHALMETIAN, CHALMATION - Someone from Chalmette, a city in St. Bernard Parish that's part of the New Orleans metro area, often called "Da Parish." Out-of-towners often pronounce it with the hard "ch" sound as in "charge". It's more like <shall-MAY-shen> or <shall-ME-shen>, and the city is pronounced <shall-MET>. Once occasionally used as an insult; many New Orleanians had a low opinion of Chalmette. However, given the horrendous devastation of St. Bernard Parish brought on by MR-GO and the failed levees following Hurricane Katrina, and the outpouring of grief and warm feelings to the people of Da Parish, it is considered gauche to make fun of Chalmations these days. CHARMER - The quintessential female Yat. Pronounced <CHAW-muh>. CHIEF, CHEEF - A form of address between men, along the lines of "cap" and "podna". COARDNER - Corner. As in, "I'm going down to the coardner to get me a shrimp po-boy." This is a contribution from native New Orleanian Powtawche N. Williams, who says, "My family in the 7th Ward uses it all the time." (I've never heard it, me ... but my family's from da 9th Ward, so who knows?) CUSH-CUSH, KUSH-KUSH, COUCHE-COUCHE - An old French/Cajun breakfast dish my grandmother used to prepare. The words rhyme with "push", and it is prepared by browning or searing cornmeal in an oil glazed pot till light brown, then served hot with sugar and milk in a bowl, just like cereal. (Contributed by Ave from Chalmette) DA - The. DAT - That. DAWLIN' - A universal form of address. Women use it to refer to both sexes, men use it toward women. DEM - Them. DERE - There. As in "Dere ya go!", an expression of encouragement or acknowledgement of having done something for someone else. DESE, DOSE - These, those. DIS - This. DODO, MAKE DODO - Sleep. From the Cajun French "fais do do", or "make sleep". In Acadiana, the term "fais do do" is used for a Cajun dance, and is thought to have originated when the parents would tell their kids to hurry up and "fais do do" so that they could go to the dance; alternately, it's said that the hosts of the house dances (bals de maison) would have a separate room for parents to put their small children, and the lady watching them would keep singing lullabyes and saying "fais do do" so that they could sleep amidst the din of the dancing Cajuns. DOUBLOON - A coin, approximately the size of a silver dollar, minted on a yearly basis by the various Mardi Gras krewes. The standard type is made of aluminum and they're thrown from Mardi Gras floats by the parade riders. The distinctive sound of a doubloon hitting da cement is enough to start a mad scramble, where you're likely to trample on an old lady, or alternately be trampled by an old lady. Doubloons usually come in a variety of colors, and collectors try not only to collect all available colors, but also the exclusive krewe members-only versions made of brushed aluminum, brass or even silver. Doubloons have traditionally been collected with great fervor and rabidity, but from what I can tell their popularity has fallen off over the years. Pronounced <d@-BLOON>, and the cries of "Da-BLOOOOON!!! Da-BLOOOOOOON!!!" can often be heard along parade routes. Unfortunately, the passion for catching doubloons and for doubloon collecting seems to have waned in recent years. Seems people want cups, or those stupid long strings of beads, rather than a nice, collectible doubloon. I think it's a shame. DOWN DA ROAD - A staple in the vocabulary of the St. Bernard Parish Yat, along with up da road. This term is travel directions for someone headed to lower St. Bernard Parish traveling on St. Bernard Highway (US Highway 46). You are usually in da parish when you use this phrase with a destination of either Violet or Poydras. For example: "Let's go down da road and pass over by the trailah pawk." DRESSED - When ordering a po-boy, "dressed" indicates lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and MYNEZ, on it. See NUTTINONIT. EARL, ERL - 1. A vegetable product used for cooking, making roux, etc. 2. A petroleum product used to lubricate the engine of your car. 3. Your Uncle Earl. (Most New Orleanians have an Uncle Earl; I do.) ELLESHYEW - Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. Occasionally preceded by the term, "Go ta hell ..." ERNGE, URNGE - An orange-colored citrus fruit. ERSTERS, ERSTAS - Oysters. ESPLANADE - Walkway. The street name is pronounced <es'-pl@-NADE>, and the last syllable rhymes with "raid", not "rod". FAUBOURG - A suburb or outlying neighborhood, as in Faubourg Marigny. Usually pronounced <FO-berg> by natives. FLYIN' HORSES - Accented on the first syllable. A merry-go-round, sometimes specifically describing the merry-go-round in City Park, but also used in general. I've never heard this term used outside of New Orleans to describe a merry-go-round or carousel. FOR - a preposition used by New Orleanians instead of "at" or "by" when referring to time. E.g., "Da parade's for 7:00, but we betta get dere for 6 if we wanna find pawkin'." This one tends to be particularly confusing to non-natives. FRONATOWN - (i.e., "front of town) the area from North Claiborne to the No. Broad St. and beyond, up to Bayou St. John, particularly if you walked "northwesterly" on Orleans Ave. Popularly used in the 6th and 7th Wards (submitted by caljazz98-at-aol.com) F'SURE! - 1. A statement of agreement. See YEAH YOU RITE. 2. An excellent (but out of print) book by local artist Bunny Matthews, featuring cartoons with "actual dialogue heard on the streets of our metropolis". F'TRUE - Pronounced <f@-TROO>. When phrased as a question, it means "Is that so?" or "Ya kiddin'!!". When phrased as a statement, it's an affirmation, a shortened version of "Nuh uh, I ain't lyin' ta ya ..." GAWD - A supernatural deity, worshipped by most New Orleanians. GO CUP - A paper or plastic cup for consumption of alcoholic beverages out on the street, as open glass containers (and cans too, I think) are illegal. As a Bunny Matthews bartender character once said, "Here, cap -- I gotta give ya dis beer in a cup, 'cos da City Council passed dis law sayin' I can go ta Angola fa serving ya a beer in a goddamn beer can ..." Many non-New Orleanians are astonished that we can drink out on the street in go cups. When I left New Orleans, I was astonished that you can't do it anywhere else (which nearly got me arrested in Los Angeles ... uncivilized savages.) GOUT - Pronounced <GOO>. French for "taste." Usually applied to coffee. As in, "You want a little gout?" Mostly old people are the only ones still saying this. GRIP - A small suitcase, usually not a hard-shell one, more like a schoolbag or an overnight bag. Other locals have used this to refer to all types of suitcases. "Don't fo'get ya grip!", says ya mamma, as you're leaving the house. GRIPPE - The flu. GRIS-GRIS - Pronounced <GREE-GREE>. Noun, A (voodoo) spell. Can be applied for nefarious purposes ("to put a gris-gris on someone"), or as a force to ward off evil, like wearing a gris-gris bag (the folks at the Voodoo Shop on Dumaine will make one to order for about $20). HAWT - A term of endearment used primarily by local females. HEY, BAY-BEE! - Pronounced <hey, BAAAAAAAY-bee> with the "BAY" drawn way out. A greeting between any two people of either gender. HICKEY - A knot or bump you get on your head when you bump or injure your head. Everywhere else in the world a hickey is what you get on your neck after necking. Not in New Orleans. See PASSION MARK. HOUSE COAT 'N CURLAS - The preferred dress for charmers while shopping at Schwegmann's. HUCK-A-BUCKS or HUCKLE-BUCKS - Frozen Kool-Aid in a Dixie cup. A way to keep cool during the summer. I had never neard this term growing up, but contributor Milton Cloutier from the 7th Ward says they used this term in his neighborhood, and another 7th Warder, Darrel Schexnayder, adds even more: The term was very common for me growing up in the 7th Ward. Neighbors would sell the frozen treats for a nickel, along time ago. Sometimes we'd make them ourselves. They were as popular as "snow-balls" are/were to the rest of New Orleans. There is even proper etiquette for eating huckle-bucks (as I used to call them). The first thing you have to do after paying your nickel/quarter or whatever the cost: 1. Warm the sides until the frost is mostly gone 2. To loosen the frozen berg from its Dixie cup confines by pushing up on the bottom of the cup. 3. Carefully flip it over so that tapered-down bottom is up and out. There are three major advantages to this technique -- (1) that's where to best flavor resides; (2) easy access to the body of the flavored ice and (3) some folks would wrap a coin in Saran Wrap and place it at the bottom. I'LL TAKE ME A ... - May I have a ... INKPEN - A ball-point pen, or any kind of pen, really. Always heavy emphasis on the first syllable ... "Lemme borra ya INKpen, awrite?" INSURANCE - Pronounced <IN-sure-ence>. JAMBALAYA - A rice-based dish containing meat and seafood, prepared in a nearly infinite variety of ways by Louisianians. The usual out-of-towner mispronunciation has the first syllable rhyming with "jam", when it should rhyme with "Tom" ... <jom'-b@-LIE-@>, secondary accent on first syllable, primary accent on third. But one local pronunciation that was brought to my attention (although nobody in my family said it this way) is <JUM-b@-lie'-@>, primary accent of first syllable which rhymes with "bum", secondary accent on third syllable. JAWN - The most popular boys' name in English, pronounced this way among Localese-speakers. Also, a pot ta pee in. Rhymes with "lawn". See TURLET. K&B, KB, KB's - A local drug store for decades, beloved by locals, whose trademark color was a deep, violent purple. Everything in KB was purple, from the price tags to the ink pens (and their ink) to the managers' and cashiers' vests. In the old days, K&B used to have lunch counters and soda fountains, but these were all gone by the time I was in high school in the mid- to late 70s. Also in the old days, there were radio and TV jingles for K&B, the lyrics of which were, "Look on every corner and what do you see? A big purple sign that says 'Your Friendly K&B!'" In schoolyards, the lyrics were often changed to have the big purple sign say something uncomplimentary and/or obscene. "K&B" stands for "Katz and Besthoff". Alas, K&B is no more, having been bought out by some vile Northern chain who changed the chain's name to "Rite Aid" and got rid of the purple. I will never shop there again under any circumstances for as long as I live. It's Walgreen's or Eckerd for me from now on. "Streetcar" Mike Strauch has put up a K&B memorial page, with the background a brilliant, beautiful K&B purple (see below). K&B PURPLE - A particular shade of purple that you'll know if you know K&B. Used in phrases like, "He was so mad, his face was K&B purple", or, "I can't believe ya bought dat ugly car! It's K&B purple!" LAGNIAPPE - Pronounced <LAN-yap>. A little something extra. Lagniappe is when your butcher gives you a pound and two ounces of hot sausage but only charges you for a pound, or when the waiter at your favorite restaurant brings you an extra dessert or something, and doesn't charge you. Lagniappe breeds good will, friendship and most importantly, return business. Also, "Lagniappe" is the name of the entertainment pull-out section of the Friday edition of The New Orleans Times-Picayune. LOCKA - Where you hang your clothes, analogous to the English word "closet". Example: "Mom-MAH! Where my shoes at?" "Looka in ya locka!" (See LOOKA) Occasionally spelled "locker", as if it was proper English. Generally always used in place of the word "closet", but I must confess I have yet to hear this term used in the context of a gay or lesbian person "comin' outta da locka ..." :^) LOOKA - The imperative case of the verb "to look". Usually accompanied by a pointing gesture. Often used as a single exclamation: "Looka!" LOOKIT DA T.V. - To watch T.V. Locals don't watch T.V., they look at it. Oh, and in proper Localese form, it's pronounced <TEE-vee>, emphasis on the first syllable. MAKE GROCERIES, MAKIN' GROCERIES - To do grocery shopping. Thought to have originated with the French expression for grocery shopping, "faire le marché". The verb "faire" can mean either "to do" or "to make", and the idiom may have been mistranslated. MARDI GRAS - This grand pre-Lenten celebration for which New Orleans is famous is pronounced <MAW-dee GRAW>. MARRAINE - Pronounced <MAH-ran>. Your godmother. Elsewhere the terms "nanny" and "nanan" (pronounced NAH-nan) are also used for godmother. MAW-MAW - Ya grandma. MIRLITON - A vegetable pear or chayote squash, which grows wild in Louisiana and in backyards throughout New Orleans. Pronounced <MEL-lee-tawn>, and wonderful when stuffed with shrimp and ham Bayou St. John, particularly if you walked "northwesterly"dressing ... have a look at the recipe. MUFFULETTA - A quintessential New Orleans Italian sancwich, of ham, Genoa salami, mortadella, Provolone cheese and marinated olive salad on a round seeded Italian loaf. Invented at Central Grocery on Decatur in da Quarter. Locals pronounce this <muff-@-LOT-@>, and will tend to just abbreviate it as "muff". But if you ask a member of the Tusa family (the proprietors of Central), they'll pronounce it in elegantly proper Italian as <moo-foo-LET-ta>. MYNEZ - Mayonnaise. NEUTRAL GROUND - The grassy or cement strip in the middle of the road. The terms "median" and/or "island" are NEVER used in New Orleans. Use of one of those foreign terms instead of "neutral ground" is a dead giveaway that you ain't from around here, or anywhere close. If you're lucky, you live on a street with a neutral ground big enough to play football on. NEW ORLEENS - The way silly tourists pronounce "New Orleans". Natives do not do this. Exception -- song lyrics, as in "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans", for example, and when omitting the "New", as in "Orleans Parish", which is always pronounced <or-LEENS>. Confusing, isn't it? More on this below. NUTTINONIT - A po-boy that is not dressed, which only contains the main ingredient(s). ON DA WES' BANK, ACROSS DA RIVUH, OVA DA RIVUH - On the West Bank of the Mississippi River, where such places as Algiers, Gretna and Marrero lie. Interestingly, the West Bank is due south of New Orleans (except for Algiers, of course). Make sense? Thought not. OR WHAT - Pronounced <r WUT>, and placed at the end of a question: "You gonna finish eatin' dat, 'r what?" OVA BY - A general replacement for the prepositions "at" and "to", particularly when referring to someone's home, or a destination in general. "Where ya goin'?" "Ova by ma mamma's." PARISH - A Louisiana state administrative district, analogous to the American "county". When used by locals in the phrase "da parish", it generally means St. Bernard Parish specifically, which is suburban to New Orleans. PARRAINE - Pronounced <PAH-ran>. Your godfather. PASS BY - To stop at a place, for a visit or to accomplish something. "Ya gonna be home later? I'll pass by ya house." It doesn't mean just to drive by in your car and keep going ... PASSION MARK - The little red mark you get on your neck (or elsewhere) after a passionate session of necking. Called a "hickey" or a "love bite" everywhere else, apparently. Pronounced <PASH'n mawk>, of course. PECAN - A nut indigenous to the South, and beloved in New Orleans as an ingredient in pies and pralines. Pronounced <p@-KAWN>, not <PEE-can>. PO-BOY - The quintessential New Orleans lunch, a sandwich on good, crispy New Orleans French bread. This definition doesn't begin to describe what a po-boy is all about, so if you really don't know you need to get one soon. Take a moment to read a little bit about po-boys. PODNA - A form of address for men, usually for ones with whom one is not acquainted. Frequently used in the emphatic statement, "I tell you what, podna ..." PRALINE - A sugary Creole candy, invented in New Orleans (not the same as the French culinary/confectionery term "praline" or "praliné") The classic version is made with sugar, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and pecans, and is a flat sugary pecan-filled disk. Yummmmm. There are also creamy pralines, chocolate pralines, maple pralines, etc. Pecan pralines are the classic, though. This is one of THE most mispronounced New Orleans terms of all. It is ***N O T*** pronounced <PRAY-leen>. It is pronounced <PRAH-leen>. Got it? Good. REGULAH COFFEE - Not "Black Coffee" as in the rest of the country. "Regular" includes lots of sugar and cream. To drink black coffee in New Orleans will cause people to look at you as though you are from another planet. As a Café du Monde waiter was quoted in a Bunny Matthews "F'Sure!" comic strip, admonishing a tourist who had ordered black coffee, "Lissen cap ... I gotta tell ya, nobody drinks dis kinda cawfee black. So I ain't responsible if ya have a hawt attack 'r sump'in ..." SCHWEGMANN'S BAG - A unit of measurement. Approximately 3 cubic feet. Derived from local icon Schwegmann Brothers Giant Supermarkets, who until recently had absolutely enormous paper bags in which they packed ya groceries. (Now they have those stupid tiny flimsy plastic bags just like everyone else.) Usage: "Hey, did ya catch a lot at da parade?" "Yeah you rite ... a whole Schwegmann bag full!" The apostrophe-s is optional. SHOOT-DA-CHUTE - A playground slide. SHOW, DA SHOW - The cinema. The movie house. The local motion picture emporium. Where works of cinematic art (or crappy flicks, depending) are shown. True New Orleanians never say, "I went to the movies", they say "I went to da show." SILVER DIME - A small coin of U.S. currency, worth ten cents. Always pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable, <SIL-vah dime>, even though they haven't been made of actual silver for over 35 years. SKEETA HAWK - Or, "mosquito hawk", the local name for a dragonfly. I'm not sure if this is particular to New Orleans only, but since moving away I have never heard anyone else use the term. SOSSIDGE - A meat preparation, made of various kinds of ground meats, seafood and spices, stuffed into a casing. Usually spelled "sausage" by English speakers, but pronounced in New Orleans as you see here, always <SAH-sage> and not <SAW-sage>. STOOP - Usually expressed as "da stoop". The front steps to your house, particularly if it's a shotgun duplex. What ya go out and sit on to chat wit'ya neighbas (an' ta keep an eye on 'em). An example, (partially taken from a Bunny Matthews' "F'Sure!") strip: "Turn on da A.C., Victa." "Nuh uh, it ain't hot enough, it's still May. Let's go out and sit on da stoop." SUCK DA HEAD, SQUEEZE DA TIP - The technique for eating crawfish. If you've never done this, have someone demonstrate. SUG - A term of endearment used primarily by Yat females. Pronoucned <SHOOG> with a soft "oo" as in "book". "THROW ME SOMETHIN, MISTA!" - The traditional (nay, required) request of a Mardi Gras paradegoer to a Mardi Gras parade rider, so that the rider will shower said paradegoer with cheap trinkets like beads, doubloons or cups (actually, the cups are highly coveted, more so than the doubloons are these days, apparently). TURLET - Ya standard flushable porcelain waste disposal unit found in every bat'troom, referred to by English speakers as a "toilet". Also good for gettin' rid of nasty food ya snuck away from da table as a child (like ma mamma's roast beef ... yuck. That lady makes heavenly crawfish étouffée, but she just murders roast beef ...) UPTOWN SIDE, DOWNTOWN SIDE, LAKESIDE, RIVERSIDE - The four cardinal points of the New Orleanian compass. "North, south, east, west" do not work in New Orleans. VALISE - Suitcase. VEDGEATIBBLE - Neither animal nor mineral. What ya mamma used to make ya eat before ya could leave the table when ya were a kid. The word has four syllables. VIOLATION - A person from Violet, Louisiana, in St. Bernard Parish. I've never heard this one before, but it's hilarious. Contributed by Karen Schneider of the Southern Yat Club. WHERE YA STAY (AT)? - Where do you live? WHERE Y'AT! - The traditional New Orleanian greeting, and the source for the term "Yat", often used (primarily by non-New Orleanians, it is said) to describe New Orleanians with the telltale accent. The proper response is, "Awrite." UMBRELLA - A standard English word, but with a special pronunciation. We say <UM-brel-l@>, not <um-BREL-l@>. UP DA ROAD - Same as down da road, only now you are traveling in the opposite direction heading "up da road" to either Chalmette or Arabi. WRENCH - To clean something under running water. "Aw baby, ya hands 'r filthy! Go wrench 'em off in da zink." See ZINK. Y'ALL - The plural form of the second person pronoun, "you all". It's not pronounced as they would in the south, though -- no twang, no drawl, just "y'all". "You guys" is never said and is a dead giveaway that you're a Tulane student from New Jersey. YA - You, your. YA MAMMA - Your mother. Used in a variety of ways, usually endearing. Also usable as an insult, specifically as a simple retort when one is insulted first; simply say, "Ya mamma." Be prepared to defend yourself physically at this point. I once saw my classmate Vince G. beat the crap out of someone (and someone a year older, at that) back in high school at Holy Cross for uttering this retort. YAMAMMA'N'EM - A collective term for your immediate family, as in "Hey dawlin', how's yamamma'n'em?" Spoken as one word. YEAH YOU RITE - An emphatic statement of agreement and affirmation, sometimes used as a general exclamation of happiness. The accent is on the first word, and it's spoken as one word. YEUHRM? - Do/Did you hear me? (Heard often at Schwegmann's.) ZATARAIN'S - Pronounced <ZAT-@-rans>. A local manufacturer of spices, seasonings, pickled products and condiments. In context, it's used by some as a generic term for either crab boil or Creole mustard, as it "Put some Zatarain's on it," or "T'row a coupla bags o' Zatarain's in da pot." Context is important here; you don't want to put Creole mustard in a seafood boil. ZINK - A receptacle for water with a drain and faucets. Where ya wrench off ya dishes or ya hands. See WRENCH. A guide to the pronunciation of local place names For instance, some people will note with delight that we have streets named after the Nine Muses of classical Greek mythology, but would probably have a seizure if they heard how we pronounced them ("Calliope" still kills me ...). And da French names often ain't what dey seem. Here's a list of the ways the natives pronouce some of our our unique place names -- streets, cities and local features. Some of you may find them baffling, but don't think to ask why. We probably don't know anyway. Special note: If you're a student DJ at WTUL and you're not a native of New Orleans ... READ THIS AND LEARN IT! Next time I hear one of y'all butcher our street names on our local airwaves, I'll pull your ribs out. Okay, so ... if you really want to fit in, learn to pronounce things like this: ALGIERS POINT - You're likely to hear this pronounced as <Algiers Pernt> AUDUBON PARK - Avoid the French pronunciation (which is a good general rule for most New Orleanian place names) of <au-dû-boN> with the nasal "N". The local will pronounce this <AW-d@-b@n PAWK>. THE BIG EASY - Avoid uttering this phrase at all costs. Under almost no circumstances would a native ever refer to the City in this way. One major (and baffling) exception: the local music and entertainment awards are called The Big Easy Awards. BONNABEL - A major street (and high school) in Metairie. The proper pronunciation is apparently Bon-@-BELL, not BON-@-ble ... although most natives will pronounce it the latter way. I'm told it's a mispronunciation, to wit: Hi, I have a pronunciation for you to add to the lexicon. I'm sure that my great-grandfather, Alfred Bonnabel, will appreciate this. Bonnabel is pronounced Bon-@-BELL, NOT Bon-@-buhl. It is always mutilated on a regular basis and it drives us nuts! At one point, they had even mispelled one of the exit signs on I-10 to read "Bonnable Blvd." An easy ay to rember is by thinking of my mother's name. It is Bonnie Belle. Cute, no? Thanks, Teri Lippincott, daughter of Bonnie Belle Lacey Lippincott BURGUNDY STREET - Pronounced <bur-GUN-dee>. Don't pronounce it like the wine. BURTHE STREET - in Uptown New Orleans. Pronounced <BYOOTH> ... sounds like "youth" with a B in front of it. Why? Beats the hell outta me. I'm told the street is named after a person, but I don't know the details. I'm also told it's a French name, but it surely wouldn't be pronounced like that in proper French (as if any New Orleans street name is). The local postmen know this pronunciation; apparently mail addressed to "Buth" or "Buthe" Street gets delivered just fine. CADIZ STREET - Pronounced <KAY-diz>. In New Orleans, Spanish place names are butchered even woise den da French ones ... CALLIOPE STREET - Pronounced, believe it or not, <CAL-lee-ope>, and not <k@-LIE-@-pee>. No doubt this particular Greek Muse is barfing up her lunch over on Olympus ... However, the steam organ on the riverboat Natchez that plays music is, in fact, the <k@-LIE-@-pee>. Go figure. CANAL - Usage is always "da canal". The Industrial Canal, one of New Orleans' main waterways, along with "da lake" and "da river". I suppose some Metry-ites may use this term to refer to the 17th Street Canal. Also, Canal Street is the main thoroughfare of the Central Business District, and borders the French Quarter on the Uptown side. CARONDELET STREET - Pronounced <k@-'ron-d@-LET>, not <k@-'ron-d@-LAY>. CHARTRES STREET - Pronounced <CHAW-t@s> or <CHAW-tuhs>. CHEF MENTEUR HIGHWAY - Pronounced <SHEF m@n-TOUR>. Most people just say "da Chef". And although it's U.S. 90, it's not really much of a highway anymore ... "Da Chef" is actually pretty depressing these days. When I-10 was completed through New Orleans in the 60s, da Chef ceased to become a main thoroughfare for travelers, and gradually died. (And if da Chef is dead now, one can only imagine how scary Old Gentilly Road must be by now ...) Five miles outside of eastern New Orleans on da Chef is the site of the infamous Jayne Mansfield decapitation. CLIO STREET - Pronounced <CLI-oh>. Also sometimes, by some folks in da neighbahood, as "CEE-ELL-TEN" ... I kid you not. CONTI STREET - Pronounced <CON-tye>. DA QUARTER - The French Quarter, pronounced <da QUAW-tah>. DAUPHINE STREET - Pronounced <daw-FEEN>. Oddly enough, it's not unlike the actual French. DECATUR SCREET - Pronounced <d@-KAY-ter>, not <'deck-@-TURE>. French people have problems with this one. DERBIGNY STREET - Pronounced <DER-b@-nee> or <DOY-b@-nee< if you're a really hardcore Nint' Wawduh. DORGENOIS STREET - Pronounced <DER-zhen-wah'>, secondary accent on third syllable. DRYADES STREET - Pronounced <DRY-@ds>. DUFOSSAT STREET - Pronounced <DOO-faucet>. A contributor writes, "When I was a kid I always interpreted it as having to do with faucets." EUTERPE STREET - Pronounced <YOU-terp>. FONTAINEBLEAU - Pronounced as if spelled "fountain blue". IBERVILLE STREET - Pronounced <IB-ber-'vil>, not <EYE-ber-'vil>. LOYOLA - The hardcore local pronunciation of this is <lye-OH-l@>. MARIGNY STREET, FAUBOURG MARIGNY - Pronounced <MA-r@-nee>, with the "a" sounding like the "a" in "hat". MAZANT STREET - Pronounced <MAY-zant>. Runs through the heart of Bywater in da Lowuh Nint' Ward. It's my family's old neighborhood; my grandparents ran a little neighborhood grocery store called Niedermeier's, which was on the corner of Mazant and Royal ... MAY-zant 'n RERL! MELPOMENE STREET - Pronounced <MEL-p@-meen>. METAIRIE - Standard New Orleanian pronunciation: <MET-@-ree>. Hardcore local pronunciation: <MET-tree>, as if it was spelled (and sometimes is spelled), "Metry". Announcers on those mail-order product commercials that are made for local products, but who are not aware of the correct pronunciation, often pronounce it <m@-TAIR-ee>, much to to the amusement of the locals. MILAN STREET - Pronounced <MY-lan> NEW ORLEANS - This is a sticky subject. As Tim Lyman mentioned above, there are oodles of ways that the locals pronounce the name of their beloved City. Natives also seem to have an instinctive grasp of what a proper pronunciation is, and can spot it in native speakers outside the City. First off, <new or-LEENS> is generally a no-no. It's like putting a big, red neon sign on your head that says, "I'm not from around here." As also mentioned above, the two main exceptions are when it's pronounced like that in song lyrics (easier to rhyme, but contributes to the confusion of non-natives) and when "Orleans" stands alone without the "New", as in Orleans Parish. So of course, there are some exceptions to this rule. I have on occasion heard some African-American native New Orleanians use the above pronunciation. I didn't say this was going to be consistent or that it wasn't going to be confusing, did I? Here are the major standard local pronunciations of the City's name: <new OR-l@ns>, <new AW-l@ns>, <new OR-lee-'@ns> <new AH-lee-@ns>, <nyoo AH-lee-'@ns>. The fabled "N'Awlins", pronounced <NAW-l@ns>, is used by some natives for amusement, and by some non-natives who think they're being hip, but actually I've come across very few locals who actually pronounce the name of the City in this way. Ben Fortson, an Uptown boy, adds, "There are also versions without the final -s, as in Fats Domino's "walkin' to Noo Awlin". The s-lessness is presumably from the French. Also, "Noo Awyuns", with a -y- instead of an -l-, is pretty common in my experience, and kind of interesting from a linguistic point of view. By the way, the shorter versions like Nawlins and Nawlns that you say aren't used much by locals have in fact been used at least by me all my life, for what that's worth. Maybe Uptown is diff'rint." (Yeah, it is, bra ... it's where dey got all dem shoits wid da lil' gators on 'em, and everyone has 59 rows o' teeth!) PLAQUEMINES PARISH - Pronounced <PLACK-@-m@ns>. PONTCHARTRAIN - Pronounced <PONCH-a-train> locally. Or you can just say, "Da Lake". POYDRAS STREET - Pronounced <PER-dr@s> by truly hardcore locals, <POY-dr@s> by everyone else. PRYTANIA STREET - Pronounced <pr@-TAN-y@>. THE RIGOLETS - Pronounced <da RIG-@-lees>. ROYAL STREET - Pronounced <RERL>, to rhyme with "pearl". A strong localese pronunciation. SOCRATES STREET - In Algiers, across da river. Pronounced <SO crates>, like the word "so" and the word "crates". I kid you not. TCHOUPITOULAS STREET - Pronounced <'chop-@-TOO-l@s>. It's easier to pronounce than to spell. Spelling "Tchoupitoulas" is the true test of a native; if New Orleans was a country at war, you'd ask a guy to spell this to make sure he was on your side, just like in all the old WWII movies. TERPSICHORE STREET - Pronounced <TERP-s@-core>. THIBODEAUX - Pronounced <TIB-@-doe>. TONTI STREET - Pronounced <TON-tee>, with the "o" sound as in "box". TOULOUSE STREET - Pronounced <TOO-loose>. TUJAGUE'S - A venerable French Quarter restaurant, highly recommended. However, some tourists have expressed reticence to go to a restaurant whose name they can't pronounce. All such folks will do well to pronounce it <TOO-jacks>. TULANE - Pronounced <TOO-lane>. Never, ever pronounce this <tu-LANE>, or you'll immediately be mistaken for a college student from New Jersey. Also, you're liable to have someone get in your face about it, like my brother-in-law Jeff Willmon does when he hears this ... "No. If you're gonna come to my city, and go to my school, you're gonna pronounce it my way." UGLESICH'S - The best restaurant in the city? Some might say so. Certainly a must for any fan of New Orleans cooking. Anthony and Gail Uglesich operate this tiny, atmosphere-free (but rich in local color) restaurant that's only open weekdays until 4 (you don't wanna be on that part of Baronne Street after dark, no). Pronounced <YOU-g@l-sitch-is>, although I've heard some natives just call it "Ugly's". VETERANS HIGHWAY - Hardcore locals pronounce this with only two syllables ... <VET-tr@ns>. VIEUX CARRÉ - Pronounced <VOO ka-RAY>. Literally means "old square", and it means Da French Quarter, the site of Bienville's original New Orleans settlement. New Orleanians! If you see anything missing, please let me know. Additional contributions of overloooked Localese may be mailed to:

Number Of Babies Born Prematurely Nears Historic Half Million Mark In U.S.

Some 12.3 percent of all babies -- 499,008 infants -- were born prematurely (less than 37 weeks gestation) in 2003, according to the report released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). That's up from 12.1 percent (or about 480,000 babies) in 2002 -- and an increase of more than 30 percent since the government began tracking premature births in 1981. The prematurity rate was 9.4 in 1981; it has increased every year since then except for slight dips in 1992 and 2000. "Prematurity is the number one killer of newborns. We see from these latest statistics that the prematurity crisis in this country continues to intensify, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will only make it worse, " said Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, president of the March of Dimes. "Babies are dying and those who survive are too often left with devastating consequences -- such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, learning problems and blindness." The March of Dimes began its multi-year campaign to address the growing rate of premature birth in 2003. The campaign educates women on the signs and symptoms of premature birth, and supports more research into the causes of premature labor. One of the goals of the campaign is to help the nation reach the goal set by the U.S. Public Health Service of reducing the rate of premature birth to 7.6 percent by 2010. The NCHS report, entitled "Births Final Data for 2003" appeared in the National Vital Statistics Report, volume 54, number 2. The March of Dimes is a national voluntary health agency whose mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. Founded in 1938, the March of Dimes funds programs of research, community services, education, and advocacy to save babies. For more information, visit the March of Dimes Web site at marchofdimes.com or its Spanish language Web site at nacersano.org. Source : March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation

-- Axioms of Web architecture

Tim Berners-Lee Date: 1998, last change: $Date: 2013-03-04 22:56:21 $ Status: personal view only. Editing status: first draft. Up to Design Issues Principles of Design Again and again we fall back on the folklore of the principles of good design. Sometimes I need a URI for them so this is started as collection of them. I have written about some in many places. Principles such as simplicity and modularity are the stuff of software engineering; decentralization and tolerance are the life and breath of Internet. Brian Carpenter has enumerated some principles of design of the Net [carpenter]. The third pair of ideas I have found commonly useful for the Web. I mentioned them in a keynote at WWW7 and the note on Evolvability. This is largely "motherhood and apple pie" but it still needs a home. "Keep it simple, stupid!" Simplicity is easily to quote but often ignored in strange ways. Perhaps this is because it is the eye of the beholder. A language which uses fewer basic elements to achieve the same power is simpler. Sometimes simplicity is confused with 'easy to understand". For example, a two-line solution which uses recursion is a pretty simple, even though some people might find it easier to work though a 10-line solution which avoids recursion. In XML, "Processing Instructions", those things which start with "<?" are not simple. They look simple, just an extra sort of thing in the language, but the complicate what was a very clean design of elements and attributes, and a complication in the underlying syntax is has great effect. All specifications which refer to XML processing will have to figure out what to do about processing instructions as well as elements. When you design a system, or a language, then if the features can be broken into relatively loosely bound groups of relatively closely bound features, then that division is a good thing to be made a part of the design. This is just good engineering. It means that when you want to change the system, you can with luck in the future change only one part, which will only require you to understand (and test) that part. This will allow other people to independently change other parts at the same time. This is just classic good software design and books have been written about it. The corollary, the TOII is less frequently met. Modular design hinges on the simplicity and abstract nature of the interface definition between the modules. A design in which the insides of each module need to know all about each other is not a modular design but an arbitrary partitioning of the bits. (More ...) Its is not only necessary to make sure your own system is designed to be made of modular parts. It is also necessary to realize that your own system, no matter how big and wonderful it seems now, should always be designed to be a part of another larger system. This is often much more difficult than modularity. Tolerance "Be liberal in what you require but conservative in what you do" This is the expression of a principle which applies pretty well in life, (it is a typical UU tenet), and is commonly employed in design across the Internet. Write HTML 4.0-strict. Accept HTML-4.0-Transitional (a superset of strict). This principle can be contentious. When browsers are lax about what they expect, the system works better but also it encourages laxness on the part of web page writers. The principle of tolerance does not blunt the need for a perfectly clear protocol specification which draws a precise distinction between a conformance and non-conformance. The principle of tolerance is no excuse for a product which contravenes a standard. Decentralization This is a principle of the design of distributed systems, including societies. It points out that any single common point which is involved in any operation trends to limit the way the system scales, and produce a single point of complete failure. Centralization in social systems can apply to concepts, too. For example, if we make a knowledge representation system which requires anyone who uses the concept of "automobile" to use the term "http://www.kr.org/stds/industry/automobile" then we restrict the set of uses of the system to those for whom this particular formulation of what an automobile is works. The Semantic Web must avoid such conceptual bottlenecks just as the Internet avoids such network bottlenecks. If someone else had already invented your system, would theirs work with yours? Does this system have to be the only one of its kind? This simple thought test is described in more detail in "Evolution" in these Design Issues. It is connectted to modularity inside-out: designing a system not to be modular in itself, but to be a part of an as-yet unspecified larger system. A critical property here is that the system tries to do one thing well, and leaves other things to other modules. It also has to avoid conceptual or other centralization, as no two modules can claim the need to be the unique center of a larger system. In choosing computer languages, there are classes of program which range from the plainly descriptive (such as Dublin Core metadata, or the content of most databases, or HTML) though logical languages of limited power (such as access control lists, or conneg content negotiation) which include limited propositional logic, though declarative languages which verge on the Turing Complete (Postscript is, but PDF isn't, I am told) through those which are in fact Turing Complete though one is led not to use them that way (XSLT, SQL) to those which are unashamedly procedural (Java, C). The choice of language is a common design choice. The low power end of the scale is typically simpler to design, implement and use, but the high power end of the scale has all the attraction of being an open-ended hook into which anything can be placed: a door to uses bounded only by the imagination of the programmer. Computer Science in the 1960s to 80s spent a lot of effort making languages which were as powerful as possible. Nowadays we have to appreciate the reasons for picking not the most powerful solution but the least powerful. The reason for this is that the less powerful the language, the more you can do with the data stored in that language. If you write it in a simple declarative from, anyone can write a program to analyze it in many ways. The Semantic Web is an attempt, largely, to map large quantities of existing data onto a common language so that the data can be analyzed in ways never dreamed of by its creators. If, for example, a web page with weather data has RDF describing that data, a user can retrieve it as a table, perhaps average it, plot it, deduce things from it in combination with other information. At the other end of the scale is the weather information portrayed by the cunning Java applet. While this might allow a very cool user interface, it cannot be analyzed at all. The search engine finding the page will have no idea of what the data is or what it is about. This the only way to find out what a Java applet means is to set it running in front of a person. I hope that is a good enough explanation of this principle. There are millions of examples of the choice. I chose HTML not to be a programming language because I wanted different programs to do different things with it: present it differently, extract tables of contents, index it, and so on. B. Carpenter, Editor: "Architectural Principles of the Internet" Internet Architecture Board, June 1996, RFC1958 Follow up In her talk The Science of Insecurity, Meredith Patterson makes the point that the principle of least power is important for security of interfaces which may be exposed to attack. Up to Design Issues Tim BL

I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp, page 1

The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. the next 5 months I'm extremely depressed to report that things seem to only be getting sadder concerning the people so devastatingly affected by Katrina last week. Two car loads of us headed over to Falls Creek, a youth camp for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma that agreed to have its facilities used to house Louisiana refugees. I'm afraid the camp is not going to be used as the kind people of the churches who own the cabins believe it was going to be used.Jesse Jackson was right when he said "refugees" was not the appropriate word for the poor souls dislocated due to Katrina. But he was wrong about why it is not appropriate. It's not appropriate because they are detainees, not refugees.Falls Creek is like a small town that is closed down about 9 months out of the year. It is made up of cabins that range from small and humble to large and grandiose, according to how much money the church who owns the cabin has. Each cabin has full kitchen facilities, bathrooms and usually have two large bunkrooms - one for women and one for men. The occupancy of the cabins varies according to the church. This past week the Southern Baptist association of Oklahoma offered the facility as a place to house refugees from the Katrina disaster. Each church owning a cabin was then called to find out if they would make their cabin available. Churches across the state agreed.I started my journey by loading six large trash bags full of clothes in the back of my beetle buggy. I then went to the local Dollar General and purchased various hygiene products, snacks and even a set of dominoes and a deck of cards. I had my daughter take her own shopping cart and go and select her own items that she wanted to take. I told her to imagine herself without anything in the world and then select what she would need to live every day.We then met up with my elderly parents who had gone to the Dollar Store themselves, and to the grocery store and had spent WAY too much of their limited social security on the venture. But that's okay. We ended up having to take both vehicles on the 150 mile round trip because they were both pretty full. My son showed up and wanted to go. He drove my parents while my daughter and I rode in my car.To say we all left with excitement would be appropriate. My 78 year old mother is a "fixer". She loves to help people and she absolutely needs some one to dote over. That she was about to be able to help some people who had lost all in their lives had her feeling physically healthier than I've seen her in days. I was glad to get the chance to actively do something other than donate what little I can to some faceless charity hoping it would get to the people who needed it. I felt glad I could do some small something that might cut through the helplessness I've felt over this situation. Both of my kids were eager to assist.The only odd thing that occurred prior to setting off happened while I was gassing up in our small town. My daughter was pumping the gas and a lady she knew pulled up to an adjacent pump. My daughter started telling her where we were going and that we were taking things to the refugees. The lady told my daughter that she had been told the Red Cross was not allowing any one to deliver supplies. When I returned to the car from paying for the gas my daughter informed of this. I told her that the Red Cross would not be preventing the members of our church from entering our own cabin, so it really didn't matter. It was at that point we decided to stop back by the house and get my daughter's camera so that she could take pictures if required.From the moment I heard about Falls Creek being scheduled to receive refugees I had two thoughts run through my mind:1. What a beautiful place to be able to stay while trying to get your life back in order.2. What a terrible location to be when you're trying to get your life back in order.The first thought is because Falls Creek is nestled in the Arbuckle Mountains of south central Oklahoma. One of the more beautiful regions of the state. It would be a peaceful and beautiful place to try to start mending emotionally, and begin to figure what you're going to do next.The second thought comes because Falls Creek is very secluded and absolutely no where near a population center. The closest route from Falls Creek to a connecting road is three miles on a winding narrow road called "High Road" (It gets that name for two reasons - it's goes over the mountain instead of around it like "Low Road" does, and it's where the teenagers of the area go to party). The road has not a single home on it for over 3 miles. After battling that 3 miles over mountains, you'll find yourself about 5 miles from the nearest town, Davis, Oklahoma, population ca. 2000. This is no place to start a new life.A few pictures headed toward Falls Creek over High Road to give you a feel of the seclusion.All of sudden the landscape changed from picturesque mountainous rural America, to something foreign to me as we approached the rear gate of the camp. Two Oklahoma State Patrol vehicles and four Oklahoma Troopers guarded the gate. We started through and they stopped us."Can I help you, ma'am?"I informed him we're here to deliver supplies to *our church's name* cabin. He stood silent and stared at me. My daughter turned and snapped a picture of his vehicle - very conspicuously.I smiled at him and he asked, "Do you know where that cabin is located?"I informed him I did. He looked at me a bit longer and then said, "Ok" and stepped away from the car. They stopped my parents' vehicle as well, but I assume my son informed them he was with us. They let them pass.We made our way through the narrow streets toward our church's cabin.We noticed that the various church cabins had numbered placards on them that normally weren't there.We arrived at our cabin and started toting the clothes in. We finally found a group of men upstairs in the dorms trying to do something alien to them - make beds. They had almost completed the room of bunk beds and told us we could go over to the ladies' dorm room and start on it. We lugged our sacks of clothes back down the stairs. Then we got the first negative message. "You can't bring any clothes in. FEMA has stated they will accept no more clothes. They've had 30 people sorting clothes for days. They don't want anymore." My mind couldn't help but go back over the news articles that have accused FEMA of refusing water in to Jefferson Parrish, or turning fuel away.We lugged the bags of clothes back to the car. We then turned to bringing in our personal hygiene products. That's when we learned our cabin had been designated a "male only" cabin. Approximately 40 men, ranging from age 13 on up would be housed there. We started resacking the female products and sorted out everything that would be useful for men.We lugged the bags of female products back to the car. We asked if they knew of a cabin that had been designated for women. The "host" (the hosts are Oklahoma civilians who have been employeed??? by FEMA to reside at each cabin and have already gone through at least one "orientation" meeting conducted by FEMA at "BASE" which is some unknown but repetitively referred location within the camp) told us he believed McAlester cabin was dedicated to females. He then explained there were male, female and family cabins designated.We then started lugging in our food products. The foods I had purchased were mainly snacks, but my mother - God bless her soul - had gone all out with fresh vegetables, fruits, canned goods, breakfast cereals, rice, and pancake fixings. That's when we got the next message: They will not be able to use the kitchen.Excuse me? I asked incredulously.FEMA will not allow any of the kitchen facilities in any of the cabins to be used by the occupants due to fire hazards. FEMA will deliver meals to the cabins. The refugees will be given two meals per day by FEMA. They will not be able to cook. In fact, the "host" goes on to explain, some churches had already enquired about whether they could come in on weekends and fix meals for the people staying in their cabin. FEMA won't allow it because there could be a situation where one cabin gets steaks and another gets hot dogs - and...it could cause a riot.It gets worse.He then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this.If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp forMy son looks at me and mumbles "Welcome to Krakow."My mother then asked if the churches would be allowed to come to their cabin and conduct services if the occupants wanted to attend. The response was "No ma'am. You don't understand. Your church no longer owns this building. This building is now owned by FEMA and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. They have it for the next 5 months." This scares my mother who asks "Do you mean they have leased it?" The man replies, "Yes, ma'am...lock, stock and barrel. They have taken over everything that pertains to this facility for the next 5 months."We then lug all food products requiring cooking back to the car. We start unloading our snacks. Mom appeared to have cornered the market in five counties on pop-tarts and apparently that was an acceptable snack so the guy started shoving them under the counter. He said these would be good to tied people over in between their two meals a day. But he tells my mother she must take all the breakfast cereal back. My mother protests that cereal requires no cooking. "There will be no milk, ma'am." My mother points to the huge industrial double-wide refrigerator the church had just purchased in the past year. "Ma'am, you don't understand...It could cause a riot."He then points to the vegetables and fruit. "You'll have to take that back as well. It looks like you've got about 10 apples there. I'm about to bring in 40 men. What would we do then?"My mother, in her sweet, soft voice says, "Quarter them?""No ma'am. FEMA said no...It could cause a riot. You don't understand the type of people that are about to come here...."I turn and walk out of the room...lugging all the healthy stuff back to the car. My son later tells me the man went on to say "We've already been told of teenage girls delivering fetuses on buses." My son steps toward him and says "That's because they've almost been starved to death, haven't had a decent place to get a good night's sleep, and their bodies can't keep a baby alive. I'm not sure that's any evidence some one should be using to show these are 'bad people'."We then went to the second dorm room and made up beds. When we got through and were headed outside the host says to me and my daughter, "How did you get in here?" I told him we came in through the back gate. He replies, "No, HOW did you get in here? No one who doesn't have credentials showing is supposed to be in here." (I had noticed all the "hosts" had two or three badges hanging around their necks.) I told him it might have had something to do with the fact my daughter was snapping pictures of the OHP presence at the gate. He then tells us, "Well, starting in the morning NO ONE comes in. So if you have further goods you want to donate you will have to take them to your local church. They will collect them until they have a full load and then bring them to the front gate."Me and my two kids then walked over the hill to the camp's amphitheater.First - just another OHP car...The amphitheater is full of clothes (but I'm not sure I'm seeing enough for 5000 people for 5 months).But there was more...an Oklahoma Department of Safety truck and a military vehicle...and a cell phone tower (which fretling didn't get a pic of...grrr). Falls Creek, because it sits in a "bowl" surrounded by mountains, is notorious for no cell phone coverage.There were buses coming in the front gate at about a rate of 1 every 2 or 3 minutes. We could hear them below us as we walked back up the hill. We could also see their white tops through the trees. We figured these were busloads of refugees arriving, but we never saw these buses in the camps, nor were any refugees visible at the camp while we were there.We then loaded back into our vehicles and headed toward the cabin we had been told was for women so that we could off-load our appropriate products. When we arrived there was no one in the cabin so we preceded to unload our vehicles and take the merchandise in to the cabin. A horde of "hosts" who had been hovering at a nearby cabin head toward us."Can we help you?"I explained to them what we were doing."Uhh... you can't just leave donated goods in the cabins. FEMA has stated they want all supplies to go to their central warehouse. They said they have had far too many supplies come in and they need to handle them. You can't leave ANY clothes."I just stared at them.One chubby-checker, after several moments of pregnant pause broken only by the sound of my 82 year old dad continuing to shuffle boxes out of the back of his car (GO DAD!), says "I'll call "BASE" and confirm what should happen here."I continue to stare.He pounds out the number on his cell phone and when some one picks up he chickens out and just asks "I need to verify that cabin 11 is a female only facility." When he hangs up he says that it is and I respond, "Well, good, we'll get on with this then." It's at that point my son pulls me aside and says, "Every damned one of them have the same phone. That's what the comm tower is for at the amphitheater. Now we know how FEMA runs through billions, they've given every one of these people a Cingular phone when walkie-talkies would have worked just fine."We off-load our goods into the McAlester cabin. Fretling takes pics of the buckets of toys that have been donated by citizens for the kiddos coming this way.And a dorm room:We then start out of the camp. I tell my daughter I want to go out the main gate this time. Here is what we saw on the way out:Just another OHP car...This cabin was apparently commandeered by a group of people in navy blue jumpsuits with insignias all over them. You can see them in the left side of this pic. But they were standing all over the place on both sides of the narrow street.This is just one OHP car in a long line of them parked along the side of the street.Three firetrucks parked along the river.Talk about a surreal moment...troops (unknown if Regular or National Guard) have taken up residency in the Durant First Baptist Church cabin very near the main gate of the camp.Two things to point out in the pictures above...we passed a row of about 6 or 8 ambulances parked in the street just in front of the troop cabin, and the large tent on the top of the hill...we have no idea what that is for.Main gate completely blocked by OHP vehicles as we approach:More OHP vehicles parked at the rear gate as we pass by:Now I'm starting to understand why it doesn't matter that this location is not conducive to starting a new life.[edit on 9-6-2005 by Valhall][edit on 22-4-2006 by SkepticOverlord]

Opinion | Broken Yardstick

Washington - THE most widely quoted federal statistic on deprivation and need in modern America is the "poverty rate" -- a measure tracking households with annual incomes below a "poverty threshold" established at the beginning of the Johnson administration's "war on poverty" in the 1960's and adjusted over time for inflation. According to the latest poverty rate estimates -- released by the Census Bureau on Aug. 30 -- the total percentage of Americans living in poverty was higher in 2004 (12.7 percent) than in 1974 (11.2 percent). According to that same report, poverty rates for American families and children were likewise higher last year than three decades earlier. On its face, this momentous story should have shocked the nation. After all, it suggested (among other alarming things) that Washington's long and expensive campaign to eliminate domestic poverty has been a colossal failure. So why did that poverty rate report end up mostly buried deep inside daily papers? Maybe because many news editors, like policymakers in Washington, know the dirty little secret about the poverty rate: it just isn't any good. Truth be told, the official poverty rate not only fails to calculate trends in impoverishment with any precision, it even gets the direction wrong. The profound flaws in our officially calculated poverty rate are revealed by its very intimation that the poverty situation in America was "better" in 1974 than it is today. Those of us of a certain age remember the year 1974 -- in all its recession-plagued, "stagflation"-burdened glory. But even the most basic facts bearing on poverty alleviation confute the proposition that material circumstances in America are harsher for the vulnerable today than three decades ago. Per capita income adjusted for inflation is over 60 percent higher today than in 1974. The unemployment rate is lower, and the percentage of adults with paying jobs is distinctly higher. Thirty years ago, the proportion of adults without a high school diploma was more than twice as high as today (39 percent versus 16 percent). And antipoverty spending is vastly higher today than in 1974, even after inflation adjustments.

Shape of Days

Propagating Plants The process of propagating nursery plants is pretty simple to master. You take a cutting from the desired plant, apply the appropriate ratio of rooting hormones and stick the plant cutting into a planting medium, such as a peat and perlite mixture. The cuttings are then watered in thoroughly and kept at high humidity until the roots form on the cutting. The trick of the whole process is knowing the best time of the growing stage to take the cuttings. Many people have success with hardwood cuttings, while others have luck with softwood and greenwood cuttings. There are a few plants that are stubborn and refuse to root unless propagated under perfect conditions. Most of these plants are better propagated by grafting them onto a suitable rootstock, but grafting is a propagation method that few take the time to master because of the complexity of understanding what is involved. If you are interested in propagating plants, I urge you to buy a good book on the subject such as, Plant Propagation by Alan Toogood. For some, it is much easier to absorb what they are reading when the desciptive text is followed along with clear photos. With a little education and luck, you will be growing your own nursery stock before you know it. Warning: Propagating your own plants can become addictive!

Q&A: Two mother embryo

The aim is to get healthy offspring free of inherited genetic disorders BBC News explains how and why. Why are the UK researchers doing it? The groundbreaking work aims to prevent mothers from passing certain genetic diseases on to their unborn babies. The researchers are focusing on a group of conditions called mitochondrial myopathy, which include types of muscular dystrophy. These cause muscle weakness and wasting, making it difficult to move normally - some may need to use a wheelchair. At present no treatment for these exists, although things can be done to help with the symptoms. Is there anything unique about these diseases? Yes. Most genetic diseases result from faults in the DNA of the organ at the heart of the cell, the nucleus. However, diseases of this type are caused by faulty genetic material contained in different cell structures called mitochondria. Mitochondria are complex structures, which float in the cytoplasm outside of the nuclei of most cells. They are responsible for energy production inside the cell - and can be compared to minute batteries. It is thought that millions of years ago, they were thought to be free-living bacteria, but it is now known they cannot exist outside of our cells. But, because of their unusual heritage, they have their own DNA - which is inherited from the mother only. It is only a tiny proportion of the total DNA of the cell - 37 genes compared with the 25,000 genes found in the nucleus. But if these few genes are faulty, the consequences can be devastating. What do scientists want to do? They plan to experiment on a fertilised egg from a woman who carries faulty mitochondrial DNA. The egg, discarded from IVF treatment, will be at such an early stage of its development that it will still only be formed of one cell. The scientists will remove tiny structures called pronuclei, which are destined to become the egg's nucleus. These will then be put into a fertilised egg from another women with only healthy mitochondrial DNA. Although this second egg has been fertilised, the pronuclei DNA from the male and female that made this egg will be removed. The result would be an embryo with pronuclei DNA from the parental egg and sperm but mitochondria - and mitochondrial DNA - from the donor egg. This embryo would share the over-whelming majority of its DNA - and almost all its physical characteristics - with its parents. But scientists believe it would also be free of the risk of mitochondrial disease as it would have different mitochondria from its mother. Why is this controversial? Opponents believe it is wrong to experiment with material that has the potential to become a human life. There are also doubts about the safety of the technique, with concerns about high rates of abnormalities. The researchers say they have no intention of allowing the embryo to develop into a fully formed baby. Was permission straightforward? No. Current legislation covering reproductive technology makes no explicit provision for such ground-breaking science, which was not envisaged at the time the original law was drawn up. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority initially rejected an application to push ahead with the research, ruling that it was not permitted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. However, following an appeal it has now approved the application.

How to render the Segway Human Transporter obsolete: add a third wheel.

How to render the Segway Human Transporter obsolete: Every once in a while someone invents something so simple and elegant that it makes you say "damn, why didn't I think of that?" Then there are the other inventions, the ones that make you say "man, I know exactly why I didn't think of that: that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen." Introducing Segway, transporter of humans. Of all the places you'll inevitably be transported to, the first place will be the bank because the Segway will cost you one healthy kidney, $4,500, and a pint of virgin blood. The reason for this cost: superfluous bullshit like high-voltage field-effect transistors or FETs. What the hell does a FET do? Nobody knows, but I guarantee some nerd spent months writing a graduate thesis on why it's important (and failing). The Segway is packed full of useless, but important-sounding extras like "angular-rate sensors" (or "gyroscopes" to anyone with something better to do than to look up obfuscated $6 words to describe a spinning wheel), and two digital signal processor controller boards with enough processing power to give even the beefiest desktop PC penis envy. The controller boards monitor the system 100 times per second for conditions that require a response, adjusting the motors up to 20,000 times per second (give or take 19,000), making calculations based on information from five solid-state gyroscopes. You'd think all of this technology would be able to do something useful like cure cancer or make an episode of "Will and Grace" funny, but alas, all it does is balance a pole. Much like the introduction to an IMAX film, the Segway engineers boast about the inherent inefficiencies of their "innovation:" redundant sensors, microprocessors, and controller boards that cost a fortune, and all for what? A balancing act? Well I came up with an innovation of my own that will help balance a Segway without years of research and millions of dollars invested in obscure technology. The secret? Yes, that's right, what many people don't realize is that you can be just as space efficient and stable with a third wheel. Hell, it doesn't even need to be turned on to balance itself. Amazing! In fact, the only thing this revolutionary new model requires from the old Segway are the motors, gear box, wheels and batteries. Throw the rest of that shit away. What's the point of all this technology if it costs a fortune? Here's a bonus: add shock absorbers to the front wheel to compensate for tilt. Man someone should hire me full time just to ruin other people's inventions. I must admit though, the Segway is quite revolutionary. So revolutionary in fact, that it takes nothing less than a programmer and a few days to build one from scratch for less than half the cost. The Segway has been thoroughly owned. 2,200,917 people didn't realize how easy it was to hand Dean Kamen his ass on a plate. © 1997-2017 by Maddox

Acoustic Snooping on Typed Information

by Li Zhuang, Feng Zhou, and Doug Tygar have an interesting new paper showing that if you have an audio recording of somebody typing on an ordinary computer keyboard for fifteen minutes or so, you can figure out everything they typed. The idea is that different keys tend to make slightly different sounds, and although you don’t know in advance which keys make which sounds, you can use machine learning to figure that out, assuming that the person is mostly typing English text. (Presumably it would work for other languages too.) Asonov and Agrawal had a similar result previously, but they had to assume (unrealistically) that you started out with a recording of the person typing a known training text on the target keyboard. The new method eliminates that requirement, and so appears to be viable in practice. The algorithm works in three basic stages. First, it isolates the sound of each individual keystroke. Second, it takes all of the recorded keystrokes and puts them into about fifty categories, where the keystrokes within each category sound very similar. Third, it uses fancy machine learning methods to recover the sequence of characters typed, under the assumption that the sequence has the statistical characteristics of English text. The third stage is the hardest one. You start out with the keystrokes put into categories, so that the sequence of keystrokes has been reduced a sequence of category-identifiers – something like this: 35, 12, 8, 14, 17, 35, 6, 44, … (This means that the first keystroke is in category 35, the second is in category 12, and so on. Remember that keystrokes in the same category sound alike.) At this point you assume that each key on the keyboard usually (but not always) generates a particular category, but you don’t know which key generates which category. Sometimes two keys will tend to generate the same category, so that you can’t tell them apart except by context. And some keystrokes generate a category that doesn’t seem to match the character in the original text, because the key happened to sound different that time, or because the categorization algorithm isn’t perfect, or because the typist made a mistake and typed a garbbge charaacter. The only advantage you have is that English text has persistent regularities. For example, the two-letter sequence “th” is much more common that “rq”, and the word “the” is much more common than “xprld”. This turns out to be enough for modern machine learning methods to do the job, despite the difficulties I described in the previous paragraph. The recovered text gets about 95% of the characters right, and about 90% of the words. It’s quite readable. [Exercise for geeky readers: Assume that there is a one-to-one mapping between characters and categories, and that each character in the (unknown) input text is translated infallibly into the corresponding category. Assume also that the input is typical English text. Given the output category-sequence, how would you recover the input text? About how long would the input have to be to make this feasible?] If the user typed a password, that can be recovered too. Although passwords don’t have the same statistical properties as ordinary text (unless they’re chosen badly), this doesn’t pose a problem as long as the password-typing is accompanied by enough English-typing. The algorithm doesn’t always recover the exact password, but it can come up with a short list of possible passwords, and the real password is almost always on this list. This is yet another reminder of how much computer security depends on controlling physical access to the computer. We’ve always known that anybody who can open up a computer and work on it with tools can control what it does. Results like this new one show that getting close to a machine with sensors (such as microphones, cameras, power monitors) may compromise the machine’s secrecy. There are even some preliminary results showing that computers make slightly different noises depending on what computations they are doing, and that it might be possible to recover encryption keys if you have an audio recording of the computer doing decryption operations. I think I’ll go shut my office door now.

We will never return, say survivors of drowned city

The tens of thousands in the New Orleans diaspora passing through the area and leaving their drowning city behind have to travel 200 miles north, to Monroe near the Louisiana-Arkansas border, before they can hope to find a motel. And then they may balk at the price: even the most flea-bitten hostels have raised their prices as demand for rooms has rocketed. Those evacuees prepared to stump up cash spend their days sitting around motel swimming pools, mobile phones glued to their ears, waiting for news. Most evacuees, however, have no choice but to take refuge in one of the hundreds of church shelters that have mushroomed across Louisiana and Texas, some of which now house hundreds of people. But, as the last of those who refuse to leave New Orleans are forcibly evacuated, many shelters now have signs saying Full. It is a word that is fast becoming synonymous with much of Louisiana. Baton Rouge's population is estimated to have doubled to 500,000 in the past week as an estimated 250,000 people have poured into the state capital, turning it into Louisiana's most populous city. The sudden influx has dramatically altered the region's demographics. Before Katrina, about 50 per cent of Baton Rouge's population was estimated to be black. New Orleans, by comparison, is 70 per cent black. Elsewhere, in the nearby towns of Lafayette and Alexandria, it is a similar story. But as the towns fill up, the Deep South's famed hospitality is stretched to breaking point and the mood is turning ugly. Gun stores say local people are buying weapons to protect themselves against a perceived threat from outsiders. Signs saying 'We have guns, we buy gold' are now seen frequently outside pawn shops, adding to the post-apocalypse atmosphere. Local people's anxiety is explored on talk radio shows and in whispered conversations in the long queues at Wal-Mart. Residents complain of longer queues in the rush hour and waiting at fast-food restaurants where people used to be served immediately. 'I work in heating and cooling. Last week I sent a man on a 10-minute trip and it took him three hours,' one man, who declined to be named, said. 'And now they say it may be 80 days before they can fully drain New Orleans. We can't wait that long. Baton Rouge had already outgrown its infrastructure as it was,' he said. In Ouachita Parish, a poor, God-fearing part of Louisiana about 250 miles north of New Orleans, the sheriff, Richard Fewell, articulated what some of his fellow residents are thinking when he expressed reservations about 'the quality' of the evacuees pouring out of a city now inextricably linked to lawlessness in the minds of many Americans. Some local people were outraged by his comments. Most nodded in agreement. Further south, at the River Centre in Baton Rouge, where several thousand are housed, evacuees talk about being labelled as second-class citizens. 'We wear these bracelets to show where we're staying. You can see [local] people glance at them and you can read the thoughts going through their minds,' said Chantelle, 22, a shop assistant from New Orleans. 'I applied for a job at Jack in the Box [a burger bar]. And when I told them where I was from, you should have seen their faces,' said her friend, Denise, 19. The River Centre evacuees are eyed suspiciously by private security patrols whenever they venture close to nearby Europe Street, a leafy, well-to-do stretch of attractive wooden houses with quaint porches in the heart of one of the city's most desirable areas. The culture clash with the endless rows of camp beds and refugees crammed into the River Centre is almost tangible. The President's mother, Barbara Bush, underlined the division between the evacuees and their hosts last week, suggesting those fleeing the flood may be better off because of the hurricane. 'So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,' she said after visiting Houston Astrodome, where thousands are being housed. 'So this is working very well for them. As many evacuees will not be able to return to New Orleans for months, possibly more than a year, the state authorities are drawing up plans to house some in semi-permanent trailer park homes across Louisiana. One of the biggest of these is likely to be in Port Allen, a joyless industrial area that clings to the west bank of the Mississippi and is home to smoke-spewing refineries and countless breakers' yards. Given the options of staying put in such grim surroundings or moving on, many New Orleans residents have decided to put as much distance as they can between themselves and their old city. Igor Szymanski, 37, was living in a $400-a-month apartment in the city when the hurricane struck. As the waters rose he stayed inside, aware a man had been shot five times outside his door when he would not surrender his bicycle to looters. Szymanski had a revolver. A police officer offered to give him ammunition to protect himself from looters, but the officer had only 9mm bullets for a pistol. A friend eventually drove him out of the city. A Pole by birth and an IT expert, Szymanski is now heading for Chicago, which has a large, tightly-knit Polish community, with the hope of starting a new life. Like many others who ended up in New Orleans, Szymanski had visited it on holiday and decided to stay. He and his girlfriend took dead-end jobs, the city's bewitching aura compensating for the low pay. But the city no longer holds a magic allure. 'We're heading up north to Chicago to get on to higher ground. To a city with a different energy,' Szymanski said. He feels the Windy City won't leave him isolated as New Orleans did, should it suffer a natural catastrophe. 'Chicago is a central point, there's a multitude of options if something goes wrong there,' Szymanski said. He is typical of thousands of others who, having little in the way of roots in New Orleans, other than lowly jobs and rented apartments, now under water, have decided to make new lives elsewhere. Katrina, it seems, has acted as a catalyst, convincing the Big Easy's residents to follow the yellow brick road to a new life elsewhere. According to the Louisiana Department of Social Services, there are now 130,000 people staying in shelters in Texas and Louisiana and a further 20,000 in other states across the US. The figures do not include those who are staying with family or friends or in hotels. Several thousand people in the two states are already estimated to have checked themselves into long-term accommodation, a sign that they do not intend to return to New Orleans soon. Of the 15,000 or so evacuees who were housed in the Houston Astrodome, only about 3,000 are now left, many having managed to find work and housing in the Lone Star state. The federal government's Department of Veterans has already started selling some of its housing stock, accrued through foreclosing on homes owned by former soldiers who defaulted on their mortgage payments, to New Orleans's evacuees wanting to make new lives further north in Louisiana or neighbouring Alabama. In addition, about 6,000 children from the New Orleans area have been enrolled at schools in Texas, and a further 12,000 in Louisiana, creating emotional links that may prove difficult for their parents to break whenever they are given the green light to return. Many former residents of the Gulf Coast region believe it is inevitable that another Katrina will visit the area and have convinced themselves to start afresh in a lower-risk area. 'I'm not going back. You can't live in a bowl,' said Alice, 73, referring to the way New Orleans is built below sea level, protected by the 350-mile network of levees surrounding the city. 'I got relatives in Florida. They tell me life is good there, so I'm going,' said Duane Williams, 23, a trainee mechanic. There were concerns about New Orleans's demographics long before Katrina rent her destruction. The city's population has been shrinking for decades, thanks in part to rising unemployment and crime levels which have driven people away. Today it is estimated that about 450,000 people are counted as living there, compared with 630,000 in 1960. Situated on the border between the states of Mississippi and Louisiana, the city is in one of the poorest regions in the US. The average wage in Mississippi is $24,650, the lowest in the US and more than $7,000 below the national average. Louisiana was ranked 42nd poorest state with an average wage of $27,795. The city's mayor, Ray Nagin, had been acutely worried about the city's shrinking population and had drawn up a $4 billion development programme to stimulate the economy and create jobs before Katrina struck. But the programme, and with it the hopes of securing New Orleans's long-term future, has been subsumed by Hurricane Katrina. There are doubts about whether the numerous casinos built on barges in the Gulf of Mexico, now reduced to matchsticks, will be rebuilt, something that would see the loss of thousands of jobs in the area. Big blue-chip companies are already moving their Louisiana headquarters from New Orleans to other parts of the state. Given the increase in insurance premiums they will need to pay to return to the city, many could end up deciding to make the switch permanent. It is estimated a third of the city's 34,000 businesses will end up having to move offices for some time. 'This is all moving very, very quickly,' said Stephen Moret, president of the Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce. 'I'm told businesses are making permanent decisions now,' he told the Advocate newspaper. Experts say it is likely that the poorest, predominantly black sections of New Orleans's society will feel the economic downturn hardest, raising questions over whether they will want to return to a city with dubious prospects. Experts are already predicting that unemployment on the Gulf Coast will rise to 25 per cent in the short to medium term as a result of Katrina. Again, inevitably, the poorest will be hit the hardest. 'There's no question that the recovery is going to be much longer and more painful for the 28 per cent of the local population in the New Orleans area living below the poverty line,' Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at stockbroker Charles Schwab told the News Star newspaper. 'The population in Louisiana and Mississippi is incredibly poor. Most of the damage was from flooding, which doesn't tend to be covered by insurance,' Mark Vitner, the senior economist at Wachovia Bank, said. 'That combination adds up to an incredibly long and painful rebuilding process - I think five to 10 years,' Vitner said. It is a gloomy prognosis, but one with which many of New Orleans's institutions seem to concur. Louisiana's supreme court has moved to a temporary new home in Baton Rouge. And, perhaps, most symbolically, the New Orleans' Saints, the city's American football team, has decamped, at least temporarily, to San Antonio in Texas. For years the team's owner, Tom Benson, has been fighting the authorities to replace the team's stadium, the Superdome, which was home to about 25,000 evacuees following the flood and which has been left badly damaged. Local sports pundits believe that Benson may now use Katrina as an excuse to move the team to Texas or, perhaps, Los Angeles, which is without a National Football League team. Whether New Orleans can reclaim its status as one of America's great cities now hinges on the federal government's economic response. It is estimated that Katrina's damage may end up totalling more than $100 billion, roughly five times the cost of the 11 September atrocities. This at a time when the Bush administration wants to make budget cuts in welfare and health programmes to reduce a $316bn budget deficit. Some senators have even expressed doubts about whether it makes sense to resurrect a city built on swampland, despite its distinguished heritage. For his part, Nagin, who seems to be battling hard to suppress his anger at the way that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and the federal authorities have handled Katrina's aftermath, is trying to paint a bright future for New Orleans. 'We will rebuild,' he pledged last week in the middle of a city now denuded of almost all its people. But thousands of New Orleans's residents no longer care for such promises. They have gone to forge new lives elsewhere. And they are not coming back.

Prescott links global warming to Katrina

John Prescott sparked controversy yesterday by linking America's refusal to tackle climate change to the devastation of the New Orleans hurricane. The Deputy Prime Minister caused potential embarrassment for Britain by drawing a parallel between the US city destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and island states that scientists believe are under threat of being swamped. In a speech in Berlin, he also criticised the US for failing to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change, which is aimed at slowing global warming by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. A debate has raged in the US over whether global warming is responsible for the recent series of storms. So far this year there have been 15 named storms, significantly more than average. President George Bush says he does not believe that human activity causes global warming, but some experts say excessive carbon emissions lead to higher sea temperatures and stronger storms. With the death toll from Katrina expected to be in the thousands, however, comments like these from a senior politician will be seen by some as insensitive. A spokesman for Prescott said Downing Street had seen the speech beforehand, but the Prime Minister's office later refused to comment. Tony Blair will meet Bush in New York this week at the United Nations world summit, at which global warming will be a key issue. A White House spokesman said the two leaders' warm relationship would not be affected by the comments. The spokesman also dismissed the suggestion of a link between Kyoto and Katrina. James Connaughton, the chief White House environmental aide, said Prescott was careful in his choice of words. 'Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster,' said Connaughton. 'Even had we ratified and implemented the provisions of Kyoto, this would not have stopped Katrina. We've had hurricanes for centuries. 'I have a high regard for John Prescott and it has been reinforced by the fact that he was careful in what he said on this issue.' In his speech, Prescott stressed his compassion for the US hurricane victims, but said Bush's administration was wrong not to join Britain and many other leading industrial nations in supporting Kyoto. He told the international congress of the Council for European Urbanism: 'As a European negotiator at the Kyoto climate change convention, I was fully aware that climate change is changing weather patterns and raising sea levels. 'The horrific flood of New Orleans brings home to us the concern of leaders of countries like the Maldives, whose nations are at risk of disappearing completely. There has been resistance by the US government to Kyoto - which I believe is wrong.'

Cornel West: Hurricane aftermath showed Darwinism in action

It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years. What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane. It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black. In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right. Poverty has increased for the last four or five years. A million more Americans became poor last year, even as the super-wealthy became much richer. So where is the trickle-down, the equality of opportunity? Healthcare and education and the social safety net being ripped away - and that flawed structure was nowhere more evident than in a place such as New Orleans, 68 per cent black. The average adult income in some parishes of the city is under $8,000 (£4,350) a year. The average national income is $33,000, though for African-Americans it is about $24,000. It has one of the highest city murder rates in the US. From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey. New Orleans has always been a city that lived on the edge. The white blues man himself, Tennessee Williams, had it down in A Streetcar Named Desire - with Elysian Fields and cemeteries and the quest for paradise. When you live so close to death, behind the levees, you live more intensely, sexually, gastronomically, psychologically. Louis Armstrong came out of that unbelievable cultural breakthrough unprecedented in the history of American civilisation. The rural blues, the urban jazz. It is the tragi-comic lyricism that gives you the courage to get through the darkest storm. Charlie Parker would have killed somebody if he had not blown his horn. The history of black people in America is one of unbelievable resilience in the face of crushing white supremacist powers. This kind of dignity in your struggle cuts both ways, though, because it does not mobilise a collective uprising against the elites. That was the Black Panther movement. You probably need both. There would have been no Panthers without jazz. If I had been of Martin Luther King's generation I would never have gone to Harvard or Princeton. They shot brother Martin dead like a dog in 1968 when the mobilisation of the black poor was just getting started. At least one of his surviving legacies was the quadrupling in the size of the black middle class. But Oprah [Winfrey] the billionaire and the black judges and chief executives and movie stars do not mean equality, or even equality of opportunity yet. Black faces in high places does not mean racism is over. Condoleezza Rice has sold her soul. Now the black bourgeoisie have an even heavier obligation to fight for the 33 per cent of black children living in poverty - and to alleviate the spiritual crisis of hopelessness among young black men. Bush talks about God, but he has forgotten the point of prophetic Christianity is compassion and justice for those who have least. Hip-hop has the anger that comes out of post-industrial, free-market America, but it lacks the progressiveness that produces organisations that will threaten the status quo. There has not been a giant since King, someone prepared to die and create an insurgency where many are prepared to die to upset the corporate elite. The Democrats are spineless. There is the danger of nihilism and in the Superdome around the fourth day, there it was - husbands held at gunpoint while their wives were raped, someone stomped to death, people throwing themselves off the mezzanine floor, dozens of bodies. It was a war of all against all - 'you're on your own' - in the centre of the American empire. But now that the aid is pouring in, vital as it is, do not confuse charity with justice. I'm not asking for a revolution, I am asking for reform. A Marshall Plan for the South could be the first step. · Dr Cornel West is professor of African American studies and religion at Princeton University. His great grandfather was a slave. He is a rap artist and appeared as Counsellor West in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. Interview by Joanna Walters, in Princeton, New Jersey

Diseases of rich deprive poor of drugs

The world's poorest people are being denied access to drugs because pharmaceutical companies are focusing their resources on diseases suffered by wealthy, middle-aged Americans, such as obesity and heart disease, a leading expert will say tomorrow. Dr David Rhodes, the Health Protection Agency's (HPA) head of business development, will claim that spiralling costs are driving firms to invest primarily in drugs that tackle diseases of 'older Americans'. As a result, the international market has been flooded with medicines to treat 'American diseases' such as high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease and cancer, while drugs to tackle tuberculosis, malaria and water-borne diseases prevalent in the poorest countries have been neglected. Presenting his research at the HPA's annual conference tomorrow, Rhodes will show that more and more pharmaceutical companies are moving their headquarters to the US in search of profits. Once there, they pump money into treatments that help the local population to live longer. 'Drugs and vaccines are becoming phenomenally expensive to develop,' said Rhodes. 'Companies have to recoup their investments by selling the drugs and vaccines. To be economic, they need a large population and the price has to be high. That increasingly means that drugs are developed for older Americans, who are getting healthier and living longer.' Costs are soaring, added Rhodes, because of extensive safety and efficacy testing and the fact that many drugs that show 'early promise' never make it through the checks. As such, companies looking to be 'economic' shift resources to meet the needs - and benefit from the profits - of the biggest spenders. 'The US tend to get the first bite of the cherry,' admitted Rhodes. He said the trend had led to a 'vicious' circle in the poorest countries of 'low economic growth leading to poor healthcare systems, creating a higher burden of disease which in turn affects the ability of the population to develop economically'. But while sub-Saharan Africa is heavily affected, China and India's strong investment in their pharmaceutical industry has seen health improvements and economic bonuses that will in turn attract investment back. Nevertheless, with many private companies turning their back on the developing world, Rhodes said research was heavily dependent on philanthropic funding and government backing. He welcomed the International Finance Facility for Immunisation - the funding arm of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation - that was launched on Friday. The group has pledged to raise $4 billion (£2.2bn) for an immunisation programme in the developing world.

A betrayal of the people

At 4pm Central Time two weeks ago today, the US national weather service warned that the hurricane about to hit New Orleans would cause 'human suffering incredible by modern standards'. The following morning, as citizens drowned on their front porches, President George W Bush attended a cake-cutting photo-opportunity to mark Senator John McCain's 69th birthday. And now another anniversary rolls around. On 11 September 2001, the world reached out to a stricken America, unaware that US helplessness was a brief prelude to an era of power run mad. From Manhattan to Mesopotamia to the Mississippi, we have come full circle. Hurricane Katrina has turned a superpower into a victim again. Only this time, few rally to the President. Rotting bodies lie like rubbish sacks in the streets of New Orleans, 42 per cent of Americans think Bush has done a 'bad' or 'terrible' job, and the world looks at his catastrophe management in horror and derision. Blaming Bush is easy. That is not to say it is wrong. It would have been better if scientists' warnings had been heeded and the levees strengthened. It would have been preferable if America had not housed its poorest below the Plimsoll line of civilisation, and if the emergency controller, now sidelined, had not been a klutz called 'Brownie' who used to run gymkhanas. Ideally, the President would learn to prioritise national disasters and birthday parties. But the hurricane is not about one scapegoat, however powerful, nor is it just a fable of America. Britons may be shocked that obese inhabitants of the richest nation can be victims of starvation too. They may be startled that many New Orleans citizens are poor black people who might shoot and loot and who have never set foot in the French quarter, with its filigree balconies, jazz clubs and a population that is 95 per cent white. But Britain, with its own gaping social divide, has no excuse for smugness. The universal lesson of Katrina is broader, though, than inequality. Timothy Garton Ash argues that we have witnessed how, with the removal of the staples of civilised life, such as water and personal security, people revert to a 'Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all'. At the hint of a dirty bomb or some other apocalyptic onslaught, societies could become 'decivilised'. This is a very gloomy creed. It is true that, in extremis, hungry flood victims are rarely to be mistaken for Jane Austen heroines. You will not find them sitting around debating whether Hobbes's gospel of state control was more relevant than the benign anarchy outlined by Proudhon, who thought that 'property was theft'. They will get down to Wal-Mart and grab some food and drink, if necessary at rifle point. Such action may or may not seem more despicable than the online looting of white-collar barbarians now setting up bogus flood relief appeals. The Lord of the Flies scenario is, by definition, nothing new. The Greeks coined the word 'barbaros' for anyone who did not speak their language. To Marx, barbarism was a synonym for capitalist destruction, a theme embroidered by Osama bin Laden's favourite writer, Sayyid Qutb, who used the term jahiliyya to label the West a materialist hell meriting attack. And so to 9/11 and a new chapter in barbaric action. The timeline linking September 2001 to today is studded with the headstones of its antagonists and martyrs. They include as many as 27,000 Iraqi citizens; the 2,000 dead US and British soldiers; the massacred of Bali and Istanbul, Riyadh, Madrid, Casablanca, London. There are the individuals whose histories dominated the narrative for a while; Margaret Hassan, Kenneth Bigley, David Kelly: the aid worker, the contractor, the government inspector. Western pugilism cannot justify the outrages of jihadism. But few, bar the US President and the British Prime Minister, would seriously argue that an unlawful Iraq war, fought against world opinion, has not fomented terrorism and laid innocent people everywhere open to attack and peril. North Korea has the bomb and Iran may not be far behind. Bush, and now Blair, have defied international rules to welcome India to their nuclear club. If the people who strolled to work in the Twin Towers on a cloudless September morning could see the blood that saturates their graves, they would be incredulous. Many would also be appalled, not only by fanatics who want to rewind the world to a 7th-century caliphate but by the forward planners of the West. On decivilisation, we do not have much to learn from a few hungry looters. Those interested in the seeds of savagery should look elsewhere. The destitute driven to anarchy are simply victims. Those who commit grave crimes under the cover of disaster deserve punishment by the law, but even they do not undermine civilisation in the same way as people who wear suits, kiss babies and sign the orders that enable, though never command, the outrages at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Camp Breadbasket. Crowds may look menacing, but the powerful are much better at torture and havoc than the weak. For Americans, and all other nations, today is the anniversary of year zero. The resurgence of religion in a world reforged four years ago meshed with Bush's war of good versus evil; of right-wing Christendom versus radical Islam. The Lord's carelessness in allowing 9/11 to happen might deepen hardline faith, but that was murder in the second degree. His callousness in unleashing an act of God has shaken Bible Belt America to its pious roots. That doubt may do some good, if a side-effect of Katrina is to downplay the hand of the Almighty in US politics. Already Bush is proving much less eager than many feared to cram the Supreme Court with anti-abortion zealots. His country might learn to love the gun a little less and the poor a little more. There are more lessons, as relevant for Britain as for America. The solidarity instilled by 9/11 made electorates too credulous. Even the most vehement opponents of invading Iraq were shocked to discover that the evidence for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was no more than the fantasy of leaders spoiling for a war. There will be other crusades. Bush still menaces Iran. Blair talks of justice and human rights as if they are the shield and armoury of jihadis, rather than the pillars of civilisation. The discarded dead of New Orleans offer another story: of social division, craven politicians and incompetent public servants. But, most of all, the disaster has been a reminder to all who hold the powerful to account. Tragedy once conferred upon our leaders a wisdom they did not possess and a trust they did not merit. Never again. mary.riddell@observer.co.uk

All eyes on Halliburton as contacts turn into contracts

With the floodwaters still high in New Orleans last week, with 25,000 body bags on their way to the city, with the Gulf of Mexico oil industry crippled - 160 platforms and 16 rigs still evacuated, oil refineries shut down - there was one group of people who, nevertheless, could see some good coming out of the wreckage. Who? Halliburton shareholders. The Houston-based company - once headed by vice-president Dick Cheney, who was dispatched by George Bush to survey the damage - has been a star performer on the markets since the storm hit the Gulf. Its shares have risen by more than 10 per cent to $65. It has out-performed the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which itself recovered last week. Concerns in the US are mounting that Katrina could prompt a round of 'pork barrel' contracts - rewarding companies with strong links in the area such as Louisiana engineer Shaw Group - which last week won a federal rebuilding deal. Meanwhile firms known for their close links with the White House are winning work. California-based contractor Bechtel won work from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide short-term housing, in the form of 'trailer' accommodation, to the homeless. But eyes will be most closely fixed on Halliburton.Other companies have attracted attention for potential work in the southern states - including some outside the US - Aggreko, the UK-owned supplier of generators, and Wolseley, the plumbing group, for example. But Halliburton has shone in the markets partly because it is expected to do well out of the catastrophe. It has outperformed competitors in servicing oil infrastructure and engineering and construction work, such as Schlumberger and Fluor (which has also won work). According to experts, Katrina was almost the perfect storm for Halliburton. Estimates of the cost of rebuilding the city range as high as £100 billion (£54bn). On 2 September, Congress voted $10.5bn for emergency relief. Last week the White House asked for $50bn more. Poe Fratt, analyst at AG Edwards in St Louis, says: 'Oil field services groups will get work on repairing the infrastructure. Halliburton would expect to win contracts on refineries and production facilities.' Fratt estimates that some $1bn will initially be spent on oil infrastructure. 'Other oil service groups don't have any engineering or construction like Halliburton's KBR subsidiary, which will benefit from the broader picture,' says Fratt. 'And the construction companies don't have oil services.' But these observations will be of secondary importance to US politicians and the growing industry of Halliburton watchers. Many expect that Halliburton will use its legendary lobbying power and close relationship with the White House, via Cheney and others, to win big. The shadow of the last big win - Iraq - is already looming. Last week Bush was criticised for underspending on flood defences in New Orleans because of overspending in Iraq - and Iraq has made Halliburton an enormous amount of money. Before war was even declared over, Halliburton was awarded, a non competitive contract to put out oil well-head fires. Along with this, it had a long-standing rolling cost-plus deal to supply the army with support from food to accommodation, known as LogCap. The oil contracts were extended to fuel supply. Halliburton reported making $10.7bn from Iraq work in 2004-05. But there was controversy, not only because of how Halliburton won the contracts, but that it overcharged the army for food and inflated the price of fuel it bought in from Kuwait. Leading the barrage of criticism heaped on the company critics was Democrat representative Henry Waxman, a member of the Congressional Committee on government reform, who last week wrote a 17-page letter savaging the federal response. Waxman's staff say it is too early in the reconstruction effort to decide if there has been any impropriety, but they confirm the committee will be keeping a very close eye on it. There are differences from Iraq. For example, KBR, the subsidiary that did much work there, is now up for sale. As Fratt says: 'If they win a lot of work, it will help the price they finally get for it.' The oil contracts will mostly be competitively tendered for by private companies owning the assets in the Gulf of Mexico. For non-oil contracts, instead of a single, shambolic agency, the Coalition Provisional Authority, acting as a central administrative point, there is likely to be a plethora of overlapping federal, state and local buyers. According to Fema, which has born the brunt of criticism for the response, there are about 30 agencies currently involved. 'They are likely to be streamlined,' said a Fema spokesman. So far, the lack of clarity has been exacerbated by squabbling between the White House, the state government, and the New Orleans city authorities. Will Halliburton benefit from such confusion? To date, there has been little major reconstruction work done while Fema has concentrated supplying water, ice, food and shelter. Last week helicopters dropped sand bags and containers on the breached levees that allowed the city to be flooded. The work was overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), and carried out by local contractors Boh Brothers and CR Bittman. ACE is also in charge of contracts for removing storm debris. In Louisiana and Mississippi, this will be carried out by US contractor Ashbritt, and in Alabama by another, Phillips and Jordan. ACE was the agency that offered Iraqi contracts. Earlier this year a ACE whistleblower, Bunnatine Greenhouse, criticised the contracts between Washington and Halliburton, saying the relationship between the company and ACE, was too close. She pointed to a revolving door, through which army employees moved over to Halliburton. And she called the oil contract 'the most blatant improper contract abuse I have witnessed in the course of my career'. It is unclear how much work will be handled by ACE and how much will be done through the LogCap contract. In either case, Halliburton is highly likely to be a beneficiary. Charlie Cray, an advisor to Halliburtonwatch.org, a website that details the company's contracts in Iraq, says: 'If they have the relevant experience, they are well placed, because they certainly have the inside track.' Halliburton also has strong connections with Fema. Joe Allbaugh, formerly chief of staff to Bush when he was governor of Texas and manager of the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000, was appointed a director of Fema in 2001. According to Senate records, Allbaugh's Washington-based lobbying company, registered KBR as a client in March. Cray says: 'He is very close to Bush. This guy is the Karl Rove of contracting. It is unclear how much work will go through Fema, but having this guy lobbying for you is going to get all your calls answered.' So far, the work Halliburton has done after Katrina has come from neither of these sources. The US Naval Facilities Engineering Command has awarded $17m of repair work at three naval stations in the region. This was part of a $500m contract with the Navy known as Concap - similar to LogCap - used for natural disaster recovery work. According to Pratap Chatterjee of Washington-based CorpWatch: 'This is a large amount of work. It is under the ConCap, which is similar to LogCap. It shows Halliburton is in there already.' Chatterjee believes that whichever agencies end up running the reconstruction, the company will be able to take advantage. Committees and watchdogs will be looking out for other key names. Some, such as Bechtel, the privately owned construction company that is close to Bush, are well known. Bechtel's work for Fema is not governed by a formal contract. There is a 'letter agreement', while Bechtel determines the scope of the work needed. In the meantime Fema is issuing instruction, or 'task orders', as the situation evolves. The value 'changes frequently' according the the comp[any. It could not say if these are cost plus agreements or not. According to Chatterjee, other, less recognisable, names are worth following for evidence of 'revolving door' syndrome. HNTB, an engineering company recently hired Lt-General Robert Flowers to head its federal services subsidiary - the part of the group that would bid for government work. 'If HNTB bids and wins, it will show that if you have the right connections, you get the work,' says Chatterjee. But for the time being, as Chatterjee concedes, all eyes will be on Halliburton.

On Oil Supply, Opinions Aren't Scarce

"The world produces about 85 million barrels a day," Mr. Pickens said. "That's where demand is now, too. And I've seen forecasts that demand is going to be higher than that by the end of the year." What's more, Mr. Pickens added, pre-Hurricane Katrina refining capacity was already at the breaking point, which is another point that is pretty unarguable. "Refineries were operating at 96 percent," he said. "You can't operate anything at 96 percent. It'll start breaking down." That last paragraph, though, encapsulates the world view of the peakists: all the easy deals have been done. One reason refineries are operating at such high capacity is that no new refineries have been built in the United States for some 30 years, which Mr. Simmons believes can be attributed to the shortsightedness of the industry. "My theory was that if the industry didn't expand like crazy the U.S. would find itself running short of energy." It didn't, and we are. Even more troubling, the pessimists believe that it is going to be increasingly difficult to replace the oil that we're now using up. "Let me give you a number that is pretty shocking when you hear it," Mr. Pickens said. "The world uses 30 billion barrels of oil a year. There is no way we're replacing 30 billion barrels of oil. Just a million barrels a day is 1,000 wells producing 1,000 barrels. That's big." How do the economists counter the geologists' arguments? They don't deny that it is hard to find new oil. But they believe that whenever tight supplies push up the price of oil, the rising price itself becomes our salvation. For one thing, higher prices temper demand as people begin to change their energy habits. (Mr. Pickens believes this as well.) Surprisingly, this has not yet happened even as gasoline at the pump has more than doubled in the last year or so. But inevitably, there will come a point when it will change behaviors. Secondly, they believe higher prices spur innovation. Oil that couldn't be extracted profitably at, say, $15 a barrel, can be enormously profitable at $60 a barrel. In the view of Mr. Yergin and his allies, in fact, this is exactly what has been happening. They point to new oil that is coming out of the Caspian Sea, deepwater drilling in Brazil and the oil sands in northern Alberta as examples. The 16 million barrels a day of new oil Mr. Yergin expects to see by 2010, he told me, "is predicated on $25-to-$30 oil." If oil stays higher than that, then there will be even more investment, and not just in ways to extract oil, but in new refineries and pipelines and other infrastructure. If you mention this theory to a hard-core peakist like Mr. Simmons, you'd better be ready for an earful. "These economists are so smug," he said derisively. "All they talk about is the magic of the free market. They don't seem to understand that this is incredibly capital intensive."

Israel completes Gaza withdrawal

Palestinians celebrated and scavenged in the rubble Enlarge Image Tanks and armoured vehicles left under cover of darkness and the last officer shut the Kissufim border at dawn. Thousands of jubilant Palestinians entered the former Jewish enclaves, and some set an abandoned synagogue ablaze in a settlement near Khan Younis. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas described the withdrawal as an historic and joyful day for his people. But he told the BBC that some issues remained to be resolved. Mr Abbas said factors include Israel's insistence on determining who can enter or leave Gaza, and its control of Gaza's airspace and the waters off its coast. 'Happiest day' Israel declared a formal end to military rule on Sunday before its remaining 3,000 troops left. Departing troops held a flag raising ceremony outside the strip Israel had already removed its settlers from Gaza, bulldozed their homes and demolished its military bases. The government did not to raze the Strip's more than 20 deconsecrated synagogues after rabbis said it was forbidden to do so. Palestinian officials had urged Israel to pull them down, given their concerns that they could not protect the buildings from desecration. Today is the happiest day in my life Jawad Abu Lafi Gaza withdrawal: Your views As the Israelis pulled out, fireworks exploded over Neve Dekalim, one of the largest settlements. Palestinian forces in red berets planted their flag inside the former enclave. Plans to bar crowds of civilians and armed militants from the settlements quickly disintegrated, and people poured in and attacked the hated symbols of occupation. Hours after the initial euphoria, hundreds remained. Groups of gunmen have been exploring Israel's now-disused military watchtowers. "Today is the happiest day in my life," Jawad Abu Lafi told Reuters, after praying at the former settlement of Ganei Tal. Controls remain Sun sets on Israeli tank in the final hours of the occupation In pictures The Israelis smashed most things before they left, he says, but Palestinians have been scavenging through the rubble - retrieving wood, metal and broken pipes. Israel will retain control over the territory's air and sea space and, at least temporarily, all its borders. The Israelis say they have to prevent militant groups smuggling in weapons but the Palestinians say that as long as Israel controls all Gaza's links with the outside world, the occupation will continue. The Palestinian Authority says it will continue to insist on total freedom of movement between Gaza and Egypt - otherwise, they add, the Israeli occupation of Gaza will not have really ended.

Hubble makes movie of Neptune's atmosphere

Spaceflight Now + Premium video content for our Spaceflight Now Plus subscribers. Hill-climbing Mars rover The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has reached the summit of Husband Hill, returning a spectacular panorama from the hilltop in the vast Gusev Crater. Scientists held a news conference Sept. 1 to reveal the panorama and give an update on the twin rover mission. Full coverage Planes track Discovery To gain a new perspective on space shuttle Discovery's ascent and gather additional imagery for the return to flight mission, NASA dispatched a pair of high-flying WB-57 aircraft equipped with sharp video cameras in their noses. Full coverage Rocket booster cams When space shuttle Discovery launched its two solid-fuel booster rockets were equipped with video cameras, providing dazzling footage of separation from the external fuel tank, their free fall and splashdown in the sea. Full coverage Discovery ferried home Mounted atop a modified Boeing 747, space shuttle Discovery was ferried across the country from Edwards Air Force Base, California, to Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Full coverage Shuttle tank returned Shuttle fuel tank ET-119 is loaded onto a barge at Kennedy Space Center for the trip back to Lockheed Martin's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The tank will be used in the investigation to determine why foam peeled away from Discovery's tank on STS-114 in July. Full coverage Delta 4 launch delayed Launch of the GOES-N weather observatory aboard a Boeing Delta 4 rocket is postponed at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Full coverage Mars probe leaves Earth The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifts off aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41. Full coverage Launch pad demolition Explosives topple the abandoned Complex 13 mobile service tower at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This video was shot from the blockhouse roof at neighboring Complex 14 where John Glenn was launched in 1962. Play video: Full view | Close-up Become a subscriber More video Hubble makes movie of Neptune's atmosphere SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE Posted: September 4, 2005 New NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of the distant planet Neptune show a dynamic atmosphere and capture the fleeting orbits of its satellites. The images have been assembled into a time-lapse movie revealing the orbital motion of the satellites. Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona), and H.B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado). Download larger image Watch movie in QuickTime dial-up | broadband Images were taken in 14 different colored filters probing various altitudes in Neptune's deep atmosphere so that scientists can study the haze and clouds in detail. These are several snapshots from the Neptune movie. The natural-color view of Neptune (to left), common to naked eye telescopic views by amateur astronomers, reveals a cyan colored planet. Methane gas in Neptune's atmosphere absorbs most of the red sunlight hitting the planet, making it look blue-green. The image was created by combining images in red, green, and blue light. Neptune's subtle features are more visible in the enhanced-color view (top right). Images taken in special methane filters show details not visible to the human eye (bottom right). The features seen in this enhanced image must be above most of the sunlight-absorbing methane to be detectable through these special filters. The planet is so dark at the methane wavelengths that long exposures can be taken, revealing some of Neptune's smaller moons. Clockwise from the top (in composite image at left), these moons are Proteus (the brightest), Larissa, Despina, and Galatea. Neptune had 13 moons at last count. Neptune is the most distant giant planet in our Solar System, orbiting the Sun every 165 years. It is so large tht nearly 60 Earths could fit inside it. A day on Neptune is between 14 hours and 19 hours. The inner two thirds of Neptune is composed of a mixture of molten rock, water, liquid ammonia and methane. The outer third is a mixture of heated gases comprised of hydrogen, helium, water and methane. On April 29 and 30, 2005, Hubble images were taken every 4-5 hours, spaced at about a quarter of Neptune's rotational period. These where combined to create a time-lapse movie of the dynamic planet. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

ongoing by Tim Bray · Massachusetts Back-Room

The comment period for the new draft Massachusetts office-file-format policy ended last Friday the 9th. During the week before that date, there was some pretty intense back-room politics going on. There are a ton of industry associations and lobbying groups, including: Mass Software Council, Technet New England, Mass High Tech Council, Mass Network Communications Council, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and AeA. You can bet that every one of them was coming under pressure last week to speak up pro or contra the state’s position. Since you have IBM and Sun on one side of this issue and Microsoft on the other, you can also bet that they were getting pulled both ways. I’m pretty sure that a lot of them ended up with a statement along the lines of “On the subject of the new draft from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we’re in favor of motherhood and apple pie.” But, I got my hands on a copy of the other side’s talking points, and I think they make interesting reading. [Update: I hear unofficially from someone at Adobe corporate that they’re “generally happy with how things went”, so I was wrong, sorry. Fixed.] Somebody at one of those associations knows somebody who’s on a mailing list with me and thus I got these talking points; I can’t say for sure who wrote them, but I can guess. Let’s give them a look, then walk through point by point. The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards. The proposed policy would create significant costs and problems for state agencies, for the private sector and for citizens, which have not been evaluated, considered, or factored in. There are practical considerations for conversion of documents in older formats which apparently have not been considered. This policy would prohibit certain innovations and solutions from technology vendors, denying future benefits to MA agencies. There are less costly, less limiting, non-preferential policy options to achieve the same goals. Bottom line: We feel strongly that this proposed policy is costly and unnecessary and would result in limiting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to desktop software that is less functional, less open and less flexible than the State of MA already has. We will continue to work with a variety of State officials to help them achieve their various public and organizational goals. On the Other Hand... · Recently we spent a few days on a farm on Saskatchewan, during which I had occasion to help clean the floor of the barn, one of whose inhabitants was a Hereford bull named “El Presidente”, being boarded for a friend. So, when I assert that these talking points are, by and large, Dung of Male Bovine (DoMB for short), I do so in an educated voice. Let’s take them up one by one. The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. Well yes, but just standardizing on “XML” is laughably inadequate. XML just labels parts of files; it doesn’t tell you what they mean; by itself, it doesn’t do semantics at all. But interoperability and business value are all about shared semantics; for example, once everyone publishing documents onto the Internet decided to agree to use HTML, the Web revolution was born. So “standardizing on XML” is useless; the business benefits are in standardizing on an actual individual set of tags and what they mean. For example, in Massachusetts’ case, OpenDocument 1.0. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. DoMB. Not only is anyone free to implement OpenDocument 1.0 without any legal or licensing issues, anyone is free to join the committee which defines and maintains it. The claim that any product is “prohibited” casts serious doubt on the intelligence and integrity of whoever has the nerve to make it. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards. The first half of this is pretty well DoMB, anyone who claims that the combination of OpenDocument 1.0 and PDF (what Massachusetts is proposing) is “narrow” clearly hasn’t taken the time to study either of them. The second part of this, I suppose, is code for “lets you use InfoPath”. They might have a point here, except for I’ve seen outfits like Propylon build the same kind of application using OpenOffice data, and there are all sorts of standard approaches like XForms and so on just coming over the horizon. Abandoning the benefits of standardization to enable the use of a frankly experimental and unproven product from one vendor strikes me as a lousy trade-off. The proposed policy would create significant costs and problems for state agencies, for the private sector and for citizens, which have not been evaluated, considered, or factored in. Really? How do they know that Massachusetts hasn’t been evaluating, considering, or factoring in? Seems like a pretty offensive claim, frankly. But there’s some real meat here. There are significant costs in converting away from a proprietary, vendor-controlled data format, and you can be sure that such vendors take those costs into account when they set their licensing prices. Let’s see, in the year ended June 30, 2005, I see that Microsoft reported 7.915 billion profit on $11.013 billion in revenues for “Information Worker” products (i.e. Office). Yes, proprietary data formats are are a big part of the story behind that remarkable profit margin. Once the world has converted to a common file format so everyone has to compete on features and quality, this will still be a good business to be in, but nobody will be reporting 72% operating profits, which in this particular case means less money going from Massachusetts to Redmond, year after year, forever. Put it another way: every so often in coming generations, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is going to change its office software. Assuming they’ve standardized the file format, the cost of changing the software will be just the cost of changing the software. If they haven’t, it’ll also include the cost of changing over all the data. Unless the cost of conversion right now is awfully damn high, this sounds like a good investment. There are practical considerations for conversion of documents in older formats which apparently have not been considered. Once again, whoever wrote this had a lot of nerve accusing Massachusetts of failing to consider obvious issues. Let me tell a little story. A couple of months ago, I bought my Mom a new Macintosh, and also Microsoft Office for the Mac. We transferred her files over from her old Windows computer, but Office wouldn’t open a bunch of them. That was OK, I went and got NeoOffice/J, a free OpenOffice-based software suite, and it opened most of them just fine. This is a story you hear over and over, on the net. Having said that, there are going to be cases (particularly heavily-engineered Excel spreadsheets), where there will be some pain transferring to the open alternative. But (see previous discussion) there will also be some pay-offs; you take the pain now or you support a 72% profit margin forever. This policy would prohibit certain innovations and solutions from technology vendors, denying future benefits to MA agencies. This is particularly gloppy ugly stinky DoMB. The notion that using standardized formats and protocols gets in the way of innovation is twenty-year-old thinking, it was wrong then and it’s wrong now. I remember perfectly well, back in the Eighties, IBM and Wang and Pr1me and DEC explaining why their proprietary networking stacks were much more innovative and better than this new-fangled least-common-denominator “Internetworking” thing, and why their proprietary operating systems were more innovative than Unix. (Hey, most of those companies are out of business, aren’t they?) These days, anybody trying to sell a one-vendor proprietary networking stack would be laughed out of the market. I am quite certain that in another decade or two, anyone trying to sell a proprietary office-document format will be too. Massachusetts is smart enough to be a little ahead of the game. There are less costly, less limiting, non-preferential policy options to achieve the same goals. Well, I have a new car-engine technology to sell that runs on tap-water and accelerates a Ford Expedition 0-60 in 2.7 seconds. You shouldn’t take either my statement or the one before it seriously, because each lacks supporting evidence and flies in the face of common sense. Bottom line: We feel strongly that this proposed policy is costly and unnecessary and would result in limiting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to desktop software that is less functional, less open and less flexible than the State of MA already has. We will continue to work with a variety of State officials to help them achieve their various public and organizational goals. That barn-floor stench threatens to overcome me. In particular, the claim that office technology based on an open, standardized, file format that has already been implemented multiple times is necessarily “less functional, less open, and less flexible” is outrageous. In free-market economies, functionality and flexibility generally arise as a result of competition, not of monopoly control of key standards. As for open-ness, the notion that a proprietary technology unilaterally controlled and licensed by a single vendor can be “more open” than a public soon-to-be-ISO standard is simply, well, that’s what El Presidente produces and what I was pitchforking out last August.

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The Long Tail: What the Long Tail isn't

After witnessing much misuse of the Long Tail phrase, this silly post has finally pushed me over the edge. It's time to draw the line. Long Tails are found everywhere, but not, you know, actually everywhere. There are many distortions of the term, but the most common one is to use it as a newly-positive synonym for "fringe". Invoking the Long Tail is not a magic wand to explain away the apparent lack of demand for what you've got. The Long Tail is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for poor-selling product. Or weak sectors. Or bad ideas. The fact that something isn't popular doesn't mean that it's just a matter of time before it will benefit from all sorts of powerful demand-creation Long Tail effects. More likely, it's just not good enough to be commercially interesting, and probably never will be. Most of the "niche" products in the tail are simply crap. That's okay, because some significant fraction of them aren't and with a functioning way to separate the good from the bad, they can be found by those who will appreciate them. But note the essential element: a functioning way to drive demand. As I've mentioned in the original article, for Long Tail effects to work, you need both a head of relatively few hits and a tail of many niches, so that recommendations and other filters can lead consumers from one to the other. A tail without a head is too noisy and apparently random to get consumer traction; people need to start with the familiar and then move, via trusted recommendations, to the unfamiliar. Likewise a head without a tail is too limited in choice; the odds of finding a niche you want are too low to bother exploring much beyond what you already know. Thus the two big Long Tail opportunities are: Aggregating hits and niches into a one big curve, from head to tail. Creating content and products that can plug into someone else's aggregated curve. If what you're selling is fringe, it may well enjoy Long Tail benefits, but only if it can fit nicely into an existing market that has the capacity to drive demand. If that market doesn't exist, it's unlikely that throwing some niche products out there is going to create it. Even if it does exist, those products will only reach their audience if the filters and recommendations are good enough to find them. While I'm at it, here are some other things the Long Tail is not (to protect the guilty I will refrain from linking to the offending examples): Commodification The LT is about nicheification, which is different. Simple variety Offering a few different choices or a bit of customization (like the sandwich filling options in the risible example above) is not enough. Long Tail effects kick in when you're expanding variety and choice by orders of magnitude--from 10x to infinity. The case for an all amateur, self-published future The LT will probably have as much commercial content as ever. It will just be joined by far more amateur fare, forming a relatively seamless continuum from pros to ams. The actual end of hits The LT ends the tyranny of hits, shifting the market equally to niches. But it certainly acknowledges that some things will continue to be a lot more popular than others. Powerlaw distributions are as natural as diversity itself. A focus on small markets at the exclusion of large ones Again, you need both hits and niches to allow the filters and recommendation engines to work, driving demand down the curve from the known to the unknown. Just any powerlaw Powerlaws are ubiquitous. Long Tails are not. The first shows up anywhere you have variety, inequality, and network effects (word of mouth). The second requires massive variety and a wide range between the hits and niches. After all, many short tails are simply truncated powerlaw distributions. They just aren't, er, long. Venture capitalists who are tired of bogus Long Tail pitches are invited to point the hapless entrepreneurs to this post.

Does the Truth Lie Within?

In some ways, self-experimentation has more in common with economics than with the hard sciences. Without the ability to run randomized experiments, economists are often left to exploit whatever data they can get hold of. Let's say you're an economist trying to measure the effect of imprisonment on crime rates. What you would ideally like to do is have a few randomly chosen states suddenly release 10,000 prisoners, while another few random states lock up an extra 10,000 people. In the absence of such a perfect experiment, you are forced to rely on creative proxies -- like lawsuits that charge various states with prison overcrowding, which down the road lead to essentially random releases of large numbers of prisoners. (And yes, crime in those states does rise sharply after the prisoners are released.) What could be a more opportunistic means of generating data than exploiting your own body? Roberts started small, with his acne, then moved on to his early waking. It took him more than 10 years of experimenting, but he found that his morning insomnia could be cured if, on the previous day, he got lots of morning light, skipped breakfast and spent at least eight hours standing. Stranger yet was the fix he discovered for lifting his mood: at least one hour each morning of TV viewing, specifically life-size talking heads -- but never such TV at night. Once he stumbled upon this solution, Roberts, like many scientists, looked back to the Stone Age for explication. Anthropological research suggests that early humans had lots of face-to-face contact every morning but precious little after dark, a pattern that Roberts's TV viewing now mimicked. It was also the Stone Age that informed his system of weight control. Over the years, he had tried a sushi diet, a tubular-pasta diet, a five-liters-of-water-a-day diet and various others. They all proved ineffective or too hard or too boring to sustain. He had by now come to embrace the theory that our bodies are regulated by a "set point," a sort of Stone Age thermostat that sets an optimal weight for each person. This thermostat, however, works the opposite of the one in your home. When your home gets cold, the thermostat turns on the furnace. But according to Roberts's interpretation of the set-point theory, when food is scarcer, you become less hungry; and you get hungrier when there's a lot of food around. This may sound backward, like telling your home's furnace to run only in the summer. But there is a key difference between home heat and calories: while there is no good way to store the warm air in your home for the next winter, there is a way to store today's calories for future use. It's called fat. In this regard, fat is like money: you can earn it today, put it in the bank and withdraw it later when needed.

Schneier on Security

Katrina and Security I had an op ed published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune today. Toward a Truly Safer Nation Published September 11, 2005 Leaving aside the political posturing and the finger-pointing, how did our nation mishandle Katrina so badly? After spending tens of billions of dollars on homeland security (hundreds of billions, if you include the war in Iraq) in the four years after 9/11, what did we do wrong? Why were there so many failures at the local, state and federal levels? These are reasonable questions. Katrina was a natural disaster and not a terrorist attack, but that only matters before the event. Large-scale terrorist attacks and natural disasters differ in cause, but they’re very similar in aftermath. And one can easily imagine a Katrina-like aftermath to a terrorist attack, especially one involving nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Improving our disaster response was discussed in the months after 9/11. We were going to give money to local governments to fund first responders. We established the Department of Homeland Security to streamline the chains of command and facilitate efficient and effective response. The problem is that we all got caught up in “movie-plot threats,” specific attack scenarios that capture the imagination and then the dollars. Whether it’s terrorists with box cutters or bombs in their shoes, we fear what we can imagine. We’re searching backpacks in the subways of New York, because this year’s movie plot is based on a terrorist bombing in the London subways. Funding security based on movie plots looks good on television, and gets people reelected. But there are millions of possible scenarios, and we’re going to guess wrong. The billions spent defending airlines are wasted if the terrorists bomb crowded shopping malls instead. Our nation needs to spend its homeland security dollars on two things: intelligence-gathering and emergency response. These two things will help us regardless of what the terrorists are plotting, and the second helps both against terrorist attacks and national disasters. Katrina demonstrated that we haven’t invested enough in emergency response. New Orleans police officers couldn’t talk with each other after power outages shut down their primary communications system — and there was no backup. The Department of Homeland Security, which was established in order to centralize federal response in a situation like this, couldn’t figure out who was in charge or what to do, and actively obstructed aid by others. FEMA did no better, and thousands died while turf battles were being fought. Our government’s ineptitude in the aftermath of Katrina demonstrates how little we’re getting for all our security spending. It’s unconscionable that we’re wasting our money fingerprinting foreigners, profiling airline passengers, and invading foreign countries while emergency response at home goes underfunded. Money spent on emergency response makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is, whether terrorist-made or natural. This includes good communications on the ground, good coordination up the command chain, and resources — people and supplies — that can be quickly deployed wherever they’re needed. Similarly, money spent on intelligence-gathering makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is. Against terrorism, that includes the NSA and the CIA. Against natural disasters, that includes the National Weather Service and the National Earthquake Information Center. Katrina deftly illustrated homeland security’s biggest challenge: guessing correctly. The solution is to fund security that doesn’t rely on guessing. Defending against movie plots doesn’t make us appreciably safer. Emergency response does. It lessens the damage and suffering caused by disasters, whether man-made, like 9/11, or nature-made, like Katrina. Posted on September 11, 2005 at 8:00 AM • 74 Comments

The Becker-Posner Blog

An article in the New York Times of September 20 by Louise Story, entitled "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood," reports the results of surveys and interviews concerning career plans of women at the nation's most prestigious colleges, law schools, and business schools. Although not rigorously empirical, the article confirms--what everyone associated with such institutions has long known--that a vastly higher percentage of female than of male students will drop out of the work force to take care of their children. Some will resume full-time work at some point in the children's maturation; some will work part time; some will not work at all after their children are born, instead devoting their time to family and to civic activities. One survey of Yale alumni found that 90 percent of the male alumni in their 40s were still working, but only 56 percent of the female. A survey of Harvard Business School alumni found that 31 percent of the women who had graduated between 10 and 20 years earlier were no longer working at all, and another 31 percent were working part time. What appears to be new is that these earlier vintages did not expect to drop out of the workforce at such a high rate (though they did), whereas current students do expect this. That is not surprising, since the current students observe the career paths of their predecessors. So, contrary to the implication of the article, there is no evidence that the drop-out rate will rise. The article does not discuss the interesting policy issues presented by the disproportionate rate of exit of elite women from the workforce. Nor does it have much to say about why women drop out at the rate they do. The answer to the latter question seems pretty straightforward, however. Since like tend to marry like ("assortative mating"), women who attend elite educational institutions tend to marry men who attend such institutions (and for the further reason that marital search costs are at their minimum when the search is conducted within the same, coeducational institution). Those men have on average high expected incomes, probably higher than the expected incomes even of equally able women who have a full working career. Given diminishing marginal utility of income, a second, smaller income will often increase the welfare of a couple less than will the added household production if the person with the smaller income allocates all or most of her time to household production, freeing up more time for her spouse to work in the market. The reason that in most cases it is indeed the wife (hence my choice of pronoun) rather than the husband who gives up full-time work in favor of household production is not only that the husband is likely to have the higher expected earnings; it is also because, for reasons probably both biological and social, women on average have a greater taste and aptitude for taking care of children, and indeed for nonmarket activities generally, than men do. But it is at this point that policy questions arise. Even at the current very high tuition rates, there is excess demand for places at the elite colleges and professional schools, as shown by the high ratio of applications to acceptances at those schools. Demand is excess--supply and demand are not in balance--because the colleges and professional schools do not raise tuition to the market-clearing level but instead ration places in their entering classes on the basis (largely) of ability, as proxied by grades, performance on standardized tests, and extracurricular activities. Since women do as well on these measures as men, the student body of an elite educational institution is usually about 50 percent female. Suppose for simplicity that in an entering class at an elite law school of 100 students, split evenly among men and women, 45 of the men but only 30 of the women will have full-time careers in law. Then 5 of the men and 20 of the women will be taking places that would otherwise be occupied by men (and a few women) who would have more productive careers, assuming realistically that the difference in ability between those admitted and those just below the cut off for admission is small. While well-educated mothers contribute more to the human capital of their offspring than mothers who are not well educated, it is doubtful that a woman who graduates from Harvard College and goes on to get a law degree from Yale will be a better mother than one who stopped after graduating from Harvard. But I have to try to be precise about the meaning of "more productive" in this context. I mean only that if a man and woman of similar ability were competing for a place in the entering class of an elite professional school, the man would (on average) pay more for the place than the woman would; admission would create more "value added" for him than for her. The principal effect of professional education of women who are not going to have full working careers is to reduce the contribution of professional schools to the output of professional services. Not that the professional education the women who drop out of the workforce receive is worthless; if it were, such women would not enroll. Whether the benefit these women derive consists of satisfying their intellectual curiosity, reducing marital search costs, obtaining an expected income from part-time work, or obtaining a hedge against divorce or other economic misfortune, it will be on average a smaller benefit than the person (usually a man) whose place she took who would have a full working career would obtain from the same education. The professional schools worry about this phenomenon because the lower the aggregate lifetime incomes of their graduates, the lower the level of alumni donations the schools can expect to receive. (This is one reason medical schools are reluctant to admit applicants who are in their 40s or 50s.) The colleges worry for the same reason. But these particular worries have no significance for the welfare of society as a whole. In contrast, the fact that a significant percentage of places in the best professional schools are being occupied by individuals who are not going to obtain the maximum possible value from such an education is troubling from an overall economic standpoint. Education tends to confer external benefits, that is, benefits that the recipient of the education cannot fully capture in the higher income that the education enables him to obtain after graduation. This is true even of professional education, for while successful lawyers and businessmen command high incomes, those incomes often fall short of the contribution to economic welfare that such professionals make. This is clearest when the lawyer or businessman is an innovator, because producers of intellectual property are rarely able to appropriate the entire social gain from their production. Yet even noninnovative lawyers and businessmen, if successful--perhaps by virtue of the education they received at a top-flight professional school--do not capture their full social product in their income, at least if the income taxes they pay exceed the benefits they receive from government. Suppose a professional school wanted to correct the labor-market distortion that I have been discussing. (For I am not suggesting that the distortion is so serious as to warrant government intervention.) It would be unlawful discrimination to refuse admission to these schools to all women, for many women will have full working careers and some men will not. It would be rational but impracticable to impose a monetary penalty on the drop-outs (regardless of gender)--making them pay, say, additional tuition retroactively at the very moment that they were giving up a market income. It would also be infeasible to base admission on an individualized determination of whether the applicant was likely to have a full working career. A better idea, though counterintuitive, might be to raise tuition to all students but couple the raise with a program of rebates for graduates who work full time. For example, they might be rebated 1 percent of their tuition for each year they worked full time. Probably the graduates working full time at good jobs would not take the rebate but instead would convert it into a donation. The real significance of the plan would be the higher tuition, which would discourage applicants who were not planning to have full working careers (including applicants of advanced age and professional graduate students). This would open up places to applicants who will use their professional education more productively; they are the more deserving applicants. Although women continue to complain about discrimination, sometimes quite justly, the gender-neutral policies that govern admission to the elite professional schools illustrate discrimination in favor of women. Were admission to such schools based on a prediction of the social value of the education offered, fewer women would be admitted.

Don't dumb me down

OK, here's something weird. Every week in Bad Science we either victimise some barking pseudoscientific quack, or a big science story in a national newspaper. Now, tell me, why are these two groups even being mentioned in the same breath? Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I've been collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I'm ready to present my theory. It is my hypothesis that in their choice of stories, and the way they cover them, the media create a parody of science, for their own means. They then attack this parody as if they were critiquing science. This week we take the gloves off and do some serious typing. Science stories usually fall into three families: wacky stories, scare stories and "breakthrough" stories. Last year the Independent ran a wacky science story that generated an actual editorial: how many science stories get the lead editorial? It was on research by Dr Kevin Warwick, purporting to show that watching Richard and Judy improved IQ test performance (www.badscience.net/?p=84). Needless to say it was unpublished data, and highly questionable. Wacky stories don't end there. They never end. Infidelity is genetic, say scientists. Electricity allergy real, says researcher. I've been collecting "scientists have found the formula for" stories since last summer, carefully pinning them into glass specimen cases, in preparation for my debut paper on the subject. So far I have captured the formulae for: the perfect way to eat ice cream (AxTpxTm/FtxAt +VxLTxSpxW/Tt=3d20), the perfect TV sitcom (C=3d[(RxD)+V]xF/A+S), the perfect boiled egg, love, the perfect joke, the most depressing day of the year ([W+(D-d)]xTQ MxNA), and so many more. Enough! Every paper - including this one - covers them: and before anyone bleats excuses on their behalf, these stories are invariably written by the science correspondents, and hotly followed, to universal jubilation, with comment pieces, by humanities graduates, on how bonkers and irrelevant scientists are. A close relative of the wacky story is the paradoxical health story. Every Christmas and Easter, regular as clockwork, you can read that chocolate is good for you (www.badscience.net/?p=67), just like red wine is, and with the same monotonous regularity, in breathless, greedy tones you will you hear how it's scientifically possible to eat as much fat and carbohydrate as you like, for some complicated reason, but only if you do it at "the right time of day". These stories serve one purpose: they promote the reassuring idea that sensible health advice is outmoded and moralising, and that research on it is paradoxical and unreliable. At the other end of the spectrum, scare stories are - of course - a stalwart of media science. Based on minimal evidence and expanded with poor understanding of its significance, they help perform the most crucial function for the media, which is selling you, the reader, to their advertisers. The MMR disaster was a fantasy entirely of the media's making (www.badscience.net/?p=23), which failed to go away. In fact the Daily Mail is still publishing hysterical anti-immunisation stories, including one calling the pneumococcus vaccine a "triple jab", presumably because they misunderstood that the meningitis, pneumonia, and septicaemia it protects against are all caused by the same pneumococcus bacteria (www.badscience.net/?p=118). Now, even though popular belief in the MMR scare is - perhaps - starting to fade, popular understanding of it remains minimal: people periodically come up to me and say, isn't it funny how that Wakefield MMR paper turned out to be Bad Science after all? And I say: no. The paper always was and still remains a perfectly good small case series report, but it was systematically misrepresented as being more than that, by media that are incapable of interpreting and reporting scientific data. Once journalists get their teeth into what they think is a scare story, trivial increases in risk are presented, often out of context, but always using one single way of expressing risk, the "relative risk increase", that makes the danger appear disproportionately large (www.badscience.net/?p=8). This is before we mention the times, such as last week's Seroxat story, or the ibuprofen and heart attack story last month, when in their eagerness to find a scandal, half the papers got the figures wrong. This error, you can't help noticing, is always in the same direction. And last, in our brief taxonomy, is the media obsession with "new breakthroughs": a more subtly destructive category of science story. It's quite understandable that newspapers should feel it's their job to write about new stuff. But in the aggregate, these stories sell the idea that science, and indeed the whole empirical world view, is only about tenuous, new, hotly-contested data. Articles about robustly-supported emerging themes and ideas would be more stimulating, of course, than most single experimental results, and these themes are, most people would agree, the real developments in science. But they emerge over months and several bits of evidence, not single rejiggable press releases. Often, a front page science story will emerge from a press release alone, and the formal academic paper may never appear, or appear much later, and then not even show what the press reports claimed it would (www.badscience.net/?p=159). Last month there was an interesting essay in the journal PLoS Medicine, about how most brand new research findings will turn out to be false (www.tinyurl.com/ceq33). It predictably generated a small flurry of ecstatic pieces from humanities graduates in the media, along the lines of science is made-up, self-aggrandising, hegemony-maintaining, transient fad nonsense; and this is the perfect example of the parody hypothesis that we'll see later. Scientists know how to read a paper. That's what they do for a living: read papers, pick them apart, pull out what's good and bad. Scientists never said that tenuous small new findings were important headline news - journalists did. But enough on what they choose to cover. What's wrong with the coverage itself? The problems here all stem from one central theme: there is no useful information in most science stories. A piece in the Independent on Sunday from January 11 2004 suggested that mail-order Viagra is a rip-off because it does not contain the "correct form" of the drug. I don't use the stuff, but there were 1,147 words in that piece. Just tell me: was it a different salt, a different preparation, a different isomer, a related molecule, a completely different drug? No idea. No room for that one bit of information. Remember all those stories about the danger of mobile phones? I was on holiday at the time, and not looking things up obsessively on PubMed; but off in the sunshine I must have read 15 newspaper articles on the subject. Not one told me what the experiment flagging up the danger was. What was the exposure, the measured outcome, was it human or animal data? Figures? Anything? Nothing. I've never bothered to look it up for myself, and so I'm still as much in the dark as you. Why? Because papers think you won't understand the "science bit", all stories involving science must be dumbed down, leaving pieces without enough content to stimulate the only people who are actually going to read them - that is, the people who know a bit about science. Compare this with the book review section, in any newspaper. The more obscure references to Russian novelists and French philosophers you can bang in, the better writer everyone thinks you are. Nobody dumbs down the finance pages. Imagine the fuss if I tried to stick the word "biophoton" on a science page without explaining what it meant. I can tell you, it would never get past the subs or the section editor. But use it on a complementary medicine page, incorrectly, and it sails through. Statistics are what causes the most fear for reporters, and so they are usually just edited out, with interesting consequences. Because science isn't about something being true or not true: that's a humanities graduate parody. It's about the error bar, statistical significance, it's about how reliable and valid the experiment was, it's about coming to a verdict, about a hypothesis, on the back of lots of bits of evidence. But science journalists somehow don't understand the difference between the evidence and the hypothesis. The Times's health editor Nigel Hawkes recently covered an experiment which showed that having younger siblings was associated with a lower incidence of multiple sclerosis. MS is caused by the immune system turning on the body. "This is more likely to happen if a child at a key stage of development is not exposed to infections from younger siblings, says the study." That's what Hawkes said. Wrong! That's the "Hygiene Hypothesis", that's not what the study showed: the study just found that having younger siblings seemed to be somewhat protective against MS: it didn't say, couldn't say, what the mechanism was, like whether it happened through greater exposure to infections. He confused evidence with hypothesis (www.badscience.net/?p=112), and he is a "science communicator". So how do the media work around their inability to deliver scientific evidence? They use authority figures, the very antithesis of what science is about, as if they were priests, or politicians, or parent figures. "Scientists today said ... scientists revealed ... scientists warned." And if they want balance, you'll get two scientists disagreeing, although with no explanation of why (an approach at its most dangerous with the myth that scientists were "divided" over the safety of MMR). One scientist will "reveal" something, and then another will "challenge" it. A bit like Jedi knights. The danger of authority figure coverage, in the absence of real evidence, is that it leaves the field wide open for questionable authority figures to waltz in. Gillian McKeith, Andrew Wakefield, Kevin Warwick and the rest can all get a whole lot further, in an environment where their authority is taken as read, because their reasoning and evidence is rarely publicly examined. But it also reinforces the humanities graduate journalists' parody of science, for which we now have all the ingredients: science is about groundless, incomprehensible, didactic truth statements from scientists, who themselves are socially powerful, arbitrary, unelected authority figures. They are detached from reality: they do work that is either wacky, or dangerous, but either way, everything in science is tenuous, contradictory and, most ridiculously, "hard to understand". This misrepresentation of science is a direct descendant of the reaction, in the Romantic movement, against the birth of science and empiricism more than 200 years ago; it's exactly the same paranoid fantasy as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, only not as well written. We say descendant, but of course, the humanities haven't really moved forward at all, except to invent cultural relativism, which exists largely as a pooh-pooh reaction against science. And humanities graduates in the media, who suspect themselves to be intellectuals, desperately need to reinforce the idea that science is nonsense: because they've denied themselves access to the most significant developments in the history of western thought for 200 years, and secretly, deep down, they're angry with themselves over that. That's what I'd have said three years ago. But now I'm on the inside, I can add a slightly different element to the story. I'm an all right-looking bloke, I get about: maybe I'm not the most popular bloke at science journalist parties, but I'm certainly talkative. For many months I had a good spirited row with an eminent science journalist, who kept telling me that scientists needed to face up to the fact that they had to get better at communicating to a lay audience. She is a humanities graduate. "Since you describe yourself as a science communicator," I would invariably say, to the sound of derisory laughter: "isn't that your job?" But no, for there is a popular and grand idea about, that scientific ignorance is a useful tool: if even they can understand it, they think to themselves, the reader will. What kind of a communicator does that make you? There is one university PR department in London that I know fairly well - it's a small middle-class world after all - and I know that until recently, they had never employed a single science graduate. This is not uncommon. Science is done by scientists, who write it up. Then a press release is written by a non-scientist, who runs it by their non-scientist boss, who then sends it to journalists without a science education who try to convey difficult new ideas to an audience of either lay people, or more likely - since they'll be the ones interested in reading the stuff - people who know their way around a t-test a lot better than any of these intermediaries. Finally, it's edited by a whole team of people who don't understand it. You can be sure that at least one person in any given "science communication" chain is just juggling words about on a page, without having the first clue what they mean, pretending they've got a proper job, their pens all lined up neatly on the desk. Of course a system like that will cock up. The proof is in Bad Science, every week. See you in Berlin. · Bad Science will be continuing in the Guardian next week

Survival of the fittest?

Last Updated: Friday, 9 September 2005, 15:02 GMT 16:02 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version Survival of the fittest? A POINT OF VIEW By Harold Evans After so many years of Social Darwinism, Hurricane Katrina could reawaken the American people's appetite for compassion in government. It takes a lot to shake America to the core - 9/11 did it four years ago this weekend; the war in Iraq still has not. It's 70 years since the satirist Eric Linklater noted in his novel Don Juan that life in America was spread over so vast an area that any number of strange and sinister interludes could be enacted without upsetting the national equilibrium. Desperate times Hurricane Katrina is one of those rare interludes which has upset the national equilibrium. While 9/11 made Americans angry, the fate of New Orleans has gone beyond that. In varying degrees the whole population is angry, ashamed, and fearful. Angry at the incompetence and buck-passing between inept local, state and federal authorities; ashamed at those relentlessly recycled pictures of the abandoned black underclass; and fearful to see that the country is still unprepared to cope with a major terrorist attack. There will be hell to pay for Katrina. In my view, it is likely to have as traumatic an impact on American political life as the Great Depression of the 1930s. That catastrophe ushered in two decades of Democratic presidents - but even more, it reversed America's entrenched dedication to laissez faire Social Darwinism, a philosophy embraced by both major parties for 150 years. Natural selection Social Darwinism was a doctrine of individualism invented in England by the 19th Century philosopher Herbert Spencer, a friend of Charles Darwin's. It was Spencer who first coined the famous phrase "the survival of the fittest" and he did so nine years before the great man himself published his Origin of Species. I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering President Grover Cleveland, 1877 Social Darwinism never infiltrated politics as much in Britain as it did in America where it was brilliantly propagated by a Yale polemicist named William Graham Sumner. Interventions by government to regulate housing, public health, factories, and so on, were wrong, he argued, because they impeded individual enterprise that alone created wealth. My mind, said the steelmaster Andrew Carnegie, was illuminated in a flash by Sumner's theorem that mankind progresses through the "ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong". Politicians of all colours agreed. It was a Democratic president - Grover Cleveland - who epitomized the philosophy in a memorable decision in 1887. Asked to release $10,000 of surplus seed for drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he declared: "I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering... The lesson should constantly be enforced that though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people." BBC NEWS: AUDIO Hear A Point of View in the BBC Radio Player America has long been entranced by stories of fortunes made by hard work and perseverance without help from government. More tellingly many of them come true, truer in America than anywhere else. It is just that they are not the whole story. When people fail it leaves, exposed as a raw nerve, the question of moral duty in a civilized society. So Social Darwinism has remained in the American psyche, sometimes submerged in the current, sometimes coming to the surface like a log in a fast-flowing river. Cleveland's sentiments might have popped up any time in the 1980s on Ronald Reagan's teleprompter. His remark that "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" was an echo of Cleveland and many presidencies thereafter. The log came clearly into view again when turbulence in the wake of 9/11 led to the re-election of George W Bush. His instinct for low taxes and small government has been neatly encapsulated by the evangelical tax cutter Grover Norquist: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Judgement day My judgment is that the log of Social Darwinism will disappear again under the toxic flood waters of New Orleans. The corpses floating face down in the muddy overflow from broken Mississippi levees are too shocking a sight for Americans of all classes and parties. They are too kindly a people. They will look once again for vigour and compassion in government, even at the price of higher taxes. Poor and huddled masses Before Katrina, America's greatest natural disaster was another Mississippi flood - that of 1927 - which made half a million homeless. At the time Republican President Calvin Coolidge refused even to recall Congress to vote emergency money. He was so inactive that when Dorothy Parker, a few years later, was told he was dead, she asked, "How do they know?" Two hundred people had drowned in the 1920s before the federal government intervened. It did so in the person of the Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Only three died after Hoover got involved. He waded in - literally up to his knees in floodwater - galvanizing everyone in six endangered states. His vigour standing on the tottering levee amid the raging floods helped to win him the Republican nomination and then the presidency. He was called "the great engineer". So why then is Hoover almost a dirty word in the history books? It is because faced with a bigger challenge than the floods - the Great Depression with 13 million out of work - he refused to recognise the responsibility of government to relieve individual suffering. Watching the crash at Wall St He believed that economic depressions, like natural disasters, were acts of God that must run their course. He expected voluntary acts of compassion by business and good neighbours would be enough, as they mostly had been in his humanitarian work in World War I. But the Depression affected so many millions it was too big and complex for that. So slow was Hoover to respond that the shanty towns of the unemployed became known as Hoovervilles. He refused to believe that anyone was starving. Of the men selling apples in the streets, the symbol of the depression, he said, "many persons left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples." It was not a joke. He had a tin ear, rather like George Bush. When GW belatedly visited the flooded region, he reminisced about his good-time days in New Orleans. His intentions were good but his off-the-cuff remark was as unfortunate as his rhapsody to the homeless about how the former Republican majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi was going to build a "fantastic new house". Brother can you spare a dime? And Bush, like Hoover, has found it hard to confront reality. He has said nobody expected the levees to break - thereby flying in the fact of scores of predictions in official reports, science journals and newspapers. Back in the 30s, clinging to the log of Social Darwinism did not save Hoover. He was swept away by a riptide of anger and fear like that which may threaten the Republican ascendancy today. In 1932 Hoover lost both his reputation and the presidency in a landslide to his Democratic challenger Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal FDR ushered in - signing 15 bills in his first 100 days - almost drove a stake through the heart of Social Darwinism. Never before had government so directly shored up the lives of individual Americans at every social level and class. It was the foundation of a welfare state - a ringing reaffirmation of America's commitment to huddled masses yearning to share in the great American Dream. Your comments: I doubt a single "Katrina" would be enough to fell social Darwinism ingrained so deeply in the America psyche, and promulgated by evangelical 'free-marketers' of all creeds and shades. Indeed, the 'Norquistodors' keep exploiting the tragedy to beam their anti-government mottos. It would take more, a great depression plus a personality, like FDR, to shake it off, and replace with a civilized order. Besides any advance into civilization is shaky and can be easily swatted by any GW-type buffoon. Even now, in the face of great losses and government failures the republican congress didn't take off the table the lavish give-away to rich (call in their parlor 'death tax'). I won't be a bit surprised if it sails through unhindered (after commotion is over). A great depression is badly needed here, but it won't come until Chinese communists would stop subsidizing our absurdly wasteful and unsustainable way of life, and some western European liberals assisting in our promiscuous adventures abroad under the guise of 'democratization'. David G., Cleveland, USA Point of Information: It was the power of the Workers' Councils that compelled Roosevelt to enact the WPA. His strategy was motivated more by political necessity than social compassion. He was obliged to over the grass roots organizations -- incorporate them into benign government agencies, essentially -- lest they become a nationally recognized -- and hence threatening -- political force. America may be compassionate, but the Workers Councils brought socialism and communism too close to a popular front. They were, by the way, the ones behind the soup kitchens; they were the ones who fed the starving when government forces were all too keen to shoot at their own. These days, we Americans are totally ignorant of our own political and social history. As long as we can get colour TVs, a working refrigerator, plenty of booze, drugs, and anti-depressants, I truly doubt we'll ever see the scale of social and governmental reform that Roosevelt ushered into office -- however needed. Remember, the "most powerful nation in the world" still can't manage to assure full literacy. Pamela Sears, Austin, Texas The only thing missing from this excellent review of the failed Social Darwinism policies of the Bush administration is the telling and callous remarks of Bush's mother, Barbara Bush, who, on viewing evacuees in Texas, claimed that they were now better off since they had been underprivileged anyway. Eileen Bach, Ithaca, NY USA That's PRESIDENT George Bush, not GW. We do not refer to your Queen as Elizabeth and I would like to see the same respect shown for our leader. Kim Wells, Oklahoma American tax payers have spent 4 trillion that's Trillion dollars on social welfare programmes over the past 35 years. Spent 3 trillion dollars during the cold war defending Europe 100 Billion in 2005 dollars rebuilding Europe after WW2 is this not Compassion. Gary Blackall, Tallahassee I do not believe that countries that subscribe to a more socially redistributing form of governance would have handled the aftermath of Katrina any better: The mere magnitude of the storm was overwhelming and federal aid agencies around the world are known for their bureaucratic shortcomings. Admittedly, there is a large spread between the haves and have-nots in the US, but the space between them can still be crossed through merit, whereas most other industrialized countries squeeze their citizens into a depressingly stagnant amalgamation of middle class. Lastly, US American enthusiasm is a one-of-its-kind phenomenon. It alone would suffice to enable the reconstruction and healing progress, including the necessary changes to emergency response agencies. The drastic difference that this (US) system depicts is people helping other people, instead of people waiting for government intervention. Sebastian, Santa Clara, CA Although I'm from the States, I've had to read about the Katrina devastation from abroad; so my perception may be a bit off. However, the major difference you might find in the impact of the two disasters Evans mentions--the Great Depression and Hurricane Katrina--is first-hand experience vs the influence of removed empathy. Americans are devastated by what Katrina has revealed about our own country, but Bush has the good ole' boy charm that Hoover never had. In the short-term, it will undoubtedly lead to a few reforms, but I question the long-term impact on the "social Darwinism." I can only hope that the administration will not be able to so craftfully slip out, free of blame, from this obscenely mishandled catastrophe--like they have so many times before. I guess it all depends on your ability to have faith in the American tenet that proclaims open arms for the poor and huddled masses. Susannah, Houston, USA I hope that America will stop being "the land of a few that can afford to be free." Yes, in America you have to work hard for yourself, but after a disaster or in a depression, everyone, including the government, needs to work together to see it thru. chris, cincinnati, ohio I hope you're right. Much of what the world perceives as wrong with the US hinges on an election won by only a few votes -- then repeated because of an unclear action on Iraq. Many of us did our best to prevent it, but it happened anyway. We are still working. Larry, Louisville, CO, USA Commentaries like this from abroad truly astound me. Indeed, while I think the general inclination is correct and applicable to Katrina, the wider simplistic discussion about Social Darwinism is completely off-base. You might as well toss in Libertarianism, Meritocracy or any other modernistic -ism which one wants to criticize. This PROTESTANT ETHIC focus on individual merit has roots well beyond 19th century academic debates about social Darwinism in the halls of Yale. This commentary sounded good, but misses the mark by not really understanding American culture beyond this simplistic intellectual history. That said, indeed, I think it hits something vital in considering Katrina as a potential turning point in American political sentiment. I just don't think it deserves so much credit at this time. Jude, New York Hurricane Katrina will have a greater impact on America than the Great Depression of the 1930s? What a joke. September 11th did not have as big an impact as the Depression and if you think it did, my guess is you have been reading some pseudo-political science books and then writing an entire article talking about President Hoover in the 1930s. If you are unable to convince an audience of your point with a significant event in their own lifetime at least, just keep that thought to yourself. Americans love to site around and talk about what happened 70 years ago - yeah right. Most of the evacuees will receive some sort of aid from the good people around the nation who donated, doing their 'good deed' of the day. The question after that will be, "What is our government going to change to be ready in case that happens to MY city?" Neal Tesseyman, Austin, TX We already can not afford the social security system that came to be, I pray that we will not succumb further into the welfare state you predict. Theresa Tompkins, Houston, Texas USA We have been in a sad state of affairs for quite some time. I really do not know what Bush meant when he described himself as a compassionate conservative. We have so many internal problems is this country. I do agree that this event can sway us away from social Darwinism, but at the same time I fear that we will swing too far in the other direction. America like extremes. It surprises me that the word moderate is found in our dictionaries. Many poor in this country are trapped by the social programs designed to help them. Welfare was a great program that led to a sad imbalance of dependence. Sarc, New York, USA Amen! Though in the short term I am not so certain, there are many Americans rather satisfied with the status quo and not too keen on asking serious questions about the role of the individual, the responsibility of the state, the meaning of public policy in a new millennium that will require dialogue and cooperation if mankind is able to survive. filip s, warsaw, poland This editorial is absolutely silly. At almost every turn there is a point made that is far from conclusively supported by events, present or historic. It is really nauseating to see that Europeans take this as an opportunity to make the most clumsy sort of appeals for their preference for heavy government involvement. We are not like you, we do not share all of your preferences, etc. Get over it. Hoping that hurricane Katrina will make us like you is as silly as us believing that the force of arms will make Iraqis just like Americans. Peter, North Carolina Evans builds a straw man, and even then can't quite knock it down. There are many justifications in the US political tradition for wanting less government, not just "social Darwinism". Bush's tax cut programme has nothing whatever to do with social Darwinism, and everything to do with the belief that such cuts will spur the economy and create jobs. As such its explicit justification is precisely to help the people, not let them battle each other for survival. Now, I happen to believe this logic is deeply flawed, but it is not social Darwinist logic. Evan's quoting of Grover Cleveland is inadvertently humorous, since in the 20th century the Federal Government has done exactly the opposite: shovel aid with abandon at people who choose to live in flood plains, in hurricane paths, and on top of earth quake zones. Hardly social Darwinism. Niall, Los Angeles I wish I had your faith in my country. Unfortunately if I've learned anything in the face of our recent disasters its that we will be shaken only as long as we cannot go back to our normal lives. After that I fear we will resume our disbelief as we have on so many other occasions and return to Social Darwinism and anything else that keeps the government and its supporters feeling safe and confident. , Arlington, VA USA Excellent--well thought out, researched, and insightful as to the basis of this country--may it be widely read. I hope the American population will be reminded/rediscover the good values we once had here. Our sincere thanks for this to you 'across the pond.' c s khalsa, Austin, Tx, USA Despite Harold Evans fevered imagination the whole population of the United States is not angry, ashamed or fearful and we will never be ready to embrace the long slow death that is European Socialism. We will rebuild and we will move on to the next challenge and our optimism will not diminish. J. Young, Atlanta, USA From one so entrenched in American journalism (or lack thereof) reading the BBC is a breath of fresh air. In times like these, the American press has not the backbone to do honest journalism such as this. I commend your news organization for upholding the ideals that first created your station. bob carpenter, Chicago USA An excellent piece, so good to see writing with a sense of history and context for a change. Let's hope that the flood of Katrina will sweep away so much more than the victims. Pete cook, Bristol I am reminded of a cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine sometime in the late 60's. An intently serious, patriarchal mandarin is reading a bedtime story of a wide-eyed little boy. The caption says, "And the first little pig was a fuzzy thinking liberal who built his house out of straw supplied by the Federal government." Karl Johnson, Arlington, Virginia, USA These "experts" from England come over here, do a superficial turn around small areas of the country then developed a simplistic theory that they feel explains all that is "wrong" in the United States. They then pontificate about their own social system that only serves to reveal the inferiority of that very same system. Physician heal thyself! You have an old saying that I feel covers it well, what a load of codswallop! Ron Knief, Bessemer, MI I sincerely hope that you are right. Scott Warren, Durango, Colorado, USA In anticipating long-term affects from the pitiable images in the media, one should not underestimate the countering affect from images of looting, lawlessness and, for lack of a better term, ingratitude. Americans suppress our comments about anything that sounds politically incorrect, but those images have left a greater impression than is evident from our media coverage. Such impressions shore up, rather than diminish, our referenced tendency toward ¿social Darwinism.¿ Arthur, Kansas Harold Evans needs to lay off the propaganda. He uses the term Social Darwinism to attack the concept of individual liberty and property rights. Americans are extremely generous, we just prefer to give through the private sector. Witness over $700 million dollars raised in less than two weeks for Katrina. Greg Burton, Atlanta, GA USA The question is, do Americans want it differently. The health system (not the available care)is a disgrace to the country yet a logical explanation for them not doing anything about it is that they have not known anything better. For many years the American system worked because the energy of the industrial system had produced jobs and the competition ie Europe and the far East had been set back by wars and power struggles. With jobs now being outsourced by American companies and the resurgence of other worldwide industries to supply to the USA the prognosis for the American is not good. The spirit of we can get the job done (often by working far more hours a day than other countries) will continue as a matter of national pride. Americans are very friendly, very hospitable and a great and resourceful nation. They have to see that there is a softer (dare I say more social) way of life of a better quality than the one they have which should be available to all Americans. In all sincerity, God bless America. Geoff, Copperopolis, CA, USA As much as I admire your premise, I believe you are engaged in wishful thinking on a grand scale. You are correct that American society rests on a foundation of social Darwinism. I just don't see what, in the current circumstances, warrants your belief that the tragedy in Louisiana and Mississippi will alter that. Millions of Americans (especially in the South) are deeply convinced that the federal government is a bloated, ineffective and culturally alien institution. The track record of the past month will do nothing to convince them to invest any further confidence in it. John A., Washington DC, USA Hoover won support by walking into the floodwaters and speaking from the levees. GWBush won't even touch the ground anywhere near the flood. Hmmm. GWB did give speeches from the 9/11 site. What changed? I guess he figured that he can't be re-elected any more. 9/11 brought out our compassion, but also brought out an ugly angry isolationist sort of patriotism which has done quite a lot of harm. I hope that the compassionate reaction to the tsunami last winter combined with our reaction to Katrina (and a lack of an enemy in both cases) will last long enough to make a lasting change for the better. I have my doubts, but I will keep hoping. Keith Murray, Stamford, Connecticut, USA Well said, except for one thing. If the government does not exist to serve the people then what purpose does it serve at all? Jon, Seattle, USA E-mail this to a friend Printable version In today's Magazine Big beasts How elephants helped to shape human history, by David Cannadine Change a-coming Justin Webb on America's love affair with progress Audience of one Would you watch a play all on your own? 7 days quiz What now for Paul the eight-limbed oracle? Magazine regulars Tweetbook Say goodbye to worktime boredom. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Magazine Monitor Paper Monitor, Your Letters, Quote of the Day, Caption Competition and more RELATED BBC LINKS: BBC Radio 4

Yahoo Gives Up Reporter's E-Mail

HANGZHOU, China – Yahoo had to comply with a demand by Chinese authorities to provide information about a personal e-mail of a journalist who was later convicted under state secrecy laws and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the company's co-founder Jerry Yang said Saturday. Yang, responding to questions during an internet forum in this eastern Chinese resort city, said he could not discuss the details of the case involving Shi Tao, a former writer for the financial publication Contemporary Business News. Overseas-based human rights groups disclosed days earlier that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong), part of Yahoo's global network, provided e-mail account information that helped lead to Shi's conviction. Yahoo earlier defended its move, saying it was obliged to comply with Chinese laws and regulations. The demand for the information was a "legal order" and Yahoo gets such requests from law enforcement agencies all the time, and not just in China, Yang told the forum. But he added, "I cannot talk about the details of this case." Other Chinese journalists have faced similar charges of violating vague security laws as communist leaders struggle to maintain control of information in the burgeoning internet era. Despite government information-sharing requirements and other restrictions, Yahoo and its major rivals have been expanding their presence in mainland China in hopes of reaching more of the country's fast-growing population of Internet users, which now number more than 100 million. Yahoo paid $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, host of the Hangzhou conference, last month. New York-based Human Rights in China and the Paris-based international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders sent an open letter addressed to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was a keynote speaker at the internet forum, urging him to bring up Shi's case during his visit to China. But Clinton only alluded to the risks faced by internet users targeted by the authorities for whatever reason. "The internet, no matter what political system a country has, and our political system is different from yours, the internet is having significant political and social consequences and they cannot be erased," he said. "The political system's limits on freedom of speech ... have not seemed to have any adverse consequences on e-commerce," he said. "It's something you'll all have to watch and see your way through," he said. According to Reporters Without Borders, court papers show that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) gave Chinese investigators information that helped them trace a personal Yahoo e-mail to Shi's computer. It says Shi was convicted for sending notes on a government circular spelling out restrictions on the media in his e-mail. He was seized in November at his home in the northwestern province of Shanxi. The case is the latest instance in which a prominent high-tech company has faced accusations of cooperating with Chinese authorities to gain favor in a country that's expected to become an Internet gold mine. Sunnyvale, California, company Yahoo and two of its biggest rivals, Google and Microsoft's MSN, previously have come under attack for censoring online news sites and blogs featuring content that China's communist government wants to suppress.

Sharia law move quashed in Canada

The prospect of Sharia law in Ontario sparked protests in Canada A report by Ontario's former attorney general Marion Boyd had recommended the use of Islamic law to settle issues such as divorce and child custody. But Premier Dalton McGuinty ruled against the move, saying there should be "one law for all Ontarians". Protests were held against the Sharia law proposal in major Canadian cities, as well as in Paris, London and Vienna. Critics said allowing Islamic tribunals could lead to discrimination against women. 'Common ground' If the recommendation had been accepted, Ontario would have become the first Western jurisdiction to allow the use of Sharia. I think our voice got heard loud and clear, and I thank the government for coming out with no faith-based arbitrations Homa Ar-Jomand Women's rights activist Ontario has allowed Catholic and Jewish faith-based tribunals to resolve family disputes on a voluntary basis since 1991. Mr McGuinty, who had been studying Ms Boyd's report since last December, said he was concerned religious family courts could "threaten our common ground". He told the Canadian Press news agency: "There will be no Sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians." 'Loud and clear' Women's rights activist Homa Ar-Jomand, who helped organise the rallies last Thursday, said she was delighted by the decision. "I think our voice got heard loud and clear, and I thank the government for coming out with no faith-based arbitrations. "That was the best news I've heard for the past five years," she said. According to the latest census in 2001, about 600,000 Muslims live in Canada.

A question of duty for US soldiers

Anthony Lawrence BBC News, Vietnam This From Our Own Correspondent was first broadcast on 23 May, 1970. Driven by Cold War concerns over the spread of communism, the US sent troops to South Vietnam in 1954. By 1970, 400,000 soldiers were stationed there. In Vietnam, Anthony Lawrence discovered what life was like for the US soldiers on the front line. Soldiers' morale is difficult to analyse, especially here in Vietnam. Wars are different now. The old vocabulary - words like "bravery", "discipline", "morale" - does not meet the problem. In the Vietnam War you mostly do not need brave men, you need efficient ones able to handle highly-sophisticated instruments of transport and death. And the standard length of service in Vietnam is one year. For most of the 400,000 Americans still out here, the best morale builder of all is that you can actually count the days to going home. But there are tremendous contrasts. Tough conditions There are about 80,000 men, less than a fifth of the total US army in Vietnam, who really meet the enemy close-up: killing and getting killed Many are better off than they would be in the States. But when you leave the big bases and maintenance areas and get out into the wilds, then it is different. There you meet the real soldiers: the men of the infantry, and the air cavalry units. There are about 80,000 men, less than a fifth of the total US army in Vietnam, who really meet the enemy close-up: killing and getting killed. They are young, mostly drafted men, graduates, college dropouts, a large proportion of negroes. Their nickname is "grunts", from the way the soldier grunts as he shoulders his heavy pack. You can go for months and meet nothing, and then three times in one week you meet some awful ambush or firelight They may be out for as long as a whole month at a time. And when they return it is not to a camp with cinema shows and hot showers, but to a so-called fire-base with gun-pits and holes in the ground to sleep in. And their chance of getting killed or wounded is very high. That is the sector where morale is under pressure. 'A nightmare' It is such a chancy business, this patrolling. You can go for months and meet nothing, and then three times in one week you meet some awful ambush or firelight. The man next to you goes down yelling with a leg blown off. The platoon commander is bleeding to death against a tree. In this infantryman's life, the great thing is to come safe home, 'to keep your arse covered', as the soldiers call it When you get back from all that, the re-enlistment sergeant is waiting for a little chat. He can get you out of all that, he says, if you are ready to sign on for a longer spell in the army, get you a cushier job. Morale In this infantryman's life, the great thing is to come safe home, "to keep your arse covered", as the soldiers call it. There is a vast gap between, on the one side, the junior officers, NCOs and men, and on the other, the higher ranks, the career officers, the so-called "lifers". It is the "lifers" who believe in conventional discipline. It is the case of old soldiers doing what cannot be got out of, doing their duty "I never thought about morale," said one young lieutenant. "The life certainly changes you a lot. "Luxury, to me, is staying in a forest clearing for one whole afternoon without having to move on. A drink from a cold stream's a gift from heaven. A bed to sleep on, unimaginable." Duty calls What about pot-smoking? Platoon commanders confirmed to me that a lot goes on. But there would be big trouble if some idiot smoked just before going on patrol. It brings on enormous thirst and for a while dulls perception, which is fatal. Their only respect is for each other and for the enemy who kills and dies like they do, along the forest trails But that is not bad morale. They would not run away. It is the case of old soldiers doing what cannot be got out of, doing their duty. And again, in the old tradition, their main contempt is for the overweight sergeants back at the base, the generals' talk of kill ratios. Their only respect is for each other and for the enemy who kills and dies like they do, along the forest trails. And they know, too, that when they get back to the States, there is no one to talk to about what they have been through. No one who wants to listen.

Pimp My Genome

By Kevin Davies Aug 15, 2005 | The first five albums by the British rock group Queen included a defiant footnote on the back cover, to wit: “No synthesizers were used in the making of this record.” It wasn’t until the ’80s that the band finally experimented with, or perhaps succumbed to, the inevitable march of technology. DNA synthesizers, pioneered by Bio-IT World’s 2005 President Award winner Leroy Hood (see “Hood Hails ‘Century of Biology,’” page 19), have enjoyed a niche role in biotechnology at best for manufacturing DNA strands for microarray platforms and other applications. But as costs plummet, the ability to rapidly synthesize and customize longer, more intricate fragments of genomic DNA opens up a plethora of applications in basic and applied biology. The term “synthetic biology” was originally coined in 1980, but since 2003, its usage has become analogous to synthetic chemistry and covers the application of engineering and computer science to genomic circuits to construct small biological devices. As noted in a recent review*, these include “diagnostic tools that improve the care of patients with infectious diseases, as well as devices that oscillate, creep, and play tic-tac-toe.” If there is a distinction, “synthetic genomics” is less about tinkering with genetic circuitry and more about customizing microbial vehicles “for groundbreaking scientific advances, including the development of alternative energy sources, and the production of new vaccines and pharmaceuticals,” says J. Craig Venter. “Synthetic genomics has the potential to enable significant societal, environmental, and medical benefits.” This summer, two companies have established the beginning of a commercial synthetic biology industry. Codon Devices, founded by a quartet of molecular biologists from MIT, Harvard, and UC Berkeley, raised $13 million in venture capital (see “Synthetic Biologists Assemble Codon Devices Company,” July 2005 Bio-IT World, page 1). It will initially focus on developing customized genetic toolkits for biosensors and engineered cells for chemical and protein manufacture. Meanwhile, Venter is stepping back into the boardroom (for the first time since leaving Celera Genomics in 2002) by founding Synthetic Genomics. Eschewing venture capital, the company has secured $30 million in private financing, about half from Mexican agrotechnology billionaire Alfonso Romo Garza. “We’re moving from reading the genetic code to writing it,” Venter told the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news of Venter’s new company. Having cracked the genome, evidently it’s time to start stitching it up again. As if on cue, the J. Craig Venter Institute announced it will participate with MIT in a Sloan Foundation-funded project to examine the societal implications of synthetic genomics, particularly the potential risks and necessary safeguards to prevent bioterror abuses. Minimal Genome The significance of Venter’s arrival on the synthetic biology scene should not be underestimated, given his remarkable sixth sense for developing and exploiting key technologies. Venter’s first foray into synthetic genomics came six years ago with a landmark paper on the “minimal genome.” Although Japan’s Mitsuhiro Itaya first coined the term in 1995, Venter and colleagues published a landmark paper in Science in 1999 suggesting that a mere 300 genes might be necessary and sufficient to encode life. Progress was suspended while Venter tackled the human genome, but last year, his group took another important step with the “resynthesis” of a viral genome — an important proof-of-principle for synthetic genomics, which will require pimping much larger genomes. The new Synthetic Genomics Web site says it all: “Imagine a future where clean, environmentally friendly microorganisms produce the bulk of industrial materials that are today made from petrochemicals...where specifically tailored organisms harness the sun to create clean energy...when researchers can use a modular, software-like product to design new microbial genomes which are manufactured on an industrial-like scale.” This may sound a tad fanciful, but the tantalizing prospect of harnessing microbes to synthesize drugs and other biomaterials will not be lost on our readers. As for abundant clean energy, have you checked the price of oil lately? ______________________________ * Benner, S.A. and Sismour, A.M. “Synthetic biology.” Nat Rev Genet 6, 533-43; 2005. Contact Kevin Davies at: kevin_davies@bio-itworld.com.

iPod nano

Introduction 2G iPod nano reviewed We've reviewed the brand-new second-generation iPod Nano. Check it out! If you're interested in seeing how the original iPod nano performed in this review from 2005, read on! The original iPod nano iPod nano Manufacturer: Apple (product page) System requirements: Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later, USB port; Windows PC running Windows 2000 SP4 or Windows XP SP2, USB port Price: US$199 (2GB), US$249 (shop for the iPod nano) As we all know, Apple's iPod has dominated the digital music player scene since its launch in 2001, much like an aardvark busting through a termite mound. As hard-drive-based players have gotten smaller and the price of flash-based players has dropped, Apple seized on the opportunity to dive into the flash-based market with the iPod shuffle. It was a wildly successful move for Apple, which has grabbed close to 46 percent of the flash-based player market since its inception. However, there were still many reasons for users not to get the shuffle—namely, the lack of a screen and sophisticated controls. The task for Apple was to create a music player that was somehow a marriage between the minute size of the iPod shuffle and the versatility of a regular iPod. Last Tuesday, Apple's solution came in the form of the iPod nano, a mini-mini-version of their current iPod color line. That's right, it's more miniature than the iPod mini, and the display is color! It's clear that these two superior elements are the reasons why Apple decided to do away with the original iPod mini line; however many consumers are upset that the iPod nano's storage capacity is smaller than what the iPod mini used to be. At 2GB and 4GB, though, the capacities are higher than the current iPod shuffle line and the pricing falls right in line in between shuffles and regular color iPods. A brief word about sound quality: the iPod nano uses the same audio codec (the WM8975) as the 4G iPods. The first and second generation iPods used the WM8721, while the 3G iPods and iPod mini used the WM8731L. Since the iPod nano uses the same audio codech chip as the 4G, U2, and iPod photo players, its sound quality will be nearly identical to those other players. Opening the package The out-of-box experience was nothing less than expected from Apple: excessive, high-end, and oh-so-delightful. When purchasing our 2GB black iPod nano for this review, it even came in a "commemorative" iPod nano bag. Opening the slim nano box was pretty much the same as opening any other iPod, and the contents were laid out in a similar manner—simple, elegant, and organized. It's when you take the iPod nano out of the box that the true experience begins. That thing is really, really nano! Photos don't even convey how small and light the iPod nano really is. In fact at first, at 3.5" x 1.6" x 0.27" and 1.5 ounces, it almost seemed too small and too light for me in my hand. The thinness is marvelous from an aesthetic and engineering standpoint, but my first thought upon holding it was don't break it. We'll get to exploring that thought later, though. The iPod nano is so thin that it slips effortlessly into the coin pocket on a pair of women's jeans, with room to spare. It certainly makes the "thousand songs right in your pocket" example a reality, especially to women who have very little pocket space and are much more adverse to carrying bulkier electronics in those pockets than men. The iPod nano barely shows a profile in the pocket and it's easy to forget about its presence after carrying it around for awhile. The iPod nano comes with all of the standard accessories, including the standard white iPod headphones (some people have poined out that providing black iPod nano with white headphones is a bit of a fashion faux pas, but I'll leave that rant for a different time), a USB cable, and a dock adapter for use of your iPod nano with a standard iPod dock. However, the nano's dock adapter must be too complex for us two lowly engineers, because getting it to fit with either of our regular iPod docks was (and still is) truly perplexing. After nearly thirty minutes of fiddling between the two of us, we finally gave up on the nano dock adapter altogether. Worry not, however, as the iPod nano plugs just dandily into a regular dock without the adapter—it just sits straight up in the middle of the designated iPod area instead of being flush with plastic all the way around. Update: After publishing this review last night, we had several readers contact us with information concerning the so-called "Dock Adapter." Dan Frakes from Playlist Magazine provided us with the most information and it came straight from the marketing folks in attendance at the special event. According to Dan, the "dock adapter" is meant to be to be used with future iPod accessories so that they will be able to connect to practically any new iPod. In a utopian world, this would mean that your new iPod would instantly be compatible with any new accessory that offered support for the "universal dock adapter." See this Apple Knowledge Base article for more info. Download the PDF (This feature for Premier subscribers only.)

Not to be read in China

By John Simpson BBC world affairs editor, Beijing Sadly, this column will not be read in China. Economic freedom, but no freedom of information in China Nor can BBC World be seen in China, except in the more expensive Western-style hotels and under certain very specific circumstances. And this must surely be almost the last place on earth where the full, old-fashioned paraphernalia of jamming is used against foreign radio broadcasts. In the days when the old Soviet Union used habitually to block the flow of information from the outside, we regarded it as the result of Moscow's hostility to free thinking: a sign of the regime's bitter resistance to change of any kind. But no one could accuse the Chinese government of resisting change. On the contrary, China has embarked on the most remarkable, even courageous, voyage into the economic unknown. Its anxieties about what the outside world might say seem to originate in something else: an odd lack of self-confidence. Access to the internet is heavily restricted. Last week a leading human rights agency accused Yahoo of helping the Chinese government identify an investigative journalist through his emails. The journalist, who had dug up some disturbing information about the ways of officialdom in China, has been jailed. Trust All this matters, because China matters. As a senior British official said privately the other day: "It's a real problem. If we're going to be their close trading partners, we really need to be certain that we can trust them in other areas as well. And this kind of thing makes it harder to be confident." When Tony Blair was in Beijing last week, he gave voice to these views. Since the British are nothing like as outspoken as the Americans on human rights here, it was significant. He wasn't presuming to lecture the Chinese leadership, or tell them how to run their country. He simply explained that it was difficult to have confidence in China as a partner if it behaved like this. Anyone who comes here today can see that there is no serious discontent, no great welling up of anger against the system In the past, I would have had a ready explanation for China's behaviour. Having witnessed the massacre in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, and seen for myself how ferociously the crowds attacked the symbols of the Communist Party and the security police, I would have said that the Chinese authorities were frightened of their own people. But I don't believe it's true now. Anyone who comes here today can see that there is no serious discontent, no great welling up of anger against the system. People have willingly accepted the huge changes in the way China runs its economy, and are mostly concerned with making a living. And they can see the very real benefits of the changes which have taken place. Radical sentiments China and the Soviet Union took different paths away from Marxism-Leninism. Looking back, it's clear that the Chinese approach was rather more effective than the Soviet one. In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev allowed people to speak freely before the benefits of opening up the economy had a chance to show themselves - so everyone complained endlessly about the economic shortages, and the government was discredited and mistrusted. The Chinese government, under Deng Xiaoping, showed people it wouldn't accept any kind of political discontent. That was what Tiananmen Square was all about. But at the same time, it made them better off than they had ever dreamed of being, and communism effectively disappeared in China without the upheavals Russia experienced. There are of course all sorts of rumblings, particularly in the Chinese countryside, sudden outbreaks of violence and anger. But they aren't directed against the political system as such, they are usually a reaction to things that people consider to be unreasonable and unjust. Nowadays, people here see themselves as taxpayers, and they think that if they're paying for the government, the government ought to behave as they want it to behave. Leading city councillor in Beijing Recently, the BBC correspondent in Beijing, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, broadcast a remarkable television report about a local electricity authority in rural China which wanted to take over the land of some farmers, and hired a gang of thugs to do it. Yet even in the depths of the countryside, things have changed now. Attitudes to injustice, for one thing, and the availability of technology for another. The farmers decided to resist, and they used video cameras to record the violent tactics of the thugs. Rupert's BBC colleagues were arrested for going to the village, and were roughly treated before being released, but the report, complete with the farmers' extraordinary video footage, was seen around the world - though not in China itself, of course. "Nowadays," says a leading city councillor in Beijing, who is famous for taking up cases where individuals have been wrongly treated, "people here see themselves as taxpayers. "And they think that if they're paying for the government, the government ought to behave as they want it to behave." Radical sentiments, but inevitable ones in a country where people are unmistakably on the road to real affluence. Further changes will come in China, but it is reasonable to assume that it will be the present political system which introduces them. The government seems entirely stable, entirely in charge. Yet if so, do the authorities here really need to be quite so nervous about letting people have information from the outside world? Your comments Having been in Taiwan, I have seen what a Chinese nation can achieve, and only half of it! John Simpson may be correct - the People's Republic probably afford to loosen up. The question remains - can they find a balance between material and political aspirations while retaining stability? R.G. Waterson, Brisbane, Australia Dear John, You are one of my most admired news reporters and I love listening to your reports but I think this article seems to drift a little bit. I suppose you mean the government and its tight control over the media. Well, which country in this world today does not control the media in one way or another? Who owns the press and decides what makes news in the free or not so free world? I think it's not a confidence issue but simply one of control. Your second half talks about ordinary citizens taking action against an authority. This is a very Chinese thing - it's history is full of peasant chivalry, of ordinary people standing up to injustice. China's people are very resilient in the face of suffering and misfortune and will fight to right a wrong at a personal level. These fights go on in all parts of the developing world. If only your camera can go to all these places and help those in trouble! Nevertheless, I think this is unrelated to the "lack of confidence" line of argument. Kind regards. H.Tan, London, UK As usual, John Simpson paints a very clear picture of the issue at hand. I like the way he can take complex issues and reduce them to understandable phrases. G.Keyes, Limerick, Ireland Just want to point out one fact. I was in Beijing this July. I was able to access BBC news website from my parent's home via a regular ADSL online service. Chong Zhang, Illinois, USA Dear Sir, I strongly subscribe to your positive and optimistic approach to characterizing China's censorship, governance, and approach to freedom of speech and human rights. I do have a small comment to your statement that "...Anyone who comes here today can see that there is no serious discontent, no great welling up of anger against the system." This is probably true to the extent that "anyone who comes here" (most tourists) goes to Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong -- places of severe surveilance and economic prosperity. In the countryside, however, the story is quite different. In terms of violent protest, we have seen a high increase in the proliferation of such demonstration, and more and more of these carried traces of blood. They occur mostly in smaller cities (though not always) and rural provinces, where the Western media is not pre-occupied with bra wars and currency exchange regimes. These protests are mostly in opposition to the rural-urban divide and high degree of corruption in smaller cities, which account for the majority of the Chinese population. The Chinese revolution of 1949 had its roots in the rural and provincial areas. It is there you probably need to go, if you really want to gauge Chinese discontent. Thanks for giving me the chance to comment on your otherwise very intriguing article. Soeren Petersen, Washington D.C, USA Yes, I defintely agree with what is written here. I wish that economic success that has made China an economic giant will be coupled with freedom of expression and of religion. Religions in China are still very much restricted in what they can do. I wish that the Vatican and China normalise their relationships with each other and hope for a warmer relationship. A democratic China will benefit the whole world not just the Asia-pacific region. Neil, Malta The Chinese government has left the idea of communism and socialism way behind and they have opened up their economy. They are ahead in the race in manufacturing and services sector in Asia. Now they are world's economic superpower. Now it is being seen by the young generation's inclination towards the English language. But the government has to do more to attain democracy and work more to eradicate human rights violations. And I hope the Chinese government will progress in the correct direction to do so. A. Nair, Bangalore, India

Spot On: Korea reacts to increase in game addiction

By now most gamers have heard the story of the South Korean man who collapsed to the floor after playing an online game at an Internet café for 50 hours straight. He later died at a local hospital. The press identified him only as "Lee." The man known as Lee was later identified as Lee Seung Seop, according to a recently published Los Angeles Times article. More details have now emerged about the 28-year-old man who seemed to lead a typical gamer's life. However, his love of gaming soon began to overtake his normal everyday responsibilities, leading to a tragic end. Lee was a vocational-college graduate with a girlfriend and a full-time job. When the clock struck 6 p.m., Lee would depart his job as an industrial boiler repairman, but instead of heading home to relax, he would change out of his uniform and head to a nearby Internet café--or PC bang, as it's known in the Korean dialect--located in Taegu, Korea's fourth-largest city. Lee's game of choice was World of Warcraft, and he soon became addicted to it, spending countless hours playing, sometimes forgetting to get adequate amounts of food, liquids, and sleep. Soon, he began to arrive late at work. This continued until one day his supervisor fired him, after multiple warnings regarding his tardiness. "He seemed like a very normal and ordinary guy," commented Park Chul Hun, the office manager of Lee's former employer. "There was nothing odd about him except that he was a game addict. We all knew about it. He couldn't stop himself." According to coworkers, Lee and his girlfriend, who was also an avid game player, broke up around this time. Six weeks later, on Wednesday, August 3, 2005, Lee entered a PC Internet café and sat down to play Starcraft. The establishment Lee frequented was dimly lit, with a haze of cigarette smoke in the air. The room was hushed at times, yet the sounds of muffled gameplay could be heard. He sat down at the keyboard and logged on to play Starcraft. During this time, he reportedly ate and drank very little (if at all) and left his PC only to take restroom breaks. Wednesday turned into Thursday, and Thursday turned into Friday. During this period of more than 50 hours, Lee continued his gaming session, failing to adequately replenish his body's need for food, drink, and rest. The evening approached. Suddenly, Lee coiled over from his chair and fell onto the floor; a witness recalls he was conscious with his eyes open. He was rushed to nearby Taegu Fatima Hospital where he died a few hours later. "He was so concentrated on his game that he forgot to eat and sleep. He died of heart failure brought on by exhaustion and dehydration," said Park Young Woo, a Taegu Fatima Hospital psychiatrist. That death came three months after another incident in Incheon, South Korea, that was previously reported by GameSpot. The incident brought to light the consequences of online gaming conflicting with the normal everyday responsibilities of real life. The incident itself revolved around the death of an Incheon infant girl. The parents of the 4-month-old infant left her alone so they could visit a neighborhood Internet café to play World of Warcraft. The couple, both in their 20s, lost track of time, staying at the cafe from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. During this five-hour period of time, the infant had turned over onto her stomach, helplessly suffocating herself. The couple has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, this according to the same Los Angeles Times report that detailed the final moments of Lee's life. Grace and Moses Lim, a Korean-American sister and brother residing in Florida, know all too well the lure of Internet cafés in Seoul. Both frequented them on an almost daily basis during their individual trips to Seoul this past year to visit relatives. Grace, a 24-year-old master's degree student, would usually check her e-mail and surf the Web, while Moses, a 17-year-old high school student would play his favorite games, which consisted of Diablo II, Counter-Strike, and Starcraft: Brood War. "The [cafés] I went to usually gave me a discount and free drinks. After I am done playing for four or five hours, I usually pay three or four US dollars. I usually order ramen noodles and Coca-Cola--the food is very cheap," Moses told GameSpot. Both agree that the low prices kept them coming back. The normal hourly charge of a South Korean Internet café is $1.00. Grace commented that sometimes the competition would even lower its hourly charge to 50 cents, while offering convenient food and soft-drink selections. "They have a full soft-drink collection, ramen noodles, cookies, chips--they bring it right up to your PC," says Grace. While visiting Internet cafés, Grace and Moses observed unsupervised elementary school-aged students using the PCs. "There are some high school, elementary, and junior high school students. It's usually packed on the weekend and after school. It's really hard to find a café that has open spots during those times," Moses said. A local law prohibits minors from entering Internet cafés between the hours of 10 p.m. and 9 a.m. When asked why South Korean society has had a more prevalent occurrence of online gaming addiction, Grace offered her own observation, "There is a lot of stress in Korean society. Going to PC bangs is one way to relieve stress and disconnect themselves from the real world. It's mainly the stress-relieving factor." Relieving stress by spending time in an Internet café to play online games may seem harmless to some. However, it is apparent that the lengthy hours spent playing online games directly contributed to the deaths of Lee and the 4-month-old infant. Both incidents share one thing in common: Addiction to time-consuming online games can potentially interfere with normal everyday responsibilities and result in tragic consequences. According to the Korea Times, the neglect of everyday responsibilities stemming from online game addiction is nothing new to the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO), a government-funded agency that has witnessed an increase in addicted online gamers contacting it for help. KADO provided counseling to 2,243 people seeking help in 2003. That number more than quadrupled to 8,978 in 2004. So far this year, KADO has provided counseling to 6,271 people, according to the Times. Most clients are male adults and teenagers, and the agency estimates that number will dramatically increase to 12,500 people by the end of this year. The counseling sessions consist of alternative recreation programs and group therapy to ease addictive compulsions. KADO plans to open more local counseling agencies across the country (in addition to its 40 established counseling agencies already in operation) by expanding its financial support to local counselors, according to the Korea Herald. Plans are already under way for Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication to build centers that aim to prevent online gaming and Internet addiction, as well as offer anti-addiction courses to local universities. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that KADO has already begun to send psychologists into South Korean Internet cafés this month to conduct user surveys, make further analysis, and even personally warn customers about the dangers of online gaming addiction. One visiting psychologist, Son Eun Suk, feels that online gaming could be a bigger social dilemma than drugs or alcohol because society is naive of its addictiveness. "Parents and teachers lecture against drugs and alcohol, but they are very open to the Internet. They think their children are learning something about computers, and they allow them to play from a very young age," Son commented. This thinking may explain why South Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world. Three-quarters of all households have high-speed broadband Internet connections (in addition to its 25,000 Internet cafés), compared to one-third of US households. South Korea's online gaming industry has grown 25 percent on an annual basis, with revenue of $1.2 billion during 2004. Two cable TV channels cover online gaming activities. The channels also profile professional players who garner celebrity-like status and make livings of up to $100,000 yearly by winning tournaments and even gaining corporate sponsorship. A number of reasons are blamed for the rise of online gaming addiction in South Korea. They range from the longer amount of time needed to finish extensive gaming objectives or storylines, to inexpensive Internet access (averaging $30.00 a month for household high-speed Internet services), to a society used to living in small apartments or homes trying to escape unfulfilling daily lifestyles. Whatever the reason, South Koreans are slowly but surely coming to terms with a social problem that could be a fair warning to the rest of the international online gaming community. It also sets a benchmark in the area of how far local government agencies might reach out to those who manifest a once-unheard-of addiction, before it potentially gets out of control. Edward Castranova, the author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, which is set to be released November 1, 2005, by the University of Chicago Press, offered his own simple opinion to the Los Angeles Times. "I think people recognize at least at a subconscious level that there is something subversive about these games," he says. "After all, wouldn't you rather be a spaceship captain than pouring lattes at Starbucks?"

Opinion | All the President's Friends

The lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina revealed to everyone that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which earned universal praise during the Clinton years, is a shell of its former self. The hapless Michael Brown -- who is no longer overseeing relief efforts but still heads the agency -- has become a symbol of cronyism. But what we really should be asking is whether FEMA's decline and fall is unique, or part of a larger pattern. What other government functions have been crippled by politicization, cronyism and/or the departure of experienced professionals? How many FEMA's are there? Unfortunately, it's easy to find other agencies suffering from some version of the FEMA syndrome. The first example won't surprise you: the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a key role to play in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, but which has seen a major exodus of experienced officials over the past few years. In particular, senior officials have left in protest over what they say is the Bush administration's unwillingness to enforce environmental law. Yesterday The Independent, the British newspaper, published an interview about the environmental aftermath of Katrina with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, whom one suspects is planning to join the exodus. "The budget has been cut," he said, "and inept political hacks have been put in key positions." That sounds familiar, and given what we've learned over the last two weeks there's no reason to doubt that characterization -- or to disregard his warning of an environmental cover-up in progress.

quiet american

april 21, 2008 1.7 MB ' The sunset call to prayer, or ezan, from the Blue Mosque — or Sultan Ahmet Camii, to give it its proper name. We'd just arrived in in Istanbul, Turkey, after driving from London through northern & eastern Europe, and after finding our hotel we wandered out onto the roof terrace to admire the view as the sun was starting to go down. As soon as the ezan started we knew we were starting to leave Europe... In the background you can hear the calls from other mosques in the neighbourhood and across the Bosphorus. Recorded with a Zoom H2, using its built-in microphones.' So writes culinary anthroplogist Matt Purver, today's contributor. [This recording particularly tickles me, because Matt and his wife Anna are friends, and it was mostly by my energetic advocacy-cum-arm-twisting that they were convinced to take a sound recording device along on their enviable travels! -Aaron] april 14, 2008 1.8 MB 'The rusty wind chime at this very old Buddhist temple in South Korea made a nice contrast to the low rumble of a jet high overhead, which was in a world far away from the temple's cut granite and the worn but brightly painted wood buildings and dark tile roofs all around. At one point you can hear workmen taking down scaffolding as well; not bad for the pinhole monaural mic of my MP3 player! Haein-sa ("ocean of reflection" temple) is large and long-lived; it is famous for the 80,000-plus woodblock printing blocks for the Tripitaka Koreana that are kept there. Before long all of them will be available for view online in a nice melding of the modern with the ancient. As my wife would not relinquish our HiMD recorder, I had to record this with my BENQ Joybee130 MP3 player; while it let me record FM clips in low quality stereo, it only recorded externally with its single pinhole mic in mono.' So writes Guven Witteveen, who has also tagged Google Maps with digital panoramas shot at Haeinsa and elsewhere in South Korea. april 7, 2008 1.4 MB 'Exactly what you are hearing in this recording, made in Castanhinho, a black heritage comunity near Garanhuns city, in the countryside of the Pernambuco state of Brazil, I would prefer not to say. But to put these sounds in context: nowadays I'm totally immersed in working with indigenous and black heritage communities at countryside of my state (Pernambuco) and in the Brazilian Amazon forest of Amazonas state. I'm employed to record sound for video documentaries and to do sound design for them; the videos are political or video-art. Besides this I produce recordings for the musical groups of these communities. So of course, I'm doing a lot of field recordings in the work intervals.... :) Recorded with a Sony MZ-R90 MD recorder and a Sony ECM-DS70P stereo condensor microphone.' A mystery, then, for once — courtesy today's contributor, Thelmo Cristovam. march 31, 2008 1.4 MB Not all birds are caged: consider this week's vacation, which comes to us courtesy Ian Callahan, who writes, 'I was in Ducktown, Tennessee. in mid-March for my grandmother's funeral; I recorded this sitting in an old lawn chair in her yard for probably the last time. I never hear this many birds where I live in Massachusetts. I used a Zoom H2 recorder [and its built-in microphones]; sorry for the lack of a windscreen.' [Our thanks, and my condolences -Aaron] march 24, 2008 2 MB As promised last week, spring is here, and the birds are... well, listen for yourself, courtesy contributing oral historian Sady Sullivan, who writes of this week's vacation, 'This is Sam, a parrot I met — and occasionally, me trying to egg Sam on; I knew his repertoire [pun intended I trust! -Aaron]. Sam lived in Cohasset, Massachusetts, with a woman named Joanne and a poodley dog named Willoughby. Joanne was my boss at the time, we were social workers, and I was house-sitting for her. This is a clip from a fourteen minute recording I did in 1999 on microcassette, recently digitized.' march 17, 2008 1 MB This week brings the vernal equinox, so let's celebrate the end of winter here in the northern hemisphere with this evocative vacation from contributor Cynthia Nogar, who writes, 'Two-inch-thick ice broke up on March 1, 2008, in Tofte, Minnesota. Tofte sits on the shore of Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world, with the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Wilderness at its back. I had traveled there specifically in hopes of recording the ice moving and happened to catch this beginning just before dusk. To watch it, the ice barely seems to move as the current slowly pushes it against itself; but where it has fractured, the water snaps the ice and piles it against the rocky shoreline... The snapping and roaring lasted in varying degrees all night and partially into the next day, until twenty four hours later, the water was clear of ice as far as the eye could see. Recorded with a Zoom H2 using in its built-in front 90 degree mics. This was my first nature sound recording.' march 10, 2008 1.4 MB More music comes to us today from sound artist Pei-Wen Liu (who works as PEI), who writes of this week's vacation, 'In the old village of Diyabakir [or Diyarbakir] in eastern Turkey, women dug on the ground amid destroyed buildings for small pieces of wood to burn; rocks were laid and piled both inside and outside of a great wall... things were difficult there, in May, 2007. On a roof, a place with no visible authority, no classification by gender or age, people shared a small peacful playground, and there we meet this boy, Sahin, at a village wedding. He sang and danced well; we saw the brightness in his eye... This recording was made at Sahin's house, as his younger sister drummed and neighborhood children surrounded us.' march 3, 2008 1.4 MB This week's vacation arrived as something of an enigma from Miguel Pacheco Gomes, who describes it only as, 'My performance (Lisboa+Claps) with Grupo Coral de Ourique in the opening of the contemporary art exhibition Depois do Dilúvio in the Old Ourique Market at Ourique, South Alentejo, Portugal, on the 8th of June in 2007.' [Typically I don't post recordings of performances or sound art here, but in this matter as in so many other things, I do take a small pleasure in occasional inconsistency. Today is Bronwyn's birthday, so this is her present, by the way!] february 25, 2008 1.4 MB The Bay Area is blessed with strong nature sound and sound engineering communities; contributor Dan Dugan epitomizes the best in both. Of today's vacation, he writes, 'From February, 2007, to January, 2008, I recorded in Muir Woods [north of San Francisco] every month at dawn, over an entire year's cycle. The one thing I missed over the year was a good storm. There were gray days, but it was never really stormy when I went out for my regular sessions... there were a couple of storms at night, but it was hard to find the motivation to drive an hour in the storm and then go out in it. On January 4, 2008, though, I got my perfect storm. When I heard in the night before that a strong winter storm was forecast to arrive on a Friday morning; I resolved to record it. I had a hard time getting there: many roads were closed; I found a way in, but I had to clear fallen branches in two places on Muir Woods Road so I could pass... Of course, the park was officially closed — but I managed to talk my way past a park policeman, and I recorded for an hour at Cathedral Grove. My minidisc recorder got so wet the buttons stopped working, but I let it run to the end of the disc and it shut itself down properly. I got my sound and it was worth it! Recorded with a Sharp MD-MS722 minidisc recorder and Telinga EM-23 omnidirectional lavalier microphones, mounted in home-made fake-fur domes on my shoulders, equalized in post to be flat across the frequency range.' [The Sharp recorder Dan still uses was my first field recorder back in 1998! -Aaron] february 18, 2008 1.4 MB For this week's vacation we thank field recording enthusiast Jason Engling, who writes, 'The time of year is mid-August and along with few thousand other people, I am standing on a tridge (a three-way footbridge) over the Huron River in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where a long standing tradition during the annual Heritage Festival is the rubber duck race. Spectators purchase a numbered duck and it is thrown into a huge vat; thousands are accumulated. At the start of the race the ducks are dumped into the river and the current races the ducks toward the finish line. It's pretty humorous to watch the sea of yellow float down the river and even more funny to watch the ones that get stuck on the rocks. Prizes are awarded to the winning rubber duck owners, but all of the money collected goes to charity. And don't worry, they are very careful to make that every duck is cleaned up when it's all finished! Recorded with a Sony MZ-N707 minidisc recorder and Sound Professionals SP-TFB-2 in-ear binaural microphones.' february 11, 2008 1.4 MB February 7th saw the celebrated arrival of our newest listener: Ember Rowan Ximm. In this recording, which I made with my Zoom H2 using its internal microphones (directly to 192 kbps mp3 by the way), young Ember nurses, with obvious enthusiasm and satisfaction... [a very sleep-deprived Aaron] february 4, 2008 1.2 MB Somewhere in this project's audience there must be a frog specalist who can help with this species ID query posed by Debbi Brusco: 'I was at Mercey Hot Springs in the Panoche Valley, southeast of Hollister, California, one evening last week. In a small creek there many Pacific Tree Frogs were calling. Upon shining a red flashlight in the water, I found a larger frog (I think; I didn't notice any parotoid glands) that was not vocalizing. It was perhaps 3.5" long not including the legs, greenish, had irregular spots without centers, mostly dark eyes, and a lightish dorsal stripe. I picked it up and turned it over, and the lower part of the underside looked grainy, mostly white with some black. It had a somewhat pointy rear end. I can't ID it from the books I have.... What you hear in this recording are the Tree Frogs calling, and a call the mystery frog made when I picked it up and it wanted me to let go — which I did, seeing how it had just "talked" for me on tape. Recorded with an Olympus DS2 digital voice recorder, which I ended up setting down, since I had a flashlight in my mouth and a frog in one hand , a frog strong enough that I really needed two!' [Don't you think that's a lovely recording for a pocket-sized voice recorder that costs just a tad over $100? -Aaron] january 28, 2008 1.5 MB Contributor Ambrose Pottie describes our vacation today succinctly: 'A petting zoo recorded in Granby, Quebec in July, 2005, on a trip with my family.' As he says, that pretty much says it all! january 21, 2008 1.9 MB For today's vacation, we thank photographer Collin Orthner, who writes, 'I hear these sounds virtually every night during the winter months, as there is a rink just across the street from my home here in Red Deer, in Alberta, Canada. I remember playing hockey for many years and I just tuned the sounds out most of the time, but the other night they caught my attention. I ran outside to catch the last few minutes of a Pond Hockey League practice — about twenty or so 10-12 year olds were messing around after their coach blew the final whistle of the formal practice. Recorded with aa Sony MZ-R37 MD recorder and a Sony ECM-M907 microphone.' january 14, 2008 1 MB Today's vacation, which inaugurates the seventh year of the one-minute vacation project, comes to us courtesy photographer Blake Gordon, who writes, 'Last fall I began taking pictures of Austin, Texas, between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., which led me to see the city in a completely different way. There was stillness to the scenes. One evening my ears honed in on a commercial AC unit, and I realized how noisy it still was; there was sound everywhere, sound that in the day was normally masked by traffic. So I began recording as well. It was revealing to [clearly] hear a train or a siren and to know that it was a mile away. This sound, the "ghost train," happens as trains navigate through the S-curves that run through the middle of town. I was shocked to hear, not brakes screeching, but pitches rising and falling into one another. I suppose it was from vibrations brought out by the curve. It takes about eight minutes for the an average train to pass... this was recorded about a block and a half from the tracks, near Shoal Creek.' january 7, 2008 1.9 MB Rain really tore up our neighborhood last week. But sometimes it can be more collaborator than foe; witness this week's vacation, for which we thank Jeremy Slater, who writes, 'The sound of percussion from rain water on crushed up Kirin cans in the Koenji neighborhood, on my last night in Tokyo, Japan. The cans said "Enjuku" which means: ripeness, mellowness, maturity, perfection. This piece presented itself to me as I was walking in the night. I felt happy in the rain recording this. Recorded last November with a Sony MZ-RH10 minidisc recorder and a Sony ECM-DS70P microphone.' december 31, 2007 1.4 MB As the year ends, let's share a quiet moment to reflect on it, courtesy prolific Freesound participant Dobroide, who writes, 'A fjord's beach at Qaleragdlit, Greenland, in August, 2007. Waves splashing, a nearby stream, wind rumbling, and the crack of ice falling from a distant glacier front (you have to pay attention). Recorded with iRiver H320 with a pair of Soundman OKM mics plugged into a FEL BMA1 preamp.' [As with the binaural recording from two weeks ago recorded with the same microphones, this one is best heard with headphones! -Aaron] december 24, 2007 1.4 MB Christmas Eve is being celebrated by many; and in this hemisphere, it's a perfect time for a quiet walk in the snow with musician Bengt Hamedani, who appropriately enough recently gave me a gift: he reminded me that creativity is infectious. About this week's vacation, a present for all of us, he writes, 'Simply walking in the snow in a town in Sweden called Rättvik, on vacation with my wife last year... It's interesting how you discover sounds in your recordings that you wasn't aware of when you did the recording. In this recording, I hear traffic in the distance; at first I thought it was disturbing, but now, as I think you [Aaron] wrote somewhere, it makes the recording a record of an event that can't be repeated in exactly the same way, so it has its own unique meaning [and character]. I used a Sharp MD 831 minidisc and a Sony ECM-MS957 stereo electret condenser microphone.' [He's right, I have said things like that, as in this interview. -Aaron] december 17, 2007 1.8 MB There's something reassuring about pure animal contentment, even that of domesticated beasts living a decent life, so let's not venture far: 'Near the small town of Ruhpolding in the Bavarian Alps in southern Germany, one sunny afternoon in July, 2007. My wife and I were hiking and in a forest meadow we encountered a herd of grazing cows. We were immediately caught by the richness of the sounds, so I neared the herd and the animals came very close. In this dense bucolic soundscape you hear the sound of cowbells, loud breathing, munching and grass-plucking, a fly buzzing by and mooing at various distances. The equipment was a Sony MZ-NH1 HiMD recorder (in uncompressed PCM mode) and OKM II Klassik binaural microphones.' So writes today's contributor, Gunther Reiche. [As with all binaural recordings, this one is best heard with headphones! -Aaron] december 10, 2007 1 MB I'm not the only one to holiday in Italy; today's vacation comes to us from local Alessandro Massobrio, who writes, 'A funny moment from my short vacation in the Ligurian hinterland of northern Italy, where in late September, some very large pigs are stopping the car traffic by rolling in a mud puddle in the middle of a pass. Some people go straight on by with their cars, others come down to watch closely. Recorded in mono with a Sehnneiser MKH-816P [long shotgun] microphone and a Fostex FR-2 recorder.' [I wish we'd had time to get out in the country ourselves! -Aaron] december 3, 2007 1.6 MB One final recording from my own recent trip to Venice, Italy... I can't resist sharing a minute I worked hard to record. This is but a small section of the cacaphonous, nearly ten-minute-long pealing of the bells of Venice's famous Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute, across the Grand Canal from the Piazza San Marco. During the last days of our stay in Venice, these bells would ring out at what seemed to be completely random times; 3:18 p.m. in the afternoon stands out in my memory as a particular curious time... Perhaps they were on some cryptic ecclesiastical calendar, I wondered? As it turned out I wasn't too far from the truth; the bells were ringing the call to Mass, and it was the schedule that was changing daily in the lead up to the famous festival of the Salute, which is held annually on November 21 to celebrate the retreat of a plague from the city in 1663 (the occasion of which, following a prayer beseaching the Virgin's aid, resulted in the building of the church). Even knowing the calendar of events, however, I had to try many times to capture the bells' peal in its majestic entirety — sometimes they inexplicably didn't ring a call; at other times it started earlier (or later) than I expected, and caught me unready, or walking away sadly, having given up on them. I only managed the capture them properly on our very last night! [Aaron] november 26, 2007 1.6 MB Last week we heard the hidden world of the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. This week, I'd like to share with you a contrasting recording I made myself: how the Grand Canal sounded at the very minute I posted last week, but this time, as recorded with conventional microphones (my beloved Sonic Studios DSM quasibinaural mics). To explain: my wife and I made simultaneous recordings from the same spot; I was curious to hear how the obvious soundscape contrasted with the hidden one underwater... which do you find more interesting? (Recorded with a Sony MZ-RH10 HiMD recorder.) [Aaron] november 19, 2007 1.6 MB Today's my birthday, and indeed, this is my present: a vacation recorded by my wife, Bronwyn Ximm, on our own vacation, in Venice, Italy, on this very day! This is the duly famous Grand Canal, as recorded with an Aquarian H2 hydrophone that she dangled off the end of a private pier in the San Polo sestiere in the heart of the city. What you hear is the ruckus of the perpetually chaotic boat traffic on the Canal, which ranges from private water taxis to vaporetto water buses to dozens of kinds of working boats... each with its own raucous motor. Recorded with a Zoom H2 recorder. [Aaron] november 12, 2007 1.4 MB Today's contributor, sound artist Pablo Jones aka Hilux Audio, writes: 'A moment from my vacation in Lazise in northern Italy, where Lake Garda is nestled into mountains, creating a micro-climate where thunderstorms appear almost from nowhere and sort of drift up the lake. The mountains also create a lot of reverb which adds to the drama of it all. I made this recording when I was woken one night about 3 a.m. by a particularily big storm; you can hear one rumble of thunder as it reverberates around my apartment. The background "hiss" is actually rain on the shutters, and not my cheap Sony MZ-R55-based recording kit!' [Which I post today in honor of my own very brief vacation in northern Italy, which I leave for tomorrow... a last little trip before our daughter arrives! -Aaron] november 5, 2007 1.8 MB For today's vacation, we thank fellow train-sound enthusiast Owen Butcher, who writes, 'Steam locomotive 2705 passes through the Australian bushland between Thirlmere and Buxton; I sat in the middle of the bush by the railway line and waited for the loco to pass. I sat high above a cutting to get the 'chug chug' sound that people would expect from a steam engine; down close to the line, the sound is very messy and full of steam. Recorded on the 21st of October, 2007, with a Zoom H4 recorder using its internal microphones (I used some slight compression to help bring the sounds of the bush out of the recording, as I had to have the gain down very low as the loco is very loud).' october 29, 2007 1 MB 'A walk down Kalverstraat, a fairly narrow pedestrian-only shopping street in Amsterdam in February. I was there on business, but liked the sound of a street organ so I stopped. The organ was very elaborate, with moving characters, large enough to be its own trailer— and, as you can hear, it had all sorts of instruments. The clinking sound is the operator shaking a brass collection cup for donations; I made one. I used Soundman OKM II binaural microphones and a Marantz PMD 670 recorder.' So writes today's contributor, Nick Miller. october 22, 2007 1.1 MB Sound artist Lasse-Marc Riek (of the wonderful label Gruenrekorder) writes of this week's vacation, 'On the 20th of June 2007, at 5:00 p.m., in the Nelimarkka Museum, in Alajärvi, Finland. Museum caretakers Tuija and Asko wrap paintings from the recent exhibition. Recorded in mono with a Sennheiser MKH-416P microphone and Marantz PMD 660 recorder.' october 15, 2007 1.6 MB If that fall chill is getting to you, listen no further than today's vacation, which comes to us thanks to Brian Valente, who writes: 'I was in Yellowstone National Park in September of this year for a photo trip, and while the steam pots didn't do much for me visually, I certainly found them amazing to listen to. Steam pools and gurgling fissures are all over the park, and this particular area looked like the surface of the moon... in this recording I count at least three separate steam pots. I recorded this with two Sennheiser MKE64 mics in a near-binaural setup and a Korg MR-1000 DSD recorder.' [And with this amazing vacation, we reach 300 vacations! -Aaron] october 8, 2007 2 MB No sooner did I praise those days of gold than (of course!) the first storm of winter arrived. Before they continue, here's a quiet moment to consider the pleasures particular to autumn, courtesy contributor Arnþór Helgason, who writes, 'September 16 was a sunny but windy day in my suburb on the western outskirts of Reykjavik, Iceland. I brought a microphone out on the balcony of our house which is facing south; the northern wind therefore didn’t disturb the recording, but the sounds of the leaves blowing away is heard quite clearly... Recorded with a Nagra Ares-M and Shure VP88 microphone.' october 1, 2007 1.6 MB As is typical in San Francisco, the golden days of summer are just upon us now, but today's contributor, Quinn, writes, 'In Japan, August is the most humid and hot month of the year. Since I moved to a small village on a mountainside here, I've been enjoying the sound of higurashi cicadas on the evenings of hot summer days. Their sounds are nicer than other kinds of cicadas, which are loud in the hot daytime.' [Is it my imagination, or do I remember hirurashi being used in Miyazake's Totoro...? -Aaron] september 24, 2007 1 MB Halfway around the world, it should surprise noone that we also find kids being... kids. Contributor Pierre Cao sets the stage: 'As the bell of the Basilica of Saint Peter marks ten o'clock, school kids gather in the Piazza San Pietro in Rome, Italy, to celebrate Mardi Gras. For the occasion they dressed in funny costumes; led by their teachers, they sang and danced all together.' [Recorded I believe with an Edirol R1 -Aaron] september 17, 2007 1.6 MB Mid-September means school's in session for most American kids. Let's commemorate that with today's vacation (recess?), which comes to us from musician, artist, and field recordist [not to mention personal inspiration] Rob Millis, who writes, 'Recess time at a school in Ubon Ratchathani in northeastern Thailand, right near the border with Laos, and as they do everywhere, the kids were going completely insane. Some had gotten ahold of saxophones and trumpets, you can hear them honking away as others screamed and yelled at the foreigner (that would be me) standing on the other side of the fence: "Falang! Falang! Hello! Hey maaan!"' Update: in response to my query, Rob clarified, 'I use a Neumann U47 AK37 semi-automatic binaural ribbon assault microphone. Usually controlled remotely from another planet. Alright, not really. It was recorded with the on-board microphone on my Sony DV camera in 16 bit digital.' september 10, 2007 1.6 MB Music of a more intentional sort, courtesy today's contributor, Petri Kaipiainen, who writes, 'Walking down a side street in Kathmandu [Nepal] late in the evening in the late 90's, I came across a small band playiing, I think they were celebrating a wedding... Recorded with a Sony MZ-R30 MD recorded and a Shure VP88 stereo mic in its mid-wide setting.' september 3, 2007 2.3 MB 'Every year in June my parents take up residence on the Belgian coast in an apartment that looks over the see and the sandy beach. It is a joy to stay there. Part of the beach is taken by a sailing school and at night they "park" their boats on the beach; I've never counted them but there must over one hundred of them. Whenever the wind picks up, the halyard (the rope running up the mast to raise the sails) beats against the mast and this makes the most remarkable bell-like sound..... On this particular day, as I was walking alone on the beach just after sundown (my favorite time of the day) I heard this "sailboats in the wind" concert; I ran inside to get the recording kit I had with me, to finally capture it! Recorded with a Nagra Ares-PII+ recorder fitted with NP-MICES XY stereo microphones.' Pure enchantment, brought to us by sound artist Peter Caeldries. august 27, 2007 1.8 MB And as long as the Zoom's out, let's hear how it works across the Atlantic... 'Belfairs Woods, in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, mid-February. This being the first really beautiful bright sunny day of the year, all the local hobby pilots seemed to be out and I did not catch a recording without the noise of a light aircraft in it! Recorded with a Zoom H4 using the internal mics. Here's a map of where I made the recording.' So writes today's contributor, photographer Ian Tomey. [Personally, what I love in this recording is precisely the enigmatic thrumming of those planes! -Aaron] august 20, 2007 940 KB As long as the umbrella's open, let's enjoy the rain in Cincinnati, Ohio, courtesy contributor Steve Bayer, who writes, 'A March afternoon's thunderstorm closes out the winter of 2007. Recorded on a Zoom H4 (using its built-in mics) resting on plant stand on the front porch, out of harm from wind and rain. Relax with drips, splashes, soft thunder, swishing motorcars, their doppler effect, and damp birds softly singing in the rain...' august 13, 2007 1.4 MB Another memorial this week, this one for... an umbrella. But not just any umbrella. As contributor Lu Olkowski explains, today's vaction documents 'The most sonically lovely umbrella in the world! I have since lost that umbrella and it smarts. No new umbrellas sound like that. Recorded in the most ordinary of ordinary places: my neighborhood, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, a recently gentrified Italian-American immigrant community (think "On the Waterfront," but in Brooklyn instead of Hell's Kitchen). I just walked out of my apartment to the corner and stood there a while as music streamed out of a neighbor's window. Recorded with a Beyerdynamic MCE 86N(C)S mic parallel to the handle, pointed straight up into the umbrella.' august 6, 2007 1.6 MB Tonight (on Tuesday) on top of the hill my wife and I live on in San Francisco, we held an Owlwake to commemorate and remember as a community the two Great Horned Owls that lived in the trees on our little windswept hilltop starting last year. Both owls, which quickly became beloved local celebrities (certainly best documented in this amazing photoset from Art Siegel, wake co-organizer), died this year, the first only hours after I left for Portugal in April, from what was determined via an owl-topsy performed by Wildcare in Marin County to have been avian herpes; my wife and I took the second to the same facility only a couple of weeks ago; we haven't heard yet the cause of its death (though since the pair nested together we assume it was the same disease). A wake seemed an appropriate farewell, as the owls provided not only an all-too-rare brush with the 'wild'; they also offered, as was oft-mentioned tonight as people shared memories and thoughts, a source of equally rare community contact: we all somehow regularly found ourselves happily chatting with strangers, often our neighbors, when we stopped to gaze at them (as my wife and I did literally every day). Today's vacation is offered in remembrance of them; in it you can hear a bit of the pleasure these feathered wonders provided, as a family arrives to 'spot' the pair, along with one of the many dogs who have the run of the hill. (This was also the first time I tried out my new recording rig: a pair of Sennheiser MKH-800 multipattern microphones, here arranged in an MS array, and a Sound Devices 722 recorder.) RIP Tux and Tuctin Owl, one of whom you can hear hooting here, in a recording I made a few minutes before this vacation. [Aaron] july 30, 2007 1.9 MB My sister-in-law leaves for Asia in less than two weeks; one of her first adventures is going to be a tour of Ladakh, a part the Tibetan plateau in political India which preserves Tibetan culture in a way that Chinese Tibet does not. I envy her itinerary, I've always wanted to go there — but at least I can visit via today's vacation, which comes to us from artist Keith de Mendonca, who writes, 'I recently travelled around Ladakh (in the state of Jammu & Kashmir in northern India), which borders onto Tibet; there I heard a lot of singing and chanting made part of work, such as people singing whilst moving rocks onto roofs — or, in this recording, whilst passing large rocks hand-to-hand in a human chain to load them onto the back of a lorry. The rubble in this case was once part of Chemrey monastary, which collapsed last year as a result of heavy rainfall.' july 23, 2007 1.2 MB A true vacation comes to us today from Angela Duncan, who writes, 'This is Mackinac Island, Michigan, as I heard it sitting on the beach (Lake Huron, I think?) with my iBook, recording the waves and seagulls, and playing with the little white stones that covered the entire beach. It was a perfectly beautiful, blue-sky day with little white clouds. I worked there last summer as a photographer for the Grand Hotel and had a lot of free time.' Oh, the long golden days of summer...! july 16, 2007 1.1 MB For today's vacation, we thank repeat-contributor Kevin T. Allen, who so evocatively writes, 'My sister and I fell in love with the mountainous region of Sapa in northwest Vietnam during a trip in the summer of 2005. There we became very friendly with our Black Hmong guide, Ger. She invited us to visit her home, so we trekked to the small village of Loa Chai to spend the day with her family and joined them for dinner, which was served squatting on the dirt floor of their thatched-roof house. It occurred to me how very differently a home sounds, away from the 60-cycle hum of modern amenities: you could really hear everything at once, really feel the space and its place in the world. The slurping of noodles, the roosters just outside, the shaman's gong, dusty footsteps, the piercing song of the cicadas, Ger's father's sighs of delight as we showed him photos — even the faint sound of running of water from the nearby irrigation system... the time we sat there together sharing an acoustic moment was perhaps my favorite sixty seconds of our trip.' july 9, 2007 1.9 MB Today's contributor, James Nestor, writes, 'On the way back from a weeks-long surf trip on the coast of Panama in March, two friends and I had to spend a night in the town of David before crossing the border. We were lucky enough to time our stay with the annual country fair. Farmers and ranchers from all over this very desolate, rural part of Panama gather during the fair to sell their wares and show off a baffling range of livestock. Outside of the fair proper, locals compete to attract fairgoers to their bar-b-ques, rudimentary craps tables, and backyard discos by blasting stereos (mostly playing reggaeton) at sound levels I have never before experienced! This recording was taken on a walk up to the fairgrounds along the busiest of the sidestreets with an Edirol recorder and binaural microphones.' july 2, 2007 2 MB This week's vacation comes to us from Alex Ellis, who writes, 'On a sunny Saturday morning just before noon in Peterborough, England, I chanced upon a sort of period opera being rehearsed in the Norman Cathedral. At the nave, five female musicians performed on a wooden stage; in this recording, the beautiful and clearly well-to-do singer faced away from the microphones, leaving her voice to echo back to me where I sat in the pews. Recorded with an iRiver iFP recorder and homemade binaural mics I made by mounting Panasonic electret microphone elements in earbud-style headphones (like those that come with the iPod).' june 25, 2007 2,5 MB For today's vacation we thank composer and sound designer Kirke Godfrey, who sets the scene: 'Walking around to the far side of Magnetic Island, off north Queensland in the Great Barrier Reef region of Australia, with a group of friends... pushing past the stinging green ants, out to the beaches and rocks, we came across a tranquil little bay with rocks and small stretches of sand (providing the fizz in this sound). So peaceful! Recorded in July of 2002 with a Sony DV handicam.' june 18, 2007 1,4 MB Today's contributor, Geoff Middleton, brings us sounds of an English summer night. Specifically, 'Nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos) singing at 1:30 a.m. on a summer evening in 2002, at Whisby Nature Reserve, in Lincoln, UK. Recorded with a Sony minidisc recorder and a pair of AKG C300 microphones.' june 11, 2007 1,5 MB Field recordist Fabian Klenk writes of today's vacation, 'In Hampi, in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, I took a room on the side of the small river in the more isolated Virupapur Gaddi area. It overlooked the rice fields and was far from the tourist crowds. Every evening, after sunset, the fields would burst with sounds from frogs, toads, and insects. Late on my last evening there, I went into the fields, sat down, and recorded this with my iRiver H340 (on which I run the open-source third-party Rockbox firmware) and Soundman OKM II binaural microphones. Everytime I listen to it, I want to go back!' [And everytime I hear it, I want to go! -Aaron] june 4, 2007 1,5 MB Today's vacation comes to us from Chad Randl, who write, 'A trip on the Schilthorn Cableway in the Swiss Alps: on September 27, 2006 we were on our way up to the revolving restaurant at Schilthorn peak, where they filmed the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The cable car was shrouded in clouds with no visibility. Tourists spoke to each other about their other travels. At about halfway through the excerpt we broke through the clouds to a spectacular view of the Alps (at about 2000 meters). Listen for the aaahhhs! Recorded with an Edirol R-09 using its internal mics.' Note: The following seven vacations, dated April 16 to May 28, were actually posted on May 29. I recorded all of these myself in and around the small town of Nodar, in northern Portugal, where I had an arts residency between April 10 and 28. During the residency and several weeks that followed this project was on hiatus... Apologies for the interruption, we will now return to our regular schedule! [Aaron] may 28, 2007 1.4 MB I hope to post a page soon about the project I realized during my stay in Nodar, but I'd like to finish this series with a favorite among the recordings I made working on it. Suffice to say for now that I intended to record here the sound of the sheep who lived next door being herded home late one afternoon, after a day grazing in the lush pasture between our house and the river. As with so many of my favorite recordings, what you actually hear is something I could not have planned... This is the sound of Dona Ilya, the sheeps' owner, discovering my unattended backpack on the side of the path, grumbling, begging heaven's aid, and finally grabbing the pack and — convinced that it was scaring her timid sheep — unceremoniously dumping it further along the path. What she didn't notice was that in doing so my pair of very small Core Sound HEB binaural mics were attached to the recorder in my backpack; moving it she ripped them out of the deep crannies I'd stuffed them into in the stone wall at the side of the path! No harm done, to my gear or her sheep, but you'll notice the stereo image changes quite a bit after the disruption in the middle of the recording when my recorder and mics are dumped on the ground... The funny thing was that I'd left my gear recording unattended specifically to avoid scaring those sheep; I'd discovered right away that they and the goats I loved (see below) would balk at passing me when I tried to record them on narrow paths, unintentionally causing delays for their tired herders (of both the two- and four-footed variety)! [Aaron] may 21, 2007 1.4 MB Something the other recordings I've posted in this series haven't conveyed is the profound natural quiet of Nodar and its surroundings. Though cars and the odd motorcycle would pass through en route to one or another of the similarly small towns dotting the hills every day, I've never been somewhere so civilized where motor and industrial noise was such a rarity. In the absence even of regular airplane overflight (which was quite infrequent, much more so than the open expanses of the American west which are my normal metric for natural quiet), I began to seriously mistrust my ability to judge sound levels; it was not uncommon to clearly hear bells tinkling on the necks of animals a thousand yards away or more. This recording is a bow to that quiet; in it, late one afternoon I capture crickets on a hillside above town and the white noise of a tributary running down to the river below... which at the time seemed achingly loud. Recorded with Sennheiser MKH-800 mics to a Sound Devices 722. [Aaron] may 14, 2007 1.4 MB One of Nodar's young entrepeneurs burns the plastic jackets and casing off foot-long lengths of multi-strand solid-core copper communications wire, so that the bare if soot-stained copper can be sold as recovered metal. I'm still a bit skeptical as to the provenance of that cable! Recorded with a Sound Devices 722 and Sennheiser MKH-800 mics — which I endeavored to keep well away from the acrid, toxic, and no doubt liable-to-coat-and-destroy-microphone-elements multi-hued smoke! [Aaron] may 7, 2007 1.4 MB One gray afternoon Binaural's Cristina Tascón led me around the hillside from the chapel (see below) to Nodar's old mill, which I'd tried and failed to find on my own — it's obscured by trees in a side valley. Upgraded with a steel wheel, it looked dormant but useable if the small stream running below the millhouse were to pick up. Absent a torrent I climbed below the house and recorded myself spinning the wheel back and forth. The sound of the millstone scraping with a rasp above me sounded so much like breathing that I improvised for ten or fifteen minutes, trying to replicate the breathe pattern of oncoming sleep. I must have done a reasonable job, since listening to the recording later that day Cristina fell fast asleep on the couch! Recorded with my beloved Sonic Studios DSM-6S/EH mics (as always in a WHB headband) to my Sound Devices 722. [Aaron] april 30, 2007 1.4 MB On the edge of town on a hillside I found the burnt-out shell of a small chapel, which was disused but only recently destroyed in the serious fire that denuded many of the hills around Nodar only a few years ago. Like almost every structure in town the chapel was constructed with irregular blocks and fins of local slate; in this recording I walk through the building's interor on stone from the fallen roof and partially collapsed walls, and try to give voice to it. Again recorded with Sennheiser MKH-800 mics in Blumlein to a Sound Devices 722. [Aaron] april 23, 2007 1.4 MB An instantly-enchanting soundmark in Nodar is the tinkle and dong of bell-clad livestock cruising lush pastures and distant hillsides. A delight of my residency was that every morning I would wake up to — or later, after I adopted the local schedule, enjoy my coffee to — the gamelan jangle of goats leaving their nearby paddock to forage high in the hillside pastures. (Though initially sent off in one direction or another by their owners, it was a lone fierce sheep dog who kept them all day, and it was he who brought them home from miles away each night.) Recorded with my Sennheiser MKH-800 mics (again in Blumlein) and Sound Devices 722. [Aaron] april 16, 2007 1.4 MB A few days after I arrived at my Binaural residency in the small town of Nodar in northern Portugal, I was caught by a wild late afternoon thunderstorm while taking my first hike high into the hills in which the town nestles. As thunder boomed I sheltered near a concrete water tank constructed to combat the not-uncommon fires that plague the area (largely a result of the cultivation of fast-growing but hot-burning eucalyptus). Not long after I started recording, blown rain turned to blow hail; punctuating the grumble and bluster of the storm you can hear hailstones bouncing off the DPA Windpac windshield that sheltered my microphones! One of my goals at this residency was to field-test the recording rig I used to record this, Sennheiser MKH-800 multipattern microphones (here arranged in the Blumlein configuration) and a Sound Devices 722 recorder. [Aaron] april 9, 2007 940 KB Tomorrow I take a vacation of my own: I'm off to Portugal for a residency. I couldn't ask for a more auspicious send-off than this recording from Kurt Tidmore, who writes, 'One evening in Lisbon, Portugal, my wife and I walked up to the Castelo de Sao Jorge at about dusk. The castle was originally built by the Moors and overlooks the city from the top of the old Alfama district. The streets in the neighborhood were full of university students in their traditional black suits and capes. As we walked with the castle walls looking down on all this, we came upon an old woman sitting in the dark singing fado, the Portuguese equivalent of flamenco or the blues. Recorded (as uncompressed PCM) with a Sony MZ-NHF800 HiMD recorder using a Sony DS-70P mic and a home-made wind guard.' See you in May! april 2, 2007 1.7 MB 'For three months I lived in a large town called Chichibu, Japan, studying the bamboo flute and doing a bit of cycle touring. Chichibu is nestled in the mountains about an hour and a half northwest of Tokyo. Every night at six p.m. (or five in winter) the town's P.A. system would play this song. It echoed all over the town and often produced strange phasing effects as the wind, or your position relative to the various loudspeakers (mounted on power poles around town), changed. I thought it was just a quaint small-town thing, but when I went traveling, I discovered that it happens all over Japan, including inside office buildings!' So writes Benji-san, today's contributor; you can read more about his stay here. march 26, 2007 2.3 MB We continue our run of nature recordings today with the help of sound designer Marc Levisohn, who writes of today's vacation, 'Where I live I overlook a canyon where hawks circle above, making these classic cries which echo throughout the valley; you know something is running for its life beneath them! Recently I've been hearing coyotes at night too. Recorded on March 18, 2007, from my studio window onto a Sony D-100 DAT with its preamp modified by Sonic Studios for use with their DSM-6S stereo mics, which I wore in my WHB Windscreen Headband.' [It's a sore point among nature recordists that the instantly familiar cry of the red-tailed hawk, which I believe is captured here, is commmonly used on TV and in movies to pinch-hit for the much less 'authoratative' cries of bald eagles (and other raptors)... -Aaron] march 19, 2007 1.4 MB 'One evening in early May 2005 I positioned a stereo mic array on the shore of a remote lake in the Chippewa National Forest in north-central Minnesota and walked away for about an hour. Some time after I left, a beaver (or two?) apparently resumed an ongoing project near the microphone... Recorded on a Sony TCD-D7 DAT recorder with a pair of Shure WL-183 microphones in an experimental wedge array.' So writes today's contributor, innovative field recordist Curt Olson. march 12 , 2007 1.8 MB Whale Bay in Northland, New Zealand, at dusk in late July, 2006... as recorded by location sound recordist Grant Finlay, with a Neumann RSM191i stereo microphone, an SQN-4S portable mixer, and a Sony TCD-D8 Portadat. march 5, 2007 3.3 MB Fans of the rest of this site are probably aware of the debt I owe today's contributor, Leonard Lombardo; he makes the Sonic Studios DSM-6S/EH microphones I used to make the recordings you hear in the field recordings section (and the compositions I've made with them elsewhere). About his contribution Leonard writes, 'Debbie and I had a delightful experience of a very quiet rolling thunderstorm here in Sutherlin, Oregon, last June 11th. It was a surprisingly calming event featuring thunder, rain, birds, and dogs in our rural-like neighborhood with close surrounding hills. Luckily we were already outside and ready to record the very-early-morning birds on the driveway with an artificial head baffle wearing a hat already set up; it took only a few minutes to pull the rest of the gear out of the truck and start recording as the storm started. This is a short clip taken from a recording over two hours long. Listen for the sound of raindrops, which is a mix of distant ground contacts and the surround sound of drops against the hat's brim. Recorded with Sonic Studios DSM-6S/H windscreened mics on full-size GUY HRTF baffle, PA-24XP mic pre (on +10 setting), into the line-level input on an M-Audio Microtrack recording at 24 bits and 88.2K; this excerpt was converted to to CD quality in Cool Edit Pro with dither and just 6 dB of gain (and no other processing). I suggest listening on the newest very-awesome Sony MDR-SA3000 or 5000 model headphones!' february 26, 2007 1.4 MB Today's vacation comes to us from sound artist Brandon Locher, who recorded 'a collective of friends, Endless Mike and the Beagle Club, playing on a street corner in Brattleboro, Vermont, on May 5th, 2006.' (You can hear more recordings of the band Brandon made that day here!) february 19, 2007 1.4 MB For today's vacation we thank location sound mixer Hayden Jackson, who writes, 'This is a recording I made in the summer of 2005, when I worked on a music video in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The last day of the shoot was on top of La Tigra National Park, which looks over the entire city. Two park employees armed with machetes were detailed to watch over us for our protection. I set up my gear (a Sony ECM-MS957 mic going directly into my Sony PCM-M1 DAT recorder) to record this track unattended (hey, I was busy working!)/. As we were quite a distance from the city, I'm amazed at how well my mic picked up some of the voices below, particularly the children. That was a memorable night: as night began to fall, the park employees took off and we were left alone. While we were packing up our equipment in the dark, two police officers approached us and demanded that we drive them back down the mountain. As we got into the van, our interpreter informed us that some of the police were corrupt and we had best watch our backs, so I was a bit uneasy when the head officer rode up front with me, his gun out in his lap mere inches from me. The drive down the mountain seemed to take forever! But thankfully, the officers didn't try anything funny...' february 12, 2007 1.4 MB The excitement around our house since we got back from Mexico has been the pair of Great Horned Owls that have taken up residence on the top of our hill here in San Francisco. Every morning my wife and I walk up to 'check on them.' Inevitably we're entertained by circling flocks of crows; it's the time of year when they engage in preposterous acrobatics as they mate. So it was with much excitement that I read the account of today's vacation, which comes to us courtesy ecology and evolution PhD candidate David La Puma: 'I went out early this morning in hopes of testing out our new Sennheiser ME66 microphone and Marantz PMD670 recorder for our Ornithology class. Here in Somerset, NJ, the usual birds were singing: Tufted Titmouse, Black-capped Chickadee, the occasional White-throated Sparrow. I picked up a Northern Cardinal singing down the trail a bit, so I walked along in an attempt to get closer. When I rounded the corner I found the cardinal perched about thirty feet in the scrubby edge of a cedar stand. As I positioned my microphone I almost immediately saw (and heard) a Great Horned Owl come bounding out of the top of a red cedar. It had been perfectly camouflaged, and as it left the tree its weight caused the top to spring back in the direction of its flight like a catapult, which startled me and filled me with excitement. I know owls nest on our property because I hear them throughout the year, but it’s rare that I actually get to see one. What followed was an audio extravaganza, as American Crows who were probably just as startled as me "mobbed" the owl some distance away... Enjoy!' february 5, 2007 1.3 MB A trip to the Yucatan need not sap everyone's work ethic, as amply demonstrated by this week's contributor, Martyn Stewart, moderator of the Nature Recordists mailing list. He writes, 'I recorded these insects and frogs at dusk at El Cuyo near Rio Lagartos, in the Mexican Yucatan. With its subtropical forest and mangroves it's a great habitat for flamingos, for which it's famous. I was more interested in documenting the state of the biophony there after the hurricane (Wilma); some areas of the Yucatan were totally devastated. Many birds were killed and a lot of farmland and pasture was under water for months afterwards. My recordings will be used to form a baseline for future catastrophes. Recorded onto a Sound Devices 744 recorder using Sennheiser MKH-30/40 mics in an MS pattern.' january 29, 2007 1.6 MB Regulars will have noticed a hiccup in service around here, for which I apologize; my work ethic was temporarily displaced by a placid passivitiy over the holidays when we spent a good number of days in the Yucatan near the Belize border, where the most pressing things on my agenda were watching crabs tentatively creep out of their holes, frigates wheel above the occasional pelican, and listening to the tradewinds blow through the palm near my hammock... the sound of the latter I offer you by way of apology, as recorded with my trusty DSM-6S/EH microphones and a venerable Sony MZ-R37 MD recorder. [Aaron] january 22, 2007 1.6 MB At the end of the week my friend Paul leaves for Amsterdam to flog the products we make together at a convention; so how about a bit of sound from that city, courtesy sound recordist Eleanor Beaton, who writes, 'On holiday in Amsterdam this past December I stayed near Museumplein. One evening as I went out for a walk with my recorder through the park, I paused at an ice rink where night-skating and a bit of hockey was going on. As I was listening an English-speaking family came along and played with a musical instrument built into the ground — it looked like a metal "tic-tac-toe" board, and (as you can hear) made xylophone-like sounds. Recorded with an M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 and a RØDE NT4 stereo microphone.'

Flickr signup: From human to droid in a Yahoo moment?

Consider the signup screen for Flickr before Yahoo: They make jokes about the screen name, remind you that it’s changeable, express their hatred for spam, and poke fun at the terms of use. And just as importantly, they only ask three questions and a confirmation. That’s it. Takes no time to complete, involves little brain activity, and you get to chuckle about it. In other words, a near perfect signup procedure. Now consider the signup screen for Flickr after Yahoo (which in true megaplex style requires three redirects and clicking signup twice, both on Flickr and the Yahoo-Flickr site): Not only is it two-and-a-half times longer, it involves sixteen questions and an opt-out cross-sell “opportunity” to get Yahoo Mail. It wants to know what industry you’re in and whether you like your Yahoo content from the US or Korea. It needs your first name, last name, gender, and possibly the middle name of your father. It features a terms of service agreement that sounds like it was written by nasty lawyers armed with medieval instruments of truth-extraction. And they display it in the classic nobody-is-ever-going-to-read-this 4-line textarea. The contrast to plain English terms like “You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Flickr users” from the original agreement couldn’t be starker. “But only pedantic industry insiders care about all of this,” you say? Wrong. The only reason I dug into this issue and found these apalling before and after shots is because my lovely girlfriend tried to sign up for Flickr last night. She didn’t made it and ended up at 23hq instead. Flickr squandered the implicit trust I had for them by subjecting her to this cruel and unsual signup hell. This, however, is not meant to be a slam as much as a cry for mercy. Yahoo, Flickr, we know you guys can do so much better than this. We know that you don’t intend to poison the well for future acquisitions and make users hate them on instinct. To Yahoo: Recognize that the reason you bought Flickr in the first place was (hopefully) because you liked the groove they had going on. And even more so, you liked the demonstrated success of said groove. Consider if the droidinization of Flickr perhaps couldn’t have happened slower, later, and with fewer casulties. You guys stand to be the new cool. This is one step forward, two backwards. To Flickr: Come on, guys. You had us eating out of your palms. You’re so much cooler than this. We know its not your lips talking when you say “Another motivation is all the stuff that Flickr can leverage from around the Yahoo! network if people can use their Yahoo! IDs in Flickr.” In other words, this is not about big being bad (we have plenty of other posts on that). This is just about not turning people away at the door, about doing more of what made you superstars in the first place, and about showing that the latest surge of M&A activity isn’t all about killing kittens. We trust that the two of you can work it out!

Asymmetrical Information

Democracy is spreading around the world. Recent elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine give hope for greater freedom and peace. But in New York, home of the Statue of Liberty and the first U.S. Congress, democracy has practically disappeared. Help us restore fair elections. Read More... I'm guest-blogging at Instapundit this week. Mindles may post, and I may put up some longer pieces here, but most of your hot Jane Galt action will be over at Insty's. . . . for campsites within reasonable travelling distance of New York City, with hiking suitable for a not particularly athletic journalist type, good for at least two days of activity. Ideally, one where I can have a fire in the privacy of my own damn campsite, instead of having to crowd into one of those horrible "fireplace" areas so that I can enjoy my romantic firelight dinner in the company of every dyspeptic toddler in the tri-state region. But this may be an amenity reserved for large groups, or outlaws, the two types of camping expeditions I have previously enjoyed. From the desk of Jane Galt Intelligent Design Redux Steve Verdon has some suggestions for other creation stories that we might want to include in our science curriculums. Excellent idea, but I feel his scope is too narrow. Why should we limit ourselves to already-existing creation stories? Why not encourage the citizenry to submit their own? For example, I have a theory that our cosmos is a third-grade science project for a multidimensional being beyond our ken who is named, for some reason, "Grimmet". Readers are encouraged to think of their own creation stories for inclusion in American textbooks. On a serious note, yes, I know that President Bush was not urging that creationism be taught in our schools, or even that ID be given equal time. I certainly don't have a problem devoting a couple of classes to the holes in evolutionary theory--one of the things that irks me is that most of the people I know who believe in evolution believe in it on the same basis that most creationists I know (yes, I do know some) believe that the world was created in six days: because their friends and family, and a couple of authority figures they respect, believe it is so. The contempt those self-identified illuminati display for those with a more traditional brand of religious belief is cruel self-parody. The problem is that the people pushing to "teach the holes" are largely also hoping to plug those holes with God. I do not like this in our nation's public schools--nay, nay, sir, I do not like it at all. President Bush's suggestion was fairly moderate, and even reasonable. But the ends to which it aspires are neither moderate, nor reasonable, and it gives me a squirmy feeling to contemplate them. On the other hand, the Republic struggled along pretty well for 200 years with creationism (and bible verses!) being taught right there in the classroom. I do not think that our nation will fall if ID wends its way into classes; given how appallingly little our nation's students seem to glean from their classwork, I doubt we'll even notice very much. Posted at 11:27 AM | Comments (84) | TrackBack (4) | Technorati inbound links

Simon Schama: Sorry Mr President, Katrina is not 9/11

Slipstreaming behind the annual rituals of sorrow and reverence for 9/11, George W Bush has decreed that, five days later, on the 16th, there is to be a further day of solemnities on which the nation will pray for the unnumbered victims of Hurricane Katrina. Prayers (like vacations) are the default mode for this president who knows how to chuckle and bow the head in the midst of disaster but not, when it counts, how to govern or to command. If you feel the prickly heat of politics, summon a hymn to make it go away; make accountability seem a blasphemy. Thus has George Bush become the Archbishop of Washington even as his aura as lord protector slides into the putrid black lagoon, bobbing with cadavers and slick with oil, that has swallowed New Orleans. No doubt the born-again president is himself sincere about invoking the Almighty. But you can hear the muttered advice in the White House: Mr President, we were in trouble after 9/11; the unfortunate episode of the schoolroom, My Little Goat and all that. But do what you did then; set yourself once more at the centre of the nation; go to the epicentre of the horror and embrace its heroes; make yourself the country's patriotic invigorator and all may yet be well. So this weekend it was predictable that the president would shamelessly invoke the spirit of 9/11 to cover his shamefully exposed rear end - "resolve of nation ... defend freedom ... rebuild wounded city ... care for our neighbours". But comparisons with 9/11 - the fourth anniversary of which was marked in New York yesterday - will only serve now to reinforce the differences between what the two calamities said about America, and especially about those entrusted with its government. The carnage of 9/11 generated an intense surge of patriotic solidarity, even with America's Babylon, a city scandalously and notoriously indifferent to Heartland values. This was because the mass murders had been committed by people who defined foreignness: theocratic nihilists who equated pluralist democracy with depravity. A hard-ass city supposedly abandoned to the most brutal forms of aggressive individualism (a fiction it liked to cultivate) showed instead the face of American mutualism as volunteers poured into the smouldering toxic crater. Blood and food donations piled up and a mayor disregarded his personal safety to be where he had to be, in the thick of the inferno; his daily press conferences astoundingly bullshit-free, unafraid of bearing bad news; treating his fellow-citizens, mirabile dictu, like grown-ups. The rest of the country looked at Zoo York and, astoundingly, saw images and heard stories that made themselves feel good about being American: the flag of defiance flown by firemen amid the Gothic ruins; the countless tales of bravery and sacrifice among those trapped inside the towers. For all the horror, this could be made into a good epic of the American character. It was this redeeming sense of national community that protected the president from any kind of serious political scrutiny whenever he invoked 9/11 as the overwhelming reason for launching the invasion of Iraq. As John Kerry found to his cost, unexamined passion triumphed over reasoned argument. Bush won re-election simply by making debate a kind of treason; an offence against the entombed. Out of the genuinely noble response to 9/11, then, came an unconscionable deceit. Out of the ignoble response to Katrina will come a salutary truth. For along with much of New Orleans, the hurricane has swept away, at last, the shameful American era of the fearfully buttoned lip. Television networks that have self-censored themselves into abject deference have not flinched from their responsibility to show corpses drifting in the water; lines of the forlorn and the abandoned sitting amid piles of garbage outside the Convention Centre; patients from Charity Hospital waiting in the broiling sun in vain for water and medical supplies; helicopters too frightened of armed looters to actually land, but throwing bottles of water down from their 20ft hover. Embarrassed by their ignorance of the cesspool that was the Convention Centre, members of the government protested that it was hard to know what was really going on "on the ground". All they had to do was to turn on the TV to find out. Millions of ordinary Americans did. And what they saw, as so many of them have said, was the brutality, destitution, desperation and chaos of the Third World. Instead of instinctive solidarity and compassion, they have witnessed a descent into a Hobbesian state of nature; with Leviathan offering fly-by compassion, 30,000ft up, and then, once returned to the White House, broadcasting a defensive laundry list of deliveries, few of which showed up when and where they were needed. Instead of acts of mutual succour, there was the police force of Gretna, south of New Orleans, sealing off a bridge against incoming evacuees, and turning them back under threats of gunfire. Instead of a ubiquitous mayor with his finger on the pulse, and the guts to tell the truth, enter Michael Brown, a pathetically inadequate director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Fema, hounded from his 11-year tenure as supervisor of commissioners and stewards of the International Arabian Horse Association by legal proceedings. Instead of summarily firing "Brownie", the president ostentatiously congratulated him on camera for doing "a heck of a job". Only on Friday, in an attempt at damage control, was the hapless Brown "recalled" to Washington, his position as Fema director intact. And instead of an urban community of every conceivable race, religion and even class brought together by trauma, another kind of city, startlingly divided by race and fortune, has symbolised everything about America that makes its people uneasy, ashamed and, finally, perhaps lethally for the conservative ascendancy and its myths, angry. A faint but detectable whiff of mortality is steaming up, not just from the Louisiana mire, but from this Republican administration. Call me a cynic but is it entirely a coincidence that suddenly the great black hope of moderate Republicanism, Colin Powell, is everywhere, publicly repenting of his speech to the UN (and by implication damning those who supplied him with unreliable intelligence), and offering, unbidden, his own lament for the institutional meltdown that followed the breach of the levee. The administration is already thought of as a turkey and the turkey vultures are starting to wheel. Historians ought not to be in the prophecy business but I'll venture this one: Katrina will be seen as a watershed in the public and political life of the US, because it has put back into play the profound question of American government. Ever since Ronald Reagan proclaimed that government was not the answer but the problem, conservatism has stigmatised public service as parasitically unpatriotic, an anomaly in the robust self-sufficiency of American life. For the most part, Democrats have been too supine, too embarrassed and too inarticulate to fight back with a coherent defence of the legitimacy of democratic government. Now, if ever, is their moment; not to revive the New Deal or the Great Society (though unapologetically preserving social security might be a start) but to stake a claim to being the party that delivers competent, humane, responsive government, the party of public trust. For the most shocking difference between 9/11 and Katrina was in what might have been expected in the aftermath of disaster. For all the intelligence soundings, it was impossible to predict the ferocity, much less the timing, of the 9/11 attacks. But Katrina was the most anticipated catastrophe in modern American history. Perhaps the lowest point in Bush's abject performance last week was when he claimed that no one could have predicted the breach in the New Orleans levees, when report after report commissioned by him, not to mention a simulation just last year, had done precisely that. But he had cut the budget appropriation for maintaining flood defences by nearly 50%, so that for the first time in 37 years Louisiana was unable to supply the protection it knew it would need in the event of catastrophe. Likewise Fema, which under Bill Clinton had been a cabinet level agency reporting directly to the president, had under his successor been turned into a hiring opportunity for political hacks and cronies and disappeared into the lumbering behemoth of Homeland Security. It was Fema that failed the Gulf; Fema which failed to secure the delivery of food, water, ice and medical supplies desperately asked for by the Mayor of New Orleans; and it was the president and his government-averse administration that had made Fema a bad joke. In the last election campaign George W Bush asked Americans to vote for him as the man who would best fulfil the most essential obligation of government: the impartial and vigilant protection of its citizens. Now the fraudulence of the claim has come back to haunt him, not in Baghdad but in the drowned counties of Louisiana. In the recoil, disgust and fury felt by millions of Americans at this abdication of responsibility, the president - notwithstanding his comically self-serving promise to lead an inquiry into the fiasco - will assuredly reap the whirlwind.

Resurgence • Issue 218

Contents Welcome Welcome • Satish Kumar Feature Articles A CITIZEN'S RESPONSE • Wendell Berry We must work seriously for peace. CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS • John Mohawk Rethinking basic assumptions. GOD SAVE AMERICA! • Ziauddin Sardar America is the first hyperpower in history. WHO IS NEXT? • Alan Simpson MP Terrorism can't be bombed out of existence. DEVASTATING THE EARTH • Jane Goodall The unseen victims of war. A LEGACY OF LOSS • Natasha Walter The war on terror is also a war of terror. FUTURE FORTUNES • Caroline Lucas MEP The West has waged war on Iraq since 1991. CAUSES OF CONFLICT • Andrew Simms Peace is impossible in an unfair world. CAR WARS • Ian Roberts Motor vehicles are responsible for one third of global oil use. BOYCOTT BRITAIN • Imran Khan Will cricketers choose not to play in the UK? THE MADNESS OF SEPTEMBER 11 • Maurice Ash The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao that is. Accompanied by the photographs of Sebastião Salgado. Prospects for Peace PEACE AS A CIVIL RIGHT • Dennis Kucinich Injustice is a weapon of mass destruction. REAL SECURITY • Amory Lovins Where does security come from? ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE • Herbert Girardet A letter to America. WALKING FOR PEACE • Satish Kumar A thought for the day. CHURCH OF LOVE • Andrew Linzey Christianity and violence are incompatible. SUSTAINABILITY AND SECURITY • Jonathon Porritt & Martin Wright Addressing the roots of conflict. THE POTENCY OF NONVIOLENCE • Scilla Elworthy Breaking the cycle of violence. PEACE DIRECT • Claire-Noelle Devas A new initiative for nonviolent conflict resolution. WORDS OF EMPATHY • Polly McLean Promoting nonviolent communication. SOUL POWER • Thomas Moore Nonviolence is the weapon of the brave. TEN-POINT PLAN FOR PEACE - • David Nicholson-Lord Changing behaviour which leads to conflict. PEACE RESOURCE DIRECTORY CULTURE OF COMMUNITY • John Battle MP The global is local and the local is global HEARTS IN HARMONY • William Dalrymple Hindus and Muslims mingle for the blessings of a Sufi saint. Regulars Touchstone • Colin Hodgetts Voice From The South • Vandana Shiva Letter from Key West • Rosalind Brackenbury Letters to the Editors The Arts TIMELESS SANCTUARIES • Nicholas Usherwood The art of Christopher Wood. Reviews SCULPTURED WORDS • Roger Berthoud Review of Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations A MIND'S JOURNEY • Diana Schumacher Review of You Are, Therefore I Am NO RIGHT TO PERSONAL RIGHTS • James Wells-Bruges Review of Unequal Protection ENOUGH IS A FEAST • Maya Kumar Mitchell Review of Slow Food IN NATURE'S IMAGE • Patrick Holden Review of Fatal Harvest PANDORA'S POWER • James Sainsbury Review of Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone WISE WOMEN • Jean Hardy Review of Elderwoman SOUL OF THE WORLD • Rosie Jackson Review of The Philosophers' Secret Fire FOLLOW THE MONEY • Nick Robins Review of The Divine Right of Capital SEEING THE WORLD AFRESH • John Lane Review of Matthias Grünewald and Henri Cartier- Bresson: Landscape/Townscape THE LAST GREAT VICTORIAN • Ivor Stolliday Review of The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell BOOKS IN BRIEF • Marian Van Eyk McCain

The Fall of the House of Saud

The most vulnerable point and the most spectacular target in the Saudi oil system is the Abqaiq complex—the world's largest oil-processing facility, which sits about twenty-four miles inland from the northern end of the Gulf of Bahrain. All petroleum originating in the south is pumped to Abqaiq for processing. For the first two months after a moderate to severe attack on Abqaiq, production there would slow from an average of 6.8 million barrels a day to one million barrels, a loss equivalent to one third of America's daily consumption of crude oil. For seven months following the attack, daily production would remain as much as four million barrels below normal—a reduction roughly equal to what all of the opec partners were able to effect during their 1973 embargo. Oil is pumped from Abqaiq to loading terminals at Ras Tanura and Ju'aymah, both on Saudi Arabia's east coast. Ras Tanura moves only slightly more oil than Ju'aymah does (4.5 million barrels per day as opposed to 4.3 million barrels), but it offers a greater variety of targets and more avenues of attack. Nearly all of Ras Tanura's export oil is handled by an offshore facility known as The Sea Island, and the facility's Platform No. 4 handles half of that. A commando attack on Platform 4 by surface boat or even by a Kilo-class submarine—available in the global arms bazaar—would be devastating. Such an attack would also be easy, as was made abundantly clear in 2000 by the attack on the USS Cole, carried out with lethal effectiveness by suicide bombers piloting nothing more than a Zodiac loaded with plastic explosives. Another point of vulnerability is Pump Station No. 1, the station closest to Abqaiq, which sends oil uphill, into the Aramah Mountains, so that it can begin its long journey across the peninsula to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. If Pump No. 1 were taken out, the 900,000 barrels of Arabian light and superlight crude that are pumped daily to Yanbu would suddenly stop arriving, and Yanbu would be out of business. Even the short pipe run from Abqaiq to the Gulf terminals at Ju'aymah and Ras Tanura is not without opportunity. If heavy damage were inflicted on the Qatif Junction manifold complex, which directs the flow of oil for all of eastern Saudi Arabia, the flow would be stopped for months. The pipes that connect the terminals and processing facilities can be replaced off the shelf, but those at Qatif require custom fabrication. Promoters of Alaskan, Mexican Gulf, Caspian, and Siberian oil all like to point out that the United States has been weaning itself from Saudi Arabian oil, for protection against the effects of just such an attack on the Saudi oil system. Saudi Arabia may sit on 25 percent of the world's known oil reserves, they argue, but it provides somewhere around 18 percent of the crude oil consumed by the United States—and that is down from 28 percent in only a decade. What these people fail to mention is that Saudi Arabia has the world's only important surplus production capacity—two million barrels a day. This keeps the world market liquid. Not only that, but because the Saudis more or less determine the price of oil globally by deciding how much oil to produce, even countries that don't buy Saudi oil would be vulnerable if the flow of that oil were disrupted.

The Jackals after the Storm

WorldWatch First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card September 4, 2005 The Jackals after the Storm The damage in New Orleans and southern Mississippi from Hurricane Katrina may have taken more lives than 9/11 -- at least that's what experts are estimating right now. And, as with 9/11, the thousands of tragic stories took place in the context of many acts of heroism, sacrifice, and simple kindness. We hear many of these good stories -- and there are doubtless many others, whose participants wouldn't dream of telling anyone about their own courage or decency. Whenever there's a breakdown in the social order there are also people who quickly reveal that with them, at least, civilization is not part of their nature, it's an external restraint, and the moment it's gone, they'll take any advantage they can. We see the footage of these jackals on television, looting whatever they can take from stores ... or neighbors' houses. Some of them might be taking it to protect from looters so they can restore it to their neighbors when they come back. We can't know other people's motives. But most of the looters are probably exactly what they seem: thieves. It's depressing to watch people profiting from others' misery. Profiteers Most depressing, for me at least, are the jackals of the news media. Most are simply reporting what happens. But there are some ... I think of Geraldo, standing in the midst of human misery, condemning those who "allowed this to happen." He's hardly alone, though. The governor of Mississippi, for instance, was pressed hard by a television news interviewer until he finally said, "I know what you want me to say -- that the federal government dropped the ball on this. But they didn't. They were as prepared as anyone could have been, and they've done everything that could be done." (Or words to that effect). A constant theme in the news media has been: Blame the federal government. Most particularly, blame President Bush. And there was Jesse Jackson, claiming that if we hadn't been fighting the war in Iraq, we would have had more resources and money to take care of this disaster. It's as if the media jackals and the spokesmen of the Left were all starring in a satire that made fun of their own stupidity. Not even their worst enemy could make them look as foolish as they're making themselves appear. They Think That Bush Is God Even the most rabid Republican wouldn't ascribe divine powers to President Bush. But the jackals do -- in a negative sense. They mock anything he actually does; but let a hurricane strike the gulf coast and a few levees break, and suddenly he has failed us. Let's see ... what was it he was supposed to have done? Stopped the hurricane? Slackened it? Kept the rain from falling? No, no, of course not, the jackals reply. He should have been better prepared to deal with it, that's all. No, says another, he should have seen to it that all the poor people were evacuated from New Orleans and southern Mississippi! They wouldn't have had to evacuate, says yet another, if President Bush had seen to it that the levees were high enough and strong enough to protect New Orleans from flooding. These clowns howl when President Bush does things that the Constitution requires him to do -- like, say, nominating Supreme Court justices and UN ambassadors. But let a disaster strike, and they condemn him for not doing things that no President has the power to do. Like forcing the evacuation of citizens from danger zones. (Remember Mount St. Helens, and the people who refused to go?) Or intervening in state affairs without the invitation of the governor, unless they're in violation of federal law, which nobody was. As for Jesse Jackson, the problem wasn't lack of money. All the money in the world couldn't have made the water evaporate any faster from the below-level streets of New Orleans. And if every soldier from the Iraq War had been home instead, they would not have been standing by waiting for Katrina to strike so they could rush in and deliver supplies and rescue people that no one imagined would need rescuing. Of course none of these people really think President Bush could have predicted or prepared any better than he did. There are agencies that are supposed to prepare, and they did their job up to any reasonable standard. Only idiots would really believe that any part of this disaster or its aftermath was the fault of the President. The trouble is, they think we are the idiots. They think that if they loudly ask, "Why wasn't President Bush ready for this?" the American people will swallow the implied accusation and blame him for not protecting us from ... from the weather. Bush was elected President, not God. The Problem Was Foreseen The sad thing is that the problem was foreseen. It's been known for more than a century that New Orleans was one of the most vulnerable cities in the world. It's below sea level, for pete's sake. It wasn't when they started building it, but it is now. The weight of buildings on the spongy ground of the Mississippi delta compresses it and squishes it out and the ground subsides. Nature has a solution for this, of course: It's called "flooding." The Mississippi is supposed to spill over its banks every spring and when it finally subsides, it's supposed to have carved itself new channels and deposited silt from Montana and Minnesota throughout the delta from Natchez to New Orleans. But that pattern doesn't fit with our human desire to stake out a piece of ground, build things and plant things on it, and have it stay the way we left it, year after year. So the Army Corps of Engineers spent many years "taming" the Mississippi -- lining it with levees to prevent it from spilling over its banks. The floods that once enriched the soil of America's middle were ended. Above all, New Orleans was kept dry. But not high and dry. It got lower and lower and lower, until you look up from the French Quarter and watch big ocean-going ships pass by on the Mississippi, floating so high that you realize their bottoms are higher than the streets of the city. When I first heard that Katrina was going to be a category five hurricane and it was heading for New Orleans, my immediate statement was, "New Orleans is below sea level. I sure hope the levees hold." And I'm not even an expert. Everybody always knew that there was a danger that a hurricane might raise the level of the river and Lake Pontchartrain so high that the levees would break. Political Reality But on what day was it politically possible to do anything about it? For good or ill, decisions like spending enormous amounts of tax money to raise and thicken the levees have to be made by politicians, and the very nature of democratic government makes it highly unlikely for us to get anything done that won't show benefits in time for the next election. There are exceptions: The Interstate Highway System only got started because of fear of Communism and nuclear weapons -- we needed a road system that would let us move our military swiftly across country. Later, we saw all kinds of economic benefits -- but what made it politically possible at first was fear. The Louisiana Purchase, Alaska (i.e., "Seward's Folly") -- their benefits were obvious and yet they were sharply criticized. Unless someone saw a way to make quick money out of it, these things rarely happened. So ... what governor or state legislature, what mayor or city council, what Congress or President could be rationally expected to say, on one particular day, "We're going to spend a hundred million dollars raising the levees around New Orleans, and another twenty million establishing a national fleet of evacuation buses that will go and evacuate the poor from densely populated cities that might be threatened by hurricanes someday." The very jackals who are now criticizing President Bush for not being prepared would have absolutely crucified him for "pork barrel politics" if he had proposed dumping that much money on raising the levees around New Orleans, and as for the fleet of evacuation buses -- he would have been mercilessly ridiculed for even proposing it. It's only after the disaster that all the solutions look obvious and everybody is full of advice on what should have been done. Again, the news people who hate Bush for being President (and hate us for reelecting him) know all this. They know that he has done nothing wrong. But it's an opportunity to damage him, and they can't bring themselves to let it go by unused. Because there are people stupid enough to think that there really was something the President should have done, and a way he could have done it. What Now? On Sunday I was talking with a good friend -- Mike Lewis, who teaches physical geography at UNC-G -- and he raised the real question: "Are we dumb enough to rebuild New Orleans in the same place?" "People are being defiant," he said. "We'll rebuild it! They can't stop us!" But there's no "they." Wind patterns are notoriously difficult to impress. It's all about risk assessment. Such a storm will happen again. It might not be for another fifty or a hundred years. But it might be next year. It might be next week. I suggested that they ought to spend the millions of dollars it would take to salvage the entire French Quarter, move all the buildings out, move in a billion tons of earth to raise the land well above sea level, and then put the buildings back. It would be run as a historical site/amusement park. A tourist destination. But the rest of New Orleans would be shut down. The levees would be torn down and the whole area would be redesignated a flood plain, with elevated roads to get tourists to and from New Orleans -- like the roads that already exist elsewhere in Louisiana. In other words, give it back to the Cajuns and the gators. What would we do with all those people? Give them assistance to relocate. The refugees who come to Greensboro, for instance, shouldn't just be fed and housed, they should be helped to find jobs and reestablish themselves in their new home -- here. The great institutions of New Orleans -- schools and universities and churches and sports teams -- should be transplanted elsewhere. Wake Forest University is no longer in Wake County and it's doing fine. And those who can't bear to let New Orleans die should rebuild that ribald-yet-graceful culture -- at Baton Rouge. There is simply no excuse for rebuilding in the same spot. Even Californians have learned from earthquakes by changing their building methods so that new buildings do a good job of riding out earthquakes. Of course, this doesn't mean Californians are smart. Take Balboa Island, for instance, or Venice Beach. There'll be a tsunami someday, and there is zero chance of any survivors on Balboa Island if the triggering earthquake is close to the coast. But people still pay enormous sums of money for the privilege of living there. We humans are such ... optimists! Or -- wait -- is the correct term "fools"? The odds of another category five hurricane hitting New Orleans are identical with the odds of a tsunami sweeping over Balboa Island and scouring it bare: One hundred percent. The only question is when. But it will happen. And still we build there. Property Lines The reason New Orleans will almost certainly be rebuilt on the same site is simple: People own property there. They can't stand the thought of losing it. They have invested money in it. So even if the only way to make New Orleans safe is to build levees so ridiculously high and strong that they make it the most ugly city in the world, surrounded by huge concrete-lined dikes, people will insist on doing it. Unless they take so long to "improve" the levees that people forget Katrina and start putting it off and finally abandon the project. Back to business as usual. Why Didn't the People Leave Town? One question I've heard several people ask about the hurricane is, "I'm sorry these people are suffering, but why didn't they leave town? They were warned!" They were warned, but they were poor. The people I've heard say this are people who have never been truly poor a day in their lives. But there were thousands of people in New Orleans who had no money, no car, nowhere to go, and nowhere to stay once they got there. Did you go down and offer any of them a ride and a few rooms in your house where they could stay till the storm was over? If not, then don't start judging them because they didn't get out in time. Besides, they thought it was a hurricane -- high winds, lots of rain. The terrible damage and loss of life came the next day, in the aftermath, as the rains upstream added to the storm damage by flooding so intensely that the levees gave out. If we find out that somebody knew the levees would break and didn't give warning, then we have somebody to blame. But my guess is that nobody knew. Maybe they should have -- but that's second-guessing. After something happens, it's always obvious that people "should have known" it could happen. Again, I'll take the critics seriously when one of them shows me footage or paper that demonstrates that they knew and gave warning that the levee would break, and nobody listened. Geraldo? Did you give that warning? Let's see you rerun that moment of wisdom and prescience, and then I'll tolerate your accusations of others for "not being ready." When you're poor you don't have choices. That's one of the main reasons we don't like poverty. Who Were These People? And it was one of the main reasons New Orleans was such a good city, despite its many problems. It wasn't a bad place to be poor. The streetcar and bus system worked -- public transportation could take you wherever you needed to go, and without making you wait for an hour. The climate is warm so you don't have to pay for much heating in the winter, and if you don't have air conditioning, at least you're no worse off than your ancestors, who didn't have it either. You could live there without much money. As for southern Mississippi, I've heard people criticize it -- not unfairly -- for its having become a gambling center. But most people there were neither gamblers nor owners of gambling establishments. And even if they were, even the most diehard Bible-thumping anti-gambler would have to agree that the penalty for such sin should not be death. (Besides, now that North Carolina has decided to adopt a lottery, we have no room to talk. There is zero difference between gambling houses on the waterfront in Biloxi and Pascagoula, and lottery tickets for sale in convenience stores in North Carolina. The customers are still being seduced into giving up something for nothing; and in North Carolina we have the distinction of being the stupidest people in America, since we already had proof that state lotteries don't help much (if at all) and do as much harm as any other system of vice.) Nobody deserves to have a hurricane destroy their property, and still less do they deserve to be killed for the crime of living near the coast. So the "Christians" who gloated of the destruction of such "wicked places" should look up Matthew 7:1-5 and keep your malice to yourselves. Natural disasters happen. We can prepare for them as best we can, but eventually there'll be some twist that we didn't anticipate, or some force greater than we imagined possible, and people will die and property will be destroyed and landscapes will be transformed. We don't have to blame anybody -- not President Bush, not sinful people, and not God. God didn't mean anything by Hurricane Katrina. This is a world where natural forces will organize and distribute disasters in a semi-chaotic way that does not care where people happen to be living. I believe that what God cares about is not whether or not we are always safe in our houses. As I understand the scriptures, what God cares about is how we act when bad things happen. Some people were brave and decent and kind and generous and I think that God is proud of his children who acted that way. Some people looted, and some people exploited the disaster to hurt their political enemies, and some people used the disaster to condemn others and make themselves feel superior to the victims. I believe that in the eyes of God, that is the real disaster -- that so many of his children, when the storm had passed, turned out to be jackals after all. And that damage has spread far and wide across the country -- including places where Katrina did not go. Copyright © 2005 by Orson Scott Card.

Brown calls for oil price effort

Ahead of expected fuel duty protests, Mr Brown told the TUC Opec countries to produce more oil and refine more. He said it was a "global challenge" which needed "global solutions". But France is to offer fuel tax rebates to farmers and retailers in Austria have cut prices after being threatened with a one-off tax on profits. 'More investment needed' Belgium, Poland and Hungary have also announced measures to cushion the impact of rising prices on consumers. Mr Brown called for more worldwide investment in refineries and alternative energies. He said he understood "the problems being faced by hauliers, farmers and motorists, by ordinary consumers across the country faced with gas and electricity bills at a time of this doubling of oil prices". BROWN'S FIVE POINT PLAN Opec to increase oil supply Opec to open books to show reserves Windfall from high oil prices to be diverted to funding new production New World Bank fund to help developing countries invest in alternative sources of energy New IMF facility to support poor countries hit by shocks in oil and commodities markets Petrol fuels inflation rise Full text of Brown speech However, Shadow Transport Secretary Alan Duncan accused Mr Brown of laying the blame for his own problems "at the feet of the Arabs". Freight Transport Association spokesman Geoff Dossetter added that UK hauliers were at a "competitive disadvantage" as a result of a "wretchedly high level of fuel duty". Panic-buying Fuel protesters angry at increases in the price of petrol and diesel plan to stage three days of protests this week. Although they have urged motorists not to panic-buy fuel, there have been long queues reported at some petrol stations over the past 24 hours. In 2000, blockades of oil refineries caused widespread shortages. But the government and the oil industry say they have taken steps to ensure protests do not have the same effect. Mr Brown said price rises were a risk to the world economy and said he had held talks with the finance ministers of all the world's major economies. Queues have been building up at some petrol stations He is calling for 500,000 extra barrels of oil a day to be produced by Opec, the association of oil-exporting nations. He is also pushing oil-producing nations to divert their current windfall into funding more production and refining facilities. At the same time, Mr Brown wants more effort put into finding greener alternatives, with the World Bank to set up a fund to help developing countries do the same. The IMF should create a fund for poorer countries hit by the rising prices, part-funded by Opec, he said. Demonstrations The Fuel Lobby protesters say they will start three days of demonstrations if ministers do not meet them on Tuesday. The group wants the public to "attend" oil refineries on Wednesday to protest. HAVE YOUR SAY My dad's garage has not had the delivery it expected today so he's totally run out already Charlotte, Grimsby, England Send us your comments Lobby spokesman Andrew Spence said: "We are not calling for a blockade, but if oil companies decide they cannot send out lorries while there is a public presence at their site, then that is a matter for them." Sir Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, said the last thing the government should do was cut fuel duty. Fuel prices needed to be kept high to drive changes in consumer behaviour and drive investment in new energy efficiency technology.

Bot herder websites in internet take-down

Bot herder websites that specialise in dumbing down the process of managing zombie networks of compromised Windows PCs are under attack. High profile bot sites such as ryan1918.com and 0x90-team.com have disappeared, reports anti-virus firm F-Secure. Another such site, known as "Neo, The One" (neo-theone.com.ar), which was hosted in Argentina, went offline on Friday (9 September). Authorities are clearly turning up the heat on such sites, but the fight is far from over. Mikko Hyppönen, director of anti-virus research at Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure, explained that so-called bot herder websites come and go all the time. "These websites specialise in distributing source code and tools for malicious bots and botnets. They provide a web interface with point and click controls that allows even clueless people to manage zombie networks." "Some bot distribution sites have started to charge money for downloading source code of bots," he added. Hyppönen said bot herder sites are normally short-lived, tending to disappear as soon as authorities get wind of them. Delivering botnet management as a hosted application is relatively new but the trade in compromised PCs among denizens of the digital underground has been taking place for around two years. The use of sites such as 0x90-team.com to download components for recent MyTob worm increased their profile and arguably hastened their demise. ®

Gulf Coast Isn't the Only Thing Left in Tatters; Bush's Status With Blacks Takes Hit

WASHINGTON - From the political perspective of the White House, Hurricane Katrina destroyed more than an enormous swath of the Gulf Coast. The storm also appears to have damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, to make inroads among black voters and expand the reach of the Republican Party for decades to come. Many African-Americans across the country said they seethed as they watched the television pictures of the largely poor and black victims of Hurricane Katrina dying for food and water in the New Orleans Superdome and the convention center. A poll released last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center bore out that reaction as well as a deep racial divide: Two-thirds of African-Americans said the government's response to the crisis would have been faster if most of the victims had been white, while 77 percent of whites disagreed. The anger has invigorated the president's critics. Kanye West, the rap star, raged off-script at a televised benefit for storm victims that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in Miami last week that Americans "have to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not." At the White House, the public response has been to denounce the critics as unseemly and unfair. "I think all of those remarks were disgusting, to be perfectly frank," Laura Bush said in an interview with the American Urban Radio Network, when asked about the comments of Mr. West and Mr. Dean. "Of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country."

No timetable for Iraq withdrawal

Mr Talabani (L) says Iraqi forces are getting stronger In a news conference in Washington with President George Bush, he said a timed pull-out could encourage terrorism. But Mr Talabani said he hoped Iraqi forces could take some responsibility from US troops by the end of 2006. In an interview with the Washington Post newspaper published on Tuesday, he had seemed to suggest that up to 50,000 US troops could leave this year. An aide later phoned the newspaper to say the Iraqi president had not meant to imply specific dates. Continued support Flanked by US President George W Bush, Mr Talabani said he did not want to do anything without the agreement of the US, as this would demonstrate to insurgents that their resolve had been weakened. Najaf has already been handed over to Iraq's security forces "We will set no timetable for withdrawal. A timetable will help the terrorists, will encourage them that they could defeat a superpower of the world and Iraqi people," he said. "We hope that by the end of 2006 our security forces are up to the level of taking responsibility from many American troops with complete agreement with the Americans." Mr Bush said the US would continue to support Iraqi democracy. "America will stand with the Iraqi people as they move forward with the democratic process," he said. "At the same time, American troops will stay on the offensive... As Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down." In other developments: US and Iraqi forces launch an attack on the insurgent stronghold of Haditha capturing one and killing at least four militants, according to the Associated Press news agency Two Iraqi civilians are killed and seven others injured when a minibus explodes in Hilla, 100km (60 miles) south of Baghdad In Baghdad a lorry driver and his assistant are shot dead while trying to deliver concrete walls to fortify polling stations for next month's referendum on the draft constitution In a separate incident in Baghdad, five mortar rounds are fired, two of which land in the Green Zone, although they are not reported to have caused any injuries. Najaf transfer The US currently has about 140,000 troops stationed in Iraq. Despite sliding public support for the US presence in Iraq, Mr Bush has refused to set a schedule for a withdrawal. He has repeated the message that the US must stay the course. The US has been training home-grown Iraqi troops to take over from their forces to allow a phased withdrawal. However, many observers say that the Iraqi forces are still far from capable of dealing with the ongoing insurgency. Earlier this month the US officially handed over military control of the southern city of Najaf to Iraqi forces. The move was the first of a planned series of security transfers across Iraq, paving the way for an eventual withdrawal of foreign forces.

Nursing home owners face charges

Nursing home owners face charges Couple charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) -- The owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, where 34 people died as Hurricane Katrina hit, have been charged with negligent homicide, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. said Tuesday. "They did not die of natural causes; they drowned," Foti told reporters. "Thirty-four people drowned in a nursing home where they should have been evacuated." The attorney general said the home's owners -- Mable and Salvador Mangano Sr., both 65 -- surrendered Tuesday to Medicaid Fraud Control Unit investigators in Baton Rouge, where they were charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide and jailed prior to posting bond. Each count carries up to five years in prison. Jim Cobb, an attorney for the Manganos, told CNN that his clients did not abandon the patients who died. The Manganos stayed in the nursing home through the storm with their children, grandchildren, and nieces and nephews, he said. "We feel we have criminal negligence," Foti said. "They did not follow the standards of care that a reasonable person would follow in a similar circumstance." (Watch the attorney general explain the charges -- 4:23) He said the owners had plenty of opportunity to move their charges out of the facility. The Manganos were asked if they wanted to evacuate the building and were offered buses; in addition, they had signed last April a contract with Acadian Ambulance to provide transportation in the event an evacuation was needed, Foti said, but "they were never called." Cobb said the Manganos said they were never told about the mandatory evacuation, and the couple was concerned that had they prematurely moved their patients, many would have died. Authorities in the parish east of New Orleans began retrieving the bodies of the 34 people from St. Rita's on Wednesday, nine days after the storm hit and a huge storm surge consumed the home. Foti said it was unclear all 34 bodies were patients, family members or people who had sought refuge in the home. Between 40 and 50 other people were rescued from the facility, St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stevens said has said. Meanwhile, President Bush on Tuesday said he takes responsibility for the federal government's failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina. "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said during a joint news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Bush said he wants to know what went right and what went wrong so that he can determine whether the United States is prepared for another storm, or an attack. (Watch the president's statement -- 1:32) "I'm not going to defend the process going in, but I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives," Bush said. (Full story) Earlier in the day, the White House announced the president will address the nation Thursday night about recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast. New Orleans may lose 160,000 homes Katrina and the floodwaters that swept through New Orleans may have damaged 160,000 homes beyond repair, an official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday. Col. Richard Wagenaar said that one of the local government's biggest challenges would be letting residents return to look at their homes. Water flowed into the city from Lake Pontchartrain through five breaches in three levees after the storm hit August 29, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged. (Watch Wagenaar describe the levee repairs -- 3:34) Workers should be able to pump the remaining water out of the city by the end of October, said Wagenaar, the New Orleans district commander of the Corps of Engineers. "Wagenaar said the process would speed up once water recedes around the city's main pumping station -- Pump Station No. 6 -- and its 1920s-era pumps can go back online. That's not expected for another two weeks. (Watch the efforts to pump New Orleans dry -- 2:40) He said that workers were focusing on making "semi-permanent" repairs to the levee system that protects the low-lying city -- that could take two or three months. More permanent fixes would be made once investigators have determined why the levees failed. Bodies found in hospital Rescue workers have removed 45 bodies from a downtown New Orleans hospital that was surrounded by floodwaters from Katrina, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said. The bodies were recovered Sunday from Memorial Medical Center, spokeswoman Melissa Walker said. Tenet Healthcare Corp., the company that owns the hospital, said in a statement that "a significant number had passed before the hurricane." (Watch the grim process of recovering victims -- 1:34) Tenet spokesman Steven Campanini wrote that the hospital was told Wednesday "that we were on our own to evacuate, [and] we brought our own helicopters to take the patients out." He said, "Every living patient was evacuated by Friday afternoon." The statement said that once all of the patients were evacuated, officials brought in guards to secure the hospital until the coroner could remove the bodies. Officials have confirmed 423 deaths in Louisiana in the wake of the hurricane. Other developments The acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Tuesday that the agency would focus on getting evacuees out of shelters and into more permanent homes. David Paulison, a 30-year veteran of fire and rescue work, was appointed Monday after Michael Brown resigned. (Watch Paulison discuss FEMA's plans) Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at FEMA on Tuesday for what she said was a "lack of urgency and lack of respect" involving the recovery of bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims. Blanco said she ordered the state to sign a contract with Kenyon International Monday, after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff failed to live up to a promise to sign a contract with the organization. (Full story) New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday if an EPA water quality report comes back with the expected good results, he will reopen parts of New Orleans, including the French Quarter, for business next week.

Google Earth threatens democracy

The recent news that South Korea is to take the US to task over Google Earth images which expose its military installations to close Commie scrutiny has provoked a mini stampede of other peace-loving nations eager to protect their assets from prying eyes. Enter stage right Thailand, which says it may ask Google to "block images of important state buildings vulnerable to attack". Armed forces spokeschap Major General Weerasak Manee-in told Reuters: "We are looking for possible restrictions on these detailed pictures, especially state buildings. I think pictures of tourist attractions should do, not crucial places which could threaten national security." Well, we went and had a quick shufti at some Thai military installations, and took the opportunity to scour the Earth's surfaces for other Google satellite data which might threaten Our Way of Life. We restricted ourselves to stuff which lends itself to perusal, mostly air force bases, because (trust us on this one) you can easily waste a whole day looking for Russian ICBM installations. First up, the evidence for Thai military preparedness. Here's Udorn Air Force base, around 300 miles from Bangkok: Move along, nothing to see here, but try Korat: That's more like it. Zoom in for a closer look, and voila! Top-quality, US-bought hardware: They've even got an awacs parked there on the hard shoulder: Hmmm. The good General may have a point. On the other hand, what is Thailand realistically going to do about it? Manee's Sri Lankan counterpart, Brigadier Daya Ratnayake, admitted it was a "serious concern if anyone could get detailed images of sensitive installations and buildings", but added: "This is a new trend, we will first have to see whether, in this day and age, if this a considerable threat to national security." He sagely added: "In this era of technology, you have to live with the fact that almost everything is on the internet - from bomb-making instructions to assembling aircraft. So it's something the military has to learn to live with and adapt." India agrees. Reuters quotes an anonymous security official there as confirming that "the issue of satellite imagery had been discussed at the highest level but the government had concluded that 'technology cannot be stopped'." "We are aware that there are websites which give detailed pictures of buildings like the president's house including every tree in the compound. Our security agencies are aware of this but how can we stop technology?" he added. How indeed? And just to prove the point, here's Palam airport in New Delhi, home of domestic flights but also government air transportation in and out of the capital: A planespotter's paradise, as a close-up reveals: Australia, too, has been fretting a little over Google's all-seeing eye. The Australian Department of Defence has said it is taking "appropriate measures to manage the threat" posed by satellite imaging: The above is a lovely snap of Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, south of Sydney, although ANSTO declared the "current images on Google posed no security risk" because: "Although buildings are clearly visible, critical infrastructure is not. The photographs are over two years old." Quite so. At this point we're getting the feeling that the South Koreans and Thai may be over-reacting a tad. What's more, they're not looking at the plus side: if Vietnam and North Korea are as we speak eagerly filling their broadband boots with Google-supplied military secrets, what's to stop us exploiting the same resource?

A Tutor Half a World Away, but as Close as a Keyboard

COCHIN, India - A few minutes before 7 on a recent morning, Greeshma Salin swiveled her chair to face the computer, slipped on her headset and said in faintly accented English, "Hello, Daniela." Seconds later she heard the response, "Hello, Greeshma." The two chatted excitedly before Ms. Salin said, "We'll work on pronouns today." Then she typed in, "Daniela thinks that Daniela should give Daniela's horse Scarlett to Daniela's sister." "Is this an awkward sentence?" she asked. "How can you make it better?" Nothing unusual about this exchange except that Ms. Salin, 22, was in Cochin, a city in coastal southern India, and her student, Daniela Marinaro, 13, was at her home in Malibu, Calif. Ms. Salin is part of a new wave of outsourcing to India: the tutoring of American students. Twice a week for a month now, Ms. Salin, who grew up speaking the Indian language Malayalam at home, has been tutoring Daniela in English grammar, comprehension and writing.

Sane Nation

NEW ORLEANS NEGLIGENCE: I agree with those who say it's not to time to play "blame games" about the New Orleans nightmare. But we can — and should — be serious about assessing responsibility. It's a simple fact that local and state official represent the first line of defense in natural disasters. It's a fact that Mayor Ray Nagin said he didn't load the now-drowned school buses with passengers because he wanted to find buses with greater comfort. It's a fact that Nagin later revised his story to say he waited to find the right drivers. It's a fact that New Orleans had an advance plan for emergency evacuation that doesn't mention the federal government playing the chief role. It's a fact that Governor Kathleen Blanco had authority to call in the National Guard, but she waited. It's a fact that those who weren't evacuated by bus were herded into the Super Dome with no plans for food and water. It's a fact that Mayor Nagin prevented the Red Cross from bringing in food and water, as if the Super Dome's new occupants were being housed there only temporarily, as if the availability of food and water would spread the wrong message: "If you feed them, they will come." None of this is surprising. Those who died were among the poorest, which is really to say the least self-sufficient and the most dependent upon a culture of low expectations. Nagin and Blanco reflect that same culture: "Wait for someone to take care of us, and blame them when they don't give us what we want, when we want it." Ben Johnson has the story at Frontpage Magazine. And Brendan Miniter makes a strong case that the poor of New Olreans were failed long before Katrina.

The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered. Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about". With European regulations to control cosmetic treatments such as collagen not expected for several years, doctors and politicians say the discovery highlights the dangers faced by the increasing number of Britons seeking to improve their looks. Apart from the ethical concerns, there is also the potential risk of infection. MPs on the Commons select health committee are to examine the regulatory system and may launch an investigation and question ministers about the need for immediate new controls. "I am sure that the committee will want to look at this," said Kevin Barron, its Labour chairman. "This is something everyone in society will be very concerned about." Plastic surgeons are also concerned about the delay in introducing regulations to control the cosmetic treatments industry. Norman Waterhouse, a former president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said: "I am surprised that we are taking the lead from the European commission, because this is bound to delay action on this important area which is increasingly a matter for concern. It seems like a bit of a cop out to me." It is unclear whether any of the "aesthetic fillers" such as collagen available in the UK or on the internet are supplied by the company, which cannot be identified for legal reasons. It is also unclear whether collagen made from prisoners' skin is in the research stage or is in production. However, the Guardian has learned that the company has exported collagen products to the UK in the past. An agent told customers it had also exported to the US and European countries, and that it was trying to develop fillers using tissue from aborted foetuses. Traditional When formally approached by the Guardian, the agent denied the company was using skin harvested from executed prisoners. However, he had already admitted it was doing precisely this during a number of conversations with a researcher posing as a Hong Kong businessman. The Press Complaints Commission's code of practice permits subterfuge if there is no other means of investigating a matter of public interest. The agent told the researcher: "A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus." This material, he said, was being bought from "bio tech" companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China. He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. "In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this," he said. Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: "The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile." The agent said his company exported to the west via Hong Kong."We are still in the early days of selling these products, and clients from abroad are quite surprised that China can manufacture the same human collagen for less than 5% of what it costs in the west." Skin from prisoners used to be even less expensive, he said. "Nowadays there is a certain fee that has to be paid to the court." The agent's admission comes after an inquiry into the cosmetic surgery industry in Britain, commissioned by the Department of Health, pointed to the need for new regulations controlling collagen treatments. Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, has highlighted the inquiry's concerns about the use of cadavers for cosmetic treatments. "Cosmetic procedures are a rapidly growing area of private health care," he said. "We must ensure we properly protect patients' safety by improving the training and regulation." The DoH has agreed to the inquiry's recommendations, but is waiting for the European commission to draw up proposals for laws governing cosmetic products. It could be several years before this legislation takes force. Meanwhile, cosmetic treatments, including those with with aesthetic fillers, are growing rapidly in popularity, with around 150,000 injections or implants administered each year in the UK. Lip enhancement treatments are one of the most popular, costing an average of £170. Some fillers are made from cattle or pig tissue, and others from humans. The DoH believes that there may be a risk of transmission of blood-borne viruses and even vCJD from collagen containing human tissue. Although there is as yet no evidence that this has happened, the inquiry found that some collagen injections had triggered inflammatory reactions causing permanent discomfort, scarring and disfigurement. In their report, the inquiry team said that if there was a risk, "action should be taken to protect patient safety through regulation". While new regulations are to be drawn up, the department is currently powerless to regulate most human-tissue fillers intended for injection or implant, as they occupy a legal grey area. Most products are not governed by regulations controlling medical products, as they are not classified as medicines. They also escape cosmetics regulations, which only apply to substances used on the surface of the skin and not those injected beneath it. The Healthcare Commission is planning new regulations for cosmetic surgery clinics next year, but these will not control the substances used by plastic surgeons. Hand transplants A number of plastic surgeons have told the Guardian that they have been hearing rumours about the use of tissue harvested from executed prisoners for several years. Peter Butler, a consultant plastic surgeon and government adviser, said there had been rumours that Chinese surgeons had performed hand transplants using hands from executed prisoners. One transplant centre was believed to be adjacent to an execution ground. "I can see the utility of it, as they have access and no ethical objection," he said. "The main concern would be infective risk." Andrew Lee of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who has visited China to examine transplant techniques, said he had heard similar rumours. Manufacturers of aesthetic fillers said they had seen Chinese collagen products on sale at trade fairs, but had not seen any labelled Chinese-made in the UK. Dan Cohen, whose US-based company, Inamed, produces collagen products, said: "We have come across Chinese products in the market place. But most products from China are being sold 'off-label' or are being imported illegally." In China, authorities deny that prisoners' body parts are harvested without their consent. However, there is some evidence to suggest it may be happening. In June 2001, Wang Guoqi, a Chinese former military physician, told US congressmen he had worked at execution grounds helping surgeons to harvest the organs of more than 100 executed prisoners, without prior consent. The surgeons used converted vans parked near the execution grounds to begin dissecting the bodies, he told the house international relations committee's human rights panel. Skin was said to be highly valued for the treatment of burn victims, and Dr Wang said that in 1995 he skinned a shot convict's body while the man's heart was still beating. Dr Wang, who was seeking asylum in the US, also alleged that corneas and other body tissue were removed for transplant, and said his hospital, the Tianjin paramilitary police general brigade hospital, sold body parts for profit. Human rights activists in China have repeatedly claimed that organs have been harvested from the corpses of executed prisoners and sold to surgeons offering transplants to fee-paying foreigners. Dr Wang's allegations infuriated the Chinese authorities, and in a rare move officials publicly denounced him as a liar. The government said organs were transplanted from executed prisoners only if they and their family gave consent. Although the exact number of people facing the death penalty in China is an official secret, Amnesty International believes around 3,400 were executed last year, with a further 6,000 on death row. What is it? Collagen is a major structural protein found in abundance in skin, bones, tendons and other connective tissue. Matted sheets of collagen give skin its toughness and by winding into molecular "cables", it adds strength to tendons. What is it used for? Collagen injections are used in cosmetic surgery to plump up lips and flatten out wrinkles. After botox, collagen injections are the second-most popular cosmetic operations in Britain. Collagen does not have a permanent effect and several injections are often needed. What else is it good for? Collagen was being put to good use as far back as the stone age. Neolithic cave dwellers around the Dead Sea are believed to have used it as a primitive form of glue some 8,000 years ago. More recently, researchers have developed a form that can be poured or injected into wounds to seal them. Where does it come from? A number of sources. Some companies extract it from cow skin and treat it to minimise the risk of allergic reactions or infection. Others collect it from human donors or extract cells from the patient before growing the necessary amount in a laboratory. Is it safe? Collagen can cause allergic reactions if it has not been treated correctly, and there is a theoretical risk of disease being passed on. A small amount of collagen is often injected into the skin a few weeks before treatment to test for possible allergic reactions. Earlier this year, Sir Liam Donaldson warned that collagen injections could spread conditions such as hepatitis and variant CJD, the human form of mad cow disease.

Amid Katrina Chaos, Congressman Used National Guard to Visit Home

Sept. 13, 2005 — -- Amid the chaos and confusion that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, a congressman used National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his personal belongings -- even while New Orleans residents were trying to get rescued from rooftops, ABC News has learned. On Sept. 2 -- five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast -- Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who represents New Orleans and is a senior member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was allowed through the military blockades set up around the city to reach the Superdome, where thousands of evacuees had been taken. Military sources tells ABC News that Jefferson, an eight-term Democratic congressman, asked the National Guard that night to take him on a tour of the flooded portions of his congressional district. A five-ton military truck and a half dozen military police were dispatched. Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News that during the tour, Jefferson asked that the truck take him to his home on Marengo Street, in the affluent uptown neighborhood in his congressional district. According to Schneider, this was not part of Jefferson's initial request. Jefferson defended the expedition, saying he set out to see how residents were coping at the Superdome and in his neighborhood. He also insisted that he did not ask the National Guard to transport him. "I did not seek the use of military assets to help me get around my city," Jefferson told ABC News. "There was shooting going on. There was sniping going on. They thought I should be escorted by some military guards, both to the convention center, the Superdome and uptown." The water reached to the third step of Jefferson's house, a military source familiar with the incident told ABC News, and the vehicle pulled up onto Jefferson's front lawn so he wouldn't have to walk in the water. Jefferson went into the house alone, the source says, while the soldiers waited on the porch for about an hour. Finally, according to the source, Jefferson emerged with a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box about the size of a small refrigerator, which the enlisted men loaded up into the truck. "I don't think there is any explanation for an elected official using resources for their own personal use, when those resources should be doing search and rescue, or they should be helping with law enforcement in the city," said Jerry Hauer, a homeland security expert and ABC News consultant. Jefferson said the trip was entirely appropriate. It took only a few minutes to retrieve his belongings, he said, and the truck stayed at his house for an hour in part to assist neighbors. "This wasn't about me going to my house. It was about me going to my district," he said. Two Heavy Trucks and Helicopter Involved The Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News the truck became stuck as it waited for Jefferson to retrieve his belongings. Two weeks later, the vehicle's tire tracks were still visible on the lawn. The soldiers signaled to helicopters in the air for aid. Military sources say a Coast Guard helicopter pilot saw the signal and flew to Jefferson's home. The chopper was already carrying four rescued New Orleans residents at the time. A rescue diver descended from the helicopter, but the congressman decided against going up in the helicopter, sources say. The pilot sent the diver down again, but Jefferson again declined to go up the helicopter. After spending approximately 45 minutes with Jefferson, the helicopter went on to rescue three additional New Orleans residents before it ran low on fuel and was forced to end its mission. "Forty-five minutes can be an eternity to somebody that is drowning, to somebody that is sitting in a roof, and it needs to be used its primary purpose during an emergency," said Hauer. Coast Guard Cmdr. Brendan McPherson told ABC News, "We did have an aircraft that responded to a signal of distress where the congressman was located. The congressman did decline rescue at the time so the helicopter picked up three other people. "I can't comment on why the congressman decided not to go in the aircraft," McPherson said. "Did it take a little more time to send the rescue swimmer back a second time? Yes … You'd have to ask the congressman if it was a waste of time or not." The Louisiana National Guard then sent a second five-ton truck to rescue the first truck, and Jefferson and his personal items were returned to the Superdome. Schneider said he could not comment on whether the excursion was appropriate. "We're in no position to comment on an order given to a soldier. You're not going to get a statement from the Louisiana National Guard saying whether it was right or wrong. That was the mission we were assigned." Jefferson insisted the expedition did not distract from rescue efforts. "They actually picked up a lot of people while we were there," he said. "The young soldier said, 'It's a good thing we came up here because a lot of people would not have been rescued had we not been in the neighborhood.'" Jefferson's Homes Searched in Unrelated Investigation In an unrelated matter, authorities recently searched Jefferson's property as part of a federal investigation into the finances of a high-tech firm. Last month FBI officials raided Jefferson's house as well as his home in Washington, D.C., his car and his accountant's house. Jefferson has not commented on that matter, except to say he is cooperating with the investigation. But he has emerged as a major voice in the post-Katrina political debate. "The levee system that had protected New Orleans for hundreds of years had failed," he said on the House floor on Sept. 7. "Our city was inundated, 80 percent of it, with deadly water. Thousands of lives were lost, many drowned, trapped in their homes. Others were lost trying to escape the fury." Last week, Jefferson set up a special trust fund for contributions to his legal defense in light of the FBI investigation. A senior federal law enforcement source tells ABC News that investigators are interested in learning if Jefferson moved any materials relevant to the investigation. Jefferson says he did not. ABC News' Sarah H. Rosenberg, Chris Isham and Ted Gerstein contributed to this report.

IHTFP Hack Gallery: Welcome to the IHTFP Gallery!

The IHTFP Gallery is dedicated to documenting the history of hacking at MIT. The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call "cracking"). (More About the IHTFP Gallery and FAQ .)

The Common Lisp web server formerly known as TBNL

Hunchentoot - The Common Lisp web server formerly known as TBNL Abstract Hunchentoot is a web server written in Common Lisp and at the same time a toolkit for building dynamic websites. As a stand-alone web server, Hunchentoot is capable of HTTP/1.1 chunking (both directions), persistent connections (keep-alive), and SSL. Hunchentoot provides facilities like automatic session handling (with and without cookies), logging, customizable error handling, and easy access to GET and POST parameters sent by the client. It does not include functionality to programmatically generate HTML output. For this task you can use any library you like, e.g. (shameless self-plug) CL-WHO or HTML-TEMPLATE. Hunchentoot talks with its front-end or with the client over TCP/IP sockets and optionally uses multiprocessing to handle several requests at the same time. Therefore, it cannot be implemented completely in portable Common Lisp. It currently works with LispWorks and all Lisps which are supported by the compatibility layers usocket and Bordeaux Threads. Hunchentoot comes with a BSD-style license so you can basically do with it whatever you want. Hunchentoot is (or was) for example used by QuickHoney, City Farming, Heike Stephan. Download shortcut: http://weitz.de/files/hunchentoot.tar.gz. :HUNCHENTOOT-NO-SSL *FEATURES* Hunchentoot will only work with Lisps where the character codes of all Latin-1 characters coincide with their Unicode code points (which is the case for all current implementations I know). Hunchentoot itself together with this documentation can be downloaded from https://github.com/edicl/hunchentoot/archive/v1.3.0.tar.gz. The current version is 1.3.0. The preferred method to compile and load Hunchentoot is via ASDF. If you want to avoid downloading and installing all the dependencies manually, give Zach Beane's excellent Quicklisp system a try. Hunchentoot and its dependencies can also be installed with clbuild. There's also a port for Gentoo Linux thanks to Matthew Kennedy. The current development version of Hunchentoot can be found at https://github.com/edicl/hunchentoot. If you want to send patches, please fork the github repository and send pull requests. "/hunchentoot" Of course, there are several other (more lightweight) web proxies that you could use instead of Apache. The development version of Hunchentoot can be found on github. Please use the github issue tracking system to submit bug reports. Patches are welcome, please use GitHub pull requests. If you want to make a change, please read this first. http://127.0.0.1:4242/ By default, Hunchentoot serves the files from the www/ directory in its source tree. In the distribution, that directory contains a HTML version of the documentation as well as the error templates. The location of the document root directory can be specified when creating a new ACCEPTOR instance by the way of the ACCEPTOR-DOCUMENT-ROOT . Likewise, the location of the error template directory can be specified by the ACCEPTOR-ERROR-TEMPLATE-DIRECTORY . Both ACCEPTOR-DOCUMENT-ROOT and ACCEPTOR-ERROR-TEMPLATE-DIRECTORY can be specified using a logical pathname, which will be translated once when the ACCEPTOR is instantiated. The EASY-ACCEPTOR class implements a framework for developing web applications. Handlers are defined using the DEFINE-EASY-HANDLER macro. Request dispatching is performed according to the list of dispatch functions in *DISPATCH-TABLE* . Each of the functions on that list is called to determine whether it wants to handle the request, provided as single argument. If a dispatcher function wants to handle the request, it returns another function to actually create the desired page. DEFINE-EASY-HANDLER is accompanied by a set of dispatcher creation functions that can be used to create dispatchers for standard tasks. These are documented in the subchapter on easy handlers Now be a bit more adventurous, try this http://127.0.0.1:4242/yo http://127.0.0.1:4242/yo?name=Dude Hunchentoot comes with a little example website which you can use to see if it works and which should also demonstrate a couple of the things you can do with Hunchentoot. To start the example website, enter the following code into your listener: http://127.0.0.1:4242/hunchentoot/test Adam Petersen has written a book called "Lisp for the Web" which explains how Hunchentoot and some other libraries can be used to build web sites. Here is some software which extends Hunchentoot or is based on it: Clack is a web server abstraction layer, defaulting to Hunchentoot. hunchentoot-cgi (by Cyrus Harmon) provides CGI handlers for Hunchentoot. CL-WEBDAV is a WebDAV server based on Hunchentoot. RESTAS is a web framework based on Hunchentoot. Caveman, Radiance, Snooze or again Weblocks are frameworks compatible with it. [Standard class] acceptor To create a Hunchentoot webserver, you make an instance of this class or one of its subclasses and use the generic function START to start it (and STOP to stop it). Use the :port initarg if you don't want to listen on the default http port 80. If 0 is specified for the port, the system chooses a random port to listen on. The port number choosen can be retrieved using the ACCEPTOR-PORT accessor. The port number chosen is retained across stopping and starting the acceptor. There are other initargs most of which you probably won't need very often. They are explained in detail in the docstrings of the slot definitions. Unless you are in a Lisp without MP capabilities, you can have several active instances of ACCEPTOR (listening on different ports) at the same time. [Standard class] ssl-acceptor Create and START an instance of this class (instead of ACCEPTOR ) if you want an https server. There are two required initargs, :SSL-CERTIFICATE-FILE and :SSL-PRIVATEKEY-FILE , for pathname designators denoting the certificate file and the key file in PEM format. On LispWorks, you can have both in one file in which case the second initarg is optional. You can also use the :SSL-PRIVATEKEY-PASSWORD initarg to provide a password (as a string) for the key file (or NIL , the default, for no password). The default port for SSL-ACCEPTOR instances is 443 instead of 80 [Generic function] start acceptor => acceptor Starts acceptor so that it begins accepting connections. Returns the acceptor. [Generic function] stop acceptor &key soft => acceptor Stops the acceptor so that it no longer accepts requests. If soft is true, and there are any requests in progress, wait until all requests are fully processed, but meanwhile do not accept new requests. Note that soft must not be set when calling stop from within a request handler, as that will deadlock. [Generic function] started-p acceptor => generalized-boolean Tells if acceptor has been started. The default implementation simply queries acceptor for its listening status, so if T is returned to the calling thread, then some thread has called start or some thread's call to stop hasn't finished. If NIL is returned either some thread has called stop , or some thread's call to start hasn't finished or start was never called at all for acceptor . [Special variable] *acceptor* The current ACCEPTOR object in the context of a request. [Generic function] acceptor-listen-backlog listen-backlog => number-of-pending-connections Number of pending connections allowed in the listen socket before the kernel rejects further incoming connections. Non-LispWorks only. [Generic readers] acceptor-address acceptor => address acceptor-port acceptor => port acceptor-read-timeout acceptor => read-timeout acceptor-ssl-certificate-file ssl-acceptor => ssl-certificate-file acceptor-ssl-privatekey-file ssl-acceptor => ssl-privatekey-file acceptor-ssl-privatekey-password ssl-acceptor => ssl-privatekey-password acceptor-write-timeout acceptor => write-timeout These are readers for various slots of ACCEPTOR objects (and some of them obviously only make sense for SSL-ACCEPTOR objects). See the docstrings of these slots for more information and note that there are corresponding initargs for all of them. [Generic accessors] acceptor-access-log-destination acceptor => (or pathname null) (setf ( acceptor-access-log-destination acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-document-root acceptor => (or pathname null) (setf ( acceptor-document-root acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-error-template-directory acceptor => (or pathname null) (setf ( acceptor-error-template-directory acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-input-chunking-p acceptor => input-chunking-p (setf ( acceptor-input-chunking-p acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-message-log-destination acceptor => (or pathname null) (setf ( acceptor-message-log-destination acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-name acceptor => name (setf ( acceptor-name acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-output-chunking-p acceptor => output-chunking-p (setf ( acceptor-output-chunking-p acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-persistent-connections-p acceptor => persistent-connections-p (setf ( acceptor-persistent-connections-p acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-reply-class acceptor => reply-class (setf ( acceptor-reply-class acceptor ) new-value) acceptor-request-class acceptor => request-class (setf ( acceptor-request-class acceptor ) new-value) These are accessors for various slots of ACCEPTOR objects. See the docstrings of these slots for more information and note that there are corresponding initargs for all of them. [Generic function] acceptor-ssl-p acceptor => generalized-boolean Returns a true value if acceptor uses SSL connections. The default is to unconditionally return NIL and subclasses of ACCEPTOR must specialize this method to signal that they're using secure connections - see the SSL-ACCEPTOR class. [Special variable] *default-connection-timeout* The default connection timeout used when an acceptor is reading from and writing to a socket stream. Note that some Lisps allow you to set different timeouts for reading and writing and you can specify both values via initargs when you create an acceptor. [Generic function] acceptor-remove-session acceptor session => | This function is called whenever a session in ACCEPTOR is being destroyed because of a session timout or an explicit REMOVE-SESSION call. If you just want to use the standard acceptors that come with Hunchentoot, you don't need to know anything about the functions listed in this section. [Generic function] start-listening acceptor => | Sets up a listen socket for the given acceptor and enables it to listen to incoming connections. This function is called from the thread that starts the acceptor initially and may return errors resulting from the listening operation (like 'address in use' or similar). [Generic function] accept-connections acceptor => nil In a loop, accepts a connection and hands it over to the acceptor's taskmaster for processing using HANDLE-INCOMING-CONNECTION . On LispWorks, this function returns immediately, on other Lisps it returns only once the acceptor has been stopped. [Generic function] process-connection acceptor socket => nil This function is called by the taskmaster when a new client connection has been established. Its arguments are the ACCEPTOR object and a LispWorks socket handle or a usocket socket stream object in socket . It reads the request headers, sets up the request and reply objects, and hands over to PROCESS-REQUEST which calls HANDLE-REQUEST to select and call a handler for the request and sends its reply to the client. This is done in a loop until the stream has to be closed or until a connection timeout occurs. It is probably not a good idea to re-implement this method until you really, really know what you're doing. Handlers may call to the DETACH-SOCKET generic function to indicate that no further requests should be handled on the connection by Hunchentoot, and that responsibility for the socket is assumed by third-party software. This can be used by specialized handlers that wish to hand over connection polling or processing to functions outside of Hunchentoot, i.e. for connection multiplexing or implementing specialized client protocols. Hunchentoot will finish processing the request and the PROCESS-CONNECTION function will return without closing the connection. At that point, the acceptor may interact with the socket in whatever fashion required. [Generic function] detach-socket acceptor => nil Indicate to Hunchentoot that it should stop serving requests on the current request's socket. Hunchentoot will finish processing the current request and then return from PROCESS-CONNECTION without closing the connection to the client. DETACH-SOCKET can only be called from within a request handler function. [Generic function] initialize-connection-stream acceptor stream => stream Can be used to modify the stream which is used to communicate between client and server before the request is read. The default method of ACCEPTOR does nothing, but see for example the method defined for SSL-ACCEPTOR . All methods of this generic function must return the stream to use. [Generic function] reset-connection-stream acceptor stream => stream Resets the stream which is used to communicate between client and server after one request has been served so that it can be used to process the next request. This generic function is called after a request has been processed and must return the stream. [Generic function] acceptor-log-access acceptor &key return-code Function to call to log access to the acceptor. The return-code keyword argument contains additional information about the request to log. In addition, it can use the standard request and reply accessor functions that are available to handler functions to find out more information about the request. [Generic function] acceptor-log-message acceptor log-level format-string &rest format-arguments Function to call to log messages by the acceptor . It must accept a severity level for the message, which will be one of :ERROR, :INFO, or :WARNING, a format string and an arbitary number of formatting arguments. [Generic function] acceptor-status-message acceptor http-return-code &key &allow-other-keys This function is called when a request's handler has been called but failed to provide content to send back to the client. It converts the HTTP-STATUS-CODE to some request contents, typically a human readable description of the status code to be displayed to the user. If an ERROR-TEMPLATE-DIRECTORY is set in the current acceptor and the directory contains a file corresponding to HTTP-STATUS-CODE named <code>.html, that file is sent to the client after variable substitution. Variables are referenced by ${<variable-name>}. Additional keyword arguments may be provided which are made available to the templating logic as substitution variables. These variables can be interpolated into error message templates in, which contains the current URL relative to the server and without GET parameters. In addition to the variables corresponding to keyword arguments, the script-name, lisp-implementation-type, lisp-implementation-version and hunchentoot-version variables are available. (asdf:load-system "hunchentoot") (asdf:load-system "drakma") ;;; Subclass ACCEPTOR (defclass vhost (hunchentoot:acceptor) ;; slots ((dispatch-table :initform '() :accessor dispatch-table :documentation "List of dispatch functions")) ;; options (:default-initargs ; default-initargs must be used :address "127.0.0.1")) ; because ACCEPTOR uses it ;;; Specialise ACCEPTOR-DISPATCH-REQUEST for VHOSTs (defmethod hunchentoot:acceptor-dispatch-request ((vhost vhost) request) ;; try REQUEST on each dispatcher in turn (mapc (lambda (dispatcher) (let ((handler (funcall dispatcher request))) (when handler ; Handler found. FUNCALL it and return result (return-from hunchentoot:acceptor-dispatch-request (funcall handler))))) (dispatch-table vhost)) (call-next-method)) ;;; ====================================================================== ;;; Now all we need to do is test it ;;; Instantiate VHOSTs (defvar vhost1 (make-instance 'vhost :port 50001)) (defvar vhost2 (make-instance 'vhost :port 50002)) ;;; Populate each dispatch table (push (hunchentoot:create-prefix-dispatcher "/foo" 'foo1) (dispatch-table vhost1)) (push (hunchentoot:create-prefix-dispatcher "/foo" 'foo2) (dispatch-table vhost2)) ;;; Define handlers (defun foo1 () "Hello") (defun foo2 () "Goodbye") ;;; Start VHOSTs (hunchentoot:start vhost1) (hunchentoot:start vhost2) ;;; Make some requests (drakma:http-request "http://127.0.0.1:50001/foo") ;;; =| ;;; 127.0.0.1 - [2012-06-08 14:30:39] "GET /foo HTTP/1.1" 200 5 "-" "Drakma/1.2.6 (SBCL 1.0.56; Linux; 2.6.32-5-686; http://weitz.de/drakma/)" ;;; => ;;; "Hello" ;;; 200 ;;; ((:CONTENT-LENGTH . "5") (:DATE . "Fri, 08 Jun 2012 14:30:39 GMT") ;;; (:SERVER . "Hunchentoot 1.2.3") (:CONNECTION . "Close") ;;; (:CONTENT-TYPE . "text/html; charset=utf-8")) ;;; #<PURI:URI http://127.0.0.1:50001/foo> ;;; #<FLEXI-STREAMS:FLEXI-IO-STREAM {CA90059}> ;;; T ;;; "OK" (drakma:http-request "http://127.0.0.1:50002/foo") ;;; =| ;;; 127.0.0.1 - [2012-06-08 14:30:47] "GET /foo HTTP/1.1" 200 7 "-" "Drakma/1.2.6 (SBCL 1.0.56; Linux; 2.6.32-5-686; http://weitz.de/drakma/)" ;;; => ;;; "Goodbye" ;;; 200 ;;; ((:CONTENT-LENGTH . "7") (:DATE . "Fri, 08 Jun 2012 14:30:47 GMT") ;;; (:SERVER . "Hunchentoot 1.2.3") (:CONNECTION . "Close") ;;; (:CONTENT-TYPE . "text/html; charset=utf-8")) ;;; #<PURI:URI http://127.0.0.1:50002/foo> ;;; #<FLEXI-STREAMS:FLEXI-IO-STREAM {CAE8059}> ;;; T ;;; "OK" You can control the resources consumed by a threaded taskmaster via two initargs. :max-thread-count lets you set the maximum number of request threads that can be processes simultaneously. If this is nil , the is no thread limit imposed. :max-accept-count lets you set the maximum number of requests that can be outstanding (i.e. being processed or queued for processing). If :max-thread-count is supplied and :max-accept-count is NIL , then a +HTTP-SERVICE-UNAVAILABLE+ error will be generated if there are more than the max-thread-count threads processing requests. If both :max-thread-count and :max-accept-count are supplied, then max-thread-count must be less than max-accept-count; if more than max-thread-count requests are being processed, then requests up to max-accept-count will be queued until a thread becomes available. If more than max-accept-count requests are outstanding, then a +HTTP-SERVICE-UNAVAILABLE+ error will be generated. In a load-balanced environment with multiple Hunchentoot servers, it's reasonable to provide :max-thread-count but leave :max-accept-count null. This will immediately result in +HTTP-SERVICE-UNAVAILABLE+ when one server is out of resources, so the load balancer can try to find another server. In an environment with a single Hunchentoot server, it's reasonable to provide both :max-thread-count and a somewhat larger value for :max-accept-count . This will cause a server that's almost out of resources to wait a bit; if the server is completely out of resources, then the reply will be +HTTP-SERVICE-UNAVAILABLE+ . The default for these values is 100 and 120, respectively. If you want to implement your own taskmasters, you should subclass TASKMASTER or one of its subclasses, SINGLE-THREADED-TASKMASTER or ONE-THREAD-PER-CONNECTION-TASKMASTER , and specialize the generic functions in this section. [Standard class] taskmaster An instance of this class is responsible for distributing the work of handling requests for its acceptor. This is an "abstract" class in the sense that usually only instances of subclasses of TASKMASTER will be used. [Standard class] one-thread-per-connection-taskmaster A taskmaster that starts one thread for listening to incoming requests and one thread for each incoming connection. This is the default taskmaster implementation for multi-threaded Lisp implementations. [Standard class] single-threaded-taskmaster A taskmaster that runs synchronously in the thread where the START function was invoked (or in the case of LispWorks in the thread started by COMM:START-UP-SERVER ). This is the simplest possible taskmaster implementation in that its methods do nothing but calling their acceptor "sister" methods - EXECUTE-ACCEPTOR calls ACCEPT-CONNECTIONS , HANDLE-INCOMING-CONNECTION calls PROCESS-CONNECTION . [Standard class] multi-threaded-taskmaster This is an abstract class for taskmasters that use multiple threads; it is not a concrete class and you should not instantiate it with MAKE-INSTANCE . Instead, you should instantiate its subclass ONE-THREAD-PER-CONNECTION-TASKMASTER described above. MULTI-THREADED-TASKMASTER is intended to be inherited from by extensions to Hunchentoot, such as quux-hunchentoot's THREAD-POOLING-TASKMASTER , though at the moment, doing so only inherits one slot and one method, on EXECUTE-ACCEPTOR , to have it start a new thread for the acceptor, then saved in said slot. [Generic function] execute-acceptor taskmaster => result This is a callback called by the acceptor once it has performed all initial processing to start listening for incoming connections (see START-LISTENING ). It usually calls the ACCEPT-CONNECTIONS method of the acceptor, but depending on the taskmaster instance the method might be called from a new thread. [Generic function] handle-incoming-connection taskmaster socket => result This function is called by the acceptor to start processing of requests on a new incoming connection. socket is the usocket instance that represents the new connection (or a socket handle on LispWorks). The taskmaster starts processing requests on the incoming connection by calling the PROCESS-CONNECTION method of the acceptor instance. The socket argument is passed to PROCESS-CONNECTION as an argument. If the taskmaster is a multi-threaded taskmaster, HANDLE-INCOMING-THREAD will call CREATE-REQUEST-HANDLER-THREAD , which will call PROCESS-CONNECTION in a new thread. HANDLE-INCOMING-THREAD might issue a +HTTP-SERVICE-UNAVAILABLE+ error if there are too many request threads or it might block waiting for a request thread to finish. [Generic function] start-thread taskmaster thunk &key => thread This function is a callback that starts a new thread that will call the given thunk in the context of the proper taskmaster , with appropriate context-dependent keyword arguments. ONE-THREAD-PER-CONNECTION-TASKMASTER uses it in EXECUTE-ACCEPTOR and CREATE-REQUEST-HANDLER-THREAD , but specialized taskmasters may define more functions that use it. By default, it just creates a thread calling the thunk with a specified name keyword argument. Specialized taskmasters may wrap special bindings and condition handlers around the thunk call, register the thread in a management table, etc. [Generic function] create-request-handler-thread taskmaster socket => thread This function is called by HANDLE-INCOMING-THREAD to create a new thread which calls PROCESS-CONNECTION . If you specialize this function, you must be careful to have the thread call DECREMENT-TASKMASTER-REQUEST-COUNT before it exits. A typical method will look like this: (defmethod create-request-handler-thread ((taskmaster monitor-taskmaster) socket) (bt:make-thread (lambda () (with-monitor-error-handlers (unwind-protect (with-monitor-variable-bindings (process-connection (taskmaster-acceptor taskmaster) socket)) (decrement-taskmaster-request-count taskmaster)))))) [Generic function] shutdown taskmaster => taskmaster Shuts down the taskmaster, i.e. frees all resources that were set up by it. For example, a multi-threaded taskmaster might terminate all threads that are currently associated with it. This function is called by the acceptor's STOP method. [Generic accessor] taskmaster-acceptor taskmaster => acceptor (setf ( taskmaster-acceptor taskmaster ) new-value) This is an accessor for the slot of a TASKMASTER object that links back to the acceptor it is associated with. The ACCEPTOR class defines a ACCEPTOR-DISPATCH-REQUEST generic function which is used to actually dispatch the request. This function is called by the default method of HANDLE-REQUEST . Each ACCEPTOR-DISPATCH-REQUEST method looks at the request object and depending on its contents decides to either handle the request or call the next method. In order to dispatch a request, Hunchentoot calls the ACCEPTOR-DISPATCH-REQUEST generic functions. The method for ACCEPTOR tries to serve a static file relative to it's ACCEPTOR-DOCUMENT-ROOT . Application specific acceptor subclasses will typically perform URL parsing and dispatching according to the policy that is required. The default method of HANDLE-REQUEST sets up standard logging and error handling before it calls the acceptor's request dispatcher. Request handlers do their work by modifying the reply object if necessary and by eventually returning the response body in the form of a string or a binary sequence. As an alternative, they can also call SEND-HEADERS and write directly to a stream. The EASY-ACCEPTOR class defines a method for ACCEPTOR-DISPATCH-REQUEST that walks through the list *DISPATCH-TABLE* which consists of dispatch functions. Each of these functions accepts the request object as its only argument and either returns a request handler to handle the request or NIL which means that the next dispatcher in the list will be tried. A request handler is a function of zero arguments which relies on the special variable *REQUEST* to access the request instance being serviced. If all dispatch functions return NIL , the next ACCEPTOR-DISPATCH-REQUEST will be called. N.B. All functions and variables in this section are related to the easy request dispatch mechanism and are meaningless if you're using your own request dispatcher. [Standard class] easy-acceptor This class defines no additional slots with respect to ACCEPTOR . It only serves as an additional type for dispatching calls to ACCEPTOR-DISPATCH-REQUEST . In order to use the easy handler framework, acceptors of this class or one of its subclasses must be used. [Standard class] easy-ssl-acceptor This class mixes the SSL-ACCEPTOR and the EASY-ACCEPTOR classes. It is used when both ssl and the easy handler framework are required. [Special variable] *dispatch-table* A global list of dispatch functions. The initial value is a list consisting of the symbol DISPATCH-EASY-HANDLERS . [Function] create-prefix-dispatcher prefix handler => dispatch-fn A convenience function which will return a dispatcher that returns handler whenever the path part of the request URI starts with the string prefix . [Function] create-regex-dispatcher regex handler => dispatch-fn A convenience function which will return a dispatcher that returns handler whenever the path part of the request URI matches the CL-PPCRE regular expression regex (which can be a string, an s-expression, or a scanner). [Function] create-folder-dispatcher-and-handler uri-prefix base-path &optional content-type => dispatch-fn Creates and returns a dispatch function which will dispatch to a handler function which emits the file relative to base-path that is denoted by the URI of the request relative to uri-prefix . uri-prefix must be a string ending with a slash, base-path must be a pathname designator for an existing directory. Uses HANDLE-STATIC-FILE internally. If content-type is not NIL , it will be used as a the content type for all files in the folder. Otherwise (which is the default) the content type of each file will be determined as usual. [Function] create-static-file-dispatcher-and-handler uri path &optional content-type => result Creates and returns a request dispatch function which will dispatch to a handler function which emits the file denoted by the pathname designator PATH with content type CONTENT-TYPE if the SCRIPT-NAME of the request matches the string URI. If CONTENT-TYPE is NIL, tries to determine the content type via the file's suffix. [Macro] define-easy-handler description lambda-list [[declaration* | documentation]] form* Defines a handler as if by DEFUN and optionally registers it with a URI so that it will be found by DISPATCH-EASY-HANDLERS . description is either a symbol name or a list matching the destructuring lambda list (name &key uri acceptor-names default-parameter-type default-request-type). lambda-list is a list the elements of which are either a symbol var or a list matching the destructuring lambda list (var &key real-name parameter-type init-form request-type). The resulting handler will be a Lisp function with the name name and keyword parameters named by the var symbols. Each var will be bound to the value of the GET or POST parameter called real-name (a string) before the body of the function is executed. If real-name is not provided, it will be computed by downcasing the symbol name of var . If uri (which is evaluated) is provided, then it must be a string or a function designator for a unary function. In this case, the handler will be returned by DISPATCH-EASY-HANDLERS , if uri is a string and the script name of the current request is uri , or if uri designates a function and applying this function to the current REQUEST object returns a true value. acceptor-names (which is evaluated) can be a list of symbols which means that the handler will only be returned by DISPATCH-EASY-HANDLERS in acceptors which have one of these names (see ACCEPTOR-NAME ). acceptor-names can also be the symbol T which means that the handler will be returned by DISPATCH-EASY-HANDLERS in every acceptor. Whether the GET or POST parameter (or both) will be taken into consideration, depends on request-type which can be :GET , :POST , :BOTH , or NIL . In the last case, the value of default-request-type (the default of which is :BOTH ) will be used. The value of var will usually be a string (unless it resulted from a file upload in which case it won't be converted at all), but if parameter-type (which is evaluated) is provided, the string will be converted to another Lisp type by the following rules: If the corresponding GET or POST parameter wasn't provided by the client, var 's value will be NIL . If parameter-type is 'STRING , var 's value remains as is. If parameter-type is 'INTEGER and the parameter string consists solely of decimal digits, var 's value will be the corresponding integer, otherwise NIL . If parameter-type is 'KEYWORD , var 's value will be the keyword obtained by interning the upcased parameter string into the keyword package. If parameter-type is 'CHARACTER and the parameter string is of length one, var 's value will be the single character of this string, otherwise NIL . If parameter-type is 'BOOLEAN , var 's value will always be T (unless it is NIL by the first rule above, of course). If parameter-type is any other atom, it is supposed to be a function designator for a unary function which will be called to convert the string to something else. Those were the rules for simple parameter types, but parameter-type can also be a list starting with one of the symbols LIST , ARRAY , or HASH-TABLE . The second value of the list must always be a simple parameter type as in the last paragraph - we'll call it the inner type below. In the case of 'LIST , all GET/POST parameters called real-name will be collected, converted to the inner type as by the rules above, and assembled into a list which will be the value of var . In the case of 'ARRAY , all GET/POST parameters which have a name like the result of (format nil "~A[~A]" real-name n) where n is a non-negative integer, will be assembled into an array where the n th element will be set accordingly, after conversion to the inner type. The array, which will become the value of var , will be big enough to hold all matching parameters, but not bigger. Array elements not set as described above will be NIL . Note that VAR will always be bound to an array, which may be empty, so it will never be NIL , even if no appropriate GET/POST parameters are found. The full form of a 'HASH-TABLE parameter type is (hash-table inner-type key-type test-function) but key-type and test-function can be left out in which case they default to 'STRING and 'EQUAL , respectively. For this parameter type, all GET/POST parameters which have a name like the result of (format nil "~A{~A}" real-name key) (where key is a string that doesn't contain curly brackets) will become the values (after conversion to inner-type ) of a hash table with test function test-function where key (after conversion to key-type ) will be the corresponding key. Note that var will always be bound to a hash table, which may be empty, so it will never be NIL , even if no appropriate GET/POST parameters are found. To make matters even more complicated, the three compound parameter types also have an abbreviated form - just one of the symbols LIST , ARRAY , or HASH-TABLE . In this case, the inner type will default to 'STRING . If parameter-type is not provided or NIL , default-parameter-type (the default of which is 'STRING ) will be used instead. If the result of the computations above would be that var would be bound to NIL , then init-form (if provided) will be evaluated instead, and var will be bound to the result of this evaluation. Handlers built with this macro are constructed in such a way that the resulting Lisp function is useful even outside of Hunchentoot. Specifically, all the parameter computations above will only happen if *REQUEST* is bound, i.e. if we're within a Hunchentoot request. Otherwise, var will always be bound to the result of evaluating init-form unless a corresponding keyword argument is provided. The example code that comes with Hunchentoot contains an example which demonstrates some of the features of DEFINE-EASY-HANDLER . [Function] dispatch-easy-handlers request => result This is a dispatcher which returns the appropriate handler defined with DEFINE-EASY-HANDLER , if there is one. request If you need more fine-grained control over the behaviour of request objects, you can subclass REQUEST and initialize the REQUEST-CLASS slot of the ACCEPTOR class accordingly. The acceptor will generate request objects of the class named by this slot. [Standard class] request Objects of this class hold all the information about an incoming request. They are created automatically by acceptors and can be accessed by the corresponding handler. You should not mess with the slots of these objects directly, but you can subclass REQUEST in order to implement your own behaviour. See the REQUEST-CLASS slot of the ACCEPTOR class. [Special variable] *request* The current REQUEST object while in the context of a request. [Function] real-remote-addr &optional request => string{, list} Returns the ' X-Forwarded-For ' incoming http header as the second value in the form of a list of IP addresses and the first element of this list as the first value if this header exists. Otherwise returns the value of REMOTE-ADDR as the only value. [Function] parameter name &optional request => string Returns the GET or the POST parameter with name name (a string) - or NIL if there is none. If both a GET and a POST parameter with the same name exist the GET parameter is returned. Search is case-sensitive. See also GET-PARAMETER and POST-PARAMETER . [Function] get-parameter name &optional request => string Returns the value of the GET parameter (as provided via the request URI) named by the string name as a string (or NIL if there ain't no GET parameter with this name). Note that only the first value will be returned if the client provided more than one GET parameter with the name name . See also GET-PARAMETERS* . [Function] post-parameter name &optional request => string Returns the value of the POST parameter (as provided in the request's body) named by the string name . Note that only the first value will be returned if the client provided more than one POST parameter with the name name . This value will usually be a string (or NIL if there ain't no POST parameter with this name). If, however, the browser sent a file through a multipart/form-data form, the value of this function is a three-element list (path file-name content-type) where path is a pathname denoting the place were the uploaded file was stored, file-name (a string) is the file name sent by the browser, and content-type (also a string) is the content type sent by the browser. The file denoted by path will be deleted after the request has been handled - you have to move or copy it somewhere else if you want to keep it. POST parameters will only be computed if the content type of the request body was multipart/form-data or application/x-www-form-urlencoded . Although this function is called POST-PARAMETER , you can instruct Hunchentoot to compute these parameters for other request methods by setting *METHODS-FOR-POST-PARAMETERS* . See also POST-PARAMETERS and *TMP-DIRECTORY* . [Function] get-parameters* &optional request => alist Returns an alist of all GET parameters (as provided via the request URI). The car of each element of this list is the parameter's name while the cdr is its value (as a string). The elements of this list are in the same order as they were within the request URI. See also GET-PARAMETER . [Function] post-parameters* &optional request => alist Returns an alist of all POST parameters (as provided via the request's body). The car of each element of this list is the parameter's name while the cdr is its value. The elements of this list are in the same order as they were within the request's body. See also POST-PARAMETER . [Special variable] *methods-for-post-parameters* A list of the request method types (as keywords) for which Hunchentoot will try to compute post-parameters . [Function] cookie-in name &optional request => string Returns the cookie with the name name (a string) as sent by the browser - or NIL if there is none. [Function] cookies-in* &optional request => alist Returns an alist of all cookies associated with the REQUEST object request . [Function] host &optional request => host Returns the 'Host' incoming http header value. [Function] query-string* &optional request => string Returns the query string of the REQUEST object request . That's the part behind the question mark (i.e. the GET parameters). [Function] referer &optional request => result Returns the 'Referer' (sic!) http header. [Function] request-method* &optional request => keyword Returns the request method as a Lisp keyword. [Function] request-uri* &optional request => uri Returns the request URI. [Function] server-protocol* &optional request => keyword Returns the request protocol as a Lisp keyword. [Function] user-agent &optional request => result Returns the 'User-Agent' http header. [Function] header-in* name &optional request => header Returns the incoming header with name name . name can be a keyword (recommended) or a string. [Function] headers-in* &optional request => alist Returns an alist of the incoming headers associated with the REQUEST object request . [Function] remote-addr* &optional request => address Returns the address the current request originated from. [Function] remote-port* &optional request => port Returns the port the current request originated from. [Function] local-addr* &optional request => address The IP address of the local system that the client connected to. [Function] local-port* &optional request => port The TCP port number of the local system that the client connected to. [Function] script-name* &optional request => script-name Returns the file name of the REQUEST object request . That's the requested URI without the query string (i.e the GET parameters). [Accessor] aux-request-value symbol &optional request => value, present-p (setf ( aux-request-value symbol &optional request ) new-value) This accessor can be used to associate arbitrary data with the the symbol symbol in the REQUEST object request . present-p is true if such data was found, otherwise NIL . [Function] delete-aux-request-value symbol &optional request => | Removes the value associated with symbol from the REQUEST object request . [Function] authorization &optional request => result Returns as two values the user and password (if any) as encoded in the 'AUTHORIZATION' header. Returns NIL if there is no such header. [Special variable] *hunchentoot-default-external-format* The external format used to compute the REQUEST object. [Special variable] *file-upload-hook* If this is not NIL , it should be a unary function which will be called with a pathname for each file which is uploaded to Hunchentoot. The pathname denotes the temporary file to which the uploaded file is written. The hook is called directly before the file is created. At this point, *REQUEST* is already bound to the current REQUEST object, but obviously you can't access the post parameters yet. [Function] raw-post-data &key request external-format force-text force-binary want-stream => raw-body-or-stream Returns the content sent by the client in the request body if there was any (unless the content type was multipart/form-data in which case NIL is returned). By default, the result is a string if the type of the Content-Type media type is "text" , and a vector of octets otherwise. In the case of a string, the external format to be used to decode the content will be determined from the charset parameter sent by the client (or otherwise *HUNCHENTOOT-DEFAULT-EXTERNAL-FORMAT* will be used). You can also provide an external format explicitly (through external-format ) in which case the result will unconditionally be a string. Likewise, you can provide a true value for force-text which will force Hunchentoot to act as if the type of the media type had been "text" (with external-format taking precedence if provided). Or you can provide a true value for force-binary which means that you want a vector of octets at any rate. (If both force-text and force-binary are true, an error will be signaled.) If, however, you provide a true value for want-stream , the other parameters are ignored and you'll get the content (flexi) stream to read from it yourself. It is then your responsibility to read the correct amount of data, because otherwise you won't be able to return a response to the client. The stream will have its octet position set to 0 . If the client provided a Content-Length header, the stream will also have a corresponding bound, so no matter whether the client used chunked encoding or not, you can always read until EOF. If the content type of the request was multipart/form-data or application/x-www-form-urlencoded , the content has been read by Hunchentoot already and you can't read from the stream anymore. You can call RAW-POST-DATA more than once per request, but you can't mix calls which have different values for want-stream . Note that this function is slightly misnamed because a client can send content even if the request method is not POST. [Function] recompute-request-parameters &key request external-format => | Recomputes the GET and POST parameters for the REQUEST object request . This only makes sense if you're switching external formats during the request. [Generic function] process-request request => nil This function is called by PROCESS-CONNECTION after the incoming headers have been read. It calls HANDLE-REQUEST (and is more or less just a thin wrapper around it) to select and call a handler and send the output of this handler to the client. Note that PROCESS-CONNECTION is called once per connection and loops in case of a persistent connection while PROCESS-REQUEST is called anew for each request. The return value of this function is ignored. Like PROCESS-CONNECTION , this is another function the behaviour of which you should only modify if you really, really know what you're doing. [Generic function] handle-request acceptor request => content This function is called by PROCESS-REQUEST once the request has been read and a REQUEST object has been created. Its job is to actually handle the request, i.e. to return something to the client. The default method calls the acceptor's request dispatcher, but you can of course implement a different behaviour. The default method also sets up standard error handling for the handler. Might be a good place to bind or rebind special variables which can then be accessed by your handlers. [Generic function] acceptor-dispatch-request acceptor request => content This function is called to actually dispatch the request once the standard logging and error handling has been set up. ACCEPTOR subclasses implement methods for this function in order to perform their own request routing. If a method does not want to handle the request, it is supposed to invoke CALL-NEXT-METHOD so that the next ACCEPTOR in the inheritance chain gets a chance to handle the request. [Generic readers] cookies-in request => cookies get-parameters request => get-parameters header-in name request => result headers-in request => headers post-parameters request => post-parameters query-string request => query-string remote-addr request => address remote-port request => port local-addr request => address local-port request => port request-acceptor request => acceptor request-method request => method request-uri request => uri server-protocol request => protocol script-name request => result These are various generic readers which are used to read information about a REQUEST object. If you are writing a handler, you should not use these readers but instead utilize the corresponding functions with an asterisk at the end of their name, also listed in this section. These generic readers are only exported for users who want to create their own subclasses of REQUEST . reply If you need more fine-grained control over the behaviour of reply objects, you can subclass REPLY and initialize the REPLY-CLASS slot of the ACCEPTOR class accordingly. The acceptor will generate reply objects of the class named by this slot. [Standard class] reply Objects of this class hold all the information about an outgoing reply. They are created automatically by Hunchentoot and can be accessed and modified by the corresponding handler. You should not mess with the slots of these objects directly, but you can subclass REPLY in order to implement your own behaviour. See the :reply-class initarg of the ACCEPTOR class. [Special variable] *reply* The current REPLY object in the context of a request. [Accessor] header-out name &optional reply => string (setf ( header-out name &optional reply ) new-value) HEADER-OUT returns the outgoing http header named by the keyword name if there is one, otherwise NIL . SETF of HEADER-OUT changes the current value of the header named name . If no header named name exists, it is created. For backwards compatibility, name can also be a string in which case the association between a header and its name is case-insensitive. Note that the header 'Set-Cookie' cannot be queried by HEADER-OUT and must not be set by SETF of HEADER-OUT . See also HEADERS-OUT* , CONTENT-TYPE* , CONTENT-LENGTH* , COOKIES-OUT* , and COOKIE-OUT . [Function] headers-out* &optional reply => alist Returns an alist of the outgoing headers associated with the REPLY object reply . See also HEADER-OUT . [Accessor] content-length* &optional reply => content-length (setf ( content-length* &optional reply ) new-value) The outgoing 'Content-Length' http header of reply . [Accessor] content-type* &optional reply => content-type (setf ( content-type* &optional reply ) new-value) The outgoing 'Content-Type' http header of reply . [Function] cookie-out name &optional reply => result Returns the current value of the outgoing cookie named name . Search is case-sensitive. [Accessor] cookies-out* &optional reply => alist (setf ( cookies-out* &optional reply ) new-value) Returns or sets an alist of the outgoing cookies associated with the REPLY object reply . [Accessor] return-code* &optional reply => return-code (setf ( return-code* &optional reply ) new-value) Gets or sets the http return code of reply . The return code of each REPLY object is initially set to +HTTP-OK+ . [Function] send-headers => stream Sends the initial status line and all headers as determined by the REPLY object *REPLY* . Returns a binary stream to which the body of the reply can be written. Once this function has been called, further changes to *REPLY* don't have any effect. Also, automatic handling of errors (i.e. sending the corresponding status code to the browser, etc.) is turned off for this request and functions like REDIRECT or to ABORT-REQUEST-HANDLER won't have the desired effect once the headers are sent. If your handlers return the full body as a string or as an array of octets, you should not call this function. If a handler calls SEND-HEADERS , its return value is ignored. [Accessor] reply-external-format* &optional reply => external-format (setf ( reply-external-format* &optional reply ) new-value) Gets or sets the external format of reply which is used for character output. [Special variable] *default-content-type* The default content-type header which is returned to the client. [Constants] +http-continue+ +http-switching-protocols+ +http-ok+ +http-created+ +http-accepted+ +http-non-authoritative-information+ +http-no-content+ +http-reset-content+ +http-partial-content+ +http-multi-status+ +http-multiple-choices+ +http-moved-permanently+ +http-moved-temporarily+ +http-see-other+ +http-not-modified+ +http-use-proxy+ +http-temporary-redirect+ +http-bad-request+ +http-authorization-required+ +http-payment-required+ +http-forbidden+ +http-not-found+ +http-method-not-allowed+ +http-not-acceptable+ +http-proxy-authentication-required+ +http-request-time-out+ +http-conflict+ +http-gone+ +http-length-required+ +http-precondition-failed+ +http-request-entity-too-large+ +http-request-uri-too-large+ +http-unsupported-media-type+ +http-requested-range-not-satisfiable+ +http-expectation-failed+ +http-failed-dependency+ +http-internal-server-error+ +http-not-implemented+ +http-bad-gateway+ +http-service-unavailable+ +http-gateway-time-out+ +http-version-not-supported+ The values of these constants are 100, 101, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 424, 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, and 505. See RETURN-CODE . [Generic readers] content-length reply => content-length content-type reply => content-type headers-out reply => headers-out These are various generic readers which are used to read information about a REPLY object. If you are writing a handler, you should not use these readers but instead utilize the corresponding functions with an asterisk at the end of their name, also listed in this section. These generic readers are only exported for users who want to create their own subclasses of REPLY . [Generic accessors] cookies-out reply => result (setf ( cookies-out reply ) new-value) return-code reply => result (setf ( return-code reply ) new-value) reply-external-format reply => result (setf ( reply-external-format reply ) new-value) These are various generic accessors which are used to query and modify a REPLY objects. If you are writing a handler, you should not use these accessors but instead utilize the corresponding functions with an asterisk at the end of their name, also listed in this section. These generic accessors are only exported for users who want to create their own subclasses of REPLY . Hunchentoot makes some reasonable effort to prevent eavesdroppers from hijacking sessions (see below), but this should not be considered really secure. Don't store sensitive data in sessions and rely solely on the session mechanism as a safeguard against malicious users who want to get at this data! For each request there's one SESSION object which is accessible to the handler via the special variable *SESSION* . This object holds all the information available about the session and can be accessed with the functions described in this chapter. Note that the internal structure of SESSION objects should be considered opaque and may change in future releases of Hunchentoot. Sessions are automatically verified for validity and age when the REQUEST object is instantiated, i.e. if *SESSION* is not NIL then this session is valid (as far as Hunchentoot is concerned) and not too old. Old sessions are automatically removed. Hunchentoot also provides a SESSION-REGENERATE-COOKIE-VALUE function that creates a new cookie value. This helps to prevent against session fixation attacks, and should be used when a user logs in according to the application. [Standard class] session SESSION objects are automatically maintained by Hunchentoot. They should not be created explicitly with MAKE-INSTANCE but implicitly with START-SESSION and they should be treated as opaque objects. You can ignore Hunchentoot's SESSION objects and implement your own sessions if you provide corresponding methods for SESSION-COOKIE-VALUE and SESSION-VERIFY . [Function] start-session => session Returns the current SESSION object. If there is no current session, creates one and updates the corresponding data structures. In this case the function will also send a session cookie to the browser. [Accessor] session-value symbol &optional session => value, present-p (setf ( session-value symbol &optional session ) new-value) This accessor can be used to associate arbitrary data with the the symbol symbol in the SESSION object session . present-p is true if such data was found, otherwise NIL . The default value for session is *SESSION* . If SETF of SESSION-VALUE is called with session being NIL then a session is automatically instantiated with START-SESSION . [Function] delete-session-value symbol &optional session => | Removes the value associated with symbol from session if there is one. [Special variable] *session* The current session while in the context of a request, or NIL . [Function] remove-session session => | Completely removes the SESSION object session from Hunchentoot's internal session database. [Function] reset-sessions &optional acceptor => | Removes all stored sessions of acceptor . The default for acceptor is *ACCEPTOR* . [Function] regenerate-session-cookie-value session => cookie Regenerates the session cookie value. This should be used when a user logs in according to the application to prevent against session fixation attacks. The cookie value being dependent on ID, USER-AGENT, REMOTE-ADDR, START, and *SESSION-SECRET*, the only value we can change is START to regenerate a new value. Since we're generating a new cookie, it makes sense to have the session being restarted, in time. That said, because of this fact, calling this function twice in the same second will regenerate twice the same value. [Special variable] *rewrite-for-session-urls* Whether HTML pages should possibly be rewritten for cookie-less session-management. [Special variable] *content-types-for-url-rewrite* The content types for which url-rewriting is OK. See *REWRITE-FOR-SESSION-URLS* . [Special variable] *use-remote-addr-for-sessions* Whether the client's remote IP (as returned by REAL-REMOTE-ADDR ) should be encoded into the session string. If this value is true, a session will cease to be accessible if the client's remote IP changes. This might for example be an issue if the client uses a proxy server which doesn't send correct 'X-Forwarded-For' headers. [Generic function] session-remote-addr session => remote-addr The remote IP address of the client when this session was started (as returned by REAL-REMOTE-ADDR ). [Special variable] *use-user-agent-for-sessions* Whether the 'User-Agent' header should be encoded into the session string. If this value is true, a session will cease to be accessible if the client sends a different 'User-Agent' header. [Generic function] session-user-agent session => user-agent The incoming 'User-Agent' header that was sent when this session was created. [Generic accessor] session-max-time session => max-time (setf ( session-max-time session ) new-value) Gets or sets the time (in seconds) after which session expires if it's not used. [Special variable] *session-max-time* The default time (in seconds) after which a session times out. [Special variable] *session-gc-frequency* A session GC (see function SESSION-GC ) will happen every *SESSION-GC-FREQUENCY* requests (counting only requests which create a new session) if this variable is not NIL . See SESSION-CREATED . [Function] session-gc => | Removes sessions from the current session database which are too old - see SESSION-TOO-OLD-P . [Function] session-too-old-p session => generalized-boolean Returns true if the SESSION object session has not been active in the last (session-max-time session) seconds. [Generic function] session-id session => session-id The unique ID (an INTEGER) of the session. [Generic function] session-start session => universal-time The time this session was started. One way is to mostly leave the session mechanism intact but to tweak it a bit: The publicly visible part of a session is encoded using a secret which you can set yourself. And it is stored using a cookie (or GET parameter) name that you can override. Each session receives a new ID when it is created and you can implement a more robust way to do that. You can arrange to be called whenever a session is created to trigger some action. You might also do this to invent your own session garbage collection. By default, all sessions are stored in a global alist in memory. You can't change the alist part, but you can distribute your sessions over different "databases". By default, every operation which modifies sessions or one of the session databases is guarded by a global lock, but you can arrange to provide different locks for this. The other way to customize Hunchentoot's sessions is to completely replace them. This is actually pretty easy: Create your own class to store state (which doesn't have to and probably shouldn't inherit from SESSION ) and implement methods for SESSION-VERIFY and SESSION-COOKIE-VALUE - that's it. Hunchentoot will continue to use cookies and/or to rewrite URLs to keep track of session state and it will store "the current session" (whatever that is in your implementation) in *SESSION* . Everything else (like persisting sessions, GC, getting and setting values) you'll have to take care of yourself and the other session functions (like START-SESSION or SESSION-VALUE ) won't work anymore. (Almost) total freedom, but a lot of responsibility as well... :) [Special variable] *session-secret* A random ASCII string that's used to encode the public session data. This variable is initially unbound and will be set (using RESET-SESSION-SECRET ) the first time a session is created, if necessary. You can prevent this from happening if you set the value yourself before starting acceptors. [Function] reset-session-secret => secret Sets *SESSION-SECRET* to a new random value. All old sessions will cease to be valid. [Generic function] session-cookie-name acceptor => name Returns the name (a string) of the cookie (or the GET parameter) which is used to store a session on the client side. The default is to use the string "hunchentoot-session" , but you can specialize this function if you want another name. [Generic function] session-created acceptor new-session => result This function is called whenever a new session has been created. There's a default method which might trigger a session GC based on the value of *SESSION-GC-FREQUENCY* . The return value is ignored. [Generic function] next-session-id acceptor => id Returns the next sequential session ID, an integer, which should be unique per session. The default method uses a simple global counter and isn't guarded by a lock. For a high-performance production environment you might consider using a more robust implementation. [Generic accessor] session-db acceptor => database (setf ( session-db acceptor ) new-value) Returns the current session database which is an alist where each car is a session's ID and the cdr is the corresponding SESSION object itself. The default is to use a global list for all acceptors. [Generic function] session-db-lock acceptor &key whole-db-p => lock A function which returns a lock that will be used to prevent concurrent access to sessions. The first argument will be the acceptor that handles the current request, the second argument is true if the whole (current) session database is modified. If it is NIL , only one existing session in the database is modified. This function can return NIL which means that sessions or session databases will be modified without a lock held (for example for single-threaded environments). The default is to always return a global lock (ignoring the acceptor argument) for Lisps that support threads and NIL otherwise. [Generic function] session-verify request => session-or-nil Tries to get a session identifier from the cookies (or alternatively from the GET parameters) sent by the client (see SESSION-COOKIE-NAME and SESSION-COOKIE-VALUE ). This identifier is then checked for validity against the REQUEST object request . On success the corresponding session object (if not too old) is returned (and updated). Otherwise NIL is returned. A default method is provided and you only need to write your own one if you want to maintain your own sessions. [Generic function] session-cookie-value session => string Returns a string which can be used to safely restore the session session if as session has already been established. This is used as the value stored in the session cookie or in the corresponding GET parameter and verified by SESSION-VERIFY . A default method is provided and there's no reason to change it unless you want to use your own session objects. (defclass cookie () ((name :initarg :name :reader cookie-name :type string :documentation "The name of the cookie - a string.") (value :initarg :value :accessor cookie-value :initform "" :documentation "The value of the cookie. Will be URL-encoded when sent to the browser.") (expires :initarg :expires :initform nil :accessor cookie-expires :documentation "The time (a universal time) when the cookie expires (or NIL).") (max-age :initarg :max-age :initform nil :accessor cookie-max-age :documentation "The time delta (in seconds) after which the cookie expires (or NIL).") (path :initarg :path :initform nil :accessor cookie-path :documentation "The path this cookie is valid for (or NIL).") (domain :initarg :domain :initform nil :accessor cookie-domain :documentation "The domain this cookie is valid for (or NIL).") (secure :initarg :secure :initform nil :accessor cookie-secure :documentation "A generalized boolean denoting whether this is a secure cookie.") (http-only :initarg :http-only :initform nil :accessor cookie-http-only :documentation "A generalized boolean denoting whether this is a HttpOnly cookie."))) HUNCHENTOOT [Function] set-cookie name &key value expires path domain secure http-only reply => cookie Creates a COOKIE object from the parameters provided to this function and adds it to the outgoing cookies of the REPLY object reply . If a cookie with the same name (case-sensitive) already exists, it is replaced. The default for reply is *REPLY* . The default for value is the empty string. [Function] set-cookie* cookie &optional reply => cookie Adds the COOKIE object cookie to the outgoing cookies of the REPLY object reply . If a cookie with the same name (case-sensitive) already exists, it is replaced. The default for reply is *REPLY* . ACCESS-LOG-DESTINATION MESSAGE-LOG-DESTINATION NIL When the path for the message or accept log is set to a variable holding an output stream, hunchentoots writes corresponding log entries to that stream. By default, Hunchentoot logs to *STANDARD-ERROR*. Access logging is done in a format similar to what the Apache web server can write so that logfile analysis using standard tools is possible. Errors during request processing are logged to a separate file. The standard logging mechanism is deliberately simple and slow. The log files are opened for each log entry and closed again after writing, and access to them is protected by a global lock. Derived acceptor classes can implement methods for the ACCEPTOR-LOG-MESSAGE and ACCEPTOR-LOG-ACCESS generic functions in order to log differently (e.g. to a central logging server or in a different file format. Errors happening within a handler which are not caught by the handler itself are handled by Hunchentoot by logging them to the established ACCEPTOR-MESSAGE-LOG-DESTINATION . [Function] log-message* log-level format-string &rest format-arguments => result Convenience function which calls the message logger of the current acceptor (if there is one) with the same arguments it accepts. Returns NIL if there is no message logger or whatever the message logger returns. This is the function which Hunchentoot itself uses to log errors it catches during request processing. [Special variable] *log-lisp-errors-p* Whether Lisp errors in request handlers should be logged. [Special variable] *log-lisp-backtraces-p* Whether Lisp backtraces should be logged. Only has an effect if *LOG-LISP-ERRORS-P* is true as well. [Special variable] *log-lisp-warnings-p* Whether Lisp warnings in request handlers should be logged. [Special variable] *lisp-errors-log-level* Log level for Lisp errors. Should be one of :ERROR (the default), :WARNING , or :INFO . [Special variable] *lisp-warnings-log-level* Log level for Lisp warnings. Should be one of :ERROR , :WARNING (the default), or :INFO . This section describes how Hunchentoot deals with exceptional situations. See also the secion about logging. When an error occurs while processing a request, Hunchentoot's default behavior is to catch the error, log it and optionally display it to the client in the HTML response. This behavior can be customized through the values of a number of special variables, which are documented below. [Special variable] *catch-errors-p* If the value of this variable is NIL (the default is T ), then errors which happen while a request is handled aren't caught as usual, but instead your Lisp's debugger is invoked. This variable should obviously always be set to a true value in a production environment. See MAYBE-INVOKE-DEBUGGER if you want to fine-tune this behaviour. [Special variable] *show-lisp-errors-p* Whether Lisp errors should be shown in HTML output. Note that this only affects canned responses generated by Lisp. If an error template is present for the "internal server error" status code, this special variable is not used (see acceptor-status-message ). [Special variable] *show-lisp-backtraces-p* Whether Lisp backtraces should be shown in HTML output if *SHOW-LISP-ERRORS-P* is true and an error occurs. [Generic function] maybe-invoke-debugger condition => | This generic function is called whenever a condition condition is signaled in Hunchentoot. You might want to specialize it on specific condition classes for debugging purposes. The default method invokes the debugger with condition if *CATCH-ERRORS-P* is NIL . [Condition type] hunchentoot-condition Superclass for all conditions related to Hunchentoot. [Condition type] hunchentoot-error Superclass for all errors related to Hunchentoot and a subclass of HUNCHENTOOT-CONDITION . [Condition type] parameter-error Signalled if a function was called with incosistent or illegal parameters. A subclass of HUNCHENTOOT-ERROR . [Condition type] hunchentoot-warning Superclass for all warnings related to Hunchentoot and a subclass of HUNCHENTOOT-CONDITION . [Function] abort-request-handler &optional result => result This function can be called by a request handler at any time to immediately abort handling the request. This works as if the handler had returned result . See the source code of REDIRECT for an example. [Function] handle-if-modified-since time &optional request => | This function is designed to be used inside a handler. If the client has sent an 'If-Modified-Since' header (see RFC 2616, section 14.25) and the time specified matches the universal time time then the header +HTTP-NOT-MODIFIED+ with no content is immediately returned to the client. Note that for this function to be useful you should usually send 'Last-Modified' headers back to the client. See the code of CREATE-STATIC-FILE-DISPATCHER-AND-HANDLER for an example. [Function] handle-static-file path &optional content-type => nil Sends the file denoted by the pathname designator path with content type content-type to the client. Sets the necessary handlers. In particular the function employs HANDLE-IF-MODIFIED-SINCE . If content-type is NIL the function tries to determine the correct content type from the file's suffix or falls back to "application/octet-stream" as a last resort. Note that this function calls SEND-HEADERS internally, so after you've called it, the headers are sent and the return value of your handler is ignored. [Function] redirect target &key host port protocol add-session-id code => | Sends back appropriate headers to redirect the client to target (a string). If target is a full URL starting with a scheme, host , port , and protocol are ignored. Otherwise, target should denote the path part of a URL, protocol must be one of the keywords :HTTP or :HTTPS , and the URL to redirect to will be constructed from host , port , protocol , and target . code must be a 3xx HTTP redirection status code to send to the client. It defaults to 302 ("Found"). If host is not provided, the current host (see HOST ) will be used. If protocol is the keyword :HTTPS , the client will be redirected to a https URL, if it's :HTTP it'll be sent to a http URL. If both host and protocol aren't provided, then the value of protocol will match the current request. [Function] require-authorization &optional realm => | Sends back appropriate headers to require basic HTTP authentication (see RFC 2617) for the realm realm . The default value for realm is "Hunchentoot" . [Function] no-cache => | Adds appropriate headers to completely prevent caching on most browsers. [Function] ssl-p &optional acceptor => generalized-boolean Whether the current connection to the client is secure. See ACCEPTOR-SSL-P . [Function] reason-phrase return-code => string Returns a reason phrase for the HTTP return code return-code (which should be an integer) or NIL for return codes Hunchentoot doesn't know. [Function] rfc-1123-date &optional time => string Generates a time string according to RFC 1123. Default is current time. This can be used to send a 'Last-Modified' header - see HANDLE-IF-MODIFIED-SINCE . [Function] url-encode string &optional external-format => string URL-encodes a string using the external format external-format . The default for external-format is the value of *HUNCHENTOOT-DEFAULT-EXTERNAL-FORMAT* . [Function] url-decode string &optional external-format => string Decodes a URL-encoded string which is assumed to be encoded using the external format external-format , i.e. this is the inverse of URL-ENCODE . It is assumed that you'll rarely need this function, if ever. But just in case - here it is. The default for external-format is the value of *HUNCHENTOOT-DEFAULT-EXTERNAL-FORMAT* . [Function] escape-for-html string => result Escapes the characters #\<, #\>, #\', #\", and #\& for HTML output. [Function] http-token-p object => generalized-boolean This function tests whether object is a non-empty string which is a token according to RFC 2068 (i.e. whether it may be used for, say, cookie names). [Function] mime-type pathspec => result Given a pathname designator pathspec returns the MIME type (as a string) corresponding to the suffix of the file denoted by pathspec (or NIL ). [Function] within-request-p => generalized-boolean Returns true if in the context of a request. Otherwise, NIL . [Special variable] *tmp-directory* This should be a pathname denoting a directory where temporary files can be stored. It is used for file uploads. [Special variable] *header-stream* If this variable is not NIL , it should be bound to a stream to which incoming and outgoing headers will be written for debugging purposes. [Special variable] *cleanup-function* A designator for a function without arguments which is called on a regular basis if *CLEANUP-INTERVAL* is not NIL . The initial value is the name of a function which invokes a garbage collection on 32-bit versions of LispWorks. This variable is only available on LispWorks. [Special variable] *cleanup-interval* Should be NIL or a positive integer. The system calls *CLEANUP-FUNCTION* whenever *CLEANUP-INTERVAL* new worker threads (counted globally across all acceptors) have been created unless the value is NIL . The initial value is 100. This variable is only available on LispWorks. To run the confidence test, start the example web server. Then, in your Lisp listener, type [Function] hunchentoot-test:test-hunchentoot base-url &key => | Runs the built-in confidence test. base-url is the base URL to use for testing, it should not have a trailing slash. The keyword arguments accepted are for future extension and should not currently be used. The script expects the Hunchentoot example test server to be running at the given base-url and retrieves various pages from that server, expecting certain responses. NIL NIL It turned out that Jeff Caldwell had worked on something similar so he emailed me and proposed to join our efforts. As I had no immediate plans to release my code (which was poorly organized, undocumented, and mostly CMUCL-specific), I gave it to Jeff and he worked towards a release. He added docstrings, refactored, added some stuff, and based it on KMRCL to make it portable across several Lisp implementations. Unfortunately, Jeff is at least as busy as I am so he didn't find the time to finish a full release. But in spring 2004 I needed a documented version of the code for a client of mine who thought it would be good if the toolkit were publicly available under an open source license. So I took Jeff's code, refactored again (to sync with the changes I had done in the meantime), and added documentation. This resulted in TBNL 0.1.0 (which initially required mod_lisp as its front-end). In March 2005, Bob Hutchinson sent patches which enabled TBNL to use other front-ends than mod_lisp. This made me aware that TBNL was already almost a full web server, so eventually I wrote Hunchentoot which was a full web server, implemented as a wrapper around TBNL. Hunchentoot 0.1.0 was released at the end of 2005 and was originally LispWorks-only. Hunchentoot 0.4.0, released in October 2006, was the first release which also worked with other Common Lisp implementations. It is a major rewrite and also incorporates most of TBNL and replaces it completely. Hunchentoot 1.0.0, released in February 2009, is again a major rewrite and should be considered work in progress. It moved to using the usocket and Bordeaux Threads libraries for non-LispWorks Lisps, thereby removing most of the platform dependent code. Threading behaviour was made controllable through the introduction of taskmasters. mod_lisp support and several other things were removed in this release to simplify the code base (and partly due to the lack of interest). Several architectural changes (lots of them not backwards-compatible) were made to ease customization of Hunchentoot's behaviour. A significant part of the 1.0.0 redesign was done by Hans Hübner. HUNCHENTOOT *acceptor* Special variable *catch-errors-p* Special variable *cleanup-function* Special variable *cleanup-interval* Special variable *content-types-for-url-rewrite* Special variable *default-connection-timeout* Special variable *default-content-type* Special variable *dispatch-table* Special variable *file-upload-hook* Special variable *header-stream* Special variable *hunchentoot-default-external-format* Special variable *lisp-errors-log-level* Special variable *lisp-warnings-log-level* Special variable *log-lisp-backtraces-p* Special variable *log-lisp-errors-p* Special variable *log-lisp-warnings-p* Special variable *methods-for-post-parameters* Special variable *reply* Special variable *request* Special variable *rewrite-for-session-urls* Special variable *session* Special variable *session-gc-frequency* Special variable *session-max-time* Special variable *session-secret* Special variable *show-lisp-backtraces-p* Special variable *show-lisp-errors-p* Special variable *tmp-directory* Special variable *use-remote-addr-for-sessions* Special variable *use-user-agent-for-sessions* Special variable +http-accepted+ Constant +http-authorization-required+ Constant +http-bad-gateway+ Constant +http-bad-request+ Constant +http-conflict+ Constant +http-continue+ Constant +http-created+ Constant +http-expectation-failed+ Constant +http-failed-dependency+ Constant +http-forbidden+ Constant +http-gateway-time-out+ Constant +http-gone+ Constant +http-internal-server-error+ Constant +http-length-required+ Constant +http-method-not-allowed+ Constant +http-moved-permanently+ Constant +http-moved-temporarily+ Constant +http-multi-status+ Constant +http-multiple-choices+ Constant +http-no-content+ Constant +http-non-authoritative-information+ Constant +http-not-acceptable+ Constant +http-not-found+ Constant +http-not-implemented+ Constant +http-not-modified+ Constant +http-ok+ Constant +http-partial-content+ Constant +http-payment-required+ Constant +http-precondition-failed+ Constant +http-proxy-authentication-required+ Constant +http-request-entity-too-large+ Constant +http-request-time-out+ Constant +http-request-uri-too-large+ Constant +http-requested-range-not-satisfiable+ Constant +http-reset-content+ Constant +http-see-other+ Constant +http-service-unavailable+ Constant +http-switching-protocols+ Constant +http-temporary-redirect+ Constant +http-unsupported-media-type+ Constant +http-use-proxy+ Constant +http-version-not-supported+ Constant abort-request-handler Function accept-connections Generic function acceptor Standard class acceptor-access-log-destination Generic accessor acceptor-address Generic reader acceptor-dispatch-request Generic function acceptor-document-root Generic accessor acceptor-error-template-directory Generic accessor acceptor-input-chunking-p Generic accessor acceptor-listen-backlog Generic function acceptor-log-access Generic function acceptor-log-message Generic function acceptor-message-log-destination Generic accessor acceptor-name Generic accessor acceptor-output-chunking-p Generic accessor acceptor-persistent-connections-p Generic accessor acceptor-port Generic reader acceptor-read-timeout Generic reader acceptor-remove-session Generic function acceptor-reply-class Generic accessor acceptor-request-class Generic accessor acceptor-ssl-certificate-file Generic reader acceptor-ssl-p Generic function acceptor-ssl-privatekey-file Generic reader acceptor-ssl-privatekey-password Generic reader acceptor-status-message Generic function acceptor-write-timeout Generic reader authorization Function aux-request-value Accessor content-length Generic reader content-length* Accessor content-type Generic reader content-type* Accessor cookie-in Function cookie-out Function cookies-in Generic reader cookies-in* Function cookies-out Generic accessor cookies-out* Accessor create-folder-dispatcher-and-handler Function create-prefix-dispatcher Function create-regex-dispatcher Function create-request-handler-thread Generic function create-static-file-dispatcher-and-handler Function define-easy-handler Macro delete-aux-request-value Function delete-session-value Function detach-socket Generic function dispatch-easy-handlers Function easy-acceptor Standard class easy-ssl-acceptor Standard class escape-for-html Function execute-acceptor Generic function get-parameter Function get-parameters Generic reader get-parameters* Function handle-if-modified-since Function handle-incoming-connection Generic function handle-request Generic function handle-static-file Function header-in Generic reader header-in* Function header-out Accessor headers-in Generic reader headers-in* Function headers-out Generic reader headers-out* Function host Function http-token-p Function hunchentoot-condition Condition type hunchentoot-error Condition type hunchentoot-test:test-hunchentoot Function hunchentoot-warning Condition type initialize-connection-stream Generic function local-addr Generic reader local-addr* Function local-port Generic reader local-port* Function log-message* Function maybe-invoke-debugger Generic function mime-type Function multi-threaded-taskmaster Standard class next-session-id Generic function no-cache Function one-thread-per-connection-taskmaster Standard class parameter Function parameter-error Condition type post-parameter Function post-parameters Generic reader post-parameters* Function process-connection Generic function process-request Generic function query-string Generic reader query-string* Function raw-post-data Function real-remote-addr Function reason-phrase Function recompute-request-parameters Function redirect Function referer Function regenerate-session-cookie-value Function remote-addr Generic reader remote-addr* Function remote-port Generic reader remote-port* Function remove-session Function reply Standard class reply-external-format Generic accessor reply-external-format* Accessor request Standard class request-acceptor Generic reader request-method Generic reader request-method* Function request-uri Generic reader request-uri* Function require-authorization Function reset-connection-stream Generic function reset-session-secret Function reset-sessions Function return-code Generic accessor return-code* Accessor rfc-1123-date Function script-name Generic reader script-name* Function send-headers Function server-protocol Generic reader server-protocol* Function session Standard class session-cookie-name Generic function session-cookie-value Generic function session-created Generic function session-db Generic accessor session-db-lock Generic function session-gc Function session-id Generic function session-max-time Generic accessor session-remote-addr Generic function session-start Generic function session-too-old-p Function session-user-agent Generic function session-value Accessor session-verify Generic function set-cookie Function set-cookie* Function shutdown Generic function single-threaded-taskmaster Standard class ssl-acceptor Standard class ssl-p Function start Generic function start-listening Generic function start-session Function start-thread Generic function stop Generic function taskmaster Standard class taskmaster-acceptor Generic accessor url-decode Function url-encode Function user-agent Function within-request-p Function Hunchentoot originally used code from ACL-COMPAT, specifically the chunking code from Jochen Schmidt. (This has been replaced by Chunga.) When I ported Hunchentoot to other Lisps than LispWorks, I stole code from ACL-COMPAT, KMRCL, and trivial-sockets for implementation-dependent stuff like sockets and MP. (This has been replaced by Bordeaux Threads and usocket.) Parts of this documentation were prepared with DOCUMENTATION-TEMPLATE, no animals were harmed. BACK TO MY HOMEPAGE

Airtime

This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here Embracing The Mobile Hacker Ethic By Carlo Longino As mobile phones become more powerful and pervasive, it was inevitable that they'd spawn the same kind of homebrew hacking culture as computers and the Internet. While the locked-down nature of cell phones and the closemindedness of wireless carriers has stunted that culture's growth, a few developments are afoot that promise to give a big boost to DIY mobile programming. Whereas programmers must typically pick up platform-specific skills to develop for mobile, a number of ways for independent and casual developers and even enthusiasts to use skills they've already got—or can relatively easily learn—to build applications. Advertisement First is Nokia's release of the Python programming language for its Series 60 smartphone environment. The port of Python is a full implementation with a high degree of portability from the desktop environment, opening mobile development to a whole new class of programmers—which was its primary goal, says Erik Smartt, the program manager of Python for Series 60. "By choosing a developer-friendly, easy-to-learn language, Nokia is making it possible for casual developers to tinker with their mobile phones and innovate without the typical investment costs for embedded system development," he says. "Bringing a language like Python to Nokia devices changes the rules on who can create applications." Advertisement This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here While Series 60's Symbian OS underpinnings allow for pretty robust programming in C++ or Java, Python offers a much simpler way to develop applications with much quicker results, encouraging users to tinker and play around. "If people are going to innovate, they need to feel comfortable rapidly proofing new ideas and throwing away code when something doesn't work," Smartt says. "That's less likely to happen if application development takes months. With Python for Series 60, it should be possible to produce a simple proof-of-concept application in an afternoon." One such application was a simple "Traffic Cam Proof of Concept" app, that was orginally built in 45 minutes. It's since been refined to include traffic cameras from cities all over the globe, all added quite easily—an app for London cams, for instance, was built over somebody's lunch break. The traffic camera application was built to demonstrate the rapid development possible with Python in response to the quick development time for a New York City traffic cam viewer that won a developers' contest for content made in Flash Lite — another tool, like Python, that is mainstreaming mobile development. Flash Lite is already available on more than 40 handset models in Japan, and can be downloaded for Symbian devices. It's also starting to appear on several manufacturers' devices in Europe and North America as well. Advertisement This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here Flash Lite applications can be built with the same version of Flash MX that's used to build Web applications, and it includes a variety of templates to facilitate design for different handsets. One difference between Flash Lite and Python that's readily apparent is the rich graphics available with Flash. Python extends the group of potential mobile developers, but Flash Lite also allows designers into the mix. Advertisement A quick look at the Flash Lite Exchange, where people can upload their applications, shows some of the different ideas people have had: there's a lot of slick games and animations, but also a lot of small applications (think widgets) that highlight the potential of Flash Lite to become quite pervasive once it's on a lot of handsets. Python and Flash are just the beginning of mobile companies embracing the hacker ethic to expand the functionality and coolness of their devices. There are cracks emerging in the standard mobile industry mindset that innovation has to come from the top down as companies realize that by opening development up to as wide a range of developers as possible will they harness the most innovation. Another example on the horizon is the Nokia 770 internet appliance, which runs an open-source Linux platform called Maemo. The device isn't even yet available, but quite a community has already rallied around it and generated several applications. Advertisement Nokia 770 Internet Appliance Rumors of this have been floating around for a bit but this looks like an interesting departure… Read more This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here Advertisement There's been a fairly seismic shift of semantics, if nothing else, over the last few years where "hacker" has dropped a lot of its negative connotations, and companies are looking to take advantage of people's capacity to use devices in new and unimagined ways. As Nokia's Smartt puts it, "If you can make a device that's fun to hack on, people will. And the more people tinker with a device and produce killer applications, the more the value of the device increases to people who own it." Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com. Advertisement Resources: Python for Series 60 Macromedia Flash Lite Nokia 770 maemo.org

Roberts quizzed on abortion issue

Pro-choice groups feel Roberts might not be sympathetic Mr Roberts, a Roman Catholic, told the committee examining his nomination that the 1973 ruling legalising abortion was "settled as a precedent of the court". He denied his faith would influence his decisions if he was chosen for the job. President Bush nominated Mr Roberts to be the country's top judge after the death of William Rehnquist this month. Correspondents say the Senate is expected to back Mr Roberts, 50. Divisive debate Asked about the court's landmark ruling on the issue of abortion, Roe vs Wade, Mr Roberts called it a "very important consideration". JOHN ROBERTS Born in Buffalo, raised in Indiana Graduated from Harvard in 1979 Was clerk to Chief Justice Rehnquist and then served in the Reagan administration Serves on the District of Columbia appeals court Has argued before the Supreme Court 39 times Profile: John Roberts The issue of abortion has long been a deeply divisive one in the US. None of the Senate's 100 members have declared their opposition to Mr Roberts but some civil rights groups have expressed concern. Some abortion rights campaigners are worried Mr Roberts may be sympathetic to an attempt to make abortions more difficult to obtain. Civil rights On the second day of his confirmation hearing, Mr Roberts came under intense criticism from Democrats, one of whom, Joe Biden, accused him of giving "misleading" answers. "Go ahead and continue not to answer," Senator Biden said. But he was in turn accused of interrupting Mr Roberts, who argued the senator would have had a whole answer had he allowed him to speak out. Democrats also questioned Mr Roberts about his writings on civil rights dating back to his years as a lawyer in Ronald Reagan's administration. Senator Edward M Kennedy accused him of showing a "narrow, cramped and mean-spirited view" in those writings, and of failing to show a full appreciation of discrimination. But Mr Roberts denied having a problem with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote to African American citizens. "The constitutionality has been upheld, and I don't have any issue with that," he said. He was also questioned on women's rights, the fight against terror and the balance of power between the branches of government. The hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee is due to be completed this week. It is the panel's first Supreme Court confirmation for 11 years.

We had to kill our patients

by C AROLINE GRAHAM and JO KNOWSLEY, Mail on Sunday Last updated at 09:10 11 September 2005 Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive. In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save. Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials. One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die." Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana, and The Mail on Sunday is protecting the identities of the medical staff concerned to prevent them being made scapegoats for the events of last week. Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of American authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless. 'These people were going to die anyway' The doctor said: "I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right. "I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul." The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, said: "This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end. "I had cancer patients who were in agony. In some cases the drugs may have speeded up the death process. "We divided patients into three categories: those who were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed urgent care, and the dying. "People would find it impossible to understand the situation. I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second. "It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity. "There were patients with Do Not Resuscitate signs. Under normal circumstances, some could have lasted several days. But when the power went out, we had nothing. "Some of the very sick became distressed. We tried to make them as comfortable as possible. "The pharmacy was under lockdown because gangs of armed looters were roaming around looking for their fix. You have to understand these people were going to die anyway." Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an hour north of New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been 'put down', saying: "They injected them, but nurses stayed with them until they died." Mr McQueen has been working closely with emergency teams and added: "They had to make unbearable decisions."

Killer Buzz Flocks to New Browser

Perhaps the world does not need another web browser – but it may want Bart Decrem's. Decrem and a small cadre of programmers in Palo Alto, California, have spent this summer quietly readying Flock, an open-source browser, for an early October beta launch. Several members of the team, including Decrem, hail from the Mozilla Foundation, which produced the Firefox browser upon which Flock is built. Flock advertises itself as a "social browser," meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It's a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user. It's no coincidence that the buzz has built rapidly to a rolling boil. Blogger and tech pundit Robert Scoble simply calls it "awesome." Given the recent swell of anticipation surrounding Flock, the preceding stealth period seems quaint by contrast. Since an August demo at Bar Camp, enthusiastic blog posts have amounted to love letters in their enthusiasm. But why? "The browser has not evolved all that much," Decrem says. "The basic concept or vision has not changed." He says the web was until recently conceptually conceived as a big library, a collection of documents to search and consume. Browsers were all about navigation. Now, he notes, "Web 2.0 is a stream of events, people and connections." A better browser is one that will understand this new user environment. Recently, Firefox has become, for many, the multi-platform browser of choice. Popular extensions like Greasemonkey have given users unprecedented control over their browsing experience. But combining separately developed, often-updated extensions can make Firefox unstable. Boris Mann, a Flock tester and admirer, claims that it "takes the best-of approach. It takes Greasemonkey and other power-browsing tools and it makes them work. And their genius is sticking with Firefox at the rendering level." Decrem notes that Flock will not attempt to compete with Firefox, which he helped launch last year. "Open source is an important part of our DNA," he adds. Yet, browsers are still "too inert" for Decrem's tastes. The Flock team speaks of moving back to the original vision of Tim Berners-Lee, that the web should be a two-way experience. "There are lots of opportunities to innovate the browser client. We are receiving a lot of interest as we plant those seeds." The clamor suggests that there is considerable interest in a beefier browser. And while Flock's initial audience is clearly power users, Kris Krug of Bryght sees it as "a Web 2.0 on-ramp" that will draw more people to social software, blogging and photo sharing. "We are not trying to do Firefox with five more features. We are trying to solve a very specific problem – yet it's a problem commonly experienced by many users," says Decrem. Rumor has it that Flock will soon announce key partnerships around its search, bookmarking and blogging tools. While the Flocksters experimented with their own hosted bookmark service, "we concluded we're not an online services company," says Decrem. Scoble thinks Flock is just the beginning of integrated web applications. In a weighty compliment, he draws a comparison to Microsoft Office, which in the 1990s succeeded in migrating users of separate spreadsheet, word-processing, database and presentation programs to a single, bundled product. "Today we're using too many different services to share our stuff on the internet," says Scoble. "Blogging, photo sharing, wikis, maps, podcasting (and) video blogging are all separate services. They probably will be joined in one system with common user interfaces." Flock may or may not become the Office of the web. But, for now, it's one of a kind, at least as far as buzz goes.

defective yeti: Roberts Continues To Stonewall On Logan v. Wayne

Roberts Continues To Stonewall On Logan v. Wayne Judge John Roberts weathered another round of questioning today as his confirmation hearing entered its second day, but the controversal pick for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court left many senators frustrated and angry as he repeatedly declined to explicate his position on Logan v. Wayne. Though he remained calm and composed while addressing members of the Senate judiciary committee, Mr Roberts refused to provide unambiguous answers when asked about the one of the most controversial questions even pondered by Congress. Proceedings quickly became acrimonious Tuesday morning, as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) openly challenged Robert's claim that he "had not made up his mind" on Logan v. Wayne. "With all due respect, I find it frankly unbelievable that, in 30 years of public service, you could not have formed an opinion on this matter," Kennedy said. "So I would again ask that you simply answer the question: who would win in a fight, Wolverine or Batman?" Seemingly nonplussed, Roberts demurred, saying, "while I�m happy to talk about the individual strengths and weaknesses of each, I don�t think I should get into the application of their powers in a mano a mano confrontation." "Powers?" interjected committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter. "Batman doesn't even have any powers. So my colleague's implication that Batman is even in the same league as Wolverine is nothing short of wishful thinking, wouldn't you agree, Mr Roberts?" Refusing to take the bait, Robert again declined to answer. Questioning continued in this vein for most of the afternoon, with senators on both sides of the aisle pressing Roberts to clarify his stance. "One of the most important responsibilities of a Chief Justice is adherence to existing precedence," Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) reminded the nominee. "I therefore call your attention to The Dark Knight Returns -- a four-part, 1986 mini-series in which Batman defeats Superman in hand-to-hand combat -- and ask you: if Bruce Wayne can beat Superman in a fight, is it not self-evident that he could defeat a mere mutant with ease?" Brownback remarks were later stricken from the record, however, after ranking Democratic member Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) pointed out that The Dark Knight Returns is now considered to be an non-canonical "Elseworlds" story. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Ut.) pressed Robert to rectify his current neutrality with remarks he made in a 1967 letter to Detective Comics, in which he described Batman as "the best superhero ever!!" Roberts again insisted that the scope of his ruling was confined to DC titles only, and should in no way be construed as an endorsement of Wayne over any character residing in the Marvel Universe. Though questions regarding Logan v. Wayne dominated today's session, Roberts was also asked about about his views on civil rights, affirmative action, the limits of presidential power, and which Modest Mouse album kicked the most ass.

George Monbiot: It was claimed that the internet and satellite TV would topple dictators

'Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head." Thus Gulliver describes his first encounter with the Yahoos. Something similar seems to have happened to democracy. In April, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "providing state secrets to foreign entities". He had passed details of a censorship order to the Asia Democracy Forum and the website Democracy News. The pressure group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was mystified by the ease with which Mr Tao had been caught. He had sent the message through an anonymous Yahoo! account. But the police had gone straight to his offices and picked him up. How did they know who he was? Last week RSF obtained a translation of the verdict, and there they found the answer. Mr Tao's account information was "furnished by Yahoo Holdings". Yahoo!, the document says, gave the government his telephone number and the address of his office. So much for the promise that the internet would liberate the oppressed. This theory was most clearly formulated in 1999 by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argues that two great democratising forces - global communications and global finance - will sweep away any regime which is not open, transparent and democratic. "Thanks to satellite dishes, the internet and television," he asserts, "we can now see through, hear through and look through almost every conceivable wall. ... no one owns the internet, it is totally decentralised, no one can turn it off ... China's going to have a free press ... Oh, China's leaders don't know it yet, but they are being pushed straight in that direction." The same thing, he claims, is happening all over the world. In Iran he saw people ogling Baywatch on illegal satellite dishes. As a result, he claims, "within a few years, every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his own ... government and the one next door". He is partly right. The internet at least has helped to promote revolutions of varying degrees of authenticity in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Argentina and Bolivia. But the flaw in Friedman's theory is that he forgets the intermediaries. The technology which runs the internet did not sprout from the ground. It is provided by people with a commercial interest in its development. Their interest will favour freedom in some places and control in others. And they can and do turn it off. In 2002 Yahoo! signed the Chinese government's pledge of "self-regulation": it promised not to allow "pernicious information that may jeopardise state security" to be posted. Last year Google published a statement admitting that it would not be showing links to material banned by the authorities on computers stationed in China. If Chinese users of Microsoft's internet service MSN try to send a message containing the words "democracy", "liberty" or "human rights", they are warned that "This message includes forbidden language. Please delete the prohibited expression." A study earlier this year by a group of scholars called the OpenNet Initiative revealed what no one had thought possible: that the Chinese government is succeeding in censoring the net. Its most powerful tool is its control of the routers - the devices through which data is moved from one place to another. With the right filtering systems, these routers can block messages containing forbidden words. Human-rights groups allege that western corporations - in particular Cisco Systems - have provided the technology and the expertise. Cisco is repeatedly cited by Thomas Friedman as one of the facilitators of his global revolution. "We had the dream that the internet would free the world, that all the dictatorships would collapse," says Julien Pain of Reporters Without Borders. "We see it was just a dream." Friedman was not the first person to promote these dreams. In 1993 Rupert Murdoch boasted that satellite television was "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere". The Economist had already made the same claim on its cover: "Dictators beware!" The Chinese went berserk, and Murdoch, in response, ensured that the threat did not materialise. In 1994 he dropped BBC world news from his Star satellite feeds after it broadcast an unflattering portrait of Mao Zedong. In 1997 he ordered his publishing house HarperCollins to drop a book by Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong. He slagged off the Dalai Lama and his son James attacked the dissident cult Falun Gong. His grovelling paid off, and in 2002 he was able to start broadcasting into Guangdong. "We won't do programmes that are offensive in China," Murdoch's spokesman Wang Yukui admitted. "If you call this self-censorship then of course we're doing a kind of self-censorship." I think, if they were as honest as Mr Wang, everyone who works for Rupert Murdoch, or for the corporate media anywhere in the world, would recognise these restraints. To own a national newspaper or a television or radio station you need to be a multimillionaire. What multimillionaires want is what everybody wants: a better world for people like themselves. The job of their journalists is to make it happen. As Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Mirror, confessed, "I've made it a strict rule in life to ingratiate myself with billionaires." They will stay in their jobs for as long as they continue to interpret the interests of the proprietorial class correctly. What the owners don't enforce, the advertisers do. Over the past few months, AdAge.com reveals, both Morgan Stanley and BP have instructed newspapers and magazines that they must remove their adverts from any edition containing "objectionable editorial coverage". Car, airline and tobacco companies have been doing the same thing. Most publications can't afford to lose these accounts; they lose the offending articles instead. Why are the papers full of glowing profiles of the advertising boss Martin Sorrell? Because they're terrified of him. So instead of democracy we get Baywatch. They are not the same thing. Aspirational TV might stimulate an appetite for more money or more plastic surgery, and this in turn might encourage people to look, for better or worse, to the political systems that deliver them, but it is just as likely to be counter-democratic. As a result of pressure from both ratings and advertisers, for example, between 1993 and 2003 environmental programmes were cleared from the schedules on BBC TV, ITV and Channel 4. Though three or four documentaries have slipped out since then, the ban has not yet been wholly lifted. To those of us who have been banging our heads against this wall, it feels like censorship. Indispensable as the internet has become, political debate is still dominated by the mainstream media: a story on the net changes nothing until it finds its way into the newspapers or on to TV. What this means is that while the better networking Friedman celebrates can assist a democratic transition, the democracy it leaves us with is filtered and controlled. Someone else owns the routers. www.monbiot.com

Companies and Discussion

In the spirit of Web 2.0 Companies, I'm beta launching the new and improved resource for all things Web 2.0. It still needs some work but it's coming together (hence the beta). Converting all my posts from Blogger to Wordpress was fairly smooth but with the new style sheets, some of the posts need some hand tweaking.The new site has been relocated to:Proudly, the domain is quite del.icio.us inspired and will conveniently work when we get to Web 3.0 or 4.0 or 88.0.Those of your subscribed to my Feedburner feed have to do nothing as you'll automatically be subscribed to the new location. Please subscribe to:I welcome your comments on the new look as well as leads for Web 2.0 Companies I have yet to cover.

DeLay declares 'victory' in war on budget fat

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an “ongoing victory,” and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget. Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans’ choice to borrow money and add to this year’s expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn’t seem possible. “My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I’ll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet,” the Texas Republican told reporters at his weekly briefing. Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, “Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we’ve pared it down pretty good.” Congress has passed two hurricane relief bills totaling $62.3 billion, all of which will be added to the deficit. Republican leaders have been under pressure from conservative members and outside watchdog groups to find ways to pay for the Katrina relief. Some Republicans wanted to offer an amendment, including cuts, to pay for hurricane spending but were denied the chance under procedural rules. “This is hardly a well-oiled machine,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. “There’s a lot of fat to trim. … I wonder if we’ve been serving in the same Congress.” American Conservative Union Chairman David A. Keene said federal spending already was “spiraling out of control” before Katrina, and conservatives are “increasingly losing faith in the president and the Republican leadership in Congress.” “Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression,” he said. Mr. Keene said annual nonmilitary and non-homeland security spending increased $303 billion between fiscal year 2001 and 2005; the acknowledged federal debt increased more than $2 trillion since fiscal year 2000; and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill is estimated to increase the government’s unfunded obligations by $16 trillion. Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), said if Mr. DeLay wants to know where to cut, “there are plenty of places to reduce.” His group soon will release a list of $2 trillion in suggested spending cuts over the next five years, and he said Congress also could cut the estimated $20 billion to $25 billion in pet projects that make their way into must-pass spending bills each year. CAGW and the Heritage Foundation also suggest rescinding the 6,000-plus earmarked projects in the recently passed highway bill. But Mr. DeLay said those projects are “important infrastructure” and eliminating them could undermine the economy as Congress tries to offer hurricane relief. “It is right to borrow to pay for it,” he said. “But it is not right to attack the very economy that will pay for it.” Mr. Schatz, though, said the highway bill included projects such as flowers for the Ronald Reagan freeway in California, which he said aren’t essential spending. Mr. DeLay said the budget this year was pared down and 100 programs or offices were eliminated in this year’s spending bills. “We have been doing that for 11 years,” he said. He said it’s an “ongoing process” that will be more complete after this year’s budget process, which calls for cuts to Medicaid and other entitlement programs. Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican, agreed that Republicans “have been more fiscally sound than the Democrats were in their decades in the House.” He acknowledged that “we’re still trying to improve,” and noted Mr. DeLay is leading the fight to reform the budget process. “We’ve had a good start, but many of us want to see the government be more fiscally sound and conservative in the future,” Mr. McHenry said. Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Gillette unveils 5-bladed razor with two lubricating strips

New system, available in early 2006, to have lubricating strips on both the front and back sides. The manual version of Gillette's new Fusion razor NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Gillette has escalated the razor wars yet again, unveiling a new line of razors on Wednesday with five blades and a lubricating strip on both the front and back. The razor, known as the Fusion, has blades spaced 30 percent closer than Gillette's current MACH3Turbo system. It also has a single blade on the back of the cartridge for shaving sideburns or trimming under the nose. The move renews an ongoing blade battle with Schick, the shaving unit of Energerizer (Research), which launched a four-blade razor, the Quattro, last year. The move ate into Gillette sales and sparked a legal battle between the two companies. Schick is adding a battery-powered Quattro to its lineup this month, while Gillette's Fusion -- in both manual and battery-powered models -- won't hit North American stores until early next year. "The Schick launch has nothing to do with this, it's like comparing a Ferrari to a Volkswagen as far as we're concerned," Chairman, President and Chief Executive James Kilts, told Reuters. Razors accounted for nearly half of the company's $2.8 billion net sales in its most recent quarter, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The razor and blade industry has annual sales of $2.4 billion in the U.S. and $10 billion globally, according to Gillette. The Fusion will also be available in a power version and features a micro-chip that regulates the voltage and blade action. Other high-tech features include a low battery indicator light and a safety switch that shuts the razor down after eight minutes of continuous operation. The manual version will be available in North America in the first quarter of 2006 and has a retail price of $9.99 with two cartridges. The power model hits stores at the same time and comes with a one cartridge and a AAA battery for $11.99. Gillette (Research) is in the process of being acquired by Procter & Gamble (Research), a $57 billion dollar deal announced in January 2005. -- From staff and wire reports ___________________________ How will Procter & Gamble's perform? Click here.

India's marathon boy, aged three

By Sandeep Sahu BBC News, Bhubaneswar Coach Das says Budhia could be a Guinness World Record holder And Budhia Singh is just three and a half years old. When Budhia's father died a year ago, his mother, who washes dishes in Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern Indian state of Orissa, was unable to provide for her four children. She sold Budhia to a man for 800 rupees ($20). But the young boy came to the attention of Biranchi Das, a judo coach and the secretary of the local judo association. Mr Das said he noticed Budhia's talent when scolding him for being a bully. "Once, after he had done some mischief, I asked him to keep running till I came back," Mr Das told the BBC. "I got busy in some work. When I came back after five hours, I was stunned to find him still running." Siesta Mr Das, also the president of the residents' association of the run-down area where Budhia used to live, summoned the man who had bought Budhia and paid him his 800 rupees back. Then started a strict diet and exercise regimen that saw Budhia adding a few kilometres to his daily marathon every few days. A few stretching exercises for the marathon boy In place of a few lumps of rice that he used to get at his mother's place, he now has a diet of eggs, milk, soybean and meat. He starts running at 0500 each day and does not stop till noon. After a few stretching exercises, he has lunch and goes for a siesta. At 1600 it is time to run again. Budhia is enjoying his stay at the judo hostel. "I can run and eat to my heart's content here," he says. His speech is not yet easy to understand. Though he has yet to go to school, he has completed learning the alphabet of Oriya, the local language. Budhia's coach has now set his eyes on a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. That, he says, will be possible when he can run for 90km at a stretch. "I have no doubt whatsoever that he will achieve it soon", Mr Das says.

Power vs. the People

Once there was a man who said, u201CRange me all men of the world in rows.u201D And instantly There was terrific clamour among the people Against being ranged in rows. There was a loud quarrel, world-wide. It endured for ages; And blood was shed By those who would not stand in rows, And by those who pined to stand in rows. Eventually, the man went to death, weeping. And those who stayed in bloody scuffle Knew not the great simplicity. ~ Stephen Crane Like a monkey that has been bitten by a scorpion, the doltish can always be counted upon to entertain the dull-witted with irrelevant chatter following a major crisis. So it is with the catastrophe in New Orleans, as partisan political interests oppose one another on such questions as were Republicans or Democrats more to blame; whether federal, state, or municipal governments were most at fault; or did race or economic factors make for disparate treatment? As Thomas Pynchon so aptly expressed it: u201Cif they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.u201D One of the most important questions — going to the perverse nature of our institutionalized world — occurred in the recent flooding in New Orleans. It grossly understates the significance of this tragedy to focus attention only upon the utter failure of state and federal government agencies to respond. Standing alone, the sheer incompetence of government agencies and officials in the days following the flooding resembled the comic-opera buffoonery of a Marx Brothers film. That Jon Stewart’s insightful u201CThe Daily Showu201D was the only newscast capable of putting such behavior in perspective, tells us much about the fallen state of our culture. The speed and scope of private responses to this devastation contrasted with those of the political establishment, reflecting not simply the greater efficiency of spontaneously ordered systems, but fundamental differences in purpose. Millions of individuals from all over the world began sending food, clothing, blankets, fuel, money, water, medical supplies, and other life-and-death necessities to flooding victims. Homeowners from across the country went online to pledge over 150,000 beds to help house those whose homes had been destroyed. In the San Fernando Valley, one woman e-mailed to people that she would be collecting such items at a given location for trucking to the victims. Her e-mails were, in turn, forwarded to others and, in three days time, six truckloads of relief supplies were collected. Such experiences have been repeated manifold, with individuals, businesses, churches, and private charities voluntarily coming to the rescue of total strangers. The disaster in the Gulf Coast is an object lesson in how compassionate and cooperative we can be toward one another when our thinking has not been infected by politically-contrived and manipulated conflicts. The responses of the state stand in stark contrast to those of individuals. From the moment government officials awoke to the enormity of the disaster — a number of days after private persons had already begun their shipments of aid — their principal purpose has been not to aid, comfort, and rescue the victims, but to establish their authority and control over them. Political systems have always served as strange attractors to the control freaks and other misfits who have never become socially housebroken. People express surprise that government didn’t come to the aid of stricken people sooner. But aiding people is not what government is about; that is the function of the marketplace and other voluntary activity. The state is about menacing, threatening, commandeering, and killing. You will not see mayors, senators, governors, or even presidents, wading through waist-deep waters to rescue a trapped family: their functions are confined to holding press conferences and muttering platitudes. Control is what the state has always been about. If you doubt this, consider the words of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, who declared that National Guard u201Ctroops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets.u201D She added: u201CThey have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.u201D Or consider the words of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff expressing what, by now, has become the underlying motto of his police-state agency: u201CWe are in control of what’s going on in the city.u201D Add to this the words of one National Guard general who decreed: u201CWe’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.u201D From whom will the city be u201Ctaken back,u201D and to what ends? Those who have learned their political catechisms from the television priesthood will speak of u201Clooters,u201D without distinguishing those stealing food and water from stores in order to survive, and without asking whether this will include a crackdown on the police officers and firemen who reportedly joined in the stealing of television sets, computers, and other valuables. Perhaps getting u201Cthis city under controlu201D includes continuing to interfere with such voluntary efforts as Red Cross deliveries of food, Wal-Mart’s shipment of water, and physicians offering to come to New Orleans to help the sick and injured. This purpose may also explain why FEMA cut emergency communications lines from New Orleans, an action reversed by the local sheriff who then placed guards around the facility. And where, in any of the draconian rhetoric being barked by these martinets, is even an oblique reference made to ending the suffering that has now run for two weeks? While men and women were graciously opening their homes to flood victims, state officials were locking people inside crowded, smelly convention centers and domed stadiums. While individuals were fighting the bureaucratic red tape that prevented the flow of assistance, National Guard troops were employing automatic weapons to menace dispirited flood victims. Navy helicopter pilots who deviated from their assigned roles and rescued more than 100 victims, were reprimanded for having done so and, in the process, had the state’s priorities reinforced upon them. A police chief ordered his officers to block a bridge to prevent people from leaving the city, with some policemen firing warning shots over the heads of tourists trying to get out. Meanwhile, residents who wanted to stay in their homes were being forcibly removed — handcuffed and at gunpoint — while homeowners were having their guns confiscated in what some might suppose was a practice run for a subsequent disarming of Americans. All of this was, of course, defended in that most Rousseauian notion: u201CWe’re trying to save them from themselves.u201D u201CLock and load,u201D and u201Csixteen in the clip,u201D were oft-heard phrases coming from National Guard soldiers, one of whom put everything in perspective: u201CIt’s like Baghdad all over again.u201D To the state, the victims of a flood — like the victims of American aggression in Iraq — are u201Cinsurgentsu201D to be brought under control. u201CThey treated us like dirt,u201D one woman reported, words that have come to represent human responses to police and military behavior anywhere in the world. It is interesting — albeit not pleasant — to observe a civilization in freefall. Panglossian optimists continue to hope — as they would at the death-bed of a loved one — for a miracle to reverse the terminal course. The belief that someone in authority can change all of this; that new leadership or new machinery can make us better than we are, continues to drive minds that have been conditioned in institutional thinking. Most of us have simply accepted, with little examination, the statist premise so well articulated by Jacques Ellul: u201C[w]e believe that for the world to be in good order, the state must have all the powers.u201D u201CWaiting For a Leader,u201D the title of a New York Times editorial written in response to New Orleans, reflects the same pathetic attitude one saw on the faces of victims at the convention center in New Orleans. This inclination is as fatal to a society as it is to those who passively await salvation by the state. Western civilization will not be saved by the same forces that are destroying it. Einstein said it best: u201Ca problem cannot be solved by the same thinking that created it.u201D Neocons and other deluded minds continue to dream of empire, as though the arrow of time can be reversed and, in the process, resurrect the fantasized world of Roman emperors or Napoleon. While the pretenders at various Washington, D.C. think-tanks continue to fancy themselves in purple and ermine robes, the realities upon which the world functions will continue their incessant march toward the decentralized, horizontally-networked systems that are rapidly displacing the command-and-control vertical structures that have long dominated mankind. I do not recall the author of the words that have long been burned into my mind: u201Ca man has a moral duty not to allow his children to live under tyranny.u201D At no time in my life has this obligation been called to accountability more than now, as our institutionalized thinking continues to play out, in exponential fashion, its implicit absurdities. The qualities that either foster or destroy a civilization are ultimately to be found only within the character and thinking of the individuals who comprise it. Our world is only as peaceful, free, loving, and creative as you and I make it; and can become violent, tyrannical, inhumane, and destructive only as our individual thinking produces such ends. I have written of the common origins of the words u201Cpeace,u201D u201Cfreedom,u201D u201Clove,u201D and u201Cfriend.u201D Most of us have long since forgotten what our ancestors must have implicitly understood, namely, that the intertwining of the qualities inherent in the meaning of these words is what produces a decent society. To institutionalized minds, the idea that a free and peaceful world is dependent upon people living as friends, with genuine love for one another, is pass. In our politically-structured world, u201Cconfrontation,u201D u201Ccontrol,u201D u201Cambition,u201D and u201Callyu201D have corrupted such earlier sentiments. These changes in thinking have been necessary to sustain the conflict-ridden world of institutional domination. A healthy society held together by trust and mutual respect deteriorates, in a politicized world, into one dominated by fear and incivility. A complex system may experience turbulence and, later, reach a bifurcation point to which either a creative response will be made, or the system will collapse into total entropy. Modern society appears to be at such a point. The question before us is how we are to respond: by mobilizing our intelligence to generate systems that are supportive of life, or to allow the nature of our present practices to play out the destructive consequences of their premises? Events in New Orleans have brought into focus the long-standing question that we have heretofore preferred not to face: is society to be organized by and for the benefit of individuals or of institutions? Does life belong to the living, or to the organizational machinery that the living so unwisely created? We are confronted — as was Dr. Frankenstein — by a monster of our own creation, which must control and dominate us if it is to survive. We continue to feed this destructive creature, not simply with our material wealth, but with our very souls and the lives of our children. Perhaps we direct so much righteous anger at child-molesters because we are afraid to face our failure to fulfill parental obligations to our own children. In the outpouring of individual compassion and cooperation following the disaster in New Orleans, the state discovered a threat to its existence. Political systems thrive only through division and conflict; by getting people to organize themselves into mutually-exclusive groups which then fight with one another. This is why u201Cwar is the health of the state.u201D But if people can discover a sense of love and mutuality amongst them, how is the state to maintain the sense of continuing conflict upon which it depends? This is why the state must prevent the private shipment of truckload after truckload of private aid to victims; this is why flood victims — including those who want nothing more than to remain in their homes — must be turned into a criminal class, against whom state functionaries will u201Clock and loadu201D their weapons and u201Cshoot and kill . . . if necessary.u201D The state is fighting for its life, and must exaggerate its inhumane, life-destroying capacities in order to terrify the rest of us into structured obedience. This is the meaning of Pogo Possum’s classic observation: u201Cwe have met the enemy and they is us.u201D This is why, as New Orleans continued to be under the u201Ccontrolu201D of federal agencies, the Pentagon proposed the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against u201Cterrorist groupsu201D using u201Cweapons of mass destruction.u201D What could u201Cterrorizeu201D the state more than to have people realize that social order lies only within the hands of free men and women? What u201Cweaponu201D could be more destructive to the state than a u201Cmassu201D outbreak of love and compassion? In the waning days of Western civilization, you and I are in a struggle between the individualized sense of humanity and the collective forces of structured order. The nature of this struggle has been no better expressed than by Gandhi: u201CThe individual has a soul, but the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence.u201D It is this contest between the human spirit and the machine that will determine the fate of mankind — including our children — in our post-civilized world. The Best of Butler Shaffer

Flat income tax - A dip in the middle

INCOME tax has been paid in Britain for more than two centuries. First introduced by William Pitt the Younger to finance the war against Napoleonic France, it is the Treasury's biggest source of revenue, raising 30% of tax receipts. It arouses strong political emotions, regarded as fair by some because it makes the rich pay a bigger share of their income than the poor, but unfair by others because it penalises enterprise and hard work. During the past 30 years, income tax has been subject to sweeping changes, notably the cut in the top rate from 98% to 40% under Margaret Thatcher between 1979 and 1988. Now another Conservative politician, George Osborne, is floating a radical reform to match that earlier exploit. The shadow chancellor announced on September 7th that he was setting up a commission to explore the possible introduction of a flat tax in Britain. Mr Osborne's big new idea stems in part from frustration at the Conservative party's failure to win votes on tax in the past two elections. Their proposal to cut taxes by £4 billion ($7.4 billion) a year did them few favours at the polls in May. Such a paltry reduction in a trillion-pound economy seemed an apology of a policy. By contrast, the introduction of a flat tax would be a radical step. The reform is already being tried elsewhere. Mr Osborne first expressed interest in the flat tax after a visit in June to Estonia, which introduced it in 1994. Since then eight other countries in eastern and central Europe have followed suit. Poland appears likely to adopt a flat income tax. Even Germany is flirting with the idea (see article). Introducing a flat income tax into Britain would involve two main changes. At present, there are three marginal tax rates. The first £2,090 of taxable income is taxed at 10%; the next £30,310 is taxed at the basic rate of 22%; and income above that is taxed at the higher rate of 40%. These three rates would be replaced by a single rate, which would be considerably lower than the current top rate. At the same time there would be an increase in the tax-free personal allowance, currently worth £4,895. Flat-tax proponents say that the reform would yield many economic benefits. If it were combined with an assault on other tax reliefs, then it would simplify a tax system that is groaning with complexity. The latest edition of “Tolley's Yellow Tax Handbook”, which contains all direct-tax legislation for 2005-06, runs to four weighty volumes and has roughly doubled in length since Gordon Brown became chancellor of the exchequer in 1997. Only this week, Mr Brown was upbraided by a parliamentary committee for the complex “nightmare” of his system of tax credits, designed to help poorer families. Another advantage is that reform could sweep a lot of low-paid people out of income tax altogether. In the past eight years under Labour, the number of income-tax payers has risen from 26.2m to 30.5m. Over the same period, the number of higher-rate taxpayers has risen from 2.1m to 3.6m. Flat-tax fans also think that it could trigger a new economic dynamism, as people respond to the enhanced incentive to work harder. The more this happens, the more the reform could pay for itself as a bigger economy generates more tax revenues. So much for the economic case for a flat tax. What of its politics? One obvious objection is that the reform would be unfair, since the richer would pay less tax than they do at present. Advocates of a flat tax make two rejoinders. First, an income-tax system with a single rate remains progressive—the rich pay a higher proportion of their income than the poor—as long as it is combined with a tax-free allowance. Second, the rich can exploit current complexities to avoid taxes in ways that could be curtailed in a flat-tax system. But could a flat tax be introduced without there being losers? A recent paper from the Adam Smith Institute suggested that this would indeed be possible. Richard Teather, its author, proposed a flat-rate tax of 22%, the present basic rate, with a tax-free personal allowance of £12,000, more than double the current one. “All taxpayers would be better off under the reform,” he argued. However, the proposal has an obvious flaw. As Mr Teather himself admits, it would result in an initial loss in revenue of £50 billion a year. That is over a third of the total income-tax receipts of £138 billion that the Treasury expects this year; and a tenth of all government revenues. Unless public spending were slashed, other taxes would have to rise to meet this shortfall. So a more realistic simulation of the impact of a flat tax is to make it revenue-neutral. The Economist asked John Hawksworth, an economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accountancy firm, to calculate what that might involve. He said the current yield of income tax could be preserved with a flat rate of 30% and a personal allowance of £10,000. We also asked Mr Hawksworth to estimate what impact such a reform would have on income-tax payers. Under this revenue-neutral approach, there would be losers as well as winners compared with current tax bills (see chart). Those who would gain are low-earners as well as high-fliers. For example, someone on £10,000 would gain 8.7% of their income; someone on £100,000 would gain 5% of their income. Those who would lose are in the middle, with losses peaking at 3.5% of income at the current higher-rate threshold of £37,295. In all, more than 10m income-tax payers—a third of the present number—would lose from such a reform. Clearly, different combinations of allowance and tax rate would generate different results. But the general pattern would remain the same. “If you raise the same revenue but increase the allowance, then it is the people in the middle of the income tax paying population that lose from a flat tax,” says Christopher Heady, head of tax policy at the OECD. This finding is politically awkward for the Tories. Unless a flat income tax were financed by big increases in other taxes, it is difficult to see how it could realistically be introduced without exacting a lot of pain among middling earners. Yet their votes will be crucial if the Conservatives are to stand any chance at the next election. The flat tax is an arresting idea—and politically attractive because it gives the Tories a platform to attack Labour's itch to meddle with the tax code—but it does not get the Conservatives off the hook. Mr Osborne wants lower and simpler taxes. However, he will be able to achieve that goal only if he can work out a convincing set of proposals to cut public spending.

Customer Data May be Too Risky to Keep

Companies keep finding ways to misplace consumers' personal data. Courier services lose tapes on their way to long-term storage facilities; malevolent social engineers con their way into access; laptop computers holding multiple databases are stolen. We hear a lot about these kinds of things now because a new California law requires companies to disclose to consumers when their data has been compromised. It should be obvious, though, that data loss has been happening for some time, because the level of security in these cases seems to have been, at best, pervasively inadequate. All of which makes me wonder: Why are companies keeping our data at all? Wouldn't they—and we—be better off in the long run if data wasn't collected and stored in the first place? This sounds counterintuitive, and it certainly goes against today's common business practices. It's basically been an article of faith that gathering, storing and massaging ever more data is a good thing. Information can be power. It helps determine risk and reward. It helps a company know its various constituents better, including customers and suppliers. And it's worth money. The current model fails in two areas. One, as noted, is with shamefully lax security. The other is the perverse notion that our personal lives are a commodity to be bought, sold and traded without serious regard for privacy or the consequences of sloppy handling. This doesn't even take into account the common problem of data that is outright false. It is distressing that most personal information—such as what we spend and where we spend it, not to mention the ultimate skeleton key for identity thieves, our Social Security numbers—can be bartered at all. And when information is compromised or incorrect, consumers are largely responsible for cleaning up the chaos that results. The data collection system is, at long last, beginning to fray at the edges. Consumers are growing more worried and angry over what they're learning about shoddy storage and trading practices. A recent survey by Harris Interactive found an increase in identity theft and a decrease in consumer confidence that negatively affected purchasing decisions. The worst practices are drawing the attention of trial lawyers who, in the absence of more serious government enforcement, are prosecuting the promise-breakers. But the California law may be a canary in the coal mine for keepers of data, because it signals the possible reappearance of legislators into an arena they've tried hard to avoid—a natural tendency, given the prodigious amounts of campaign contributions legislators have collected from the data collectors and sellers. It's in this context that we should be asking whether the rewards of holding on to consumer data are worth the trouble—and whether it's possible to create an infrastructure that gives consumers much more control over their information from the outset. Eric Norlin, a vice president at Ping Identity Corp., and a longtime writer on these matters, advocates "federated identity"—a decentralized system that would have the effect of giving consumers just this sort of granular control. "This is about customers being able to make their identities portable," he says, "to allow individuals to present the ID they choose to present to the service provider." For example, if I were buying a plane ticket, I could give the airline permission to charge a certain amount of money to my credit card. But the airline wouldn't need access to the actual credit card number if I'd simultaneously given the card issuer enough information about the transaction to make the transfer. The bank or other card issuer would need my permission to pay the airline, but the entire transaction could take place in a seamless mesh of business logic, using advanced Web services, that lends parts of my identity to those who need it on a temporary basis. This leaves a single potential point of failure (for this transaction, at any rate) from an identity-theft standpoint: the bank. Even though banks can, and sometimes do, get careless with data, a financial institution that builds and maintains an excellent record for data security will win more business. Competition for customers would bring more business to providers that are the most careful. For such a system to have any chance of working, a variety of technologies is required. Ultimately, consumers and merchants must trust that the parties they're dealing with on either side of the transaction are indeed who they're supposed to be. Also, data cannot be easy to compromise. So encryption as well as the ability to digitally "sign" what we send around are crucial. A viable public-key encryption infrastructure meets these requirements, and the technology's inventor is Whitfield Diffie, Sun Microsystems' chief security officer. He questions whether institutions would ever buy into an identity system where the data resided solely with consumers, but says there's no fundamental technical barrier. Still, the practical difficulties are not trivial. Mortgage lenders may lose some of their ability to uncover information borrowers may have failed to disclose, and that would mean greater lending risk. One way around the problem might be harsher contract sanctions for failing to give lenders correct information when asked, plus a higher interest rate for more limited kinds of disclosure. In such transactions, people will have to make visible more verified data about themselves than in deals, such as a simple purchase, where the stakes are lower. Another real-world barrier, Diffie notes, is the lack of a ubiquitous key infrastructure. The old AT&T could have created that, given its one-time dominance of communications. Federal agencies such as the National Security Agency had the wherewithal to do it, but the NSA damaged its credibility with the public by trying to exert improper control over encryption. Federated identity advocates are painstakingly building an infrastructure today that they hope will solve the problems of tomorrow. One drawback with user-controlled data has nothing to do with business, and that is the government's wish to spy on us. Law enforcement might find its job complicated by an identity system that decentralized control and collection of information. Even so, there is enormous logic and value to society in returning people's personal lives to their own control. The credibility of future electronically based commerce may depend on consumers' trust in the system. They are losing faith already, and a data Chernobyl is in no one's interest. The way we're going, however, such a meltdown might be hard to avoid. It would be wise to plan now for the aftermath, wiser still if companies would consider—just consider—the possibility that data retention itself could be the heart of the problem, and seriously analyze the alternatives. That alone would move the ball ahead. Corporate America has an unfortunate addiction to centralized data that it doesn't need. Sometimes, losing control is an advantage. This is my first column for CIO Insight. We're calling it "EdgeWise" to reflect the growing decentralization of today's information economy. The insights and endeavors that people (and their machines) at the edges of networks feed back to the center, and to each other, are already enormous—and they're expanding. We see this phenomenon in open-source software projects. We see it in Weblogs. We see it in grid computing and mass parallel processing. You know more than I do. I hope you'll tell me things that you know and I don't and that CIOs need to know. Let's make this space a conversation, not a lecture. Dan Gillmor is author of We the Media: Grassroots -Journalism by the People, for the People and founder of Bayosphere.com, a San Francisco Bay Area Web site. His next column will appear in December.

Guantanamo hunger strike expands

Many prisoners are al-Qaeda or Taleban suspects Eighteen prisoners have been hospitalised, including 13 who are being tube-fed. Lawyers for the detainees say they are demanding release or immediate trial. This is the latest in a series of hunger strikes since 2002 by detainees, who are held at the facility on Cuba as part of the US war on terror. If their condition appears to weaken, they will be brought to the hospital and either fed intravenously or nose-fed Capt John Adams, detention centre spokesman Lawyers for the detainees said as many as 200 were involved in the protest. Many of the inmates have been held without charge for more than three years. A hunger strike in July ended when the Pentagon agreed to talk to inmates. The prison at Guantanamo holds about 500 prisoners from nearly 40 countries. Starve to death A spokesman for the detention centre, Capt John Adams, says all those inmates hospitalised are being monitored by doctors at the camp, AFP news agency reports. "Everyone is stable at this time. If their condition appears to weaken, they will be brought to the hospital and either fed intravenously or nose fed," says Captain Adams. The Pentagon says many prisoners have been sent home During the previous hunger strike, the prisoners were monitored by medical professionals and also admitted to hospital where necessary. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has provided lawyers for many detainees, say some prisoners have threatened to starve to death unless they are put on trial or released, the Associated Press reports. The US military has also denied claims by the CCR that at least three detainees were abused by the military's Extreme Reaction Force, AP says. The Pentagon says nearly 250 prisoners have been sent to their home countries from Guantanamo since the prison operation began. An Afghan prisoner sent back two days ago was identified by Afghan state television as Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taleban ambassador to Pakistan, Reuters news agency reports. Many of the prisoners are al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects detained during the 2001 war in Afghanistan. As most inmates are held as enemy combatants they are not protected by the Geneva Convention and can be held indefinitely, the US government says.

Human evolution - Three of a kind

HAVING been trumped last week by the decision of the chimpanzee genome-sequencing consortium to publish in their rival, Nature (see article), the editors of Science have now got somewhat of their own back with a trio of papers that look at genes which seem to be involved in the evolution of the human brain. Two of these papers reported studies carried out by Bruce Lahn, of the University of Chicago, and his colleagues. Dr Lahn has been studying two genes that tell the brain what size to grow to. If either of these genes, known as Microcephalin and ASPM, fails to do its job properly, the result is a brain that, though normal in its structure, is far smaller than it ought to be—somewhere between a quarter and a third of the normal volume—and which does not work properly. One of the characteristics of Homo sapiens is an exceedingly large brain, and some biologists have speculated that changes in these two genes might be part of the cause of this enlargement. Those speculations have been supported by evidence that these genes have changed significantly since the human and ape lines separated several million years ago. Dr Lahn has added to that evidence, and has shown that this evolution continued even after Homo sapiens became a species in its own right, less than 200,000 years ago. One variant of Microcephalin, now widespread, came into existence only about 37,000 years ago, while a widespread version of ASPM originated a mere 5,800 years ago—meaning that it post-dates the beginning of civilisation. Dr Lahn and his team were able to estimate the dates that the two gene-variants first appeared by looking at which groups of people have them. The past two decades have revealed a lot about how humanity has spread across the globe, and when. By tracing branches of the family trees containing the variants in question backward until they join, the dates at which the variants appeared can be worked out. That the two variants have spread by natural selection rather than chance can be seen from the speed with which they have become established. If they had no positive consequences, their frequency would rise, if at all, by chance—a process known as neutral drift. The third paper, by Toshiyuki Hayakawa and Takashi Angata, of the University of California, San Diego and their colleagues, looks at a molecular receptor for a chemical called sialic acid. This chemical caused a stir a few years ago when it was discovered that human sialic acid is different from that found in apes—and, indeed, any other mammals. Dr Hayakawa and Dr Angata have found a receptor for sialic acid that occurs in human brain cells (though the cells in question are support cells rather than actual nerve cells), but not in those of apes. The gene that encodes this receptor molecule seems to have been cobbled together from bits of two other genes one of which, in a curious twist, had itself stopped working properly during the course of evolution. What all this means is still mysterious. The study of brain evolution is still in the stamp-collecting phase that begins most branches of science, when researchers are looking for interesting facts to stick in their albums, rather than assembling overarching hypotheses. These three stamps, though, are very pretty. Eventually, they may turn out to be precious.

Content Management System, Blog Software & Publishing Platform

License Agreement for Use of Movable Type Number of servers: 1 / Number of users: Unlimited This Movable Type License Agreement (hereinafter referred to as this "Agreement") is made and entered into by and between an individual, corporation, entity or organization (hereinafter referred to as the "Client") that uses Movable Type (hereinafter referred to as the "Software") and Six Apart Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Six Apart"). The Client shall not download, install or use the Software unless it agrees to this Agreement. The Client shall be deemed to have agreed to this Agreement upon its download, installation or use of the Software. Article 1. Definitions In this Agreement, the following terms shall have the meanings specified below: (1) User "User" means an individual who has been assigned his/her own login name generated by the Software through the function of the Software to "add/edit blog authors." Any person using invalidated login name shall not be counted as a User. Further, it is prohibited to share a login name of any individual among more than one person. (2) Commenter "Commenter" means a User entitled only to post comments on the Software. The number of Commenters shall not be included in the number of Users. (3) Server "Server" means a computer installed with Movable Type, or a group of computers consisting of a computer installed with Movable Type and a computer or computers used for publishing web pages and a computer or computers used as database server. (4) Update "Update" of a product means a minor functional improvement over, or a bug fixing in, the current version. Release of an Update may be confirmed by a change of the version number. (5) Upgrade "Upgrade" means a major-scale release of a product with introduction of a new function or improvement in the key functionality of the Software. Release of an Upgrade may be confirmed by a change of the version number. Designation of either the "Update" or the "Upgrade" shall be made by Six Apart. Article 2. Use of Software Pursuant to the provisions of this Agreement, the Client shall be granted a license to use, on a non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable basis, the Software for the purpose of the Client's own use (if the Client is a corporation, entity or organization, use of the Software by an individual belonging to the Client or any similar individuals designated by the Client from among individuals within the scope permitted by Six Apart in accordance with the License Policy, as the use of the Software by the Client pursuant to this Agreement), and, if the Client operates a community, for the purpose of use within the community by participants therein. Except as specified in this Agreement, the Client may not provide any third party the whole or part of functions of the Software, nor may the Client receive from any third party a consideration for the use of the Software, no matter what the purpose of use is. Six Apart shall be entitled to determine whether the use by the Client is pursuant to this Agreement or not. Six Apart shall retain all rights pertaining to the Software (including all intellectual property rights), as well as all rights pertaining to the Software which are not specifically licensed under this Agreement. The use of the Software shall be limited to the number of Users and the number of Servers set forth in this Agreement. The number of the Commenters shall not be limited. Article 3. 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After the lapse of one (1) year following the purchase of the license, the Client has to purcahse the license again to receive the Maintenance. (3) If the Software is provided as an Update or Upgrade, the Client may use either the previous version or the current version and shall not use both versions concurrently; provided, however, that, if the Client chooses to use the previous version despite the Upgrade of the Software, the Client shall acknowledge that the Update set forth in the preceding Paragraph concerning such previous version may be terminated at the discretion of Six Apart. Article 5. Compliance The Client shall understand and acknowledge that it may use the Software only in compliance with all applicable laws. In addition, the Client shall use the Software in accordance with laws and other regulations relating to privacy and intellectual property rights. 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网上购买福彩快三

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Taking Stock of the Forever War

As Zarqawi described in his letter and in subsequent broadcasts, his strategy in Iraq is to strike at the Shia -- and thereby provoke a civil war. "A nation of heretics," the Shia "are the key element of change," he wrote. "If we manage to draw them onto the terrain of partisan war, it will be possible to tear the Sunnis away from their heedlessness, for they will feel the weight of the imminence of danger." Again a strategy of provocation -- which plays on an underlying reality: that Iraq sits on the critical sectarian fault line of the Middle East and that a conflict there gains powerful momentum from the involvement of neighboring states, with Iran strongly supporting the Shia and with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Syria strongly sympathetic to the Sunnis. More and more, you can discern this outline in the chaos of the current war, with the Iranian-trained militias of the Shia Islamist parties that now control the Iraqi government battling Sunni Islamists, both Iraqi and foreign-born, and former Baathists. In the midst of it all, increasingly irrelevant, are the Americans, who have the fanciest weapons but have never had sufficient troops, or political will, to assert effective control over the country. If political authority comes from achieving a monopoly on legitimate violence, then the Americans, from those early days when they sat in their tanks and watched over the wholesale looting of public institutions, never did achieve political authority in Iraq. They fussed over liberalizing the economy and writing constitutions and achieving democracy in the Middle East when in fact there was really only one question in Iraq, emerging again and again in each successive political struggle, most recently in the disastrously managed writing of the constitution: how to shape a new political dispensation in which the age-old majority Shia can take control from the minority Sunni and do it in a way that minimized violence and insecurity -- do it in a way, that is, that the Sunnis would be willing to accept, however reluctantly, without resorting to armed resistance. This might have been accomplished with hundreds of thousands of troops, iron control and a clear sense of purpose. The Americans had none of these. Instead they relied first on a policy of faith and then on one of improvisation, driven in part by the advice of Iraqi exile "friends" who used the Americans for their own purposes. Some of the most strikingly ideological decisions, like abruptly firing and humiliating the entire Iraqi Army and purging from their jobs many hundreds of thousands of Baath Party members, seemed designed to alienate and antagonize a Sunni population already terrified of its security in the new Iraq. "You Americans," one Sunni businessman said to me in Baghdad last February, shaking his head in wonder, "you have created your own enemies here." The United States never used what authority it had to do more than pretend to control the gathering chaos, never managed to look clearly at the country and confront Iraq's underlying political dysfunction, of which the tyranny of Saddam Hussein was the product, not the cause. "The illusionists," Ambassador John Negroponte's people called their predecessors, the officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority under L. Paul Bremer III. Now, day by day, the illusion is slipping away, and with it what authority the Americans had in Iraq. What is coming to take its place looks increasingly like a failed state. VI. It is an oft-heard witticism in Washington that the Iraq war is over and that the Iranians won. And yet the irony seems misplaced. A truly democratic Iraq was always likely to be an Iraq led not only by Shia, who are the majority of Iraqis, but by those Shia parties that are the largest and best organized -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Islamic Party -- which happen to be those blessed by the religious authorities and nurtured in Iran. Nor would it be a surprise if a democratic Saudi Arabia turned out to be a fundamentalist Saudi Arabia and one much less friendly to the United States. Osama bin Laden knows this, and so do American officials. This is why the United States is "friendly" with "apostate regimes." Democratic outcomes do not always ensure friendly governments. Often the contrary is true. On this simple fact depends much of the history of American policy not only in the Middle East but also in Latin America and other parts of the world throughout the cold war. Bush administration officials, for all their ideological fervor, did the country no favor by ignoring it. In launching his new cold war, George W. Bush chose a peculiarly ideological version of cold-war history. He opted not for containment, the cautious, status quo grand strategy usually attributed to the late George F. Kennan, but for rollback. Containment, by which the United States determinedly resisted Soviet attempts to expand its influence, would have meant a patient, methodical search for terrorists, discriminating between those groups that threaten the United States and those that do not, pursuing the former with determined, practical policies that would have drawn much from the military and law-enforcement cooperation of our allies and that would have included an effective program of nonproliferation to keep weapons of mass destruction out of terrorist hands. Rollback, on the other hand, meant something quite different; those advocating it during the 1950's considered containment immoral, for it recognized the status quo: Communist hegemony in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. They wanted instead to destroy Communism entirely by "rolling back" Communists from territory they had gained, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur did briefly and, it turned out, catastrophically, in North Korea, and as President Eisenhower refused to do when he declined to support the Hungarian revolutionaries against the Soviet invasion in 1956. The original advocates of rollback lost that struggle. In this new cold war, the rollback advocates triumphed and adopted as the heart of their policy a high-stakes, metaphysical gamble to "democratize the Middle East" and thus put an end, once and for all, to terrorism. They relied on a "domino theory" in which the successful implantation of democracy in Iraq would lead to a "democratic revolution" across the region. The ambition of this idea is breathtaking; it depends on a conception of American power as virtually limitless and on an entirely fanciful vision of Iraqi politics, a kind of dogged political wish-fulfillment that no sober analysis could penetrate. Replacing any real willingness to consider whether a clear course existed between here and there, between an invasion and occupation of Iraq and a democratic Middle East, was, at bottom, the simple conviction that since the United States enjoyed a "preponderance of power" unseen in the world since the Roman Empire, and since its cause of democratic revolution was so incontrovertibly just, defeat was inconceivable. One detects here an echo of Vietnam: the inability to imagine that the all-powerful United States might lose. American power, however, is not limitless. Armies can destroy and occupy, but it takes much more to build a lasting order, especially on the shifting sands of a violent political struggle: another Vietnam echo. Learning the lesson this time around may prove more costly, for dominoes can fall both ways. "Political engineering on this scale could easily go awry," Stephen D. Biddle, a U.S. Army War College analyst, wrote this past April in a shrewd analysis. "If a democratic Iraq can catalyze reform elsewhere, so a failed Iraq could presumably export chaos to its neighbors. A regionwide Lebanon might well prove beyond our capacity to police, regardless of effort expended. And if so, then we will have replaced a region of police states with a region of warlords and chronic instability. This could easily prove to be an easier operating environment for terrorism than the police states it replaces."

Massive sunspot has Earth in its sights

A sunspot five times the size of Earth could wreak havoc with satellites and radio communication systems, scientists warn, as it moves across the face of the sun and Earth moves directly into its firing line. Seven huge X-class flares have already erupted from the spot, including one of magnitude X17 last Wednesday that made it into the record books as the fourth largest ever seen. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that the flares have already caused problems with some electric power systems, radio communications and global positioning equipment. It went on to warn that further flares are likely in the next week, and because the sunspot is moving into line with Earth, the risk of disruptions is even greater as the solar activity will strike the planet head-on. The daddy of all solar flares was spotted in November 2003, and ranked X28 on the magnitude scale. Fortunately, the flare did not directly strike Earth. Even so, it did disrupt satellites, and caused some problems for the Mars Express spacecraft, which at that time was still en route to Mars. The radiation from a flare will reach the Earth within minutes, but the charged particles associated with the event take longer to arrive, typically two days. These particles are responsible for the Auroras Borealis and Australis; the Northern and Southern lights. These plasma storms are also responsible for interfering with power grids, TV reception, satellites and so on. In 1989 a solar flare that hit the Earth directly actually knocked out a whole power grid in Quebec. ®

Powazek: Just a Thought: Embrace your bottom!

Embrace your bottom! Just a thought from 13 September 2005 about Design, Powazek, Weblogs. I mentioned this idea briefly when I posted about the recent redesign, but I wanted to expand it further. Web designers of the world, let's talk about your bottoms. When you're designing pages - specifically content pages - what is the best possible thing that could happen? I mean after the user has bought a computer, gotten internet connectivity, figured out how to use a browser, and somehow found their way to your site ... what is the single best thing that they could do? Read. That's right, read. And read all the way to the bottom of the page. In this business, a user that actually reads all the way to the bottom of a page is like gold. They're your best, most engaged, happiest users. You know, because they haven't clicked away. They did the best possible thing they could do, and now they're at the bottom of the page. And how do you reward them? With a copyright statement. Maybe, if they're lucky, some bland footer navigation. If you ask me, that's just rude. It's time we designers start thinking about page footers as part of the experience design of a complete site. The bottom of a page is the kiss at the end of the date - and we're making sites that end without even a handshake. Take the usual site: The top is crowded with navigation, the middle is primarily devoted to the main content, with about a third of the vertical space devoted to distracting sidebar items. Those sidebar items are great for readers who just aren't engaged in whatever they're reading. They can skim down a paragraph or two and then link away to the next thing. But do you really want to optimize your site for the least engaged? Your engaged users - the ones who really like you, yaknow, more than a friend - are sticking with that main content. Everything in the sidebar just makes it harder to focus on your content. Then, when they get to the end, when they're ready for something else to do, when they're ready for that end of the date smooch ... that's the moment it's all been leading up to. That's when users are most open to suggestions of where else to go, maybe do a search, maybe even click on an ad. It's those engaged users we should be optimizing for. Because by creating a web experience that's encouraging and engaging to the people who actually want to read your site, you create more of them! Pretty soon, that's all you have. We may even wind up with a web of people who actually like to read.

Bush 'caught short' at UN summit

The note was written during UN summit talks Enlarge Image But when you are the US president, at a gathering of more than 150 world leaders, it is even more tricky. While talk at the UN world summit was focused on terrorism and internal reform, George W Bush appeared to have been caught short. And, he is said to have turned to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for advice. "I think I may need a bathroom break? Is this possible?" a Reuters news agency photographer caught him writing in a note to Ms Rice. The photograph, and Mr Bush's apparent request for permission to pee, has been the subject of discussion on a number of satirical websites. President Bush was among monarchs, presidents and prime ministers for the opening of the three-day summit, marking the 60th anniversary of the UN. In a speech, he urged the UN to pursue meaningful reforms to allow it to meet modern challenges and said the US was committed to helping overcome poverty.

Meebo: More of What You Love

Meebo is now part of Google Meebo was acquired by Google on June 4, 2012. Our team is now working just a few miles down the road with the Google+ team, where we continue to focus on creating delightful experiences for our users, developers, and publishers. Meebo's products are no longer available, but you can find all the latest and greatest things that we're working on at https://developers.google.com/+/. Thanks, The Meebo Team

Why I switched to Firefox

It’s a sad day and a good day. For years I’ve held onto my IE install out of love. I worked on IE 1.0 thru 5.0, and was one of the people that designed much of its UI. But my love for the past has faded. Last week I switched to Firefox: and I’ve been happy. Why I switched: IE is a ghetto. There are specs I wrote for UI features in 1998 that are unchanged today, 7 years later, in a world where browser usage has changed dramatically. I’ve watched bugs that I fought to have fixed in 5.0 become regressions, appearing in 5.01 and surviving in 6.0. Even though it’s the product I was proudest of, using it now makes me sad – it’s been left behind. I do read the IE blog now and again – smart folks are working – but there’s nothing for me to install. Bookmarks work. The Favorites UI model in IE is the same one we built in 1997, when we knew most of our users had 20-40 favorites. It was made to be super simple and consumer friendly as most of the population was still new to the net. This UI is effectively broken today, designed for people that don’t exist. The Favorites menu and Favorites bar show links in different orders, the organize favorites dialog is just weird, multiselect doesn’t work: favorites is a sad forgotten place. This was by far my greatest frustration with IE, even though I’m responsible for much of the original design. Firefox has quality & polish. IE 5.0, for its time (1999), was a high quality release. Really, it was. Joe Peterson, Hadi Partovi and Chris Jones fought hard to give the team time to do lots of fit and finish work. We did fewer features and focused hard on quality and refinement. Firefox feels to me like what IE 6.0 should have been (or what i expected it to be after I left the team in ’99). It picked a few spots to build new features (tabs), focused on quality and refinement, and paid attention to making the things used most, work best. The core UI design is very similiar to IE5: History/Favorites bars, progress UI, toolbars, but its all smooth, reliable and clean. They made a mainstream product. One of the big challenges in designing software is balancing the requests of earlier adopters in the community, with the needs of the majority of more mainstream users. After playing with mozilla on and off I was afraid firefox would be a built for programmers by programmers type experience. It’s not. I don’t know who in the firefox org was the gatekeeper on features and UI, but I’d like to meet him/her/them (seriously). They did a great job of keeping the user experience focused on the core tasks. If you’re reading please say hi. Security isn’t annoying. . The press makes security into such a huge deal, but I’ll be honest. I don’t want to think about security at all. I’ll do what I need to, but mostly I want the system to take care of it and stay out my face. Nothing in FF makes me feel safer explicitly, I just don’t deal with as many warnings, settings and other details. I know from the PR that security in FF is better (even if only because it’s less targeted by spyware, etc.) but I’m pleased that the product doesn’t remind me of how safe I am all the time. Problems with Firefox: I’m a UI design guy, so many of these are UI related. (Added note: I’d used FF on and off, but since I’m now 100% some of these are complaints might fade in a month of usage. Stay tuned). Find UI. Why does the find dialog appear at the bottom of the screen? I agree that a dialog box (semi-modal) can be a mistake if you’re doing multiple searches, but flipping a coin for placement (top vs. bottom), the top is a better choice for any UI, especially if it’s going to look and act like a toolbar. I can’t move it so it earns a spot on this list. However, the overall implementation isn’t circa 1992 like the IE one. It highlights, it searches on type, & it warns on unfound items – nice.. Download UI. Here’s a case where modeless makes sense (it’s never my primary user task), but here we get a dialog box. My first crack at this would be a one line toolbar, much like the find bar, at the bottom of the screen telling me about downloads. That’s where all the other dl status info goes. Again, despite my nits, it’s an improvement on the ancient IE implementation (which we all hated forever too). Tabs and new windows. Firefox goes against IE behavior and starts each browser instance from scratch. IE intentionally brings the browser history into the new window: the bet being that users who want to continue from where they left off can, and those that want to go their home page can do that with one click. Everytime I hit Cntr-T and see a blank screen I think I’m in Word. I use tabs less often than I expected: opening new windows is often more comfortable – easier to track which window lives where. With multiple tabs (I find) the back/forward behavior becomes complex and hard to predict. Strict UI logic would put the tab UI above the toolbars, not below, but that creates other problems. Tabs and modality. The desired illusion of tabs should be to make each tab a virtual browser. Well this breaks when you bring up a modal dialog within a tab: you can’t switch to another tab. It’s an annoyance, not a sin, but when it happens it reinforces my new window habit, and slaps my wrist on my growing New tab habit. The return of the go menu. It was with great pride that we killed the go menu in IE 5.0. It was the stupidest menu I’d ever seen, since it was never used and no one knew what it did. For accessibility it was necessary, but had no rights to be a top level menu (IE has View.Go). The Go menu was probably inherited from NSCP/mozilla, but it really should be put out to pasture. And if it stays, someone needs to explain why it shows a different history list than the one in the back button drop down. For reference: I wrote about principles of browser design here: How to build a better browser. (Update: I’ve responded to many of the comments in a second post.)

The Coming Dollar Crisis?

As is often the case, the most interesting things I learned at last August's round of conferences came not in the formal conference sessions but in the informal small-group conversations before, around, in the interstices of, and after the conference. Take the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's "Greenspan Era" conference. It was held in Jackson Hole, at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park, in the shadow of the Grand Tetons, which are perhaps the most impressive mountain range in North America. ("Perhaps" because the Canadian central bankers present pointed out the Canadian Rockies from Lake Louise to Jasper, while Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco president Janet Yellen sang the praises of the mountains of her own Federal Reserve District: the east face of the Sierra Nevada as seen from the Owens Valley, to be specific.) You spend the mornings in windowless conference rooms, and the afternoons outside--on the Snake River, hiking, climbing, looking for moose, looking for elk, hoping that bear are not looking for you. But the afternoons--and the formal and informal breaks in the mornings when you flee the windowless conference room for the fresh air of the west lawn of the lodge to stare at Mount Moran and company across the lake--are filled with arguments. Go with Federal Reserve Governor Don Kohn on an afternoon hike up Cascade Canyon, I am told, and expect to gain 3000 feet in two hours while being quizzed intently about technical details of monetary policy. Try to keep from grounding yourself on sand bars in the Snake River, and you will hear ex-senior executive branch officials of both political parties give their assessments of why neither of the Bush II Treasury Secretaries has been able to make effective use of the thousand or so people who work directly for him. This time the most interesting rounds of break-and-afternoon conversations I heard were sparked by Sebastian Edwards's paper about the U.S. current account deficit. My conversations quickly exposed a deep fault among the conference attendees. Those who analyzed or forecast the U.S. domestic macroeconomy agreed that a steep decline in the value of the dollar sometime in the next five years was overwhelmingly likely, but by and large they did not think that such a decline would pose a big problem for the U.S. economy. (They agreed that it might well pose a very big problem for some of America's trading partners.) By contrast, those who analyzed or forecast the international economy as a whole were typically terrified by the prospect of a steep (30% or more, perhaps much more) decline in the value of the dollar: they thought a severe U.S. recession was a definite possibility, and that the situation would require exceptionally skillful handling to keep from becoming a serious economic problem. Why this disjunction? The domestic macroeconomists would typically argue more or less like this: Yes, the dollar is likely to decline steeply either when foreign central banks stop buying dollar-denominated assets to keep the values of their currencies down or when international speculators lose confidence or both. But so what? The fall in the value of the dollar will boost foreign demand for U.S. exports. Workers will be pulled out of other sectors into the export sector. The effects of the dollar decline are much more likely to be a plus for employment rather than a minus, a boom rather than a recession. To this, the international economists would respond more-or-less like this: When foreign central banks stop buying or international speculators lose confidence in the value of the dollar and thus stop buying U.S. long-term bonds, two things happen: the value of the dollar falls, and the rate of interest on dollar-denominated long-term bonds spikes. The spike in long-term interest rates discourages investment spending directly, and also discourages consumption spending because higher interest rates mean lower housing and stock prices and thus lower consumer wealth. The fall in domestic spending happens now. The rise in exports as the falling dollar makes U.S.-made products more attractive to foreigners happens two years from now. In between, a lot of people are unemployed--and as they are unemployed, they cut back further on their spending. Plus there is the risk that the fall in the value of the dollar and the fall in long-term asset prices generated by the interest rate spike will cause enough bankruptcies among financial institutions to cause a flight to quality--which will further raise non-safe interest rates, and further discourage investment and consumption spending This then puzzled the domestic economists: Why should interest rates spike? The Federal Reserve controls American interest rates. If it wants to keep the price of the ten-year Treasury bond high, it can simply start buying bonds until the price of ten-year Treasuries is what the Fed wants it to be. There's no reason for employment in construction and other interest rate-sensitive sectors to fall before employment in exports and related sectors rises--at least not unless the Federal Reserve makes a big mistake and allows rising interest rates to shoot the economy in the head. And at this point the response of the international economists fragmented: Some said that the falling dollar would create inflation--with imports at 1/6 of GDP, a 40% fall in the dollar would, if fully passed through to import prices, add 6% to the U.S. price level. The Federal Reserve would feel honor-bound to maintain its reputation as an inflation-fighter, and so would allow interest rates to go high enough to produce enough unemployment to push nominal wages down far enough to offset this rise in import prices. Thus the Federal Reserve would welcome the spike in interest rates as appropriate, and take no steps to offset it. Others said that the adjustment to the fall in the dollar would require that ten million workers shift out of construction, retail, and consumer services occupations and into export and import-competing manufacturing industries. You cannot move ten million American workers from one sector to another in a matter of a year or two without creating lots of structural unemployment. Still others said that financial stress would be the key: perhaps some major Wall Street firms would discover big unhedged risks in their derivative books; perhaps perhaps others would find that the values of their portfolios were more responsive to changes in long term interest rates than they had thought. In either case, it is financial distress and chaos that really triggers the recession. And the domestic side had rebuttals to each of these three points: If the Federal Reserve announces now that it is targeting a measure of inflation that is not grossly affected by import prices--that it is targeting nominal wage growth, say--there is no need for the Federal Reserve to defend its credibility by attacking the economy. Just as the Federal Reserve has trained observers that it is more important to worry about 'core inflation' than 'headline inflation', so the Federal Reserve ought to be preparing observers to recognize that inflation produced by rising import prices is a one-time event, not an inflationary spiral that needs to be fought by triggering a deep recession. A large structural shift will cause high unemployment only if the transition is quick and brutal, and only if workers are pushed out of job-losing rather than pulled into job-gaining sectors. Whether it is quick or gradual and whether it is push or pull depends, once again, on the path of interest rates. Only if the Federal Reserve fails to do its job and allows for a massive interest rate spike is there a problem. Financial stress is something that can be managed: if the Federal Reserve keeps the path of interest rates smooth, great financial stress is unlikely. And the domestic side of the argument pointed to the historical experience of the U.S. from 1986-1990: Between 1985 and 1989 the value of the U.S. dollar declined by 40%. Between 1986 and 1990 the U.S. trade deficit declined from 4.0% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP--without a big recession, or significant macroeconomic distress. Before dinner one evening I was lectured by a prominent Washington-area international finance economist about all the reasons that the 1986-1990 U.S. experience was likely to be a bad guide to the future: 1986-90 began with a 50% decline in world oil prices, a powerful stimulus to the world economy. This time the process is beginning with a doubling of world oil prices. 1986-90 saw Europe growing rapidly. Europe has a high propensity to buy U.S. exports, and the European boom meant that U.S. exports grew much faster in the late 1980s than anyone had expected. This time it is Asia that is booming, not Europe. And Asia has a relatively low appetite for U.S. exports. The Japanese government was willing to buy very large amounts of dollar-denominated assets in the late 1980s to keep the decline in the value of the dollar "orderly." In so doing, it inflated its domestic credit base and touched off its own property bubble. No foreign government is going to risk this again just because the U.S. would rather that the decline in the dollar was slow and orderly. The problem then was half as big relative to the size of the U.S. economy as is the problem now. One way I found myself thinking of the argument is that the domestic-side economists look at the goods market and think of a decline in the value of the dollar as a supply shock, and as not that big a supply shock: if half of the adjustment in import prices is taken in reduced margins by producers abroad, and if the shock is spread out over four years, then 40% / 2 x 16% / 4 = 0.8% increase in inflation relative to baseline over three consecutive years. The Federal Reserve could easily allow that to happen without--providing it explained its causes well--running any risk of damaging the credibility of its commitment to effective price stability. No big deal. International finance economists, by contrast, look at the asset markets. A 40% decline in the dollar over four years is a decline at the rate of 10% per year. Once financial markets convince themselves that such a decline is coming and that they need to be compensated for it, that ought to drive a 400 basis point wedge between U.S. and foreign long-bond expected returns. And that is a very big deal. Martin Feldstein said something very smart just after we had both taken off our shoes at Jackson Hole airport. He said that the domestic-side economists were keying off the past experience of the U.S. after 1985 and of Britain after 1982, and so were saying "no big deal"; while the international finance economists were keying off of the experiences of developing countries that had run large current-account deficits--Mexico 1994, East Asia 1997, Argentina 2001. Each side had its own preferred models that functioned very well at explaining the past historical cases that they focused on. But there was no way right now of settling, empirically, whether a model built to explain the U.S. in 1985 or Korea in 1998 was more applicable to the U.S. in 2006--you had to make a bet, either that continuities in U.S. economic structure were important, or that financial globalization was important, in choosing your model and your terms of analysis. It was very interesting. And very disturbing. Brilliant economists, thinking hard, unable to reach even the beginnings of analytical agreement about how to model the distribution of possible futures.