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Sunday, Apr 07, 2002

a drain on leadership

"So it's alarming that, in the "root cause" department, Bush is doing roughly what Sharon is doing: dodging the issue. Of course, both men talk the talk. Sharon acknowledges the Palestinians' aspirations of statehood�it's just that it's never a good time to actually discuss them. When the Arab states unveiled their peace proposal�a vague and imperfect idea, but a major step forward�Sharon changed the subject, using the Passover bombing as the occasion to launch his massive incursion. (This seems to have pleased the bombing's sponsor, Hamas, which shares Sharon's aversion to the Arabs' two-state solution). Bush, similarly, says we need to address the sources of Islamic discontent, including poverty; but when it came time to open American textile markets to Pakistan�which Gen. Musharraf had requested in exchange for his courageous alliance with America�Bush balked. (He did so for crass domestic political reasons, as Franklin Foer has shown in the New Republic.)"

starry eyed

"It has been a long time since Santayana's maxim about forgetting history and repeating history could be cited without irony. The sentence--which first appeared in 1905 in a chapter on "Reason and Common Sense" in Santayana's book The Life of Reason--has been so often and oppressively quoted that it has itself become the very symbol of clich�, the most common way of teaching a platitude by example. Those who do not remember Santayana's maxim, you might say, are condemned to repeat it. But there is at least one precinct of American life in which the famous admonition still has the power to sting: the American government, and particularly the institutions of American foreign policy."

shed your grace

understanding america

pass the peas

red hot jazz archive

Saturday, Apr 06, 2002

cloner

"ROME, Italy -- A maverick fertility specialist is reported to have claimed that a patient is pregnant with the world's first cloned baby."

(re)making it

"Mary Tyler Moore Reunion Leads TV Nostalgia Wave"

real player

"During the last year or so technological realism has claimed its greatest triumph yet, as three major game systems made their debuts. Lives there an 8 to 18-year-old � or an adult guiltily aspiring to that state of mind � who has not yet heard about the technological accomplishments of Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube? Elaborate textures and sounds make earlier games seem like playthings. The humble controller that once maneuvered a diminutive and plump plumber named Mario across a television screen, allowing him to jump, bop and run, has now been pumped up like Lara Croft's bodice; the bloated Xbox controller has eight buttons, two triggers, three toggling switches and untapped possibilities. And the promise and threat of these systems caused sales of video game systems and games to jump 42 percent last year to $9.4 billion."

Friday, Apr 05, 2002

chew toy

"A wad of Bazooka bubble gum supposedly spit out by Luis Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks during a spring training game has been up for bid on "www.nocontraction.com" for a week."

Thursday, Apr 04, 2002

genuwine concern

bush read a reasonably good speech today, considering his point of view, outlining at least some american position on the middle east conflict. maybe theyve accepted that if they can broker a peace it would actually be a major foreign policy victory for bush. i would accept him as the reluctant peacemaker even if he was forced to confront the problem because of his desire to "get saddam". theres little downside for bush to get involved at this point as his lack of resolve is beginning to hurt him in the polls and he aint invading iraq without some arab acquiescence.

absolutely nothing

�Why should I go to kill and to be killed � for what?� says Ron, one of about 400 Israeli soldiers refusing to join the fight in the West Bank and Gaza.

�This is a war that we have no chance to win,� he says.

Lt. Itai Ryb got the call to serve on Friday. But this week he decided to pack not for war, but for jail, joining other refuseniks who have signed a letter saying they�d rather go to prison than serve in the military campaign.

�This war is not acceptable to me,� he says. �I can�t take part in it.�

The Israeli action in the West Bank is wrong, he says, because �it�s occupation, it�s illegal; mostly it harms the well-being of Israel. The sooner we end the occupation, the sooner we�re going to have peace in this country."

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