Absolutely Everything Else: Aug 7, 2008

Thursday, August 7, 2008

LA Times building The Los Angeles Times published its last standalone Book Review (LATBR) on Sunday, July 27. It must have been difficult reading for subscribers who've been lamenting the loss of the LATBR since news of its demise broke on July 21. L.A. Times book coverage, what remains, supposedly will be grafted into the larger paper. Cue my unimpressed cheer.

It's not that you couldn't have seen this coming. Over the past year, death knells have been sounding ad nauseam for every subsidiary of the printed word. Newspapers are dying; publishers are struggling; essayists are flopping; book reviews are becoming extinct. No one is reading, at least not as much as they used to, and with less patience.

It's still remarkable to witness one of the Goliaths fall—if only for how it exposes the flawed sense that something so established couldn't be flushed away so fast. A July 7^th memo from the Tribune Company's chief innovation officer seems to rail against just this outcome. "Heard a conversation about how Book reporting doesn't generate revenue and may have to go away," writes Lee Abrams. "WAIT! Maybe Book reviews and coverage are one of those things that don't generate revenue right now, BUT—are trademarks for newspapers and elicit high passion from readers."

Abrams is on to something, until he offers a less-than-innovative plan for revamping book sections—which are "maybe too scholarly"—by including more popular, retail-oriented picks. If the Tribune Company messed up in axing the LATBR, at least it got one thing right: Abrams' fix wouldn't have made anyone any less upset.

We want our culture, and we want it uncompromising. In a public letter, four former editors of the Review condemn the decision as a "philistine blunder that insults the cultural ambition of [Los Angeles] and the region."

http://www.utne.com/2008-07-31/GreatWriting/Big-Brother-is-Watching-Orwells-Diaries-to-Be-Published-as-Blog.aspx?blogid=38&utm_medium=email&utm_source=iPost

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The deficit

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When Google Owns You

Nick Saber isn't happy now. Monday afternoon, after lunch, Nick came back from lunch to find out that he couldn't get into his Gmail account. Further, he couldn't get into anything that Google made (beside search) where his account credentials once worked. When attempting to log in, Nick got a single line message:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]

That's it.

Nick sent a message or three to Google for support. He got back this:

Thank you for your report. We've completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at
this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very
seriously. For this reason, we're unable to reveal any further information
about this account.

And that's it.

Suddenly, Nick can't access his Gmail account, can't open Google Talk (our office IM app), can't open Picasa where his family pictures are, can't use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.

If he was doing something wrong/illegal/invalid, they might've said so (not thinking that he was). If he had been hacked, wouldn't that be something vaguely apparent? I dunno, but it seems like that'd be the way.

So, what happens now? What does Nick do? He's sent a bunch of emails. But now what? Locked out of ALL of Google's apps, the apps that I praise daily, the apps where Julien Smith and I are writing a book. Should we be doing that? I didn't see a problem until this. What if we're the next Nick?

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/when-google-owns-you/

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'Major Discovery' Primed To Unleash Solar Revolution: Scientists Mimic Essence Of Plants' Energy Storage System

A snapshot showing the new, efficient oxygen catalyst in action in Dan Nocera's laboratory at MIT. (Credit: MIT/NSF)

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080731143345.htm

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Meet the rich

The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever. But that doesn't seem to bother Britain's wealthiest earners. In an extract from their new book, Polly Toynbee and David Walker describe the jaw-dropping arrogance they encountered when they asked some of the fat cats to justify their lives of luxury

Unjust Rewards by Polly Toynbee and David Walker

Illustration: James Dawe/Pocko

From the marbled 20th floor of a glass tower in Canary Wharf the view of the river is breathtaking. It snakes down to the Thames barrier, glinting in the sunset. Close to the new city lie the serried ranks of East End estate blocks. The view is typical of London: glossy new wealth nestling close to old and persisting penury. Precious little money has trickled down from this gilded new town in the sky to its neighbours below.

The view is a reminder of the widening gap. History, many like to believe, is a Whiggish tale of wealth, social progress and fairer distribution, an onward march: we all wear the same clothes, meet on equal terms on Facebook. Yet background predicts who will run the banks and who will clean their floors. It's not happenstance; it is largely pre-programmed. General mobility is a myth. The top 10% of income earners get 27.3% of the cake, while the bottom 10% get just 2.6%. Twenty years ago the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company earned 17 times the average employee's pay; now it is more than 75 times. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the proportion of personal wealth held by the top 10% has swelled from 47% to 54%. Labour did try to tug in the opposite direction, but after Gordon Brown's last budget as chancellor axed the 10p tax rate, many of the lowest paid were left bearing a heavier burden.

Those who make the most money, meanwhile, seem less willing than ever to see it redistributed. Tax consultants Grant Thornton estimated that in 2006 at least 32 of the UK's 54 billionaires paid no income tax at all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/04/workandcareers.executivesalaries

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The rise and (relative) fall of stupidity in America

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The Irrelevancy of the Gitmo Trials

By Jacob G. Hornberger

The Pentagon's model "judicial" system at Guantanamo Bay has many fascinating features, virtually all of which are contrary to the rights and guarantees in the federal system established by the Constitution. Among the features in the Pentagon's system are a presumption of guilt for the accused, no right to confront witnesses, the use of hearsay evidence, the use of evidence acquired by torture or coercion, no right against self-incrimination, no protection against cruel and unusual punishments, no right to bail, and no right to trial by jury.

But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Pentagon's system is the irrelevancy of the trial itself. Under the Pentagon's rules, if a person is found not guilty the Pentagon can nonetheless continue to keep him in custody for as long as it wants, even for the rest of his life. In the federal judicial system here in the United States, when a jury acquits an accused he is immediately discharged from custody, enabling him to walk out the courtroom a free man.

Granted, it is highly unlikely that any defendant is going to be acquitted, given that U.S. military personnel are serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury. Nonetheless, every American should take note of this critically important part of this model "judicial" system established by the Pentagon. If the accused is acquitted by the military tribunal, the Pentagon can continue to treat him as if he had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Obvious questions arise: If the Pentagon can continue imprisoning a defendant who has been acquitted, then what's the point of a trial? Isn't the trial more in the nature of a show trial, similar to those conducted by the Soviet Union? Isn't the Pentagon simply using a fake trial, one whose outcome is preordained and irrelevant, to convince people that its punishment of a person is done pursuant to principles of justice?

The Pentagon's model "judicial" system makes a mockery of the principles of justice that America is supposed to stand for.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20441.htm

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Law Professor: Counter Terrorism Czar Told Me There Is Going To Be An i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act

By Steve Watson

Amazing revelations have emerged concerning already existing government plans to overhaul the way the internet functions in order to apply much greater restrictions and control over the web.




	Lessig also revealed there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that "There's going to be an i-9/11 event" which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an "i-Patriot Act" if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled "2018: Life on the Net", Lessig stated:

There's going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn't necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You've got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said "of course there is".

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20440.htm

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The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today

By John Pilger

On the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, John Pilger describes the 'progression of lies' from the dust of that detonated city, to the wars of today - and the threatened attack on Iran.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20444.htm Sphere: Related Content

Book says White House ordered forgery

AFP/Getty Images/File Photo:

The CIA symbol is shown on the floor of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia. US...

by Mike Allen

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in "The Way of the World," to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official "that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion."

The letter's existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, "Terrorist behind September 11 strike 'was trained by Saddam.'"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080805/pl_politico/12308

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You know they're Republicans when...

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Quote of the Day

"It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now."
-Al Gore

For the full speech of Gore's inspiring and visionary speech go to

http://wecansolveit.org/pages/al_gore_a_generational_challenge_to_repower_america/

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Why Cover the Edwards Scandal?

Protecting Elizabeth vs. telling the truth.

By Mickey Kaus

Why write about the Edwards scandal? Here's a short clip-'n'-save response to those (including many friends) who argue the Edwards scandal shouldn't be pursued--or at least pursued too vigorously-- even if it is true:**

1. No"private citizen": Edwards was certainly a contender for VP, or a big cabinet post like Attorney General, or even the Supreme Court, before the scandal first erupted in the "undernews" in late 2007. Some reporters say he was still on Obama's VP list until quite recently. If he's now finished as far as those big jobs are concerned, it's in large part because of this scandal, which Obama might never have learned about if everyone had followed the MSM's lead. Even now, Edwards may not be out of the running for an array of lesser public posts--including cabinet-grade positions--that provide non-trivial power and a platform for future advancement. Important unions back him. Until last week, he'd been traveling the country keeping himself in the public eye in a way well-designed to let him play a big national role in either the Obama administration or the opposition to the McCain administration. It's silly to say "he's just a private citizen"--he's much less of a "private citizen" than, say, William Bennett was in 2003 when Jonathan Alter and Joshua Green torpedoed Bennett's career by revealing his gambling habits.

What makes the scandal awful and unpleasant--as opposed to the Bennett scandal, which was delicious--is that Edwards has a very ill wife. But, as Susan Estrich has noted, that's also what makes Edwards' alleged behavior awful and unpleasant--more objectionable than anything Bennett was accused of doing.

2. Hypocrisy: Ah, but Bennett was a hypocrite-- a man whose chief claim to national attention was as a sophisticated moral scold who turned out to have a major gambling jones. Edwards is a hypocrite too, in much the same way. Why, after all, was Edwards ever considered presidential material. Is he a great executive? No. A brilliant policy expert? No. An accomplished diplomat? No. He's an ex-Senator with one undistinguished term in office who rose in life on the basis of his singular ability to use tearjerking stories to move juries and win large verdicts . His presidential campaign has featured similarly moving anecdotes, such as the famous 10-year old girl "somewhere in America" who goes to bed "praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today, because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm."

http://www.slate.com/id/2196758/#whycover

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