From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun  7 07:42:52 2004
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon Jun  7 07:42:34 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going
	on folks (fwd from baptista@dot-god.com)
Message-ID: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>


This is a hoax, right?

----- Forwarded message from Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com> -----

From: Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:50:29 -0400 (EDT)
To: <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
Subject: [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going on folks
Organization: http://www.baptista.god/ or http://www.joebaptista.com/
Reply-To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>


A number of us have detected movements in the U.S. money supply which are
difficult to interpret.  At best we have hints of an imminent Catastrophe
of some sorts.

The Federal Reserve has recently raised the money supply (M-3) by crisis
proportions. It was up another $46.8 billion this past week.

This is unprecedented, unheard-of pre-catastrophe M-3 expansion. M-3
is up an amount that we've never seen before without a crisis -- $155
billion over the past four weeks, a $2.0 trillion annualized pace, a 22.2
percent annualized rate of growth.

There must be a crisis of historic proportions coming, and the Federal
Reserve Bank of the United States is making sure that there is enough
liquidity in place to protect the U.S.'s fragile financial system.

This is an unusual move since steep increases in M3 can result in the
permanent devaluation of a currency.  Why are they doing this?

Also we have detected a number of military actions - i.e. Navy ships
around the World are leaving their ports in unprecedented numbers?  Why?

Within the last two - three weeks there is also increased activity on all
US Military bases.  Why?

And last of all the internet rumor mill is at an all time high.  Huge
amounts of rumors and government disinformation on the Internet.  Why?

These and a few other technical observations leads us to conclude that the
event which is being planned for will occur in mid June or early July.

enjoy
joe baptista






_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144            http://www.leitl.org
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From owen at permafrost.net  Mon Jun  7 07:55:10 2004
From: owen at permafrost.net (Owen Byrne)
Date: Mon Jun  7 07:54:22 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going
	on folks (fwd from baptista@dot-god.com)
In-Reply-To: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
References: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <40C481CE.4050204@permafrost.net>

Eugen Leitl wrote:

>This is a hoax, right?
>
>----- Forwarded message from Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com> -----
>
>From: Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com>
>Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:50:29 -0400 (EDT)
>To: <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
>Subject: [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going on folks
>Organization: http://www.baptista.god/ or http://www.joebaptista.com/
>Reply-To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
>
>
>A number of us have detected movements in the U.S. money supply which are
>difficult to interpret.  At best we have hints of an imminent Catastrophe
>of some sorts.
>
>The Federal Reserve has recently raised the money supply (M-3) by crisis
>proportions. It was up another $46.8 billion this past week.
>
>  
>
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/WM3NS.txt

2004-02-09  8919.3
2004-02-16  8959.3
2004-02-23  8939.3
2004-03-01  8959.6
2004-03-08  9003.1
2004-03-15  9052.5
2004-03-22  9035.8
2004-03-29  9058.2
2004-04-05  9100.7
2004-04-12  9127.5
2004-04-19  9112.1
2004-04-26  9069.3
2004-05-03  9118.3
2004-05-10  9168.2
2004-05-17  9205.5
2004-05-24  9140.7

Thats in billions so 46.8 bill isn't exactly crisis proportions. 
According to here: 
http://www.forbes.com/finance/eventcalendar/EconomicEvent.jhtml?param_eventid=833302
Thats up to date. May 31st's number will be released on Thursday. 

>This is unprecedented, unheard-of pre-catastrophe M-3 expansion. M-3
>is up an amount that we've never seen before without a crisis -- $155
>billion over the past four weeks, a $2.0 trillion annualized pace, a 22.2
>percent annualized rate of growth.
>
>There must be a crisis of historic proportions coming, and the Federal
>Reserve Bank of the United States is making sure that there is enough
>liquidity in place to protect the U.S.'s fragile financial system.
>
>This is an unusual move since steep increases in M3 can result in the
>permanent devaluation of a currency.  Why are they doing this?
>
>Also we have detected a number of military actions - i.e. Navy ships
>around the World are leaving their ports in unprecedented numbers?  Why?
>
>Within the last two - three weeks there is also increased activity on all
>US Military bases.  Why?
>
>And last of all the internet rumor mill is at an all time high.  Huge
>amounts of rumors and government disinformation on the Internet.  Why?
>
>  
>
Conclusive indicator there.
Owen

From joe at barrera.org  Mon Jun  7 08:05:53 2004
From: joe at barrera.org (Joseph S. Barrera III)
Date: Mon Jun  7 08:05:29 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going
	on folks (fwd from baptista@dot-god.com)
In-Reply-To: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
References: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <40C48451.6040702@barrera.org>

Somewhat less alarmist article:

<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/FF03Dj01.html>

Global Economy

Daily Forex Commentary (Asia Times)
By Jack Crooks

Key News -- June 3, 2004

People's Bank of China vice governor Li Ruogu said that one worrisome 
indicator - inflation - appears to be heading in the right direction. (WSJ)

South Korea's trade surplus reached US$3.01 billion in May - the 
second-highest monthly surplus figure ever. (WSJ)

Key reports due Wednesday (WSJ): 7:45am ICSC-UBS Store Sales Index. For 
May 29 Wk. Previous: -0.5%. 8:55am Redbook Retail Sales Index. For May 
22 Wk. Previous: +0.5%. 6:30pm. ABC/Money Consumer Confidence. For May 
22 Wk. Previous: -11.

Quotable: "Should the growth momentum of money supply [in China] 
contract sharply on account of a possible sharp fall in bank lending, 
economic activity will follow suit. For example, a fall in the yearly 
rate of growth of money M1 from 54 percent in the second quarter of 1993 
to 14 percent in the second quarter of 1996 plunged the nominal GDP 
[gross domestic product] rate of growth from 69 percent in the fourth 
quarter of 1994 to 2 percent in the fourth quarter of 1997." - Frank 
Shostak, Mises Institute

FX Trading: The Institute of Supply Management index for May, a measure 
of US manufacturing strength, reported better than expected on Tuesday. 
It's an indication that US job growth may still be robust. Manufacturers 
said the rate of hiring last month was the best since 1970. Bonds 
tumbled, and yet the dollar did very little with all of that good news. 
Hmmm...

US manufacturers did say they are concerned about rising materials 
prices and the cost of energy. Is inflation nagging at the buck? Or is 
reflation by the Bubble Master nagging at the buck? Tuesday's ISM data 
increases the odds of another blow-out month for US Non-Farm Payrolls 
come Friday. And that being the case, I expected more from the dollar - 
a lot more.

Everyone on the planet is concerned about rising energy prices. It's 
hitting Mr Consumer directly in the pocket book and already changing, if 
not neutering, consumption patterns. The demand for SUVs (sport utility 
vehicles) and pickup trucks is plummeting - not good news for auto 
makers as these are the most profitable on the lot. Mr Consumer is 
actually socking more away into savings. Why? It's because costs are 
rising - and income is not - time to tighten the belt. If consumers are 
saving more, yet not making more in their paychecks, they are spending 
less - or soon will be spending less.

This may be why the Bubble Master is actually blowing it back into the 
bubble, instead of letting some air seep out. These tidbits of excellent 
analysis come from Greg Weldon, Weldon's Money Monitor:

Savings soaring: Total savings deposits held at thrifts and commercial 
banks - up $14.7 billion in the week ended May 17 - the second-largest 
rise in a row, following hard on the heels of the May 10 week increase 
of $57.7 billion. (Taken from the Federal Reserve Money Stock data) - 
and so is the money supply: M-3 - up $46.8 billion, another mammoth 
sized weekly expansion, and the second largest of the year, second only 
to the monstrous rise of $58.2 billion posted two weeks ago, and barely 
more than the huge $46.7 billion weekly expansion posted in the prior week.

In summary: energy costs are soaring, savings are soaring, income growth 
is stagnant, money supply is soaring, job growth is robust, commodities 
prices are rising.

This is still an election year. And the Bubble Master was just 
reappointed by the man occupying the White House. And, as I mentioned 
yesterday, Mr Greenspan doesn't want to reign over another Asian crisis. 
So he huffs and he puffs and he blows. Oh yeah, that point about the Fed 
falling behind the interest rate curve? Well, with an energy drag, a 
savings drag, and an income drag on the economy, maybe the Fed errs on 
the bubble side until convinced inflation has truly reared its ugly 
head. If reflation is back, then the buck should breakdown even more. 
It's sitting on a key area now (50 percent retrace) after breaking its 
three month uptrend five sessions ago.

Jack Crooks has actively traded in global equity, fixed income, 
commodity, and currency markets for more than 20 years. He is President 
of Black Swan Capital, a currency advisory firm -- BlackSwanTrading.com.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please 
contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication 
policies.)



From bill at wstoddard.com  Mon Jun  7 08:12:24 2004
From: bill at wstoddard.com (Bill Stoddard)
Date: Mon Jun  7 08:12:14 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going
	on folks (fwd from baptista@dot-god.com)
In-Reply-To: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
References: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <40C485D8.6020806@wstoddard.com>

Eugen Leitl wrote:

> This is a hoax, right?
> 
> ----- Forwarded message from Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com> -----
> 
> From: Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com>
> Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:50:29 -0400 (EDT)
> To: <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going on folks
> Organization: http://www.baptista.god/ or http://www.joebaptista.com/
> Reply-To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> 
> 
> A number of us have detected movements in the U.S. money supply which are
> difficult to interpret.  At best we have hints of an imminent Catastrophe
> of some sorts.
> 
> The Federal Reserve has recently raised the money supply (M-3) by crisis
> proportions. It was up another $46.8 billion this past week.

Bill Fleckenstein qutoe from this article: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P85415.asp

"The money-supply numbers are so large as to be incomprehensible, but I'll try to put them into perspective: 
Two weeks ago, M3, the broadest measure of money supply, rose by $46 billion. (This particular surge has been 
more a result of assets shifting into institutional money funds than any overt action by the Fed. So for once, 
this isn't an example of pure Fed pumping.) At that rate, we'll have created about $1.5 trillion from thin air 
in about seven months' time."

Most folks who have an extreme view of things are just wrong. But Fleckenstein makes a compelling case that 
we're in for some rough times ahead and that is not even accounting for the possibility of a nasty terrorist 
attack.

Bill
From gojomofork at xavvy.com  Mon Jun  7 09:14:20 2004
From: gojomofork at xavvy.com (Gordon Mohr)
Date: Mon Jun  7 09:13:48 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going
	on folks (fwd from baptista@dot-god.com)
In-Reply-To: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
References: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <40C4945C.7030107@xavvy.com>

Meteors expected June or soon thereafter by apocalyptics of a certain stripe.
See for example:

http://www.bushcountry.org/news/jun_news_pages/g_060104_withheld_june_2004.htm

...which also mentions the M3 indicator.

Curious how one of the suspicious fireballs appeared over "Grover's
Mill, NJ" -- the same site chosen by the martian invaders we were so
lucky to have repelled back in '38.

- Gordon

Eugen Leitl wrote:

 > This is a hoax, right?
 >
 > ----- Forwarded message from Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com> -----
 >
 > From: Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com>
 > Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:50:29 -0400 (EDT)
 > To: <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
 > Subject: [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going on folks
 > Organization: http://www.baptista.god/ or http://www.joebaptista.com/
 > Reply-To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
 >
 >
 > A number of us have detected movements in the U.S. money supply which are
 > difficult to interpret.  At best we have hints of an imminent Catastrophe
 > of some sorts.
 >
 > The Federal Reserve has recently raised the money supply (M-3) by crisis
 > proportions. It was up another $46.8 billion this past week.
 >
 > This is unprecedented, unheard-of pre-catastrophe M-3 expansion. M-3
 > is up an amount that we've never seen before without a crisis -- $155
 > billion over the past four weeks, a $2.0 trillion annualized pace, a 22.2
 > percent annualized rate of growth.
 >
 > There must be a crisis of historic proportions coming, and the Federal
 > Reserve Bank of the United States is making sure that there is enough
 > liquidity in place to protect the U.S.'s fragile financial system.
 >
 > This is an unusual move since steep increases in M3 can result in the
 > permanent devaluation of a currency.  Why are they doing this?
 >
 > Also we have detected a number of military actions - i.e. Navy ships
 > around the World are leaving their ports in unprecedented numbers?  Why?
 >
 > Within the last two - three weeks there is also increased activity on all
 > US Military bases.  Why?
 >
 > And last of all the internet rumor mill is at an all time high.  Huge
 > amounts of rumors and government disinformation on the Internet.  Why?
 >
 > These and a few other technical observations leads us to conclude that the
 > event which is being planned for will occur in mid June or early July.
 >
 > enjoy
 > joe baptista
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > extropy-chat mailing list
 > extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
 > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
 >
 > ----- End forwarded message -----
 >
 >
 > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > FoRK mailing list
 > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork



From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Mon Jun  7 11:25:17 2004
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Mon Jun  7 11:24:58 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is
	going	on folks (fwd from baptista@dot-god.com)
Message-ID: <1086632717.19196@whirlwind.he.net>

> The Federal Reserve has recently raised the money supply (M-3) by crisis
> proportions. It was up another $46.8 billion this past week.


The growth in money supply has been discussed ad nauseum in the
financial community.  While I'm no expert on money supply matters, the
people who are don't seem to be getting all wiggy over it.  It looks
more like an academic policy issue rather than a sign of an impending
apocalypse.  When the money supply folks start throwing big red flags,
then I'll pay attention.

 
> Also we have detected a number of military actions - i.e. Navy ships
> around the World are leaving their ports in unprecedented numbers?  Why?
> 
> Within the last two - three weeks there is also increased activity on all
> US Military bases.  Why?


Ummm... Because the US military is finally doing a well publicized and
long overdue redistribution of its assets from a Cold War deployment
configuration?  This is will save the US DoD billions of dollars a year,
and I've always wondered what took them so long to finally get around to
executing on this.

Incidentally, the summer is ALWAYS the most active season on military
bases.  The reason is simple:  All the Reserve and National Guard units
go on their annual two-week activation in this window, with the
logistical footprint implied.  The military is suddenly effectively 20%
larger for about 10 weeks in the summer than the rest of the year.  This
is normal.

 
> And last of all the internet rumor mill is at an all time high.  Huge
> amounts of rumors and government disinformation on the Internet.  Why?


He must have just discovered Usenet.


j. andrew rogers

From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun  7 11:36:30 2004
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon Jun  7 11:35:54 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [IP] AlterNet: Future Schlock (fwd from dave@farber.net)
Message-ID: <20040607183630.GC12847@leitl.org>

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave@farber.net> -----

From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 13:20:12 -0400
To: Ip <ip@v2.listbox.com>
Subject: [IP] AlterNet: Future Schlock
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.618)
Reply-To: dave@farber.net

Future Schlock


By Bob Ostertag, AlterNet
June 4, 2004


Wired magazine's NextFest 2004 filled San Francisco's Fort Mason 
exhibition center over the weekend with thousands of eager earthlings 
looking to be dazzled by the latest in gee-whiz tech.



I wait through the long line of those of us who had not bought advance 
tix and dive right in. I find myself confronted with a nice young man 
demonstrating the Gummi from Sony, a "bendable, credit-card sized 
computer interface." The idea is that instead of typing, or pressing 
buttons, or moving a joystick, you bend this little credit card thingy. 
Not obvious to you what the advantage of bending a credit card might 
be? Me neither. Unfortunately, I remain unenlightened on this matter, 
because the Gummi had broken. "It worked really well this morning," the 
nice young man pointed out helpfully.



Next door was the Reality Helmet. Supposedly, this helmet takes the 
sounds and images that surround you in the real world and translate 
them into different sounds and images you experience inside the Reality 
Helmet. But when I strap in, all I get was a very static purple image 
with pink in the middle, and a recurring loop of not very interesting 
electronic sound. I try waving my hands in front of it, clapping loudly 
in front of it, and swinging my head from side to side, but nothing I 
can do interrupted the monotonous loop inside the helmet. The problem, 
the man from Reality Helmet explains, is that we were just in the wrong 
environment. Not a good one for the helmet. Right helmet, wrong 
reality.



No worries, there are fascinating things everywhere. Nearby, You're the 
Conductor - A Digital Conducting Experience for the Public invited me 
to "Find your inner musician." A video of a symphony orchestra is 
projected on a screen. I am instructed to stand in front of the screen, 
and wave around odd microphone-size thing. The faster I wave the thing, 
the faster the video plays. And the farther I move it from side to 
side, the louder the music gets.



Wow. A volume control.

Hooray. A speed control.



I am told that this project was supposed to give me "a visceral sense 
of what it feels like to conduct a real orchestra." Are you listening, 
Michael Tilson-Thomas? That's what you orchestra conductors do, right? 
Control the speed and volume?



It's occurring to me that orchestra conductors get paid an awful lot 
for controlling an orchestra's speed and volume. Actually, it's 
occurring to me that the people who made this exhibit must know nothing 
about music. Incredibly, the contraption is the result of the combined 
efforts of Immersion Music, Stanford University, and ETH Zurich. Even 
more incredibly, it is booked two years out in museums around the 
country.



"Find your inner musician."



Actually kids, you'd be much better off with a beat-up guitar. Volume 
and speed? Bah. You can learn about dynamics and tempo. And also 
melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, tunings, the feel of a string 
vibrating under your finger, and how differences between your skin and 
fingernails change the sound.



Even a pair of rocks would be an improvement. In addition to your basic 
speed and volume, you can explore rhythm, phrasing, swing, and timbre. 
And you'll have way more fun knocking them together than you will 
waving this black plastic cigar-thingy around.



Say, I should contact some of these museums and offer them a couple of 
rocks. I could cut them a sweet deal.



Anyone else noticing that the marketing of this hi-tech junk is even 
more vacuous than your average corporate drivel?



Next to the canned orchestra is the Intel pavilion, festively adorned 
with banners proclaiming that "In the future, you will not have to 
learn about technology. Technology will learn about you."



"Technology will learn about me?" I ask the Intel rep.



"Yes," he beams.



"Sounds like a nightmare," I answer. There is one of those awkward 
moments.



"Yes, there is an element of that," he answers, smile still frozen in 
place.



Next stop: the KBOT by Human Emulation Robotics. KBOTs are somewhat 
lifelike looking heads covered with a stretchy, skin-like material and 
filled with little motors and chips. They are capable of making 
human-like expressions. Think the next-generation of Disneyland's 
Pirates of the Caribbean. The display placard informs us that the 
applications of this technology include "Advertising and Marketing" and 
"High End Toys."



In fact, many of the informational placards the exhibits sport announce 
the technologies' usefulness for "Advertising and Marketing" and "High 
End Toys." (Of course, if the You're the Conductor placard had been 
accurate, the "Applications" field would have read "None.") The other 
common applications are "Military" and "Security." War and play, 
marketing and security, it is getting hard to keep things straight 
these days.



Still pondering the subtle divide between war and fun, I head to the 
"Future of Security" section of the festival. Interesting place, this ? 
except there is nothing here that will make anyone more secure. Quite 
the contrary, in fact.



Most interesting is the kiosk from Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, 
because these guys have some serious stuff to exhibit. "Brain 
fingerprinting can detect whether specific information is stored in a 
person's brain." Brain fingerprinters can show you a series of objects, 
and by monitoring your brain, they can tell which of them you have seen 
before. Kind of like interrogation, but without any questions. 
Americans are going to love this, because torture is not required. None 
of that old-fashioned "Are you gonna talk?" stuff. They don't even need 
you to open your mouth. As long as they can keep your eyes open, they 
can tell what you know.



I'm feeling more secure already.



But the piece de resistance of The Future of Security is the kiosk from 
the US Army, displaying their Future Force Warrior.



Future Force Warrior notional concepts seek to create a lightweight, 
overwhelmingly lethal, fully integrated individual combat system, 
including weapon, head-to-toe individual protection, netted 
communications, soldier worn power sources, and enhanced human 
performance. The program is aimed at providing unsurpassed individual & 
squad lethality, survivability, communications, and responsiveness ? a 
formidable warrior in an invincible team.



Lethality Vision: FFW family of lightweight weapons with advanced fire 
control, optimized for urban combat, and synchronized direct and 
indirect fires from Future Combat System.



Survivability Vision: Ultra-Lightweight, Low Bulk, Multi-Functional, 
Full Spectrum Protective Combat Ensemble.



Sensors & Communications (C4ISR) Vision: Netted FFW small unit/teams 
with robust team communications, state-of-the-art distributed and fused 
sensors, organic tactical intelligence collection assets, enhanced 
situational understanding, embedded training, on-the-move planning, and 
linkage to other force assets.



Power Vision: 72-hour continuous autonomous team operations, high 
density, low weight/volume, self-generating/re-generating, reliable, 
safe power source/system.



Mobility Sustainability and Human Performance: Unconstrained vertical 
and lateral movement at full up combat/assault capability during 
mission execution. Optimized cognitive and physical fightability, 
on-board physiological/medical sensor suite with enhanced prompt 
casualty care.



Hey, I'm feeling secure.



On the lighter side, literally, is the Adidas "Smart Shoe." This is a 
sneaker with a built-in computer that monitors the wearer's stride and 
drives a tiny screw and cable system that adjusts the heel cushion 
depending on the signals sent back by an electric sensor coupled to a 
magnet. I'm not kidding. You can't make stuff like this up. But don't 
take it from me: For $250 these digital shoes can be yours.



Finally, I stop by the car displays. Both GM and GE are on hand, 
showing hydrogen fuel cell car prototypes. They look really cool. They 
have very futuristic lines. Their motors are integrated into their 
chassis. They are the stars of the whole show. The only problem is that 
they are a hoax.



Well, not precisely a hoax, but something close. The only byproduct 
that hydrogen fuel cells generate is water. Nice clean water coming out 
of the tailpipe. Hooray!



The problem is where to get the hydrogen. It doesn't exist by itself 
naturally. It has be to be extracted from other things. This could be 
done in a very dirty way, say, with a coal-fired plant, or it could be 
done with, um... some cleaner technology that does not yet exist. Fuel 
cell cars do not solve the pollution problem, they move it from the 
powering of the car to the manufacture of the fuel.



There were no hydrogen extraction technologies on display at the 
NextFest.



GE not only showed its fuel cell tech, but was actually the sponsor of 
the whole event. "We are especially delighted that GE is the Presenting 
Sponsor of WIRED NextFest," announce Wired Magazine's Editor-in-Chief 
and Publisher on the first page on the festival guide.



GE. Now that rings a bell. Isn't that the same company that San 
Francisco film maker Debra Chasnoff won an Oscar for skewering in her 
film Boycott GE?



And you thought southern California culture was superficial and 
dominated by big corporations. You're living in the past. You are going 
to have to catch up. Fortunately, Wired has a wonderful future to share 
with you.



Bob Ostertag is an electronic music composer.


? Home ? ? MediaCulture
<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18872>

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From dl at silcom.com  Mon Jun  7 12:05:59 2004
From: dl at silcom.com (Dave Long)
Date: Mon Jun  7 11:45:55 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Axiom: symbolic mathematics language w/ rigorous
	mathematical types 
In-Reply-To: Message from Contempt for Meatheads <jbone@place.org> of "Sat,
	05 Jun 2004 14:00:28 CDT."
	<9C6EDEA4-B722-11D8-AEB1-000A95CFE9DE@place.org> 
Message-ID: <200406071905.MAA01482@maltesecat>



> I've started wondering whether there's a potential algebraic 
> unification in a derivative typed lambda calculus between the concepts 
> of multiplication, application, parametric type composition ala 
> Haskell's monads.  Theory of computation as equation solving?

Would you believe a connection between
combinators and the title of an early
IXth century book* by Mr. Algorithm?
> The title [Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala] refers to the two main
> operations in solving equations: 'reunion', the transfer of negative
> terms from one side of the equation to the other, and 'reduction',
> the merging of like terms on the same side into a single term.
> In the twelfth century, the book was translated into Latin under
> the title _Liber algebrae et almucabola_, thus giving a name to a
> central area of mathematics.

Al-jabr is also reunion, apply, or S.
Apply brings together a couple of items,
injecting them into the larger space of
function applications (S on steroids)

Al-muqabala is reduction, eval, or K.
Eval brings together a couple of items,
projecting them onto the smaller space
of determined values (K under rotations)

Those two operations take care of all
the places where a computation splits,
so it's no surprise that neither lisp
nor Mr. Algorithm have a name for the
common operational detail of replacing
single items with their informational
equivalents (I up to isomorphism)

-Dave

:: :: ::

* Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (~780-~850), book written ~830.
discussion above from: George Ghevergese Joseph, _The Crest of the Peacock_,
which continues with an "operational" detail:
> A traditional meaning of the arabic word /jabr/ is 'the setting of a
> broken bone' ... A few decades ago, it was not an uncommon sight on
> Spanish streets to come across the sign 'Algebrafista y Sangrador'
> (bonesetting and bloodletting) at the entrance of barbers' shops.
From jbone at place.org  Mon Jun  7 13:39:28 2004
From: jbone at place.org (Contempt for Meatheads)
Date: Mon Jun  7 14:07:08 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Axiom: symbolic mathematics language w/ rigorous mathematical
	types
Message-ID: <C5922D05-B8C2-11D8-AEB1-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>


Dave says:

> Would you believe a connection between
> combinators and the title of an early
> IXth century book* by Mr. Algorithm?
>
> ...elided...

Sure, sure.  SKI combinators.  What I'm wondering is whether there's 
not a different and possibly richer calculus of combinators that is 
perhaps more fruitful in dealing with parametric type composition.  
Where I was going was that if you consider unifying type and value 
space --- i.e. making all types first-class values, and giving all 
values a default compositional behavior relative to other values, 
particularly those of type type --- you possibly get a type system over 
which a simpler combinatorics obtains.  Call it a "coercer calculus."  
Maybe I'm shooting my wad here, but it seems to me that there's not so 
much necessary distance between

	1 kg m / s^2

and

	1 2 3 4 (or 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 if you prefer, but I'm using math notation 
intentionally to underscore the point)

and

	f . g x

and

	List of String

?

Put more concisely:  why does application (of functions to values, 
functors to functions) necessarily have to be treated differently from 
type composition? Aren't they all just categorical morphisms?

Reading some on O'Haskell.  Interesting unification of OOP (objects as 
state-encapsulating monads) and functional programming with a pretty 
rich (read:  thorny problems, but very useful) polymorphic subtyping 
paradigm.

jb

From jbone at place.org  Mon Jun  7 11:30:04 2004
From: jbone at place.org (Contempt for Meatheads)
Date: Mon Jun  7 14:07:13 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Monday Jrobb bits
Message-ID: <B1EDB174-B8B0-11D8-AEB1-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>


Couple of snippets of interest, w/ links.

--

  The Economist [1] makes the case that Reagan was the first  
market-state president in viewpoint but not in practice.

Here's my view.  There are four ways to deal with the global market  
that controls every aspect of modern life: ride it (the US), mitigate  
it (Europe), rig it (Asia), and ignore it (P2P users, etc.).  Of  
course, there is one group I left out: global guerrillas. Their  
approach is to break it.
	
--

  Here's a map (PDF) [2] of how countries line up in the war between  
free information networks and controlled intellectual property markets.

--

[1] http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2743405
[2]  
http://a1112.g.akamai.net/7/1112/492/07312000/www.wired.com/wired/ 
archive/12.06/images/atlas_opener.pdf

From eugen at leitl.org  Mon Jun  7 14:49:17 2004
From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl)
Date: Mon Jun  7 14:48:55 2004
Subject: [FoRK] paging Tom Whore
Message-ID: <20040607214916.GL12847@leitl.org>


I presume everyone seen those

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040527.html

but perhaps not followup on

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040603.html

and the comment

http://dailywireless.org/modules.php?name=AvantGo&file=print&sid=2597

Some very interesting hardware hack/mod docs on Sveasoft's 
http://sveasoft.com page (which currently seems to be down).

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144            http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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From bill at whump.com  Mon Jun  7 17:29:35 2004
From: bill at whump.com (Bill Humphries)
Date: Mon Jun  7 17:28:58 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [extropy-chat] M3 UP UP UP - Something REALLY BAD is going
	on folks (fwd from baptista@dot-god.com)
In-Reply-To: <40C4945C.7030107@xavvy.com>
References: <20040607144252.GW12847@leitl.org> <40C4945C.7030107@xavvy.com>
Message-ID: <EB00E621-B8E2-11D8-AF96-000A95EB01C6@whump.com>


On Jun 7, 2004, at 9:14 AM, Gordon Mohr wrote:

> Meteors expected June or soon thereafter by apocalyptics of a certain 
> stripe.

Didn't I see something like this in an 1980's Alan Moore comic?

-- whump

From gojomofork at xavvy.com  Tue Jun  8 02:29:27 2004
From: gojomofork at xavvy.com (Gordon Mohr)
Date: Tue Jun  8 02:28:37 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [McCullaugh] It's time to abolish the FCC
Message-ID: <40C586F7.5000800@xavvy.com>

Less censorship. Less protection for politically-favored incumbent operators.
More innovation. Sounds like a winner to me.

- Gordon

#
# Why the FCC should die
#
# By Declan McCullagh
# <mailto:declan.mccullagh@cnet.com?subject=FEEDBACK:Why the FCC should die>
# http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5226979.html
# Story last modified June 7, 2004, 4:00 AM PDT
#
#
# *It's time to abolish the Federal Communications Commission.*
#
# The reason is simple. The venerable FCC, created in 1934, is no longer
# necessary.
#
# Its justification for existence was weak 70 years ago, but advances in
# technology since then have eliminated whatever arguments remained.
# Central planning didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it's not working
# for us. The FCC is now an agency that does more harm than good.
#
# Consider some examples of bureaucratic malfeasance that the FCC, with
# the complicity of the U.S. Congress, has committed. The FCC rejected
# long-distance telephone service competition in 1968, banned Americans
# from buying their own non-Bell telephones in 1956, dragged its feet in
# the 1970s when considering whether video telephones would be allowed and
# did not grant modern cellular telephone licenses until 1981--about four
# decades after Bell Labs invented the technology. Along the way, the FCC
# has preserved monopolistic practices that would have otherwise been
# illegal under antitrust law.
#
# These technologically backward decisions have cost Americans tens of
# billions of dollars.
#
# More recently, the FCC has experienced a string of embarrassing losses,
# when its grand telecommunications plans
# <http://news.com.com/FCC+loosens+broadband+rules/2100-1033_3-985313.html?tag=nl>
# were repeatedly vetoed by the courts. A majority of the commissioners want
# to force local phone companies to pay government-mandated rates when
# long-distance providers like AT&T and MCI use their phone lines. A
# federal appeals court recently shot down that scheme
# <http://news.com.com/Court+rebuffs+FCC%27s+new+telecom+rules/2100-1034_3-5168628.html?tag=nl>
# and gave the Bush administration until June 15 to appeal to the Supreme
# Court. There's already talk about higher telephone bills becoming a
# campaign issue this fall.
#
# Meanwhile, the FCC is hard at work, trying to figure out how to muzzle
# Howard Stern
# <http://news.com.com/FCC+sends+dirty+joke+to+email+list/2100-1023_3-225577.html?tag=nl>
# and make a national example of Janet Jackson's right breast
# <http://news.com.com/Janet+Jackson%27s+flash+dance+tops+Web+search/2100-1026_3-5153330.html?tag=nl>.
# Commissioners are planning how to order
# <http://news.com.com/FBI+adds+to+wiretap+wish+list/2100-1028_3-5172948.html?tag=nl>
# voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) companies to comply with arguably
# unlawful wiretapping requests from the FBI
# <http://news.com.com/Shhh%21+The+FBI%27s+listening+to+your+keystrokes/2010-1028_3-5193750.html?tag=nl>.
#
# * There's already talk about higher telephone bills becoming a campaign
# issue this fall. *
#
# In a sop to Hollywood, the FCC has decided that any device capable of
# receiving digital television signals must follow a complicated set
# <http://news.com.com/Are+PCs+next+in+Hollywood+piracy+battle%3F/2100-1028_3-5103305.html?tag=nl>
# of "broadcast flag" regulations. When those rules take effect in
# mid-2005, they will put some PC tuner card makers out of business.
#
# These signs warn of an agency that is overreaching. If the FCC had been
# in charge of overseeing the Internet, we'd likely be waiting for the
# Mosaic Web browser <http://news.com.com/Mother+of+invention/2009-1032_3-995679.html?tag=nl>
# to receive preliminary approval from the Wireline Competition Bureau
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcc.gov%2Fwcb&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>.
# Instead, the Internet has transformed from a research curiosity into a
# mainstay of the world's economy--in less time than it took the FCC to
# approve the first cell phone licenses.
#
# Even ardent supporters of the FCC should admit that there's less
# justification for its existence after the Telecommunications Act of 1996
# <http://news.com.com/Remaking+the+Telecommunications+Act/2100-1033_3-252065.html?tag=nl>,
# which removed some barriers to competition. Local phone customers don't
# need to worry about the Bells' monopolistic practices, because they
# effectively aren't monopolies anymore. Cable customers don't need to
# worry much about monopolistic practices because of satellite TV.
# Eventually, fiber connections will transport every kind of data.
#
# *Historical justification*
# The original justification for existence of the FCC was to rein in an
# unruly marketplace. That thinking dates back to the 1920s, when Commerce
# Secretary Herbert Hoover
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fhistory%2Fpresidents%2Fhh31.html&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>,
# an engineer by training, was worried about the unregulated new industry
# of broadcasting. Hundreds of radio stations had been launched, and the
# only requirement was that they register with the Commerce Department.
#
# Conflicts began to arise. The Navy complained of the "turbulent
# condition of radio communication." But courts were already undertaking
# the slow but careful common-law method of crafting a set of rules for
# the new medium. An Illinois state court decided in 1926, for instance,
# that Chicago broadcaster WGN had the right to a disputed slice of
# spectrum, because "priority of time creates a superiority in right."
#
# But Hoover and Congress didn't give the courts a chance. The Radio Act
# of 1927
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFederal_Radio_Commission&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>,
# followed by the Communications Act of 1934
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCommunications_Act_of_1934&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>,
# gave the FCC unlimited power to assign frequencies, approve
# broadcasters' power levels and revoke licenses on a whim. The FCC
# already enjoyed the power to regulate telephone lines and eventually
# would accumulate the authority to regulate cable as well.
#
# Abolishing the FCC does not mean airwave anarchy.
# * If the FCC had been in charge of overseeing the Internet, we'd likely
# be waiting for the Mosaic Web browser to receive preliminary approval
# from the Wireline Competition Bureau. *
#
# What it means is returning to bottom-up law rather than the top-down
# process that has characterized telecommunications for the last 80 years.
#
# *How to do it...*
# In his excellent 1997 book "Law and Disorder in Cyberspace
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.phuber.com%2Fhuber%255Ccl%255Ccl.htm&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>,"
# Manhattan Institute fellow Peter Huber
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.phuber.com&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>
# describes how the privatization process could work. Huber proposes that
# the government sell off standard units of spectrum--10kHz for AM radio,
# 6MHz for television, 25MHz for cellular, 40MHz for PCS--using existing
# geographical contours for each type of frequency.
#
# "Once the standard parcels are defined, they can be sold to the highest
# bidders," Huber writes. "To keep for how long? Forever. Just like land."
# If just one UHF (ultrahigh frequency) television station in Los Angeles
# were permitted to transfer its spectrum to a third cellular provider,
# Huber estimates, "the overall public gain would be about $1 billion, or
# so the government itself estimated in 1992." Wireless technologies would
# be huge winners, if the spectrum were privatized.
#
# What if disputes over spectrum arose? The answer is simple. Whoever
# owned the rights to that slice of virtual real estate would locate the
# illicit broadcaster, march into the local courthouse and get a
# restraining order to pull the plug on the transmitter. Trespass is
# hardly a new idea, and courts are well-equipped to deal with it.
#
# One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves,
# would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the
# market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the
# reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain
# on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman
# Antitrust Act
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usdoj.gov%2Fatr%2Ffoia%2Fdivisionmanual%2Fch2.htm&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>
# to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers.
#
# Now is the perfect time to ask whether the FCC should continue to exist.
# Congress is considering revisions to the 1996 Telecommunications Act,
# and some courageous politicians are wondering out loud whether the
# hundreds of pages of legalese are still necessary.
# * Abolishing the FCC does not mean airwave anarchy. *
#
# At a hearing last month, Rep. Chris Cox
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fcox.house.gov&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>,
# R-Calif., asked whether "perhaps we should declare victory" and ditch
# the FCC. Beyond the economic cost of missed opportunities caused by
# regulation, it would also immediately save taxpayers
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcc.gov%2FReports%2Ffcc2005budget.html&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>
# $300 million a year.
#
# It's true that imagining a telecommunications world without the FCC is
# not easy. But imagining a telecommunications world not dominated by Ma
# Bell was difficult two decades ago, and it was not easy for the Eastern
# European countries to imagine life without the Soviet Union.
#
# Since then, those formerly communist nations have privatized resources
# formerly owned by their governments, with remarkable results. Estonia is
# Europe's new economic wonder
# <http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fcf.heritage.org%2Findex2004test%2Fcountry2.cfm%3Fid%3DEstonia&siteId=3&oId=2102-1028-5226979&ontId=1023&lop=nl_ex>:
# revenue from state-owned property is a smaller percentage of the economy
# than it is in the United States, and its economy is growing more than
# twice as fast as ours.
#
# That should be a lesson. It's time for the FCC to go.
#
#
# Copyright <http://www.cnet.com/aboutcnet/0-13611-7-811029.html?tag=ft>
# ?1995-2003 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Tue Jun  8 03:42:18 2004
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare@alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Jun  8 03:41:41 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: What the Bagel Man Saw 
Message-ID: <20040608104218.DAF5484BD@web39t.prvt.nytimes.com>

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu.


hard data rules!

khare@alumni.caltech.edu


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up. But there have been sacrifices along the way. When Wayne is
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ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out.
Watch the trailer at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/theclearing/index_nyt.html

\----------------------------------------------------------/


What the Bagel Man Saw

June 6, 2004
 By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT 



 

Once upon a time, Paul F. dreamed big dreams. While
studying agricultural economics at Cornell, he wanted to
end world hunger. Instead, after doctoral work at M.I.T.,
he wound up taking a job with a research institute in
Washington, analyzing the weapons expenditures of the
United States Navy. This was in 1962. After four years came
more of the same: analyst jobs with the Bureau of the
Budget, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the President's
Commission on Federal Statistics. Still, he dreamed. He had
''potent research ideas,'' as he recalls them now, which
the Environmental Protection Agency failed to appreciate.
He developed a statistical means of predicting cancer
clusters, but because he was an economist and not a doctor,
he couldn't make headway with the National Cancer
Institute. He still loved the art of economics -- the
data-gathering, the statistical manipulation, the
problem-solving -- but it had led him to a high-level dead
end. He was well paid and unfulfilled. ''I'd go to the
office Christmas party, and people would introduce me to
their wives or husbands as the guy who brings in the
bagels,'' he says. '''Oh! You're the guy who brings in the
bagels!' Nobody ever said, 'This is the guy in charge of
the public research group.''' 

The bagels had begun as a casual gesture: a boss treating
his employees whenever they won a new research contract.
Then he made it a habit. Every Friday, he would bring half
a dozen bagels, a serrated knife, some cream cheese. When
employees from neighboring floors heard about the bagels,
they wanted some, too. Eventually he was bringing in 15
dozen bagels a week. He set out a cash basket to recoup his
costs. His collection rate was about 95 percent; he
attributed the underpayment to oversight. 

In 1984, when his research institute fell under new
management, he took a look at his career and grimaced. ''I
was sick of every aspect of the whole thing,'' he says. ''I
was discouraged. I was tired of chasing contracts. So I
said to management: 'I'm getting out of this. I'm going to
sell bagels.''' 

His economist friends thought he had lost his mind. They
made oblique remarks (and some not so oblique) about ''a
terrible waste of talent.'' But his wife supported his
decision. They had retired their mortgage; the last of
their three children was finishing college. Driving around
the office parks that encircle Washington, he solicited
customers with a simple pitch: early in the morning, he
would deliver some bagels and a cash basket to a company's
snack room; he would return before lunch to pick up the
money and the leftovers. It was an honor-system commerce
scheme, and it worked. Within a few years, he was
delivering 700 dozen bagels a week to 140 companies and
earning as much as he had ever made as a research analyst.
He had thrown off the shackles of cubicle life and made
himself happy. 

He had also -- quite without meaning to -- designed a
beautiful economic experiment. By measuring the money
collected against the bagels taken, he could tell, down to
the penny, just how honest his customers were. Did they
steal from him? If so, what were the characteristics of a
company that stole versus a company that did not? Under
what circumstances did people tend to steal more, or less? 

As it happens, his accidental study provides a window onto
a subject that has long stymied academics: white-collar
crime. (Yes, shorting the bagel man is white-collar crime,
writ however small.) Despite all the attention paid to
companies like Enron, academics know very little about the
practicalities of white-collar crime. The reason? There
aren't enough data. 

A key fact of white-collar crime is that we hear about only
the very slim fraction of people who are caught. Most
embezzlers lead quiet and theoretically happy lives;
employees who steal company property are rarely detected.
With street crime, meanwhile, that is not the case. A
mugging or a burglary or a murder is usually counted
whether or not the criminal is caught. A street crime has a
victim, who typically reports the crime to the police,
which generates data, which in turn generate thousands of
academic papers by criminologists, sociologists and
economists. But white-collar crime presents no obvious
victim. Whom, exactly, did the masters of Enron steal from?
And how can you measure something if you don't know to whom
it happened, or with what frequency, or in what magnitude? 

Paul F.'s bagel business was different. It did present a
victim. The victim was Paul F. 


It is 3:32 a.m., and Paul F. is barreling down a dark
Maryland road when he jams on the brakes and swears. ''I
forgot my hearing aids,'' he mutters. He throws the
gearshift into reverse and proceeds to drive backward
nearly as fast as he had been driving forward. 

He is 72, and his business is still thriving. (Thus his
request to mask his full name and his customers'
identities: he is wary of potential competitors poaching
his clients.) His daughter, son-in-law and one other
employee now make most of the deliveries. Today is a
Friday, which is the only day Paul F. still drives.
Semiretirement has left him more time to indulge his
economist self and tally his data. He now knows, for
instance, that in the past eight years he has delivered
1,375,103 bagels, of which 1,255,483 were eaten. (He has
also delivered 648,341 doughnuts, of which 608,438 were
eaten.) 

He knows a good deal about the payment rate, too. When he
first went into business, he expected 95 percent payment,
based on the experience at his own office. But just as
crime tends to be low on a street where a police car is
parked, the 95 percent rate was artificially high: Paul
F.'s presence had deterred theft. Not only that, but those
bagel eaters knew the provider and had feelings (presumably
good ones) about him. A broad swath of psychological and
economic research has argued that people will pay different
amounts for the same item depending on who is providing it.
The economist Richard Thaler, in his 1985 ''Beer on the
Beach'' study, showed that a thirsty sunbather would pay
$2.65 for a beer delivered from a resort hotel but only
$1.50 for the same beer if it came from a shabby grocery
store. 

In the real world, Paul F. learned to settle for less than
95 percent. Now he considers companies ''honest'' if the
payment is 90 percent or more. ''Averages between 80
percent and 90 percent are annoying but tolerable,'' he
says. ''Below 80 percent, we really have to grit our teeth
to continue.'' 

In recent years, he has seen two remarkable trends in
overall payment rates. The first was a long, slow decline
that began in 1992. ''All my friends say: 'Aha! Clinton!'''
Paul F. says. ''Although I must say that most of my friends
are conservative and inclined to see such things where
others might not.'' The second trend revealed in Paul F.'s
data was even starker. Entering the summer of 2001, the
overall payment rate had slipped to about 87 percent.
Immediately after Sept. 11, the rate spiked a full 2
percent and hasn't slipped much since. (If a 2 percent gain
in payment doesn't sound like much, think of it this way:
the nonpayment rate fell from 13 percent to 11 percent,
which amounts to a 15 percent decline in theft.) Because
many of Paul F.'s customers are affiliated with national
security, there may be a patriotic element to this 9/11
effect. Or it may represent a more general surge in
empathy. Whatever the reason, Paul F. was grateful for the
boost. He expends a great deal of energy hectoring his
low-paying customers, often in the form of a typewritten
note. ''The cost of bagels has gone up dramatically since
the beginning of the year,'' reads one. ''Unfortunately,
the number of bagels and doughnuts that disappear without
being paid for has also gone up. Don't let that continue. I
don't imagine that you would teach your children to cheat,
so why do it yourselves?'' 

He is impatient and cantankerous but in sum agreeable.
Dressed in jeans and sneakers, with busy eyes and a wavy
fringe of gray hair, he awoke this Friday at 3 a.m. Working
out of his garage, he first loaded 50 cardboard trays of
doughnuts -- a local bakery delivered them overnight --
into the back of his van. He drives an unmarked white Ford
E-150 rigged with a bagel-warming compartment. (The van was
never stopped during the D.C. sniper attacks, but Paul F.'s
tendency to park at the curb caused problems in the near
aftermath of 9/11. One customer left a note saying:
''Please park in a parking space. You are freaking a lot of
people out.'') 

After the doughnuts, Paul F. loaded two dozen money boxes,
which he made himself out of plywood. A money slot is cut
into the top. When he started out, he left behind an open
basket for the cash, but too often the money vanished. Then
he tried a coffee can with a slot in its plastic lid, which
also proved too tempting. The wooden box has worked well.
Each year he drops off about 7,000 boxes and loses, on
average, just one to theft. This is an intriguing
statistic: the same people who routinely steal more than 10
percent of his bagels almost never stoop to stealing his
money box -- a tribute to the nuanced social calculus of
theft. From Paul F.'s perspective, an office worker who
eats a bagel without paying is committing a crime; the
office worker apparently doesn't think so. This distinction
probably has less to do with the admittedly small amount of
money involved than with the context of the ''crime.'' (The
same office worker who fails to pay for his bagel might
also help himself to a long slurp of soda while he's
filling a glass in a self-serve restaurant, but it is
extremely unlikely that he will leave the restaurant
without paying.) 

After retrieving his hearing aids, he heads for the bagel
shop that provides him with roughly 50 dozen bagels, in six
flavors, every day. He drives nearly 80 m.p.h. along empty
highways and discusses what he has learned about honesty.
He is leery of disparaging individual companies or even
most industries, for fear it will hurt his business. But he
will say that telecom companies have robbed him blind, and
another bagel-delivery man found that law firms aren't
worth the trouble. He also says he believes that employees
further up the corporate ladder cheat more than those down
below. He reached this conclusion in part after delivering
for years to one company spread out over three floors -- an
executive floor on top and two lower floors with sales,
service and administrative employees. Maybe, he says, the
executives stole bagels out of a sense of entitlement. (Or
maybe cheating is how they got to be executives.) His
biggest surprise? ''I had idly assumed that in places where
security clearance was required for an individual to have a
job, the employees would be more honest than elsewhere.
That hasn't turned out to be true.'' 

Since he started delivering bagels, Paul F. has kept
rigorous data -- which, when run through a computer and
measured against external factors ranging from the local
weather to the unemployment rate, can tell some interesting
stories. Other conclusions, meanwhile, are purely
intuitive, based on Paul F.'s 20-year exposure to bagel
behavior. 

He has identified two great overriding predictors of a
company's honesty: morale and size. Paul F. has noted a
strong correlation between high payment rates and an office
where people seem to like their boss and their work. (This
is one of his intuitive conclusions.) He also gleans a
higher payment rate from smaller offices. (This one is
firmly supported by the data.) An office with a few dozen
employees generally outpays by 3 percent to 5 percent an
office with a few hundred employees. This may seem
counterintuitive: in a bigger office, a bigger crowd is
bound to convene around the bagel table -- providing more
witnesses to make sure you drop your money in the box.
(Paul F. currently charges $1 for a bagel and 50 cents for
a doughnut.) But in the big-office/small-office comparison,
bagel crime seems to mirror street crime. There is far less
crime per capita in rural areas than in cities, in large
part because a rural criminal is more likely to be known
(and therefore caught). Also, a rural community tends to
exert greater social incentives against crime, the main one
being shame. 

The bagel data also show a correlation between payment rate
and the local rate of unemployment. Intuition might have
argued that these two factors would be negatively
correlated -- that is, when unemployment is low (and the
economy is good), people would tend to be freer with their
cash. ''But I found that as the unemployment rate goes
down, dishonesty goes up,'' Paul F. says. ''My guess is
that a low rate of unemployment means that companies are
having to hire a lower class of employee.'' The data also
show that the payment rate does not change when he raises
bagel prices, though volume may temporarily fall. 

If the payment tendencies that Paul F. has noted so far
might be called macro trends, it is the micro trends --
those reflecting personal mood -- that are perhaps most
compelling. Weather, for instance, has a major effect on
the payment rate. Unseasonably pleasant weather inspires
people to pay a significantly higher rate. Unseasonably
cold weather, meanwhile, makes people cheat prolifically;
so does heavy rain and wind. But worst are the holidays.
The week of Christmas produces a 2 percent drop in payment
rates -- again, a 15 percent increase in theft, an effect
on the same order, in reverse, as 9/11. Thanksgiving is
nearly as bad; the week of Valentine's Day is also lousy,
as is the week straddling April 15. There are, however, a
few good holidays: July 4, Labor Day and Columbus Day. The
difference in the two sets of holidays? The low-cheating
holidays represent little more than an extra day off from
work. The high-cheating holidays are freighted with
miscellaneous anxieties and the high expectations of loved
ones. 

As considerable as these oscillations may be, the fact is
that a poorly paying office rarely turns into a well-paying
office, or vice versa. This has led Paul F. to believe in a
sobering sort of equilibrium: honest people are honest, and
cheaters will cheat regardless of the circumstance. ''One
time when I was cleaning up leftovers,'' he recalls, ''a
man came and took a doughnut while I was standing there,
and started to walk away without putting any money in the
box. I never challenge people about paying, but in that
place, despite notes and appeals to management, the payment
rate had been abysmal, and I was fed up. I said to the guy,
'Are you going to pay for that?' And he said, 'Oh, I left
my wallet in my car,' and started to put the doughnut back.
Now I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he hadn't left
his wallet in the car, but he was too cheap to pay 50 cents
for a doughnut and too brazen to say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I
just wasn't thinking,' which is what anyone with half a
conscience would say.'' 


Once the van is loaded with fresh bagels, sorted by the
dozen into white paper bags that Paul F. had earlier
labeled with customers' names, he begins his rounds. It is
5:02 a.m. The first stop is an office building in northern
Virginia. His routine is nearly always the same. He grabs
one of the magnetic ID cards dangling from his rearview
mirror, hangs it from his neck, jumps around to the side of
the van, loads up a cardboard box with bagels, doughnuts
and a cash box and practically sprints inside. In the snack
room, he dumps the bagels from their bag, folds back the
top of the doughnut tray, plunks his money box on the table
and hustles out. Then back into the van, which he drives
maniacally even from one office-park cul-de-sac to the
next. (When a woman in a Lexus tarries at the entrance to
one parking lot, he calls her terrible names.) Another
office building, another ID card, another delivery. You can
tell the defense contractors by the art on the walls:
achingly sensual black-and-white photographs of missiles
and armored personnel carriers. Some of the break rooms
have vending machines whose offerings -- ''Spicy Chicken
Biscuit'' and ''Chopped Beefsteak Sandwich'' -- look so
vile that the simple appeal of a warm, fresh bagel becomes
all the more apparent. 

By 9 a.m., he has made all his deliveries. At 11, he will
start picking up leftovers and the money boxes. Until then,
it is time for his weekly Friday morning breakfast with a
dozen of his old economist friends. They meet in the
ground-floor cafeteria of the office building where one of
them now works. They swap gossip, tax tips, Ziploc bags of
pipe tobacco. 

These are some of the same friends who 20 years ago told
Paul F. that his bagel business would never work. People
cannot be trusted, they said. Their conversation this
morning continues along those lines. One man cites a story
he heard about a toll-collector strike in England. During
the strike, drivers were asked simply to put their money
into a box. As it turned out, the government collected more
toll money during the strike -- which suggests that the
drivers were at least fairly honest, but also that the toll
collectors had been skimming like mad. Another economist at
the table is now a tax preparer. He ticks off a long list
of common tax evasions his clients try to use -- lying
about the cost basis of stocks is perhaps the favorite --
and reminds the others that the United States tax code is,
like Paul F.'s bagel business, largely built on an honor
system. 

Amid all the talk of cheating, lying and scamming, Paul F.
takes the floor to declare his faith in humankind. ''You
guys know the story about the Ring of Gyges, right?'' he
says. 

A man named Gyges, he explains, came upon a cave and,
inside it, a skeleton wearing a ring. When Gyges put on the
ring, he found that it made him invisible. Now he was faced
with a choice: would he use his invisibility for good or
evil? The story comes from Plato's ''Republic.'' It was
told by a student named Glaucon, in challenge to a Socratic
teaching about honesty and justice. ''Socrates was arguing
against the idea that people will be dishonest if given the
chance,'' Paul F. says. ''His point was that people are
good, even without enforcement.'' 

But Paul F. doesn't tell his friends how Glaucon's story
ends. Gyges actually did woeful things once he got the ring
-- seduced the queen, murdered the king and so on. The
story posed a moral question: could any man resist the
temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be
witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no. But
Paul F. sides with Socrates -- for he knows that the
answer, at least 89 percent of the time, is yes. 




Stephen J. Dubner, an author and journalist in New York
City, and Steven D. Levitt, an economist at the University
of Chicago, are writing a book about the economics of baby
names, cheating, crack dealing and real estate. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?ex=1087691338&ei=1&en=c5bb8225192e01e1


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From Kenneth.Meltsner at ca.com  Tue Jun  8 07:44:31 2004
From: Kenneth.Meltsner at ca.com (Meltsner, Kenneth)
Date: Tue Jun  8 07:43:51 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: What the Bagel Man Saw 
Message-ID: <039E46C3C030AE4E871CEEBC6868063904EDE638@usilms24.ca.com>

The big question: would Paul invest in the more honest or the less
honest companies?

Ken

From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Tue Jun  8 16:00:47 2004
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare@alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Jun  8 16:00:16 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: Heavy Debt and Drought Drive India&#39;
	s Farmers to Desperation 
Message-ID: <20040608230047.49CB284CF@web39t.prvt.nytimes.com>

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu.


IT outsourcing employment rounds to zero when divided by 1B :-(

In all seriousness, many other more significant moral lessons to be learned within, though... 

RK

khare@alumni.caltech.edu


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ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out.
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\----------------------------------------------------------/


Heavy Debt and Drought Drive India&#39;s Farmers to Desperation

June 6, 2004
 By AMY WALDMAN 



 

ANANTAPUR, India - For the 28th time in less than four
hours, the telephone in the colonial-era district
headquarters trilled. 

"Hello, help line," Gurram Pramila answered, her pen poised
to record yet another tale of financial distress. 

A 55-year-old farmer who gave his name as Kadirappa was on
the line, telling of a dry well on his eight acres and his
$890 of debt. If the government did not help, he vowed, he
would kill himself. 

Ms. Pramila, a junior bureaucrat untutored in improving
mental health, improvised. "Don't lose heart," she told
Kadirappa. "Have faith in yourself." 

The farmer's threat had the force of ominous context. In
the past six years, 2,000 to 3,000 farmers (the state has
not compiled an official tally) are believed to have
committed suicide in this state, Andhra Pradesh, many of
them in this arid district. Fifty to 100 have killed
themselves since a new state government took office in
mid-May, promising farmers relief. 

A help line set up by the government on May 22 had already
logged more than 800 calls a week later. Close to half were
from this district, most of them fielded by Ms. Pramila. 

The template of the calls - dry land and crushing debt -
never varied, nor did their desperate tone. 

Nine wells failed on 10 acres owned by a farmer named
Umapatty, and he owed $4,400 to banks and moneylenders. J.
Narayanappa had two dry wells on 20 acres, and owed $5,777.
Ms. Pramila took down the details, and promised that an
official would follow up. 

Most of the suicidal farmers have swallowed pesticides, the
easiest killer at hand. Burdened by compound interest, they
compound tragedy, leaving families their debts, and
depriving them of fathers, husbands and breadwinners. 

"I would have thrown the pills out," said Pullamma, the
haggard widow of Jayram Reddy, 52, who killed himself on
May 22 by swallowing ammonium phosphate tablets in the
village of Regadikothur. 

He lay down on the family veranda to die, whispering to her
that he could not bear the burden of more than $6,000 in
debt. Now she will go to other farmers' fields to labor for
45 cents a day. 

India has seen spates of similar suicides in recent years,
in states from Punjab to Kerala. In part, the suicides
reflect a rural culture in which excess indebtedness
becomes a mark of shame, which private moneylenders and
public creditors milk to try to collect. 

But the dead farmers are also the canaries in the mine for
India's agricultural economy - indicators of dire straits.
Agriculture, which supports two-thirds of India's more than
one billion people, generates only one-quarter of its gross
domestic product. In the past five years, while the
services sector has grown an average of 8 percent a year,
agriculture has grown just 2 percent a year. 

India's new government rode to power partly on the back of
farmers' angst, but salving it will not be easy. In the
farmers' plight, all the strands of an economy in
transition intersect. This area had four successive years
of drought, but the farmers have been buffeted by more than
weather. 

With small landholdings, constrained markets for their
products, and an overdependence on subsidies for power and
fertilizer, India's farmers were ill equipped to compete
when the national government undertook economic reforms in
1991. 

To a degree, the suicides reflect the farmers' bafflement
at the gradual, and erratic, withdrawal of the state. They
have felt the cost of reforms - but have yet to see the
benefits. 

Jayram Reddy was the second farmer in his village to kill
himself. On Nov. 20, Nagalinga Reddy, no relation, took the
same route, using the same method. The buildup to his
death, at age 50, suggests the confluence of conditions
that have driven farmers to desperation. 

Nagalinga Reddy grew rice and sunflowers. Only 10 of his
acres were irrigated. He sank five bore wells at a minimum
cost of $200 apiece - but only two struck water. 

In Nagalinga Reddy's village, the cost of powering the
pumps had risen sevenfold in recent years, with the state
government trying to wean farmers off free power. 

The cost of fertilizers had risen, too, as the government
sought to reduce subsides. 

Nagalinga Reddy had regularly lost crops to drought, dry
wells and pests in the past seven years. He had stopped
farming cotton because of pests, which drove hundreds of
farmers to suicide in Warangal, another of the state's
districts. In October, by the time he scraped together the
money to spray his crop, the pests had gotten it. 

He was $9,000 in debt to three banks, one cooperative
society and moneylenders. Bank officers regularly came to
visit, and one bank took legal action. The moneylenders
regularly harassed him. He avoided the ignominy of having
the cooperative society post a public notice saying his
land would be auctioned only by paying them a small sum. 

The banks and cooperative societies, under pressure in an
era of reform to show more fiscal responsibility, cut him
off. 

As access to formal credit has narrowed, the power of
moneylenders - who charge at least 24 percent annual
interest - has grown. Like most of his neighbors, Nagalinga
Reddy turned to them. But by the time he died, a month
after pests ate the rice crop, even the moneylenders
considered him a bad risk. 

Like many of the suicides, Nagalinga Reddy had been a step
above the very poor. He owned 15 acres and had built a
solid house with ceiling fans. He had rank in an upper
caste. All of that seemed to make his fall in status that
much harder to bear. 

"My father was brave, but he could not withstand the
pressure of the situation," said Tirumal Reddy, his gentle
21-year-old son. 

His son is a 10th-grade graduate who had hoped to end the
family's dependence on agriculture by becoming educated
enough to get a government job. But he is as yoked to the
fields as his illiterate father was. Even marriage is
unthinkable until he clears the debt. 

Farmers have also been affected by factors they may be only
dimly aware of. Most states spend the bulk of their budgets
on debt interest and salaries, which has left almost
nothing to invest in irrigation. Ninety percent of this
district is unirrigated, and thus depends on rain for
water. 

Agricultural markets remain heavily regulated, and because
there are few facilities here to process agricultural
products, almost every crop must be exported to another
state, something beyond small farmers' capacity. They sell
cheap to middlemen, who harvest far greater profit across
state lines. 

The opening of the Indian economy to imports has affected
farmers as well. Some farmers in this district planted
mulberry trees to produce silk - but demand dropped as raw
China silk began flowing in. The main crop here, groundnut,
or peanut, is processed into oil, but recently the poor
have been forsaking local peanut oil for cheaper palm oil
from Southeast Asia. 

For now, the new state government is focusing on the
symptoms of farmer distress, not the causes. Its first act
was to declare free power for farmers and clear their
arrears. The short-term relief will only add to the state's
fiscal deficit, making infrastructure investment and power
sector reform much harder. 

Politicians also held a rally in Hyderabad, the state
capital, to beg farmers not to take their lives, and state
officials set up the help line. 

The help line started the day Jayram Reddy died. In his
case, the moneylenders had spared no cruelty to collect.
One filed a police complaint against him; the police,
probably bribed by the lender, hauled him in. Over the past
two years moneylenders, regular visitors to his home, had
taken his bullock cart, two bullocks and nine buffalo. They
wanted to take his house, too. 

On a recent day, women were whitewashing the walls of
Jayram Reddy's house in a posthumous purification ritual.
At the same time, three of his lenders were at a local
government office to proclaim that they had not pressed him
for repayment, and thus could not be held liable for his
death. 

They were also there to collect. As fellow villagers, they
felt bad about Jayram Reddy's death, said a lender, N.
Nagamunny. As lenders, they felt bad about their money.
They wanted a piece of the government aid likely to be
provided the family. 

Their mercenary mission was a necessity, said one, Keshur
Reddy. He had four daughters to marry off. To lend to
Jayram Reddy, he had borrowed from someone else, and that
someone was pressing him hard. 

"If the money is not repaid to me," he said, "I'll commit
suicide." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/international/asia/06INDI.html?ex=1087735647&ei=1&en=08ede861527fb95f


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Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Tue Jun  8 16:04:12 2004
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare@alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Jun  8 16:03:32 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: Facing the World With Egos Exposed 
Message-ID: <20040608230412.1CBB535040@web38t.prvt.nytimes.com>

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu.


For the archives... HotOrNot fans will have long-ago dissected this piece... RK

khare@alumni.caltech.edu


/--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\

THE CLEARING - IN THEATERS JULY 2 - WATCH THE TRAILER NOW

An official selection of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, THE CLEARING
stars ROBERT REDFORD and HELEN MIRREN as Wayne and Eileen Hayes - a
husband and wife living the American Dream. Together they've raised two
children and struggled to build a successful business from the ground
up. But there have been sacrifices along the way. When Wayne is
kidnapped by an ordinary man, Arnold Mack (WILLEM DAFOE), and held for
ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out.
Watch the trailer at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/theclearing/index_nyt.html

\----------------------------------------------------------/


Facing the World With Egos Exposed

June 3, 2004
 By GARY RIVLIN 



 

ANGELA MacRAE was feeling lonely and maybe even a little
unloved. So a couple of years back, Ms. MacRae, who then
weighed 330 pounds, made her foray into an Internet realm
increasingly popular among people under 35. She posted
provocative pictures of herself at various Web sites that
invite the world to rate physical appearance. 

"I wanted to know that people were attracted to me and
would find me sexy," said Ms. MacRae, 31, who estimates
that over several months she posted her pictures at about a
dozen Internet rating sites, from the relatively wholesome
hotornot.com, which tallies roughly 10 million votes per
day, to bangable.com, a site as coarse as its name. There,
the rating scale dips from the perfect 10 down to negative
1, and visitors are invited to post comments that, not
surprisingly, tend toward the raw and crude, if not cruel. 

Ms. MacRae's reception at Bangable was easy to foretell.
In one shot she wears a revealing black lace negligee. In
another, she sits on a couch, sad-faced, wearing no clothes
above her waist except a red satin bra. 

The two pictures earned her ratings that fell between 1.0
and 1.5. Several hours after Ms. MacRae's debut, someone
writing as Solon wrote, "What a masochist." 

Ms. MacRae, however, has no regrets. The rare positive
posting ("You are scrumptious," one person wrote) more than
compensated for the derogatory ones, she said from her home
in Victoria, British Columbia. She said she had received
dozens of private messages from men who contacted her
through an e-mail address she provided, and even credited
one persistent admirer for convincing her to lose weight.
(She says she is down to 150.) 

"It really picked up my esteem to know that there are still
some people out there who find me beautiful," she said. 

It is not surprising that a culture that embraces reality
TV shows, which find drama in rejection, would find
entertainment in rating others and seeing how they fare.
"We allow people to do online what they already do every
day, all the time," said James Hong, a founder of Hot or
Not, the pioneer of the rating sites. What remains striking
about the sites, though, is how many men and women are
willing to submit their looks and their egos to the
scrutiny of the anonymous masses. 

At Hot or Not, more than four million people, most of them
18 to 24, have posted at least one photograph, according to
the company. The site was founded in late 2000 by Mr. Hong
and Jim Young when Mr. Hong was an unemployed hardware
engineer and Mr. Young was struggling with a dissertation
for a joint degree in electrical engineering and computer
science. 

"Basically, we were sitting around drinking beers in the
middle the afternoon when a comment Jim made about a woman
he had seen at a party made us think, wouldn't it be cool
if there was a Web site where you could tell if a girl was
a perfect 10?" said Mr. Hong, 31, who saved the Heineken
bottle he was sipping from at the time. 

What began as a lark has in three years transmogrified into
something entirely different. For Mr. Hong and Mr. Young it
has turned into a serious business that earns several
million dollars a year as an online dating service. 

The site's popularity has given rise to hundreds of copycat
sites that reveal a world very different from the PG-rated
realm that Mr. Hong and Mr. Young imagined back in 2000.
Sites like Bangable and howmanywouldittake.com - where
visitors rate snapshots based on the number of beers it
would require to render that person sexually attractive,
ranging from "sober" to 24 bottles - are clearly rated R,
if not X. (There are also sites focusing on body parts,
like ratemyimplants.com, which offers the helpful
disclaimer that its content is not to be construed as
medical advice.) 

"Some of these sites are much more cruel than others," said
Armond Aserinsky, a psychiatrist who studies the mass
media, including the Internet, after 30 years of private
practice in the suburbs of Philadelphia. "Hot or Not has
some rules that they seem to keep to. At least they're
trying to keep it civilized." 

Hot or Not (where it is rare for anyone to rate below 3.0)
requires that people be fully clothed and not expose
themselves in their skivvies or lingerie; it also prohibits
sexually suggestive poses. But other sites are less
restrained, with participants posting nude photos and, in
some cases, soliciting business. At least a few of those
posting at Bangable invite browsers to chat online - at a
price - or buy videos in which you can see much more of
them. 

There is also the occasional prank. "People try to post
pictures of famous people and porn stars and sports stars
all the time, but I just delete them," said Nathan Hudson,
the creator of HowManyWouldItTake.com. More difficult to
monitor -and more troubling - are those who post pictures
of others, as a joke or for revenge. 

"You've got people putting their bosses up, or old
girlfriends or whatever," Mr. Hudson said. Still, he
figures that he has received only 5 to 10 complaints a year
since creating the site in 2001. 

Some no doubt find such sites offensive because they treat
people as objects and encourage quick verdicts based on
nothing but looks. But online the premise seems to be taken
largely in stride. "Like everything with the Internet," Dr.
Aserinsky said, "these rating sites carry something we see
other places to an extreme. Think of the 'Jerry Springer'
show. It's hard to get on 'Jerry Springer.' But now there's
an infinite space for people to indulge this narcissistic
hunger to be seen." 

The Internet gives everyone "an opportunity to put
themselves out there," he added. "Now everyone is on the
screen." 

Not quite everyone: Only 2 percent of those visiting Hot or
Not post a picture, Mr. Hong said. And while 45,000 people
have rated Lexi, the top-ranked woman at Bangable, fewer
than 1,000 people have posted their picture there. Maybe
that's because even Lexi has detractors: "You need a nose
job," wrote SlaveForYou. "You're lucky they invented
makeup," wrote another poster. 

Given such a prospect, why someone would post a personal
photo to be judged on a Web site is a matter for
conjecture. 

"It takes a certain kind of person to put their picture on
the Web," said Mr. Hudson, who created
HowManyWouldItTake.com while a freshman at the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst. "But I don't think it has very
much to do with their looks. I guess some people just want
an honest appraisal of their physical appearance." 

That decision is not always made at one's best. "I was
bored one night and kind of ripped, and it seemed like a
good idea at the time," said a 25-year-old concrete-plant
worker in southern Illinois who posted his picture at
Bangable under the screen name Phreack, and asked that his
real name not be used here. But while he was disappointed
that the site's voters gave him a low score (.63), he
seemed to brush off any suggestion that it mattered. "What
do I care what people on the Internet think of me?" he
asked. 

Some experts believe that the psychological concept of
self-handicapping might help explain why someone would put
an unflattering picture of himself online. For no reason he
could offer, the Illinois man chose to post a droopy-eyed
shot of himself. 

"Some people set themselves up for failure by sending in
photos that aren't flattering," said Abraham Tesser, a
psychology professor at the University of Georgia who
studies human self-concept. "Then if they fail - if they
get rated down - it was because of the photo, not because
of who they really are." 

Dr. Tesser said that people can also convince themselves
that "if they get rated up, it was because they are so
attractive that even the unflattering photo can't dampen
their true beauty." 

On the other hand, a distorted sense of one's
attractiveness might also play a role. "I don't think you
can discount for the fact that some people who get very low
ratings indeed think that they are hot," Dr. Tesser said. 

But the most straightforward explanation, he and others
said, is that the world is crowded with people so hungry
for attention that they will submit to any number of
indignities for even a small bit of it. 

"I see this phenomenon as an extension of the narcissism
that has become much more pervasive in our culture," Dr.
Aserinsky said. "I see it especially in the under-30 crowd,
where there's this insatiable appetite for acknowledgment
based largely on patterns in child-rearing that came along
about the time of that generation." He calls it the
"overappreciated child," whose every accomplishment, no
matter how pedestrian, is praised as if extraordinary, if
not also bronzed and placed on a pedestal. 

"I'm sure these people would rather get praise, but more
important is this primitive kind of need for attention,"
Dr. Aserinsky said. 

Ms. MacRae was clearly craving something like attention
when she decided to post her pictures at many sites. She
had a boyfriend, but he was seldom around. She felt trapped
at home alone with three children, and in short order she
was spending up to 10 hours a day corresponding through
e-mail and an instant messaging service with people she met
through the rating sites. 

"I just wanted to talk with someone," she said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03rate.html?ex=1087735851&ei=1&en=e1ac8d1e4f20aa8b


---------------------------------

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From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Tue Jun  8 16:05:26 2004
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare@alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Jun  8 16:04:43 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: For High-Definition Sets,
	Channels to Match 
Message-ID: <20040608230526.E098D84BD@web39t.prvt.nytimes.com>

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu.


Pogue's review of Voom makes it seem like a no-brainer to try it out... it's just that i'm out of HD inputs!! :-)

Rohit

khare@alumni.caltech.edu


/--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\

THE CLEARING - IN THEATERS JULY 2 - WATCH THE TRAILER NOW

An official selection of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, THE CLEARING
stars ROBERT REDFORD and HELEN MIRREN as Wayne and Eileen Hayes - a
husband and wife living the American Dream. Together they've raised two
children and struggled to build a successful business from the ground
up. But there have been sacrifices along the way. When Wayne is
kidnapped by an ordinary man, Arnold Mack (WILLEM DAFOE), and held for
ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out.
Watch the trailer at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/theclearing/index_nyt.html

\----------------------------------------------------------/


For High-Definition Sets, Channels to Match

June 3, 2004
 By DAVID POGUE 



 

Correction Appended 

LET'S face it: those $5,000 plasma screens are popular not
just because they're high-definition TV sets but also
because they're status symbols. Look at Gateway's 42-inch
$3,000 plasma screen, a runaway hit even though it can't
actually display images in high definition. At this rate,
someone will surely come up with a $200 plasma screen that
doesn't even turn on. It would just hang on the wall and
look cool. 

But however cool the screens, as the nine million people
who have bought HDTV's have quickly discovered, the
high-definition age is not yet fully upon us. If you buy an
HDTV receiver connected to an antenna on your roof, you can
enjoy a few hours of prime-time HDTV broadcasts each night
on ABC, CBS and so on - if you're within about 50 miles of
a big city. If you have cable or satellite, you can upgrade
your plan to include a handful of high-def channels, like
HBO HDTV and ESPN HD. 

Otherwise, what you'll mostly watch is low-definition
shows, either stretched to fit your wide-screen set or with
black bars on the sides. It will be years before the
networks, cable and satellite outfits broadcast all HD, all
the time. 

The executives at Voom, a new satellite service controlled
by Cablevision and offered throughout the continental
United States, don't think you can wait that long. Started
in January, Voom already offers 39 HDTV channels, many more
than you can get from any other source. 

Now, HDTV aficionados may already be furrowing their brows.
"Thirty-nine high-def channels?" they're saying. "There
aren't 39 high-def channels in the world!" 

Actually, there are now. For starters, Voom gives you those
prime-time over-the-air network broadcasts, because Voom's
installers put not one but two antennas on your roof: one
satellite dish and one that picks up NBC, CBS, ABC and so
on. (If you live in an apartment, check on your building's
restrictions.) 

The basic $40-a-month package also includes Voom's 21
homegrown proprietary channels. All programs on those
channels are filmed and broadcast in a high-definition
format known as 1080i; they look and sound spectacular, and
- apart from Voom promos - are commercial-free. 

For example, Rush is an extreme-sports channel that
specializes in colorful hot-air balloons, gleaming kayaks
and hang gliders in bright sunshine. The Gallery channel is
like an art history class that never ends: all close-ups of
paintings, presented continuously. The Auction channel is
nonstop descriptions of collectibles. 

Then there's the MOOV channel, a 24-hour screen saver; it
features weird kaleidoscopic "motion art" segments set to
music and created by broadcast designers. (Video art is, as
Voom puts it, "ambient television, not appointment
television." You're meant to leave it playing on the wall
as you do other things around the house, not gather the
family in the living room for half an hour of "iMovie
Effects Gone Nuts.") 

All of these channel topics were obviously selected because
they show off the stunning visual qualities of HDTV. Their
looks are their sole reason for existence; most would die a
quick death in any other forum. 

Not all, however. HD's wider screen and sharper video make
a big difference to Voom's news and WorldSport channels.
And on Voom's Rave channel, featuring rock concerts filmed
live in HD, something about that wide screen and the
intimacy of the cameras makes the experience thrilling and
immersive. 

Rounding out the 21 Voom Originals, as the company calls
its proprietary channels, are a dozen 24-hour movie
channels. Most show the same movie all day, over and over.
Unfortunately, their motto may as well be, "Not just bad
movies - high-definition bad movies." Among this week's
selections are the 1962 classic "Rider on a Dead Horse,"
1986's unforgettable "Troll" and 1962's immortal "Slaughter
of the Vampires." 

Voom admits that the movies are so far on the lame side,
but points out that you'd be hard pressed to find 12
commercial-free movie channels - let alone high-definition
ones - in the basic $40 package from any other cable or
satellite provider. Voom also says that by the end of the
year, those channels will repeat less and gain thematic
personalities: one channel each for action movies, chick
flicks, westerns, documentaries, gay and lesbian movies,
and so on. 

Finally, for $15 each, you can add "plus packs": one each
for HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and Starz. Each includes one
high-def channel and eight spinoffs (HBO East, HBO West,
and so on). (If you're a movie-holic, you may as well save
money by subscribing to the Va Va Voom plan: $80 a month
for all of the above.) 

Each Voom basic package also includes 84
standard-definition cable channels like CNN, TNT and
Disney. (You can inspect the complete list at www.voom.com,
along with a "what's on right now" grid.) 

Voom's best feature is its smooth integration of network
broadcasts, cable channels and Voom's own homemade channels
into a single set-top box, controlled with an expertly
designed illuminated remote, and displayed on a unified
onscreen TV guide. 

As a result, Voom simulates channel-surfing in, say, 2015,
when every channel from every source will be in high
definition. The colors are breathtaking, the clarity puts
standard TV to shame, and the rectangular, much wider
picture fills your field of view the way a screen in a
movie theater does. It all sounds good, too, because Voom
transmits in five-channel Dolby surround sound. 

The company has come a long way since its rocky start in
January, when the installers didn't know what they were
doing, the Motorola set-top box required frequent
rebooting, and ESPN wasn't on board. (An HDTV service
without sports? Heresy!) 

Even so, Voom is still a startup. The listings grid
routinely chops off the second line of each show's
description, the box takes several seconds to change
channels and the channel grid always appears at channel
100, rather than the channel you're already watching. And
Voom's customer service department is still, ahem,
evolving. (It took eight days to get a reply to an e-mailed
question to Voom tech support, which promises a response in
24 hours.) 

At the moment, Voom fills an important niche. But as the
world goes all-HDTV in the coming years, you might
reasonably wonder how long Voom will be around. 

Voom acknowledges that its window of opportunity is finite
but maintains that it will remain open for much longer than
people imagine. Voom has room for expansion; by the end of
next year, it will have satellite capacity for 94 high-def
channels and 368 standard ones, the company says. (A single
HDTV channel, according to Voom, requires as much bandwidth
as eight standard-definition channels.) The company
maintains that finding the bandwidth for a total switch to
high-def will be far more difficult for its cable and
satellite rivals. 

In the meantime, through July 5, Voom is making an
irresistible offer. The company will install the box and
the two antennas at no charge. In addition to the service
fee, you pay $9.50 a month to rent the equipment, and you
can cancel at any time with no penalty. (Exploiting this
offer - rather than buying the box outright for $500 - is
even a good idea if you intend to stick with Voom, because
this fall the company plans to offer a new set-top box
adding the TiVo-like ability to pause, rewind, record and
play back high-def shows.) 

If you're a TV nut, you could consider supplementing your
current service with Voom to add HD channels worthy of your
screen. If you're anyone else, you could even replace your
current service with Voom; $40 a month, or $55 with nine
HBO channels, is somewhat more expensive than a basic cable
or satellite plan, but, of course, includes those 12 movie
channels and much more in high-def. 

Either way, Voom is clearly an infant service still finding
its way. But upgrade by upgrade, channel by channel, Voom
intends to become a major player, capitalizing on its
satellite capacity and advanced equipment to surge past its
more established rivals in the age of high definition. 

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com 

Correction: June 5, 2004,
Saturday 

The State of the Art column in Circuits on Thursday, about
a subscription service for high-definition television
called Voom, misstated the number of standard-definition
channels in its basic package. It is 84, not 40. It also
misstated the number of channels in supplementary
subscriptions, called "plus packs," for premium services
like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime or Starz. Each has at least two
high-definition channels, not one. The column also included
an erroneous figure from Voom's Web site for the
high-definition channels that are currently part of the
service. There are 36, not 39. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03stat.html?ex=1087735926&ei=1&en=7e14e3ba11f655ed


---------------------------------

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Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Tue Jun  8 16:06:21 2004
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare@alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Jun  8 16:05:41 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: Just Like High-Definition TV,
	but With Higher Definition 
Message-ID: <20040608230621.E332B35040@web38t.prvt.nytimes.com>

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu.


Home IMAX? And they manage not to mention pr0n?? :-)

RK

khare@alumni.caltech.edu


/--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\

THE CLEARING - IN THEATERS JULY 2 - WATCH THE TRAILER NOW

An official selection of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, THE CLEARING
stars ROBERT REDFORD and HELEN MIRREN as Wayne and Eileen Hayes - a
husband and wife living the American Dream. Together they've raised two
children and struggled to build a successful business from the ground
up. But there have been sacrifices along the way. When Wayne is
kidnapped by an ordinary man, Arnold Mack (WILLEM DAFOE), and held for
ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out.
Watch the trailer at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/theclearing/index_nyt.html

\----------------------------------------------------------/


Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition

June 3, 2004
 By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER 



 

HIGH-DEFINITION television may be only just beginning to
catch on, but researchers at the Japanese national
broadcaster NHK are already working on a successor. The
format, called Ultra High Definition Video, or UHDV, has a
resolution 16 times greater than plain-old HDTV, and its
stated goal is to achieve a level of sensory immersion that
approximates actually being there. 

At a picture size of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels - that works out
to 32 million pixels - UHDV's resolution trounces even
high-end digital still cameras. HDTV, by comparison, has
about two million pixels, and normal TV about 200,000 (and
only 480 lines of horizontal resolution versus 4,000 with
UHDV). 

Add to that UHDV's beefed-up refresh rate of 60 frames per
second (twice that of conventional video), projected onto a
450-inch diagonal screen with more than 20 channels of
audio, and you've got an impressive home theater on your
hands. 

Of course, UHDV's current dimensions make it impractical
for most homes. The NHK researchers are investigating how
to squeeze all those pixels onto smaller screens. 

But the project aims to do more than just make home
entertainment more realistic. The UHDV standard may someday
find applications in museums, hospitals, shopping malls or
other places where a keener representation of detail might
be desirable. 

All of that is a long way off, however, because the
standard is still in the early stages of development. UHDV
"will take many years," said Fumio Okano, a researcher with
the network. But NHK is familiar with long-term projects:
it began developing the HDTV standard in 1964, and the
first high-definition content arrived only in 1982. 

The pixel count of UHDV may be impressive, but as anyone
who has tried to watch TV on a sunny beach knows, pixels
are not the whole picture. "Resolution is only one of the
key measurements," said John Lowry of Lowry Digital Images,
a company in Burbank, Calif., that digitizes films at the
highest possible quality for archival purposes. Perhaps
even more important than pixels, he said, is the dynamic
range of an image, which is measured in terms of contrast
ratio. The eye can perceive contrasts between the brightest
white and the darkest black of roughly 100,000 to one,
whereas today's best projectors can only muster levels of
about 4,000 to one. 

To achieve truly realistic images, Mr. Lowry said, "the
blacks have to be really black, while still seeing the
glint off a diamond." 

So while current projection technology cannot meet the
demands of UHDV, the standard excels in other crucial
areas, for example breadth of view. While both UHDV and
HDTV use the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio (standard TV uses
4:3), HDTV offers only a 30-degree field of view
horizontally, whereas UHDV's massive screen size expands
this to about 100 degrees, said Mr. Okano, who said his
research indicates that this angle is where "immersive
sensation" peaks. 

In developing UHDV, NHK has also focused on sound. The
standard calls for 22.2 sound: 10 speakers at ear level, 9
above and 3 below, with another 2 for low frequency
effects. It is a setup that is well beyond the level of the
multichannel systems currently in vogue, like the 5.1
surround system. 

All those sound channels and all those image pixels add up
to a lot of data. In test, an 18-minute UHDV video gobbled
up 3.5 terabytes of storage (equivalent to about 750
DVD's). The data was transmitted over 16 channels at a
total rate of 24 gigabits per second, thousands of times
faster than a typical D.S.L. connection. 

The realism creates other complications. The NHK is
studying the physical and psychological effects of UHDV on
audiences. One concern is a kind of motion sickness, which
researchers attribute to a combination of the wide viewing
angle, the massive image and the on-screen motion. 

There are other reasons to shy away from maximum reality,
some of them aesthetic. "There is a very common practice,"
Mr. Lowry said, "of putting a filter on a camera just to
soften the image, to reduce the resolution." Movie stars
are now learning the hard way that high-definition is hard
on human imperfections: blemishes and bad makeup invisible
to conventional TV suddenly jump to the fore when filmed in
high-definition format; how will aging celebrities fare
with UHDV? 

But UHDV's developers do not intend the standard
exclusively as a vehicle for Hollywood, or even for sports
or news, where HDTV has flourished. They point to
potentially useful applications in medicine, education, or
art appreciation. The new format has also been designed to
be compatible with other standards - unlike, for example,
IMAX, a 70-millimeter film format that has unsurpassed
quality but a unique infrastructure that limits its
mass-market potential. 

Are audiences even warming up to high-definition
television? While sales of HDTV sets are gradually
increasing, the growth remains less than spectacular. With
only 15 million to 18 million HDTV sets currently in the
United States, "we haven't even scraped the tip of the
iceberg yet," said Vamsi Sistla, an analyst with the
research firm Allied Business Intelligence. 

Navigating the jungle of standards and terminology remains
confusing, and a complete high-definition set (including
tuner) costs several thousand dollars. Consumers, Mr.
Sistla said, "are not too keen on the nitty-gritty. They're
looking at the price point, at sexy flat screens.'' 

The NHK is still years from having to worry about how to
sell UHDV to consumers. Perhaps the format will always be
out of reach for most consumers. However, while it took 40
years, HDTV eventually gained a foothold. 

"I applaud them," Mr. Lowry said of the NHK. "They are
reaching off into what a lot of people might call
never-never land at the moment. But why not?" 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03next.html?ex=1087735981&ei=1&en=607bb48a0ceebd60


---------------------------------

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help@nytimes.com.  

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Tue Jun  8 16:59:59 2004
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare@alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Jun  8 16:59:22 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: The Fat Epidemic: He Says 
Message-ID: <20040608235959.1ED4135040@web38t.prvt.nytimes.com>

It&#39;s an Illusion 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII 
MIME-Version: 1.0

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu.


Interesting hidden-in-plain-view interpretation of NCHS' data... would love to see the _Science_ article on the deabte rather than a personality profile, though...

Rohit


khare@alumni.caltech.edu


/--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\

THE CLEARING - IN THEATERS JULY 2 - WATCH THE TRAILER NOW

An official selection of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, THE CLEARING
stars ROBERT REDFORD and HELEN MIRREN as Wayne and Eileen Hayes - a
husband and wife living the American Dream. Together they've raised two
children and struggled to build a successful business from the ground
up. But there have been sacrifices along the way. When Wayne is
kidnapped by an ordinary man, Arnold Mack (WILLEM DAFOE), and held for
ransom in a remote forest, the couple's world is turned inside out.
Watch the trailer at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/theclearing/index_nyt.html

\----------------------------------------------------------/


The Fat Epidemic: He Says 
It&#39;s an Illusion

June 8, 2004
 By GINA KOLATA 



 

Ask anyone: Americans are getting fatter and fatter.
Advertising campaigns say they are. So do federal officials
and the scientists they rely on. 

But Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at
Rockefeller University, argues that contrary to popular
opinion, national data do not show Americans growing
uniformly fatter. 

Instead, he says, the statistics demonstrate clearly that
while the very fat are getting fatter, thinner people have
remained pretty much the same. 

Let it be said that Dr. Friedman, a Howard Hughes Medical
Institute investigator and the discoverer of the gene for
leptin, a hormone released by fat cells, is not fat. He is
tall and gangly, with the rumpled look of an academic
scientist. 

As an obesity researcher, he might be expected to endorse
the prevailing view that obesity in this country is out of
control. But Dr. Friedman said he was outraged by the
acceptance of what he sees as a hurtful myth, one that
encourages people to believe that if you are fat, it is
your fault. 

The obesity arena "is so political, so rife with
misinformation and disinformation," he said. 

Dr. Friedman points to careful statistical analyses of the
changes in Americans' body weights from 1991 to today by
Dr. Katherine Flegal of the National Center for Health
Statistics. At the lower end of the weight distribution,
nothing has changed, not even by a few pounds. As you move
up the scale, a few additional pounds start to show up, but
even at midrange, people today are just 6 or 7 pounds
heavier than they were in 1991. Only with the massively
obese, the very top of the distribution, is there a
substantial increase in weight, about 25 to 30 pounds, Dr.
Flegal reported. 

As a result, the curve of body weight has been pulled
slightly to the right, with more people shifting up a few
pounds to cross the line that experts use to divide normal
from obese. In 1991, 23 percent of Americans fell into the
obese category; now 31 percent do, a more than 30 percent
increase. But the average weight of the population has
increased by just 7 to 10 pounds since 1991. 

Dr. Friedman gave an analogy: "Imagine the average I.Q. was
100 and that 5 percent of the population had an I.Q. of 140
or greater and were considered to be geniuses. Now let's
say that education improves and the average I.Q. increases
to 107 and 10 percent of the population has an I.Q. of
above 140. 

"You could present the data in two ways," he said. "You
could say that the average I.Q. is up seven points or you
could say that because of improved education the number of
geniuses has doubled." 

He added, "The whole obesity debate is equivalent to
drawing conclusions about national education programs by
saying that the number of geniuses has doubled." 

Not everyone agrees. 

"It' s one thing to talk about
statistics and another to talk about what's happening to
individuals," said Dr. Marion Nestle, a professor of
nutrition, food studies and public health at New York
University. "Everyone notices that there are more
overweight people now." 

Dr. Friedman, however, begs to differ. The statistics let
scientists get beyond impressions and focus on the
evidence. 

He is, in a way, an unexpected figure to insert himself
into the highly charged politics of obesity. He left
clinical medicine in 1980 after discovering that his true
passion was the laboratory. By 1981, he had begun his
scientific career, and within a few years he was taking on
what seemed like an impossibly onerous task, finding a gene
whose absence made mice grow massively obese. 

He keeps mementos from those days. He still has the
purchase order, from December 1986, for the first batch of
mice he used for the experiment. Hanging on his office wall
is a framed strip of white paper with black blotches, the
data that on Sunday morning, May 8, 1994, revealed he had
found the gene that he named leptin. 

"To me, those data are as beautiful as the Mona Lisa," he
said. 

Over the years, Dr. Friedman says, he has watched the
scientific data accumulate to show that body weight, in
animals and humans, is not under conscious control. Body
weight, he says, is genetically determined, as tightly
regulated as height. Genes control not only how much you
eat but also the metabolic rate at which you burn food.
When it comes to eating, free will is an illusion. 

"People can exert a level of control over their weight
within a 10-, perhaps a 15-pound range," Dr. Friedman said.
But expecting an obese person to decide to simply eat less
and exercise more to get below the obesity range, below the
overweight range? It virtually never happens, he said. Any
weight that is lost almost invariably comes right back. 

The same goes for gaining weight in general, Dr. Friedman
argued. A person who has the genes to be thin is not going
to get fat because portion sizes increase. It makes no
scientific sense, he said. 

But isn't it true that we can decide to eat or not,
choosing to skip dinner, say, or pass up dessert? Isn't
that free will? Not really, Dr. Friedman said. The control
mechanisms for body weight operate over months, even years,
not day to day or meal to meal. 

"People live in the moment," he said. "They lose weight
over the short term and say that they have exercised
willpower," but over the long term, the body's intrinsic
controls win out. And just as willpower cannot make fat
people thin, a lack of it does not make thin people fat. 

No one, he says, can consciously calibrate their food
intake as precisely as the body does naturally. Most
people's weights remain steady, within about 10 pounds,
year in and year out. But when people count calories, they
typically err by about 10 percent. For someone who eats
750,000 calories in a year, that 10 percent error would add
up to 75,000 calories, or about 25 pounds. 

Obesity, Dr. Friedman says, is a problem; fat people are
derided and they have health risks like diabetes and heart
disease. But it does no one any good to exaggerate the
extent of obesity or to blame the obese for being fat. 

"Before calling it an epidemic, people really need to
understand what the numbers do and don't say," he said. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/health/08cont.html?ex=1087739199&ei=1&en=ed0545422bbe9663


---------------------------------

Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
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---------------------------------
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New York Times on the Web, please contact
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For general information about NYTimes.com, write to 
help@nytimes.com.  

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
From joe at barrera.org  Tue Jun  8 17:25:19 2004
From: joe at barrera.org (Joseph S. Barrera III)
Date: Tue Jun  8 17:24:45 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [Fwd: ALGOL 6X and FORTRAN 90]
Message-ID: <40C658EF.3080101@barrera.org>

Anyone who (1) knows Tony Hoare or (2) has a good knowledge of his
quotable quotes could help me out here.

- Joe

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	ALGOL 6X and FORTRAN 90
Date: 	Tue, 08 Jun 2004 17:16:58 -0700
From: 	Joe Barrera <jbarrera@collation.com>
To: 	d.love@dl.ac.uk



<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2001-12/msg00208.html>

"ALGOL 60 is alive and well and living in FORTRAN 90.  -- Tony Hoare"

... Surely that should be ALGOL 68? ALGOL 60 was simple and clean,
ALGOL 68 was more complicated than man was ever meant to know.

(You wouldn't happen to know how to get ahold of Tony Hoare, would you?)

- Joe





-- 
Someday
You realize that everything you do or see or think of
If it interferes with nothing
Might as well dissolve in arrows or in tears
Nobody hears
From joe at barrera.org  Tue Jun  8 17:32:14 2004
From: joe at barrera.org (Joseph S. Barrera III)
Date: Tue Jun  8 17:31:41 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: Just Like High-Definition TV,	but
	With Higher Definition
In-Reply-To: <20040608230621.E332B35040@web38t.prvt.nytimes.com>
References: <20040608230621.E332B35040@web38t.prvt.nytimes.com>
Message-ID: <40C65A8E.2060504@barrera.org>

khare@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:

>  Home IMAX? And they manage not to mention pr0n?? :-)

There was a good article in, I believe, Slate, which explained why
HDTV was not good for porn. I may even have forked it...

- Joe
-- 
Someday
You realize that everything you do or see or think of
If it interferes with nothing
Might as well dissolve in arrows or in tears
Nobody hears

From sdw at lig.net  Tue Jun  8 20:05:42 2004
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Tue Jun  8 20:05:01 2004
Subject: [FoRK] NYTimes.com Article: Heavy Debt and Drought Drive
	India&#39; s Farmers to Desperation
In-Reply-To: <20040608230047.49CB284CF@web39t.prvt.nytimes.com>
References: <20040608230047.49CB284CF@web39t.prvt.nytimes.com>
Message-ID: <40C67E86.6070509@lig.net>

So close but so far to go...

Al Qaeda (and some segment of Muslims) are or want to be in the Stone Age.
Whole African countries seem to be in primitive tribal genocidal 
rilvaries with modern weapons.
Russia is (re)living a US-style gangster period (a la Chicago, 
prohibition, etc.), while pining for those heady Communism days.

Where is India?
It is, as books and documentaries have shown, the red tape capitol of 
the world, or used to be.
It has strong, well developed business sense but massive rural farming 
with entrenched middle-men like China.
India seems to have more or less free press, freedom of religion (what 
about freedom from religion?), but more mystical beliefs (i.e. broader 
and more whimsical range), classism, and culturalism.

Interesting, annoying, promising, disheartening.  Very ying/yang.

I have a first cousin who is married to an Indian, who apparently works 
for Dell.  She's been having a time getting a house built in India.  The 
whole concept of "polished plaster" has me shaking my head.

sdw

khare@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:

>The article below from NYTimes.com 
>has been sent to you by khare@alumni.caltech.edu.
>
>
>IT outsourcing employment rounds to zero when divided by 1B :-(
>
>In all seriousness, many other more significant moral lessons to be learned within, though... 
>
>RK
>
>khare@alumni.caltech.edu
>
>
>/--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\
>
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>
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>Watch the trailer at: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/theclearing/index_nyt.html
>
>\----------------------------------------------------------/
>
>
>Heavy Debt and Drought Drive India&#39;s Farmers to Desperation
>
>June 6, 2004
> By AMY WALDMAN 
>
>
>
> 
>
>ANANTAPUR, India - For the 28th time in less than four
>hours, the telephone in the colonial-era district
>headquarters trilled. 
>
>"Hello, help line," Gurram Pramila answered, her pen poised
>to record yet another tale of financial distress. 
>
>A 55-year-old farmer who gave his name as Kadirappa was on
>the line, telling of a dry well on his eight acres and his
>$890 of debt. If the government did not help, he vowed, he
>would kill himself. 
>
>Ms. Pramila, a junior bureaucrat untutored in improving
>mental health, improvised. "Don't lose heart," she told
>Kadirappa. "Have faith in yourself." 
>
>The farmer's threat had the force of ominous context. In
>the past six years, 2,000 to 3,000 farmers (the state has
>not compiled an official tally) are believed to have
>committed suicide in this state, Andhra Pradesh, many of
>them in this arid district. Fifty to 100 have killed
>themselves since a new state government took office in
>mid-May, promising farmers relief. 
>
>A help line set up by the government on May 22 had already
>logged more than 800 calls a week later. Close to half were
>from this district, most of them fielded by Ms. Pramila. 
>
>The template of the calls - dry land and crushing debt -
>never varied, nor did their desperate tone. 
>
>Nine wells failed on 10 acres owned by a farmer named
>Umapatty, and he owed $4,400 to banks and moneylenders. J.
>Narayanappa had two dry wells on 20 acres, and owed $5,777.
>Ms. Pramila took down the details, and promised that an
>official would follow up. 
>
>Most of the suicidal farmers have swallowed pesticides, the
>easiest killer at hand. Burdened by compound interest, they
>compound tragedy, leaving families their debts, and
>depriving them of fathers, husbands and breadwinners. 
>
>"I would have thrown the pills out," said Pullamma, the
>haggard widow of Jayram Reddy, 52, who killed himself on
>May 22 by swallowing ammonium phosphate tablets in the
>village of Regadikothur. 
>
>He lay down on the family veranda to die, whispering to her
>that he could not bear the burden of more than $6,000 in
>debt. Now she will go to other farmers' fields to labor for
>45 cents a day. 
>
>India has seen spates of similar suicides in recent years,
>in states from Punjab to Kerala. In part, the suicides
>reflect a rural culture in which excess indebtedness
>becomes a mark of shame, which private moneylenders and
>public creditors milk to try to collect. 
>
>But the dead farmers are also the canaries in the mine for
>India's agricultural economy - indicators of dire straits.
>Agriculture, which supports two-thirds of India's more than
>one billion people, generates only one-quarter of its gross
>domestic product. In the past five years, while the
>services sector has grown an average of 8 percent a year,
>agriculture has grown just 2 percent a year. 
>
>India's new government rode to power partly on the back of
>farmers' angst, but salving it will not be easy. In the
>farmers' plight, all the strands of an economy in
>transition intersect. This area had four successive years
>of drought, but the farmers have been buffeted by more than
>weather. 
>
>With small landholdings, constrained markets for their
>products, and an overdependence on subsidies for power and
>fertilizer, India's farmers were ill equipped to compete
>when the national government undertook economic reforms in
>1991. 
>
>To a degree, the suicides reflect the farmers' bafflement
>at the gradual, and erratic, withdrawal of the state. They
>have felt the cost of reforms - but have yet to see the
>benefits. 
>
>Jayram Reddy was the second farmer in his village to kill
>himself. On Nov. 20, Nagalinga Reddy, no relation, took the
>same route, using the same method. The buildup to his
>death, at age 50, suggests the confluence of conditions
>that have driven farmers to desperation. 
>
>Nagalinga Reddy grew rice and sunflowers. Only 10 of his
>acres were irrigated. He sank five bore wells at a minimum
>cost of $200 apiece - but only two struck water. 
>
>In Nagalinga Reddy's village, the cost of powering the
>pumps had risen sevenfold in recent years, with the state
>government trying to wean farmers off free power. 
>
>The cost of fertilizers had risen, too, as the government
>sought to reduce subsides. 
>
>Nagalinga Reddy had regularly lost crops to drought, dry
>wells and pests in the past seven years. He had stopped
>farming cotton because of pests, which drove hundreds of
>farmers to suicide in Warangal, another of the state's
>districts. In October, by the time he scraped together the
>money to spray his crop, the pests had gotten it. 
>
>He was $9,000 in debt to three banks, one cooperative
>society and moneylenders. Bank officers regularly came to
>visit, and one bank took legal action. The moneylenders
>regularly harassed him. He avoided the ignominy of having
>the cooperative society post a public notice saying his
>land would be auctioned only by paying them a small sum. 
>
>The banks and cooperative societies, under pressure in an
>era of reform to show more fiscal responsibility, cut him
>off. 
>
>As access to formal credit has narrowed, the power of
>moneylenders - who charge at least 24 percent annual
>interest - has grown. Like most of his neighbors, Nagalinga
>Reddy turned to them. But by the time he died, a month
>after pests ate the rice crop, even the moneylenders
>considered him a bad risk. 
>
>Like many of the suicides, Nagalinga Reddy had been a step
>above the very poor. He owned 15 acres and had built a
>solid house with ceiling fans. He had rank in an upper
>caste. All of that seemed to make his fall in status that
>much harder to bear. 
>
>"My father was brave, but he could not withstand the
>pressure of the situation," said Tirumal Reddy, his gentle
>21-year-old son. 
>
>His son is a 10th-grade graduate who had hoped to end the
>family's dependence on agriculture by becoming educated
>enough to get a government job. But he is as yoked to the
>fields as his illiterate father was. Even marriage is
>unthinkable until he clears the debt. 
>
>Farmers have also been affected by factors they may be only
>dimly aware of. Most states spend the bulk of their budgets
>on debt interest and salaries, which has left almost
>nothing to invest in irrigation. Ninety percent of this
>district is unirrigated, and thus depends on rain for
>water. 
>
>Agricultural markets remain heavily regulated, and because
>there are few facilities here to process agricultural
>products, almost every crop must be exported to another
>state, something beyond small farmers' capacity. They sell
>cheap to middlemen, who harvest far greater profit across
>state lines. 
>
>The opening of the Indian economy to imports has affected
>farmers as well. Some farmers in this district planted
>mulberry trees to produce silk - but demand dropped as raw
>China silk began flowing in. The main crop here, groundnut,
>or peanut, is processed into oil, but recently the poor
>have been forsaking local peanut oil for cheaper palm oil
>from Southeast Asia. 
>
>For now, the new state government is focusing on the
>symptoms of farmer distress, not the causes. Its first act
>was to declare free power for farmers and clear their
>arrears. The short-term relief will only add to the state's
>fiscal deficit, making infrastructure investment and power
>sector reform much harder. 
>
>Politicians also held a rally in Hyderabad, the state
>capital, to beg farmers not to take their lives, and state
>officials set up the help line. 
>
>The help line started the day Jayram Reddy died. In his
>case, the moneylenders had spared no cruelty to collect.
>One filed a police complaint against him; the police,
>probably bribed by the lender, hauled him in. Over the past
>two years moneylenders, regular visitors to his home, had
>taken his bullock cart, two bullocks and nine buffalo. They
>wanted to take his house, too. 
>
>On a recent day, women were whitewashing the walls of
>Jayram Reddy's house in a posthumous purification ritual.
>At the same time, three of his lenders were at a local
>government office to proclaim that they had not pressed him
>for repayment, and thus could not be held liable for his
>death. 
>
>They were also there to collect. As fellow villagers, they
>felt bad about Jayram Reddy's death, said a lender, N.
>Nagamunny. As lenders, they felt bad about their money.
>They wanted a piece of the government aid likely to be
>provided the family. 
>
>Their mercenary mission was a necessity, said one, Keshur
>Reddy. He had four daughters to marry off. To lend to
>Jayram Reddy, he had borrowed from someone else, and that
>someone was pressing him hard. 
>
>"If the money is not repaid to me," he said, "I'll commit
>suicide." 
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/international/asia/06INDI.html?ex=1087735647&ei=1&en=08ede861527fb95f
>
>
>---------------------------------
>
>Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
>reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
>Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
>now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here:
>
>http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS/SubscriptionT1.do?mode=SubscriptionT1&ExternalMediaCode=W24AF
>
>
>
>HOW TO ADVERTISE
>---------------------------------
>For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters 
>or other creative advertising opportunities with The 
>New York Times on the Web, please contact
>onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media 
>kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
>
>For general information about NYTimes.com, write to 
>help@nytimes.com.  
>
>Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
>_______________________________________________
>FoRK mailing list
>http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>  
>


-- 
swilliams@hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st
Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw

From tomwhore at slack.net  Wed Jun  9 09:42:15 2004
From: tomwhore at slack.net (Tom)
Date: Wed Jun  9 09:41:32 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Portland, home of the free land of the connected
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.44.0406091239560.196-100000@crank.slack.net>


http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=5186

A bit of press on the state of the group I am working with. Come for the
wifi, stay for the microbrews:)-

-tomwsmf

From lgonze at panix.com  Wed Jun  9 09:49:47 2004
From: lgonze at panix.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Wed Jun  9 09:49:01 2004
Subject: [FoRK] RVW 0.2 (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.58.0406091249330.26087@panix2.panix.com>


A vertical syndication format, orthogonal to RSS.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 16:12:08 +0200
From: Alf Eaton <a@pmbrowser.info>
Subject: RVW 0.2

To those people who might be interested,

I've put a new version of the RVW format for reviews metadata online -
this time I've tried to fit it into all of Atom, RSS and RDF (as well
as TypeLists, where it's already used). If you have a minute, I'd
appreciate any comments you might have about anything I might have
missed, suitability for your uses, problems with changing to a
percentage rating, misuse of namespaces, that kind of thing.

I made a brief post here:
http://www.pmbrowser.info/hublog/archives/000863.html
and the actual document (no official specifications yet) is here:
http://www.pmbrowser.info/rvw/0.2/

I haven't produced any examples for reviewing things other than books,
movies and music - the idea is that you can put whatever metadata you
like to describe the subject of the review, including unique
identifiers if possible, and aggregators will make use of it
selectively as best as they can. I also haven't gone into specifying
the creator of the review - that could be FOAF or some other digital
identifier, but it's outside the scope of what I wanted to achieve.

There's a (slightly related) HTML-producing review-formatting tool here
now: http://alf.hubmed.org/cgi-bin/rvw.cgi - it only produces the post,
not the metadata, but sitting on top of a blogging system it might be
an easy way for people to identify the object they want to write about
without having to search out the identifier for themselves.

Yours,
Alf.
From lrivers at gmail.com  Wed Jun  9 10:29:13 2004
From: lrivers at gmail.com (Lorin Rivers)
Date: Wed Jun  9 10:28:28 2004
Subject: [FoRK] October Surprise Poll
Message-ID: <94982984040609102953e1dd12@mail.gmail.com>

What's it going to be?

Osama bin Laden captured!
 38.0%

Spectacular terrorist attack on US soil!
 17.8%

Vote is threatened by terrorist attacks, vote suspended due to red alert.
 15.5%

Diebold Election Systems fixes the vote in battleground states.
 11.1%

Escalation in Israel, Iran, or North Korea. US opens a new war front.
 7.3%

WMD's found in Iraq!
 5.3%

US pulls out of Iraq in October, leaving the UN in charge.
 5.0%

<http://www.octobersurprise.net/index.html>
From owen at permafrost.net  Wed Jun  9 11:56:55 2004
From: owen at permafrost.net (Owen Byrne)
Date: Wed Jun  9 11:56:41 2004
Subject: [FoRK] October Surprise Poll
In-Reply-To: <94982984040609102953e1dd12@mail.gmail.com>
References: <94982984040609102953e1dd12@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <40C75D77.5060605@permafrost.net>

Lorin Rivers wrote:

>What's it going to be?
>
>Osama bin Laden captured!
> 38.0%
>
>Spectacular terrorist attack on US soil!
> 17.8%
>
>Vote is threatened by terrorist attacks, vote suspended due to red alert.
> 15.5%
>
>Diebold Election Systems fixes the vote in battleground states.
> 11.1%
>
>Escalation in Israel, Iran, or North Korea. US opens a new war front.
> 7.3%
>
>WMD's found in Iraq!
> 5.3%
>
>US pulls out of Iraq in October, leaving the UN in charge.
> 5.0%
>
><http://www.octobersurprise.net/index.html>
>_______________________________________________
>FoRK mailing list
>http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>  
>
Well I'd bet on one based on what happened here last fall. A hurricane 
hits Boston or New York or vicinity circa the end of September.
Owen

http://www.ns.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/juan/intensity_e.html

>
>     Why did a category-two Hurricane hit Nova Scotia?
>
> *An explanation of the unusual intensity of Hurricane Juan
> Prepared by Chris Fogarty
> Hurricane Researcher, Canadian Hurricane Centre
> October 24, 2003*
>
> It is not rare for hurricanes to strike Nova Scotia (once every three 
> years lately), but usually they are barely hurricane strength when 
> they reach our shores. Hurricane Juan made landfall on September 29th, 
> 2003 as a marginal category two hurricane with maximum sustained wind 
> speeds of 85 knots (158 km/h). Based on hurricane records during the 
> past 100 years, it appears that such a strong hurricane in Nova Scotia 
> occurs only once in 50 years.
>
>
> <http://www.ns.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/juan/photos/ocean_temp_e.gif>
>
> So what made Juan so powerful when it reached Nova Scotia? The answer 
> to that question has a lot to do with the unusually warm ocean surface 
> water temperatures during the tail end of September 2003.

...

Owen



From dl at silcom.com  Wed Jun  9 12:36:47 2004
From: dl at silcom.com (Dave Long)
Date: Wed Jun  9 12:21:58 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Axiom: symbolic mathematics language w/ rigorous
	mathematical types 
In-Reply-To: Message from Contempt for Meatheads <jbone@place.org> of "Mon,
	07 Jun 2004 15:39:28 CDT."
	<C5922D05-B8C2-11D8-AEB1-000A95CFE9DE@place.org> 
Message-ID: <200406091937.MAA05970@maltesecat>



> Put more concisely:  why does application (of functions to values, 
> functors to functions) necessarily have to be treated differently from 
> type composition? Aren't they all just categorical morphisms?

All compositions are equal.
But some are more equal than others.

Function application has to occur
at run time, when we finally have
the specific data for the process.

Type composition can be checked at
a single point, for it should be a
platonic property of the program.

On small slow boxen, it was better
to arrange for type composition to
cancel out at compile time, and so
it wouldn't need representation in 
any of the run time processes. [0]

On today's machines, more symmetric
approaches may be less painful. [1]

-Dave

:: :: ::

[0] on popular machines, the CPU
is very egalitarian, and willing
to process memory values without
any type information.  A reason
why C code is tough to beat for
speed is that C programmers are
used to helping out the machine
by handling quite a bit of this
type erasure themselves.

[1] one of the annoying problems
in industrial IDEs is that we'd
like code in production processes
to be race-drilled, stripped-down
instances of what was called for
by the program, but when hit with
a debugger, we wish to have left
enough information lying around
to be able to relate the process
state to a helpful program state.

:: :: ::

> Reading some on O'Haskell.  Interesting unification of OOP (objects as 
> state-encapsulating monads) and functional programming with a pretty 
> rich (read:  thorny problems, but very useful) polymorphic subtyping 
> paradigm.

Hmmm...  I'll have to take a look.  Just
got around to playing around with Haskell
recently.  Instance/where is great, but
the crunch time for even toy programs may
convince me to acquire a more modern box.

> 	1 2 3 4 (or 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 if you prefer, but I'm using math notation 
> intentionally to underscore the point)

although in this case it might be more
useful if juxtaposition resulted in the
categorical, not arithmetical, product,
yielding the list [1,2,3,4], winding up
as 24 only after coercion with integer
big-pi.
From deafbox at hotmail.com  Wed Jun  9 12:48:47 2004
From: deafbox at hotmail.com (Russell Turpin)
Date: Wed Jun  9 12:48:01 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Axiom: symbolic mathematics language w/
	rigorousmathematical types
Message-ID: <BAY12-F51qbC8wSA1Xv000547c4@hotmail.com>

Dave Long:
>Function application has to occur
>at run time, when we finally have
>the specific data for the process.
>Type composition can be checked at a single point, for it should be a
>platonic property of the program.

It's worth pushing on both ends of
this assumption. On the one hand,
compilers have long applied functions
to constant arguments, even when
other arguments are left to runtime,
e.g., optimizing ++, but also unrolling
loops, etc. On the other end, there
are zillions of applications with user-
defined types, and it's not entirely
obvious why that sort of typing
should be completely divorced from
the programming language's.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 9 Dial-up Internet Access fights spam and pop-ups – now 3 months FREE! 
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From jbone at place.org  Wed Jun  9 20:36:50 2004
From: jbone at place.org (Contempt for Meatheads)
Date: Wed Jun  9 20:36:03 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Proof Of Riemann Hypothesis?
Message-ID: <6862D2C4-BA8F-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>


Well, perhaps if this pans out:

	http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/09/223241

Mathemetician Claims Proof Of Riemann Hypothesis
Science
The Almighty Buck
News
Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 09, @07:00PM
from the peer-review-pending dept.
TheSync points to this press release about a Purdue University  
mathematician, Louis de Branges de Bourcia, who claims to have "proven  
the Riemann hypothesis, considered to be the greatest unsolved problem  
in mathematics. It states that all non-trivial zeros of the zeta  
function lie on the line 1/2 + it as t ranges over the real numbers.  
You can read his proof here. The Clay Mathematics Institute offers a $1  
million prize to the first prover."

...we can all stop losing sleep about this:

	http://www.singinst.org/CFAI/info/ 
glossary.html#gloss_riemann_hypothesis_catastrophe

Riemann Hypothesis Catastrophe:  Defined in 3.2: Generic goal systems.
     A "failure of Friendliness" scenario in which an AI asked to solve  
the Riemann Hypothesis turns all the matter in the solar system into  
computronium, exterminating humanity along the way.  (As I recall, I  
first heard this version - with a slightly different phrasing - from  
Marvin Minsky.)  In variant forms, a subclass of the subgoal stomp  
error, the Devil's Contract problem (both diabolic and golemic), and  
the "emergent pressures" scenario a la "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" (see  
3.2.7: Emergent phenomena in generic goal systems).

From jbone at place.org  Wed Jun  9 21:33:00 2004
From: jbone at place.org (Contempt for Meatheads)
Date: Wed Jun  9 21:32:12 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Republican Survivor
Message-ID: <41442826-BA97-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>

	
Hehe.

	http://www.dtriptv.org/watchpast.aspx

jbopppp8

From lrivers at gmail.com  Thu Jun 10 09:42:26 2004
From: lrivers at gmail.com (Lorin Rivers)
Date: Thu Jun 10 09:41:42 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Reagan's Popularity Overstated
Message-ID: <94982984040610094253e3ea3d@mail.gmail.com>

<http://www.fair.org/press-releases/reagan-myth-reality.html>

MEDIA ADVISORY: 
Reagan: Media Myth and Reality

June 9, 2004

As the media spend the week memorializing Ronald Reagan, journalists
are redefining the former president's life and accomplishments with a
stream of hagiographies that frequently skew the facts and gloss over
scandal and criticism.

Reagan's Popularity

"Ronald Reagan was the most popular president ever to leave office,"
explained ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas (6/6/04). "His approval ratings
were higher than any other at the end of his second term." Though the
claim was repeated by many news outlets, it is not true; Bill
Clinton's approval ratings when he left office were actually higher
than Reagan's, at 66 percent versus Reagan's 63 percent (Gallup,
1/10-14-01). Franklin Delano Roosevelt also topped Reagan with a 66
percent approval rating at the time of his death in office after three
and a half terms.

In general, Reagan's popularity during his two terms tends to be
overstated. The Washington Post's lead article on June 6 began by
declaring him "one of the most popular presidents of the 20th
Century," while ABC's Sam Donaldson announced, "Through travesty,
triumph and tragedy, the president enjoyed unprecedented popularity."
The Chicago Tribune (6/6/04) wrote that "his popularity with the
electorate was deep and personal... rarely did his popularity dip
below 50 percent; it often exceeded 70 percent, an extraordinarily
high mark."

But a look at Gallup polling data brings a different perspective.
Through most of his presidency, Reagan did not rate much higher than
other post-World War II presidents. And during his first two years,
Reagan's approval ratings were quite low. His 52 percent average
approval rating for his presidency places him sixth out of the past
ten presidents, behind Kennedy (70 percent), Eisenhower (66 percent),
George H.W. Bush (61 percent), Clinton (55 percent), and Johnson (55
percent). His popularity frequently dipped below 50 percent during his
first term, plummeted to 46 percent during the Iran-Contra scandal,
and never exceeded 68 percent. (By contrast, Clinton's maximum
approval rating hit 71 percent.)

Some in the media similarly emphasized Reagan's likeability. CBS
anchor Bob Schieffer asserted, "You could hate his policies, but it
was hard not to like Ronald Reagan (6/6/04). But Reagan's
"likeability" numbers did not score much higher than other modern
presidents, including Jimmy Carter. (For more on Reagan polling myths,
see: http://www.fair.org/extra/8903/reagan-popularity.html)

No Time for Critical Voices

Mainstream media have relied heavily on Republicans and former Reagan
officials to tell the story of Reagan and his accomplishments, which
results in a decidedly one-sided version of events. A June 7 article
in the New York Times on Reagan's impact claimed that Reagan "was
almost always popular and, many now say, usually right." The article
stated that "Reagan lived long enough to enable many of his old
lieutenants, and some more dispassionate chroniclers as well, to argue
that he had also been right on some of the bigger questions of his
time."

Six of the eight sources the article quoted were former Reagan
staffers or Republicans, one was longtime Reagan devotee Margaret
Thatcher, and one was University of Chicago law professor Cass
Sunstein, who gave no argument that Reagan was "right" about anything.
No other "dispassionate chroniclers" were quoted. Should readers be
surprised that Reagan's friends and former colleagues still think he
was right?

Television news has displayed an even more pronounced reliance on
Reagan's Republican admirers. The Sunday morning shows (6/6/04) almost
exclusively featured Republicans; former Reagan chief of staff James
Baker appeared on all three networks, as well as Fox and CNN. Fox News
Sunday (6/6/04) featured, in addition to Baker, current national
security advisor Condoleezza Rice, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
and Sheila Tate, former press secretary for Nancy Reagan. MSNBC's June
6 Hardball program featured Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Republican
representatives David Dreier and Chris Cox, and Reagan strategist
Richard Wirthlin.

Interviewing Reagan's admirers may have provided an intimate view of
the former president, but it yielded virtually no acknowledgment of
his flaws. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, when questioned
by CNN's Anderson Cooper (6/6/04) to name Reagan's greatest weakness
or failing, responded, "I'm not going to criticize the President. And
even if I wanted to, I would never do it on an occasion such as this.
We should be grateful that the world was a better place because of
Ronald Reagan's presidency."

Even when potentially critical voices were included, the tendency was
to soften any disagreements over Reagan's policy. On NPR's Morning
Edition (6/7/04), Susan Stamberg interviewed Republican congressman
Dana Rohrabacher along with Democratic strategist Paul Begala.
Clearly, though, this was no time for disagreement, as evidenced by
one of Stamberg's questions to Begala: "You once famously said that
politics is show business for ugly people. Ronald Reagan makes a liar
out of you. He was an extremely handsome, attractive man." Begala's
response: "Boy, was he."

Reagan's Legacy

Reagan's influence over world politics and the direction of the
Republican Party were important aspects of the media's Reagan
tributes. But more often than not, the more controversial aspects of
Reagan's legacy were either downplayed or recast as footnotes.

Time magazine (6/14/04) cheered that "the Reagan years were another of
those hinges upon which history sometimes turns. On one side, a
wounded but still vigorous liberalism with its faith in government as
the answer to almost every question. On the other, a free market so
triumphant-- even after the tech bubble burst-- that we look first to
'growth,' not government, to solve most problems." As NBC's John
Hockenberry put it (6/5/04), "The Reagan revolution imagined the
unimaginable. When poverty and welfare were at crisis levels in the
1980s, Reagan declared war on government and turned his back on the
welfare state." The long-term impact of cuts in social spending,
gutted environmental protections and other casualties of Reagan's "war
on government" were relegated to passing mentions.

Reagan's fervent support for right-wing governments in Central America
was one of the defining foreign policies of his administration, and
the fact that death squads associated with those governments murdered
tens of thousands of civilians surely must be included in any
reckoning of Reagan's successes and failures.

But a search of major U.S. newspapers in the Nexis news database turns
up the phrase "death squad" only five times in connection with Reagan
in the days following his death--twice in commentaries (Philadelphia
Inquirer, 6/6/04; Chicago Tribune, 6/8/04) and twice in letters to the
editor (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/8/04; L.A. Times, 6/8/04). Only one
news article found in the search (L.A. Times, 6/6/04) considered the
death squads an important enough part of Reagan's legacy to be worth
mentioning. The three broadcast networks, CNN and Fox didn't mention
death squads at all, according to Nexis. Nor were any references found
in the transcripts of the broadcast networks to the fact that Reagan's
policy of supporting Islamicist insurgents against the Soviet-backed
government of Afghanistan led to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The Reagan administration's friendly policy towards Saddam Hussein was
also a neglected media topic. During the Reagan years, the U.S.
offered significant support to Iraq, including weapons components,
military intelligence, and even some of the ingredients for
manufacturing biological weapons like anthrax (Newsweek, 9/23/02).

The rare opportunities for critical reflection about Reagan's policies
were turned into additional evidence of his strength, as when Time
magazine (6/14/04) suggested, "Even when his views were most
intransigent-- when he wondered out loud whether Martin Luther King
Jr. was a communist or failed for nearly all of his presidency to
speak the word AIDS even once-- Reagan gave Reaganism a human face."
Time followed that strange assessment with a comment from Bush adviser
Karl Rove: "He made us sunny optimists... His was a conservatism of
laughter and openness and community."

Journalists seemed determined to show that any criticisms of Reagan
could be turned upside down. As Dan Rather explained on CBS's 60
Minutes (6/6/04), "The literal-minded were forever troubled by his
tendency to sometimes confuse life with the movies. But he understood,
like very few leaders before or since, the power of myth and
storytelling. In his films and his political life, Ronald Reagan stood
at the intersection where dreams and reality meet, and with a wink and
a one-liner, always held out hope for a happy ending."

Even Reagan's contradictions were somehow construed as strong points.
As Time put it (6/14/04), "So great was Reagan's victory in making his
preoccupations into enduring themes of the national conversation that
it may not matter that his record didn't always match his rhetoric. He
insisted, for instance, that a balanced budget was one of his
priorities. But by the time Reagan left office, a combination of lower
tax revenues and sharply higher spending for defense had sent the
deficit through the roof."

The Iran-Contra scandal, which loomed too large to ignore, was often
written off by journalists. "As we look back today, it's like just a
speck in the eight years of his presidency," explained CNN's Judy
Woodruff (6/7/04). Meet the Press host Tim Russert (6/6/04) showed a
clip of Reagan's famous response to the scandal, in which he stated,
"A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for
hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true.
But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." Russert described
this tortured evasion of culpability as "very believable."

Whatever reporters made of Iran-Contra, though, Reagan's triumph over
such problems was more important than the incidents themselves. CBS
reporter Anthony Mason (6/6/04) explained: "The deficit doubled during
the Reagan years. His second term was scarred by the Iran Contra
scandal, but he never lost that common touch.... Ronald Reagan had an
uncanny ability to make Americans feel good about themselves." That
bond with American citizens remained front-and-center throughout the
media. As CBS anchor Dan Rather put it (6/5/04), Reagan "was the great
communicator, yes. But he was also a master at communicating
greatness. He understood that, as he once put it, 'History is a ribbon
always unfurling,' and managed to convey his vision in terms both
simple and poetic. And so he was able to act as a conduit to connect
us to who we had been and who we could be."

Reagan and the Media

The overwhelmingly positive coverage of Reagan struck some as a
significant change. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz
noted (6/7/04): "The uplifting tone with which journalists are
eulogizing Ronald Reagan is obscuring a central fact of his
presidency: He had a very contentious relationship with the press."
Others would certainly disagree with Kurtz's assessment-- Mark
Heertsgaard's 1991 book, "On Bended Knee: The Press & the Reagan
Presidency," for example, characterizes the press corps as being
basically uncritical during the Reagan years.

In any event, it would be hard to argue that current coverage of
Reagan carries any lingering traces of that formerly "contentious"
relationship. If anything, some reporters now seem to think that the
main lesson learned from the Reagan years was not to be critical. As
ABC's Sam Donaldson put it (6/4/04), "Reporters over the years made
the mistake of saying, 'Well, he made this mistake, he made this
mistake. He got that fact wrong.' The American public got it right. It
didn't matter."

Finally, Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism
(USA Today, 6/7/04) gave an interesting take on what he acknowledged
were "almost completely uncritical" media reports on Reagan: "For
networks that are accused of being liberal, this is a way for them to
show that they are fair." One would hope that such an overwhelmingly
uncritical assessment of important political and historical matters
would not meet anyone's definition of "fair" journalism.
From owen at permafrost.net  Thu Jun 10 10:02:45 2004
From: owen at permafrost.net (Owen Byrne)
Date: Thu Jun 10 10:01:52 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Reagan's Popularity Overstated
In-Reply-To: <94982984040610094253e3ea3d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <94982984040610094253e3ea3d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <40C89435.1000605@permafrost.net>

Lorin Rivers wrote:

><http://www.fair.org/press-releases/reagan-myth-reality.html>
>
>MEDIA ADVISORY: 
>Reagan: Media Myth and Reality
>
>June 9, 2004
>
>  
>
I think that they have a problem because a lot of things that Reagan was 
criticized for at the time (death squads, sham tax cuts and manipulation 
of the media)
are now core values of the current administration. While at the time 
Reagan was clearly a lunatic, he is a colossus compared to W and the gang.

Owen


From lgonze at panix.com  Thu Jun 10 10:14:41 2004
From: lgonze at panix.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Thu Jun 10 10:14:29 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Reagan's Popularity Overstated
In-Reply-To: <40C89435.1000605@permafrost.net>
References: <94982984040610094253e3ea3d@mail.gmail.com>
	<40C89435.1000605@permafrost.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.58.0406101312170.8134@panix2.panix.com>


A stray thought: Reagan created the modern right, Bush II destroyed it.
We're just getting to the end (exactly when depends on how the election
comes out) of a twenty year phase.

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Owen Byrne wrote:
> I think that they have a problem because a lot of things that Reagan was
> criticized for at the time (death squads, sham tax cuts and manipulation
> of the media)
> are now core values of the current administration. While at the time
> Reagan was clearly a lunatic, he is a colossus compared to W and the gang.

From owen at permafrost.net  Thu Jun 10 10:15:28 2004
From: owen at permafrost.net (Owen Byrne)
Date: Thu Jun 10 10:14:41 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Reagan's Popularity Overstated
In-Reply-To: <94982984040610094253e3ea3d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <94982984040610094253e3ea3d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <40C89730.1030700@permafrost.net>

Just look beyond your borders (while you still can):

Owen

> Gorby had the lead role, not Gipper
>
>
> By LAWRENCE MARTIN
>
> UPDATED AT 1:13 PM EDT 	Thursday, Jun 10, 2004
>
>   Advertisement
>
>
> Fiction has its place -- especially at the time of one's passing. And 
> so, the American airwaves glisten these days with tales about how it 
> was Ronald Reagan who engineered the defeat of communism and the end 
> of the Cold War.
>
> It was his arms buildup, Republican admirers say, and his menacing 
> rhetoric that brought the Soviets to their knees and changed the world 
> forever. He was a pleasant man, the 40th president, which makes this 
> fairy tale easier to swallow than some of history's other canards. 
> Truth be known, however, the Iron Curtain's collapse was hardly Ronald 
> Reagan's doing.
>
> It was Mikhail Gorbachev, who with a sweeping democratic revolution at 
> home and one peace initiative after another abroad, backed the Gipper 
> into a corner, leaving him little choice -- actors don't like to be 
> upstaged -- but to concede there was a whole new world opening up over 
> there.
>
> As a journalist based first in Washington, then in Moscow, I was 
> fortunate to witness the intriguing drama from both ends.
>
> In R.R., the Soviet leader knew he was dealing with an archetype Cold 
> Warrior. To bring him around to "new thinking" would require a rather 
> wondrous set of works. And so the Gorbachev charm offensive began. The 
> first offering, in 1985, was the Kremlin's unilateral moratorium on 
> nuclear tests. "Propaganda!" the White House declared.
>
> Then Mr. Gorbachev announced a grandiose plan to rid the world of 
> nuclear weapons by 2000. Just another hoax, the Reagan men cried. More 
> Commie flim-flam.
>
> Then came another concession -- Kremlin permission for on-site arms 
> inspections on Soviet land -- and then the Reykjavik summit. In 
> Iceland, Mr. Gorbachev put his far-reaching arms-reduction package on 
> the table and Mr. Reagan, to global condemnation, walked away, 
> offering nothing in return.
>
> /Glasnost/ and/ perestroika/ became the new vernacular. For those in 
> the White House like Richard Perle, the prince of darkness who still 
> thought it was all a sham, Gorby now began a withdrawal of forces from 
> Afghanistan. He released the dissident icon Andrei Sakharov and 
> hundreds of other political prisoners. He made big strides on freedom 
> of the press, immigration and religion. He told East European leaders 
> that the massive Soviet military machine would no longer prop up their 
> creaking dictatorships. He began the process of something unheard of 
> in Soviet history -- democratic elections.
>
> By now, the U.S. administration was reeling. Polls were beginning to 
> show that, of all things unimaginable, a Soviet leader was the 
> greatest force for world peace. An embarrassed Mr. Reagan finally 
> responded in kind. Nearing the end of his presidency, he came to 
> Moscow and he signed a major arms-control agreement and warmly 
> embraced Mr. Gorbachev. A journalist asked the president if he still 
> thought it was the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about 
> another time, another era."
>
> The recasting of the story now suggests that President Reagan's 
> defence-spending hikes -- as if there hadn't been American military 
> buildups before -- somehow intimidated the Kremlin into its vast 
> reform campaign. Or that America's economic strength -- as if the 
> Soviets hadn't always been witheringly weak by comparison -- made the 
> Soviet leader do it.
>
> In fact, Mr. Gorbachev could have well perpetuated the old 
> totalitarian system. He still had the giant Soviet armies, the 
> daunting nuclear might and the chilling KGB apparatus at his disposal.
>
> But he had decided that the continuing clash of East-West ideologies 
> was senseless, that his sick and obsolescent society was desperate for 
> democratic air. His historic campaign that followed wasn't about 
> Ronald Reagan. It would have happened with or without this president. 
> Rather, it was about him, Mikhail Gorbachev: his will, his inner 
> strength, his human spirit. As for the Gipper, he was bold and wise 
> enough, to shed his long-held preconceptions and become the Russian's 
> admirable companion in the process.
>
> In the collapse of communism he deserves credit not as an instigator, 
> but an abettor. Best Supporting Actor.
>
> /lawrencemartin9@hotmail.com <mailto:lawrencemartin9@hotmail.com> /
>
>
>   <http://www.bellglobemedia.ca/>
>  ? 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
>
> <http://ad.ca.doubleclick.net/click;h=v2%7C3126%7C0%7C0%7C%2a%7Cv;6918484;0-0;0;6016516;4307-300%7C250;4111759%7C4129655%7C1;;%3fhttp://www.globeandmail.com/business>


From owen at permafrost.net  Thu Jun 10 10:24:47 2004
From: owen at permafrost.net (Owen Byrne)
Date: Thu Jun 10 10:23:54 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Reagan's Popularity Overstated
In-Reply-To: <40C89730.1030700@permafrost.net>
References: <94982984040610094253e3ea3d@mail.gmail.com>
	<40C89730.1030700@permafrost.net>
Message-ID: <40C8995F.7020109@permafrost.net>

Owen Byrne forgot the link
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040610/COMARTIN10/TPComment/TopStories

>> Gorby had the lead role, not Gipper
>>
>>
>> By LAWRENCE MARTIN
>>
>> UPDATED AT 1:13 PM EDT     Thursday, Jun 10, 2004
>>

From ciamac at moallemi.com  Thu Jun 10 13:51:45 2004
From: ciamac at moallemi.com (Ciamac Moallemi)
Date: Thu Jun 10 13:51:16 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Proof Of Riemann Hypothesis?
In-Reply-To: <6862D2C4-BA8F-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>
References: <6862D2C4-BA8F-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>
Message-ID: <FC5033BD-BB1F-11D8-9DD3-000A95A0D9DE@moallemi.com>

This looks like science-by-press-release, especially since he hasn't 
put the actual proof on his website. From a friend who is a number 
theorist:

> de Branges has published at least 3 or 4 false proofs of RH  in the
> last 20 years.  He has done serious work in the past, but no one takes 
> his
> attempts seriously now.  His claim should be treated with skepticism 
> (to
> put it lightly :)
>

More background, from:
http://www.maa.org/reviews/sabbaghRH.html

>  Of the mathematicians interviewed for the book, the one most 
> prominently featured is Louis de Branges of Purdue University. De 
> Branges, is of course, well known for his proof of the Bieberbach 
> Conjecture in 1984, and he has been working on the Riemann Hypothesis 
> ever since. He has several times announced a proof of RH, only to 
> retract it later. Sabbagh acknowledges that other number theorists are 
> skeptical about de Branges work, but their doubts did not dissuade 
> him. Sabbagh writes "...?I chose de Branges for the simple reason that 
> he told me he was putting the final touches to a proof. After getting 
> over my initial excitement, it took only two or three phone calls to 
> realize that no one else took such a statement seriously. ...?their 
> skepticism made me want to find out more about de Branges, as a way of 
> beginning to understand what mathematicians do when they are trying to 
> prove a major hypothesis."
>
>  Among other things, Sabbagh gives excerpts from reviews of de 
> Branges' declined National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal, 
> submitted in 2002. The reviews are fairly negative, but Sabbagh 
> presents them sympathetically, as if to argue that the NSF and its 
> reviewers are trying to stifle the efforts of someone who is about to 
> make a breakthrough on the Riemann Hypothesis. However, de Branges has 
> enjoyed considerable past support from the NSF. Specifically, he was 
> supported by the NSF continuously from 1984 through 1998, and again 
> from 2000 through 2002. In all, the NSF has awarded six grants 
> totaling $459,279 for the work of de Branges on the Riemann 
> Hypothesis. (This information is publicly available at the NSF 
> Fastlane web site.)
>
>  As a former program director at NSF, I know that program directors 
> there will take a chance on risky proposals that attack long standing 
> important unsolved problems, particularly if the principal 
> investigator has a good track record. De Branges is one example of 
> someone who has been supported for a high-risk proposal on some long 
> unsolved problem; there are other examples. It is appropriate that 
> such investigators be given some time to investigate a risky approach. 
> On the other hand, it is not surprising that someone with sixteen 
> years of support and little to show for it would be turned down. The 
> conventional wisdom is that de Branges' approach will not work. But if 
> de Branges does succeed, and the conventional wisdom turns out to be 
> wrong, then Sabbagh's book will look quite prophetic.
From sdw at lig.net  Thu Jun 10 17:13:29 2004
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Thu Jun 10 17:12:33 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Showdown With The Linux Gang
Message-ID: <40C8F929.3030307@lig.net>

Old news, but funny that WashPost thinks that Linux uses the General 
Plublic License and that "SCO's clams are groundless".  (Their claims 
are groundless too presumably.)  The Washington Post has 3-8 typos or 
researchos every day that I notice.  Do they not pay to have editors 
anymore?  Is it somehow more difficult to proofreed when everyone can 
see the official copy and fix it electronically??  Couldn't they pay 
proofreaders in India overnight for the low low price of $x???


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29675-2004Jun9.html

Showdown With The Linux Gang
One Company's Lawsuits Challenge Open-Source Code

      
       
Darl McBride, chief executive of SCO Group, says Linux users have 
rustled his company's Unix software code. (Tom Smart For The Washington 
Post)


 
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page E01

LINDON, Utah -- For a small but fervent cadre of computer enthusiasts, 
the most popular Internet parlor activity over the past year hasn't 
involved animated dungeons, dragons or warlords.

Instead, it is real-life sleuthing to piece together a business puzzle: 
How can a tiny, struggling software company based here at the foot of 
the Wasatch Mountains afford to pursue a legal donnybrook with some of 
the biggest names in corporate America?

SCO Group Inc. is suing companies such as International Business 
Machines Corp., Novell Inc., DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone Inc. -- and 
threatening government agencies and more than 1,500 other firms -- over 
their use of software called Linux.

Many big companies and organizations have embraced Linux in recent years 
because of its chief virtue: It's free. Developed and maintained by a 
loose confederation of engineers, Linux is available to anyone and can 
be modified by users, challenging the traditional model of software 
controlled and licensed to others by a single entity such as Microsoft Corp.

SCO claims that pieces of code from another operating system that it 
owns found its way into Linux, and the company is demanding a licensing 
fee of $700 for every computer server running the software.

In the process, SCO has become one of the most hated companies in the 
country, and it has sparked a vitriolic war over the future of software. 
Linux advocates regard SCO as part of a broader campaign to snuff out 
the software, known by its smiling penguin logo.

"There are some vested interests, Microsoft among them, to whom the 
whole concept of Internet collaboration is a threat," said Eric S. 
Raymond, a technology book author who was one of the first to take up 
the fight against SCO more than a year ago.

Working largely on their own time, Linux devotees apply their 
collaborative model for creating software, known as open source, to 
attack SCO and its case. Dozens of online detectives comb corporate 
documents, analyze legal filings and publish everything they can find 
about the company, its finances, management and connections to Microsoft.

One Web site focused exclusively on the case, known as Groklaw, was 
started by a paralegal named Pamela Jones and now has roughly 5,000 
contributors. Though it is ardently pro-Linux, the site has grown into 
such an exhaustive archive of software history and law that attorneys on 
both sides use it as a resource.

"Our international membership means SCO can't do anything anywhere on 
the planet without someone seeing it and telling on them," Jones said in 
an e-mail interview.

Redmond Shadow

The strongest evidence pointing to possible Microsoft encouragement in 
the SCO campaign is this: Early last year, Microsoft agreed it would pay 
SCO an eyebrow-raising sum, as much as $16 million, to license its 
technology, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange 
Commission. Later, Microsoft executives brought SCO to the attention of 
a venture fund, BayStar Capital, which ended up putting together 
investments in SCO totaling $50 million.

Microsoft spokesman Mark Martin said the company's sole involvement with 
SCO was the license. He said it was needed because Windows makes use of 
some code from software known as Unix, a version of which is owned by 
SCO. Sun Microsystems also purchased a license from SCO.

The cash infusions allowed SCO to hire one of the nation's most 
prominent and expensive litigators, David Boies, to press its claims. In 
one of the case's many odd twists, it was Boies who tormented Microsoft 
when he served on the Justice Department's legal team in its antitrust 
prosecution of the company in the late 1990s. To retain his services, 
Boies's firm received a $10 million cut of the $50 million investment 
SCO received, as well as 400,000 shares of SCO stock, which could soar 
in value if the company prevails.

Most troubling to companies, governments and other potential Linux users 
is that SCO is going after them instead of the companies that provided 
them with the software. Generally, they get Linux from distributors such 
as IBM and Novell or Red Hat Inc., which make money by selling 
installation and support and packaging other services to go with it.

"Companies like DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone have been dragged into this 
as pawns in a bigger fight . . . and that is not logical," said Daniel 
Egger, who heads Open Source Risk Management, which he hopes will offer 
insurance to companies worried about copyright infringement with 
open-source software. "They didn't write it. They are just end users 
running it."

Linux backers call this tactic the spreading of "FUD," tech-speak for 
fear, uncertainty and doubt, to turn the marketplace against open-source 
software.

Tensions are so high that people on both sides claim they have received 
threats to their safety. Groklaw's Jones said she closely guards her 
privacy and base of operations after a menacing note appeared on an 
Internet message board.

SCO chief executive Darl McBride said he now sometimes carries a 
handgun, and his wife sometimes gets threatening calls when he is away 
on business. On Super Bowl Sunday this year, SCO's Web site was 
temporarily shut down by a virus aimed at the company.

"This case is a tinderbox," said Laura DiDio, a software analyst at the 
Yankee Group research firm, who said that some "Linux loonies" have 
harassed her over her research reports on the lawsuits, which generally 
have favored SCO's legal position. "IBM is using Novell, and Microsoft 
and Sun are using SCO to fight their battles for them."

Linux leaders deplore harassment as the work of an errant few, but they 
have no reservations about their desire to revolutionize the 
fundamentals of the software industry.

They believe that open-source collaboration yields better software, 
because more minds are put to the task. And they argue that 
operating-system software is now so essential to the economy that it 
should be a basic commodity that is cheap, or free, so that users can 
better spend their resources tailoring it to fit their needs and using 
it to expand their businesses.

"When that happens, some people lose, but everyone else wins, because 
things getting cheaper raises the general wealth level and raises 
productivity," said Raymond, the author.

Disputing the Benefits

McBride calls these arguments tantamount to a death sentence for a 
multibillion-dollar software industry that has helped propel the United 
States to economic and technological leadership in the digital era.

In March, he sent a letter to every member of Congress warning that 
Linux threatens the country's economic well-being and even its national 
security.

"Each Open Source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of 
proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software," he said in 
his letter. "This means fewer jobs, less software revenue and reduced 
incentives for software companies to innovate."

If open-source advocates want to give away their wares, McBride said, 
they can do so. But he insists they cannot take code from SCO-owned 
Unix, put it into Linux and distribute it for free.

He sometimes describes the company's predicament in the down-to-earth 
language of the cattle business in which he was raised.

"We went out one day and our Unix cows were missing," McBride said he 
told his father in trying to explain the case to him. "We looked in the 
Linux pen, and there's a bunch of them in there that have our brand on 
them . . . in this case the copyright. Someone took our cows and we want 
'em back -- it's as simple as that."

SCO officials acknowledge that the firm, formerly known as Caldera, was 
likely going out of business before pursuing its Linux licensing 
program. The company purchased rights to Unix code from Novell and sells 
it to some companies, but McBride said that business cannot compete with 
Linux's free distribution model.

For its part, Microsoft has been on the offensive against Linux for 
years, often labeling it one of the company's greatest competitive 
threats. Calling it "viral" and a "cancer," officials have lobbied the 
Pentagon, other agencies and foreign governments not to use it, while 
stepping up efforts to win business customers by being more flexible in 
Windows licensing negotiations.

More recently, the firm's public rhetoric has moderated.

"Developers should be free to use whatever license they choose," Martin 
said. "But Microsoft wants people to be aware of the benefits and 
drawbacks."

Last month, however, a think tank heavily funded by Microsoft, the 
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, issued a lengthy study questioning 
whether developers of Linux, including patriarch Linus Torvalds, 
appropriated substantial amounts of code from other systems.

Torvalds denies the charge, as do developers quoted in the study who say 
its author distorted their views. But Torvalds recently told Linux 
developers that when they add features or refinements to the software, 
they should certify that the code was not improperly copied.

Even the most hardened Linux advocates, including Torvalds, doubt that 
Microsoft inspired SCO to bring its lawsuits. But they contend the 
software giant knows how to exploit a golden opportunity when it sees one.

For them, news of the $50 million investments in SCO had the whiff of a 
smoking gun. Why would a Northern California venture capital firm, 
BayStar Capital, and the Royal Bank of Canada sink a combined $50 
million into a company that acknowledged that Linux was so overwhelming 
its Unix business that its only hope of survival was its lawsuits?

It was then that one of the online gumshoes scored his biggest coup: 
Raymond was leaked a memo from an SCO consultant suggesting that 
Microsoft was behind those investments, and more.

"Microsoft will have brought in $86 million for us including BayStar," 
wrote Michael Anderer to SCO Vice President Christopher Sontag in an 
e-mail dated Oct. 12. "Microsoft also indicated there was a lot more 
money out there and they would clearly rather use BayStar 'like' 
entities to help us get significantly more money if we want to grow 
further or do acquisitions."

Responding to the clamor, SCO said the e-mail was authentic, but that 
Anderer had gotten many details wrong, including Microsoft's 
involvement. Like Microsoft, McBride said there is no connection between 
the two beyond the licensing deal.

McBride said he thinks Anderer, who worked with him at a previous 
company, was trying to inflate the size of deals he brought to the company.

"We hired him as a consultant to help put together some licensing deals 
with Microsoft, which he did," McBride said. "Consultants have fee 
arrangements, and . . . the more dollars they can attribute to something 
they are doing, then obviously the bigger their fee would be."

 From his home office, Anderer said he could not discuss the issue 
because of a nondisclosure agreement with SCO. He said he was 
disappointed when he heard McBride's response to the memo.

BayStar, meanwhile, said it was introduced to SCO by Microsoft officials.

"I would not have known about the existence of SCO, but for the 
introduction by Microsoft," BayStar President Lawrence Goldfarb said in 
an interview.

SCO officials say the introduction was made by a former Microsoft 
employee, but Goldfarb said he was approached by two current, senior 
Microsoft executives whom he did not name except to say they were not 
Chairman Bill Gates or chief executive Steven A. Ballmer.

Goldfarb added that Microsoft's involvement stopped at the introduction, 
and that Microsoft is not an investor in BayStar.

"We're a pure financial animal," Goldfarb said of the venture capital 
firm. The terms of the investment deal were attractive, he said, with 
BayStar purchasing $20 million worth of preferred shares that paid an 
ongoing dividend. The firm mitigates its risk by shorting the common 
stock of the company it is investing in.

Goldfarb said BayStar researched SCO's legal claims before investing and 
believes they have merit, giving the BayStar investment potentially high 
returns.

He added that he agrees with concerns held by SCO, and Microsoft, that 
contractual terms for Linux designed to keep it free -- known as the 
General Public License -- can undermine ownership rights of software 
that might be used in the same network environment.

*'This Sucking Effect'
*
Under this view, software that is enhanced to work in conjunction with 
Linux might be labeled a Linux derivative, which the public license then 
requires to be distributed for free.

"The GPL has this sucking effect of grabbing your IP [intellectual 
property], sucking it in and destroying your property rights," McBride 
said.

Torvalds, the Linux founder, ridicules that notion.

"Having a hole in your head has this sucking effect," Torvalds said, 
firing back at McBride. "The GPL doesn't 'grab' any IP at all. The only 
thing that is desperately trying to grab other people's IP is Darl 
McBride and company."

Still, some Linux advocates such as Bruce Perens, former open-source 
strategist at Hewlett-Packard, say the GPL has some "ambiguities." But 
Perens argues these are easily resolved. An even bigger assault on Linux 
looms, he fears, through the assertion of patent rights by big software 
firms.

If any company were to worry about threats to intellectual property, it 
would be IBM, which holds more patents than any other firm in the world. 
But the company has staked a portion of its business on Linux, selling 
services and add-ons to other companies and institutions.

IBM officials declined to comment on the lawsuit. The company said that 
it has had no problems working with all types of licenses.

"If you understand and adhere to the terms and conditions, you can work 
with the software," said IBM spokeswoman Trink Guarino.

In its lawsuit against SCO, Red Hat -- the country's largest Linux 
distributor -- has asked a judge to declare Linux free of infringed 
code. Meanwhile, organizations such as the National Retail Foundation 
have issued statements that, based on their research, SCO's clams are 
groundless.

As for SCO, it has had a rocky past few weeks. Its stock, which soared 
when it began its lawsuit campaign, has since dropped dramatically.

More recently, the Royal Bank of Canada dropped out of the picture, 
selling two-thirds of its stake to BayStar and converting the remaining 
$10 million into SCO stock, which it can sell on the open market.

Initially, BayStar also sought a refund of its investment, which could 
have stripped SCO of much of its cash.

"We do not like to be in the public forum," Goldfarb said. "We were not 
happy with what we thought was a cavalier attitude [by SCO management] . 
. . in dealing with investor relations and the press. This is an issue 
of grave importance."

But recently, BayStar said it was satisfied with SCO management.







sdw

-- 
swilliams@hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st
Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw

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From sdw at lig.net  Thu Jun 10 17:26:09 2004
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Thu Jun 10 17:25:08 2004
Subject: [FoRK] [Fwd: Skype Upsets VOIP, Dumb Smart Phone, Google Envy,
 Video Editing Shoot-Out]
Message-ID: <40C8FC21.50700@lig.net>

Usually I wouldn't forward one of these directly, but there are at least 
5 good articles.
Boy am I glad I went the SprintPCS/Handspring Treo 600 route.

sdw

-- 
swilliams@hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st
Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw


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From: What's New Now from Ziff Davis <whatsnewnow@eletters.wnn.ziffdavis.com>
Subject: Skype Upsets VOIP, Dumb Smart Phone, Google Envy,
	Video Editing Shoot-Out
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 23:43:18 UT
Size: 11901
Url: http://lair.xent.com/pipermail/fork/attachments/20040610/b015e657/SkypeUpsetsVOIPDumbSmartPhoneGoogleEnvyVideoEditingShoot-Out.mht
From bill at wstoddard.com  Thu Jun 10 19:38:38 2004
From: bill at wstoddard.com (Bill Stoddard)
Date: Thu Jun 10 19:38:16 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Showdown With The Linux Gang
In-Reply-To: <40C8F929.3030307@lig.net>
References: <40C8F929.3030307@lig.net>
Message-ID: <40C91B2E.20505@wstoddard.com>

Stephen D. Williams wrote:

> By Jonathan Krim
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page E01
> 
> LINDON, Utah -- For a small but fervent cadre of computer enthusiasts, 
> the most popular Internet parlor activity over the past year hasn't 
> involved animated dungeons, dragons or warlords.

Ok, I just stopped reading. Why doesn't Krin go on to say 'and for once it's not eating paste either'. Jeesh.

Bill
From joe at barrera.org  Thu Jun 10 19:43:57 2004
From: joe at barrera.org (Joseph S. Barrera III)
Date: Thu Jun 10 19:43:09 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Showdown With The Linux Gang
In-Reply-To: <40C91B2E.20505@wstoddard.com>
References: <40C8F929.3030307@lig.net> <40C91B2E.20505@wstoddard.com>
Message-ID: <40C91C6D.9040407@barrera.org>

Bill Stoddard wrote:

>  Ok, I just stopped reading. Why doesn't Krin go on to say 'and for
>  once it's not eating paste either'.

Because we're still eating paste?

I mean, I am, still, at least. When I'm not taping my glasses.

- Joe

From sdw at lig.net  Thu Jun 10 19:50:54 2004
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Thu Jun 10 19:49:58 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Showdown With The Linux Gang
In-Reply-To: <40C91B2E.20505@wstoddard.com>
References: <40C8F929.3030307@lig.net> <40C91B2E.20505@wstoddard.com>
Message-ID: <40C91E0E.3070906@lig.net>

Yea, he's not the sharpest FoRK in the drawer...

Hmm...  FoRK Awards.  Cool.
Sharpest FoRK in the Drawer Award
Twisted Tine Award
Devil's Pitch FoRK Award
FoRK in the Road Award
Three Tine Innovator Award

sdw

Bill Stoddard wrote:

> Stephen D. Williams wrote:
>
>> By Jonathan Krim
>> Washington Post Staff Writer
>> Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page E01
>>
>> LINDON, Utah -- For a small but fervent cadre of computer 
>> enthusiasts, the most popular Internet parlor activity over the past 
>> year hasn't involved animated dungeons, dragons or warlords.
>
>
> Ok, I just stopped reading. Why doesn't Krin go on to say 'and for 
> once it's not eating paste either'. Jeesh.
>
> Bill
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork



-- 
swilliams@hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st
Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw

From deafbox at hotmail.com  Fri Jun 11 09:27:28 2004
From: deafbox at hotmail.com (Russell Turpin)
Date: Fri Jun 11 09:26:45 2004
Subject: [FoRK] "ACLU persuades Virginia park to allow baptisms"
Message-ID: <BAY12-F84OO36UeR0z200059c6d@hotmail.com>

Many people believe the ACLU opposes religion.
In fact, the ACLU is and long has been the chief
defender of free religious expression. Here is the
latest example:

http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/lateststories/index.ssf?/base/national-25/1086908341263450.xml

Recently, the ACLU has also defended a young
girl who wore a religious T-shirt to school. Anyone
surprised by that has been duped by right-wing
spin. The ACLU's stance has consistently supported
individual religious expression, and as part of that,
it has insisted on government neutrality
regarding religion. The ACLU is supported in
this by a variety of religious groups.

The religious right, which should not be
confused with the larger religious population,
wants the government to favor religion
generally, and Christianity specifically. They
interpret any opposition to government
preference as opposition to religion. They
relentlessly lie to support their spin. Their
biggest lie is the false notion that prayer
has been made illegal in public schools. In
fact, it's not. And the ACLU would vigorously
oppose any effort to outlaw prayer, in
public school or elsewhere.

I know: I'm preaching to the choir here. But
this is important stuff, so forgive me for a
little preaching.

_________________________________________________________________
Get fast, reliable Internet access with MSN 9 Dial-up – now 3 months FREE! 
http://join.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/

From jbone at place.org  Fri Jun 11 10:53:54 2004
From: jbone at place.org (Contempt for Meatheads)
Date: Fri Jun 11 10:53:06 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Mac Envy
Message-ID: <4E016C59-BBD0-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>

	
Hilarious:

	http://features.engadget.com/entry/8828351836181248/

and the screenshot:

	http://screenshots.haque.net/screenshots/view/16062/screenshot 
-16062.jpg

jb

From bill at wstoddard.com  Fri Jun 11 11:01:25 2004
From: bill at wstoddard.com (Bill Stoddard)
Date: Fri Jun 11 11:01:10 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Mac Envy
In-Reply-To: <4E016C59-BBD0-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>
References: <4E016C59-BBD0-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>
Message-ID: <40C9F375.1070800@wstoddard.com>

Contempt for Meatheads wrote:

>     
> Hilarious:
> 
>     http://features.engadget.com/entry/8828351836181248/
> 
> and the screenshot:
> 
>     http://screenshots.haque.net/screenshots/view/16062/screenshot 
> -16062.jpg

The 'uptime' gives it away as a Windows machine :-)

B
From jbone at place.org  Fri Jun 11 14:26:41 2004
From: jbone at place.org (Contempt for Meatheads)
Date: Fri Jun 11 14:25:57 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Pay no attention to the left hand...
Message-ID: <07A3EB87-BBEE-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>

	
Sadly, this is probably closer to truth and warrants more consideration  
than its ranterish presentation might otherwise indicate...

	http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http:// 
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060804_coup_detat.html

--

COUP D'ETAT:
The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the
CIA on June 3rd and 4th

Bush, Cheney Indictments in Plame Case Looming

by
Michael C. Ruppert

additional reporting by
Wayne Madsen from Washington

? Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications,  
www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted,  
distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes  
only.

JUNE 8, 2004 1600 PDT (FTW) - Why did DCI George Tenet suddenly resign  
on June 3rd, only to be followed a day later by James Pavitt, the CIA's  
Deputy Director of Operations (DDO)?

The real reasons, contrary to the saturation spin being put out by  
major news outlets, have nothing to do with Tenet's role as taking the  
fall for alleged 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence "failures" before the  
upcoming presidential election.

Both resignations, perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from  
Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent  
and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon  
administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central  
Intelligence Agency. The coup, in the planning for at least two years,  
has apparently become an urgent priority as a number of deepening  
crises threaten a global meltdown.

Based upon recent developments, it appears that long-standing plans and  
preparations leading to indictments and impeachment of Bush, Cheney and  
even some senior cabinet members have been accelerated, possibly with  
the intent of removing or replacing the entire Bush regime prior to the  
Republican National Convention this August.

FTW has been documenting this Watergate-like coup for more than fifteen  
months and almost everything we will discuss about recent events was  
predicted by us in the following pages: Please see our stories "The  
Perfect Storm - Part I" (March 2003); "Blood in the Water" (July 2003);  
"Beyond Bush - Part I" (July 2003); "Waxman Ties Evidentiary Noose  
Around Rice and Cheney" (July 2003); and "Beyond Bush - Part II"  
(October 2003).

There were two things we didn't get right. One was the timing. We  
predicted the developments taking place now as likely to happen after  
the November election, not before. Secondly, we did not foresee the  
sudden resignations of Tenet and Pavitt. Understanding the resignations  
is the key to understanding a deteriorating world scene and that  
America is on the precipice of a presidential and constitutional crisis  
that will ultimately dwarf the removal of Richard Nixon in 1974.

So why did Tenet and Pavitt resign? We'll explain why and we will  
provide many clues along the way as we make our case.

HIGH CRIMES AND REALLY STUPID MOVES

Shortly after the "surprise" Tenet-Pavitt resignations, current and  
former senior members of the U.S. intelligence community and the  
Justice Department told journalist Wayne Madsen, a former Naval  
intelligence officer, that they were directly connected to the criminal  
investigation of a 2003 White House leak that openly exposed Valerie  
Plame as an undercover CIA officer. What received less attention was  
that the leak also destroyed a long-term CIA proprietary intelligence  
gathering operation which, as we will see, was of immense importance to  
US strategic interests at a critical moment.

The leak was a vindictive retaliation for statements, reports and  
actions taken by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson,  
which had deeply embarrassed the Bush administration and exposed it to  
possible charges for impeachable offenses, including lying to the  
American people about an alleged (and totally unfounded) nuclear threat  
posed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Conservative columnist Robert Novak,  
the beneficiary of the leak, immediately published it on July 14, 2003  
and Valerie Plame's career (at least the covert part) instantly ended.  
The actual damage caused by that leak has never been fully appreciated.

Wilson deeply embarrassed almost every senior member of the Bush junta  
by proving to the world that they were consciously lying about one of  
their most important justifications for invading Iraq: namely, their  
claim to have had certain knowledge, based on "good and reliable"  
intelligence, that Hussein was on the brink of deploying a nuclear  
weapon, possibly inside the United States. It was eventually disclosed  
that the "intelligence" possessed by the administration was a set of  
poorly forged documents on letterhead from the government of Niger,  
which described attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium for a  
nuclear weapons program.

It has since been established by Scott Ritter and others that Iraq's  
nuclear weapons program had been dead in the water and non-functioning  
since the first Iraq war.

Wilson was secretly dispatched in February 2002, on instructions from  
Dick Cheney to the CIA, to go to Niger and look for anything that might  
support the material in the documents. They had already been dismissed  
as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the CIA, and  
apparently everyone else who had seen them. The CIA cautioned the  
administration, more than once, against using them. Shortly thereafter,  
Wilson returned and gave his report stating clearly that the  
allegations were pure bunk and unsupportable.

In spite of this, unaware of the booby traps laid all around them, the  
entire power core of the Bush administration jumped on the Niger  
documents as on a battle horse and charged off into in a massive public  
relations blitz. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz and  
others - to varying degrees - insisted, testified, and swore that they  
knew, and had reliable, credible and verified intelligence that Saddam  
was about to deploy an actual nuclear device built from the Niger  
yellowcake.

It was full court media press and they successfully scared the pants  
off of most Americans who believed that Saddam was going to nuke them  
any second.

George Bush made the charge and actually cited the documents in his  
2003 State-of-the-Union address, even after he had been cautioned by  
George Tenet not to rely on them. In a major speech at the United  
Nations, Colin Powell charged that Iraq was on the verge of deploying a  
nuke and had been trying to acquire uranium. Dick Cheney charged in  
several speeches that Saddam was capable of nuclear terror. And shortly  
before the invasion, when asked in a television interview whether there  
was sufficient proof and advance warning of the Iraqi nuclear threat, a  
smug and confident Condoleezza Rice quipped, "If we wait for a smoking  
gun, that smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud over an American city."  
Rice was lying through her teeth.

By July of 2003, as the Iraqi invasion was proving to be a protracted  
and ill-conceived debacle, executed in spite of massive resistance from  
within military, political, diplomatic and economic cadres, there was  
growing disgust within many government circles about the way the Bush  
administration was running things. The mention of Wilson's report came  
in July though his name was not disclosed. It suggested corroborative  
evidence of criminal, rather than stupid, behavior by the  
administration. The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

A senior CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the  
intelligence agency informed the White House on March 9, 2002 - 10  
months before Bush's nationally televised speech - that an agency  
source who had traveled to Niger could not confirm European  
intelligence reports that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from the  
West African country.

Note the reference to an Agency source.

It was inevitable that Wilson would move from no comment, to statements  
given on condition of anonymity, and finally into the public spotlight.  
That he did, in a July 6th New York Times Editorial titled "What I  
Didn't Find in Africa." Soon he was giving interviews everywhere.

On July 14th Novak published the column outing Wilson's wife, Valerie  
Plame. As a result, any criminal investigation of the Plame leak will  
also go into the Niger documents and any crimes committed which are  
materially related to Plame's exposure.

Instead of retreating, Wilson advanced. In Septmeber he went public,  
writing editorials and granting interviews which thoroughly exposed the  
Bush administration's criminal use of the documents, Cheney's lies  
about the mission, and all the other lies used to deceive the American  
people into war.

At the moment he went on the record, Wilson became another legally  
admissible, corroborative evidentiary source; a witness available for  
subpoena and deposition, ready to give testimony to the high crimes and  
misdemeanors he has witnessed.

First Clue: James Pavitt was Valerie Plame's boss. So was George Tenet.

HOW THE TRAP WAS SET

Conflicting news reports suggest that perhaps several sets of the  
documents were delivered simultaneously to several recipients. I could  
find only one news story (out of almost 60 I have reviewed) which  
indicated just when the Niger papers were first put into play. One of  
the most fundamental questions in journalism, "when?" was omitted from  
every major press organization's coverage except for a single story  
from the Associated Press on July 13th.

? [T]he forged Niger government documents, showing attempts by Iraq to  
purchase yellowcake, were delivered by unknown sources to a journalist  
working for Italy's Corriere della Sera which then gave them to the  
Italian intelligence service. She then reportedly gave them to Italian  
intelligence agents who gave them to the US embassy. Seymour Hersh of  
the New Yorker also offered this version indicating that the documents  
had surfaced in Italy in the fall of 2001.

The fall of 2001. That means that the documents were created no more  
than three and a half months after September 11th.

The earliest press report mentioning the documents was a March 7, 2003  
story in The Financial Times. On that day, Mohammed El Baradei, head of  
the International Atomic Energy Agency reported to the UN Security  
Council that the documents were forgeries. The story contained a  
revealing paragraph.

"The allegation about the uranium purchase first surfaced in a UK  
government dossier published on September 24 last year about Iraq's  
alleged weapons programmes, though it did not name Niger. Niger was  
first named when the US State Department elaborated on the allegations  
on December 19 [2002]?

Canada's Globe and Mail reported on March 8, 2003:

?[T]he forgeries were sold to an Italian intelligence agent by a con  
man some time ago and passed on to French authorities, but the scam was  
uncovered by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] only  
recently, according to United Nations sources familiar with the  
investigation. The documents were turned over to the IAEA several weeks  
ago.

"In fact, the IAEA says, there is no credible evidence that Iraq tried  
to import uranium ore from the Central African country in violation of  
UN resolutions.

"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the  
concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the  
basis for the reports of these uranium transactions between Iraq and  
Niger, are, in fact, not authentic," Mr. El Baradei told the UN  
Security Council Friday?.

The Chicago Tribune reported on March 13, 2003, "Forged documents that  
the United States used to build its case against Iraq were likely  
written by someone in Niger's embassy in Rome who hoped to make quick  
money, a source close to the United Nations investigation said.

The Washington Post gave yet a different story, also on March 8, 2003:

?Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation  
described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi  
agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The  
documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed  
extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude  
errors that eventually gave them away - including names and titles that  
did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the  
letters were purportedly written, the officials said?"

?The CIA, which had also obtained the documents, had questions about  
"whether they were accurate," said one intelligence official, and it  
decided not to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure  
weapons of mass destruction.

In a follow-up story on March 13th the Post reported:

It's something we're just beginning to look at," a senior law  
enforcement official said yesterday. Officials are trying to determine  
whether the documents were forged to try to influence U.S. policy, or  
whether they may have been created as part of a disinformation campaign  
directed by a foreign intelligence service...


?The phony documents - a series of letters between Iraqi and Niger  
officials showing Iraq's interest in equipment that could be used to  
make nuclear weapons - came to British and U.S. intelligence officials  
from a third country. The identity of the third country could not be  
learned yesterday.

What if it wasn't a foreign intelligence service? I had been suspicious  
that a Watergate-like coup was forming immediately after reading the  
first few stories about the documents. I was convinced when the AP  
reported on March 14, 2003 (just days before the Iraqi invasion) that  
the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee had called  
for an FBI investigation of the documents' origins. The Boston Globe  
reported two days later that the Senator was specifically seeking to  
determine whether administration officials had forged the documents  
themselves to marshal support for the invasion.

The request was not nearly as significant to me as who it had come from  
- Jay Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Rockefellers. An oil dynasty was  
calling for an investigation of a bunch of oil men. Somebody was  
screwing up big time.

Seymour Hersh dropped a major bombshell that went virtually unnoticed,  
54 paragraphs deep into an October 27, 2003 story for the New Yorker  
titled "The Stovepipe."

Who produced the fake Niger papers? There is nothing approaching a  
consensus on this question within the intelligence community. There has  
been published speculation about the intelligence services of several  
different countries. One theory, favored by some journalists in Rome,  
is that [the Italian intelligence service] Sismi produced the false  
documents and passed them to Panorama for publication.

"Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He  
had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first  
wrote about the forgery, and said, 'Somebody deliberately let something  
false get in there.' He became more forthcoming in subsequent months,  
eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A.  
clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last  
year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves. [emphasis added]

Hersh's revelation provided corroboration for something I and others,  
like the renowned political historian Peter Dale Scott, had been  
suspecting for a long time. The CIA was fighting back. This was a well  
orchestrated, long-term covert operation - exactly what the CIA does  
all over the world.

POINT OF NO RETURN

Willing disclosure of the identity of a covert operative is a serious  
felony under Federal law, punishable by fine and/or imprisonment. The  
Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 makes it a crime for  
anyone with access to classified information to intentionally disclose  
information identifying a covert operative. The penalties get worse for  
doing it to a deep cover Direcorate of Operations (DO) case officer (as  
opposed to an undercover DEA Agent).

After John Ashcroft was forced to recuse himself from the case, Patrick  
Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, was transferred to Washington  
and appointed special prosecutor in the Plame case.

Robert Novak, rightly standing by the journalistic code of ethics, has  
steadfastly refused to identify his White House source. We would do the  
same thing in his shoes. The investigation is nearing a climax with  
pending issuance of criminal indictments. Press reports citing sources  
close to the investigation have directly and indirectly pointed fingers  
at Dick Cheney and his Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, as  
suspects.

Second clue: The criminal investigation of the Plame leak was  
investigated after a September 2003 formal request from the CIA,  
approved by George Tenet.

Not only was Plame's cover blown, so was that of her cover company,  
Brewster, Jennings & Associates. With the public exposure of Plame,  
intelligence agencies all over the world started searching data bases  
for any references to her (TIME Magazine). Damage control was  
immediate, as the CIA asserted that her mission had been connected to  
weapons of mass destruction.

However, it was not long before stories from the Washington Post and  
the Wall Street Journal tied Brewster, Jennings & Associates to energy,  
oil and the Saudi-owned Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO.  
Brewster Jennings had been a founder of Mobil Oil company, one of  
Aramco's principal founders.

According to additional sources interviewed by Wayne Madsen, Brewster  
Jennings was, in fact, a well-established CIA proprietary company,  
linked for many years to ARAMCO. The demise of Brewster Jennings was  
also guaranteed the moment Plame was outed.

It takes years for Non-Official Covers or NOCs, as they are known, to  
become really effective. Over time, they become gradually more trusted;  
they work their way into deeper information access from more sensitive  
sources. NOCs are generally regarded in the community as among the best  
and most valuable of all CIA operations officers and the agency goes to  
great lengths to protect them in what are frequently very risky  
missions.

By definition, Valerie Plame was an NOC. Yet unlike all other NOCs who  
fear exposure and torture or death from hostile governments and  
individual targets who have been judged threats to the United States,  
she got done in by her own President, whom we also judge to be a  
domestic enemy of the United States.

Moreover, as we will see below, Valerie Plame may have been one of the  
most important NOCs the CIA had in the current climate. Let's look at  
just how valuable she was.

ARAMCO

According to an April 29, 2002 report in Britain's Guardian, ARAMCO  
constitutes 12% of the world's total oil production; a figure which has  
certainly increased as other countries have progressed deeper into  
irreversible decline.

ARAMCO is the largest oil group in the world, a state-owned Saudi  
company in partnership with four major US oil companies. Another one of  
Aramco?s partners is Chevron-Texaco which gave up one of its board  
members, Condoleezza Rice, when she became the National Security  
Advisor to George Bush. All of ARAMCO?s key decisions are made by the  
Saudi royal family while US oil expertise, personnel and technology  
keeps the cash coming in and the oil going out. ARAMCO operates,  
manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil fields ? 25% of all the  
oil on the planet.

It gets better.

According to a New York Times report on March 8th of this year, ARAMCO  
is planning to make a 25% investment in a new and badly needed refinery  
to produce gasoline. The remaining 75% ownership of the refinery will  
go to the only nation that is quickly becoming America's major world  
competitor for ever-diminishing supplies of oil: China.

Almost the entire Bush administration has an interest in ARAMCO.

The Boston Globe reported that in 2001 ARAMCO had signed a $140 million  
multi-year contract with Halliburton, then chaired by Dick Cheney, to  
develop a new oil field. Halliburton does a lot of business in Saudi  
Arabia. Current estimates of Halliburton contracts or joint ventures in  
the country run into the tens of billions of dollars.

So do the fortunes of some shady figures from the Bush family's past.

As recently as 1991 ARAMCO had Khalid bin Mahfouz sitting on its  
Supreme Council or board of directors. Mahfouz, Saudi Arabia's former  
treasurer and the nation's largest banker, has been reported in several  
places to be Osama bin Laden's brother in law. However, he has denied  
this and brought intense legal pressure to bear demanding retractions  
of these allegations. He has major partnership investments with the  
multi-billion dollar Binladin Group of companies and he is a former  
director of BCCI, the infamous criminal drug-money laundering bank  
which performed a number of very useful services for the CIA before its  
1991 collapse under criminal investigation by a whole lot of countries.

As Saudi Arabia's largest banker he handles the accounts of the royal  
family and - no doubt - ARAMCO, while at the same time he is a named  
defendant in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by 9/11 victim families  
against the Saudi government and prominent Saudi officials who, the  
suit alleges, were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

Both BCCI and Mahfouz have historical connections to the Bush family  
dating back to the 1980s. Another bank (one of many) connected to  
Mahfouz - the InterMaritime Bank - bailed out a cash-starved Harken  
Energy in 1987 with $25 million. After the rejuvenated Harken got a  
no-bid oil lease in 1991, CEO George W. Bush promptly sold his shares  
in a pump-and-dump scheme and made a whole lot of money.

Knowing all of this, there's really no good reason why the CIA should  
be too upset, is there? It was only a long-term proprietary and  
deep-cover NOC - well established and consistently producing "take"  
from ARAMCO (and who knows what else in Saudi Arabia). It was destroyed  
with a motive of personal vengeance (there may have been other motives)  
by someone inside the White House.

 From the CIA's point of view, at a time when Saudi Arabia is one of the  
three or four countries of highest interest to the US, the Plame  
operation was irreplaceable.

Third clue: Tenet's resignation, which occurred at night, was the first  
"evening resignation" of a Cabinet-level official since October 1973  
when Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy, William  
Ruckelshaus, resigned in protest of Richard Nixon's firing of Watergate  
special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Many regard this as the watershed  
moment when the Nixon administration was doomed.

SAUDI ARABIA

Given that energy is becoming the most important issue on the planet  
today, if you were the CIA, you might be a little pissed off at the  
Plame leak. But there may be justification to do more than be angry.  
Anger happens all the time in Washington. This is something else.

One of the most important intelligence prizes today - especially after  
recent stories in major outlets like the New York Times reporting that  
Saudi oil production has peaked and gone into irreversible decline -  
would be to know of a certainty whether those reports are correct. The  
Saudis are denying it vehemently but they are being strongly refuted by  
an increasing amount of hard data. The truth remains unproven. But the  
mere possibility has set the world's financial markets on edge. Saudi  
Oil Minister Ali Naimi came to Washington on April 27th to put out the  
fires. It was imperative that he calm everybody's nerves as the markets  
were screaming, "Say it ain't so!"

Naimi said emphatically that there was nothing to worry about  
concerning either Saudi reserves or ARAMCO's ability to increase  
production. There was plenty of oil and no need for concern.

FTW covered and reported on that event. Writer and energy expert Julian  
Darley noted that there were some very important ears in the room,  
listening very closely. He also noted that Naimi's "scientific" data  
and promises of large future discoveries did not sit well many who are  
well versed in oil production and delivery.

[See FTW's June 2nd story, "Saudi's Missing Barrels" and our May 2003  
story, "Paris Peak Oil Conference Reveals Deepening Crisis." In that  
story FTW editor Mike Ruppert was the first to report on credible new  
information that Saudi Arabia had possibly peaked.]

If anybody has the real data on Saudi fields it is either ARAMCO or the  
highest levels of the Saudi royal family.

The answer to the Saudi peak question will determine whether Saudi  
Arabia really can increase production quickly, as promised. If they  
can't, then the US economy is going to suffer bitterly, and it is  
certain that the Saudi monarchy will collapse into chaos. Then the  
nearby US military will occupy the oilfields and the U.S. will  
ultimately Balkanize the country by carving off the oil fields - which  
occupy only a small area near the East coast. That U.S. enclave would  
then provide sanctuary to the leading members of the royal family who  
will have agreed to keep their trillions invested in Wall Street so the  
US economy doesn't collapse.

So far the Saudis haven't had to prove that they could increase  
production due to convenient terror attacks at oil fields, and more  
"debates" within OPEC.

Fourth clue: Bush and Cheney have both hired or consulted private  
criminal defense attorneys in anticipation of possible indictments of  
them and/or their top assistants in the Plame investigation. On June 3,  
just hours before Tenet suddenly resigned, President Bush consulted  
with and may have retained a criminal defense attorney to represent him  
in the Plame case.

According to various press reports Bush has either retained or  
consulted with powerhouse attorney Jim Sharp, who represented  
Iran-contra figure retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord;  
Enron's Ken Lay; and Watergate co-conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder. All  
three were facing criminal rather than civil charges. Either way, a  
clear signal has been sent that Bush expects to be either called to  
testify (which was a precursor in Watergate to a criminal indictment of  
Richard Nixon) or be named as a defendant. Either way, the President's  
men are falling faster than their counterparts fell in Watergate, and  
the initial targets are much higher up the food chain.

Cheney's attorney is Terrence O'Donnell, a partner of the Williams and  
Connolly law firm. O'Donnell worked for then White House chief of staff  
Cheney in the Ford administration and as General Counsel for the  
Pentagon when Cheney was Defense Secretary under the first President  
Bush. He has been representing the Vice President in criminal and civil  
cases involving Cheney's chairmanship of Halliburton. These include a  
Justice Department investigation of Halliburton for alleged payment of  
bribes to Nigerian political leaders and a stockholders' fraud law suit  
against Halliburton. O'Donnell also represented former CIA director  
John Deutch when he was accused of violating national security by  
taking his CIA computer home and surfing the Internet while it  
contained hundreds of highly-classified intelligence documents.

SPRINGING THE TRAP

Now, seemingly all of a sudden, Bush and Cheney are in the crosshairs.  
Cheney has been questioned by Fitzgerald within the last week.

The CIA Director's job by definition, whether others like it or not, is  
to be able to go to his President and advise him of the real scientific  
data on foreign resources (especially oil); to warn him of pending  
instability in a country closely linked to the US economy; and to tell  
him what to plan for and what to promise politically in his foreign  
policy. In light of her position in the CIA's relationship with Saudi  
Aramco, the outing of Valerie Plame made much of this impossible. In  
short, the Bush leak threatened National Security.

Former White House Counsel and Watergate figure John Dean, writing for  
the prestigious legal website findlaw.com on June 4th made some very  
ominous observations that appear to have gone unnoticed by most.

This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development.  
The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private  
criminal defense lawyer. Unsurprisingly, the White House is doing all  
it can to bury the story, providing precious little detail or context  
for the President's action?

?But from what I have learned from those who have been quizzed by the  
Fitzgerald investigators it seems unlikely that they are interviewing  
the President merely as a matter of completeness, or in order to be  
able to defend their actions in front of the public. Asking a President  
to testify - or even be interviewed - remains a serious, sensitive and  
rare occasion. It is not done lightly. Doing so raises separation of  
powers concerns that continue to worry many?

?If so - and if the person revealed the leaker's identity to the  
President, or if the President decided he preferred not to know the  
leaker's identity. - Then this fact could conflict with Bush's  
remarkably broad public statements on the issue. He has said that he  
did not know of "anybody in [his] administration who leaked classified  
information." He has also said that he wanted "to know the truth" about  
this leak.

If Bush is called before the grand jury, it is likely because  
Fitzgerald believes that he knows much more about this leak than he has  
stated publicly.

Perhaps Bush may have knowledge not only of the leaker, but also of  
efforts to make this issue go away - if indeed there have been any. It  
is remarkably easy to obstruct justice, and this matter has been under  
various phases of an investigation by the Justice Department since it  
was referred by the CIA last summer?

?On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor  
who works in Washington, specializing in white collar criminal defense  
(but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled  
by Bush's move - unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. "It would not  
seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby  
preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about  
the leak," he told me.

What advice might Bush get from a private defense counsel? The lawyer I  
consulted opined that, "If he does have knowledge about the leak and  
does not plan to disclose it, the only good legal advice would be to  
take the Fifth, rather than lie. The political fallout is a separate  
issue."

I raised the issue of whether the President might be able to invoke  
executive privilege as to this information. But the attorney I  
consulted - who is well versed in this area of law - opined that  
"Neither 'outing' Plame, nor covering for the perpetrators would seem  
to fall within the scope of any executive privilege that I am aware  
of."

That may not stop Bush from trying to invoke executive privilege,  
however - or at least from talking to his attorney about the option. As  
I have discussed in one of my prior columns, Vice President Dick Cheney  
has tried to avoid invoking it in implausible circumstances - in the  
case that is now before the U.S .Supreme Court. Rather he claims he is  
beyond the need for the privilege, and simply cannot be sued. [Emphasis  
added]

Suffice it to say that whatever the meaning of Bush's decision to talk  
with private counsel about the Valerie Plame leak, the matter has taken  
a more ominous turn with Bush's action. It has only become more  
portentous because now Dick Cheney has also hired a lawyer for himself,  
suggesting both men may have known more than they let on. Clearly, the  
investigation is heading toward a culmination of some sort. And it  
should be interesting.

Last and final clue: Under Executive Privilege, a principle intended to  
protect the constitutional separation of powers, officials in the  
Executive Branch cannot give testimony in a legal case against a  
sitting President. The Bush administration has invoked or threatened to  
invoke the privilege several times. Dick did it over the secret records  
of his energy task force and George Bush tried to use it to prevent  
Condoleezza Rice from testifying before the "Independent" Commission  
investigating September 11th.

Former officials of the Executive Branch are, however, free to testify  
if they are no longer holding a government office when subpoenaed or  
when the charges are brought.

[To learn more about Executive Privilege visit www.findlaw.com]

The Bush administration has proved itself to be an insular group of  
inept, dishonest and dangerous CEO's of the corporation known as  
America. They have become very bad for business and the Board of  
Directors is now taking action. Make no mistake, the CIA works for "The  
Board" - Wall Street and big money. The long-term (very corrupt and  
unethical) agenda of the Board, in the face of multiple worsening  
global crises, was intended to proceed far beyond the initially  
destructive war in Iraq, toward an effective reconstruction and a  
strategic response to Peak Oil. But the neocons have stalled at the  
ugly stage: killing hundreds of thousands of people; destroying Iraq's  
industrial and cultural infrastructure as their own bombs and other  
people's RPGs blow everything up; getting caught running torture camps;  
and making the whole world intensely dislike America.

These jerks are doing real damage to their masters' interests.

But (not surprisingly) Tenet and the CIA were and remain much better at  
covert operations and planning ahead than the Bush administration ever  
was. Tenet and Pavitt actually prepared and left a clear, irrefutable  
and incriminating paper trail which not only proves that they had  
shunned and refused to endorse the documents, the CIA also did not  
support the nuke charges and warned Bush not to use them.

Where are those documents now? They're part of the Justice Department  
Plame investigation - and they're also in the hands of the Congressman  
who will most likely introduce and manage the articles of impeachment,  
if that becomes necessary: Henry Waxman (D), of California. If you  
would like to see how tightly the legal trap has been prepared, and how  
carefully the evidence has been laid out, I suggest taking a look  
around Waxman's web site at: http://www.house.gov/waxman/.


THE SWARM

There are a multitude of signs that the Bush administration is being  
"swarmed" in what is becoming a feeding frenzy as opposition is  
surfacing from many places inside the government, including the  
military. The signs are not hard to find.

The June 3rd issue of Capitol Hill Blue, the newspaper published for  
members of Congress, bore the headline "Bush Knew About Leak of CIA  
Operative's Name". That article virtually guaranteed that the Plame  
investigation had enough to pursue Bush criminally. The story's lead  
sentence described a criminal, prosecutable offense: "Witnesses told a  
federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no  
action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a  
journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of  
administration policy in Iraq."

A day later, on June 4th Capitol Hill Blue took another hard shot at  
the administration. Titled "Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House  
Aides", the story's first four paragraphs say everything.

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood  
swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately  
express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President  
goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against  
the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the  
state."

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge,  
increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a  
public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political  
consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy;  
everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."

The attacks have not stopped. On June 8th, the same paper followed with  
another story headlined, "Lawyers Told Bush He Could Order Suspects  
Tortured".

Journalist Wayne Madsen, a Washington veteran with excellent access to  
many sources has indicated for this story that the Neocons have few  
remaining friends anywhere. All of this is consistent with a CIA-led  
coup.

Ahmed Chalabi

Madsen reported that the Plame probe comes amid another high-level  
probe of Pentagon officials for leaking classified National Security  
Agency cryptologic information to Iran via Iraqi National Congress head  
Ahmed Chalabi. FBI agents have polygraphed and interviewed a number of  
civilian political appointees in the Pentagon in relation to the  
intelligence leak, said to have severely disrupted the National  
Security Agency's ability to listen in on encrypted Iranian diplomatic  
and intelligence communications.

Chalabi's leak has once again forced Iran to change equipment,  
resulting in impaired U.S. intelligence gathering of Iran's sensitive  
communications. The probe into the Chalabi leak is centering on  
Pentagon officials who have been close to Chalabi, including Office of  
Net Assessment official Harold Rhode, Director of Policy and Plans  
officials Douglas Feith and William Luti, Undersecretary for  
Intelligence Stephen Cambone, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul  
Wolfowitz. In addition, some former Pentagon advisers are also targeted  
in the probe.

Many press reports throughout 2003 indicated that Chalabi, distrusted  
and virtually discarded by the CIA, had been resurrected and inserted  
into the Iraqi political mix on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul  
Wolfowitz and the other Neocons listed above.

Abu Ghraib and Torture

A former CIA official told Madsen that between the Plame leak and the  
Abu Ghraib torture affair, the Bush administration is facing something  
that will be "worse than Watergate."

PLANNING FOR SUCCESSION

If both Bush and Cheney are removed or resign, what happens? Madsen  
reported that lobbyists and political consultants in Washington are  
dusting off their copies of the Constitution and checking the line of  
presidential succession.

One lobbyist said he will soon pay a call on Alaska Republican Senator  
Ted Stevens, who, as President pro tem of the Senate, is second in line  
to House Speaker Dennis Hastert to become President in the event Bush  
and Cheney both go.

It is one of the greatest ironies of the Plame affair that the Bush  
administration, spawned and nurtured by oil, might have committed  
suicide by vindictively, cruelly and unthinkingly exacting personal  
retribution on an intelligence officer who had committed no offense,  
and who was, quite possibly, providing the administration with critical  
oil-related intelligence which the President needed to manage our shaky  
economy and affairs of state for a while longer to squeak through to  
re-election. In our opinion, nothing better epitomizes the true nature  
of the Neocons.

That being said, they have to go. FTW wishes that it was as certain  
that what will come after them will be better.

From joe at barrera.org  Fri Jun 11 14:56:07 2004
From: joe at barrera.org (Joseph S. Barrera III)
Date: Fri Jun 11 14:55:23 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Fwd: [FoES] The Reagan Memorial $3 Bill
Message-ID: <40CA2A77.2090602@barrera.org>

If Jeff can forward from FoES, then so can I...

- Joe

P.S. I haven't been watching or listening to a shred of the funeral 
coverage.

P.S. I had more respect for Nixon. Much more.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[FoES] The Reagan Memorial $3 Bill
Date: 	Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:43:23 -0700
From: 	chris arkenberg <carkenbe@adobe.com>
Reply-To: 	Friends of Elias Sinderson <foes@campbiscuit.com>
To: 	Friends of Elias Sinderson <foes@campbiscuit.com>


Jimmy Breslin on the Reagan Wankathon:

The great American news industry, the Pekinese of the Press with so much room and time and nothing to say, compared Reagan to Lincoln and Hamilton, they really did. This is like claiming that the maintenance man wrote the Bill of Rights. And almost all the reporters agreed that Reagan was the man who brought down Russia in the Cold War.

Just saying this is absolutely sinful. The Cold War was won by a long memo written by George Kennan, who worked in the State Department and sent the memo by telegram about the need for a "Policy of Containment" on Russia. Kennan said the contradictions in their system would ruin them. Keep them where they are and they will tear themselves apart. We followed Kennan's policy for over 40 years. The Soviets made it worse on themselves by building a wall in East Berlin. When they had to tear it down and give up their system, Kennan was in Princeton and he sat down to dinner.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/ny-nybres113845462jun11,0,5005058,print.column?coll=ny-ny-columnists

Reagan should be on a $3 bill
Jimmy Breslin

June 11, 2004

I offered my small prayer for Ronald Reagan when he was shot by this Hinckley. I said another prayer for him when I read this graceful note that he issued about his Alzheimer's.

Having said this, I now strongly endorse a suitable memorial for him.

Ronald Reagan belongs on a $3-bill.

You are supposed to honor and respect the dead. But you also must respect the truth, and live for the living - and this funeral has gone on for almost a week. I am in a car and I hear the radio announcer, who is supposed to be telling you news, whisper:

"The color guard quietly leaves the casket viewing area and marches with the colors towards the two hearses; they are taking no chances and have a backup ... "

I was waiting for him, or somebody next to him, to let out a sob.

For the funeral of Ronald Reagan, they took the body from Beverly Hills to Simi Valley, the white Los Angeles suburb, where it stayed for a day and a half or so then they drove it in one of these two hearses to the airport and flew it to Washington and then they had a march and afterwards put the casket into the Capitol for crowds to pass by and now there was to be another march and a religous service and then a drive to the airport, where the casket will be shuttled back to the airport south of Los Angeles and in a hearse to the final ceremony at his library on Friday. That is quite a funeral. They buried George Washingon in half the time.

You keep thinking of Harry Truman, whose code was, "Do not impose." He left an order that there were to be no eulogies at his funeral.

This man Reagan was 93 years old and out of it with Alzheimer's for many years and I don't see how anybody can summon grief. They proclaimed it a deep religious ceremony. Which it is not. His whole weeklong funeral is cheap, utterly distasteful American publicity.

The great American news industry, the Pekinese of the Press with so much room and time and nothing to say, compared Reagan to Lincoln and Hamilton, they really did. This is like claiming that the maintenance man wrote the Bill of Rights. And almost all the reporters agreed that Reagan was the man who brought down Russia in the Cold War.

Just saying this is absolutely sinful. The Cold War was won by a long memo written by George Kennan, who worked in the State Department and sent the memo by telegram about the need for a "Policy of Containment" on Russia. Kennan said the contradictions in their system would ruin them. Keep them where they are and they will tear themselves apart. We followed Kennan's policy for over 40 years. The Soviets made it worse on themselves by building a wall in East Berlin. When they had to tear it down and give up their system, Kennan was in Princeton and he sat down to dinner.

I thought that children were taught this. Instead, all week, reporters told us that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Beautiful.

Ronald Reagan was an actor. He was as real as the line he used to keep his fame alive. "Win one for the Gipper."

The line was complete Hollywood, down to agents who fought over it.

In 1938, a radio show, "Cavalcade of America," had a segment about coach Knute Rockne of Notre Dame and his star back, George Gipp, who was dying of pneumonia and supposedly said to Rockne, "Someday, when the team's up against it, the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they've got! Win one for the Gipper."

Warner Brothers bought the radio segment and assigned screen writer Robert Buckner to put the "Win one" line into his otherwise original screenplay of "Knute Rockne All American."

Pat O'Brien was Rockne and Reagan was George Gipp. Reagan delivered "Win one for the Gipper" extremely well; he was a lot better actor than he was supposed to be.

When the writers of the radio show saw the movie, they realized that this guy was getting their best line. "Win one ... "

"Where is ours?" they asked. Warner Brothers made a quick settlement and the film was released with Reagan's famous speech.

But for a television release, the line was taken out of the film because Warner didn't want to pay any more. It is back in the video, my friend Harry Haun notes in his book, "The Cinematic Century."

In government, he was as real as his trademark line. He was a callous man with a smile who cut taxes in 1981 and left this city and state without funds for such things as help for dependent children. He proudly hurt the boroughs of this city more than anyone before or after him. If you live in Brooklyn, the record shows that Ronald Reagan hated children. The city and state had to raise taxes to make up for money lost because of Reagan's great conservative movement. Reagan then raised taxes six times. He walked off, leaving us an enormous deficit but with a smile on his face that even the Gipper's fakery couldn't help us with.



_______________________________________________
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From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Fri Jun 11 15:11:14 2004
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (Rohit Khare)
Date: Fri Jun 11 15:11:50 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Gmail, to the tune of "Lose Yourself" by M&M :-)
Message-ID: <413EC024-BBF4-11D8-AA47-000A95C941B4@alumni.caltech.edu>

 From GMSV:


Grovel for Gmail: And now, if you'll imagine a drum roll please, the 
winner of the increasingly less rare but still cool Google Gmail 
account. First, thanks to all who submitted their heartfelt pleas, 
which ranged from worshipful to wistful to woeful. To the degree that 
clever bootlicking can contribute to success, you all will prosper. 
Still, there was one entry that rose above the crowd with a faithful 
and creative adaptation of a difficult art form. And that came from our 
winner, Linda Sharps, marketing manager for The Omni Group, whose 
effort in this silly little contest was impressive and, frankly, a 
little scary. In compiling our Secret Reader Dossier (can't remember if 
that's mentioned in the privacy policy), we found even more to like 
about Linda, including the fact that her company bio features a mug 
shot of a weasel, her co-workers appreciate her humor, and her hobbies 
include "quoting 'Pirates of the Caribbean' at random ('Aye, sea 
turtles'), reading up on Spider Jerusalem and Jesse Custer, laughing 
hysterically at Eddie Izzard, and playing with her extremely silly 
dog." So congratulations, Linda; the Gmail invitation will arrive soon. 
Keep in touch. And now, with apologies to Eminem, we throw the mike to 
MC Sharps:

  Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
  To seize everything you wanted in an email service
  Would you capture it, or just let it slip?

  Yo.

  Her palms are sweaty, knees weak, mouse is heavy
  There's a gig of storage ready, a spam machete
  She's typing, and in her writing she isn't steady
  Too uncool, but she keeps on and beggin'
  What she puts down, when she's mailing John
  She opens her mouth, and the pleas come out
  She's groveling how, Paczkowski's smiling now
  He opens the invitation, he sends it, blaow!
  Snap back to the levity, oh, there goes brevity
  Oh, this email blows, it's choked, it's so bad
  But she won't give up that easy, no, she won't have it
  She knows her whole tax for these hopes
  It don't matter, Gmail's dope
  We know that, preview mode, it's so rampant, you know
  When she goes back to her Bellevue home, that's when it's
  Back to Yahoo again, yo this whole catastrophe
  She'll log in and view about a thousand ads in it

  You better lose yourself in the email, the moment
  You own it, you better never let it go
  You only get one shot, do not make him tell you no
  This invitation comes once in a lifetime

  You better lose yourself in the email, the moment
  You own it, you better never let it go
  You only get one shot, do not make him tell you no
  This invitation comes once in a lifetime

  The mail's escaping through my service erasing
  Filled boxes are all berating; a bad thing
  As we move toward a new web order
  A normal account is boring, and Google's close to IPO
  It only grows larger, only grows smarter
  They blow us all over, the tech co's is all on them
  Most of us know, in their role as search mogul
  No real woes, God only knows they've grown big while they roam
  They're mobile, they shone with free email that's global
  But hold your head cuz they led us to ogle
  The invitations - hello, they're hot product
  She must beat the next schmoe or know
  She'll nose dive and then nada
  No Gmail, how lo and behold, I suppose it's old partner
  But the beta goes on da da dum da dum da da

  You better lose yourself in the email, the moment
  You own it, you better never let it go
  You only get one shot, do not make him tell you no
  This invitation comes once in a lifetime

  You better lose yourself in the email, the moment
  You own it, you better never let it go
  You only get one shot, do not make him tell you no
  This invitation comes once in a lifetime

  No more tease, I'ma change what you call please
  Tear up this freakin' subject like I'm on my knees
  I was moochin' in the beginning, no expertise
  I been beggin' and pleading with stupid words like these
  But I kept whinin' and pinin' for the invitation
  Best believe somebody sees my dedication
  All the urge inside amplified by the new service
  And I can't get by with my Yahoo life
  And I can't provide the right login or folder view
  Cuz man, these goddamn web apps with their ads
  And it's a new thing, the Gmail sensation
  This is my chance, and this email's so hard
  And it's getting even harder tryin' to rhyme and write this crap, plus
  Teetertotter caught up between bein a bother even though I wanna
  Begging comma drama schemin on and on for mail nirvana
  This is my plot, to escape message monotony
  Has gotten me to the point I cannot fail
  I've got to formulate a plot or end up with mail or not
  An address is my only freakin' option, it's red hot
  John, I dig you, but the invitation's got to go
  I cannot grow old in Yahoo's spot
  So here I go with my lot, delete me not
  This may be the only opportunity that I got

  You better lose yourself in the email, the moment
  You own it, you better never let it go
  You only get one shot, do not make him tell you no
  This invitation comes once in a lifetime

  You better lose yourself in the email, the moment
  You own it, you better never let it go
  You only get one shot, do not make him tell you no
  This invitation comes once in a lifetime

From rohit at ics.uci.edu  Fri Jun 11 15:15:21 2004
From: rohit at ics.uci.edu (Rohit Khare)
Date: Fri Jun 11 15:14:41 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Alan Kay, ICS Commencement Speaker & Turing Award for '03...
Message-ID: <D4772D5F-BBF4-11D8-AA47-000A95C941B4@ics.uci.edu>

I hadn't heard... I'm sooo out of the loop :-(

http://internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3342511
  April 20, 2004
Smalltalk Creator Wins 'Nobel Prize' of Computing
  By  Jim Wagner


  One man's work to bring a biological model to the computer world has, 
34 years later, led to a 2003 Turing Award by the Association for 
Computing Machinery (ACM), officials announced Monday.

  Dr. Alan Kay will receive the "Nobel Prize of Computing" in a ceremony 
in June, as well as $100,000, for his pioneering work on Smalltalk, the 
first complete dynamic object-oriented programming (OOP) language. 
Today, the language is credited as the model for C++ (define) and Java; 
Kay is considered the first to coin the phrase "object-oriented."

  Kay said he was happy to receive the award, especially since most of 
his personal heroes have already made the roster. He also said he's 
surprised at the lasting power of languages such as Smalltalk in the 
business world.

  "Of course, it's an incredible thrill, I'm quite surprised to get it," 
he told  internetnews.com. "It's hard to describe the last 20 years or 
so in a few sentences, but it's interesting that in spite of the 
enormous change downward in the kinds of machines that can run on it, 
dynamic languages like Smalltalk and (List Processor (define)), both of 
these languages still hung in there."

  The award is named for Dr. Alan Turing, the British mathematician who 
is most famously known for the "Turing Machine," an abstract logic 
exercise published by Turing in the mid-1930s to describe a mechanical 
device taking information in a systematic way. It turns out the paper 
anticipated many common computer functions like input, output, coded 
programs and compilers/interpreters.

  Smalltalk was Kay's idea of using "cells" of individual objects 
communicating with one another to solve problems. In 1972, he took his 
work to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he began work 
using Smalltalk as an educational tool for children. He concluded 
children learned best when information was presented in graphics and 
sound, rather than just dry text.

  He and his team came up with the "Dynabook," the model for a computer 
much smaller than the mainframes in use at the time and the basis for 
the Xerox Alto; it included a GUI and three-button mouse. The rest, as 
they say, is history. Kay pushed for more funding from the Xerox 
leadership for a "personal computer" and was summarily rejected. In 
1979, a little-known entrepreneur named Steve Jobs was touring the PARC 
facility and saw the "windowing GUI" Kay's team had been working on and 
immediately used it as the basis of the mouse with Apple Macintosh, 
which in turn led to the genesis of the Microsoft Windows operating 
system.

  This is the second time Kay's work at PARC has been acknowledged by 
the ACM; in 1987, he and his research team received the ACM Software 
System Award. Kay was also one of this year's National Academy of 
Engineering Charles Stark Draper Prize winners, considered the "Nobel 
Prize of Engineering."

  Allen Davis, executive director of the Smalltalk Industry Council, 
congratulated Kay on the Turing Award and told internetnews.com in an 
email interview that the language developed decades ago continues to 
influence the software industry today.

  "The principles found in the Smalltalk language and development 
environments continue to influence the software industry," he wrote. 
"Many capabilities found in Smalltalk exceed those found in more 
recently-developed object-oriented programming languages such as Java. 
 From hobbyists to Fortune 500 companies, Smalltalk continues to be used 
today for traditional and web-based applications."

  Smalltalk is considered by many to be an easier language to code 
because its syntax resembles English and its use of nouns and verbs. 
According to the authors at Smalltalk.org, it also takes much less code 
to get the point across in programming -- to the tune of one-third to 
one-half the code needed in a more popular OOP.

  Take, for example, the differences in writing code in C++/Java over 
Smalltalk. In Java or C++, getting a program to execute "Hello" 10 
times would look something like this:

  for (int x = 0; x < 10; x++)

  {

System.out.print ("Hello");

}

In Squeak, an implementation of Smalltalk, it would look like so:

  10 timesRepeat: [Transcript show: 'Hello '.].

Kay is the second computing pioneer in as many weeks to be recognized 
for efforts conducted in the 1970s. On Thursday, Sir Tim Berners-Lee 
took home the Millennium Award and $1 million Euros by a Finnish 
organization for his work to bring the World Wide Web (WWW) to the 
masses.

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

Please join me at a reception honoring ICS' 2004 Commencement speaker, 
Dr. Alan Kay.
The reception will be held following commencement ceremonies:

June 19, 2004
2 - 4 p.m.
University Club Lawn

Light refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP to Diane Triantis <dianet@ics.uci.edu> by Tuesday, June 15.

Dr. Kay, President of Viewpoints Research Institute and Hewlett-Packard 
Senior Fellow, was recently honored as the 2003 Turing Award winner for 
his development of Smalltalk 
(http://internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3342511)?

  ICS is deeply honored to have such a distinguished speaker, so I hope 
you can all join me not only at the reception, but also at commencement 
(12-1 at the Bren Events Center - 
http://www.commencement.uci.edu/cere12noon.html).

  Please join me in introducing Dr. Kay to our exceptional graduates as 
well as showing him the respect of enjoying his address to the "class 
of 2004" - the first graduating class of the Donald Bren School of 
Information and Computer Science.
From joe at barrera.org  Fri Jun 11 15:17:23 2004
From: joe at barrera.org (Joseph S. Barrera III)
Date: Fri Jun 11 15:16:39 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Alan Kay, ICS Commencement Speaker & Turing Award for
	'03...
In-Reply-To: <D4772D5F-BBF4-11D8-AA47-000A95C941B4@ics.uci.edu>
References: <D4772D5F-BBF4-11D8-AA47-000A95C941B4@ics.uci.edu>
Message-ID: <40CA2F73.2050701@barrera.org>

Rohit Khare wrote:

>  Dr. Alan Kay will receive the "Nobel Prize of Computing" in a
>  ceremony in June, as well as $100,000, for his pioneering work on
>  Smalltalk, the first complete dynamic object-oriented programming

IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME!

From jbone at place.org  Fri Jun 11 18:06:01 2004
From: jbone at place.org (Contempt for Meatheads)
Date: Fri Jun 11 18:05:08 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Doh!  My bad.
Message-ID: <ABEFE584-BC0C-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>

	
Joe says:

> If Jeff can forward from FoES, then so can I...
>
> - Joe

Ah --- doh!  Yes, of course, I forgot the attribution.

:slits own throat

jb

From gtn at rbii.com  Sun Jun 13 09:16:43 2004
From: gtn at rbii.com (Gavin Thomas Nicol)
Date: Sun Jun 13 09:16:14 2004
Subject: [FoRK] Mac Envy
In-Reply-To: <40C9F375.1070800@wstoddard.com>
References: <4E016C59-BBD0-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>
	<40C9F375.1070800@wstoddard.com>
Message-ID: <200406131216.43582.gtn@rbii.com>

Then there's always pearpc....
    http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

Slow but it does run MacOSX :-)
From sdw at lig.net  Sun Jun 13 12:18:45 2004
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Sun Jun 13 12:17:33 2004
Subject: VMWare Envy, was: Re: [FoRK] Mac Envy
In-Reply-To: <200406131216.43582.gtn@rbii.com>
References: <4E016C59-BBD0-11D8-8AD5-000A95CFE9DE@place.org>	<40C9F375.1070800@wstoddard.com>
	<200406131216.43582.gtn@rbii.com>
Message-ID: <40CCA895.5020709@lig.net>

QEMU is very interesting and is beginning to have PowerPC support.
Running XP Pro on a Linux P4 laptop, it is completely usable.  Some 
published benchmarks place it at 1/4 to 1/10th native hardware which is 
amazing for full emulation and just-in-time instruction mapping.  I'm 
very pleased.
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

I have old VMWare licenses to sell if anyone needs them... ;-)
(I have one fully upgraded license that I need.)

sdw

Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:

>Then there's always pearpc....
>    http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/
>
>Slow but it does run MacOSX :-)
>_______________________________________________
>FoRK mailing list
>http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>  
>


-- 
swilliams@hpti.com http://www.hpti.com Per: sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st
Stephen D. Williams 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax 20147-4622 AIM: sdw