gary350

A few days after the crucifiction, Jesus was in a partying mood and went to a disco. Problem was, he couldn't get his groove on - he couldn't quite get in synch with the music. Finally, in frustration, he exclaimed to his friends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Help! I've risen and I can't get down!

Yes - BASE jumping - not fun, very sad.

From my limited amount of research, it looks like JumpRun and SkyWriter are the only major players. Is this true? Are there any other packages out there, perhaps less functional, yet still stable and mature? How do the two packages compare? I personally think a couple grand is a huge bargain for mature, proven, supported, vertical software, but it's just my nature to cover all the bases and see if there are other viable choices. . . Thanks for any help.

Wonder if it had anything to do with how secular Iraq was? On the other hand, they were certainly not a democracy. . .

That's a very good question - I don't know why - It is one of the questions I had when I first saw this. Again - I didn't post to make conclusions, but to ask questions. It's called curiosity. One question is if there may be differences in religious beliefs and practices (regardless of country, ethnic culture, language. . . .) that correlate somehow to an openness and curiosity that leads to greater intellectual curiosity and output. Doesn't seem incredibly likely, since Islam was also the religion when Arabs were doing much better. I think it has more to do with fundamentalism and repressive societies.

And I'll ask again, sincerely. What is the purpose of this thread? Ciels- Michele Geez Louise - give me a chance to write. . .

Gotta go. Quick response: I think societies/cultures based on (any) religious fundamentalism and totalitarianism are bad for human progress. Curious as to why the same people who produced so much in the recent past now seem to contribute so little. Their capacity as humans is no different - it must be conditions(?) Open to the idea that it is a perception thing, and willing to listen closely to any arguments. Asking questions, not making conclusions, though I admit the facts are provocative. . .

Duh. . . Only if the goal was to show they are an inferior people, which it is not. I am interested in what is going on today and in the last couple hundred years and why - seems like Nobel awards are, as said, one measure of intellectual output in the last 100 years or so. There are many, many others - please see previous post/link regarding science. Never expected such knee-jerking from you, Professor

So, because you're disturbed by some facts, without any conclusions, you would censor them? The charge of even a hint of racism is absurd. Nobody claims they are an inferior people. Any slightly educated person knows that for hundreds of years the Arab/Islamic world was a center for art and science. But the fact is that things are very different now - you would be hard pressed to find anyone, even in the Arab world, that will disagree. And I am interested in why. This issue is about religion, culture, and society and the effects on intellectual output. There are many, many more examples than the Nobel Prize statistics. . . Read this article about science in the Arab world: http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i26/26a03601.htm Last October the United Nations' Development Program and the Kuwait-based Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development released a study showing how dire the situation is. Among the findings: No Arab country spends more than 0.2 percent of its gross national product on scientific research, and most of that money goes toward salaries. By contrast, the United States spends more than 10 times that amount. Fewer than one in 20 Arab university students pursue scientific disciplines. There are only 18 computers per 1,000 people in the Arab world. The global average is 78 per 1,000. Only 370 industrial patents were issued to people in Arab countries between 1980 and 2000. In South Korea during that same period, 16,000 industrial patents were issued. No more than 10,000 books were translated into Arabic over the entire past millennium, equivalent to the number translated into Spanish each year.

Wrong! About the 50 years part, anyway. What the Iraqis themselves think: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001915405_poll29.html BAGHDAD, Iraq — A solid majority of Iraqis support an immediate pullout of U.S. troops even in the face of greater danger, and only one in three now believe that the U.S.-led occupation is doing more good than harm, according to a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll. What Americans think: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/politics/29POLL.html?hp April 29, 2004 Support for War Is Down Sharply, Poll Concludes By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and JANET ELDER Support for the war in Iraq has eroded substantially over the past several months, and Americans are increasingly critical of the way President Bush is handling the conflict, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. After initially expressing robust backing for the war, the public is now evenly divided over whether the United States military should stay for as long as it takes to stabilize Iraq or pull out as soon as possible, the poll showed. Asked whether the United States had done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, 47 percent of respondents said it had, down from 58 percent a month earlier and 63 percent in December, just after American forces captured Saddam Hussein. Forty-six percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, up from 37 percent last month and 31 percent in December. The diminished public support for the war did not translate into any significant advantage for Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The poll showed the two men remaining in a statistical dead heat, both in a head-to-head matchup and in a three-way race that included Ralph Nader. Support for Mr. Bush is stronger in other areas vital to his re-election, including his handling of the threat from terrorism, which won the approval of 60 percent of respondents. Even so, just short of a year after Mr. Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln last May 1 and proclaimed the end to major combat operations under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," his approval rating has slid from the high levels it reached during the war. It now stands at 46 percent, the lowest level of his presidency in The Times/CBS News Poll, down from 71 percent last March and a high of 89 percent just after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. At this point in his winning re-election race in 1996, President Bill Clinton's approval rating in The New York Times/CBS News Poll was 48 percent. Mr. Bush's approval rating for his handling of Iraq was 41 percent, down from 49 percent last month and 59 percent in December. The survey held hints of trouble for Mr. Kerry as he seeks to introduce himself to an electorate that knows relatively little about him. While 55 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters said they strongly favored the president, only 32 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters strongly favored their candidate. Sixty-one percent of voters said Mr. Kerry says what he thinks people want to hear, versus 29 percent who said he says what he believes. The Bush campaign has attacked Mr. Kerry for months on that score, portraying him as a flip-flopper with no convictions. On the same question, 43 percent said Mr. Bush says what people want to hear and 53 percent said he says what he believes. The poll, conducted from Friday to Tuesday, came during a month that has seen more American soldiers killed in Iraq than in any other month since the invasion 13 months ago. In the days before the poll was conducted, a Web site obtained and publicly released for the first time photographs of soldiers' coffins returning to the United States from Iraq. "The only thing I think was good was when they got Saddam," said Anna Bartlow, 67, of Tulsa, Okla., a poll respondent who identified herself as a Republican. "That's the only thing that I think they did right, but if they were going to go over there just for him, they should have gotten him and then got out." Of the Iraqis, Ms. Bartlow said, "Let them fight it out among themselves." The poll questioned 1,042 people. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, questioned whether the poll accurately reflected public opinion. But, Mr. Holt said, the White House has all along expected the presidential race to be close until the very end. "There will be tough times in Iraq," Mr. Holt said, "but the key to prevailing and winning the war on terror is steady, determined leadership." Chad Clanton, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said the fact that the race remained essentially tied showed that Mr. Bush's attacks, including an aggressive advertising campaign, had failed to take down Mr. Kerry. The poll suggested that American attitudes about the war were shifting in response to a daily barrage of disturbing images and news reports. Mr. Bush's advisers have asserted that Americans long ago made up their minds that the war was justified, and that violent flare-ups in Iraq would not hurt the president politically as long as the United States remained committed to creating a stable democracy there. But the Times/CBS poll appeared to bolster the view of many Democrats that the intensified violence in Iraq would inevitably lead to questions about the wisdom of the war and Mr. Bush's leadership. Asked whether the results of the war with Iraq were worth the loss of American lives and other costs, 33 percent of respondents said it was worth it. That was down from 37 percent at the beginning of April and 44 percent in December. Fifty-eight percent said it was not worth it, up from 54 percent at the start of the month and 49 percent in December. At a time when American troops are engaged in fierce battles in Najaf and Falluja, two centers of the Iraqi insurgency, the poll found that 46 percent of Americans thought the United States military should remain in Iraq for as long as it takes to create a stable democracy, even if it takes a long time, and 46 percent said the United States should withdraw as soon as possible. American perceptions of Iraqis haveH also shifted, the poll found. While 53 percent of Americans in a CBS News poll a year ago saw Iraqis as grateful for getting rid of Mr. Hussein, 38 percent see Iraqis feeling that way now. Forty-eight percent now view the Iraqis as resentful, up from 26 percent a year ago. But the Iraq developments do not appear to have reshaped the presidential race in any discernible way. If the election were held today, 46 percent of registered voters would vote for Mr. Kerry and 44 percent for Mr. Bush, the poll found. With Mr. Nader in the race, Mr. Bush would get 43 percent, Mr. Kerry 41 percent and Mr. Nader 5 percent, suggesting that nearly all of Mr. Nader's support comes from voters who would otherwise back the Democrat. Follow-up interviews with people who took part in the poll suggested that the surge in violence in the past few months had led some Americans who supported the general goal of bringing democracy to Iraq to become more skeptical. "It appears to me that we're not welcome there, and I don't know if I would have been able to support the invasion of Iraq if I had felt that the Iraqi people didn't welcome us there," said Michael Ryan, 54, of Ashland, Ore., who identified himself as a Democrat. "I'm under the impression now that Dick Cheney came into office with an agenda for war in Iraq, and that George Bush had the same agenda, and that they were twisting the facts to justify the invasion," he said. "And I feel angry about it because I supported the U.S. invasion." Violet Adams, 66, of Delta, Colo., who identified herself as a Republican, said she thought the United States would have to maintain a presence in the Middle East for a decade as part of the broader effort to confront Islamic terrorism. "We either take them in their territory, on their turf, and keep them there, or we let them scatter all over the world and start their little cells, and then we'll all be living like Israel," Ms. Adams said. Nick Dente, 46, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who identified himself as an independent, said he had not been a supporter of Mr. Bush but was open to backing him depending on how he conducted the fight against terrorism. In going to war with Iraq, Mr. Dente said, Mr. Bush took that fight in the wrong direction. "I believe we've gotten sidetracked from finding Al Qaeda," he said. Fred Backus contributed reporting for this article.

Can't absolutely vouch for accuracy, but did check around to try to disprove and couldn't - any other verification/not is welcome. Nobel Prizes are just one measure of intellectual output, but it is an interesting comparison. I've seen some conclusions drawn, but haven't thought it all out enough myself. Anyone else? Why is this so? Does it say something about religion/culture/society or are those Norwegians just biased? ARAB/ISLAMIC NOBEL WINNERS From a pool of 1.4 BILLION Muslims 20% of World's Population (2 out of every 10 people) Literature 1988 - Najib Mahfooz Peace 1978 - Anwar El-Sadat 1994 - Yasser Arafat 2003 - Shirin Ebadi Chemistry 1990 - Elias James Corey (Arab Christian) 1999 - Ahmed Zewail Physics 1979 - Abdus Salam Medicine 1960 - Peter Brian Medawar (Arab Christian) 1998 - Ferid Mourad (Arab Christian) JEWISH NOBEL WINNERS From a pool of 14 million Jews .2% of the World's Population (2 out of every 1,000 people) Literature 1910 - Paul Heyse 1927 - Henri Bergson 1958 - Boris Pasternak 1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon 1966 - Nelly Sachs 1976 - Saul Bellow 1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer 1981 - Elias Canetti 1987 - Joseph Brodsky 1991 - Nadine Gordimer 2002 - Imre Kertesz World Peace 1911 - Alfred Fried 1911 - Tobias Asser 1968 - Rene Cassin 1973 - Henry Kissinger 1978 - Menachem Begin 1986 - Elie Wiesel 1994 - Shimon Peres 1994 - Yitzhak Rabin 1995 - Joseph Rotblat Chemistry 1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer 1906 - Henri Moissan 1910 - Otto Wallach 1915 - Richard Willstaetter 1918 - Fritz Haber 1943 - George Charles de Hevesy 1961 - Melvin Calvin 1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz 1972 - William Howard Stein 1972 - C.B. Anfinsen 1977 - Ilya Prigogine 1979 - Herbert Charles Brown 1980 - Paul Berg 1980 - Walter Gilbert 1981 - Ronald Hoffmann 1982 - Aaron Klug 1985 - Herbert A. Hauptman 1985 - Jerome Karle 1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach 1988 - Robert Huber 1989 - Sidney Altman 1992 - Rudolph Marcus 1998 - Walter Kohn 2000 - Alan J. Heeger Economics 1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson 1971 - Simon Kuznets 1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow 1973 - Wassily Leontief 1975 - Leonid Kantorovich 1976 - Milton Friedman 1978 - Herbert A. Simon 1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein 1985 - Franco Modigliani 1987 - Robert M. Solow 1990 - Harry Markowitz 1990 - Merton Miller 1992 - Gary Becker 1993 Rober Fogel 1994 - John Harsanyi 1994 - Reinhard Selten 1997 - Robert Merton 1997 - Myron Scholes 2001 - George Akerlof 2001 - Joseph Stiglitz 2002 - Daniel Kahneman Medicine 1908 - Elie Metchnikoff 1908 - Paul Erlich 1914 - Robert Barany 1922 - Otto Meyerhof 1930 - Karl Landsteiner 1931 - Otto Warburg 1936 - Otto Loewi 1944 - Joseph Erlanger 1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser 1945 - Ernst Boris Chain 1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller 1950 - Tadeus Reichstein 1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman 1953 - Hans Krebs 1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann 1958 - Joshua Lederberg 1959 - Arthur Kornberg 1964 - Konrad Bloch 1965 - Francois Jacob 1965 - Andre Lwoff 1967 - George Wald 1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg 1969 - Salvador Luria 1970 - Julius Axelrod 1970 - Sir Bernard Katz 1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman 1975 - David Baltimore 1975 - Howard Martin Temin 1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg 1977 - Rosalyn Sussman Yalow 1977 - Andrew V. Schally 1978 - Daniel Nathans 1980 - Baruj Benacerraf 1984 - Cesar Milstein 1985 - Michael Stuart Brown 1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein 1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini] 1988 - Gertrude Elion 1989 - Harold Varmus 1991 - Erwin Neher 1991 - Bert Sakmann 1993 - Richard J. Roberts 1993 - Phillip Sharp 1994 - Alfred Gilman 1994 - Martin Rodbell 1995 - Edward B. Lewis 1997 - Stanley B. Prusiner 1998 - Robert F. Furchgott 2000 - Eric R. Kandel 2002 - Sydney Brenner 2002 - Robert H. Horvitz Physics 1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson 1908 - Gabriel Lippmann 1921 - Albert Einstein 1922 - Niels Bohr 1925 - James Franck 1925 - Gustav Hertz 1943 - Gustav Stern 1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi 1945 - Wolfgang Pauli 1952 - Felix Bloch 1954 - Max Born 1958 - Igor Tamm 1958 - Il'ja Mikhailovich 1958 - Igor Yevgenyevich 1959 - Emilio Segre 1960 - Donald A. Glaser 1961 - Robert Hofstadter 1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau 1963 - Eugene P. Wigner 1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman 1965 - Julian Schwinger 1967 - Hans Albrecht Bethe 1969 - Murray Gell-Mann 1971 - Dennis Gabor 1972 - Leon N. Cooper 1973 - Brian David Josephson 1975 - Benjamin Mottleson 1976 - Burton Richter 1978 - Arno Allan Penzias 1978 - Peter L Kapitza 1979 - Stephen Weinberg 1979 - Sheldon Glashow 1988 - Leon Lederman 1988 - Melvin Schwartz 1988 - Jack Steinberger 1990 - Jerome Friedman 1992 - Georges Charpak 1995 - Martin Perl 1995 - Frederick Reines 1996 - David M. Lee 1996 - Douglas D. Osheroff 1997 - Claude Cohen-Tannoudji 2000 - Zhores I. Alferov 2003 - Vitaly Ginsburg 2003 - Alexei Abrikosov

Boortz was good. . . what a joke. "Boortz is no libertarian. He is a sorry shill for the Bush big-government, interventionist, xenophobic, authoritarian regime." http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-12-18/fishwrapper.html Neal Boortz is no John Galt Libertarians will ensure their irrelevance if they embrace radio ignoramus BY JOHN F. SUGG Atlanta's radio offerings are so, so, so very awful that, yes, on my drive to the office, in desperation I am forced to tune in to the city's pinnacle (or is it pit?) of know-nothingness, Neal Boortz. But I have a rule. At his first lie, gross misrepresentation of the truth, or race baiting, I go to a book on tape. Often, I don't make it out of the driveway. Seldom do I travel the five miles to I-85, and never have I completed the 30-minute drive to the Loaf without Boortz bellowing some deceitful absurdity. Neal dissembles, John hits the off button. For example, just last week Boortz proclaimed that the Bushies told no fibs to con Americans into supporting the war. Huh? I paused for a minute before switching on my current recorded book to make sure Boortz wouldn't qualify that astounding fiction or giggle and say, "Just kidding," since all the world now knows George Bush lied. So did Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the contemptible gang. They politicized and distorted intelligence, and when that didn't work, they fabricated and uttered gross untruths. They have even admitted it, but now claim it doesn't matter. I sometimes jot down Boortz's lamest deceits. It's a long list. Ranking at the top was his hysterical claim, in the days before Bush's invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein's military might surpass that of Nazi Germany. I slapped my forehead at that one -- the claim went beyond mere bad information and makes me wonder if there isn't serious impairment of Boortz's reasoning capacity. The fellow needs a 12-step program for the chronically dishonest and incorrigibly stupid. The truth, by the way, was that in 1939 Adolf Hitler boasted 98 divisions, with 1.5 million well-trained men, for the invasion of Poland. For the Western offensive, Germany had 2.5 million men, and 2,500 tanks. In June 1941, Hitler had available 3 million men and 4,000 tanks to invade the Soviet Union. Saddam, prior to our invasion, never had more than 400,000 troops and 2,200 tanks, and the demoralized and largely broken-down Iraqi military was never in the same universe as the Wehrmacht. In other words, Boortz equals bullshit. I don't want to argue the war here, but it was just so Boortzian for him to proclaim that pure lunacy as truth. And the sheep that follow him bleat their belief that they are actually getting "information." That Boortz struts about touting himself as a libertarian would make his daily mission of mendacity a good laugh -- except for one thing: For Big Brother to win, the Bush regime needs to bovine-ize America. Ignorance and the Orwellian capacity to simultaneously believe glaring contradictions are the essential intellectual diet of the Bushies. Force feeding America the swill are Faux News and the phalanx of talk show screechers, of which Boortz is, to his chagrin, merely a farm team lightweight. (In October a University of Maryland survey measured how much false information -- such as that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq -- people believed and whether they primarily relied on Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or print. Those relying on Fox were far less likely to know the truth about critical world and national issues, and far more likely to believe distortions of the truth. Boortz, of course, gets it wrong more often than the heavy-hitting propagandists he worships on Fox.) America needs real libertarians, whose origins are firmly rooted in the Bill of Rights. The Libertarian Party (libertarians with a big "L") is holding its national convention in Atlanta in May, and the party has invited Boortz to be a speaker. I'm told by Libertarian activists the decision was rooted in the group's cheapness -- they didn't want to foot the freight for major talent. Well, you get what you pay for -- free traders such as the Libertarians should understand that. In lib -- or Lib -- ertarian land, there has been a howl of protest over the invitation to Boortz. One of the few points on which Boortz's rants coincide with the Libertarians is ending the Drug War. Hell, there are a lot of tokers out there who can't even spell Libertarian who are in tune with the party on that point. Boortz is no libertarian. He is a sorry shill for the Bush big-government, interventionist, xenophobic, authoritarian regime. Imposing our will on the world, looting resources and guaranteeing Halliburton billions in profits -- that isn't free trade; it's empire. Gutting the Bill of Rights, spying on law-abiding citizens, manipulation through agitprop -- that isn't freedom; it's slavery. "The Libertarian Party is so desperate, it has led them to abandon their issues in favor of seeking popularity," says Eric Garris, who helps run a libertarian website, antiwar.com, and who has long been involved with the party at the national and state (California) levels. On the key issues confronting America, Boortz clearly stands on the side of those who attack freedom, and those who want to turn Big Government into Gargantuan Government (as long as someone besides rich people and corporations pay for it). Examples: He applauds the FBI investigating anti-war demonstrators, making a broad smear recently on his website (that could have been authored by Karl Rove, and maybe was) that activists should be hounded by the feds because they are "pro-Saddam and anti-U.S.," and that they are "largely anti-American communists and Islamic radicals." Likewise, in the same epistle, he applauded the police riot last month against trade demonstrators in Miami. I never met someone who claimed to be a libertarian but was so antagonistic toward the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments. It just doesn't compute. In Boortz's best imitation of Joe McCarthy, he has insinuated that Justin Raimondo -- a nationally prominent Libertarian since the 1970s and the prolific editor of anti-war.com -- is a red. Raimondo "doesn't like me," Boortz huffed on his website last week, "because I approve of our actions in Iraq. Fair enough. Do you know who else doesn't like our Iraqi actions? Well, communists, for one." Slimey, slimey, slimey. On economics, Boortz worships Ronald Reagan -- ignoring the fact that government grew much faster under the Gipper than under, say, Bill Clinton, who the talk show host blames for just about every ill that has ever happened (another script line from Karl Rove). And, of course, Boortz has nothing but gushing praise for Bush's economics, somehow equating fiscal responsibility with pumping up government spending to $21,000 per American household, compared with $16,000 during the Clinton administration -- the biggest increase in more than 50 years. That remarkably un-libertarian accomplishment, coupled with Bush's tax cuts for the plutocrats, has created record deficits that will indenture our children and grandchildren -- hardly what Ayn Rand, the spiritual guru for Libertarians, had in mind in Atlas Shrugged. It's the war, however, that has real libertarians frothing at the invitation to Boortz. The Libertarian Party platform is decidedly anti-war, stating: "We call for the withdrawal of all American military personnel stationed abroad. ... There is no current or foreseeable risk of any conventional military attack on the American people, particularly from long distances. We call for the withdrawal of the U.S. from commitments to engage in war on behalf of other governments and for abandonment of doctrines supporting military intervention such as the Monroe Doctrine." Pretty clear writing, and it's at the heart of Libertarian thought. An irony is that since Boortz is peachy happy with the FBI snooping on anti-war activists, and since most Libertarians are anti-war, the radio blowhard is all in favor of the government investigating the very people who invited him to address their convention. And, in the witch-hunting delusions that substitute for thought in Boortz's diseased mind, it's quite likely all those Libertarians are really either commies or radical Islamists. Boortz doesn't like me. I outed him as a chickenhawk. He keeps changing the story about how he evaded military service during Vietnam (was it the asthma or your eyesight, Neal?). Last week, he was claiming the military wouldn't take him. More precisely, when he couldn't get a relatively cushy job as a pilot, he wasn't about to get dirty (or dead) crawling through rice paddies. It's so easy to be bellicose when it's the other guy -- probably an oh-so-expendable member of the working class and a minority -- who is getting shot. But that's Neal Boortz, the apotheosis of cowardice. He doesn't like to debate when he can't be in control. He keeps his finger on the disconnect button so that when callers start to score points, he can quickly cut them off. If that's who the Libertarians want to hear, the party -- already victim to several internal scuffles -- might as well admit that it's history. If its program is to imitate the Democrats' emulation of the Republicans, the Libertarian Party stands for nothing. Neal Boortz was offered space for his unedited remarks on libertarians' "boot Boortz" efforts. Boortz apparently preferred to pout in silence. For those who would like to sign the petition to give Boortz the heave-ho from the Libertarian convention: www.petitiononline.com/noboortz/petition.html Senior Editor John Sugg -- who says, "Neal, you gutless bag of wind, this is a challenge to a smackdown" -- can be reached at [email protected] or at 404-614-1241. 12.18.03

I shall not be imprisoned in that grave where you are to bury my body. I shall be diffused in great Nature, in the soil, in the air, in the sunshine, in the hearts of those who love me, in all the living and flowing currents of the world. - John Burroughs

[Cliff Claven] It's a little known fact that The Bard himself was the original author of "The Hokey Pokey" [/Cliff Claven] O proud left foot, that ventures quick within Then soon upon a backward journey lithe. Anon, once more the gesture, then begin: Command sinistral pedestal to writhe. Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke, A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl. To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke. Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl. The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

Old stuff from The Onion - maybe posted here before, but no longer available on the original site. And hey, it's Easter.

Very cool - They are soon going to be competing with Yahoo and Hotmail in the email arena, with a some significant additions. . . Sign me up! https://gmail.google.com/ A Google approach to email. Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want. The key features are: Search, don't sort. Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received. Don't throw anything away. 1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message. Keep it all in context. Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation. No pop-up ads. No banners. You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest.

Sounds just like my niece. She has a big monitor lizard across her lower back, with flowers. Way cool - I love nature tattoos, especially beautiful animals when there is some special connection. My niece grew up with reptiles. I have a great memory of her maybe 4 or 5 - she feeds a mouse to one of her snakes and says with a big grin, "Watch - after he eats the mouse, he'll drool blood! " Anyway, also just knocked out by the "Creation of Adam" piece. Very beautiful. It opens up a whole world of possibilities - what art/artists move her? Literature is yet another avenue - does she have special interests there? I saw a guy a couple years ago who had extensive tats of scenes from monster stories and pulp sci-fi covers from the 30s/40s like strange fiction and the like. Awesome. Or she could go with an anchor. . .

So they caved in and she is going to testify. This should be good, seeing her squirm and weasel, finally under oath. Truth is not their friend.

Again courtesy of americanprogress.org. I love these guys - EVERYTHING is sourced (actual links in original story) and directly quoted. -------------------------------------------------------- http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=40520 A point-by-point analysis of how one of America's top national security officials has a severe problem with the truth Pre-9/11 Intelligence CLAIM: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 5/16/02 FACT: On August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." In July 2001, the Administration was also told that terrorists had explored using airplanes as missiles. [Source: NBC, 9/10/02; LA Times, 9/27/01] CLAIM: In May 2002, Rice held a press conference to defend the Administration from new revelations that the President had been explicitly warned about an al Qaeda threat to airlines in August 2001. She "suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04] FACT: According to the CIA, the briefing "was not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04] CLAIM: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so high…we were at battle stations." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'" Meanwhile, the Bush Administration decided to terminate "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Newsweek, 3/21/04] CLAIM: "The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: President Bush and Vice President Cheney's counterterrorism task force, which was created in May, never convened one single meeting. The President himself admitted that "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"] CLAIM: "Our [pre-9/11 NSPD] plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick: "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: "Right." Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04] Condi Rice on Pre-9/11 Counterterrorism Funding CLAIM: "The president increased counterterrorism funding several-fold" before 9/11. – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/24/04 FACT: According to internal government documents, the first full Bush budget for FY2003 "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Source: New York Times, 2/28/04; Newsweek, 5/27/02] Richard Clarke's Concerns CLAIM: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. [Source: CBS 60 Minutes, 3/24/04; White House Press Release, 3/21/04 CLAIM: "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: "On January 25th, 2001, Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy of his 1998 Delenda plan to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice." – 9/11 Commission staff report, 3/24/04 Response to 9/11 CLAIM: "The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04] 9/11 and Iraq Invasion Plans CLAIM: "Not a single National Security Council principal at that meeting recommended to the president going after Iraq. The president thought about it. The next day he told me Iraq is to the side." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: According to the Washington Post, "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document marked 'TOP SECRET'" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by a CBS News, which reported on 9/4/02 that five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq." [Source: Washington Post, 1/12/03. CBS News, 9/4/02] Iraq and WMD CLAIM: "It's not as if anybody believes that Saddam Hussein was without weapons of mass destruction." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/18/04 FACT: The Bush Administration's top weapons inspector David Kay "resigned his post in January, saying he did not believe banned stockpiles existed before the invasion" and has urged the Bush Administration to "come clean" about misleading America about the WMD threat. [Source: Chicago Tribune, 3/24/04; UK Guardian, 3/3/04] 9/11-al Qaeda-Iraq Link CLAIM: "The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11." – National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04 FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there is a connection. [Source: BBC, 9/14/03]

WOW! What a convincing retort! What withering logic! What a brilliant counter-attack of arguments in defense of your heros! My, oh my - your facts, your quotes, your conclusions. . . I think I'm just going to rush right out and write a check to the RNC! Ah ha ha ha ha ha! THAT is the best ANY of you can do? Silence. . . . . Silence. . . . Truly pathetic, but not surprising.

A guy actually wrote a book full of those. He picked the perfect title - a classic mistaken song lyric - the line Jimi Hendrix sings in Purple Haze that comes after "Actin' funny, and I don't know why". . . Do YOU know the next line? It's. . . .It's. . . . It's NOT "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy"! It's 'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671501283/102-2274157-1612110?v=glance

When I was younger (middle school maybe) I thought that debris was pronounced de-bris ("bris" as in circumcision). Stupid silent letters. D'oh! Stupid French words. Reading Jack London as a boy, rendezvous was always ren-da-vus for me as well. . . I was probably a teenager before I put it together.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=533&e=2&u=/ap/20040329/ap_on_re_us/sept_11_commission Fucking slimy weasels, all of them. How on earth can this woman still have a job, and how can Bush even be running again, let alone be remotely close in the polls? God and Greed. Disgusting.

This (in bold) astonishes even me. We all know the GOP priorities, but geez. . . ---------------------------------------------------------- Beat the Progress Report Yesterday, on Hannity and Colmes, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said "the assertion that somehow the Bush administration wasn't paying attention when we came into office is just false." But, despite Rice's comments, we were unable to find a single instance where Rice, Vice President Cheney or President Bush said "al Qaeda" or "bin Laden" in public between Bush Inauguration and 9/11. (The closest thing we could dig up – despite extensive searches on Nexis and the White House website – was a routine written extension of an executive order dealing with the Taliban.) During the same period, however, we were able to identify roughly 400 times that Rice, Cheney and Bush publicly mentioned "tax relief" or "tax cut." Prove you're better than the Progress Report! Send any instance of Rice, Cheney or Bush uttering the words "al Qaeda" or "bin Laden" in public between 1/20/01 and 9/10/01 to [email protected]. The first person to submit a successful entry (which we can verify) will receive a free copy of "Deliver Us From Evil" by Fox News Anchor Sean Hannity signed by the members of the Progress Report team. Note: James Carville has sweetened the pot by also promising a copy of his book to the first person to win the " Beat the Progress Report" contest!

Part of preventing it from happening again is understanding not only what happened, but WHY it happened. In this case, a big part of why it happened is the extremely poor judgment and priorities of the current administration. This incompetence, combined with an amazing ability to brazenly lie, blame, weasel, and avoid apologies or responsibility for mistakes, does not instill much confidence that we are preventing it from happening again. Quite the opposite. The small percentage of voters who are able to swing their votes must understand the character and judgment of this administration - they must know how incompetent AND untrustworthy these people are, and the consequence of keeping them in power. The way to do that is to examine the facts. What's the point? The truth is the point.