drat fink
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degree of difficulty
"But Stanley Milgram believed he had solved the problem, or at least made substantial empirical progress, through an ingenious experiment. Milgram (1967) asked "starters," supposedly "randomly" chosen people from psychologically distant locations like Kansas or Nebraska, to send a folder through the mail to a target person in places like Cambridge, Massachusetts or Boston. The starters were given information about the target person and written instructions to send the folder through the mail to someone they knew on a first-name basis who would be more likely to know the target. That person was to send the folder on to someone even closer. Returned tracer postcards tracked the progress of each chain."
probably meets possibly
"WASHINGTON — Radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear weapons tests across the globe probably caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths in U.S. residents born after 1951, according to data from an unreleased federal study. The study, coupled with findings from previous government investigations, suggests that 20,000 non-fatal cancers — and possibly many more — also can be tied to fallout from aboveground weapons tests."
hedging your bets
"Liberals love to shower Soros with respect, ignoring his Wall Street background, because his motives are so obviously honorable, and the money he is spending so clearly is going to "good" causes. But his life raises some troubling questions about the autonomy of capital in the era of globalization. Make enough money, and you don't have to obey anyone's rules."
battle criers
"The good news is that to beat the Republicans, the Democrats don't have to fight like them. They simply need to remember how to fight like Democrats. The first step is to stop worrying about how their words and actions will play in the establishment media. Bad press is frequently the sign that you're doing something right. If they're serious about beating back Bush, Democrats need to start pulling on all the levers of power available to them, and to stop shrinking away from sounding partisan when the cause is just. Standing up for your Senate leader when he has been attacked is a form of partisanship that the average American can admire. Voters can grasp the moral difference between investigating a politician's private life and investigating how an administration managed to lose $4 trillion of surplus. American voters understand that Enron is no Whitewater."
file under...
"According to the editors, the current thrown-together look of the Web site will soon be tweaked as a long-overdue plan to spruce up its layout is now in an advanced stage. In the coming months and years, Debkafile intends to expand into more fields and languages; increase its specialized staff of reporters, editors, and analysts; and further build its customized base of individual and corporate clients who are willing to pay to receive the publication's reporting, in more detail, before anyone else."
pestilence
"DeWitt's organization has filed suit in US federal court on behalf of 10,000 Ecuadorian peasant farmers and Amazonian Indians charging Lombardi's company with torture, infanticide and wrongful death for its role in the aerial spraying of highly toxic pesticides in the Amazonian jungle, along the border of Ecuador and Colombia. DynCorp's chances of squirming out the suit were dealt a crushing blow in January when federal judge Richard Roberts denied the company's motion to dismiss the case on grounds that their work in Colombia involved matters of national security."
international style
"These cold war assumptions, both ideological and power-political, will have to be dispensed with if we are to develop some means of controlling armed conflict. It is also evident that the US has failed, and will inevitably fail, to impose a new world order (of any kind) by unilateral force, however much power relations are skewed in its favour at present, and even if it is backed by an (inevitably shortlived) alliance. The international system will remain multilateral and its regulation will depend on the ability of several major units to agree with one another, even though one of these states enjoys military predominance."
winning smile
i was busy watching stories of the ancient nefertiti while a modern version was reveling in her own golden moment.
say it aint sasha
was the bush-cohen photo-op just a cattle call for the beef industry?
dog tired
"howling at where lay lays his head and wondering where sullivans is"
georgia on my mind
the pentagon in the transcaucusas
next stop: georgia
anti-terrorising georgia
us to assist georgia in anti-terror
break his crown
"[Editor's Note: The following is a speech that Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Congressman from Cleveland, Ohio, gave this past weekend at the University of Southern California. Rep. Kucinich is the leader of the Progressive Caucus and a longtime defender of free speech, civil liberties and international peace. This speech makes him the first member of the United States Congress to openly repudiate President Bush's war rationale.]"
dont cry for me
"It's already hard to be a whistle-blower. This incentive structure makes it even harder. One of the striking things about Enron is that no one came forward and blew the whistle on the company. (Sherron Watkins has been cast in the role, but all she really did is beg her boss to orchestrate an artful cover-up so she could continue to make lots of money.) Why will the people who work at the next Enron behave any differently?"
pettinest
my only problem with this story is that if somehow this effort by the saudis actually makes some progress in the middle east that ny times columnist thomas friedman will be given credit for initiating the talks. can you imagine what would happen to his already outsized ego if he could claim credit for bringing some resolution to the most troublesome spot on the globe?
please tell me this isnt happening
"Amy Fisher and Tonya Harding will box on Fox in a one-hour March 13 special (9 p.m. ET/PT). The three-fight card — When Celebrities Attack, perhaps? — also features a battle of the former network stars, as The Partridge Family's Danny Bonaduce dukes it out with The Brady Bunch's Barry Williams for three two-minute rounds. A yet-to-be-announced bout also is planned."
late news
"So if that WSJ editorial writer who invoked "evil" had been honest, he might have written, "it may well be that Danny Pearl was killed because his murderers held him responsible for positions on the Middle East conflict and on Islam oft expressed in these editorial pages. If so, then he died for principles that we honor and will always uphold", or something of that sort, while simultaneously emphasizing that reporters are not editorial writers and that Pearl bore no responsibility for the editorials."
responsible broadcasting
"Scripps said that under its "Democracy 2002" initiative, its nine network-affiliated TV stations will provide five minutes of free airtime to candidates nightly between 5 p.m. and 11:35 p.m. in the 30 days preceding this year's general elections. The stations also will provide free airtime as needed during the 30 days preceding primary elections."