Really interesting and a big problem with a lot at stake:

Spotting Bushmanders

by Mark Monmonier (academic page) (personal page), author of Bushmanders and Bullwinkles: How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections

Remember that this book was published in 2001, before the Bush Administration really got going.

Congrats again, Michael Strong! 

Congrats to Michael Strong who graduated from George Washington University this spring-- I've only just got the photos and the wherewithal to post them.  

I've been having a great time going through a website called Footnotes to History, a collection of short descriptions of failed attempts to set up independent states (countries) around the world. Some of these little vignettes are fascinating and some of these are really funny. I encourage you to look through the whole webpage but I wanted to put the best ones up here for people to read:

Free District of Lake Michigan In 1886, a Chicago businessman named Cap Streeter built a steamboat. On its first voyage, the boat was grounded on a sandbar just off Chicago's municipal dump on the Lake Michigan coast. Sensing an opportunity to make the most of his loss, Streeter built a causeway to shore and underbid the dump. Soon, Streeter's sandbar had multiplied to 180 acres, and he filed for squatter's rights as a Civil War veteran. He soon opened up business selling alcohol, which was strictly regulated by Illinois law. In 1893, the Columbian Exposition created a boom along the Chicago waterfront. The wealthy landowners began to see Streeter as a threat instead of a nuisance, and hired street thugs to expel him. However, Streeter had hired a force of his own, and fought off the invaders.

The raids continued for several months, and Streeter, exasperated, declared himself independent of Illinois. The next day, Chicago police raided the Free District. After Streeter blackmailed and fought the police into acquiescence, the landowners brought in a group of Missouri bandits. When they attacked, Streeter shot and killed their leader. He was convicted of murder, and the Free District was torn down. When he was pardoned two years later, Streeter lost a suit to regain his land. He died in 1921, owning only a hot dog stand. His island is now the "Golden Coast", the most expensive land in Chicago.

Great Republic of Rough and Ready Rough and Ready was founded near a rich seam of gold during the California Gold Rush in 1849. By 1850, the town was thriving, and over a thousand people voted in the elections of that year. The flinty miners seceded from the Union that year to protest a new ore tax. However, the Roughandreadians rejoined the United States in June of the next year, in order to become the site of a new post office. (And also to enjoy the upcoming July 4th celebrations with a guilt-free conscience)

North Dakota In 1933, William "Fighting Bill" Langer took office as Governor of North Dakota. Although he was hugely popular, he soon exhausted his support when he demanded that state employees contribute to the state Republican party. As some of these salaries were paid with federal money, he was convicted of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government in June of 1934. Langer refused to accept the verdict or to resign from office. Ole Olsen, the lieutenant governor, asked the state's Supreme Court to order Langer to resign. On July 17, 1934, the Supreme Court of North Dakota declared Olsen the legitimate governor. Langer's reaction was not what the Supreme Court expected- before the Court's order was filed on the 18th, Langer met with ten of his friends and declared North Dakota's independence. He then barricaded the governor's mansion and declared martial law. Not until the Supreme Court met personally with Langer did he relent, revoking his declaration and bringing North Dakota back into the Union.

Incredibly, Langer was later re-elected. From all accounts, he served out his second term in a much quieter fashion.

Isle of Dogs The Isle of Dogs is a small peninsula in the middle of London, formed by a bend in the River Thames. The area was historically a dumping ground for poor Londoners, who often felt they received an unfairly small allocation of resources. In 1970, a group of residents declared independence in protest, barricading the single road leading into the Isle. A Labour city councilman named Ted Johns was elected President. The protest served its purpose; extra funding was allocated, and the Republic was dissolved.

It turns out this was merely the beginning of the area's woes; in the name of urban renewal, the government turned the Isle of Dogs into Canary Wharf, burying the district's history under an abysmal pile of postmodern "architecture".

Sealand In the 1960s, one of Great Britain's more productive cottage industries was pirate radio. The painfully bland BBC and the painfully bland government of Harold Wilson took umbrage, and soon the pirate transmitters were forced underground. After one pirate station began transmitting from a ship outside the three-mile limit of the UK's waters, Roy Bates and Ronan O'Rohilly, both owners of pirate radio stations, got to thinking.

The North Sea at this time was littered with Second World War-vintage radar platforms. In 1966, Bates and O'Rohilly occupied one and called it Sealand. They began hatching moneymaking schemes ranging from not just a pirate radio station, but also a gambling resort and a corporate tax haven. As the freshly-minted nation's prospects rose, so did the tension between the diumvirs of the baseball-diamond sized empire. Bates seized the tower. In June of 1967, O'Rohilly launched an offensive, which Bates and his men repulsed with guns, Molotov cocktails, and a surplus flamethrower. Upon hearing that the Royal Marines were preparing to seize the platform, Bates declared Sealand's independence and himself Prince Roy on September 2. When a Royal Navy ship demanded that Bates abandon the platform, the Prince opened fire. On a jaunt back to the old country, Bates was arrested and brought before a British court on a number of charges related to the incident. The case was dismissed in October of 1968; the court agreed that Prince Roy's Sealand was outside of British jurisdiction.

Sealand stayed out of the news until a German businessman toured Sealand a few years later. During negotiations, the German’s hired Dutch goons kidnapped the crown prince and set him back ashore. Prince Roy rapidly got together an army, hired a helicopter, and retook the tower. Since the German had accepted Sealand citizenship, Bates arrested him for treason. Over the next seven weeks, the German government repeatedly appealed to the British Foreign Office, which insisted that it had no jurisdiction. Further vindicated, Bates eventually released the German without payment of his 75,000 Deutschmark fine.

The next uproar took place during the Falkland Islands War of 1982. Argentina's initial success rapidly eroded, and the Argentines conceived of a desperate plan. They contacted Bates and asked to lease Sealand as a missile base, hoping to destroy British morale. Bates swallowed down his mercenary impulses and declined. In a completely unrelated matter, Britain extended its territorial waters to the 20 kilometer limit later that year, soon after dynamiting another tower near Sealand. Prince Roy refused to give up the ship, though. In 1999, he entered into negotiations with HavenCo to lease the entire nation. HavenCo (naturally) now plans to turn Sealand into an offshore data haven. Since the EU has already extended Sealand a certain degree of de facto recognition, it remains to be seen how these plans will develop.

Isle of the Roses In the early 1960s, engineering professor Giorgio Rosa constructed a platform eight miles offshore from the Italian city of Rimini. After a storm swamped the platform, another was erected in 1965. The 4,000 square foot platform boasted several businesses. The Italian authorities took little notice of the platform, since it was in international waters at the time, until May 1, 1968, when Rosa declared the platform an independent nation.

Two months later, the platform was illegally occupied by the Italian Navy, who then illegally removed Rosa and proceeded to illegally destroy the entire country with dynamite. The Isle of the Roses is therefore, along with Carthage and New Atlantis, one of the few nations to be utterly removed from the face of the earth by military action.

Jefferson Northern California and southern Oregon have long been dissatisfied with their respective governments. This exasperation erupted over the failure of the government to provide funding for new roads. A number of border counties sent delegates to demand better treatment at a November, 1941 meeting in Yreka, California. The local board of county supervisors, urged on by the Chamber of Commerce, allocated funds to further the cause of independence and designated Yreka the temporary capital of the State of Jefferson. On December 4, Judge John Childs was elected governor of the new state. National opinion was favorable, but fate was not; three days later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The inhabitants of Jefferson put aside their bid for the sake of national unity. All ended well; the government built a number of roads through the area to transport timber during the war.

New Atlantis This nation was founded on an 8'x30' platform in the Caribbean by Leicester Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's brother. The nation boasted eight citizens during its brief independence in 1964, but was utterly destroyed by fishermen who tore up the platform for the lumber.

They did not retrieve the anchor and Ford engine block which tethered New Atlantis. Undaunted, Hemingway anchored another platform christened Tierra del Mar. The U.S. State Department quickly contacted Hemingway and "actively discouraged" any claims of sovereignty, fearing Tierra del Mar could serve as a springboard for annexation of nearby islands from the Bahamas.

North Dumpling North Dumpling is a scenic island (complete with New England lighthouse) off the coast of New York. It was purchased in the 1980s by inventor Dean Kamen (the man behind the Ginger scooter hoohaw). In the late 80s, Kamen decided to build a wind turbine to generate power for the island. When the state government refused him a permit, Kamen seceded from the United States, establishing a currency with the value of pi, signing a non-aggression pact with President George Bush, and naming Ben and Jerry Joint Chiefs of Ice Cream. Kamen's position as an inventor of medical devices and major player in the state politics of New Hampshire has probably saved him from the fate of, say, Justus Township.

Hay-on-Wye In 1977, Hay-on-Wye was just another decaying British town past its prime. On April Fool's Day, local bookstore owner Richard Booth decided to declare himself King of Hay-on-Wye, both to drum up business and protest the seeming indifference of the British government to Hay's plight. The move inspired Hay to remake itself as a tourist destination, and today Hay thrives as the first of the "international book towns", with thirty bookstores (one per 65 inhabitants) and 500,000 annual visitors. King Richard still actively serves in community functions, and as the owner of a very fine bookstore.

Muscongus Island Muscongus Island is located off the shore of Maine. In 1860, the island was inadvertantly left off the state’s official maps, and the residents were therefore not allowed to vote. In retaliation, Muscongus Island declared its independence. Like many respectable residents of rural America, they enforced this by firing their rifles at any tax collectors sighted on the island. The Muscongans decided not to press the point after the Civil War began, although the declaration of independence was not formally withdrawn until 1934.

Free State of Jones According to legend, Jones County in southern Mississippi seceded from the Confederacy during the Civil War. However, no evidence exists that such an event took place. The legend appears to have some basis in fact: the nickname "Free State of Jones" was used for the county, but was used in antebellum Mississippi and referred to the paucity of slaves in Jones County. A military operation was launched by the Confederate Army against an organization calling itself the Republic of Jones in late 1863 and early 1864. The Republic of Jones (and perhaps a second group called the Jones County Confederacy) appear to have been bands of Confederate Army deserters, who took refuge in the swamps and woods of Jones County. The Natchez Courier, a pro-Union newspaper, published a story lampooning the Confederacy in 1864, involving the supposed secession of Jones County. Encouraged by oral tradition, the legend has persisted to the present day.

Embassy of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia Throughout the Cold War, the United States refused to recognize the annexation of the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) by the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Therefore, the United States maintained that the ambassadors of those nations in Washington still represented the only lawful authority in the Baltics, and that the embassies were sovereign territory controlled by the Baltic governments-in-exile. Until the Baltic republics regained their independence in 1990, the "Presidents" of all three nations resided for forty years at the still-independent embassy buildings.

Provisional Government of Kentucky In April 1861, Kentucky's government chose the better part of valor and declared that the state would be neutral in the looming Civil War. This neutrality was ended when Confederate and Federal troops entered Kentucky in September; the Confederates retreated, and the Army of the Cumberland soon established a militia and a series of military camps. The sympathies of many Kentuckians lay with the Confederacy, however, and in November of 1861, delegates met at Russellville to declare Kentucky's independence. The new Provisional Government established its capital at Bowling Green and sent representatives to the Confederate government. It soon became apparent that the Provisional Government existed on paper only, and its governor left in February of 1862 to join the Confederate Army. Thereafter (although a government-in-exile continued at Richmond) Confederate Kentucky remained only a pipe dream.

Kaifeng Jews Jewish settlements existed throughout medieval China. The settlement at Kaifeng was notable for its size and duration. Founded around the year 1000, by the 16th century the Jewish community engaged in agriculture, trade, the civil service, and the army. The Chinese were tolerant of the Jews, who began to incorporate Confucian ideas in their thought, and who were gradually assimilated to the point where they were indistinguishable from other Chinese. The community's vibrant life suffered a dramatic shock in 1810, when Kaifeng's last rabbi died. Although most of the Jewish traditions have been lost and no organized Jewish community groups exist, the descendants of the Jewish colony still fiercely identify themselves as Jewish.

Abalonia The USS Abalonia was a concrete cargo ship, constructed for the purpose of becoming an independent nation. The company which built it hoped to anchor it in rich shellfish beds on the Cortes Bank, 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, and claim jurisdiction over the area. Shortly after the Abalonia's launch in 1969, it foundered and sank, nearly killing the crew. In the wake of the Abalonia fiasco, a second company began plans to build a platform on the Cortes Bank and declare it the nation of Taluga. The US government quickly gave notice that the Cortes Bank, as part of the continental shelf, fell within its jurisdiction.

Every year at about this time, NPR does a show on good books to choose for 'summer reading.' I just finished listening to this year's edition and it has some interesting recommendations, so I thought I'd post the link here:

Summer Reading 2005: Summer Reading Picks from Critics, Listeners

And here's another fun story from NPR:

Strong Bad Walks in Footsteps of Darth, Lex, J.R.

Take a listen to this interview with the producers of www.homestarrunner.com on NPR's news show All Things Considered.

What do you think? Is the whole thing "smooth 'n smarmy," like Strong Bad says?

Woo Hoo! The book is finally close to coming out!

Some of you will remember that I played a central role in organizing and running the symposium Eisenhower and National Security for the 21st Century, which was co-sponsored by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission (where I work) and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University and held at Fort McNair from January 26-28, 2005.

We've been working hard to get at least some of the insights developed during the symposium in book form and we're finally getting close to releasing it!

The book, Forging the Shield: Eisenhower and National Security for the 21st Century will hopefully be released in July sometime but the publisher, Imprint Publications, has just put background and purchase information up on its website. Check it out!!

And now for something completely random-- but still interesting.

The website of the Qaanaaq (Greenland) Tourist Office, billed as the world's northernmost municipality.

Too much to say about this. I'll leave it up to you.

Robocop Camera Photographs Crooks... Then Tells Them To Beat It

Dell sent me a new HD and it's working-- technically. Now I've just got to reinstall everything and get all the hardware drivers loaded. That and figure out how to connect up to the rather strange internet setup. (I'm writing this from work, by the way).

Ah, well... back to it...

Argh...

My computer has finally given up the ghost-- or, rather, the hard drive has. I was on the phone with Dell and they finally decided that there was nothing for it but to replace my (corrupted) hard drive with a blank one. So, I'm going to be offline for a while until I get the replacement and re-install everything.

I'm soooooooo glad I backed most of my files up on Friday!

A word to the wise:

Never let a computer know you're in a hurry.

I was reading in last week's Economist's Special Report on France and the EU and was intrigued by the following quote on French employment:

France's private sector boasts some of the world's leading companies, in industries such as cars, handbags, shampoo, yoghurt and insurance. Yet these firms tend to manage by employing relatively few people. Jobs are so thickly protected that employers hesitate to create them. Many resort to temporary or short-term contracts, or to interns. The upshot is a two-tier labor market: sheltered jobs for those who have them, and precariousness or joblessness for the rest.

I wonder if this might be true after a fashion in the United States, not because of oppressive employment regulation but due to the skyrocketing cost of health insurance and, according to employers, the crushing responsibility of actually paying a living wage.

Hi there-- my computer is being a bit problematic, so I might be offline for a little while. Don't really know what's going on but hopefully it'll just be a temporary glitch.

On a very different subject, this is a very interesting article:

Foreign Language Enrollments in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2002

Warm congratulations to this minty-fresh pair who celebrated their beautiful wedding over this weekend!  

Wow! It's great to see an org like the WFP have a marketing success like this and it seems really interesting on a lot of different levels:

SURPRISE HIT HUMANITARIAN VIDEO GAME REACHES ONE MILLION PLAYERS
New York, Jun 1 2005 2:00PM
(UN News Centre)
Launched by the United Nations only six weeks ago, the first video game designed to teach children about global hunger has surpassed all expectations in the gaming world by reaching more than one million players in 40 countries.

What makes this achievement highly unusual is that no android attackers are blown away in the game, “Food Force,” released by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in April. Instead, kids race against time to feed thousands of people on the fictitious island of Sheylan, alongside a crack team of emergency aid workers.

They pilot helicopters while looking out for hungry people, negotiate with armed rebels blocking a food convoy, and use food aid to help rebuild communities. Along the way, they learn about the real world where over 800 million people are plagued by hunger each day.

“Finally! An educational game that rocks!” comments Watercoolergames.com

Available as a free download in MAC and PC formats through a dedicated website where information on global hunger can also be found, the world’s first humanitarian video game contains six different missions aimed at children 8-13 years old. Evidence of the response to the game includes thousands of comments posted on the site along with highest scores.

As of today, “password300” of China leads with 148,952,869 points.

According to John Powell, WFP Deputy Executive Director, the game is reaching 40 countries even though it is currently available in English only. Powell is looking for partners to help translate the game into other languages.

The WFP is also focussing on free distribution in schools around the world, backed by Yahoo! and Internet2, a Washington-based high-speed educational network. In addition, the game is supported by a community web site which includes lesson packs on world hunger in seven languages provided by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

 

I just saw the recent film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe and enjoyed it immensely. It was particularly interesting to see how the filmmakers chose material from a book whose content is sometimes not altogether easily filmed. I'm also interested in the quantity of 'Douglas Adams-ness' in the screenplay since he was working on an adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide when he died, though I'm not sure exactly how close to completion he felt it was.

In other news, I have stumbled upon Conversations with History an extremely wide-ranging archive of fascinating interviews with people of remarkable insight and experience in global issues that reach much deeper than most similar programs I have seen. Anyone interested in world events should browse widely within the literally hundreds of recorded interviews.

I just finished listening to Timothy Garton Ash discuss his deep insights gained from being at the epicenter of the collapse of Soviet Communism's influence on Central Europe. The whole interview is excellent but listen especially for the description of how he helped Lech Walesa communicate with Margaret Thatcher.

I also really enjoyed a fabulous interview with Thomas Goltz. Listen to how he came to get out of Samashki, the Chechen village he lived in for several weeks during the wars in Chechnya.

I also recommend that you visit Thomas Goltz's own site(thomasgoltz.com) and take a look at the beautiful slide show he has put together of his trip, by motorcycle (and sidecar), along the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline route in 2002.

Well, I guess I should get back to work... more soon!

A very nice philatelic view of an internal Chinese landscape. (original stamp is 2 by 3.5 inches)  

A bunch of miscellaneous but interesting stuff:

Spying on the Government: A UC Berkeley geographer maps the secret military bases of the American West -- where billions of dollars disappear into creepy clandestine projects.


Trevor Paglen The protagonist of the preceding story-- Includes Secret Bases, Secret Wars and Recording Carceral Landscapes.


Secret Service Visits Art Show at Columbia from the Chicago Sun-Times


A fascinating collection of historical airline and airport information

Building a Better Spy

Advice for John Negroponte: Go for broke. Face down Rumsfeld. Your country needs you.

Richard A. Clarke writes directly (and quite sharply) to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte here in a very interesting shot across his bow.

It's also amazing to think that Negroponte has been in this new office of 'Director of National Intelligence' for a month. It's amazing how seamlessly the bureaucracy has swallowed him up.

How prescient!

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents more and more the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal: On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

--H.L. Mencken (1920)

Some very sad news:

Andrew J. Goodpaster, 90, Soldier and Scholar, Dies
The New York Times
May 17, 2005

Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster, a soldier and scholar who fought in World War II, commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and came out of retirement to lead the United States Military Academy in a time of crisis, died on Monday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here. He was 90 and a resident of Washington.

The cause was prostate cancer, said his granddaughter Sarah Nesnow.

General Goodpaster was NATO commander from 1969 to 1974, after serving as deputy commander of American forces in Vietnam. Before beginning his Vietnam service in 1968, he was the third-ranking member of the United States delegation to the Paris negotiations with North Vietnam.

He retired as a four-star general after his NATO command but came out of retirement in 1977 to become superintendent of West Point and deal with the aftermath of a scandal involving cheating. General Goodpaster voluntarily gave up a star, assuming the rank of lieutenant general as superintendent. He retired again in 1981.

Andrew Jackson Goodpaster was born on Feb. 12, 1915, in Granite City, Ill. He attended McKendree College in Lebanon, Ill., for two years before transferring to West Point, where he graduated second in his class in 1939. That year, he married Dorothy Anderson.

In World War II he was twice wounded while leading a combat engineer battalion in North Africa and Italy. In addition to two Purple Hearts, he was awarded the Army's second-highest decoration for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross, for making a reconnaissance under heavy fire through a minefield, and a Silver Star.

Returning to the United States after being wounded for the second time, he served for three years on the general staff of the War Department. Early in that assignment, he helped plan for an invasion of Japan that became unnecessary after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the late 1940's, he studied at Princeton University, earning a master's in engineering and a doctorate in international relations. In the early 1950's he was attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, then served with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe.

From 1954 to 1961, he was an adviser to President Eisenhower. He then served as assistant commander of the Third Infantry Division and, later, as commander of the Eighth Infantry Division. He held several Pentagon posts and served as commandant of the National War College before becoming deputy commander of American forces in Vietnam.

When he came out of retirement to become West Point's superintendent, the academy was reeling from a cheating scandal that involved 151 cadets. In his four-year tenure there, the general sought to substitute ''positive leadership'' for hazing and personal abuse, to bolster the academy's courses in humanities and public policy, and to ease the admission of women to the academy.

General Goodpaster was a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Eisenhower Institute, which studies foreign and domestic policy issues.

He was a member of the American Security Council and a founder of the Committee on the Present Danger, groups whose central thesis was that the Soviet Union's military threat was underestimated and that the United States needed a correspondingly strong defense.

A West Point classmate, Lt. Gen. Edward L. Rowny, retired, said General Goodpaster was working on his memoirs until a week ago.

He is survived by his wife; two daughters, Susan Sullivan of Alexandria, Va., and Anne Batte of Salisbury, N.C.; and seven grandchildren.

This amazing man spoke at my conference and was actually cracking jokes, despite having gone through at least two rounds of radiation therapy relatively recently.

And the things that he had done and seen! A certainly full life!

Rest in peace, sir!

Here's something that I think people would enjoy:

CONELRAD
- an often 'over the top' look at Cold War propaganda, design and politics.

Plowing through a lot of work while I'm fighting off this damn cold but I decided that I had to stop to let the rest of the world know about a book I happened across:

On Bullshit
by Harry G. Frankfurt
Princeton University Press, 2005

The video interview is disappointing as only Princeton University Press could make it.

Anybody out there read it, so you can tell me whether it should drop the 'On' in its title?

Harumph!! I'm stuck in bed with a bad cold when I could be listening to Vaclav Havel speak in person at the Library of Congress.

At least the LoC is broadcasting the presentation via live webcam. If you want to watch it from home, click here and follow the directions. It's going to start in a few minutes, so I'd better go...

For all of you out there in need of an Esperanto fix, or if you want something to go with the poetry you have gotten from a Tajik guide in Afghanistan, take a look at Radio Polonia's Esperanto page!

You can listen to today's news by clicking on the red link in the top left of the page.

Or maybe you can go to Rebecca-stan or maybe to Symi-stan. ;-)

Very sad news-- Huit (08/08/88 - 05/13/05), my landlord's extremely sweet dog, died of old age (in his sleep) on Saturday. Sorry to see that your white muzzle has finally caught up with you.... 

Everybody beware! It's Friday the 13th!

Something I saw in a local Chinese restaurant:

Sake:
(for one) $3.50
(for town) $8.00

===================

I'm sure they meant to write 'two' instead of 'town' but I had a good laugh anyway...

That money talks, I can't deny.
I heard it once. It said 'goodbye'!
- Richard Armour

I was walking down the street the other day and saw a DC vanity license plate spelling out "Bacchus."

Just perfect.

Symi's in DC-- Yaaaaay!!

Fitting.

Three slime mold beetles now bear the names of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Sometimes I wonder what some parents were thinking when they name their children certain things.

Most of you know my feelings about people who call their children 'Chastity' but there are some people whose names must make their lives a living hell just because of their resemblance to other people or fictional characters.

Of course, there is the character in the movie Office Space named Michael Bolton but I have talked to a lot of other people with bizarre connections:

There is a Toni Braxton working at the National Park Service.

I had to get a guy named Jim Crow to send me some info from Atlanta a few months ago in order to finish a project I was working on...

I went to high school with a Benjamin Franklin and have since met another one.

One of the people I competed against in Academic Decathlon was named Travis Tritt.

And many, many others...

There are also a few people whose names just conjure up unpleasant references:

A really good British professor of mine decided to change his name after moving to the US because his family name happened to be 'Barff.'

I can also go to what looks to be an interesting lecture on Operations Research, Military Consulting and the Growth of Tyson's Corner, Virginia: 1945-1970 given by Paul Virus, Curator of Aerospace Electronics & Computing, Division of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.

I just feel sorry for them...

NEWS FLASH

MOLVANIA DISQUALIFIED FROM EUROVISION!

The tiny Eastern European republic of Molvania was disqualified from the Eurovision Song Contest this year.

Zladko “Zlad” Vladcik was to perform his very popular techno-ballad, “Elektronik – Supersonik” - described as “a melodic fusion combining hot disco rhythms with cold war rhetoric”. [ Click here to see the music video]

However, the 23-year-old singer was arrested at Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport and immediately deported. While Eurovision does not normally test for recreational drugs, unfortunately for Vladcik, Turkish Customs do.

On his return, “Zlad” apologised to everyone in Molvania for letting them down, especially his family, his friends and his dealer.

“ZLAD” – A SHORT HISTORY

Zladko “Zlad” Vladcik rose to prominence in 2002 when he won Molvanian Idol in controversial circumstances - the other finalist, Ob Kuklop, pulled out due to a serious throat condition after one of the judges tried to strangle him.

“Zlad” immediately released the megahit, “Juust Az I Amm” – hailed by Rolling Stone as the most incorrectly spelt song of all time.

After barely 2 days on the Molvanian “Rhythm & Polka” charts, the track went platinum – remarkable considering it was only available on cassingle.

Then, in an exciting move, “Zlad” formed supergroup Wow! But while on their very first tour, he decided to go solo again, citing the fact that the rest of the band was “moving in a different direction” (Romania).

For more information on Molvania, visit the Jet Lag Travel Guide website and this NPR Interview.

Had a great time in NYC last weekend with Symi-- she's back in the US for a week to do research in the Columbia University libraries. Anyone out there have insight into antisemitism in France?

The cherry blossoms in New York were in full bloom and we had some phenomenal weather. And at night- a phenomenal time hearing Dee Dee Bridgewater sing the heck out of Les Chansons Francaises.

Looking forward to going back up for this coming weekend for Pesach.

This will be held only across the street from home in Indio-- looks like really good time. Some really impressive acts!

As many of you know, Penguin in the City (Tricia) has just celebrated a year after her harrowing bout with brain cancer. I encourage you all to read the following message and help however you can!

Justin

Please help me in the fight against brain tumors

Hello everyone!

On May 1st, the Brain Tumor Society will be hosting the 8th annual 2005 Race for Hope 5K to benefit brain tumor research. Last year, the Brain Tumor Society gave 1.3 million dollars to brain tumor research. This year it hopes to give even more.

I will be running/walking because, as many of you know, I'm a brain tumor survivor. (If you're able to come to the race, you'll definitely see me in the survivor's tent in a Lance-Armstrong inspired yellow T-Shirt!) I walk in honor and in memory of still a few other people. I hope that you will consider walking with me or supporting me and raise money and awareness to fight this horrible disease. Here are the various ways you can participate:

1. Sign up to walk/run on May 1st by visiting www.curebraintumors.org. When registering, you will have the option of making an additional donation on top of the $25 registration fee. All donations are tax deductible.

2. If you want to support me but cannot attend the race on May 1st, please go here to make your pledge and to be added to the honor roll list.

3. Help spread the word. Please send this email to your friends and family and invite them to join us on May 1st by participating in the Race for Hope or by making a donation.

4. For me, a big cheering section is also greatly appreciated! :)

Thank you so much for your efforts. We hope you will join us as we collectively bring strength and hope to all families who are battling this terrible disease. Please contact me if you have questions or need clarification on how you can help.

NOTE: Online Registrations close April 26th...

Sincerely,
Tricia Southard
email: plsouthard@alumni.furman.edu
phone: 202-412-6968
IM: ask via email

Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support Brain Tumor Society

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Some email systems do not support the use of links and therefore this link may not appear to work. If so, copy and paste the following into your browser:
http://raceforhope.kintera.org/2005/flyingpenguin?faf=1&e=275191906
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Patricia Southard

Amazon.com just came out with a fascinating new feature-- "Statistically Improbable Phrases."

Amazon.com's Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", show you the interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases that occur in the text of books in Search Inside the Book. Our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to how many times it occurs across all Search Inside books, that phrase is a SIP in that book.

I'm really fascinated by this kind of 'smart searching' as one might call it-- seeing patterns or hiccups in data would be extremely useful in my work and raises a lot of intellectual questions with me too.

Anyone know of similar projects and/or research elsewhere? I'd be curious to hear about them!

Wow-- I just came across an address for a person in Bayonet Point, FL.

What a terrible name!! I'm not sure I would ever want to live in a town named that, just on principle!

Very interesting....

And a breath of fresh air since it seems the clout of the big consulting and financial companies that was so stifling when I was at Dartmouth has been broken. More power to my fellow alums who have broken out of the corporate mold-- though I am surprised that 11% of this year's class went into a single program, however worthy.

Teach for America Attracts Record Number of Graduates
NPR Morning Edition, April 12, 2005
(transcript)

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

More college seniors than ever before are applying to Teach for America. That program is a little like the Peace Corps. For the past 15 years it has recruited top college graduates to teach for two years in low-income rural and urban schools. NPR's Anthony Brooks visited Dartmouth College to find out why applications to the program are up.

(Soundbite of voices)

ANTHONY BROOKS reporting:

This past week it was warm and sunny as the long New England winter finally released its grip on Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Students in T-shirts and flip-flops played Frisbee on the campus green while a campus tour guide made the most of this spring day.

Unidentified Woman: Yeah, welcome to Dartmouth. This is clearly an amazing day to see the school.

BROOKS: As the guide welcomes this group of prospective students, another class of Dartmouth seniors is preparing to leave.

Mr. ALEX DOMINGUEZ (Student): I'm from Brooklyn, New York. My focus is international economics and international relations.

BROOKS: But Alex Dominguez says what excited him most about the last four years was volunteering as a mentor for an underprivileged boy from a nearby town, so he applied to Teach for America, was accepted, and for the next two years he'll be a special ed teacher in a Newark, New Jersey, elementary school.

Mr. DOMINGUEZ: A lot of my friends necessarily didn't go to as good a college or even go to college, and I felt that I owed it to society, you know, to give back a little bit.

BROOKS: That's a common theme here. Senior Julia Hildreth wants to go on to law school, but first she'll spend the next two years teaching urban schoolkids. Hildreth, who comes from New Hampshire, says she's committed to Teach for America because of the inequities she's seen between rich and poor schools.

Ms. JULIA HILDRETH (Student): It just seems so unjust for those children in the lower-income schools, and that's a driving force behind my excitement about the program and my reasons for wanting to do it.

BROOKS: More than a hundred Dartmouth seniors have applied to Teach for America. That's 11 percent of the senior class. Surprising, perhaps, given the many lucrative career opportunities available to these Ivy League grads.

Ms. CHELSEA NILSSON (Student): There's a desire to make an impact, there's no question.

BROOKS: Chelsea Nilsson is a senior from Pennsylvania who applied to Teach for America. If accepted, she wants to teach English in an urban high school. It's hard work for relatively little pay, but she says it offers immediate responsibilities that most first jobs don't.

Ms. NILSSON: So many recent graduates feel that you have to commit this obligatory time to being someone's photocopying assistant or someone's coffee runner. I want to find a way to make an immediate impact.

BROOKS: This year, Teach for America has attracted some 17,000 applicants to fill just 2,000 openings, a jump of almost 40 percent over last year. The numbers are up at many schools, from Dartmouth to Yale to the University of Michigan. Elissa Clapp, who heads recruitment at Teach for America, says she's not surprised.

Ms. ELISSA CLAPP (Teach for America): I do think that this generation of leaders is outraged by what they're seeing, and the gap in educational outcomes that continues to persist along racial and economic lines. And at the same time we have ramped up our effort to reach the top graduating seniors on campuses.

BROOKS: A survey by The Brookings Institution two years ago found that more than a third of college seniors were interested in public service work, though many didn't know how to find it. Dan Kessler of Idealist.org, an online clearing house for the non- profit sector, says Teach for America has successfully tapped into that interest in public service. He says the program is highly visible on campuses and employs young recruiters who compete aggressively with the private sector to attract the best and the brightest.

Mr. DAN KESSLER (Idealist.org): It's prestigious and it's intensely competitive, so one of the things that they've done incredibly well in addition to the program itself is simply have absolutely brilliant marketing.

BROOKS: As one professor put it, Teach for America is cool. Senior Alex Dominguez agrees with that and says he looks forward to a new challenge, even if he'll be sad to say goodbye to Dartmouth.

Mr. DOMINGUEZ: I think it's time that, you know, I go and venture out into the world and, you know, start to make my place out there.

BROOKS: Next fall, Dominguez will take his place in a classroom in Newark, New Jersey.

Anthony Brooks, NPR News.

MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.

My apologies-- I misread the dates for my previous post. This year's American Library Week is actually this week (April 10-16)-- Sorry Tricia...

Next week (April 18-24) is National Library Week, according to the American Library Association.

Must..... resist..... using.... 'check out'.... pun.........(gasp)

Here's a story Symi sent me:

In Steinbeck's Birthplace, A Fight to Keep the Libraries Open
New York Times
by Carolyn Marshall
April 4, 2005

An absolute travesty!!

A bit of a laugh for all of you who are part of fantasy sports leagues.... (Washington Post 040305) 

Bleagh! The 'n' & 'delete' keys have died o my home keyboard. Likely the
begi i g of the e d for the whole keyboard-- the same thi g happe ed to my previous keyboard.

Tha kfully, I thi k it is still u der warra ty.

(btw-- if you have a problem with how I typed the letter I was missi g above, realize that I copied it from a other page & pasted it here.)

For those of you interested in a deeper look at current issues, I highly recommend PBS' program Frontline.

I have just finished watching one of their reports on the issue of prescription drugs in the US, entitled The Other Drug War. There's a wealth of background information on the site, in addition to a full video copy of the program, divided into six parts for easy loading.

Other topics I think they do exceptionally well are as follows:

Beyond Baghdad

In the summer of 2003, as violence against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq spiked alarmingly, the top U.S. administrator there, L. Paul Bremer, told FRONTLINE producer Martin Smith that the press was doing a terrible job of covering the story. He said they needed to get out of Baghdad to see the kind of progress that was being made.

Accepting Bremer's challenge, in November FRONTLINE went back to Iraq to see how the U.S. plan to turn the country into a showcase for democracy in the Middle East was faring.

The Secret History of the Credit Card

In "Secret History of the Credit Card," FRONTLINE® and The New York Times join forces to investigate an industry few Americans fully understand. In this one-hour report, correspondent Lowell Bergman uncovers the techniques used by the industry to earn record profits and get consumers to take on more debt.

Some of you are aware that a friend of mine is involved in a legal dispute with George Washington University regarding housing there. The following is an article published in the GWU newspaper, The Hatchet

Student Vows to Continue Legal Battle Against GW
by Larry Adler, Hatchet Reporter
Published 04/11/05

A GW student who unsuccessfully sued President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg over health code violations in his dorm room said he plans to continue with his case even though it was dismissed.

The violations, which were identified by a city agency last semester and have since been fixed, included cracks in the ceiling and walls, defective doors, loose paint, broken floor tiles and missing caulking in his 2109 F St. room. Mike Strong, a senior, also unsuccessfully sued Tom Dwyer, managing director for Property Management, and Walter Gray, director of Facilities Management. He was seeking damages of $4.5 million.

On Aug. 30, Strong went to the basement of his dorm to do laundry and placed a call to Fix-It upon finding roaches there. He then left his dorm for two days, and returned to find a padlock on his door.

After being locked out of his room for hours, he said he was finally allowed back in, and found that the room had been left a mess and was mistakenly fumigated.

Strong said that inside the room was a sign warning that it had been treated for roaches. He said there was no indication that he was in any danger because he did not smell poison. A few days later, Strong started to feel sick and went to GW Hospital, where he was admitted for insecticide poisoning.

Strong also said he noticed other safety problems in his room and asked Dwyer to come take a look at, among other things, a door he was able to unlock with a plastic knife.

"I called in Facilities Management, but they didn't do anything for six weeks, so I called in (the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs)," Strong said. "The day I got the report, I filed the lawsuit for $4.5 million dollars in D.C. Superior Court."

DCRA documents obtained by The Hatchet indicate that on Oct. 4, 2004, the city served GW with nine housing violations for Strong's room plus one for an infested basement.

Facilities Management director Peter Comey referred calls for this article to the University's media relations department and its lawyers. Media relations could not be reached for comment. Linda Schutjer, GW's associate general counsel, said the University was not concerned with the suit.

"He serviced the wrong people," Schutjer said. "He should have sued the University. On these kinds of technical ground they typically try and give them another shot at filing it correctly."

In response to the lawsuit, the University made three petitions to have the case thrown out. One said Strong did not properly serve the University with the lawsuit, and the other two were that the case was moot.

The case was originally thrown out and later dismissed without prejudice, meaning Strong could re-file the case. Strong believes he still has a case and is hoping to make the University aware of the problems with its dorms.

"The lawsuit is not about me, it's about bringing change. It's to ensure students' safety in the future. The University has a rank for their house," he said, referring to the widely held belief that GW offers some of the best college housing in the country. "It's time to live up to their rank."

Lots of stuff happening with, to and around me... people have moved into the office next to the Commission... the washing machine is broken.... I'm working hard to make sure the book that's arranged around my conference is moving closer to completion....and lots more to boot.

I'll write more once things wind down a bit...

Not been able to decide on a dish to bring to Penguin in the City's potluck this weekend. Anyone out there have any great (and portable) ideas?

Just got an envelope of newspaper articles from home and found one piece of very sad news. Below is the obituary, run in the local paper (The Desert Sun) on April 1st.

After a full career as a teacher and counselor in one of the outer LA suburbs, she came to the Desert and became a leader in things like Gifted and Talented Education, Career Prep and various parts of the curriculum. She was a tiny woman, definitely under five feet tall, with a heart of gold and able to hold her own in front of a classroom, even at 75 (when I graduated from high school).

The fact that she has died is not a big surprise--she lived an extremely full and long life--it's just a pity that the Earth lost someone so exceptional.

The Desert Sun
April 1, 2005 (Palm Springs, California)
Lives Remembered

Julie Hilla

Julie Hilla, 82, of Ashland, Oregon and formerly of Palm Desert, Died February 23, 2005, in Medford, Oregon.

She was born in 1922 to Albert and Jeanne Schoensieqel in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

She married Harold Abshear in 1943 in San Bernadino and later became an educator for the Whittier High School District. After retiring from that position, she moved to Palm Desert and became an active volunteer in local Coachella Valley schools.

She was active in the Unitarian Fellowship, the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert and the Democratic Party.

She is survived by her husband, John Hilla of Ashland; her daughter Joan Brown of Ashland; two sons, Donald Abshear of Grand Junction, CO and Robert Abshear of Ashland; her brother, Richard Schoensieqel of Del Mar; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

Arrangements were under the direction of Litwiller Simonsen Funeral Home in Ashland.

This was just too wonderful not to post. [Children of the World, a 4-stamp block issued by Sharjah & Dependencies (now part of the United Arab Emirates), 1972.] 

Extremely beautiful! 

I'm finally getting the time to post photos from my trip to Paris! This is the wonderful Symi and I in front of Notre Dame.  

For those of you who had a hard time in HS math class... 

I saw one of the cutest things the other day.

After I finished some work on Capitol Hill, I stopped by the Union Station Au Bon Pain to get something to eat. While munching on a little snack, I was able to look out on a pretty busy passageway of people walking between the Amtrak part of the station and the Metro.

As I looked out into the general bustle, I saw a new mother walking by with a little baby girl, about 5 months old, in a pink snuggly that was strapped to the mother's chest. Every time the mother took a step, the baby's arms and legs (which were sticking out of the snuggly) bounced around, much to her delight.

That pair happened to pass a family walking the other way-- a mother and father pushing an older child in a stroller. Probably about 10 months old.

The parents, each focused on wherever they were going, didn't give each other a second glance but stroller baby saw snuggly baby's arms bouncing around, gave a big smile and waved back.

Everybody saw this and there was about 15 seconds of baby waving to baby--snuggly baby was still a bit young to have the whole coordination thing down, so for her, it was more good-natured flailing--until everybody walked off on their separate ways with a smile on their faces.

Including myself.....

This looks kinda cool and I wholeheartedly support the premise.

The UN recently issued a stamp to celebrate its work on Disarmament.
I like the premise: Books--Not Guns.

The Crow of the Early Bird
By WARREN ST. JOHN and ALEX WILLIAMS
The New York Times
March 27, 2005

Mr. Iger, who is married to the television journalist Willow Bay, with whom he has four children, is up at 4:30 in the morning, works out and arrives in the office by 6:30.

The New York Times, March 14, profile of Robert A. Iger, the new president of the Walt Disney Company

Most days before work, Ward, 53, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. at her South Anchorage condo, grabs her mandatory morning coffee and heads to the gym. Part of her success rides on the fact that she exudes energy and sleeps only six hours a night.

The Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 3, profile of Robin Ward, a real estate deal maker

After Singer's call, Wirtschafter couldn't get back to sleep. He usually drops off for only about three hours a night, anyway, rising at around 1 a.m. to read scripts and scribble diagrams in a blue notebook, plotting the decision tree of the following day's phone calls.

The New Yorker, March 21, profile of Dave Wirtschafter, the president of the William Morris Agency

THERE was a time when to project an image of industriousness and responsibility, all a person had to do was wake at the crack of dawn. But in a culture obsessed with status—in which every conceivable personal detail stands as a marker of one's ambition or lack thereof—waking at dawn means simply running with the pack. To really get ahead in the world, to obtain the sacred stuff of C.E.O.'s and overachievers, one must get up before the other guy, when the roosters themselves are still deep in REM sleep. And of course since so few people are awake at such an ungodly hour, the early risers of the world take special pains to let everyone else know of their impressive circadian discipline.

"I'm an early riser, I'm achievement driven, and oh, my, has it served me well in the business world," said Otto Kroeger, a motivational speaker and business consultant in Fairfax, Va. Mr. Kroeger, who says he routinely rises at 4 a.m., preaches about the advantage of getting up before dawn to audiences and clients. "For 13 years," Mr. Kroeger said, "I never allowed myself more than 4 hours in any 24-hour period. It was all ego driven. My psyche was saying, 'I can do it, I can outlast.' It's a version of the old Broadway song from 'Annie Get Your Gun': 'Anything you can do, I can do better.' "

For late risers, the crack of dawn was a formidable enough benchmark. In today's age of competitive waking, they're made to feel even worse. The writer Cynthia Ozick, who goes to bed after 3 a.m. and wakes up sometime after noon, said she lives with constant disapproval. "I'm a creature of bad habits in the eyes of the world," she said. When Ms. Ozick answers the telephone in the early afternoon, she said, "you're approached in the most accusing voice—'Did I wake you?' "

At least since Benjamin Franklin included the proverb "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" in his Poor Richard's Almanac, Americans have looked at sleeping habits as a measure of a person's character. Perhaps because in the agrarian past people had to wake at dawn to get in a full day's work outside, late sleepers have been viewed as a drag on the collective good.

Even today, said Edward J. Stepanski, the director of the Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, "it's a uniformly negative characteristic to be asleep while everyone else is going about their business."

But before slinking back under the covers in shame, slugabeds of the world should consider: Sleep researchers are casting doubt on the presumed virtue and benefits of waking early, with research showing that the time one wakes up has little bearing on income or success, and that people's sleep cycles are not entirely under their control. Buoyed by the reassessment of their bedtime habits, a few outspoken and well-rested night owls are speaking out against the creep of sleepism.

"There are night owls who have just had their fill of people making them feel guilty and of other people who rag on them," said Carolyn Schur, a late sleeper from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who advocates for night owls in speeches and in her book "Birds of a Different Feather." "A lot of people are just saying, 'I can't take it anymore.'"

Whatever the negative associations with sleeping late, scientists say there's good reason to doubt the boasts of the early risers. Dr. Daniel F. Kripke, a sleep researcher at the University of California, San Diego, said that in one study he attached motion sensors to subjects' wrists to determine when they were up and about. While 5 percent of the subjects claimed they were awake before 4 a.m., Dr. Kripke said, the motion sensors suggested none of them were. And while 10 percent reported they were up and at 'em by 5 a.m., only 5 percent were out of bed.

Dr. Stepanski said the same is true of people who boast they need little sleep. In a study in which subjects claimed they could get by on just five hours' sleep, he said, researchers found the subjects were sneaking in long naps and sleeping in on weekends to make up for lost z's.

"There's a tendency to generalize and to do it in a self-serving way," Dr. Stepanski said. "If your view is that you can get by on less sleep than the average person, then you're going to play that up."

Scientists call early risers larks, and late sleepers owls, and speak of morningness and eveningness to describe their differing circadian rhythms. Researchers believe that about 10 percent of the population are extreme larks, 10 percent are extreme owls and the remaining 80 percent are somewhere in between. And they say the most important factor in determining to which group a person belongs is not ambition, but DNA.

"Timing of sleep is genetically determined, whether you're an owl or lark," said Dr. Mark Mahowald, the medical director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center. While most people are a little bit owl or a little bit lark, for others, Dr. Mahowald said, altering sleep habits is "like changing your height or eye color."

Dr. Christopher R. Jones, the medical director of the Sleep-Wake Center at the University of Utah, said that just as there are morning people, scientists have found morning flies and morning mice. Variations in sleep patterns among the population, he added, may have benefited the species.

"The whole tribe is better off if someone is up all the night, listening for a lion walking through the grass," he said.

The rhythms of modern times are determined not by fanged predators, of course, but by the 9-to-5 schedule of the workaday world. While those hours would seem to benefit larks, there is little evidence that night owls are any less successful than early risers. Dr. Kripke said that a 2001 study of adults in San Diego showed no correlation between waking time and income. There's even anecdotal evidence of parity on the world stage; President Bush is said to wake each day at 5 a.m., to be at his desk by 7 and to go to sleep at 10 p.m., while no less an achiever than Russian President Vladimir V. Putin reportedly wakes at 11 a.m. and works until 2 a.m.

Night owls thrive, it seems, by strategizing around the expectations of the early crowd. Bella M. DePaulo, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who goes to sleep around 3 a.m. and wakes about 11 a.m., said that before she answers the phone in the late morning, she practices saying "Hello" out loud until she sounds awake. Ms. DePaulo said she has been a night person since childhood, and that she gravitated toward academia in part of because of her sleep habits.

"Academia is a good place to be if you're out of the mainstream," she said. "If you're doing 80 hours of work a week, what does it matter what 80 hours you work?"

Dr. Meir H. Kryger, a professor of medicine and a sleep researcher at the University of Manitoba, said that many people choose professions in line with their circadian rhythms.

"There are whole professions that tend to be larks," he said, like bankers and surgeons. "Very often people self-select themselves into that kind of career." Owls, he said, tend toward the entertainment or hospitality industries and the arts. But not everyone manages to find a perfect fit.

Drue Miller, a design and marketing consultant in San Francisco and the creator of a satirical late sleepers' bill of rights online bulletin board, said that when she worked as a Web designer, she was able to indulge her night owl tendencies by coming in late in the morning and working into the evening. That changed when she became the boss and found herself adjusting her schedule to fit the perception that people who run things are at their desks early. "I felt like I was being a 'bad boss' by showing up so much later," she said.

Perhaps the biggest boon to night owls in keeping up with the larks has been the Internet. Ms. Schur, the night owl advocate, said she spends the wee hours shopping, paying her bills and doing her banking online.

"It's a vehicle for maintaining a night owl lifestyle," she said of the Web. Ms. Schur added that if she is expected to get some bit of work to clients or colleagues by the early morning, she typically does it late at night.

"People will call me and say, 'Hey, your e-mail said 2 or 3 in the morning—did you really send it at that time?'" Ms. Schur said. "I say, 'Yes.' "

For people desperate to change their circadian rhythms, doctors say, there are some options. Dr. Kripke said that light therapy, melatonin and large doses of vitamin B12 can be used to adjust the body's natural clock. (Dr. Kripke outlines these treatments in a free e-book on his Web site www.BrightenYourLife.info.) But because sleep rhythms are so ingrained, the treatments must be practiced continually and so for many are impractical.

"People come to my clinic and want to change," said Dr. Jones of the University of Utah, "and I tell them I can't, I don't have a genetic screwdriver to get in there and tweak the gene."

Of course for hardened members of the early-to-rise crowd, any talk of being a slave to a notion as wispy as circadian rhythms is a sure sign of weakness. Their message to the drowsy is more or less: Get an alarm clock.

"If you work two extra hours a day," said Brian Tracy, the motivational guru, "you will outstrip everyone else in your field. The question is, where do you get those two hours? Early morning time is the most productive. It does no good to do work later in the day, because by then your batteries are burned out. Most successful people try to get up by 5 or 5:30 in the morning."

He added: "Getting up late, having fun at work, these are all for losers."

This is a really interesting site!

MLA Language Map

It's a map that shows national distribution of people speaking a wide variety of languages based on 2000 US Census data. The chloropleth geometry can be arranged by counties and by zip codes, making it useful both as an overview and in great detail.

This is hilarious! Take a look at this:

Le Bloggeur

I was talking with Hoosier Daddy and he showed me that his cell phone had Danse Macabre as a ring tone. Penguin in the City's phone plays the theme to Cheers.

This conversation has inspired me to look for a better ring tone for myself. All my phone does is play a canned version of a synthesized but traditional telephone ring with an unhealthy amount of re-verb. Does anyone out there have a good idea of what tune I should get?

I was just listening to a radio performance of The Case of the Noble Bachelor, a Sherlock Holmes mystery, while working and heard quite a surprising statement from someone in Victorian England.

After a major character storms out, Sherlock Holmes turns to an American man and says:

"Then I trust that you at least will honour me with your company," said Sherlock Holmes. "It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes."

What a world it would be if something like that had actually come to pass....

Yet another piece of evidence demonstrating the flaws in the whole Iraqi War debacle, though I'm not sure I had put Tony Blair quite in that light.

MI6 chief told PM: Americans ‘fixed’ case for war
The Sunday Times (UK)-- March 20, 2005

More power to you, Dr. Rassias!

The Legacy of Our Moat Mentality: John Rassias on the importance of language for international understanding

Very sad news--George Kennan died last night.

The world has lost an incredible intellect and insight into how we interact with one another.

Aie!! Bush is trying to put Wolfowitz forward as the head of the world bank?!!?

This is absolutely ridiculous! First John Bolton, and now this?! This isn't Michael Bolton, the "no-talent ass clown". This is infinitely worse.

Every time the Bush administration does something so incredibly idiotic and harmful to the US and the world, it goes out and finds some way to screw things up even more. I hate these kinds of surprises.

I've included an article by Samantha Power that gives a good overview of what is going on, for non foreign policy wonks.

Boltonism
by Samantha Power
From the New Yorker
March 21, 2005

Barring a sudden and improbable outbreak of independent judgment in the Senate, John Bolton will soon be confirmed as President Bush's Ambassador to the United Nations, an institution he openly disdains. "It is a President's prerogative to name his ambassadors," Secretary-General Kofi Annan meekly told reporters last week. When he was asked whether he saw the nomination as a hostile act, he laughed and said, "I'm not sure I want to be drawn on that one." At U.N. headquarters, staffers walked around in a daze of disbelief. They had hoped that Bush's congenial European trip—combined with the U.N.'s moves toward internal reform and its indispensable role in pulling off the Iraqi elections—would spawn a U.S.-U.N. detente. Then came word that Bush was sending them Bolton.

"I'm pro-American," Bolton says, as if that required him to be anti-world. He dismisses the U.N.'s tools for promoting peace and security. International law? "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so—because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States." (Never mind that such laws might have "constricted" the torture of detainees.) Humanitarian intervention? It's "a right of intervention that is just a gleam in one beholder's eye but looks like flat-out aggression to somebody else." Negotiation as a way of dealing with rogue states? "I don't do carrots," Bolton says.

It is easy to catalogue the things that John Bolton doesn't "do"—encourage payment of U.N. dues, support the International Criminal Court, strengthen international disarmament treaties. What he does do is less obvious. As Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, he has rightly been given credit for the Proliferation Security Initiative, which attempts to interdict shipments of fissile material and which is supported by sixty nations, including France and Germany.

But on his watch North Korea, the chief target of his ire, reprocessed enough plutonium to make six new nuclear weapons. Bolton boasts of "taking a big bottle of Wite-Out" to President Clinton's signature on the statute for the International Criminal Court ("a product of fuzzy-minded romanticism" that is "not just naive but dangerous"). Yet the Administration's assault on the I.C.C. has, in fact, bolstered the court's legitimacy internationally. Powerful middle-tier countries (like Germany) have helped make up the loss of American funds and personnel, and the court is now deep into investigations of mass slaughter in Congo and Uganda.

Bolton is also a longtime skeptic of tools that are increasingly part of the Bush Administration's arsenal. Nation building is a "fallacy," he thinks. "The U.S. is still engaged in nation building here two hundred and twenty-five years plus after the Declaration of Independence, and we still have a long way to go," he said in 2002. "The idea that we can nation-build for somebody else is just unrealistic." When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced Bolton's nomination, last Monday, she said, "We who are on the right side of freedom's divide have an obligation to help those who are unlucky enough to be born on the wrong side of that divide." But Bolton, who stood stoically next to her, has never believed that spreading freedom is America's business.

It is unclear what the Bush Administration has in mind by shipping Bolton to New York. The appointment has been spun as "Nixon goes to China." Nixon, however, actually went to China: the visit was compatible with his world view. Bolton, by contrast, seems averse to compromise, and is apparently committed to the belief that the U.N. and international law undermine U.S. interests. If he is to be an engine for U.N. reform, he will have to jettison his core values. He will have to work on expanding the Security Council, even though, in 1997, he said, "Leave the veto alone, and leave the Security Councils membership alone." (More recently, he suggested shrinking membership to a single state: his.) He will have to work with European states, even though he believes that "some Europeans have never lost faith in appeasement as a way of life." He will have to cooperate with China, even though he has called for full diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. And, if the Administration is serious about prosecuting the perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur, he will have to allow the Security Council to refer the case to the I.C.C.

The appointment of John Bolton has the look of a bureaucratic fix for an Administration that doesn't really care what happens to the U.N. At the State Department, Bolton, a protege of Vice-President Dick Cheney, has behaved more like a grandstander at a conservative think tank than like a diplomat. Colin Powell endured the collateral damage caused by his outbursts, but Rice made it plain that she would have none of it, and passed over Bolton for Deputy Secretary of State. Cheney reportedly then insisted that Bolton get the U.N. When Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke were appointed U.N. Ambassadors, President Clinton announced the nominations. Bush did the same for his first-term nominees, John Negroponte and John Danforth. Rice, in naming Bolton herself, sent a not so subtle signal that she expects to remain boss.

Nobody is more aware of a "U.N. in crisis" than the U.N.'s senior officials. They know that the U.N. is first and foremost a gathering of states, and an organization run by the most powerful of them. To be effective, the U.N., as Bolton himself has said, "requires sustained American leadership." Kofi Annan, speaking in Madrid three days after the nomination, praised Bolton's Proliferation Security Initiative and said that the "most vital" aim of the U.N. should be denying terrorists access to nuclear materials. The Administration did not return the love: instead, Rice sent Annan a letter informing him that the United States had unilaterally withdrawn from yet another international agreement, this one regarding an international court's jurisdiction over the claims of foreigners held in American jails.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will have a lot to contemplate when the ever-quotable Bolton arrives for confirmation. At the U.N. last week, the most discussed Boltonism was the claim that if the U.N. building "lost ten stories it wouldn't make a bit of difference." One staffer sighed and said, "He didn't say which ten floors he would like to see disappear. Perhaps that leaves us some room for influence."

Happy Pi Day!

Today is March the 14th or 3.14, as it might be written, and all over the world, engineers, high school math teachers and the odd college mathematics professor throw down their slide rules (or in high school, their graphing calculators) and dance around them (in circles of course).

Since I know people in each of those categories (especially some very odd math teachers and professors), I encourage you all to take the opportunity to act as odd as they do!

Listen to this discussion of the history of Pi, from the BBC program In Our Time

I was disturbed to read an article on Congressman Peter Hoekstra, the new head of the House Select Intelligence Committee now that Porter Goss has gone over to the CIA and been surprised by its workload.

Key Lawmaker Says US Needs Strategic Plan for Intelligence

The Washington Diplomat
March 2005

Reading that headline, I started rolling my eyes at such another example of incredible Republican stupidity but upon reading further, this was overtaken by the following:

One expert told Hoekstra's panel that although the country is tightly focused on the Iraq war, terrorism, Iran and North Korea, China is making a number of shrewd and largely undetected moves to expand its position across Asia.

'This concerns me,' Hoekstra said. What is China doing while the United States has its eyes on terrorism, Iraq, Iran and North Korea? What is China's position going to be in five or seven years when we finally turn our attention back to Asia?'

First of all, it doesn't evoke confidence when the head of the House Select Committee on Intelligence doesn't even realize that each of the places he mentioned are in Asia!! What paltry attention span he has is already dealing with Asia! Truly sub-par intelligence.

Not only that, but the PRC is North Korea's most important ally, economic supporter and protector. It has been hosting six-party talks on North Korea that the US considers 'the best way to end North Korea's nuclear programs and the only way for Pyongyang to achieve better relations with other countries.' There have been lots of Chinese citizens kidnapped in Iraq and China has been a huge influence on Iranian development of their missile systems and other military technology.

The Washington Diplomat is a surprisingly good little monthly newspaper--I recommend you read more of it than just that article. They did a relatively good job playing a very weak hand.

This was too good not to post-- apologies for all the puns (they're not mine)

Looking for a Job You Can Relish?
Here is a Job with all the fixings!

Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Spokesperson

Can you cut the mustard?
Here are some of the Qualifications that we are looking for:

- Must love to travel!

- A willingness to learn.

- Drive to succeed.

- An appetite for fun and adventure.

- Want to explore the US through the eyes of a Hot Dog!

- Willing to work and communicate with kids of all ages.


Who? - You! We need outgoing, creative, friendly, enthusiastic, graduating college seniors who have an appetite for adventure and are willing to see the world through the windshield of an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

Applicants should have a BA or BS, preferably in public relations, journalism, communications, advertising, or marketing, though applicants are not limited to these degrees.

Se Habla Espanol? - Bilingual candidates are encouraged to apply.

What? - To represent Oscar Mayer Foods as a goodwill ambassador through radio and television appearances, newspaper interviews, trade visits and charity functions. To meat and greet people from coast to coast. To maintain company car (Oscar Mayer Wienermobile). To work with internal and external consumer promotions, marketing and sales professionals. To manage your own traveling public relations firm; organizing promotions and pitching TV, radio and print media.

Where? - The Hot Dog Highways of America. Wienermobiles travel through all regions of the country visiting big cities and small towns alike, bringing miles of smiles to millions.

Why? - The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile has become an American icon. For over 65 years, the Wienermobile has been able to provide a Wienerwhistle and a laugh for all. Oscar Mayer continues to use the Wienermobile at special events throughout the country and they need people like you to coordinate all aspects of Wienermobile travel and event management.

Condiments-

- Receive $500 per week, plus expenses, benefits and clothing.

-Experience of being your own traveling public relations firm.

-Experience in a self-managed position with many responsibilities.

-Be a mini-celebrity in small towns and big cities through event appearances and media interviews, and for being the driver of an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

I don't remember how long I clipped this but it's still incredibly true. 

As some of you know, I will be out of the country for the next two weeks and may or may not be able to get online during that period.

Though, if I am, I will certainly try to post descriptions of all of the great things I will be doing and seeing in Paris and Prague.

I'll be sending those people whose mailing addresses I have post cards but this is a bit more instant gratification.

Take a listen to this -- sound file (mp3) about the Weimar Republic.

It's really bizarre-- I had to listen to it twice before I could stop laughing-- but it still covers the history pretty effectively.

FYI-- I found this at the bottom of the
Wikipedia article on the Weimar Republic.

I've got a lot to write about, so more soon!

Anyone out there know of someone looking for a new place to live? I just got a message from a friend that offers a great opportunity for this-- Check it out!

----

Hi everyone!
I have a room to rent in a two bedroom condo in Falls Church.
The rent is $ 725 a month, all utilities except electricity and cable
included. It would be a month-to-month arrangement until June.
The place is quiet and nice, with a small patio and large living room.
Please forward this to anyone who might be looking for a place inside
the beltway in Virginia.
Thanks!
- Ann
ann.bayliss@gmail.com
----

I just got this message from a friend of mine from Dartmouth. It's a great way to contribute to such an important cause.

----

Dear All,

One of my baby cousins is trying to raise funds for Tsunami victims on behalf
of UNICEF. His target goal is only $2,000. If you would like to help him by
making a contribution (ANY denomination, no matter how small, will be
appreciated!), please visit the following site:

Click Here

The fundraising effort is for a good cause and would only take a minute.

Happy New Year,

Saleela

---

Happy New Year, Saleela, despite the circumstances!

Wow-- California is really getting inundated. We've gotten over 4 times our average annual rainfall. Ok.... ok.... I'm from the desert and we're only pushing about 5 inches for the year. But we barely get an inch a year and have mountains between ourselves and LA.

On the other side of the mountains, it's getting pretty bad. I remember driving through a pretty little town called La Conchita huddled on the coast when my father and I were driving along US Highway 101 from Ventura to Santa Barbara for his business.

I say the town was 'huddled' because it was built on a tiny piece of flat land that was barely the size of the DC mall, connected only by the ribbon of highway that often had sea cliffs on one side and steep bluffs rising on the other without much shoulder at all.

This was a tenuous existence at best and the little town had been pummeled before by the weather-- sometimes dramatically (like in 1995).

It's a real pity to see the area around the landslide get built up again, only to (predictably) be demolished again with the rains this winter. I'm even more saddened to hear that 10 people ended up dying this time...

An Ariel Sharon insight into life:

The best thing to do when you've been stung by a wasp is to follow that wasp back to its hive and start whacking the hive with a stick.

Keep whacking the nest with a stick until they've learned their lesson.

If they sting you again, whack it harder.

(Andy Sultzman, BBC, "The Now Show," March 2004)

One of many reasons why it's important to study Geography...

Schoolgirl saved family and others by recognizing signs of coming tsunami
Jan 02, 2005 MacLeans, Canada

LONDON (AP) - A British schoolgirl who recognized the signs of a coming tsunami thanks to a recent geography lesson saved her family and some 100 other tourists at a Thai beach, a British newspaper reported.

Tilly Smith, 10, realized they were in danger when she saw the tide suddenly rush out -an indication earthquake-driven tidal waves are only minutes away -and told her mother, The Sun said in its Saturday edition.

She explained that she had studied tsunamis only two weeks before at her school in Oxshott, just south of London. Her parents, Penny and Colin Smith, warned nearby vacationers and staff at their hotel in Phuket, and the hotel swiftly evacuated Maikhao beach, minutes before the devastating waves struck, the newspaper said.

The Sun reported that the beach was one of only a few in Phuket where no one was killed or seriously hurt.

"I was on the beach and the water started to go funny," Tilly was quoted as telling The Sun. "There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. I recognized what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy."

Penny Smith, 43, said that she ran off the beach after Tilly explained what was going to happen.

"I dread to think what would have happened if we had stayed," she was quoted as telling The Sun. "Minutes later the water surged right over the beach and demolished everything in its path."

Craig Smith, general manager of the JW Marriott Hotel where Tilly's family were staying, said the 10-year-old was a heroine.

"I think it's phenomenal that Tilly's parents and the others on the beach are alive because she studied hard at school," Smith was quoted as telling The Sun.

Tilly learned about tsunamis in a lesson with geography teacher Andrew Kearney at Danes Hill School, a private school in Oxshott.

"It is an incredible coincidence that our class were learning about this type of tsunami just two weeks before Christmas," Kearney was quoted as telling the newspaper. He added that Tilly "was particularly captivated by this force of nature and its effects."

© The Canadian Press, 2005