Good times in Ireland are bad times for the pubs

Behold the dark side of prosperity.

As recently as the 1980s, young people had to leave Ireland to find work and millionaires were as rare as hen's teeth, as the Irish say. But by 2005, according to the Bank of Ireland, the country of 4 million people had 30,000 residents worth more than a million euros, or about $1.5 million. A year later, the number of millionaires had jumped another 10 percent.

Ireland's per-capita income is now among the highest in the world, surpassing those in the United States, Sweden and Japan, according to the World Bank.

Wealth has given the Irish more options and less time -- a bad combination for the local pub. More people are spending sunny weekends in Spain rather than evenings of "craic," as good times and conversation are known, down at the pub.

Fewer people are farming the valuable rolling green hills around Carney's, about 50 miles south of Galway, and more are commuting long distances to better-paying jobs. And all over the country, when the weary commuters return home, many now prefer to stay in their comfortable homes with a glass of chardonnay in front of their flat-screen TVs.

The Vintners' Federation of Ireland, which represents rural pubs, said the number of pubs outside Dublin has dropped from 6,000 to 5,000 in the past three years. Some estimates suggest the number may soon dwindle to 3,500.

That's just wrong. I suppose if I ever want to experience a real Irish pub, I'd better get a move on before it's too late.

RIP, Dith Pran

Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist on whose life the movie "The Killing Fields" was based, has died of cancer at the age of 65.

Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for [New York Times reporter Sydney] Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War reached its chaotic end in April 1975 and both countries were taken over by Communist forces.

Schanberg helped Dith's family get out but was forced to leave his friend behind after the capital fell; they were not reunited until Dith escaped four and a half years later. Eventually, Dith resettled in the United States and went to work as a photographer for the Times.

It was Dith himself who coined the term "killing fields" for the horrifying clusters of corpses and skeletal remains of victims he encountered on his desperate journey to freedom.

The regime of Pol Pot, bent on turning Cambodia back into a strictly agrarian society, and his Communist zealots were blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people.

"That was the phrase he used from the very first day, during our wondrous reunion in the refugee camp," Schanberg said later.

With thousands being executed simply for manifesting signs of intellect or Western influence -- even wearing glasses or wristwatches -- Dith survived by masquerading as an uneducated peasant, toiling in the fields and subsisting on as little as a mouthful of rice a day, and whatever small animals he could catch.

After Dith moved to the U.S., he became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, dedicated to educating people on the history of the Khmer Rouge regime.

He was "the most patriotic American photographer I've ever met, always talking about how he loves America," said Associated Press photographer Paul Sakuma, who knew Dith through their work with the Asian American Journalists Association.

Schanberg described Dith's ordeal and salvation in a 1980 magazine article titled "The Death and Life of Dith Pran." Schanberg's reporting from Phnom Penh had earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

Later a book, the magazine article became the basis for "The Killing Fields," the highly successful 1984 British film starring Sam Waterston as the Times correspondent and Haing S. Ngor, another Cambodian escapee from the Khmer Rouge, as Dith Pran.

The film won three Oscars, including the best supporting actor award to Ngor.

"Pran was a true reporter, a fighter for the truth and for his people," Schanberg said. "When cancer struck, he fought for his life again. And he did it with the same Buddhist calm and courage and positive spirit that made my brother so special."

I saw "The Killing Fields" in the theaters with some buddies when I was in college. It was one of the most emotionally wrenching movies I've ever seen, and I cannot begin to fathom what it must have been like for Dith Pran and those like him who survived it. My sincere condolences to his family. Rest in peace, Dith Pran.

The "doomsday seed vault"

Is it just me, or does anyone else get a wee bit edgy when sci-fi plotlines become news?

A doomsday seed vault on a remote Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean opened Tuesday, creating a bank of more than 100 million seeds representing every major food crop on Earth.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is meant to be a Noah's Ark for plant genetics. At 4 degrees below 0 F, it will preserve the thousands of regional and local crop varieties farmers worldwide have bred for thousands of years.

Were war, disease, plague or global warming to wipe out any one species, it could be replenished from the seeds stored deep in the permafrost of the mountain vault.

"Norway is proud to be playing a central role in creating a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds but the fundamental building blocks of human civilization," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said in comments relayed by a spokesman.

Numerous seed repositories exist worldwide, but the Svalbard vault is the most comprehensive.

I guess that's a good thing to have, as long as someone remembers it's there in the event it's needed. But I'd prefer to live in a world where this sort of contingency is not seen as needed. Oh, well.

The Irish bag tax

We've talked about recycling and voluntary reduction as a way of dealing with the plastic bag problem. Here's another approach, taken by Ireland, which has been very successful.

There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them for their purchases must now pay 22 cents per bag at the register.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable -- on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one's dog.

[...]

Efforts to tax plastic bags have failed in many places because of heated opposition from manufacturers. In Britain, Los Angeles and San Francisco, proposed taxes failed to gain political approval, though San Francisco passed a ban last year.

Today, Ireland's retailers are great promoters of taxing the bags. "I spent many months arguing against this tax with the minister; I thought customers wouldn't accept it," said Sen. Feargal Quinn, founder of Ireland's largest homegrown chain of supermarkets. "But I have become a big, big enthusiast."

Hard to argue with that kind of result. I think as the use of plastic bags becomes increasingly frowned upon, it's inevitable that the same kind of tax will be passed here somewhere, and then once that happens, it'll spread the same way anti-smoking laws have done.

No thank you for not smoking

Now that's what I call a backlash.

The owner of a small German computer company has fired three non-smoking workers because they were threatening to disturb the peace after they requested a smoke-free environment.

The manager of the 10-person IT company in Buesum, named Thomas J., told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper he had fired the trio because their non-smoking was causing disruptions.

Germany introduced non-smoking rules in pubs and restaurants on January 1, but Germans working in small offices are still allowed to smoke.

"I can't be bothered with trouble-makers," Thomas was quoted saying. "We're on the phone all the time and it's just easier to work while smoking. Everyone picks on smokers these days. It's time for revenge. I'm only going to hire smokers from now on."

Apparently, the revolution has begun. You have been warned.

The bridge protest

As you may know, I'm a tournament bridge player, though not as frequent a player as I once was, thanks to other obligations. I can honestly say that in nearly 20 years of playing at tournaments, I have very little idea how most of the folks I've played with and against vote. It just doesn't come up in the conversation. So I guess I'm as surprised as anyone to hear about this.

In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.

At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, "We did not vote for Bush."

By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of "treason" and "sedition."

"This isn't a free-speech issue," said Jan Martel, president of the United States Bridge Federation, the nonprofit group that selects teams for international tournaments. "There isn't any question that private organizations can control the speech of people who represent them."

Not so, said Danny Kleinman, a professional bridge player, teacher and columnist. "If the U.S.B.F. wants to impose conditions of membership that involve curtailment of free speech, then it cannot claim to represent our country in international competition," he said by e-mail.

I look at it this way: If you think these women are representing all US bridge players, then I'd agree they were out of line. If this had occurred in 2002, with someone holding up a sign that said "9/11: Have You Forgotten?" superimposed over a map of Iraq, I'd have been mighty pissed if I felt they were somehow speaking on my behalf. If that's your view, that the USBF team represents all of us, then sanctioning them is appropriate.

This view isn't crazy. You hear Olympians talk all the time about "representing their country" and how proud they are to do so. But it seems to me that if you are representing your country, then as Ronald Reagan used to joke about, one of the ideals you're also representing is the right to criticize its leaders openly and publicly. That doesn't immunize you from criticism of your actions, of course, but it is something that the sponsoring organization, in this case the USBF, should respect and leave alone.

So put me down as someone who thinks these women should not be made to issue any perfunctory apology, or to be suspended from international play. It's the USBF, and not the individual team captained by Gail Greenberg, that represents me in some sense, and as such I'd prefer they butt out and let the ideal of free speech speak for itself. Link via Jon Swift and The American Street, who has an amusing alteration of the sign.

Prosecute or not?

The Humane Society is applying pressure to the Justice Department in an effort to get them to prosecute Dan Duncan.

Duncan testified before a grand jury in Houston last week about the hunting trip in which he killed a moose and a sheep while flying with a Russian guide. He said he wasn't aware hunting from the air was illegal in Russia, as it is in the U.S.

"The Humane Society of the United States urges prosecution to the full extent of the law and we thank the Department of Justice for giving this case the attention it deserves," the group said in a statement today.

Duncan's attorney, Rusty Hardin, said he "respects everyone's right to have an opinion" but would not comment further on the group's statement.

Hardin said last week that the government might prosecute Duncan under the Lacey Act, a law designed to prevent the interstate and international trafficking of rare plants and animals, although the animals he shot were not endangered.

As distasteful as I find Duncan's actions to be, I don't want this decision to be made in the media. I support there being an investigation to determine if any laws were broken, and if so, then I support a vigorous prosecution. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Call it something else, please

I'm not a hunter. Compared to me, even Mitt Romney looks like Daniel Boone. I have nothing against hunting, it's just not my idea of a good time. But I can at least understand the allure, on some level, of matching wits with your prey on even terms, on their turf.

This, however, I don't understand at all.

Dan Duncan may not have known it was against the law to hunt from a helicopter in Russia, but some say the Houston billionaire should have.

Duncan, 74, appeared before a grand jury in Houston this week to answer questions about a 2002 hunting trip he took in Russia where he shot a moose and a sheep from a helicopter.

Duncan told the Chronicle he believed he was within the law because his Russian guide instructed him to take the shots.

It wasn't until he was recently contacted by U.S. investigators that he learned the practice was illegal in Russia and that by bringing the trophy heads back to the U.S., he violated a law here known as the Lacey Act.

But some believe the executive with pipeline giant Enterprise Products Partners shouldn't have used the assistance of the aircraft when making the shot anyhow.

"Hunting from aircraft has long been prohibited in the U.S. So I'd think any experienced hunter from the U.S. would know it's illegal elsewhere," said Michael Bean, an attorney and chairman of the wildlife program for Environmental Defense in Washington, D.C.

I'm sorry, but taking a potshot at a moose from a helicopter, I don't know what you call it, but I don't call it hunting. It's not a fair fight. I feel the same way about the "canned" hunts on private ranches, where the game is basically trapped in an enclosed area, and every two-bit Kit Carson who pays for the privilege is guaranteed to kill something. To me, this has more in common with Michael Vick than it does with anything that can reasonably be called a sport. I have no opinion on whether or not the feds should pursue a case against this guy - maybe he really didn't know it was illegal, and for sure they have better things to be doing - and to some extent, I don't really care. I'll settle for him feeling shame for taking part in this. If he's not ashamed of himself, he should be.

Le Wi-Fi, oui oui

Add the city of Paris to the municipal Wi-Fi revolution.

If Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe has his way, free wireless Internet soon will be in public places throughout the city - including the cafe haunts on the Left Bank where the master of the chiseled phrase used to write longhand in small black notebooks.

While it might be a little hard to imagine Hemingway writing A Farewell to Arms on a laptop, Delanoe is betting that le Wi-Fi (pronounced wee-fee here) is one of many changes in Paris that will attract creative spirits as well as legions of young people who might otherwise flee the tradition-bound city for places closer to the cutting edge.

Delanoe, 56, a socialist with strong views about how to make Paris competitive in the 21st century, has been reshaping the city's image since he was elected the French capital's first openly gay mayor in 2001. He wants to make Paris greener, more high- tech, less uptight.

"Paris is extremely strong when it is most welcoming," Delanoe told a news magazine shortly after his election. Previous mayors and the national government, he said, had "museumified" the city.

His goal is both to attract young people, some of whom have chosen to move to London for employment, and to attract new business, which increasingly looks to Eastern Europe or the Far East.

"We can't leave Asian cities like Seoul or Tokyo, or American cities like San Francisco or Philadelphia, to make the running (to dominate) in digital matters," Delanoe said earlier this year when he announced plans to create 400 free wireless hotspots.

I forget what the technical term is for what Mayor Delanoe has in mind here - ideopolis, I think - but I'll leave that to folks like Tory to comment on. Y'all know that I love seeing more Wi-Fi access in more places, so I'm just happy to note this for the record.

Question of the day

So am I a big ol' sap for admitting that reading this choked me up, or do I get a pass for being the father of a little girl? Help me out here.

RIP, Steve Irwin

Steve Irwin, the famed Crocodile Hunter, died with his boots on over the weekend.

Irwin died doing what he loved best, getting too close to one of the dangerous animals he dedicated his life to protecting with an irrepressible, effervescent personality that propelled him to global fame.

The 44-year-old Irwin's heart was pierced by the serrated, poisonous spine of a stingray as he swam with the creature today while shooting a new TV show on the Great Barrier Reef, his manager and producer John Stainton said.

Marine experts called the death a freak accident. They said rays reflexively deploy a sharp spine in their tails when frightened, but the venom coating the barb usually just causes a very painful sting for humans.

"It was extraordinarily bad luck,'' said Shaun Collin, a University of Queensland marine neuroscientist. "It's not easy to get spined by a stingray, and to be killed by one is very rare.''

Maybe karma finally caught up with him. Anyone who's watched a few episodes of his TV show knows that he's had more than a few close calls in his career. This time he wasn't so lucky.

Conservationists said all the world would feel the loss of Irwin, who turned a childhood love of snakes and lizards and knowledge learned at his parents' side into a message of wildlife preservation that reached a television audience that reportedly exceeded 200 million.

"He was probably one of the most knowledgeable reptile people in the entire world,'' Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio, told ABC's Good Morning America.

[...]

He was a committed conservationist, running a wildlife park for crocodiles and other Australian fauna, including kangaroos, koalas and possums, and using some of his TV wealth to buy tracts of land for use as natural habitat.

Say what you want about Irwin's style, and about some of the choices he may have made. From where I stand, he did a hell of a lot of good for the cause of conservation, and for making all kinds of animals normally considered nuisances or dangerous less threatening to skittish humans. He put his money where his mouth was, and he died the way he lived, doing what he loved. The world could use more people like that. Rest in peace, Steve Irwin.

Iraq Internet cafe

However you feel about the current situation in Iraq, I believe this proposal by Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is something we can all support.

This May we are returning to Iraq with the intention of dedicating a twenty-four station "Internet Cafe" in Taji. Our goal is to make the World Wide Web available via satellite link in outlying areas of rural Iraq where that service is severely limited.

Some of the hardware and equipment for this project has already been donated. The remaining need is approximately $140,000 to fund the satellite services and equipment for two years.

The Department of Texas VFW Foundation, a 501(c)3 entity, will manage the collection and disbursement of the tax deductible contributions. Corporate contributors are welcome, and it is our goal to have these resources in hand no later than May 15.

I am asking your financial support in this project. This is a personal priority of mine, ahead of re-election fundraising or any other work. I would sincerely appreciate your help.

Information about the cafe and how you can help are at the link. I'm told by Patterson's press secretary Jim Suydam that Patterson has been hitting up elected officials in Austin to give from their campaign cash. That's as good a use for it as I can think of.

Take a look, and if you agree that this is worthy of support, pass the link along to someone else. Thanks very much.

UPDATE: In the Pink puts it all in perspective.

Daylight savings trouble

Daylight Savings time is upon us again this weekend (*). Whether you like it or not (I do, in cases anyone is curious), just be glad you're not in Indiana, where they will start observing DST for the first time since the 1970s. Well, sort of.

But the shift, coupled with a U.S. Transportation Department decision allowing eight of the state's 92 counties to change to the Central time zone, has left many confused and uneasy.

Under state law, most of Indiana has ignored daylight-saving time since the early 1970s. The result has been a patchwork of time zones, with 77 counties observing Eastern time but not changing clocks; five on Eastern time unofficially observing daylight-saving time; and 10 on Central time that observed daylight-saving time.

The clock confusion made the state the butt of jokes and even provided a plotline for television's The West Wing.

Gov. Mitch Daniels pushed daylight time last year, saying it would end the confusion and promote commerce. Lawmakers passed it by a single vote. Instead of resolving the matter, the vote created a new debate about which time zone Indiana should observe.

The only sure thing about Indiana's time debate is that it will continue long after the state springs forward.

Pulaski and Martin Counties already want to move back to Eastern time, contending many businesses will be hurt.

Or Australia.

A simple daylight saving shift to improve the viewing experience of the Commonwealth Games has sent a ripple through the industry with time-conscious IT managers busy updating systems. And many could be caught napping due to a widespread, mistaken belief the extension applies only to Victoria.

Whereas daylight saving usually finishes on the last weekend in March it has been extended this year, in the eastern states that observe the time change, until Sunday April 2 (at 3am clocks go back one hour.)

Microsoft Windows users were issued a patch from the software giant to cope with the extension of daylight savings for a week until April 2, while mid-range and Linux systems require manual configuration to maintain the correct time.

However, keeping an organization's network temporal during this year's sporting spectacle may vary from simple to overly complex, according to Tweed Shire Council's systems supervisor Marcus Armour.

As someone once said, does anybody really know what time it is?

(*) Europe has been on DST since last weekend - they always go a week before we do in the States. This impacted me personally when Tiffany and I took an Easter Week vacation in Switzerland a few years ago. We were there when the Continent sprung forward, and we came home in time for the US to follow suit. Which means that I lost two hours' sleep that year, and only gained one back in the fall. Some days I feel like I'm still catching up from that.

The Monsoon Chronicles

Best of luck to Seth and Sarah Oldmixon as they leave to spend the next two years in Bangladesh with the Peace Corps. They're writing about the experience here. Bon voyage, you two!

London Terrorist Attack

I'm sure everyone has heard by now about the terrorist attack on London mass transit (Two BBC stories; Reuters is inaccessible.) I have always thought London would be better prepared for terrorist attacks after its experiences with the IRA in the 1980s and 1990s. I can't tell whether the low numbers of casualties we're hearing so far is a result of that preparation, British stiff-upper-lippedness, or suppression of news to avoid hysteria.

On September 11, most of the little net.community Chuck and I belong to got online to check in and make sure that everyone was OK. This time, it's no different. Here's hoping that the casualties are as few as possible, the bastards who did this--not just the bombers, who are probably dead, but the ones behind them--are caught and punished, and that London gets back to normal as soon as possible.

Today I'm thanking $DEITY that neither my husband nor I take mass transit to work here in the metro New York area.

I'm Ginger, I'm Chuck's blog-mother, and I post intermittently on my own blog, Perverse Access Memory. Chuck and I have been trading news snark for many years on blogs and mailing lists, but not as many as Matt and Ellen and Chuck have.

New York City: Not one of life's winners

London, not New York, will host the 2012 Olympics, according to CNN. But at least the NYC boosters had an opportunity to stick it to the French:

In the first round, London got 22 votes, Paris 21, Madrid 20 and New York 19. In the second round, Madrid had 32 votes, followed by London with 27 and Paris 25, AP said.

In the third round, London led Paris 39-33 after picking up several New York votes. In the last round, Madrid's votes were spread about evenly, giving London enough to win.

Would it be too late to start bribing IOC officials for Houston 2016 (or at least attempting to woo them by noting the supreme irony of hosting the world's premier sports event in the America's - and possibly the world's - most obese city?)

Addendum: Seriously, if Houston wants it, it stands a good chance, according to the early buzz from CNN:

He and fellow delegates, clearly dejected at a post-election news conference in Singapore, said it was too soon to say whether the city would try for the 2016 Olympics, which stand a good chance of being awarded to the United States for the first time since the Atlanta Games in 1996...

Peter Ueberroth, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said New York -- despite its energetic campaign -- would not gain any special status if it entered the race to be the U.S. candidate for 2016.

"We will have a new process for the next four years," he said. "We'll open it up."

The mad scramble for U.S. cities should begin any moment now. And while we all love New York City, it's not September 12th any more, and there oughtn't be any guilt of waging a no-holds-barred contest (as in, a bit more enthusiastic than the 2012 talk) for the love and affection of the USOC.

BRING IT ON!

New York City: One of life's winners

Brad DeLong points us to a new paper which attempts to explain how New York got so big, and stays so big:

For 200 years, New York City has been the largest city in the nation, and it continues to outperform most cities that were once its competitors. In the 1990s, the city’s population grew by 9 percent and finally passed the eight million mark. New York is the only one of the 16 largest cities in the northeastern or mid-western United States with a higher population today than it had 50 years ago. New York’s economy remains robust. Payroll per employee is more than $80,000 per year in Manhattan’s largest industry and almost $200,000 per year in Manhattan’s second largest industry.

All cities, even New York, go through periods of crisis and seeming rebirth, and New York certainly went through a real crisis in the 1970s. But while the dark periods for Boston, Chicago or Washington D.C. lasted for thirty or fifty years, New York’s worst period lasted for less than a decade. While Boston’s history is one of ongoing crises and reinvention (Glaeser, 2005), New York’s history is one of almost unbroken triumph. The remarkable thing about New York is its ability to thrive despite the massive technological changes that challenged every other dense city that was built around public transportation.

Much to my embarassment, I've never been to New York City (on the other hand, much like the protagonist in Savage Steve Holland's Better Off Dead, this fact has, more than any other, kept me willing to go on with life, no matter how badly the Astros are doing). Nonetheless, a similar question could be asked of Houston. Lord knows that we've had "periods of crisis and seeming rebirth." Indeed, at a meeting on Friday a lecturer asked us if we knew what the "new hot thing" for young lawyers in Houston was twenty years ago. After an uncomfortably long silence in which no-one spoke up to answer, I guessed it might have been real estate.The correct answer was oil and gas. Wrong boom-bust cycle!

Indeed, the most relevant article I can find on Houston's economic history was written at the peak of the go-go 80s (namely, Joe R. Feagin, "The Global Context of Metropolitan Growth: Houston and the Oil Industry", Am. J. of Sociology vol. 90 no. 6 (May 1985), 1204-30). Which leads me to believe it's time for some grad students to get busy on the theses.

Chuck 'n' Camilla

I just want to say that I can't think of any other couple getting married in recent memory who deserved each other more richly. That is all.

How to help

Forty four thousand dead. I have no words.

Here's how you can help.

Put some clothes on!

I'm always grateful to hear of a really dumb law being passed someplace other than Texas.

Alarmed by glimpses of sweaty citizens in the buff, the city council in the southeastern city of Villahermosa has adopted a law banning indoor nudity, officials confirmed on Wednesday.

The regulation, which takes effect on Jan. 1, calls for as much as 36 hours in jail or a fine of $121 for offenders in the Tabasco state capital, 410 miles east of Mexico City.

"We are talking about zero tolerance ... for a lack of morality,'' said city councilwoman Blanca Estela Pulido of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, which governs the state and city.

Opposition party councilman Rodrigo Sanchez said in an interview that the measure, part of a larger series of prohibitions, "tramples on the rights of the citizens by taking laughable measures such as contemplating penalties for citizens who walk around nude inside their houses."

"I have no idea how you detect the naked. You'd have to have a big operation to try to bring it under control," he added.

Pulido said she was confident that citizens who catch a glimpse of offenders would report them to police -- though the law also threatens jail for peeping Toms.

The city on the southern Gulf of Mexico is noted for its swelteringly hot, humid climate.

"The majority of houses have a lot of ventilation and we give ourselves the luxury of going naked," Pulido said. "Because we walk past the windows, you see a lot of things."

Well, as John Mellencamp once sang, "I've seen lots of things/But I have not seen a lot of other things". I think that about sums it up. Via Michael.

Charlie Wilson: The man, the movie

Nice article on former Rep. Charlie Wilson, the eccentric Texan whose career may be making it to the big screen in an adaptation of the book Charlie Wilson's War. He was an interesting guy - I wish I could find some old Molly Ivins columns online, she had some excellent anecdotes about him. Check it out.

The Sudan

This is a petition urging President Bush to take action against the ongoing genocide in the Sudan. I've signed it and I urge you to sign it as well.

That said, it's somewhat hard to imagine what exactly the United States can do other than tell them to stop it. The Army has no spare capacity, a situation which I remind you is entirely the President's fault. What other bad choices will we have to make in the coming months because we have no other viable options?

UPDATE: The Poor Man comments on this.

The case for space travel, continued

Christians look to form "new nation" within US

Calling the approval of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts "the straw that broke the camel's back," a group of Christian activists is in the beginning stages of an effort to have one state secede from the United States to become its own sovereign nation.

"Our Christian republic has declined into a pagan democracy," says Cory Burnell, president of ChristianExodus.org, a non-profit corporation based in Tyler, Texas. "There are some issues people just can't take anymore, and [same-sex marriage] might finally wake up the complacent Christians."

Burnell is leading the charge for a peaceful secession of one state from the union, and after originally considering Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina due to their relatively small populations, coastal access, and the Christian nature of the electorate, Burnell says South Carolina has been selected as the target location.

If I may be so bold as to suggest it, I have a much better idea for these folks.

How mighty is the pen?

Julia suggests a way to help an acquaintance of hers in Afghanistan help some kids over there. Check it out.

Problems in the Galapagos Islands

I hate stories like this.

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador -- Armed with spray guns and tanks of herbicide, 15 Ecuadoreans descended into the crater of an inactive volcano to beat back one of the Galapagos Islands' most voracious foes: the blackberry.

The first blackberry seedlings were introduced by a farmer a decade ago. But now the thorny thickets are spreading from island to island, crowding out native flora by soaking up water, sunlight and soil nutrients.

"This is one of the most aggressive plants," said fumigator Fernando Correa, as he held up the tip of one branch that had nestled into the ground and was already sprouting roots. "It's out of control."

More than 150 years ago, the singular ecosystem of the Galapagos Islands inspired Charles Darwin to conceive his theory of evolution.

Today, however, rising numbers of human settlers and tourists, overzealous fishermen and the introduction of alien species to the archipelago inspire nothing but angst among environmentalists.

Pigs and dogs brought here by humans eat turtle eggs and compete with endemic animals for food. On one island, 200,000 feral goats gobble nearly everything in their path, forcing park officials to organize hunting trips with helicopter-mounted marksmen.

Overfishing in the Galapagos Marine Reserve, a partially protected area covering 51,000 square miles, is reducing the numbers of shark, lobster, grouper and other sea life. In the past three years, two tankers carrying diesel for tourist boats have run aground, spilling thousands of barrels of fuel into the sea.

Because of high birth rates among residents and the arrival of illegal settlers, the islands' human population has shot up from a few thousand in 1990 to more than 25,000 today. Experts say the population will likely double over the next 20 years.

"That's terrifying," said Howard Snell, director of science at the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora, the largest town on the Galapagos. "More people means less biodiversity."

[...]

The islands' extreme isolation meant that, over millions of years, flora and fauna evolved largely on their own. Nearly all of the reptiles, half of the insects and birds, and a third of the plants have adapted to their ecological niches so well that they bear only a faint resemblance to their mainland cousins.

Of the islands' 5,000 plant and animal species, 1,900 are found only on the Galapagos.

The down side to all of this is that many of these species are fragile and will be quickly threatened by nonnative invaders. A new predator can wipe out a population in short order.

Fishermen are now pressuring the government for permission to use long lines, contraptions that send out multiple, hook-filled filaments that stretch across miles of ocean. Long lines are the scourge of ecologists, because they often hook more birds, sea lions and turtles than targeted fish.

To press their demands, fishermen have killed some of the island's famous giant tortoises and kidnapped park workers. In 2000, Ecuadorean special forces had to rescue the Darwin station director after he was chased into a mangrove swamp by irate fishermen, who later ransacked his home and burned park offices.

I want to have sympathy for the fishermen, who are just trying to feed themselves, but they're making it hard for me.

I don't have any good ideas about this. I'm just sad to read about it.

Saint-Exupery's plane found

Pieces of an airplane that were found recently have been definiteively identified as being from the plane Antoine Saint-Exupery was flying when he was last seen.

The mystery of the death of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who celebrated the mysteries of life so charmingly in "The Little Prince," remains intact.

Or nearly. French researchers are due to announce Friday that 60 years after the philosopher-pilot crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, they have found, and identified beyond a doubt, the remains of Saint-Exupéry's Lockheed P-38.

But why he crashed, and how, whether he was shot down, lost control of his plane, or, as some historians have suggested, committed suicide, will, perhaps fittingly, never be known. As the Fox tells the Little Prince: "One can see clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eye."

[...]

As Allied troops prepared to invade the south of France, Saint-Exupéry took off from an airfield in Sardinia on the morning of July 31, 1944, to photograph German troop positions in the French Alps. He never returned to base.

For more than half a century, that was all that was known. And then one day in 1998 a fisherman trawling near the port of Marseille found in his net a silver bracelet engraved with the name Consuelo - Saint-Exupéry's wife's name.

The news reminded Marseille dive-shop owner Luc Vanrell that he had seen pieces of an old airplane at the bottom of the sea near where the bracelet had come up. Two years later, after much searching, he found a piece of metal stamped with a manufacturer's serial number, 2734 L.

The piece of metal, it turned out, was part of a turbocharger from a Lockheed Lightning P-38, the sort of plane that Saint-Ex had been flying on his last sortie. Last fall, Mr. Vanrell won government permission to salvage more of the plane, and brought up nearly two dozen bits and pieces - enough to identify the aircraft as a second-generation P-38, modified for reconnaissance, exactly the model Saint-Exupéry had been flying.

A few weeks ago, a team of enthusiasts under the guidance of Patrick Grandjean, a French Ministry of Culture marine archaeologist, found definitive proof in US Air Force and Lockheed archives: a technical drawing of Saint-Exupéry's plane, with the serial number of its turbocharger: 2734 L. "There is no arguing with that," says Mr. Grandjean. "We can be perfectly certain."

Certain of the twisted piece of metal's provenance, perhaps, but of little else. No bullet holes have been found in the wreckage to suggest that Saint-Exupéry was shot down, but then only a few fragments of the plane have surfaced.

Did the engine malfunction? "The plane hit the sea very violently, to judge by the way the metal is twisted," says Vanrell. "It doesn't look like a failed emergency landing on water. One might guess that it fell vertically from a great height."

But Vanrell and his fellow researchers can only guess. "He dropped out of the glorious sky," says Grandjean. "We can say nothing more."

Rest in peace, Saint-Ex. Thanks to Linkmeister for the catch.

Calpundit on the neocons

Damn straight.

There's the basic contradiction all at once: Wolfowitz and the neocons seem to truly believe that they're motivated by an idealistic devotion to democracy, but at the same time they're willfully blind to the fact that their own Cold War history makes a shambles of that supposed devotion.

After all, this is the same group that spent much of the 70s and 80s so intent on interpreting everything as part of a war of civilizations between the West and a resurgent communism that they ignored — or in some cases actively encouraged — the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. (Remember Afghanistan and Iran-Contra?) The very single-mindedness that neocons are famous for blinded them to the fact that they were contributing to the rise of an even bigger problem, one that had nothing at all to do with communism.

A more expansive approach to the Cold War would almost certainly have worked nearly as well — after all, communism was rotting from within and the Soviet Union was never as strong as the neocons insisted it was — and might have left room for a more democratically inclined Mideast policy as well. But instead of learning this lesson the neocons have simply shifted their familiar monomania to the very fundamentalism they helped midwife into creation. Even the methods are familiar: proxy wars around the world, domino theories, demonization of the left, and an insistence on huge military buildups. The old hatred of Europe is back too, this time even more virulent than before.

Having failed so spectacularly in the 80s to understand the consequences of a single-minded foreign policy, they are now asking us to give them another chance against a different enemy. But wouldn't it be better, instead, to try a cure that hasn't already been proven worse than the disease?

Brilliant!

Two thousand white crosses in mute witness stand

One of the things we saw a lot of in France, out where we were in the champagne country near Epernay and Reims, was war memorials. An awful lot of WWI and WWII happened right there, and there's no forgetting it. Every little town we visited had a memorial to its fallen sons and daughters. Even a tiny little town where we stayed like Reuilly, which occupied about 300 meters on the highway, had a monunment. You couldn't avoid the history and the loss if you wanted to.

One place we visited was Bois de Belleau, now also known as Bois de la Brigade de Marine, which was a critical battle in June of 1918. The memorial, whose inscription you can get a closer look at here, is as remote and foreboding now as it must have been then.

On the other side of the wood is the American military cemetary, whose land was given in perpetuity by France to the US in 1919. The entrance leads up to a beautiful chapel, where inscribed inside is the name and hometown of every soldier who is known to be buried there. Over 2300 soldiers rest in peace here, though about half of their names are not known. A plaque by the visitor's center informs you that there were 116,000 American dead and 300,000 wounded, while France lost 1.4 million soldiers, with another 3.5 million injured. No other Allied country suffered as many losses. You can see some more pictures here.

But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

May they forever rest in peace.

Concordes retiring

So long, supersonic.

LONDON -- British Airways' last Concorde flight for fare-paying passengers took off for New York today, a day before scheduled supersonic service ends for good.

Both today's London-New York flight and Friday's final trans-Atlantic return are expected to be full, but Friday's passengers will all be invited guests of the airline, including actress Joan Collins and Concorde frequent flyer Sir David Frost.

Thousands of planespotters are expected to gather near Heathrow Airport on Friday to watch the near-simultaneous landing of the New York flight and two other Concordes -- one carrying competition winners from Edinburgh, the other taking guests on a circular flight from Heathrow over the Bay of Biscay.

With that, the era of supersonic commercial flight will be over, at least for now.

I don't really have anything to add to this, just that I thought the Concorde was cool. Too bad it was too expensive and environmentally unfriendly. I also didn't realize just how strong the opposition was to the Concorde in New York. I'd probably feel less affection for it if my house was underneath its flight path.

Interview with a war correspondent

Hope has a friend who's a reporter for the Associated Press, and he was kind enough to respond to a few questions she emailed him. He spent time in Afghanistan and was embedded in Iraq, and he's now in East Africa. Check it out.

Missed opportunities

Such a shame we didn't have time to visit Austria while we were overseas, or we could have stopped in on the Schwarzeneggar Museum.

In Graz, travelers can visit the Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum in the Fitnessparadies gym, with photo displays of Schwarzenegger's bodybuilding victories alongside his old metal barbells. Or they can take in an event at the 15,350-seat Arnold Schwarzenegger Soccer Stadium, dedicated on his 50th birthday in 1997.

According to a report in the Orange County (California) Register, recent plans for a massive 82-foot-tall steel statue of Schwarzenegger were "terminated," as the local media liked to say, by the movie star's assertion that the estimated $5 million cost would have been better spent on local charities and services.

Alas. Maybe next time.

Pop goes Antarctica

Great. As if I don't have enough to worry about:

If Russian researchers in Antarctica succeed in drilling through the final 396 feet of nearly 2-1/2 miles of ice to reach an ancient, unexplored lake underneath, scientists at NASA warn the hole could cause an eruption that spews water thousands of feet into the air.

The American scientists speculate that the water in pristine Lake Vostok, filled with gases and pressurized under tons and tons of ice, would act like a carbonated drink in a can that's shaken and then popped open.

Their concern is that the lake water, which has not been exposed to Earth's atmosphere in as many as 15 million years, might become contaminated with microbes and chemicals from the surface. And unsuspecting researchers could get injured by an icy blast from the lake.

In an article published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Chris McKay at NASA-Ames Research Center and his colleagues issued a simple message to the Russians: Be careful.

"Imagine opening a can of Coke," McKay said. "We know from experience that you can do it carefully, no problem. But if you didn't do it carefully, there would be problems."

All righty, then. Nobody shake Antarctica before the Russians pop it open, OK?

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan

You remember Afghanistan, right? Here's how things are going over there:

Such is the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, compounded by the return to the country of a large number of former Afghan communist refugees, that United States and Pakistani intelligence officials have met with Taliban leaders in an effort to devise a political solution to prevent the country from being further ripped apart.

According to a Pakistani jihadi leader who played a role in setting up the communication, the meeting took place recently between representatives of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Taliban leaders at the Pakistan Air Force base of Samungli, near Quetta.

Remember how, before the invasion of Iraq, critics said we shouldn't distract our attention from the vital job of rebuilding Afghanistan? Remember how pro-invasion advocates assured everyone that we could handle both places at the same time?

With the withdrawal of the Soviets and the emergence of the Taliban in the early 1990s, though, the situation once again changed. The Taliban, taking advantage of the power struggles among bitterly divided militias in Kabul, consolidated themselves into an effective political movement led by clerics and in 1996 seized power in Kabul. A part of their success also lay in the fact that initially Afghans, especially Pashtuns who make up the majority of the country, were reluctant to take up the gun against clerics.

Now, in the renewed guerrilla war against foreign troops, it is the clerics who are calling the shots. For instance, Hafiz Rahim is the most respected cleric in the Kandahar region, and he commands all military operations from the sanctuary of the mountainous terrain.

The US forces have employed maximum air support and advanced technology in an attempt to curtail attacks, but without the help of local Afghan forces they are unable to track down Hafiz Rahim, who to date has targeted US convoys scores of times. The United States has admitted a few deaths, while the Taliban claim they have killed many more than the official numbers state. For funds, the Taliban use money looted from the central bank before they abandoned Kabul, estimated in excess of US$110 million, in addition to money received from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

At the same time, famed warlord Gulbbudin Hekmatyar has joined the resistance after returning from exile in Iran. His Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) is the most organized force in Afghanistan, and its participation has added real muscle to the resistance. Many top slots in the Kabul administration are occupied by former HIA members who, although they were once anti-Taliban, are loyal to the Islamic cause and anti-US. Also, several provincial governors and top officials are former HIA commanders. They are suspect in the eyes of the Americans, but because of their huge political clout it is impossible to remove them.

With this groundswell of support - even if in places it is only passive - and with Kabul's influence restricted to the capital, the Americans and their allies will remain vulnerable targets, let alone be in a position to restore any form of law and order. It is in situations like this, argue most experts on Afghanistan, that traditionally insurrections begin in the Afghan army against foreign administrators.

But hey, at least we've been careful to maintain our alliances with other countries in all of these foriegn forays. You know, to make sure that we all have the same goals in mind.

At present, Kabul is divided into two main factions. The first is pro-US, which is represented by the US and allied troops and those loyal to President Hamid Karzai. The second is pro-Russian and pro-Iranian, represented by Defense Minister General Qasim Fahim and his Northern Alliance forces. Although the camps are cooperating at present, they are silently building their support bases to make a grab for full power once the present interim administration runs its course, a process that is due to begin in October with a loya jirga (grand council).

In this respect, every returned or returning former "communist comrade" is important, for should the Northern Alliance faction develop sufficient critical mass, it would come as no surprise if its leaders openly forged an alliance with the resistance movement.

Via Atrios, who says "Every time somebody starts complaining that the Democrats need a coherent foreign policy I just want to bang my head against the table and ask them just what the coherent Bush foreign policy is." I totally agree.

To cover my bases here, I'll admit as Jim Henley notes that this story may not be true, and even if it is there's value in intelligence agencies maintaining ties to "out-groups and adversaries". That said, I'm pretty sure that this isn't what the average American has in mind when asked about President Bush's leadership capabilities.

Talk about a hot stock

Looking for a nice, recession-proof stock? Try an Australian brothel.

"Everyone knows sex is a smart investment," said Heidi Fleiss, the former Hollywood madam, who helped launch the Daily Planet on the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday. Investors in the Melbourne brothel saw shares rise from an opening price of 50 Australian cents (19p) to $1.09 (42p) at the close of trading.

The Daily Planet prides itself on a high-class clientele and says it is "like any other five-star hotel", although rooms can be hired by the half-hour. It claims to be Australia's largest legal brothel and has 18 spa rooms, all equipped with ceiling mirrors.

The chief executive, Andrew Harris, said it had been an uphill battle to get the company listed. "The financial establishment did not want a brothel on the stock exchange," he said. "We have fought every institution, every law firm. It has cost us a fortune."

The flotation was also the culmination of delicate financial manoeuvres designed to allow investors to back the project without being prosecuted under legislation that prohibits living off immoral earnings. Mr Harris said the company had never made a cent from the "working girls" themselves, who were paid directly by clients. Instead, its profits were derived from the $115 (£44) an hour room rental.

The promotional brochure for the brothel promises hospital-standard hygiene, noting that "all sex workers are required by law to use condoms and/or dental dams during any sexual activity".

The company has ambitious plans. It wants to open a sister establishment in Sydney, as well as a "sex Disneyland" theme park. Mr Harris, a former special forces officer who describes himself as "a very strong family man", said: "You may be able to have a simulator of a six-mile high club."

Brothels are legal in Australia, but must be licensed by state governments. Daily Planet also hopes to open outlets in Brazil, Colombia and the American state of Nevada.

Maybe if they include a casino, they can get Bill Bennett to drop in. I suspect he'll have some free time coming up.

Notice the pattern?

Big Media Matt points to this article about the US siding with repressive regimes to block language in a United Nations resolution that calls for countries to condemn violence against women and "refrain from invoking any custom, tradition or religious consideration" as an excuse against condemning such violence. It contains several rather revealing quotes:

"I don't think we're aligning ourselves with countries who have bad records on human rights," said Ellen Sauerbrey, a former Republican candidate for Maryland governor and President George W. Bush's chief representative to the commission.

The State Department's 2002 human rights report says that in Iran, "abuse in the family was a private matter and was seldom discussed publicly." Rape is illegal, but with the law rarely enforced, it is "a widespread problem." Also, the testimony of a woman in a court proceeding is worth half that of a man's. And, the State Department reports, "The 'blood money' paid to the family of a female crime victim is half the sum paid for a man."

Anyway, Sauerbrey said, the positions she took were part of an effort to achieve consensus in a forum where all participants must agree on a final document. In fact, the controversy over halting violence against women disrupted the proceedings and no final statement was issued - for the first time ever. It so happens that the changes pushed by the ayatollahs dovetailed with attempts by American social and religious conservatives who were appointed by the White House as representatives to the UN commission.

"For too long, the feminists have been pushing a radical, special-interest agenda under the erroneous mantra made rhetorical cliche by Hillary Clinton: 'Women's rights are human rights,'" writes Janice Crouse, an official of the conservative group Concerned Women for America and a member of the U.S. delegation.

Concerned Women for America, in comments about the commission session on its Web site, said it objected to language on preventing "custom, tradition or religious consideration" as excuses for violence against women. "It starkly projects custom, tradition and religion as as negative influences," the group said.

The organization, along with the National Right to Life Committee, also objected to use of the term "forced pregnancy" in the section on the abuse of women in armed conflict.

"It so happens there are times when there are issues where social conservatives, whether they be Muslim or Christian, find common ground," Sauerbrey said in explaining the groups' influence.

Other countries that we're aligned with include Sudan, Libya, and Pakistan. As the article notes, in the recent past one of our allies of convenience was Iraq. One wonders how Ellen Sauerbrey would characterize their record on human rights. You can read more about the Bush Administration's support for such things here. I blogged about that incident here, here, and here. That was in my Blogspot days, so the comments I refer to are no longer visible.

Urgent assistance needed

Max Power points to this story of what happened when a Business Week reporter decided to respond to all of those Nigerian email scams. Check it out.

And now the Nigerian scammers have met the Raving Atheist. If that's not a death blow to this industry, nothing will be. Very funny in that obsessive Make Money Fast Hall of Humiliation way. Via Frankenstein.

Online Estonia

Here's a nice little article about the former Soviet republic of Estonia, which is now one of the most Net-connected places on earth:

Dubbed E-Stonia by some, the country ranked No. 8 out of 82 countries in putting the Net to practical use in a recent World Economic Forum report. The country ranked No. 2 in Internet banking and third in e-government.

Last month, the government launched a one-stop home page for online state services. Estonians can use it to digitally sign government forms or legally binding contracts with other people.

The government also set up a site called "Today, I'm Deciding" to let citizens offer their own opinions on legislation. It's got a chat room where they can debate the merits of bills or offer up legislation of their own.

One suggestion offered on the site, which is continually monitored by a webmaster in the prime minister's office, called for easing restrictions on carrying swords in public.

Student fraternities, which use ceremonial swords in college rituals, proposed the change and left hundreds of online messages in support. The campaign succeeded.

Sure would be nice to have that kind of responsive government here, wouldn't it? Of course, it would help if we had a higher percentage of our citizenry involved in the process, but that's another rant for another day.

Best quote in the story:

"If a Frenchman loves to sip wine with his friends and a German enjoys his beer, then an Estonian likes to sit behind his computer on a dark evening, surfing the Net and at the same time talking on his mobile phone," Estonian communications executive Toomas Somera once said.

Rock on, dudes.

Off to war

Well, Dubya's about to get his wish. The prospect leaves me depressed, worried, and angry. I do not believe this invasion will make us safer - quite the contrary. I do not believe that Saddam was an imminent, uncontainable threat. I do not believe this course of action is anywhere close to the best utilization of our increasingly scarce resources. I do believe that the damage President Bush has done to world relations will haunt us for years.

A number of antiwar types have said that once invasion is inevitable, those of us who oppose it need to start talking about what comes next. Now that not attacking Iraq is sadly no longer a realistic hope, we need to focus on making sure that the aftermath is properly handled. Truth be told, all I can really think about right now is working to unelect Bush in 2004. I'm having a hard time getting past my emotions on this.

If you haven't already, I'll echo Josh Marshall and recommend that you read these two articles about how Bush failed where Clinton and Bush Sr succeeded in coalition-building, and why the world has reacted the way it has to America's drive for war. In case you're wondering why getting rid of Bush is so high on my mind. Lastly, don't overlook this article, via TAPPED, which looks at the likely numbers needed to keep the peace when the invasion is over.

If you favored this invasion, all I can say is I hope to hell you turn out to be right. I wish I had your faith.

Another view of Iraq

As long as we're thinking outside the box today, I'll point you to Centerpoint's take on how to bloodlessly resolve the Iraq situation. Interesting reading. And I plan to hold Ted to his promise of future analysis.

On a different note, Centerpoint also has a way to reduce the budget deficit. That would all be funnier if it weren't for the fact that the duct tape industry is already a corporate sponsor of President Bush.

Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction

From Yahoo News:

The Bush administration said Tuesday that it expects Iraq to pay for its own reconstruction in the event there is a war to oust Saddam Hussein.

"Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction," said White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer.

"Our advice is to start by cutting taxes on dividends. We find that this allows you to pay for most everything," Fleischer did not add.

Via Body and Soul.

Yes, you can change the world for the better

Here's a fantastic story about the international campaign by the Rotarians to eradicate polio. They started in 1985, have raised $1.8 billion, worked with WHO and UNICEF and government health agencies everywhere, and have reduced polio outbreaks to almost nothing. Go read it, it's the best thing you'll read today. Via Nathan Newman.

Old ways, modern times

Here's a fascinating article about a Mennonite community in Mexico and how it has adapted its traditional ways of making a living by farming and dairy farming in an increasingly competitive environment. Check it out.

Our friends the Saudi phreakers

The Texas A&M phone system was hacked by some Saudi Arabians, who used it to make free long distance calls.

Phone carriers alerted the school to the suspicious activity Thursday, said Walt Magnussen, A&M's associate director of telecommunications. The university sent an emergency e-mail to employees about the attack that urged them to change their mailbox passwords.

The fraud affected five voice mailboxes among the university's 25,000 phone lines. The number or cost of the unauthorized calls wasn't immediately known, The Eagle reported today.

"Initial indications look like we caught it pretty quickly," Magnussen said.

The hackers guessed each mailbox password because it was the same as the phone number.

"It's like using your name for your password," he said. "It's one of the first things people are going to guess."

The hackers manipulated the outgoing messages by recording "Hello?", followed by a pause, then "Yes." The new recording was designed to fool international operators into thinking they were talking to a live person who answered the phone, then agreed to take a collect call.

Once inside the mailbox, hackers could transfer the call anywhere they wanted at A&M's expense. It may take a month or more to learn how much damage was done, Magnussen said.

This is a pretty common technique, though the recording of "Hello" and "Yes" to fool an operator into thinking that collect charges had been accepted is a new one to me.

The USS Meredith Victory

I'll be scaling back on posting for a day or two (there's some kind of holiday coming up). In the spirit of that holiday, read about the USS Meredith Victory, which rescued 14,000 Korean War refugees on December 22, 1950. More information is here, including a page of photos. That page sadly lacks any captions, but you can see from this picture what it was like on board. I'd never heard anything about this great story before.

Thanks to my dad for the link.

That other nuke-seeking Axis of Evil member

William Burton has posts on why North Korea is a bigger threat than Iraq, why unilateral action in North Korea has a better risk-reward ration than Iraq, why we really need to keep nukes out of Kim Jong Il's hands, and how he would go about accomplishing all that. Go check it out.

A solution to that nasty Iraq issue

Numerous people have joked about how Saddam Hussein's campaign song, which is apparently getting a lot of airplay in Baghdad these days, is Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You". However, so far no one has seen that this is the key to the whole regime change thing. It's simple, really: Tell the RIAA that Saddam is using a pirated copy of the song, which he's got stored on a peer-to-peer file sharing server, and for which he's paying zero royalties, then sit back and let their lawyers take care of it.

On second thought, an invasion might be the more humane thing to do.

No Marshall Plan here

Greg Morrow has some data about the relative value of the Marshall Plan versus what we are doing in Afghanistan. It's another reason why so many of us are so suspicious about Iraq invasion plans: We don't believe that Team Bush will give a flip about Iraq once the fighting is done.

Rummy and Saddam

Michael O'Hanlon gives Donald Rumsfeld a spanking for deliberately misleading the nation about the case for war against Iraq. It's a short summary of Rummy's misstatements that should come in handy when you need it.

Lili arrives

Hurricane Lili has made landfall in Louisiana. The good news is that Lili has been weakened by some dry western winds and has been downgraded to a Category 2 storm. The bad news is that she's still packing 100 MPH winds.

Once again, Louisianans know how to get through the tough times:

Some residents stayed. Steve Petty, 45, taped the windows of his Lake Charles home but did not board them up. Late Wednesday, he was watching baseball playoffs in one of the few open businesses -- a bar and pool hall.

"I've been through Audrey and several others I can't remember the names of. I'm not freaking out, I'm not leaving town. I been through a lot worse," Petty said.

One other bit of good news comes from Scott, who reports that the McIlhenny Company, the makers of Tabasco sauce, expect to keep on making their spicy nectar without disruption. Whew! It's one thing to threaten oil rigs, but when you start messin' with Tabasco sauce, you've crossed the line.

Lili's coming

Geez, the folks in Louisiana haven't even recovered from Isidore, and now they've got to worry about Hurricane Lili, which looks to be a lot worse. Batten down the hatches, y'all.

Here's a little advance warning for the serious student of conspiracy theories:

At this point, Hurricane Lili appears to be aiming for Cameron, which means it will pass through the area of the Gulf that has the greatest density of oil company production platforms and rigs. Cameron is just 25 miles from Port Arthur, which is 15 miles southeast of Beaumont.

We all know what happens next once the oil rigs are inoperable, right?

UPDATE: Lili is now a Category Four storm. Hold on tight.

But I'm sure it was weapons-grade zinc and zirconium

By now I'm sure you've heard that the 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium that was seized in Turkey has turned out to be 150 grams of inert metals such as zinc and zirconium. Oopsie.

I took a quick peek through some warblogger sites (and will be off to take a shower as soon as I can) to see which of them played fair with this story. To their credit, more of them did than didn't. Gold stars to Den Beste, who was skeptical from the beginning and noted the followup. Bill Quick, the Big Baby of the Blogosphere, also called it properly. Charles Johnson worked up a lather at first, but did note the correct story at the end.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have a few guys who dropped the story like a bad habit once it no longer followed their script: NZ Bear, who knows all about making a nuke, Damian Penny, and InstaPundit himself, who eventually gave himself some weasel room with the daring prediction that this "will turn out to be something less than initially advertised". Disadvantage: InstaPundit!

Finally, a shoutout to a guy who's way too cool to be a warblogger, Scott Chaffin, who did get all worked up when the story first hit, but is honest enough to admit it and throw in a pig picture to make it up to us.

Isidore hits New Orleans

Tropical Storm Isidore, which still packed a pretty big punch despite never working its way back up to Hurricane status - made landfall in Louisiana, dumping more than 10 inches of rain and knocking out power for thousands of people.

Never let it be said, though, that the folks in Louisiana don't know how to handle stressful times like this:

Two days of steady downpours had already left 10- 12-inch accumulations on some New Orleans streets, and the French Quarter, usually aglitter all night, was empty with many bar fronts boarded up before midnight. One of the open bars was Molly's at the Market, where about a dozen people holed up against the rain.

"It's all hardcore locals -- the people you knew would be here," said bartender Jolie Meaux. "The owner specifically said we don't close -- ever -- unless they make us. Better to be stuck in a bar than at home watching TV."

I'll drink to that.

Isidore update

Looks like TS/Hurricane Isidore will be heading to Louisiana and not to the Houston area. Here's hoping everyone stays safe and dry throughout.

Isidore heads back out into the Gulf

Tropical Storm Isidore is heading towards the Texas Gulf Coast after battering the Yucatan Peninsula. It's not clear when and where it will hit yet, but pretty much everyone's nervous about it.

Isidore hits Yucatan

Hurricane Isidore, a Category 3 storm, is about to hit the Yucatan peninsula, which is being evacuated as a precaution. No one knows for sure which way this storm will go next, but it could come knocking on our door here. We'll be watching.

Top 10 reasons not to "do" Iraq

Those pinko liberals at the Cato Institute give ten reasons why invading Iraq is a bad idea. Does Jim Henley know about this?

Via Tim Dunlop, who's been all over the weapons inspections point/counterpoint.

Remembrance and atonement

Ted Barlow was the first blogger that I saw who pointed to this page, which is a memorial to Shiri Negari, a young woman killed by a suicide bomber in June. I confess I didn't click the link at the time.

Today, via Jeff Cooper, I came across this post by William Burton about loss, remembrance, and atonement. I urge you to go and read it.

World reaction to Bush UN speech

From In the National Interest, some analysis of how Russia, China, and France reacted to President Bush's recent speech before the UN. Some good quotes:

It remains unclear to us, however, whether the Bush Administration will be prepared to accept the results of successful international inspections in Iraq, i. e. a disarmed Iraq--with Saddam still in power.

[...]

What influences American policy still remains a mystery. President Bush's address reminds one of a comic-book plot, where the United States is cast in the role of the superhero (Superman, or Spiderman) who faces not complex political issues, but megalomaniac characters--Saddam Hussein as "the Joker", or bin Laden as "The Penguin." (ed. note: this guy needs to get his comic book characters straight.)

[...]

One cannot also ignore the domestic factors behind this speech. Bush's challenging international diplomacy takes place only weeks before midterm elections, and retaining control of the Congress is the number-one consideration of his staff. They have concluded that the Iraq issue would help the Republicans to win, since they are facing attacks from the Democrats, a troubled economy, and the President's own position is eroding. So, the president, by speaking before the General Assembly, and negotiating with the other permanent members of the Security Council, keeps the Iraq issue in the headlines through to November.

Spain invests in Mexico

Interesting article in today's Chron about investment by Spanish businesses in Mexico. Spain is the fourth-largest investor in Mexico at $3.6 billion, trailing Canada ($3.8 billion), the Netherlands ($8.9 billion), and of course the US ($66.7 billion, all numbers courtesy of a sidebar chart that's apparently only in the print edition).

Once again: Why Iraq?

From MSNBC, Iran harboring al Qaeda deputies:

Two figures who have assumed critical roles in the al Qaeda hierarchy in recent months, including one reported dead by the Pentagon,