Ethel the Blog
Observations (and occasional brash opining) on science, computers, books, music and other shiny things that catch my mind's eye. There's a home page with ostensibly more permanent stuff. This is intended to be more functional than decorative. I neither intend nor want to surf on the bleeding edge, keep it real, redefine journalism or attract nyphomaniacal groupies (well, maybe a wee bit of the latter). The occasional cheap laugh, raised eyebrow or provocation of interest are all I'll plead guilty to in the matter of intent. Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

The usual copyright stuff applies, but I probably won't get enraged until I find a clone site with absolutely no attribution (which, by the way, has happened twice with some of my other stuff). Finally, if anyone's offended by anything on this site then please do notify me immediately. I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.

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"When they say, 'Gee it's an information explosion!', no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now, where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, ANYTHING." - Harlan Ellison JOLLY OLD PALS Other stuff of mild interest to some: unusual literature scientific software blog physical oceanography glossary computer-related tutorials and texts Thursday, February 21, 2002 CHENEY THE LIAR When the National Review starts pointing out when Dick Cheney lies... But last night, appearing on The Tonight Show, Cheney repeated his charge. "What's at stake here is whether a member of Congress [Waxman] can demand that I give him notes of all my meetings and a list of everybody I met with," Cheney told host Jay Leno. "We don't think that he has that authority." It is not clear exactly what strategy Cheney is pursuing in his public statements about the case. In highly publicized forums, he has claimed that the GAO is demanding notes of the task force meetings. But the evidence seems to support the GAO's position that it is not making that demand. While Cheney's statements may elicit public approval - they drew enthusiastic applause on The Tonight Show - the vice president might face a more critical audience in court, where a judge would be able to examine correspondence between the GAO and Cheney's office over the nature of the GAO's demands. A key piece of evidence will be an August 17, 2001 letter to Cheney from GAO chief David Walker, in which Walker wrote: In communications with the vice president's counsel...we offered to eliminate our earlier request for minutes and notes and for the information presented by members of the public. Even though we are legally entitled to this information, as a matter of comity, we are scaling back the records we are requesting to exclude these two items of information. The letter seems clear enough, yet Cheney continues to say that the GAO is demanding "notes of all my meetings." posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 05:05:07 PM | link BIO SURGERY Talking Points Memo points to the Defense Department's official biography of Army Secretary Thomas E. White before and after the Enron scandal broke. Before: Prior to his appointment as Secretary of the Army, Secretary White served as Vice Chairman of Enron Energy Services, the Enron Corporation subsidiary responsible for providing energy outsource solutions to commercial and industrial customers throughout the United States. Mr. White was responsible for the delivery component of energy management services, which included commodity management; purchasing, maintaining, and operating energy assets; developing and implementing energy information services; capital management; and facilities management. Secretary White also served as a member of Enron's Executive Committee and was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for Enron Operations Corporation. He was also responsible for the Enron Engineering and Construction Company, which managed an extensive construction portfolio with domestic and international projects. And after: From 1990 to 2001, Mr. White was employed by Enron Corporation and held various senior executive positions. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 04:40:05 PM | link ENRON MANIPULATED CALIFORNIA POWER MARKET A Yahoo Finance item tells of how Enron manipulated the California power market to raise prices. A former Enron Corp. employee has written a letter to U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer claiming that he has knowledge the company's trading arm manipulated wholesale electricity prices in California . ... The letter, sent to Sen. Boxer (D., Calif. ), last week by David Fabian, a former employee for Enron's trading unit who wrote the company's trading software for electricity and natural gas sales, claims Enron congested the state's transmission lines and then resold the power in the state's wholesale electricity market at skyrocketing rates. Mr. Fabian worked at the unit from 1997 until the end of 2000. "I never witnessed this but this is what the traders talked about," Mr. Fabian told Dow Jones Newswires. "I spent a lot of time with traders writing the software programs and they discussed how they could use tricks to get high prices for electricity." Enron held the so-called "firm" transmission rights for North Pass and South Pass, California transmission lines that carry electricity north to the south and south to north. Firm transmission rights, which are auctioned to energy companies, give holders the right to reserve space on lines, and rent out that space. "Enron would clog up NP and SP and then gouge people when they needed to use the line to ship power," Mr. Fabian said in an interview. Mr. Fabian also alleged in his letter that Enron had a "cozy" relationship with the federal Bonneville Power Administration and knew when the agency had an abundant supply of water, used to produce hydroelectricity. "BPA would tell Enron traders when they would dump water in order to make power," Mr. Fabian said. "Once the dams got full they would have to dump water, then Enron could get it for a low bid and they would resell it at a markup." posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 04:28:30 PM | link QUESTION OF THE YEAR An interesting question from the halls of BartCop. Answer me this....when Payne Stewart's personal jet did not respond to radio calls and veered off course, an F16 was flying beside it within 25 minutes. Yet when FOUR passenger jets stopped responding to radio calls and went off course, about a 2 and a half hour episode from start to finish, NO military jets were scrambled. Why is that? posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 03:48:52 PM | link PROFIT IS MORALITY Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman discuss how Enron is the rule rather than the exception. Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel are University of Chicago law professors who believe that, when it comes to making profits, nothing -- not even the law -- should stand in the way. (For almost two decades, Easterbrook has also been a federal appeals court judge.) Twenty years ago, writing about antitrust crimes in the Michigan Law Review, Easterbrook and Fischel, then both professors at the University of Chicago, wrote that managers not only may, but should, violate the rules when it is profitable to do so. And it is clear that they believed that this rule should apply beyond just antitrust. In a nutshell, this is the Chicago School view of corporate law that has taken hold over the past 20 years. Under this view, if a Fed Ex truck needs to double park to make a delivery -- double park. No problem. Pay the $20 fine. Just as long as you are still making money, violate the law. Or course, when it comes to corporate crime and violence, we aren't talking about just double parking. We're talking about fraud, corruption, pollution, price-fixing, occupational disease, and bribery. The Chicago School says these are "externalities" and related fines and penalties should simply be viewed as the "costs of doing business." We call these activities crimes, and we believe society imposes penalties for committing these crimes to deter and socially sanction those who would violate society's proscription. Lawmakers of both parties are shamelessly portraying Enron and Arthur Andersen as rotten apples, even though those same lawmakers were just until recently on the take from both corporations, and doing the dirty work of defeating laws that would have governed both. But of course we are not talking about a couple of rotten apples here. As Easterbrook and Fischel so clearly show, the corporate world is now governed by an ideology that is rotten to the core. After all, as the great Chicago professors teach us, it is the duty of managers to violate the law when it is profitable to do so. Note how most if not all who would agree with Easterbrook and Fischel are also undoubtedly "law 'n' order" types who disdain and would maximally punish individuals engaging in the same activities. A small fine if that for the corporations and their wealthy managers, but jail terms for all the other suckers. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 03:31:07 PM | link FUN TIMES TONIGHT Having just received the Sony SCD-CD775 CD/SACD player I snagged on eBay for song, I'm looking forward to some fine listening tonight. I've only snagged one SACD disk thus far, although Weather Report's Heavy Weather is a good 'un. One could argue that the band reached their pinnacle as a jazz outfit with this album, seeing how they got almost completely away from improvisation and soloing on ensuing albums. The apex of this album for me is the fretless bass playing of Jaco Pastorious, who damned near reinvented the instrument. One of the Amazon reviews of this is quite funny, for instance when commenting on the famous opening "Birdland" track: I know it's not "cool" to like beautifully arranged, catchy songs that are extremely memorable if you're a "true" jazz fan, but all you asleep out there secretly hope Anthony Braxton would hit a melody like that in "piece 99938.53" or whatever. This song is brilliantly written out. Jaco's bass is amazing and there are passages that still make me cry with excitement. And for the track "Havona": This was the Jaco moment equivalent to Napolean crowing himself emperor. I'd edit out the synth opening straight out of the movie "Tron", and you'd have a complex, shimmering masterpiece with an improv by Jaco that will make your head spin. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 03:12:14 PM | link THE SANCTION DEATHS DEBATE REVISITED Matt Welch revisits the debate about how many child deaths can be attributed to the sanctions against Iraq. Skipping over the boilerplate attacks against his least favorite "loonies on the left" (as well as some more muted criticism of the pro-sanctions crowd on the right), we find some chewy meat: Garfield concluded that between August 1991 and March 1998 there were at least 106,000 excess deaths of children under 5, with a "more likely" worst-case sum of 227,000. (He recently updated the latter figure to 350,000 through this year.) Of those deaths, he estimated one-quarter were "mainly associated with the Gulf war." The chief causes, in his view, were "contaminated water, lack of high quality foods, inadequate breast feeding, poor weaning practices, and inadequate supplies in the curative health care system. This was the product of both a lack of some essential goods, and inadequate or inefficient use of existing essential goods." Ultimately, Garfield argued, sanctions played an undeniably important role. "Even a small number of documentable excess deaths is an expression of a humanitarian disaster, and this number is not small," he concluded. "[And] excess deaths should...be seen as the tip of the iceberg among damages to occur among under five-year-olds in Iraq in the 1990s....The humanitarian disaster which has occurred in Iraq far exceeds what may be any reasonable level of acceptable damages according to the principles of discrimination and proportionality used in warfare....To the degree that economic sanctions complicate access to and utilization of essential goods, sanctions regulations should be modified immediately." Garfield's conclusion echoes that of literally every international agency that has performed extensive studies in Iraq. In 1999 a U.N. Humanitarian Panel found that "the gravity of the humanitarian situation of the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated." UNICEF's Carol Bellamy, at the time her landmark report was released, said, "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war." The former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, travels around the world calling the policy he once enforced "genocide." His replacement, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned in protest of the U.N.'s "criminal policy." Welch then returns to attack dog mode to finish the article. It's interesting to note that those who claimed over a million additional deaths due to sanctions are painted as "loonies" or worse, while Garfield, who gives a minimum figure of 100,000 and a "more likely" worst-case total of 350,000, is deemed a paragon of rationality. This eternal debate reminds me of another one over how many Stalin killed, with the political sides reversed. Estimates range from 5 to 75 million, with the obvious groups claiming the extremes. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 02:34:34 PM | link A TERRORIST WHO ISN'T A TERRORIST Iving David Rubin is the head of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), an organization that would almost certainly be classified as terrorist if it consisted of Muslims instead of Jews. As a matter of fact, Rubin's been charged with a crime that, once again, would be classified as terrorism if he were a Muslim. By his own count, Rubin has been arrested 40 times, and now he and his associate Earl Krugel are sitting in a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles. They are charged with conspiracy to blow up a mosque, the building housing a Muslim organization, and the offices of a congressman of Lebanese descent. And as for 9/11 marking the beginning of terrorism on American soil: In October 1985, a few months after Rubin was named leader of the JDL, a powerful pipe bomb exploded at the West Coast headquarters of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee in Santa Ana, killing its Palestinian-American regional director, Alex Odeh, and injuring seven others. No arrests were made, but the FBI questioned several people connected with the JDL. One year after Odeh's murder, an FBI analysis said "certain evidence" implicated former associates of Rubin's who have since emigrated to Israel. That bit of terrorism got as much attention from the Feds as nail clippers at a regional airport do these days. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 11:11:43 AM | link SCHEER ON CARLYLE Robert Scheer has finally noticed my favorite satanic baby-eating cult disguised as a private investment firm. Not much I haven't heard except for the last three paragraphs. Take the 80,000-ton Crusader howitzer cannon designed to defeat the tanks of the Soviet army in a conventional war in Central Europe. As a candidate, even George W. Bush made fun of the antiquated weapon as he campaigned on the principle of a leaner, more efficient military built for modern wars. But perhaps nobody had told him that the Crusader is being built by a defense contractor called United Defense, owned by the Carlyle Group. Clinton, on the advice of the Pentagon, was set to bury the weapon as a Cold War artifact. Now Bush the younger has embraced it--and Carlyle suddenly found the confidence to take United Defense public after holding off for a decade. No biggie. What's $11 billion for the Crusader in a defense budget designed to grow to $451 billion by 2007? Only a bleeding heart pinko pacifist would point out that $11 billion is what this "education" president is planning to spend on educating the nation's poor children under next year's Title I appropriation. But hey, child poverty is not the Carlyle Group's business. Note: A canuck of my acquaintance points out that since an 80,000-ton howitzer cannon might create its own black hole, an 80,000-pound howitzer is more likely. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:58:41 AM | link ABC SWALLOWS A Variety item tells how ABC is jumping into bed with Rumsy and the Pentagon. ABC is doing a little more than its TV rivals to bring the war on terrorism into America's homes. The network is turning the war into a weekly reality series, "Profiles From the Front Line," which could end up on the air as soon as this summer. It will follow U.S. troops as they combat terror in global hot spots such as Afghanistan, the Philippines and South America. ABC has given the docudrama series a 13-episode commitment. Rumors indicate that Rumsy has yet to leave even a nickel on the night stand. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:54:26 AM | link HEAR NO EVIL Time tells of an ex-Taliban high mucky-muck whose pleas to tell all to the CIA continue to fall on deaf ears. That's right, the former deputy Interior Minister of the Taliban wants to tell the CIA everything, but they'd rather spend their time saying "pretty please" to drugged up, ignorant pawns baking in the Guantanamo Bay sun. Gee, could it be that the Bush Cabal will say or do anything to keep from having to admit that the remnants of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are being aided by new extra special ally Pakistan? Mullah Abdulsamata Khaksar has been waiting months for the CIA to talk to him. The former deputy Interior Minister of the Taliban says he has a lot of information to give up, perhaps even some that will lead to Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of Afghanistan's fallen regime and chief ally of Osama bin Laden. But, until TIME alerted U.S. military officials in Kabul in late January of his willingness to talk, no American officials had debriefed Khaksar. Two weeks after, no senior U.S. intelligence official had spoken to him yet. The little that Khaksar has divulged - to an American general and his intelligence aide -is tantalizing. For example, after the loss of Kandahar, elements of the Taliban and al-Qaeda formed a new group based in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. Called "al Farkan," its goal was to wage jihad against the American presence in Afghanistan. Khaksar says that there are people in the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, who know about this and may be involved. He says that the ISI agents are still mixed up with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and that the ISI recently assassinated an Afghan in Paktika province who knew the full extent of ISI's collaboration with al-Qaeda. According to Khaksar, the reason the U.S. hadn't been able to find Mullah Omar so far is that it has been relying on "liars" and tribal chieftains who were using U.S. firepower to wreak revenge on their ancient enemies. (Khaksar's brother-in-law is Mullah Salaam, one of Omar's closest advisers; indeed, Salaam may be on the run with Omar.) What does Khaksar want for his hoard of information? Safe passage for his family to a location of his choice. Not Pakistan, he says - too dangerous and too full of ex-Taliban and ISI agents who want him silenced. Until the Taliban Foreign Minister surrendered to U.S. forces in Kandahar last week, Khaksar was the most senior Taliban official to have surrendered. The mystery is, why hasn't the CIA come to debrief him? posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:51:06 AM | link ASHCROFT DECLARES JIHAD What's the difference between John Ashcroft and the Mad Mullahs? Obviously, his god and his eternal verities are the real McCoys. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday cast the government's war on terrorism in religious terms, arguing that the campaign is rooted in faith in God and urging Christians, Jews and Muslims to unite in the effort. Some claim to have seen Ashcroft wiping away a tear as he pondered the dispositions of the souls of the hellbound Jews and Muslims. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:42:16 AM | link BODY COUNT Another reason why the official Afghan civilian body counts of the Pentagon and its simpering toadies are so low. The Americans came back to this dead village last month, bearing words of contrition and a fragment of rubble from the World Trade Center in New York -- another place, they told survivors, where innocent people died. The Pentagon continues to call the attack on Chowkor Kariz on Oct. 22 a legitimate military strike and has made no admission of error. But the small group of U.S. officials who traveled here told relatives of dozens of dead civilians that they were "very sorry about it," said Yusuf Pashtoon, a top Afghan official who accompanied the Americans. "They knew it was a mistake." *sniff* I just knew Rumsy and the Pentagon Boys were nothing but a pack of old softies. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:35:21 AM | link FROM MILOSEVIC TO SHARON The obsession of some to convict Slobodan Milosevic at all costs may be setting some interesting and very dangerous precedents. Take for instance the following bit from a BBC item: Mr Milosevic stressed that the court would have to prove he ordered the crimes. "Otherwise, what sense and meaning do these spots in which the people were killed have to do with the accusations against me?" he asked. But the tribunal has set precedents that commanders can be convicted if they knew, or should have known, about crimes by their subordinates and did nothing to prevent them. But then again 99% of the battle is getting the designated villain up in the dock in the first place, and that'll happen with the Butcher of Lebanon Ariel Sharon approximately three centuries after the winged pigs glide effortlessly over the snowdrifts in hell. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:27:02 AM | link THEIR LOSS IS YOUR GAIN Those kwazy conspiracy nuts over at Yahoo Finance detail how you can win while Saddam loses. Realize of course that the really big money has already been locked down by the Carlyle Group. Already, some investment pros are girding for a U.S. attack on Iraq. Their line of thinking: Which stocks will triumph if America launches military action against Saddam Hussein? Ever since President Bush's January State of the Union speech in which he characterized three nations as forming an "axis of evil," led by Iraq, speculation has accelerated about an imminent U.S. move against Iraq. While it's inherently unsettling to think about ways to profit from war, Wall Street is always on the outlook for an investment opportunity. And defense companies are the natural first place it looks at such times. "A U.S. military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein's regime should benefit companies that produce 'military consummables,'" such as ammunition and spare parts, argues analyst Byron Callan at Merrill Lynch. He has yet to factor in earnings projections for such companies. But Callan figures that outfits facing a "material change" in their earnings include Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Raytheon (RTN), and possibly Level 3 Communications (LLL). They have the highest percentage of sales from such consummables, notes Callan. posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:20:50 AM | link LIST O' LISTS Always a sucker for such things, I've found another treasure trove over at AVguide, the web site affilitated with the magazines "The Perfect Vision" and "The Absolute Sound". Top Ten Rock & Pop Albums of 2001 - Bob Gendron Golden Ear Music Awards 2001 Top Ten Rock Albums of 2000 - Bob Gendron Top Ten Rock Records of the 90s - Bob Gendron Top 100 Jazz Albums of the 20th Century - Fred Kaplan Top 100 Classical Compositions - Mark Lehman and Jonathan Valin Top 100 Classical Compositions of the Century - Mark Lehman and Jonathan Valin The 100 Greatest Pop Albums of the Century - Allan Kozinn posted by Steven Baum 2/21/2002 10:10:44 AM | link Tuesday, February 19, 2002 GOOSE STEPPING TO THE MEDAL STAND David Macfarlane of the Globe and Mail has some marvelously nasty things to say about the Olympics. I find myself in agreement with most of them. Okay, all of them. I can't say that I care for the Olympics. I can't say it because I can say I hate almost everything to do with the damn things. With the exception of the athletes, or, at least, the athletes who are clean -- and that narrows the field of my indiscriminate affection pretty darn quickly -- I wish the Olympics would fly (economy, for a change) back to Athens and choke on exhaust fumes for the next century. The International Olympic Committee is, so far as I can discern, a squalid, horrible, sleazy gang of self-important, two-bit bureaucrats who have managed somehow to convince the world that there is some connection between athletic excellence and rabid nationalism. And while we might have thought that at least the IOC performed the function of being what you found in the dictionary when you looked up "venal," we now find that they don't even do that better than anyone. When you look up "venal" in the dictionary, you find the International Skating Union. It is not coincidence, I think, that all television coverage of "The Games" is heralded over and over by music that we might generously describe as High Fascism. It's not mere happenstance, I believe, that all Olympic anchors are people who, the more you stare at them, and the more you listen to them, the more impossible it becomes to imagine them doing anything else. Not because they do what they do so well. It's just that what they do -- and that would fall under the heading of smarmy enthusiasm, I think -- is so completely disconnected from what those of us who don't sit behind desks the size of aircraft carriers, might call reality. Nor is it merely by chance that (to return to what used to be called "the topic sentence") the only character I have ever come across who bears any resemblance to the extremely creepy former IOC head, Juan Antonio Samaranch, is Homer Simpson's extremely creepy boss, Mr. Burns. ... I remember there was a time when I feared that our children had been so completely indoctrinated by the Disnified world of consumerism and celebrity and wholesome entertainment that they would grow up thinking that the world works the way The Lion King does. I remember that there was a time when they seemed to be not only uncritical, but actually enthusiastic about whatever syrupy nonsense Hollywood was going to pour down its sticky pipe next. I worried that they would buy whatever guff anyone could shovel at them -- so long as it was sentimental, so long as it involved somebody famous, and so long as it had soaring music: the Olympics, in other words. I remember wondering what their equivalent of Mad Magazine would be -- now a pale shadow of its former self, but a generation ago, a primer in cynicism, in satire, in subversion, and in seeing pretentious nonsense for what it truly is. I despaired, I confess. But then, 13 years ago, along came The Simpsons. Just in the nick of time. It's hard to think of anything so mainstream that is so subversive of the mainstream. Forget Beijing. The next Olympics should be in Springfield. And there's always "The Family Guy" for those who find the Simpsons a bit too treacly. posted by Steven Baum 2/19/2002 04:28:34 PM | link Monday, February 18, 2002 POINDEXTER FLOATS BACK TO THE SURFACE I've been sent notice of a New Republic article detailing another tower of moral rectitude obtaining high station in the Bush Cabal. I was also reminded that Poindexter said "I do not recall" 184 times during five days of testimony at the Iran-Contra hearings. The Pentagon's new Information Awareness Office (IAO) harks back to those Strangelovean intelligence agencies of yore with deliberately ambiguous names and broad, mysterious ambits. IAO is charged with organizing databases to catalog information gleaned from the government's ever-expanding array of surveillance systems--the kind of top secret work you'd think would be restricted to officials who are above ethical reproach. Apparently not. After sorting through résumés, the brains at the Department of Defense decided this week that the person to run the new operation would be Admiral John M. Poindexter. A quick refresher for those lucky enough to have forgotten: During his one-year tenure as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, Poindexter landed in a bit of trouble for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal and ensuing cover-up. According to the testimony of his underling Oliver North, Poindexter tore up a document signed by Reagan authorizing the sordid arms-for-hostages deal. Prosecutors found that, in his letters and meetings with congressional investigators, Poindexter fibbed left and right about his involvement. In 1990 a federal district court judge found him guilty of five counts of deceiving Congress. (The conviction was later overturned because he'd provided his testimony under an immunity agreement.) Even if the war on terrorism justifies the creation of this creepy new surveillance entity, it's hard to imagine that the Pentagon couldn't have entrusted its management to someone with a record of honesty. It hardly inspires confidence that the man now in charge of "information awareness" is best known for his cover-ups. posted by Steven Baum 2/18/2002 12:46:06 PM | link

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