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"It Did It" is a beautiful and haunting short flick about depression. Peter Brinson artfully uses the Scientific Method to creatively document the effects of the drug Zoloft on his mood and his brain chemistry.
comment posted at 8:30 AM on Feb-15-03
comment posted at 3:47 PM on Feb-15-03

Going to anti-war protests this weekend? Become a photo stringer for the BBC! "The BBC is asking people attending Saturday's anti-war protests who are carrying new combination camera/cell phones to relay their pictures to its newsroom at (44) 7970 885089 or email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk. The broadcaster said that it hopes to provide coverage of the demonstrations 'from a protester's perspective.' It is also accepting photos taken with digital cameras."
comment posted at 7:24 PM on Feb-14-03

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed
comment posted at 7:54 AM on Feb-14-03

What Cost Life? An article that argues that the board of inquiry into the space shuttle's disaster consists mostly of members of the Industrial/Military comples rather than science people to study a science failure. Sort of like setting up a self-study to see why your organization is not doing well. You sure are not going to get approvalfrom the top people if you find them to be at fault. Whatever happened to Truman's famous "the buck stops here." We have kept in place the heads of CIA and NSA and FBI after 9/11, thus not providing much reassurance that there would be important changes to prevent further debacles of the type that took place.
comment posted at 11:03 AM on Feb-9-03

The first cracks in the foundations of Colin Powell's "Case for War" speech are beginning to be uncovered by a Cambridge professor. Some of the information taken from an "up to date" British intelligence dossier was apparently plagiarized and dramatically spun from a California graduate student's paper, describing the Iraqi regime during the 1990s. Will it make any difference in U.S. public opinion if the Powell speech is debunked? Will the widening gap between U.S. and global opinion further weaken the UN?
comment posted at 4:34 PM on Feb-8-03

In his 1947 letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations Albert Einstein wrote of 'enhancing the moral authority of the UN' and portrayed the United Nations as a "transitional system toward the final goal, which is the establishment of a supranational authority". Is the United Nations the depository of the moral authority of the international community? Some say no. Is there really such a thing as moral authority or is it one of those intangibles that, as a Supreme Court justice once said about obscenity, we cannot define, but we know it when we see it? Could a "one world government" work and would it really produce "moral authority" ? (More Inside)
comment posted at 8:05 PM on Feb-5-03
comment posted at 9:14 PM on Feb-5-03
comment posted at 1:55 PM on Feb-6-03

Powell's address to the UN. In a direct, long and rich presentation, Colin Powell has laid the cards on the table, and presented what's likely to be our most explicit case for war. While it's difficult to separate the larger issue of War on Iraq from just this presentation, I'm interested in other takes on Powell's speech. Anything substantially new? Truly irrefutable? Strong enough to justify immediate action? Does this have more heft coming from Powell (considering he's more trusted than Bush on this issue), or is he acting as a mouthpiece? Or, to be succinct, did Colin change anyone's mind? At the very least, he satisfied my need to know more about why our administration is acting so urgently.
comment posted at 2:22 PM on Feb-5-03

A War Crime or an Act of War?

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. ..

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. (NYT)
comment posted at 7:35 PM on Jan-31-03

Vonnegut Weighs in on the State of the Union. As a writer and artist, have you noticed any difference between how the cultural leaders of the past and the cultural leaders of today view their responsibility to society?

Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility to humanity in general? And leaders in what particular cultural activity? I guess you mean the fine arts. I hope you mean the fine arts. ... Anybody practicing the fine art of composing music, no matter how cynical or greedy or scared, still can't help serving all humanity. Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up.
comment posted at 4:38 PM on Jan-30-03

A list of articles by former weapons inspector Richard Spertzel on current inspections. Also former weapons inspector Bill Tierney says Saddam has nukes and the French sabotaged U.N. WMD searches.
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Jan-29-03

Fixin'to Die after all these years Woodstock-era protest singer Country Joe McDonald still keeps an active pulse on today's events on his website. One of what eventually came to be perhaps his most famous song, the "I-Feel-Like-Fixin'-to-Die rag" has taken new life in light of current events, which is quite simple to deduct: just substitute all the Vietnam references with "Iraq" and there you have it - as many people have been happy to do by submitting their own lyrics versions to the site, somehow confirming that the world actually hasn't changed much in that respect 30 years after Vietnam...
comment posted at 3:09 PM on Jan-29-03

Dobby the House Elf and Russian President Vladimir Putin -- Separated At Birth?
comment posted at 4:01 PM on Jan-28-03

The First State of the Union Address - Here is President George Washington's State of the Union Address from January 8, 1790. Have things really changed that much in 213 years?
comment posted at 8:41 AM on Jan-28-03

Arundhati Roy on the war. This is the text of a speech Arundhati gave at Santa Fe last September. I have not seen it on MeFi before. Hence, I thought it would still be of interest. TWe have talked about her before here- 1, 2, 3. It is a long speech! So, read it when you have the time.
comment posted at 7:50 AM on Jan-28-03

Back in the good old days, before The Privacy - Nightmare,
before the deep thinkers went missing in action, before The Permissions Crisis, before the Team Leaders took over with their earth-gobbling death machines and our consciences were drugged into submission, Nigerian security chiefs offered their German counterparts sage advice on combating black magic. And nobody ever spied on the birds!

Except for the Conservative Midwest, where people had other interests, Americans spent their spare time happily perusing ECHO - The EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online, freely offering their comments on federal regulations at Regulations.gov, and reading stimulating independent content like The Talking Blogroll Blues, ... [more inside]
comment posted at 2:44 PM on Jan-25-03
comment posted at 3:02 PM on Jan-25-03
comment posted at 3:36 PM on Jan-25-03

Everybody Loves Potato Chips! But not everyone is a fan of your nationally available tripe; for the true connoisseur, regional "estate" chips are where it's at. From the delicious, slightly vinegary "Utz Carolina Style Barbecue", to the St. Louis hot sauce flavored "Old Vienna Red Hot Riplets"; from the straightforward pleasures of Tim's Cascade Style Cracked Peppercorn to the more exotic temptations of Route 11's Mama Zuma's Revenge, these "micro-fryeries" will never threaten Frito Lay for America's spare change, but for those lucky enough to travel the U.S., they are a welcome taste of local flavor. The truly tempted can scratch that itch via the miracle of e-commerce, but don't expect them to get to your house in time for the Superbowl. Any other favorites out there to keep an eye out for?
comment posted at 9:56 PM on Jan-25-03

"Nothing like this will be built again" is the summary, by sf author Charles Stross, of his tour of the Torness nuclear power station in East Scotland.
His enthusiastic descriptions of the extreme coolness of the technology, the combination of near Victorian style brass plumbing and advanced nuclear engineering, go some way to demystify and humanise what I always regarded as one of the more terrifying pieces of architecture I had ever seen when I lived in the area.
comment posted at 12:51 PM on Jan-25-03
comment posted at 1:05 PM on Jan-25-03

Iraq: How Saddam hides the smoke and the guns This account is from an Italian paper and appears in an Israeli site that sums up materials pertaining to the Middle East. Of course I am not able to verify its authenticity, nor would anyone, given the "hidden" nature of the man being interviewed. But it does suggest what the Bush administration and many pundits have been saying or implying for some time now.
comment posted at 9:48 AM on Jan-24-03

Intern : I was told to mislead the FBI. Yet another good looking young woman finds her beauty has landed her in a tough spot. How many young people working as interns will be forced to suffer embarrassment as a result of the misconduct of their employers?
comment posted at 10:16 AM on Jan-23-03
comment posted at 12:05 PM on Jan-23-03
comment posted at 4:21 AM on Jan-29-03

The Pill changes women's taste in men. Women on the pill prefer masculine men for marriage and sensitive guys for flings. Women not on the pill prefer the opposite, according to a recent British study. Researchers don't know why but "Where a woman chooses her partner while she is on the pill, and then comes off it to have a child, she may find she is married to the wrong man."
comment posted at 11:30 AM on Jan-22-03

The Unseen Gulf War is a photo exhibit from the Gulf War that shows an aspect that I doubt many people have had a chance to see, the "human consequences". Why because the US government after Vietnam fears a media that is not corralled. Besides the fact that this is undemocratic, this view that the media really turned the tide of public opinion in Vietnam seems to be debated by many as this article explains. I must warn that many of the images can be highly disturbing
comment posted at 6:14 AM on Jan-22-03

Why Gen X doesn't care that Gen X doesn't care about the war - in which an irreverent, arrogant, crass young essayist hits a nerve. What RAND has to say about the impact of Iraqi oil on the world economy. Who's organizing large demonstrations against war on Iraq, and who's upset about this. Spend an hour with the real experts on Iraq, real Iraqis, and real people who can't make the case for war. (RealPlayer) This in-depth broadcast interview features some truly key players, the real arguments on both sides, and you probably never heard it, making the case for Internet Radio.
comment posted at 12:14 PM on Jan-21-03
comment posted at 4:27 PM on Jan-21-03

What did John F. Kennedy, Oscar Wilde, William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Confucius all have in common? They were masters of chiasmus. If you've ever been amused by the simple but elegant word play in sentences like "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy, or "It's not the men in my life, it's the life in my men", then you appreciate a good chiasmus when you hear one. via the always interesting bragadocchio
comment posted at 9:48 AM on Jan-21-03
comment posted at 6:10 AM on Jan-23-03

Quick returns dilute tax credit.
Many lower income people, families fall prey to these businesses. Another example are the Payday Loans, courtesy your friend, Mr. Cash.
comment posted at 4:49 AM on Jan-15-03
comment posted at 9:35 AM on Jan-21-03

Family of 7 killed in Arson - Is an Anti-Drug Campaign Responsible? a lawyer from Johnnie Cochran's high-profile firm says so. He claims that the "Baltimore Believe" program got the victims to speak out against drug dealers and report a few of them - resulting in their untimely deaths last October 16th.

Their names are interestingly missing from the "list of believers" on the campaign's website. You can see the list here I'm guessing this isn't what Nancy Reagan had in mind, huh.
comment posted at 5:50 PM on Jan-8-03

The Tyranny of the Tidy: In college, after months of being chided by my roommate for an exceedingly messy room, I finally silenced her by repeatedly demonstrating my ability to quickly and easily retrieve any desired implement from the clutter without leaving my desk. Trying to be tidy always served only to make me inefficient. I understand that for others it may not be so, but is cleanliness really always a virtue?
comment posted at 11:59 PM on Jan-6-03

Inventing a new disease? Some experts are saying that the drug industry is trying lump women’s sexual problems under the term “female sexual dysfunction” to create a market for lucrative new Viagra-like drugs. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association [abstract] found sexual dysfunction is more prevalent for women (43%) than men (31%), but the jury is still out.
comment posted at 4:17 PM on Jan-3-03

Ring in a New Year with good news from the web: Infamous Ugandan rebel ends years of reclusion to call for talks. Peace may be coming to Sumatra, Sri Lanka, Congo and Cyprus. Bill Gates, Sr. wants his kid to preserve the estate tax. Sudanese women launch sex strike to end civil war. Sentimental, choked-up politician says, "If at the end of my mandate all Brazilians have the possibility to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, I will have fulfilled the mission of my life" -- and is honest enough to admit this won't be easy.
comment posted at 6:40 AM on Jan-2-03

Proliferation 101: North Korea, included in the Bush Administration's "Axis of Evil" (and cited as a potential target for US attack), revives it's nuclear weapons program. And while the US has stated " 'We will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes and terrorists to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.'... there is no sign that this new unconditional doctrine will be directed against North Korea." (NYTimes)
comment posted at 9:27 AM on Jan-1-03
comment posted at 8:18 PM on Jan-1-03

This is Baader-Meinhoff. Extensive info about the West German terrorist phenomenon of the 1970s, compiled by a guy whose father was head of the US Army's Bomb Disposal unit in Berlin while Baader-Meinhoff (aka the Red Army Faction) was on the run. Other leftist "urban guerillas" included Movement 2 June and the Socialist Patients collective. The detailed timeline, art criticism, terrorist bios and info about 1970s terror groups in the Mid-East and South America make fascinating reading. There's also the Joe Strummer connection, of course.
comment posted at 8:59 PM on Dec-30-02
comment posted at 9:14 PM on Dec-30-02

Coffee, tea or should we feel your pregnant wife's breasts? Well, like most of you I've read many personal accounts of the change in air travel since 9/11. But this one packs a major wallop, well written, infuriating and containing one of the best concluding sentences . . . ever. ( via Blogdex )
comment posted at 10:54 AM on Dec-22-02

Beyond petroleum? British Petroleum’s recent $200-million makeover into sunny-logoed bp seems to respond to mounting concerns over pollution, global warming, and wars for oil. By advocating alternatives to the very product that has made it the world’s seventh-largest company, it also seems like economic suicide. In accordance with their environmental goals, they've helped release bald eagles in Manhattan and bring solar power to rural Tibet, but many remain unconvinced. Each bp ad ended with the same tagline: “It’s a start.” Is it?
comment posted at 7:56 PM on Dec-21-02

Shizzolate dat sh*t, homey! Snoop can help funkify and shizzolate yo' site, B. That's his word, dogg. (This is amusing for a solid 40 seconds...)
comment posted at 6:18 PM on Dec-19-02

Cluster Bombs: The American Gift That Keeps On Giving. "During its air war in Afghanistan, the United States dropped nearly a quarter-million cluster bomblets that killed or injured scores of civilians, especially children, both during and after strikes, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today....Human Rights Watch found that the United States did not take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties, as required by international humanitarian law....As of November 2002, the International Committee of the Red Cross had identified 127 civilian casualties to cluster bomb duds-a number it stressed was only a partial tally of the total killed and injured since many go unreported. An astonishing 69% of the casualties were children."
comment posted at 5:02 PM on Dec-18-02

"Hitting Home: Coercive Theory, Air Power and Authoritarian Targets" will answer your questions on how aerial bombardment fits into the range of options between coercive diplomacy and total war, questions such as: -- What should be targeted for bombing? -- Exactly how much do you need to destroy to achieve your government's political objectives?
comment posted at 8:04 PM on Dec-17-02

"You are now clear to engage the vehicles." (Warning: 5.5 meg Windows Media video.) This video purports to be the gunsight view of an American AC-130 gunship targetting a compound, and its inhabitants and vehicles, in Afghanistan. Complete with battlefield audio. While I can't guarantee its provenance, it does appear to show what it says. Leaving that aside: How do you react to this footage? Does it change your view of the engagement in Afghanistan? Should more people see this footage? What has the lack of this sort of footage -- didn't we see much more of this sort of battlefield view during the Gulf War? -- meant to the war effort, and the war at home?
comment posted at 7:18 PM on Dec-17-02

The President signs the E-Government Act. Good? Bad? Ugly?
comment posted at 6:36 PM on Dec-17-02