why dave bergman is neat

vanessa 'W is for wren' kerry is coming to speak on campus today. i wish my friend vanessa were coming to speak instead, because she would doubtless have much more of interest to say. at any rate, i am hoping to see some demagogic haranguing--but i am afraid i will probably have to wait until michael moore shows up to get that. so...now we've got kerry's daughter and michael moore coming before the election--who will they find to complete the trifecta?

here is some big news from the archaeological and Biblical worlds. see here for photos of the inscription:

Solving a Riddle Written in Silver
New York Times ^ | September 28, 2004 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Posted on 09/27/2004 9:26:45 PM PDT by 68skylark

The words are among the most familiar and ecumenical in the liturgies of Judaism and Christianity. At the close of a worship service, the rabbi, priest or pastor delivers, with only slight variations, the comforting and fortifying benediction:

"May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace."

An archaeological discovery in 1979 revealed that the Priestly Benediction, as the verse from Numbers 6:24-26 is called, appeared to be the earliest biblical passage ever found in ancient artifacts. Two tiny strips of silver, each wound tightly like a miniature scroll and bearing the inscribed words, were uncovered in a tomb outside Jerusalem and initially dated from the late seventh or early sixth century B.C. - some 400 years before the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

But doubts persisted. The silver was cracked and corroded, and many words and not a few whole lines in the faintly scratched inscriptions were unreadable. Some critics contended that the artifacts were from the third or second century B.C., and thus of less importance in establishing the antiquity of religious concepts and language that became part of the Hebrew Bible.

So researchers at the University of Southern California have now re-examined the inscriptions using new photographic and computer imaging techniques. The words still do not exactly leap off the silver. But the researchers said they could finally be "read fully and analyzed with far greater precision," and that they were indeed the earliest.

In a scholarly report published this month, the research team concluded that the improved reading of the inscriptions confirmed their greater antiquity. The script, the team wrote, is indeed from the period just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar and the subsequent exile of Israelites in Babylonia.

The researchers further reaffirmed that the scrolls "preserve the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and that they provide us with the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh."

Some of the previously unreadable lines seemed to remove any doubt about the purpose of the silver scrolls: they were amulets. Unrolled, one amulet is nearly four inches long and an inch wide and the other an inch and a half long and about half an inch wide. The inscribed words, the researchers said, were "intended to provide a blessing that will be used to protect the wearer from some manner of evil forces."

The report in The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research was written by Dr. Gabriel Barkay, the archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who discovered the artifacts, and collaborators associated with Southern California's West Semitic Research Project. The project leader is Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, a professor of Semitic languages at U.S.C., who worked with Dr. Marilyn J. Lundberg, a Hebrew Bible specialist with the project, and Dr. Andrew G. Vaughn, a biblical historian at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn.

A companion article for next month's issue of the magazine Near Eastern Archaeology describes the new technology used in the research. The article is by the same authors, as well as Kenneth Zuckerman, Dr. Zuckerman's brother and a specialist in photographing ancient documents.

Other scholars not affiliated with the research but familiar with it agreed with the group's conclusions.

They said it was a relief to have the antiquity and authenticity of the artifacts confirmed, considering that other inscriptions from biblical times have suffered from their uncertain provenance.

Scholars also noted that early Hebrew inscriptions were a rarity, and called the work on the amulets a significant contribution to an understanding of the history of religion in ancient Israel, particularly the time of the Judean Monarchy 2,600 years ago.

"These photographs are far superior to what you can see looking at the inscriptions with the naked eye," said Dr. Wayne Pitard, professor of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern religions at the University of Illinois.

Dr. Pitard said the evidence for the antiquity of the benediction was now compelling, although this did not necessarily mean that the Book of Numbers already existed at that time. Possibly it did, he added, but if not, at least some elements of the book were current before the Babylonian exile.

A part of the sacred Torah of Judaism (the first five books of the Bible), Numbers includes a narrative of the Israelite wanderings from Mount Sinai to the east side of the Jordan River. Some scholars think the Torah was compiled in the time of the exile. A number of other scholars, the so-called minimalists, who are influential mainly in Europe, argue that the Bible was a relatively recent invention by those who took control of Judea in the late fourth century B.C. In this view, the early books of the Bible were largely fictional to give the new rulers a place in the country's history and thus a claim to the land.

"The new research on the inscriptions suggests that that's not true," Dr. Pitard said. In fact, the research team noted in its journal report that the improved images showed the seventh-century lines of the benediction to be "actually closer to the biblical parallels than previously recognized."

Dr. P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in ancient Semitic scripts, said the research should "settle any controversy over these inscriptions."

A close study, Dr. McCarter said, showed that the handwriting is an early style of Hebrew script and the letters are from an old Hebrew alphabet, which had all but ceased to be used after the destruction of Jerusalem. Later Hebrew writing usually adopted the Aramaic alphabet.

There was an exception in the time of Roman rule, around the first centuries B.C. and A.D. The archaic Hebrew script and letters were revived and used widely in documents. But Dr. McCarter noted telling attributes of the strokes of the letters and the spelling on the amulets that, he said, ruled out the more recent date for the inscriptions. Words in the revived Hebrew writing would have included letters indicating vowel sounds. The benediction, the scholar said, was written in words spelled entirely with consonants, the authentic archaic way.

The two silver scrolls were found in 1979 deep inside a burial cave in a hillside known as Ketef Hinnom, west of the Old City of Jerusalem. Dr. Barkay, documenting the context of the discovery, noted that the artifacts were at the back of the tomb embedded in pottery and other material from the seventh or sixth centuries B.C. Such caves were reused for burials over many centuries. Near this tomb's entrance were artifacts from the fourth century, but nothing so recent remains in the undisturbed recesses.

It took Dr. Barkay another seven years before he felt sure enough of what he had to announce details of the discovery. Even then, for all their microscopic examination of the inscriptions at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, scholars remained frustrated by the many unreadable words and lines.

About a decade ago, Dr. Barkay enlisted the help of Dr. Zuckerman, whose team had earned a reputation for achieving the near-impossible in photographing illegible ancient documents.

Working with scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. Zuckerman's group used advanced infrared imagining systems enhanced by electronic cameras and computer image-processing technology to draw out previously invisible writing on a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The researchers also pioneered electronic techniques for reproducing missing pieces of letters on documents. By examining similar letters elsewhere in the text, they were able to recognize half of a letter and reconstruct the rest of it in a scribe's own peculiar style.

"We learned a lot from work on the Dead Sea Scrolls," Dr. Zuckerman said. "But at first a processing job like this would send your computers into cardiac arrest. We had to wait for computer technology to catch up with our needs."

As the researchers said in their magazine article, the only reasonably clear aspect of the inscriptions was the Priestly Benediction. Other lines preceding or following the prayer "could barely be seen."

To get higher-definition photographs of the inscriptions, Ken Zuckerman applied an old photographer's technique called "light painting," brought up to date by the use of fiber-optic technology. He used a hand-held light in an otherwise dark room to illuminate a spot on the artifact during a time exposure. In addition, he photographed the artifact at different angles, which made the scratched letters shine in stark relief.

The next step was to convert the pictures to digital form, making possible computer processing that brought out "the subtleties of the surface almost at the micron level." This analysis was particularly successful in joining a partial letter stroke on one side of a crack with the rest of the stroke on the other side. It also enabled the researchers to restore fragments of letters to full legibility by matching them with clear letters from elsewhere in the text.

In this way, the researchers filled in more of the letters and words of the benediction itself and for the first time deciphered meaningful words and phrases in the lines preceding the benediction.

Scholars were particularly intrigued by a statement on the smaller artifact. It reads: "May h[e]/sh[e] be blessed by YHWH, the warrior/helper, and the rebuker of Evil."

Referring to God, Yahweh, as the "rebuker of Evil" is similar to language used in the Bible and in various Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars said. The phraseology is also found in later incantations and amulets associated with Israel, evidence that these artifacts were also amulets, researchers concluded.

"In the ancient world, amulets were taken quite seriously," Dr. Zuckerman said. "There's evil out there, demons, and you need protection. Having this around your neck, you are involving God's presence and protection against harm."

Dr. Esther Eshel, a professor of the Bible at Bar-Ilan and an authority on Hebrew inscriptions, said this was the earliest example of amulets from Israel. But she noted that the language of the benediction was similar to a blessing ("May he bless you and keep you") found on a jar from the eighth century B.C.

If the new findings are correct, the people who wore these amulets may have died before they had to face the limitations of their efficacy. They might then have asked in uncomprehending despair, "Where was Yahweh when the Babylonians swooped down on Jerusalem?"

Other scholars, including those previously skeptical, will soon be analyzing the improved images. In a departure from usual practices, the researchers not only published their findings in a standard print version in a journal but also as an accompanying "digital article," a CD version of the article and the images to allow scholars to examine and manipulate the data themselves.

The research group said, "As far as we are aware, this is the first article to be done in this fashion, but it certainly will not be the last."

in sports news, the tigers have pulled off two straight wins agains the 2nd place chicago white sox. now that's what i'm talking about!

michael moore should be happy: it loooks like the inner protestor is still alive and well after all:

Bush has criticized Kerry throughout the campaign for the vote, which the president says shows a lack of support for troops in the field. Bush has mocked Kerry for saying, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

"It was just a very inarticulate way of saying something and I had one of those inarticulate moments," Kerry said in an interview broadcast Wednesday on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "But it reflects the truth of the position ... I thought that the wealthiest people of America should share in that burden. It was a protest."

some outkast news:

Parks' Dementia Can't Stop Rap Suit
(E! Online, 09/22/2004 7:35 PM)

By Charlie Amter

Rosa Parks may have dementia, but she is still moving forward with her lawsuit against hip-hop heavyweights OutKast.

Lawyers representing the famed civil-rights pioneer filed papers Monday naming the condition preventing her from testifying in her trademark and defamation dust-up with the Grammy-winning hip-hop act.

In July, Parks was ordered by a federal judge to comply with defense requests about why the 91-year-old claimed she could not testify.

In August, Parks honored that ruling by asking her doctor to go ahead and open up her medical file. However, the exact nature of her condition, dementia, was not known publicly until this week. According to medicinenet.com, dementia is defined as a group of symptoms, including memory loss and a decline in thinking skills, that is similar to Alzheimer's.

Defense lawyers representing OutKast's label, BMG (OutKast has officially been dropped as a defendant in the case), had asked to interview Parks to explain her claims of emotional and mental distress due to the rap group's 1998 song "Rosa Parks." Now, Team OutKast will only be able to question Parks' doctor, Joel Steinberg, about her dementia during a hearing in October. A trial is scheduled to start Jan. 10 in Detroit.

Parks originally filed her lawsuit against the hip-hop duo in 1999, accusing Big Boi and Andre 3000 and record company BMG of profiting off her moniker by appropriating it for the 1998 tune "Rosa Parks" and falsely suggesting the song was endorsed by her.

The lawsuit was initially tossed out by a lower court, then reinstated. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the reinstatement.

Parks, who famously refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus 49 years ago, wants her name removed from future versions of OutKast's Aquemini album.

Unless a settlement is reached, lawyers for BMG will have to convince a jury in Detroit, where legal proceedings have been creeping along for years now, that OutKast was not trying to profit off of Parks' name with their hit song, which features the lyrics: "Ah-ha/Hush that fuss/Everybody move to the back of the bus."

and another piece, by the same author, this one exceedingly asinine.

ouch. here are a couple of excerpts:

MITCH ALBOM: Lions put in their place by the Eagles

30-13 loss shows how far Detroit is from contending
September 27, 2004

BY MITCH ALBOM
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

It was like asking Britney Spears to dance with the Bolshoi, like watching Nelly try to sing "La Boheme," like seeing if the cashier at the 7-Eleven can crunch numbers with Alan Greenspan. The Lions and Eagles may have shared the same record coming into Sunday afternoon's showdown at Ford Field, but that was where the similarity ended. Coach Steve Mariucci had predicted this game would be "a reality check" for his young team.

Guess what?

Reality stinks.

"Our guys can see what a championship-caliber squad looks like," Mariucci moaned after the 30-13 drubbing. "We just saw one."

This is like telling the Coyote that he just saw a Roadrunner; you are usually talking to a face full of gunpowder. The Lions were dirtied early in this one. In fact, you could say the game was over in one three-and-a-half minute stretch of the first quarter.

Here's what happened. The Eagles had a third-and-long in their territory. The crowd was roaring. The score was 0-0. There was reason to believe.

Then Donovan McNabb escaped several failed Lions tacklers, and connected with a 25-yard pass to his tight end..

Two plays later, he hit a 45-yard pass down the gut of the Lions' defense.

Three plays later, the Eagles scored a touchdown.

Three plays after that, Joey Harrington fumbled the ball off his knee.

One play later, the Eagles scored another touchdown -- a 29-yard lob from McNabb to Terrell Owens. It was 14-0.

And fans started checking their watches. This was still the first quarter, still, technically, bright lights, big viewers. But you knew it: We all knew it. The Lions were not ready for prime time.

The rest was just determining a score.

[...]

For six days we had a whale of a time here, inhaling the fumes of an undefeated season. Then the Philharmonic came to town, and we sent out the organ grinder monkey. It was fantasy football, this was reality, and as a movie title once suggested, reality bites, right in the butt.

myway.com's quote of the day today:

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week.
--- Charles Darwin

former beatles producer phil spector charged with murder:

Phil Spector Charged With Murder
(AP, 09/27/2004 1:44 PM)

By Linda Deutsch

Record producer Phil Spector was charged in an indictment unsealed Monday with murder in the shooting death of a B-movie actress at his mansion last year.

Spector, 64, leaned on the arm of his attorney as the indictment in the slaying of 40-year-old Lana Clarkson was read, but showed no emotion. He was allowed to remains free on $1 million bail.

He spoke only briefly in court, answering, "Yes, your honor," to Judge David S. Lesley's questions. Lesley set Dec. 16 as the earliest possible trial date.

Spector, creator of rock music's "Wall of Sound" recording technique in the 1960s, suggested in an interview with Esquire magazine that Clarkson shot herself.

The judge agreed to keep the trial in Los Angeles rather than move it to Pasadena, closer to Spector's home in Alhambra. Attorneys for both sides expressed concern about the crush of reporters expected to attend it, and the courtrooms in Los Angeles are bigger.

Clarkson starred in Roger Corman's cult film classic "Barbarian Queen." She was working as a hostess at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip and went home from there with Spector the night she was killed.

oh, is jimmy carter still talking? i'd forgotten to pay attention anymore.

(via drudge.)

that last post got me thinking again about masters, so i thought i would post the words to one of the poems from spoon river that richard buckner set to music on 'the hill'. to me, it is one of the most moving, perhaps the most moving, of the ones buckner chose:

'Elizabeth Childers'

Dust of my dust,
And dust with my dust,
O, child who died as you entered the world,
Dead with my death!
Not knowing Breath, though you tried so hard,
With a heart that beat when you lived with me,
And stopped when you left me for Life.
It is well, my child. For you never traveled
The long, long way that begins with school days,
When little fingers blur under the tears
That fall on the crooked letters.
And the earliest wound, when a little mate
Leaves you alone for another;
And sickness, and the face of Fear by the bed;
The death of a father and mother;
Or shame for them, or poverty;
The maiden sorrow of school days ended;
And eyeless Nature that makes you drink
From the cup of Love, though you know it's poisoned;
To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?
Botanist, weakling? Cry of what blood to yours?—
Pure or foul, for it makes no matter,
It's blood that calls to our blood.
And then your children—oh, what might they be?
And what your sorrow? Child! Child!
Death is better than Life!

last night i found myself longing for the american middle west, so i put on some richard buckner (alas! not a midwesterner) and reread one of the tales from sherwood anderson's winesburg, ohio called 'the philosopher'. mr. anderson WAS a midwesterner, and it shows in his writing--i think it's quite an extraordinary book. as a part of the 'chicago group', anderson would have been familiar with edgar lee masters, author of spoon river anthology, and a reading of both men will readily link them in one's mind. masters was the inspiration for richard buckner's album 'the hill'; so, though not a midwesterner, buckner was acceptably included by association in my midwestern cocktail.

today's slashie award goes to john kerry, who wins the mr. pessimism-slash-conspiracy theorist award today (link via memeorandum).

i was baffled by the following comment about teresa heinz kerry in the phoenix business journal (link via drudge):

She said she was embarrassed to receive tax cuts advocated by Bush and supports her husband's efforts to roll them back for higher incomes and use those funds for education, health care and deficit reduction.

what rational person on earth would be 'embarrassed' to receive tax cuts? if you don't want the money and feel that other people should have it, you're free to give it away--in fact, it would almost certainly be spent more effectively and efficiently if you took care of its disposal yourself, instead of giving it to the giant hapless charity ward of the federal government.

sinead o'connor back in the news:

O'Connor Wants People to Stop Heckling
(AP, 09/24/2004 8:10 AM)

By Shawn Pogatchnik

One-time pop sensation Sinead O'Connor was back in the news Friday — by taking out a full-page ad pleading for people to stop making fun of her.

O'Connor, who shot to international fame in 1990 with her biggest hit "Nothing Compares 2 U," claimed she had been "consistently ridiculed, lashed and called mad" for decades, particularly in her native Ireland.

"I don't think there can be any person male or female from this country who has been as consistently lashed as I have been and always am no matter what I set out to do," she complained during her 2,000-word essay published in the Irish Examiner newspaper.

"If ye all think I am such a crazy person why do ye use me to sell your papers?" she wrote, adding, "Please, I just want to be a little old lady now, and not be all controversial and not be bashed and called crazy and laughed at when I open my mouth to sing or speak."

O'Connor, 37, specialized in attention-seeking stunts during her early career, most notoriously in 1992, when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on the U.S. TV show "Saturday Night Live" and declared, "Fight the real enemy." She also courted hostility from American audiences by refusing to allow the U.S. anthem to be played at her concerts there.

In recent years, she's clashed with her own siblings — particularly her brother Joe, an internationally regarded author — about her allegations of an abusive childhood at the hands of her late mother. Her siblings insist she's exaggerating claims of abuse.

She returned to that theme Friday. "Before God let me swear to you that if I or any of us were to tell you what we went through this country would cry for a month. To know that my brothers and sister survived, makes me proud of us all," she wrote.

O'Connor, who married in 2001 and has two children, has continued to court headlines with unusual decisions and occasional essays published in local papers.

She was ordained a priest in a breakaway Catholic sect in 1999, but subsequently stopped referring to herself as "Mother Bernadette Mary" and said she'd found the celibacy rule impossible to follow.

Last year she declared she was retiring from the music business, was interested in a movement called the "Death Midwives" that counsels chronically ill people, and planned to train as a religion teacher for elementary school kids.

She resurfaced on Ireland's airwaves Wednesday, when she told the national RTE radio network about her campaign to stamp out head lice in children.

The spread of head lice is a chronic problem in Irish schools, but some commentators sarcastically noted her pressure group's email address, "nittwit," and poked fun at her appeal for Ireland to stage a "national delousing day."

O'Connor said her efforts to help people were unfairly ridiculed. She compared her treatment to that of U2 frontman Bono, whose lobbying of world governments on such issues as AIDS and Third World debt has earned him respect and humanitarian awards.

"If ye wrote about Bono like you wrote about me, he'd kick your asses," she wrote.

i heard the doobie brothers' 'listen to the music' on the radio on my way here today. it was SO SWEET. then i saw a woman walking a collie that looked like my parents dog. so i made funny unintelligible noises at it and wrestled it to the ground.

ok, i didn't really do that. but i THOUGHT about all those things.

here is an article in today's opinion journal from victor davis hanson on the UN (link via little green footballs). here is an excerpt:

Despite the seemingly disparate geography of these continued attacks, we are always familiar with the similar spooky signature: civilians dismembered by the suicide belt, car bomb, improvised explosive device and executioner's blade. Then follows the characteristically pathetic communiqué or loopy fatwa aired on al-Jazeera, evoking everything from the injustice of the Reconquista to some mythical grievance about Crusaders in the holy shrines. Gender equity in the radical Islamic world is now defined by the expendable female suicide bomber's slaughter of Westerners.

In response to such international lawlessness, our global watchdog, the United Nations, had been largely silent. It abdicates its responsibility of ostracizing those states that harbor such mass murderers, much less organizes a multilateral posse to bring them to justice. And yet under this apparent state of siege, President Bush in his recent address to the U.N. offered not blood and iron--other than an obligatory "the proper response is not to retreat but to prevail"--but Wilsonian idealism, concrete help for the dispossessed, and candor about past sins. The president wished to convey a new multilateralist creed that would have made a John Kerry or Madeleine Albright proud, without the Churchillian "victory at any cost" rhetoric. Good luck.

[...]

[T]he present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is himself a symbol of all that is wrong with the U.N. A multibillion dollar oil-for-food fraud, replete with kickbacks (perhaps involving a company that his own son worked for), grew unchecked on his watch, as a sordid array of Baathist killers, international hustlers and even terrorists milked the national petroleum treasure of Iraq while its own people went hungry. In response, Mr. Annan stonewalls, counting on exemption from the New York press on grounds of his unimpeachable liberal credentials. Meanwhile, he prefers to denigrate the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "illegal," but neither advocates reinstitution of a "legal" Saddam nor offers any concrete help to Iraqis crafting consensual society. Like the U.N. membership itself, he enjoys the freedom, affluence and security of a New York, but never stops to ask why that is so or how it might be extended to others less fortunate.

here is a shameful story about the presbyterian church (u.s.a.) acting in kind with baathist syria and cutting ties with israel (thanks to the bayou city perspective for the link). here are a couple of excerpts:

Recently, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to divest from American companies that do business with Israel. The action, taken at the church's 216th General Assembly meeting in Richmond, is the first of its kind taken by an American denomination. Indeed, even colleges and universities, where anti-Israel campaigning is rampant, have rejected calls for divestment. As with Syria, Caterpillar is a particular object of Presbyterian ire.

The divestment action manifests a singular animosity towards Israel. The Presbyterians have not divested their funds from any of the cruel regimes of the world: not from China for its ethnic cleansing of Tibetans, and its repression of Muslems and Falun Gong; and not even from Sudan, currently engaged in the extermination of Africans in Darfur. But then again, Syria has not boycotted those states either.

One would expect the Presbyterian Church to use its economic clout with an eye to punishing the many regimes around the world that oppress their fellow Christians, and call attention to their plight. However, the church has not taken action against such nations as Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, or North Korea (whose government has reportedly murdered 300,000 Christians), where anti-Christian persecution has been detailed by Christian human-rights groups. Indeed, the Presbyterians have not even boycotted Lebanon, where Christians have been slaughtered by various Muslim groups. But then, neither has Syria, which controls Lebanon as a vassal state.

[...]

The Presbyterians say the policy is prompted by Israel's treatment of Palestinians — the same line Syria advances these days. Yet it can't change the fact that the policy has the effect of economically strangling the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Interestingly, the Presbyterians have not seen fit to take sanctions against the Palestinians on account of the hundreds of Jews they have murdered.

One hopes that the vote of the assembly does not represent the sentiments of three million members of the church. One also prays that the companies targeted for divestment will be no more swayed by it than by Syria's boycott.

'Old age and death are not orderly; they link the present with the future by long, destructive processes. Such processes linked the old 'world' of Augustine to his heavenly 'city': and life itself was presented as a gradual and painful adjustment to a miraculous new growth that could happen in the midst of the horror of old age.'

--Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (p.295)

right now our campus center is selling a coffee called 'pumpkin spice'. i don't understand how it is possible for a human being to consume a coffee product called 'pumpkin spice'. then again, i also don't understand how it is possible for a human being to consume something called 'vegetables'.

via yahoo:

Passenger Cat Stevens Gets Plane Diverted
(AP, 09/22/2004 7:02 AM)

By Leslie Miller

A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine when it was discovered that passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as singer Cat Stevens — was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country.

United Airlines Flight 919 was en route to Dulles International Airport when the match was made Tuesday between a passenger and a name on the watch list, said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.

The plane was met by federal agents at Maine's Bangor International Airport around 3 p.m., Melendez said.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy identified the passenger as Islam. "He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds," Murphy said.

He said Islam would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.

Officials had no details about why the peace activist might be considered a risk to the United States. Islam had visited New York in May for a charity event and to promote a DVD of his 1976 MajiKat tour.

One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Islam, 56, was identified by the Advanced Passenger Information System, which requires airlines to send passenger information to Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center. The Transportation Security Administration then was contacted and requested that the plane land at the nearest airport, that official said.

Melendez said Islam was questioned by FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Another federal official, who is in law enforcement and spoke anonymously because of agency policy, said that after the interview, Customs officials decided to deny Islam entry into the United States.

Flight 919 continued on to Dulles after Islam was removed from the flight.

Islam, who was born Stephen Georgiou, took Cat Stevens as a stage name and had a string of hits in the 1960s and '70s, including "Wild World" and "Morning Has Broken." Last year he released two songs, including a re-recording of his '70s hit "Peace Train," to express his opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq .

He abandoned his music career in the late 1970s and changed his name after being persuaded by orthodox Muslim teachers that his lifestyle was forbidden by Islamic law. He later became a teacher and an advocate for his religion, founding a Muslim school in London in 1983.

Islam founded Islamia Primary school in London in 1983. In 1998, it became the first Muslim school in Britain to receive government support, on the same basis as Christian and other sectarian schools.

A statement posted on a fan-supported Web site where his music is promoted said Islam being on a watch list "is certainly an error."

"It's also a very sad state of affairs when a man best known as a peace loving pop star can be grouped into the same category Osama Bin Laden just because of his chosen faith," the statement said.

Islam drew some negative attention in the late 1980s when he supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence against Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses." Recently, though, Islam has criticized terrorist acts, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the school seizure in Beslan, Russia, earlier this month that left more than 300 dead, nearly half of them children.

In a statement on his Web site, he wrote, "Crimes against innocent bystanders taken hostage in any circumstance have no foundation whatsoever in the life of Islam and the model example of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Islam issued a statement saying: "No right thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action: The Quran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity."

from netscape:

Sean Penn Will Read Audiobook by Dylan

NEW YORK (AP) - Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn will read the audiobook version of Bob Dylan's ``Chronicles: Volume One,'' to be published Oct. 12 by Simon & Schuster Audio.

The book and audiobook comprise the first in a series of the singer-songwriter's personal histories, with the first volume consisting of first-person narratives focusing on significant periods in Dylan's life and career, the publisher said last week.

The audiobook version runs for six hours on four cassettes or five CDs.

``When we were thinking of actors to read the Bob Dylan audiobook, the first name on our list was Sean Penn,'' said Chris Lynch, executive vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio, in a statement. ``We knew he would be perfect for the material, and we are absolutely thrilled that an actor of his caliber will be reading `Chronicles.'''

This is the first audiobook that Penn has narrated.

He won an Oscar in 2004 for his role in ``Mystic River.'' His other movies include ``I Am Sam,'' ``Sweet and Lowdown'' and ``Dead Man Walking.''

On the Net:
http://www.simonsaysaudio.com/

09/21/04 08:43

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

see here for evidence of despicable moral cowardice in the 'news' as reported by reuters (thanks to classical values for the link).

and now for a mickey 'mouse' moore update: he is coming to speak at bryn mawr. as mercenaries (and CBS) often do, moore approached bryn mawr, not the other way around. he has agreed to 'speak' for $20,000, half of his usual fee, because he feels that it is important to speak in swing-state pennsylvania. of course, being a college campus, many of the people attending might be from out of state and not actually registered to vote in PA, but an attention to detail has never bothered moore in the past, and i don't suspect it will start doing so now.

i wonder what would happen if one were to protest loudly in the middle of his speech and shout things like 'you're a liar and a hack of a filmmaker'. do you think he would be silenced, or do think he would be allowed the freedom of speech claimed as a right during pres. bush's speeches?

laudator temporis acti reminded me of these words from 'little gidding':

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

via drudge, the latest blast of hot air from michael mo(o)re means less can be found here. i think that i might be persuaded to comment on it more if there were even one comprehensible sentence in it. but between his self-congratulation and obvious dim-wittedness, there's not a whole lot of meat there to chew on, so i'll leave it to the local preschool to take it apart, which probably boasts a level of incisiveness unparalleled in the fantasy kingdom of mr. penthouse manhattan working-class gas-bag. and anyway, his 'inner soldier/protester' collocution at the end of the piece (and all of kerry's appropriations of both personae at subsequent times, according to political convenience, that it conjures up), though not intended to be humorous or oxymoronic, i'm quite sure, says most of what needs to be said about the kerry candidacy.

neo-nazism on the rise in germany?

(link via drudge.)

here is an article on the most recent Farm Aid concert with willie nelson, neil young and others.

this is so hilarious that it's almost too good to be true. michigan readers especially will get a kick out of it. i know, i know--bush is still the 'dumb' candidate, and kerry is still the 'smart, nuanced' candidate.

In campaign game, occasional fumbles
Local flavor gets Kerry cheers, jeers
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff | August 5, 2004

MILWAUKEE -- John F. Kerry, like many politicians, knows that a great way to win over a crowd is to celebrate its local rituals and embrace its customs. As his bus caravan travels across the country, he's making the effort anew, often to raucous cheers, but on occasion to a lesser reaction.

On Monday night, the Democratic presidential nominee noted that he was in the home state of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle company, telling a crowd of 10,000, ''At home I have my Harley, so you can say that when it comes to getting from here to there, this candidate for president of the United States knows where the power comes from."

On Sunday, Kerry also worked the local angle when he visited Bowling Green, Ohio, outside Toledo. The proximity between those cities has given rise to one of the greatest local football rivalries in any state, the ''Battle of I-75" between the Bowling Green State University Falcons and the University of Toledo Rockets. Only games played by the larger Ohio State University Buckeyes can inspire pigskin unity.

Standing with his running mate, John Edwards, Kerry said, ''John and I, we're absolutely promising you, we are going to give you the courageous leadership you need. We're going to make decisions; we'll make the tough decisions. But there's one tough decision I refuse to take: I'm not choosing between the Falcons and the Rockets." As the audience cheered, Kerry said, ''I'm just going to acknowledge, without doubt, there is nothing better than the Buckeye football."

While that crowd delighted in the nod to a local favorite, not all have.

On Sunday night in Taylor, Mich., Kerry noted that he had just come from Bowling Green but apparently forgot that he had arrived in the state of the Ohio Buckeyes' most bitter rival, the University of Michigan Wolverines. The nickname of the Bowling Green team he had celebrated hours earlier also seemed to escape him.

''We just came from Bowling Green, and I was smart enough not to pick a choice between the Falcons and the, you know . . . all the other teams out there. I just go for Buckeye football, that's where I'm coming out."

As a smattering of boos alerted him to his faux pas, Kerry tried to right his wrong: ''That's while I was in Ohio. Now I'm in the state of Michigan, and your great big 'M' and a powerhouse of a team, and the bottom line is all of us are still waiting for Massachusetts to somehow get in there."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

i haven't posted on bob seger in awhile. which reminds me--i'm listening to bob seger right now, and it rocks.

for this reason, and so many others, you'll be happy to know that, while perusing the latest national review, i came across a nod to the seeg. therein is a review of m. night shyamalan's movie 'the village'. you know what the review is called? that's right--'night moves'. is that awesome, or is that awesome?!?

i recently learned of this really useful site. it essentially collects and links to news items of different varieties: blogs, traditional headlines, etc. maybe you would like to read a little bit about it. i will also attempt to add it to the links list on the right.

UPDATE: yes. see 'some newsy bizz'.

will kerry now sing the song he's been telling bush to sing about the swift boat ads? i certainly hope so. for consistency's sake.

via drudge: johnny ramone has died.

i find it interesting that the punk icon was a conservative, with ronald reagan his favorite president.

R.I.P.

i heard on the radio this evening that some people are upset because they feel that all of the hurricanes are helping pres. bush. ok, wait a minute--are people now going to question the timing of NATURAL DISASTERS?

must be part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. i heard the next one is going to be named karl...

i read in national review last night that a writer for harper's expounded upon the speeches given at the republican national convention, disparaging their content and moving on from there to criticize conservative ideas in general as 'archaic and bizarre'. the article was for the september issue, which means that the articles could have been finished by august 19 at the latest, according to NR. but the republican national convention didn't start until august 30, which means there's no way the writer in question could possibly have heard the speeches before commenting on them as though he had. way to go, liar.

maybe you can get hired at CBS.

another update on the CBS documents (via drudge). my favorite part of CBS's lame response was the following:

"Most importantly, the content of the documents was backed up by our reporting and our sources who knew the thoughts and behavior of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian at the time," the statement said.

knew his thoughts? wow, that's really neat. not only did the 'sources' (whom they still won't reveal, probably in case the 'sources' happen to have a computer with microsoft word) know what he ACTED like, they even knew WHAT HE WAS THINKING! INCREDIBLE! i don't usually know what MY friends are thinking--good thing the CBS sources have telepathy! in light of that, maybe dan rather is right--who are we to question his extra-sensory sources (or his non-sensical responses)?

wow.

man, he just looks awful. what material is he made of?

the accompanying AP article has this to say:

It's red meat for loyal Democrats, to whom Gore is the embodiment of what is at stake on Nov. 2.

wow. if he is the 'embodiment of what is at stake', i think they've got bigger problems than bunny suits and bad ideas for health care.

and how could we forget this: Study shows men also suffer from PMS .

update on possibly faked documents aired without scruple by CBS.

tonight at choir practice the guy sitting next to me called our director a 'teutonic taskmaster'.

welcome back, matthew! good to have you back on board. does this mean that it's already winter in montana and it's too cold to fly-fish? in any case, glad that you've reappeared on the dave.

for a chuckle, sometimes i go here, where you can read about how 'shocking' everything is.

for an interesting discussion about the possibility that the incriminating bush national guard documents are forgeries, see here, with links. i bid you all a glorious tromp through cyberspatial woodlands.

i assume that john kerry will soon denounce this as an unfair attack on bush's patriotism. right? now that the shoe's on the other foot, he will act according to his 'principles' (which i'm sure are many and varied), won't he? he won't stand for this sort of attack, will he?

good morning!

i have to go work now.

this (via drudge) seems like a ridiculous and silly move by the bush campaign. thoughts?

UPDATE: perhaps bush was worried for his personal safety. after john kerry was given a semi-automatic rifle as a gift this weekend, he hadthis to say:

"I thank you for the gift, but I can't take it to the debate with me," Kerry told a cheering crowd as he held up the device.

excuse me? is that a threat i'm hearing? you 'can't' take it to the debate with you? why would you WANT to? why would the cheering crowd want you to? sounds like we know who the real cowboy candidate is now.

ha!!!

i went to see maria full of grace this weekend. maria is a colombian 'mule'--a term with which i was unfamiliar, meaning a person who smuggles drugs into the U.S. by swallowing them. that's right--dozens of pellets of heroin, encased apparently in latex, swallowed into an empty stomach, digested, and popped out the other end upon arrival in the country of destination. i found 'maria full of grace' to be a much more powerful statement about the war on drugs than something like 'traffic'. in the broadest sense, it was for me an experience similar to seeing requiem for a dream--i was glad to have seen it once, but don't really care to see it several times. the best aspect of the movie, i thought, was the totally unsentimental way in which the action was presented. this does not mean that the movie has no emotional effect on the viewer--quite the opposite. in fact, it seems more powerful because of its objectivity, allowing the story to speak and act for itself without the interjection of cued emotion. a label such as 'scientific realism' might be appropriate for such a style, for it reminded me of emile zola's somewhat detached method of telling a story. anyway, it is well worth checking out.

planning on posting something soon. but for now, go eat some candy. remember: you don't need no teeth for kissin' gals or smokin' cheap cigars.

happy munching!

good evidence for not giving up:

Washington State Solves Oldest Cold Case

Sep 3, 3:33 AM (ET)

By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE

SEATTLE (AP) - A man already serving two life sentences for murder has been charged with committing what prosecutors say is Washington state's oldest unsolved crime, the 1968 fatal stabbing of a pregnant teenager.

John Dwight Canaday, 59, admitted recently during questioning by Seattle police detectives that he killed Sandra Bowman, according to charging papers filed Thursday.

Canaday sighed, held up his hands and declared, "Yes, I killed her," when told he had left DNA at the scene, the documents said.

A prisoner at the Walla Walla penitentiary, Canaday faces another possible life sentence for the Bowman slaying. He is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.

Earlier this year, a state forensic scientist matched Canaday's DNA to sperm found on Bowman's body. His genetic profile was in the database because of two 1969 murder convictions.

Bowman, who was in her second trimester of pregnancy, was stabbed at least 57 times. The 16-year-old was found by her husband when he came home from work - face down on their bed, her hands tied behind her back.

Canaday was working as a pipeman's helper for the city water department when Bowman was killed.

In a June interview, according to the documents, Canaday told the detectives that he "randomly knocked on her door" and "attacked her ... I stabbed her."

The charging papers said Canaday blamed the December attack on a bitter divorce, "a lot of anger at myself and immaturity."

In court documents, Deputy Prosecutor Timothy Bradshaw said killing Bowman "evidently emboldened" Canaday to attack other women, killing two of them.

In January 1969, Canaday kidnapped and strangled 21-year-old Mary Bjornson. Three weeks later, he raped and killed Lynne Tuski, 20.

Canaday was sentenced to die for those murders but won a reprieve in 1972 when the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in more than 30 states, including Washington.

john kerry is still whining about lots of stuff. i quote:

"They have attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief," Kerry said.

no one's attacking your patriotism, john. people may, however, question whether you sometimes have trouble telling the truth, and whether you are a self-serving opportunist.

he went on to say:

"I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq."

actually, john-boy, that's not a decision you get to make. especially when you're AWOL for 76% of the senate intelligence committee's public hearings. and, by the way, bush didn't 'refuse to serve'. he was in the texas air national guard and, while that is not vietnam, he could have been called up at any time. sounds to me, john, like you're questioning the patriotism of GWB and those in his administration, though the 'those' is sort of vague; surely he doesn't mean the likes of don rumsfeld, who served heroically in combat. and, at any rate, it is a non sequitur; everyone is free to look at your record and question your commitment to defense all they want to. and what is all this 'misled' business? dear sir, you had access to all the same intelligence information, and have even said recently that you STILL would have authorized war in iraq, EVEN IF YOU KNEW NO WMDs WOULD BE FOUND. here i will end my second-person address. kerry goes on:

"Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this country," Kerry added. "Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting 45 million Americans go without health care makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting the Saudi Royal Family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this country," Kerry told several thousand supporters.

we've already discussed the 'misleading' tomfoolery. but i also have a problem with his assumption that it is the government's responsibility to provide health care to 45 million people. how, pray tell, might government pay for that? regardless of the nuts and bolts of being able to afford it, the belief that such things are the province of government in the united states is absurd in the extreme. as reagan often pointed out, goverment is most often the source of problems, not the solution for them. and, finally, if kerry would like greater energy independence, why does he not work to authorize drilling in ANWR? this, of course, would not solve all of the problems, but it would be a start. but this, i suppose, is simply another incidence of him wanting to have his cake and eat it too--moaning and whining about a problem and not doing anything to fix it.

i happened to turn on the michael medved show on my way home today, and had the unfortunate privilege of hearing him attempt to have a 'discussion' with al franken. now, say what you will about whether al franken actually has anything intelligent to say (and you can pretty well guess what i think about that), but it was not even an issue, because mr. franken was (and usually is, from what i can gather) uncivil to the point of absurdity. i would say that listening to him was like listening to a kindergartener, but i feel that that would be giving him too much credit.

as a completely unrelated aside, i am beginning to grow tired (ok, i began a long time ago and the tiredness is reaching an advanced stage) of the use of the word 'ideology' every 5 seconds everywhere i turn my ears. thus, i shall now substitute the word 'ideography' in every context in which one might think it the appropriate time to use the word 'ideology'.

well, at least i will substitute it in my own head, anyway.

good. this seems somewhat better than john edwards's plan to allow iran to keep nuclear power plants as long as they promise not to make bombs.

i happened to catch some of tom russell's performance on letterman tonight. i'd never heard his cowboy tunes before, and i was quite impressed. this stanza was by far my favorite:

When I'm too damn old to sit a horse, I'll steal the warden's car
Break my ass out of this prison, leave my teeth there in a jar
You don't need no teeth for kissin' gals or smokin' cheap cigars
I'll sleep with one eye open, 'neath God's celestial stars

check him out.

by the way, i changed my pants today. that might not be a big deal to some of you, but it sure is to me.

salon.com has an opinion piece today in which mark follman comments on bloggers blogging from the RNC. he seems very upset about the frivolity of some of the posts he's found, and tut-tuts accordingly. i suspect that he is upset that bloggers, in general, do salon.com's job much better than salon.com does, all without being credentialed (though another salon writer likes to look at the way blogging is 'not journalism'). his criticism of its playfulness is largely unfounded, however, as an investigation lasting approximately 10 seconds will promptly tell you. for example, he chastises a couple of posts at oxblog for their lack of seriousness, but if one actually takes the time to visit the site, one finds rather a large number of serious posts, with analysis that often makes salon.com's own analyses look like grade school exercises, or, perhaps better, exercises in fantasy.

the most visible of the protestors (via drudge) continue to prove themselves to be obnoxious and childish.

for a change today, i thought we might have some news from cameroon, lest we forget what's going on off the beaten path.

Village Crier Joins Cameroon's War on Cholera

Tue Aug 31, 8:08 AM ET

By Tansa Musa

FESSETT, Cameroon (Reuters) - With his trumpet and loud hailer the village crier in this Cameroon community has a message that may save lives.

Emerging at dusk, when the streets are filled with farmers trudging home, boys bearing firewood and little girls carrying buckets of water, the crier sounds his horn and begins.

"When you come home after the day's labor in the field, make sure you have a wash. Always wash your hands before and after your meals," he cries.

The village crier is at the forefront of the battle against cholera, a deadly intestinal infection spread by contaminated water and food that has broken out in this part of Cameroon for the first time since 1997.

Africa had been free of cholera for more than century when the disease hit western regions in 1970. It spread quickly and eventually became endemic across most of the continent.

This year there have been deadly outbreaks in Mozambique in the South, Chad, Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo (news - web sites) in the center and Guinea in the West, killing at least 333 people.

Since 2001, cholera outbreaks have hit a further 10 African countries including South Africa, Nigeria and Ivory Coast.

The disease, which can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death, has infected at least 6,400 people and killed more than 130 in Cameroon this year, according to government figures.

In Fessett, 150 people became ill and 18 died in the first three weeks of the outbreak in May, said Ahmadou Nsangou, chief of the community of 15,000.

"In my 18-year reign I haven't seen this before ... people dying like chickens. If the government hadn't intervened quickly I think the whole village would have been wiped out," he said.

SPEEDY REACTION

While enlisting a village crier to educate people about how to contain the disease was a local initiative, aid organizations and the authorities in the capital Yaounde launched a concerted public health campaign to bring the outbreak under control.

Measures included making treatment for all cholera patients free of charge, rushing extra doctors to hospitals in hard-hit towns and sending mobile teams to rural areas to teach people basic hygiene in house-to-house missions.

In the southwestern coastal town of Limbe, authorities decreed every Wednesday would be devoted to public cleanliness campaigns. Offices and shops closed and taxis stopped running to get as many people as possible involved.

As a result, the spread of cholera was slowed and by mid-July the government said the situation was under control and only isolated new cases were being reported.

Cholera breaks out almost every year in Cameroon, usually in the major port city of Douala, where hundreds of thousands of slum-dwellers depend for water on improvised wells that are often adjacent to latrine pits.

In the giant shanty of Bepanda, 80 percent of people do not have access to safe drinking water, and poor drainage leaves pools of stagnant water and piles of waste in densely populated areas -- a perfect breeding ground for cholera.

VULNERABLE VILLAGE

"The risk of a cholera outbreak is greatest in the hot season when water becomes even harder to come by and people use whatever water they can get, even if it is filthy," said Viviane Nzeusseu, who works for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Yaounde.

During the latest outbreak, the government helped sterilize 1,700 wells in Bepanda and dig 300 more.

Fessett is in a food-growing region about 90 miles northeast of Douala, often referred to as Cameroon's granary. Many people from Douala and other parts of the country go there to buy food.

A predominantly rural region, it does not face the same overcrowding problems as Douala, but a different set of factors made it vulnerable to cholera.

"Here people don't have the habit of digging pit latrines, they just do everything in the bushes," said Chief Nsangou.

"Many people go to relieve themselves, wash their clothes and household utensils in this stream yet people living downstream still use it as a source of drinking water," he added, pointing to the Nkoup, the main river in the region.

In addition, an industrial poultry farm disposes of waste including rotten eggs into the waters of the Nkoup.

Transporting corpses and the sick between villages and health centers also contributes to spreading the disease.

These problems are compounded by cultural factors. In some communities people see cholera as a curse and seek a cure from traditional healers or simply leave the sick to die, while others are suspicious of hospitals and refuse to go to them.

(Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon)