||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
OUTLYING PRECINCTS
POLITICS 1- The Michigan Democratic Party has decided to hold
Presidential caucuses, which will result in a full slate of convention
delegates being selected and seated. "We are currently in negotiations
over the seating of a Michigan delegation to the National Convention.
Any resolution must be agreeable to all four interested parties: the
MDP, the DNC, and both the Clinton and Obama campaigns because we all
want a united Democratic Party in Michigan to ensure a victory for the
Democratic nominee this fall," said State Democratic Chair Mark Brewer.
While the specific details -- like the date -- have yet to be worked
out, The New Republic reports Michigan Dems will be "announcing a new
caucus in the next few days." Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) has
endorsed the caucus re-vote. In Florida, by contrast, leaders of the
both the Clinton and Obama camps agree a re-vote is not going to happen.
"A do-over is unworkable, too expensive, unfair and not logistically
possible in a state our size this late in the game," said Congresswoman
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
http://www.politics1.com/index.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ANOMALY OF THE DAY
We have a media list containing hundreds of names to which we sent our
email updates. Over the past few years, only 37 journalists have
unsubscribed, some because they changed jobs, some because they had too
much to read and some because they just couldn't stand the Progressive
Review. Here's the anomaly: 43% of these cancellations came from just
two media outlets: National Public Radio and the LA Times. NPR we can
understand. In many ways, the Review is the anti-NPR - keeping the new
in news, disrespecting the powerful, challenging the conventional and
actually enjoying politics and life. But the LA Times we can't figure
out. Is southern California becoming that stodgy? Have the hip fled to
the more mountainous corners of the state? Has Hillary Clinton not only
captured Hollywood but the local media as well?
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ECONOMY AND JOBS
WALL STREET JOURNAL - Two crucial barometers of the nation's housing
market have worsened markedly in recent months, ratcheting up pressure
on policy makers in Washington for action to stem the growing housing
crisis and its widening impact on the nation's financial system. Among
the latest trouble signals, the number of American homes entering
foreclosure rose to the highest level on record in the fourth quarter of
2007. Meanwhile, homeowners' share of the equity in their homes fell to
a post-World War II low. Perhaps most troublesome for policy makers: The
deterioration in household finances is expected to continue throughout
the year as housing prices fall further. "We are likely to be living
with a high degree of uncertainty for some period of time about the
ultimate magnitude and duration of the slowdown under way," Federal
Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner said in a speech.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485071664018195.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone
MSN - The total value of homes owned in the U.S. has increased from $834
billion to $5.1 trillion, in inflation-adjusted dollars, since 1952. In
the same time, home equity -- the portion people have paid off -- has
increased from $672 billion to more than $2.5 trillion. That sounds like
great news. But it also means the average equity people have in their
homes dropped from 80% of the home's value in those Howdy Doody days to
a record low of 50.4%.
http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/
2008/03/06/is-home-equity-falling-maybe-maybe-not.aspx
AP - Employers slashed jobs by 63,000 in February, the most in five
years, the starkest sign yet the country is heading dangerously toward
recession or is in one already.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080307/economy.html?.v=7
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CYBER NOTES
NY TIMES - A growing underground network of young people armed with
computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups
has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent
months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.
Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university
videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcon, the
president of the National Assembly. Mr. Alarcon seemed flummoxed when
students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at
hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google The video
spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and
seriously damaged Mr. Alarcon's reputation in some circles. Something
similar happened in late January when officials tried to impose a tax on
the tips and wages of employees of foreign companies. Workers erupted in
jeers and shouts when told about the new tax, a moment caught on a
cellphone camera and passed along by memory sticks. "It passes from
flash drive to flash drive," said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who,
like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his
last name not be used for fear of political persecution. "This is going
to get out of the government's hands because the technology is moving so
rapidly."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/world/americas/06cuba.html?_
r=1&ei=5090&en=45a74148f87914b3&ex=1362459600&partner=
rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FREEDOM BEAT
COMPUTER WORLD - Denver International is the biggest airport in the
world to offer free Wi-Fi. But now a Denver newspaper reports that the
connection is censored. The airport actually blocks blogs like
BoingBoing.net, perezhilton.com and other "potentially racy sites."
irport officials say they'd rather deal with complaints about censorship
than complaints about people viewing objectionable content on their
laptops. The Seattle Times points out that Denver International Airport
stores sell hard-core pornographic magazines, but that the Sports
Illustrated swimsuit site online is blocked. The Vanity Fair magazine
web site is also reportedly blocked by the Denver censorship program.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/censorship_with_your_free_wi_fi
AP - A Swiss bank quietly dropped its lawsuit against renegade Web site
Wikileaks.org, days after a judge reversed his order to disable the site
for posting confidential bank documents. In court papers, Bank Julius
Baer did not give a reason for dropping the suit and reserved the right
to refile it later. Bank lawyer William Briggs did not return a
telephone call seeking comment in time for this story.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19765
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DRUG BUSTS
STATELINE - It's a type of mint plant, with broad leaves and a hollow
stem, widely used by landscapers and gardeners as ground cover. It's
also sold on the Internet for about $15 an ounce for leaves, $11 a gram
for the more potent extract, to be smoked or chewed for a high lasting a
few minutes to a half-hour.
Thousands of videos on YouTube.com show bong-smoking teenagers
"tripping" on the drug. Called salvia divinorum, it's been legal in the
United States until recently, although banned in several countries,
including Australia, Belgium and Italy. Now, state legislators from
Maine to Missouri to California are pushing to outlaw or regulate the
herb that has become a popular recreational drug among young people.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=287942
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NAFTA
BILL FLETCHER JR, BLACK COMMENTATOR - Though NAFTA did result in the
introduction of some new jobs, what is critical is the net effect of
NAFTA. If one factors in losses and gains, the net impact has been the
loss of approximately 900,000 jobs in the USA. Unfortunately, much of
the NAFTA debate stops here or within a few feet. . . What is critical
for us to grasp on this side of the Rio Grande River is that NAFTA has
had a devastating impact on the Mexican economy. Through forcing the
Mexican farmer to compete with USA farmers, rural Mexico's economy has
been turned upside down. The reality is that the Mexican farmer has been
unable to compete, and as a result there began - in the mid 1990s - a
migration of rural Mexicans into the larger Mexican cities. Finding few
job opportunities, the migration moved north toward the USA. This was
accompanied by the impact of NAFTA on the Mexican public sector, which
also suffered severe body blows, thereby undermining what little social
safety net the people of Mexico had.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/267/267_african_world_nafta.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
COLLEGE
SLASHDOT - A student at Ryerson University is facing 147 counts of
academic misconduct after helping to run a chemistry study group through
Facebook. School officials have declined to comment, but students are
claiming that it is simply a valid studying technique in the information
age.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/03/07/0355244.shtml
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
EMENDATION
FROM READER HARRY MULYK: You report that Progressive Punch ranks Obama
as 19th most progressive in the Senate and Cinton as 24th. Out of
curiosity I went to Progressive Punch to look at the details, and
discovered that you've reversed the rankings - Obama is 24th and Clinton
is 19th (with Clinton ranked as marginally more progressive in most
categories and overall). I find this transposition sort of interesting
... there's a general assumption in the progressive community that Obama
is the more progressive candidate (even though there's recognition that
he's imperfect). That assumption seems to be generating an interesting
unintentional 'distortion field' within discussion and reporting in the
progressive community.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ECO CLIPS
TREE HUGGER - An apartment high-rise concept won a sustainable housing
award recently in China. It integrates a vertical greenhouse into the
high-rise. Designed by Knafo Klimor Architects, the "agro-housing"
concept allows the residents to produce their own food, reducing
commuting needs and providing a green neighbourhood. The greenhouse is a
multi-floor structure for cultivation of crops such as vegetables,
fruits, flowers and spices, equipped with a drip irrigation system that
re-uses grey water.
LA TIMES - Like many of the Californians he represents, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger now spends more than three hours commuting because he
lives so far from the office. But his ride is a private jet. After
flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then
living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across
from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at
his Brentwood mansion. The commute costs hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year, which aides say the governor pays for himself. Some
environmentalists say the trips expand his carbon footprint enough to
undermine his image as a crusader against global warming, despite the
pollution credits he buys to offset the damageevan.halper@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arnold7mar07,0,2891674.story
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FIELD NOTES
THE MENHADEN FISH is unique to American waters and it does two things:
it cleans the water and it's a food source for the kind of fish we like
to eat. Menhaden used to number in the billions, perhaps trillions, and
accounted for the unimaginable bounty of the sea and crystal clear
waters found by early settlers. But having now been fished to the brink
of extinction, the loss of Menhaden is directly responsible for huge
dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, not to mention
huge decreases in available game and commercial fish. George Kenney
interviews H. Bruce Franklin, author of Menhaden is The Most Important
Fish in the Sea.
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2008/03/neptunes_cornucopia.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FURTHERMORE. . . .
GUARDIAN - The Telegraph reports that academics in Denmark found the
furniture chain Ikea was naming its cheaper products after Danish towns.
"The researchers claim to have discovered a pattern where more expensive
items, such as beds and chairs, have been named after Swedish, Finnish
and Norwegian towns whereas doormats, draught excluders and runners are
named after Danish places," says the paper. Klaus Kjoller, of the
University of Copenhagen, apparently analyzed (rather than browsed) the
Ikea catalogue. He said it "symbolically portrays Denmark as the doormat
of Sweden, a country with a larger economy and population." An Ikea
official described the product names as "pure coincidence".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/07/wikea107.xml
CHRIS WILSON, SLATE - Prince Harry returned to London on Saturday, after
a 10-week deployment to Afghanistan with the Household Cavalry of the
British army. Photographs of the young royal showed him dressed in
desert fatigues with a healthy mop of red hair-an unusual sight for
Americans accustomed to military buzz cuts. Don't British soldiers have
to cut their hair, too? Only if their commander says so. Unlike American
male recruits, for whom the buzz cut is part of the initiation into the
service, the British Ministry of Defence leaves coiffure decisions up to
individual regiment leaders. Most require new recruits to report with
neatly groomed hair of modest length; they'll even go so far as to
prohibit cuts shorter than about 1 centimeter. For example, the Army
Training Regiment in Lichfield manual for recruits mandates that "the
closest permissible haircut is a No 3," a clipper that leaves about 3/8
of an inch of hair. It specifically prohibits "skinheads." Women are
generally required to keep their hair in a net or bun, as they are in
the United States.
http://www.slate.com/id/2185850/nav/tap3/
TMZ - TMZ has learned the recording industry has no interest -- at least
for now -- in the "American Idol" girls. Their focus is exclusively on
two male contestants. David Archuleta and David Hernandez Well-connected
record industry sources tell TMZ the major publishers (including Sony
and Warner) have already set their sights on David Archuleta and David
Hernandez. The record publishers have already told their songwriters to
write songs specifically for David-squared, whether they win or not.
Sources say this is the earliest publishers have ever committed to the
contestants.
GUARDIAN, UK - The Times splashes on a ban on RAF personnel wearing
their uniforms while off-duty because of "persistent threats and abuse".
"The uniform ban was imposed by the station commander at RAF Wittering,
near Peterborough, after a number of servicemen and women walking in the
city in their military clothes were targeted because of their
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan," the paper reports. The Times says
the order to wear civilian clothes threatens to undermine a planned
policy that will call for "the widespread wearing of military uniforms
to engender respect and appreciation for the Armed Forces". US service
personnel wear their uniforms while off-duty, but doing so in Britain
was banned while the IRA remained a threat.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3500926.ece
A MATHEMATICIAN'S LAMENT
http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
EPA REMOVES WATCHDOG CHEMIST FROM PANEL UNDER PRESSURE FROM INDUSTRY
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-epa29feb29,0,6191299.story?page=1
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
OUTLYING PRECINCTS
POLITICS 1- The Michigan Democratic Party has decided to hold
Presidential caucuses, which will result in a full slate of convention
delegates being selected and seated. "We are currently in negotiations
over the seating of a Michigan delegation to the National Convention.
Any resolution must be agreeable to all four interested parties: the
MDP, the DNC, and both the Clinton and Obama campaigns because we all
want a united Democratic Party in Michigan to ensure a victory for the
Democratic nominee this fall," said State Democratic Chair Mark Brewer.
While the specific details -- like the date -- have yet to be worked
out, The New Republic reports Michigan Dems will be "announcing a new
caucus in the next few days." Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) has
endorsed the caucus re-vote. In Florida, by contrast, leaders of the
both the Clinton and Obama camps agree a re-vote is not going to happen.
"A do-over is unworkable, too expensive, unfair and not logistically
possible in a state our size this late in the game," said Congresswoman
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
http://www.politics1.com/index.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ANOMALY OF THE DAY
We have a media list containing hundreds of names to which we sent our
email updates. Over the past few years, only 37 journalists have
unsubscribed, some because they changed jobs, some because they had too
much to read and some because they just couldn't stand the Progressive
Review. Here's the anomaly: 43% of these cancellations came from just
two media outlets: National Public Radio and the LA Times. NPR we can
understand. In many ways, the Review is the anti-NPR - keeping the new
in news, disrespecting the powerful, challenging the conventional and
actually enjoying politics and life. But the LA Times we can't figure
out. Is southern California becoming that stodgy? Have the hip fled to
the more mountainous corners of the state? Has Hillary Clinton not only
captured Hollywood but the local media as well?
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ECONOMY AND JOBS
WALL STREET JOURNAL - Two crucial barometers of the nation's housing
market have worsened markedly in recent months, ratcheting up pressure
on policy makers in Washington for action to stem the growing housing
crisis and its widening impact on the nation's financial system. Among
the latest trouble signals, the number of American homes entering
foreclosure rose to the highest level on record in the fourth quarter of
2007. Meanwhile, homeowners' share of the equity in their homes fell to
a post-World War II low. Perhaps most troublesome for policy makers: The
deterioration in household finances is expected to continue throughout
the year as housing prices fall further. "We are likely to be living
with a high degree of uncertainty for some period of time about the
ultimate magnitude and duration of the slowdown under way," Federal
Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner said in a speech.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120485071664018195.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone
MSN - The total value of homes owned in the U.S. has increased from $834
billion to $5.1 trillion, in inflation-adjusted dollars, since 1952. In
the same time, home equity -- the portion people have paid off -- has
increased from $672 billion to more than $2.5 trillion. That sounds like
great news. But it also means the average equity people have in their
homes dropped from 80% of the home's value in those Howdy Doody days to
a record low of 50.4%.
http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/
2008/03/06/is-home-equity-falling-maybe-maybe-not.aspx
AP - Employers slashed jobs by 63,000 in February, the most in five
years, the starkest sign yet the country is heading dangerously toward
recession or is in one already.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080307/economy.html?.v=7
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CYBER NOTES
NY TIMES - A growing underground network of young people armed with
computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups
has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent
months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.
Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university
videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcon, the
president of the National Assembly. Mr. Alarcon seemed flummoxed when
students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at
hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google The video
spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and
seriously damaged Mr. Alarcon's reputation in some circles. Something
similar happened in late January when officials tried to impose a tax on
the tips and wages of employees of foreign companies. Workers erupted in
jeers and shouts when told about the new tax, a moment caught on a
cellphone camera and passed along by memory sticks. "It passes from
flash drive to flash drive," said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who,
like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his
last name not be used for fear of political persecution. "This is going
to get out of the government's hands because the technology is moving so
rapidly."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/world/americas/06cuba.html?_
r=1&ei=5090&en=45a74148f87914b3&ex=1362459600&partner=
rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FREEDOM BEAT
COMPUTER WORLD - Denver International is the biggest airport in the
world to offer free Wi-Fi. But now a Denver newspaper reports that the
connection is censored. The airport actually blocks blogs like
BoingBoing.net, perezhilton.com and other "potentially racy sites."
irport officials say they'd rather deal with complaints about censorship
than complaints about people viewing objectionable content on their
laptops. The Seattle Times points out that Denver International Airport
stores sell hard-core pornographic magazines, but that the Sports
Illustrated swimsuit site online is blocked. The Vanity Fair magazine
web site is also reportedly blocked by the Denver censorship program.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/censorship_with_your_free_wi_fi
AP - A Swiss bank quietly dropped its lawsuit against renegade Web site
Wikileaks.org, days after a judge reversed his order to disable the site
for posting confidential bank documents. In court papers, Bank Julius
Baer did not give a reason for dropping the suit and reserved the right
to refile it later. Bank lawyer William Briggs did not return a
telephone call seeking comment in time for this story.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19765
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DRUG BUSTS
STATELINE - It's a type of mint plant, with broad leaves and a hollow
stem, widely used by landscapers and gardeners as ground cover. It's
also sold on the Internet for about $15 an ounce for leaves, $11 a gram
for the more potent extract, to be smoked or chewed for a high lasting a
few minutes to a half-hour.
Thousands of videos on YouTube.com show bong-smoking teenagers
"tripping" on the drug. Called salvia divinorum, it's been legal in the
United States until recently, although banned in several countries,
including Australia, Belgium and Italy. Now, state legislators from
Maine to Missouri to California are pushing to outlaw or regulate the
herb that has become a popular recreational drug among young people.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=287942
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NAFTA
BILL FLETCHER JR, BLACK COMMENTATOR - Though NAFTA did result in the
introduction of some new jobs, what is critical is the net effect of
NAFTA. If one factors in losses and gains, the net impact has been the
loss of approximately 900,000 jobs in the USA. Unfortunately, much of
the NAFTA debate stops here or within a few feet. . . What is critical
for us to grasp on this side of the Rio Grande River is that NAFTA has
had a devastating impact on the Mexican economy. Through forcing the
Mexican farmer to compete with USA farmers, rural Mexico's economy has
been turned upside down. The reality is that the Mexican farmer has been
unable to compete, and as a result there began - in the mid 1990s - a
migration of rural Mexicans into the larger Mexican cities. Finding few
job opportunities, the migration moved north toward the USA. This was
accompanied by the impact of NAFTA on the Mexican public sector, which
also suffered severe body blows, thereby undermining what little social
safety net the people of Mexico had.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/267/267_african_world_nafta.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
COLLEGE
SLASHDOT - A student at Ryerson University is facing 147 counts of
academic misconduct after helping to run a chemistry study group through
Facebook. School officials have declined to comment, but students are
claiming that it is simply a valid studying technique in the information
age.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/03/07/0355244.shtml
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
EMENDATION
FROM READER HARRY MULYK: You report that Progressive Punch ranks Obama
as 19th most progressive in the Senate and Cinton as 24th. Out of
curiosity I went to Progressive Punch to look at the details, and
discovered that you've reversed the rankings - Obama is 24th and Clinton
is 19th (with Clinton ranked as marginally more progressive in most
categories and overall). I find this transposition sort of interesting
... there's a general assumption in the progressive community that Obama
is the more progressive candidate (even though there's recognition that
he's imperfect). That assumption seems to be generating an interesting
unintentional 'distortion field' within discussion and reporting in the
progressive community.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ECO CLIPS
TREE HUGGER - An apartment high-rise concept won a sustainable housing
award recently in China. It integrates a vertical greenhouse into the
high-rise. Designed by Knafo Klimor Architects, the "agro-housing"
concept allows the residents to produce their own food, reducing
commuting needs and providing a green neighbourhood. The greenhouse is a
multi-floor structure for cultivation of crops such as vegetables,
fruits, flowers and spices, equipped with a drip irrigation system that
re-uses grey water.
LA TIMES - Like many of the Californians he represents, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger now spends more than three hours commuting because he
lives so far from the office. But his ride is a private jet. After
flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then
living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across
from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at
his Brentwood mansion. The commute costs hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year, which aides say the governor pays for himself. Some
environmentalists say the trips expand his carbon footprint enough to
undermine his image as a crusader against global warming, despite the
pollution credits he buys to offset the damageevan.halper@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arnold7mar07,0,2891674.story
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FIELD NOTES
THE MENHADEN FISH is unique to American waters and it does two things:
it cleans the water and it's a food source for the kind of fish we like
to eat. Menhaden used to number in the billions, perhaps trillions, and
accounted for the unimaginable bounty of the sea and crystal clear
waters found by early settlers. But having now been fished to the brink
of extinction, the loss of Menhaden is directly responsible for huge
dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, not to mention
huge decreases in available game and commercial fish. George Kenney
interviews H. Bruce Franklin, author of Menhaden is The Most Important
Fish in the Sea.
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2008/03/neptunes_cornucopia.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FURTHERMORE. . . .
GUARDIAN - The Telegraph reports that academics in Denmark found the
furniture chain Ikea was naming its cheaper products after Danish towns.
"The researchers claim to have discovered a pattern where more expensive
items, such as beds and chairs, have been named after Swedish, Finnish
and Norwegian towns whereas doormats, draught excluders and runners are
named after Danish places," says the paper. Klaus Kjoller, of the
University of Copenhagen, apparently analyzed (rather than browsed) the
Ikea catalogue. He said it "symbolically portrays Denmark as the doormat
of Sweden, a country with a larger economy and population." An Ikea
official described the product names as "pure coincidence".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/07/wikea107.xml
CHRIS WILSON, SLATE - Prince Harry returned to London on Saturday, after
a 10-week deployment to Afghanistan with the Household Cavalry of the
British army. Photographs of the young royal showed him dressed in
desert fatigues with a healthy mop of red hair-an unusual sight for
Americans accustomed to military buzz cuts. Don't British soldiers have
to cut their hair, too? Only if their commander says so. Unlike American
male recruits, for whom the buzz cut is part of the initiation into the
service, the British Ministry of Defence leaves coiffure decisions up to
individual regiment leaders. Most require new recruits to report with
neatly groomed hair of modest length; they'll even go so far as to
prohibit cuts shorter than about 1 centimeter. For example, the Army
Training Regiment in Lichfield manual for recruits mandates that "the
closest permissible haircut is a No 3," a clipper that leaves about 3/8
of an inch of hair. It specifically prohibits "skinheads." Women are
generally required to keep their hair in a net or bun, as they are in
the United States.
http://www.slate.com/id/2185850/nav/tap3/
TMZ - TMZ has learned the recording industry has no interest -- at least
for now -- in the "American Idol" girls. Their focus is exclusively on
two male contestants. David Archuleta and David Hernandez Well-connected
record industry sources tell TMZ the major publishers (including Sony
and Warner) have already set their sights on David Archuleta and David
Hernandez. The record publishers have already told their songwriters to
write songs specifically for David-squared, whether they win or not.
Sources say this is the earliest publishers have ever committed to the
contestants.
GUARDIAN, UK - The Times splashes on a ban on RAF personnel wearing
their uniforms while off-duty because of "persistent threats and abuse".
"The uniform ban was imposed by the station commander at RAF Wittering,
near Peterborough, after a number of servicemen and women walking in the
city in their military clothes were targeted because of their
involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan," the paper reports. The Times says
the order to wear civilian clothes threatens to undermine a planned
policy that will call for "the widespread wearing of military uniforms
to engender respect and appreciation for the Armed Forces". US service
personnel wear their uniforms while off-duty, but doing so in Britain
was banned while the IRA remained a threat.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3500926.ece
A MATHEMATICIAN'S LAMENT
http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
EPA REMOVES WATCHDOG CHEMIST FROM PANEL UNDER PRESSURE FROM INDUSTRY
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-epa29feb29,0,6191299.story?page=1
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