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Monday, Dec 17, 2001

same old song

"The fate of Frank Olson, long stamped 'Top Secret,' was a dark and cautionary tale of the Cold War. On November 19, 1953, Olson, a 43-year-old scientist at Fort Detrick, had joined other government researchers at Deep Creek Lodge in Western Maryland. There, an unseen hand had slipped 70 micrograms of LSD into his glass of Cointreau and the glasses of others. The meeting soon degenerated into hours of drug-induced hilarity. But days after, Olson was said to be sullen and withdrawn. A government official had escorted him to New York to 'take care of him'-words his son Eric would later use with grim irony. Shortly after 2:30 on the morning of November 28, 1953, Olson's body was discovered, bloodied and broken, on the pavement of Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, clothed only in underpants and a T-shirt.The government asked the family to believe that he had hurled himself through a closed window on the 10th floor of the Statler Hotel, while a government scientist assigned to keep an eye on him had slept in the next bed."

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war birds

seymour hersh on the iraq hawks

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cynic schism

"Understanding the difference between critique and cynicism -- and the difference between hope and optimism -- is crucial to the future of any struggle against injustice. At this moment in history, those struggles must not only be about trying to win changes in policies but also about the reinvigoration of public life -- a call for participation, for politics, for radical citizenship in reactionary times."

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chutzpah award

john walkers lawyers website is mofo.com.

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df overcast

promising keepers
smarting cards
metablogging
john dean on samuel mudd
enrongate

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Sunday, Dec 16, 2001

at a theatre near you

just around the corner (so to speak)

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ten franca notes

classics of the Lingua Franca canon

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ny sees

We asked 50 New Yorkers to write on their Sept. 10, and were amazed at their tenderness and wit. We were gratified to have Tom Wolfe write on the city that changed. Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg sketches his plans for the future of New York City.

We live in a four-dimensional city, where time and space make their own rules. This has never been clearer than this year, when so many lives were stolen from us but left a transcending legacy. As E.B. White wrote in Here Is New York, "this riddle in steel and stone is at once the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of non-violence, of racial brotherhood."

At the end of this year, in this aching holiday season, we are full of gratitude for the souls we loved; their exuberant faith makes New York a place where memory is the bedrock, ambition the air, intuition and courage the reasons to stay, forever.


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you ought to be in....

chinese director offers role to jenna bush

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Saturday, Dec 15, 2001

stroker ace

the strokes cd was the top seller at other music in 2001.

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