Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
Wampum says
. . . I guess it's time to unveil a side project I've been putting together in my limited free time, It's Still The Economy, Stupid, an attempt to collect weblog and traditional media articles in one place. I've just begun to put together the blogroll; any suggestions as to other center-to-left weblogs which regularly post on economic news would be welcome.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/19/2003 11:05:15 PM |
Random thoughts
It's been a while since I wandered the web just to see what I can find.
Actually, the wandering wasn't as innocent as all that. I've been looking for community, considering the impressions sites oriented toward and/or authored by BLACK folks make on me. Thinking about the impression I want to make with this one, who do I want to talk to, stuff like that.
I figure there are unfilled niches in the Black online market. Like, it ought to be possible to put together a kinda Black parallel to Little Green Footballs. The fact that I mention that site without linking to it is a sign that I don't want anything to do with that sort of thing. I'm not sure why I even mention the possibility . . . maybe because I'm realizing there are good people who aren't interested in the things I present here, and there are people who would be interested that I'm satisfied with their knowing nothing of the site.
(Truth is, I feel the above-referenced good people are making a mistake. I'm trying to find stuff that Black folks need to consider. That means I have to cast my net over more than what folks like to think of as "Black" topics. I am also open to the idea that it may be an error to be satisfied with some folks skipping merrily past the site with no knowlege of its existance.)
I guess I'm feeling my muse and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. I know it has to be useful, and it has to be real. As much as I'd like to I can't seem to get any fiction going.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/19/2003 10:57:24 PM |
Poverty is a health problem
Study Finds Asthma in 25% of Children in Central Harlem
By RICHARD P�REZ-PE�A
A study has found that one of every four children in central Harlem has asthma, which is double the rate researchers expected to find and, experts say, is one of the highest rates ever documented for an American neighborhood.
Researchers say the figures, from an effort based at Harlem Hospital Center to test every child in a 24-block area, could indicate that the incidence of asthma is even higher in poor, urban areas than was previously believed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that about 6 percent of all Americans have asthma; the rate is believed to have doubled since 1980, but no one knows why. New York City is thought to have a higher rate than other major cities, but that, too, is something of a mystery. The disease kills 5,000 people nationally each year.
Previous studies have pointed to rates above 10 percent, and as high as the high teens, in the South Bronx, Harlem and a few other New York City neighborhoods where a long list of environmental factors put people at higher risk. Several asthma researchers say they know of no well-documented level above 20 percent in the United States.
Asthma is an inflammation and constriction of the airways that makes it difficult to breathe. Scientists believe that only someone with a genetic predisposition can become asthmatic, but environmental factors like pollen, dust, animal dander, air pollution and cold air also contribute to development of the disease and can lead to attacks.
Some of the worst triggers, studies have found, are most prevalent in poor communities, including the feces of cockroaches and dust mites, cigarette smoke and mold and mildew. Harlem, East Harlem and the South Bronx also have a heavy concentration of diesel bus and truck traffic, and the tiny particles in diesel exhaust are thought to be another serious asthma trigger.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/19/2003 09:46:26 AM |
How's your Inequality IQ?
Silver Rights sent me to Kieran Healy to find out about the Inequality IQ Test produced by Cornell's Center for the Study of Inequality.
I only got six out of twelve right.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 01:49:30 PM |
To the residents of the west coast
The one damn thing that's a legitimate source of American discomfort and certain people start waffling.
U.S. official: N. Korea move 'insulting'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- North Korea's announcement Friday that it has begun reprocessing spent fuel rods to make nuclear weapons has put talks scheduled among the U.S., North Korea and China next week in jeopardy, a senior Bush administration official tells CNN.
"This is really sand in our eyes to say this the week before the talks," the official said.
. . . "This is the perverse way they think," the official said. "They think they can get leverage."
. . . "It's insulting," he said. "Just insulting."
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 01:17:38 PM |
Frequently Asked Questions About "U-People"
by Earl Dunovant
Copyright © 1995
Why do U-People romanticize the lower economic class?
Because we all know we can wind up in that class as a result of something stupid that's out of our control. We need something to look forward to.
Why do U-People complain about unfair treatment then turn around and try to treat others unfairly?
If you want to go north and find out you're going west, you're original destination isn't north from where you are, it's northeast.
Why can't U-People just act like everyone else?
We do. We just do it in in a situation you don't recognize, so you don't recognize the results.
Why do U-People score lower on standardized tests if you're not stupider?
The standardized tests are best at testing conformance to the standard. The standard is a white male. As evidence, even white women score less well on the SAT than men with the same grades in college - or to phrase it differently, women get higher grades than men with the same SAT scores.
Either way, there's evidence that some factors relevant to both intelligence and success are missed by the standardized tests.
Why are U-People so violent?
As compared to what? Where is there a non-violent people?
Why do U-People always think everyone is a racist?
Well, everything in America is looked at through, measured in terms of, categorized and stored by race. So we know you have thoughts and opinions about us. Then we look at everything the society produces that depicts us. We consider that to be tangible evidence of the collective attitude. So now we know that the collective opinion of our race is negative.
This is a competitive disadvantage, and when our abilities are immediately discounted to the degree that we can be made to fit people's preconceptions as a tactic, we feel the tactitician and the one who executes the tactic is racist. When the tactic succeeds, we feel those who hold the preconceptions that were played on are racist.
Why don't U-People want to just accept the way things are and work to get ahead?
I need to use a metaphor for this one. Euro-American economic development has depended on extracting the value of the efforts of others. In the USofA, this has meant leveraging Black people. It's very much as if you had to get over a chasm using one of those teeter-totter arrangements Wile E. Coyote uses. . . you know, where you stand on one end of a lever, toss a heavy weight on the other end and you are catapulted forward. The USofA has used Black people as that heavy weight. The weight, in this case, has been the forced and spontaneous products of Black activity.
What we are offered now, at best, is an opportunity to toss some of our own people on the other end of our lever, to fuel our progress at the expense of others of our people.
This is not acceptable.
Why are so many of U-People in jail if you don't have criminal tendancies?
We have roughly the same proclivity to crime as everyone else. It's just that the crimes of opportunity are different for us, and you can't commit a crime without opportunity. The crimes of opportunity for us are the ones that scare the hell out of you. The crimes of opportunity for you seem to be forgivable because they're kinder and gentler (though its overall effect on the nation has been far more damaging than the muggings and such).
Beyond that, it's a truism that what you see depends on where you look. And since law enforcement officials have classified our very appearance as cause for suspicion (if we're hip-hop we're gang-bangers; if we drive a luxury car we're suspected drug dealers) they look at us a lot. . . it's their job, after all.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 12:54:12 PM |
IRE ALERT . . . SATIRE ALERT . . . SATIRE ALERT . . . SATIRE ALE
Warning for the humor-impaired and culturally insensitive: You will not "get" this next piece at all, even if you follow the link to get the whole editorial.
You have been warned.
From The Black Commentator
The Issues
"One can understand the pent-up feelings that can result from decades of repression," said Donald Rumsfeld, smiling like a serpent and still drunk from the previous day's toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. "They're free. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
At that moment, and in the sense of a "black," gallows humor to which African Americans are most receptive, Rumsfeld was howlingly, obscenely hilarious - and the distance separating him from sane humanity was never greater. If there is one social phenomenon with which African Americans have a collective body of experience, it is looting and rioting. Scarcely a decade ago, our memory-reservoirs on the subject were replenished in circles of fire spreading outward from South-Central Los Angeles. Had we known then that these acts of destruction, puny compared to the evisceration of Baghdad, were in fact behaviors of "free people [who] are free to make mistakes and do bad things," and therefore sanctioned by the ruling elite, we would have looted much further and longer and with a greater sense of righteous purpose.
Still, there is the tricky matter of timing when considering Los Angeles 1992 and Baghdad, 2003.
Rumsfeld's logic becomes a revelation. The mobs of Baghdad, each arsonist and looter, are collective victims of 35 years of oppression by Saddam's political party and personal clique. (Damn, that's not very long, from a Black perspective, but we're getting the rhythm of this reasoning.) The looters, who in their zeal have killed shop owners, medical personnel and others unwilling to contribute to the "liberation" festivities, are justified because they are happy at the political turn of events. This is a joyous riot, violence in solidarity with U.S. soldiers and Marines and their commander-in-chief. Now we understand why Rumsfeld can't keep from smiling, just thinking about all that joy.
Hundreds of years of oppression without many events to celebrate about have evidently numbed Black American sensibilities to the etiquette and proprieties of looting. Apparently, we have been engaging in the practice at the wrong time (colored people's) and for the wrong reasons, thus inviting upon our foolish heads the penalties of summary execution and long imprisonment.
Suddenly the mists part, and all becomes clear. Thanks to the revelatory logic of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer ("It's a reaction to oppression"), and Secretary of State Colin Powell ("I think it has to be understood in the context of people who have been oppressed and are reacting to their oppression"), Black Americans may now intelligently plan their next riot. It must coincide with a happy occasion. If by some miracle George Bush is defeated in November, 2004, we will wreck the joint and, this time, not a single building or institution of value will be left intact. Churches will empty immediately into the streets in righteous plunder, so uncontainable will be our joy! The sick and infirm will trash their own wheel chairs and intravenous tubes in rapturous celebration of Bush's demise. Two million inmates will burn the prisons down around themselves, forgetting to first unlock the place - Oh Happy Day! After the subways of New York have been stripped of wiring, the Black masses will gather in Harlem, where crowds will dance deliriously as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture goes up in flames, its new Malcolm X museum section reduced to ashes. Sweet victory!
We will call it the Great-Right-Time-Place-and Reason Riot. Rumsfeld, Fleischer and Powell will, of course, appreciate the logic of events as they hitchhike their ways home from burnt out Washington, D.C. They will understand the "context" of our actions, and agree that even a brief respite from nearly 400 years of oppression demands a suitable orgy of celebratory destruction.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 12:40:38 PM |
Oof!
From The Black Commentator
(a consistant source of some rather harsh editorial cartoons)
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 12:30:40 PM |
Symbolic gestures
In this age of choosing an action not only to have a specific effect but to "send a mesage," this issue is more important than many non-Black folks suspect (or will admit to).
Georgia has New State Flag�For Now
Special to the NNPA)�Georgia lawmakers have reached a compromise over the controversial state flag that bears the Confederate symbol, and redesigned the banner to display a less divisive symbol.
But it may not be a permanent solution. A statewide referendum in March 2004 will allow voters to decide if the flag stays. The state Senate now must approve the compromise flag.
The new design comes from Rep. Bobby Franklin, a conservative Republican. He was once a strong supporter of the Confederate battle emblem. However, in a recent speech to the state Rules Committee, he had changed his mind.
Franklin repeatedly cited biblical passages and said the rebel �X� has been ruined forever by White supremacists.
�Can�t you honor heritage in a manner that�s not offensive?� Franklin asked.
A statewide referendum initially was proposed by Gov. Sonny Perdue shortly after his upset victory last November.
Black legislators protested for six hours claiming that if the new design is not approved by the state senate, an additional referendum will be held in which voters would choose between a design dominated by the Confederate symbol or an earlier flag.
�You deserted me today, both Democrats and Republicans. You deserted me today,� said Stan Watson, a Black Democrat from Decatur. �I thought we were friends; you should have asked me how I felt.�
In 2001 the legislature voted to shrink the Confederate battle emblem on the state flag, which had been added in 1956 after the federal government ordered public schools to desegregate.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 12:23:22 PM |
Sometimes, against my better judgement
I am not a supporter of imperialism, fascism and other recent favorite philosophies of the current regime in D.C. I am a supporter of getting everyone's viewpoint out there, even if they're fishing around in this . . . mess . . . for material to make their point.
From BlackPressUSA.com
Ethnic but not Racial Diversity Prevails at War Headquarters
by George E. Curry
DOHA, Qatar�In one sense, one couldn�t ask for more diversity at the daily press briefings at the United States Central Command at Doha, Qatar. One moment, I was sitting between journalists from Japan and Finland. A few minutes later, I was talking to colleagues from France, England, Germany, Holland, Mexico, Korea, Canada, or from one of 30 countries represented here. But when Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, An African-American, looked into the audience to call on reporters last week, there was only who shared his racial heritage-me.
That�s not a tribute to me or my news organization-it�s an indictment of the American news media.
It is true that a handful of African-Americans were embedded with troops in Iraq. Byron Pitts of CBS, Keith B. Richburg of the �Washington Post,� Ron Harris of the �St. Louis Post-Dispatch� and Ron Allen of NBC are a few of the African-Amercians reporting from the war zone for major news organizations. But it is equally true that in Doha, where the daily briefings would be televised, often live, to billions of people around the world, there was not one Black reporter representing a major U.S. news outlet. Think about it: More than 700 journalists were issued press credentials at CENTCOM, as it is called, and not one of them African-American.
. . . There are dozens of Black journalists who could cover any aspect of the war on Iraq as well as, if not better, than White reporters. Not because they are Black but, like Brooks, because they are the best at what they do.
War against Iraq Showcases Top Black Leadership
by George E. Curry
DOHA, QATAR�If United States Supreme Court justices want know how affirmative action works before ruling in the Michigan cases pending before them, they should visit the Army base here, the place where the war against Iraq is being coordinated. Everyone on this side of Mars knows by now that daily briefings are conducted by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, an African-American. His is the official voice and face of the war, the person who conducts daily briefings that are beamed around the world.
. . . During oral arguments in the affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia said if the University of Michigan is so interested in diversity, it should lower its standards. Of course, university officials reminded Scalia that the institution does not need to lower its standards in order to attain a diverse student body.
If Scalia comes here, he will see that the Army didn�t lower its standards to produce quality leadership.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 12:04:52 PM |
Overzealous?
Ujaama smoking gun up in smoke
Early on, Ujaama was indicted on suspicion of helping set up a terror camp in Oregon. Early on, the government said Ujaama provided material support to terrorists. Officials charged him with giving "training, facilities, computer services, safe houses, and personnel" to al-Qaida. He was gearing up "to murder and maim" people, the feds believed.
That is why the Islamic convert was looking at 25 hard years.
Serious time for serious charges. Who could argue with that?
Then came Monday's plea. Suddenly, a sentence of some two decades was slashed to two years. The Oregon terror camp wasn't just pushed to the back burner. It was shoved off the stove.
. . . So how did the heavy case become so light?
A retired federal prosecutor offered me two theories.
Seen one way, the government had a strong case but retracted its talons because Ujaama was willing to talk. Authorities would overlook his involvement in the Oregon camp and other alleged activities to get at people such as Abu Hamza, the radical Moslem cleric in Europe.
That sounds reasonable.
But if Ujaama was among the worst of the worst, as the feds once claimed, it is quite unnerving to think he will be free in less than two years. Are we to believe he will be miraculously cured of his proclivities toward terror by then? Or was he never the threat he was made out to be?
The second theory is that the government overcharged Ujaama and "did not have the goods on him" as they had once believed, the retired federal prosecutor told me.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 12:54:47 AM |
I should have known better
Trying to get away from this damn keyboad so I can watch "Cradle 2 The Grave," I decide to look at just one more web site. I haven't read the report referred to yet and I'm not going to tonight. ("Cradle 2 The Grave," remember?) If you want a leg up on me, it's at http://www.ed.gov/ocr/raceneutral.html.
From African American News&Issues
What if you announced the solution to the
affirmative action debate and nobody listened?
That appears to have happened with last week's unveiling by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige of "Race-Neutral Alternatives in Postsecondary Education: Innovative Approaches to Diversity." The secretary's press released said that report " seeks to foster innovative thinking at education institutions that are seeking race-neutral means to achieve diversity on their campuses." "Make no mistake that it will take time, creativity and constant attention by government and university officials to pursue effective race-neutral policies," Paige said. "However, as Americans we owe it to our heritage and to our children to meet those challenges head on, rather than looking for shortcuts that divide us by race and betray the nation's fundamental principles.
Ho-hum, seemed to be the response from most major media, which gave the report scant attention in D.C. or elsewhere.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 09:33:37 PM |
Scanning the archives
I started looking through my email archives (pretty much what I used before getting so many web references from blogs) and found a couple of oldies-but-goodies you can read in connection with the PBS special just below.
From Scientific American, 2/03
The Reality of Race
There's hardly any difference in the DNA of human races. That doesn't mean, argues sociologist Troy Duster, that genomics research can ignore the concept
From the Washington Post, 12/26/02
People of Color Who Never Felt They Were Black
Racial Label Surprises Many Latino Immigrants
. . . Race matters in Latin America, but it matters differently.
Most South American nations barely have a black presence. In Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, there are racial tensions, but mostly between indigenous Indians and white descendants of Europeans.
The black presence is stronger along the coasts of two nations that border the Caribbean Sea, Venezuela and Colombia -- which included Panama in the 19th century -- along with Brazil, which snakes along the Atlantic coast. In many ways, those nations have more in common racially with Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic than they do with the rest of South America.
This black presence is a legacy of slavery, just as it is in the United States. But the experience of race in the United States and in these Latin countries is separated by how slaves and their descendants were treated after slavery was abolished.
In the United States, custom drew a hard line between black and white, and Jim Crow rules kept the races separate. The color line hardened to the point that it was sanctioned in 1896 by the Supreme Court in its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that Homer Plessy, a white-complexioned Louisiana shoemaker, could not ride in the white section of a train because a single ancestor of his was black.
Thus Americans with any discernible African ancestry -- whether they identified themselves as black or not -- were thrust into one category. One consequence is that dark-complexioned and light-complexioned black people combined to campaign for equal rights, leading to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
By contrast, the Latin countries with a sizable black presence had more various, and more fluid, experiences of race after slavery.
African slavery is as much a part of Brazil's history as it is of the United States's, said Sheila Walker, a visiting professor of anthropology at Spelman College in Atlanta and editor of the book "African Roots/American Cultures." Citing the census in Brazil, she said that nation has more people of African descent than any other in the world besides Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.
Brazil stands out in South America for that and other reasons. Unlike most nations there, its people speak Portuguese rather than Spanish, prompting a debate over whether Brazil is part of the Latino diaspora.
Brazilian slavery ended in 1889 by decree, with no civil war and no Jim Crow -- and mixing between light- and dark-complexioned Indians, Europeans, Africans and mulattoes was common and, in many areas, encouraged. Although discrimination against dark-complexioned Brazilians was clear, class played almost as important a role as race.
From Scientific American, 2/99
The Puzzle of Hypertension in African-Americans
By Charles N. Rotimi , Richard S. Cooper, Ryk Ward
Genes are often invoked to account for why high blood pressure is so common among African-Americans. Yet the rates are low in Africans. This discrepancy demonstrates how genes and the environment interact
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 09:22:17 PM |
On PBS
This was brought to my attention on a mailing list I frequent. I'm particularly interested in the episode to be aired on 5/1, "The Story We Tell," the other two episodes presnting stuff that strikes me as obvious to an honest mind.
RACE: The Power of an Illusion
What if people suddenly discovered that their most basic assumption about race � that the world�s people can be divided biologically along racial lines � was false? And if race is a biological �myth,� where did the idea come from? How do established institutions give race social meaning and power?
These are among the questions raised by Race: The Power of an Illusion, a provocative new series airing on PBS Thursdays, April 24-May 8, 2003, (check local listings). The first television series to scrutinize the very idea of race through the distinct lenses of science, history and social institutions, Race:The Power of an Illusion asks, �What is this thing called �race�?� � a question so basic it is rarely raised. The series� three one-hour programs challenge some of people�s most deeply held beliefs. C.C.H. Pounder (�The Shield�) narrates.
Ethnic cleansing, affirmative action battles, immigration restrictions � all place race at center stage in contemporary life. Race is so fundamental to discussions of poverty, education, crime, music and sports that, whether people are racist or anti-racist, they rarely question its reality.
Yet recent scientific evidence suggests that the idea of race is a biological myth, as outdated as the widely held medieval belief that the sun revolved around the earth. Anthropologists, biologists and geneticists have increasingly found that, biologically speaking, there is no such thing as �race.� Modern science is decoding the genetic puzzle of DNA and human variation � and finding that skin color really is only skin deep.
However invalid race is biologically, it has been deeply woven into the fabric of American life. Race: The Power of an Illusion examines why and how in three installments. �The Difference Between Us� (4/24) surveys the scientific findings � including genetics � that suggest that the concept of race has no biological basis. �The Story We Tell� (5/1) provides the historical context for race in North America, including when and how the idea got started and why it took such a hold in people�s minds. �The House We Live In� (5/8) spotlights the ways social institutions �make� race by providing different groups with vastly different life chances even today, 40 years after the Civil Rights Act.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 08:29:50 PM |
On fascism
David Neiwert, a freelance journalist, maintains a blog called Orcinus, in which he's presented what I think is an important analysis of the developing fascist tendancies of the right.
These tendancies are a major reason I started this blog. I enjoy writing and research, so I thought I'd be putting together something about this problem myself. But it's important enough that I'll put my personal pleasure aside when it's covered so well by someone else.
I've already posted an essay that explains the rise of Hitler's extensive control over the German citizenry in a way that makes the parallels between that and the current situation in the USofA obvious and undeniable. But Mr. Neiwert rounds up the current state of affairs, and if it doesn't at least make you nervous you're just not thinking.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Appendix
He's also posted feedback he's received from this series, some of which is well worth searching out. He's also promised to wrap the whole series up into a PDF, which I'm looking forward to.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 07:17:10 PM |
For you Cynthia Tucker fans out there
Midnight madness. Editor pulls cartoon.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution early Tuesday pulled from its Web site a Mike Luckovich cartoon severely critical of Gov. Sonny Perdue. The decision to withdraw the drawing by the Pulitzer Prize winning Luckovich seems to confirm that Republican Perdue is enjoying a lengthy honeymoon with the big Atlanta media.
So why did Tucker pull this particular cartoon altogether? According to Luckovich the decision was made �out of deference to The Office of The Governor.� Tucker says the cartoon is �unfairly harsh and unduly disrespectful�. Many Georgians have voiced similar criticism of Gov. Perdue�s policy on the flag. To be clear, Luckovich told the Georgia Reporter, this decision was not made because Tucker held Perdue himself in high regard, but rather to respect the Governor�s office as an institution. It is hard to tell how Cynthia Tucker truly feels about the cartoon. Tucker explicitly and eloquently opposes Perdue�s referendum, yet she thinks a cartoon obviously criticizing this same policy is �unfairly harsh�?
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 06:53:52 PM |
Unemployment figures
From Wampum.
Jobless claims increase markedly
This is not good news at all.
Jobless Claims Surge to 442, 000 Last Week
By Reuters
Filed at 8:55 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More Americans than expected signed up for state unemployment benefits last week, reflecting increased layoffs in the auto industry as the world's richest economy limped forward, a government report on Thursday showed.
First-time jobless claims rose by 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 442,000 for the week ended April 12, the Labor Department said. It was the ninth straight week that claims held above the key 400,000 level, regarded by economists as a sign of an unhealthy labor market.
Much of the rise reflects an increase in layoffs in the auto industry, a Labor Department official said.
The gain was well above expectations. Economists in a Reuters poll had forecast, on average, that jobless claims would edge up to 411,000.
The auto industry, as you can see just a few posts below, was the one shining start in retail sales last month. If producers are laying off workers, they obviously don't expect that trend to continue.
The Administration also revised last week's claims, from 405K to 412K. Isn't it funny how they keep losing jobs when the initial, closely watched, reports come out?(emphasis added)
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 06:47:55 PM |
What the hell is going on?
In U.S., Fear Is Spreading Faster Than SARS
By DEAN E. MURPHY
This article was reported by Jennifer 8. Lee, Dean E. Murphy and Yilu Zhao and written by Mr. Murphy.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 16 - The rumors have been frantic and virtually impossible to contain.
In this city's Sunset District, word spread that the owner of a popular dim sum restaurant was gravely ill with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. In San Gabriel, a suburb of Los Angeles, a flurry of anonymous e-mail messages said the police had closed an Asian supermarket and a restaurant because of SARS outbreaks.
In Seattle, there was talk that two cashiers at a grocery store had come down with the disease. And in Honolulu, people said a worker at a roasted-meats shop in Chinatown had been infected.
None of the reports were true, but the truth did not matter much. Business fell off as thoroughly as if there were a boycott. In San Francisco, even shops near the dim sum restaurant were shunned until a top county health official appeared on the sidewalk on Monday assuring people that the neighborhood was safe.
Along the West Coast, a region whose identity is defined in large measure by its economic and cultural ties to the Pacific Rim, as well as in other parts of the country like New York City, a psychology of fear has taken hold, particularly in Asian immigrant communities.
The fear about SARS, the mysterious respiratory disease first reported in China, has spread even though no one in the United States has died from the disease.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 11:52:57 AM |
A piece of history looks to be on its death bed
Beleaguered Black College Loses Its Chief
By GREG WINTER
After losing the battle to win back his institution's accreditation, the president of Morris Brown College has abruptly resigned, leaving its board of trustees vowing to keep the 122-year-old college open, despite being a bit uncertain as to how.
"We don't plan to close the school," said Bishop Frank C. Cummings, the chairman of the board at Morris Brown, in Atlanta. "It is our desire to bring the school back on line, and make it better than it ever was."
Bishop Cummings said the board had convened a committee to figure out how to go forward, but had not made any formal proposals.
Dr. Charles E. Taylor, the president who had pledged to pull the college back from the brink of insolvency or quit if he failed, stepped down after seven months on Tuesday, a week after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools refused to reinstate Morris Brown's accreditation on appeal.
That ruling, essentially a restatement of the association's decision to revoke the college's accreditation last December for fiscal instability and faulty leadership, leaves Morris Brown ineligible for federal financial aid, the source of up to 70 percent of its revenue.
Despite being stripped of its accreditation and scrambling to pay up to $27 million in debts, the college is under no obligation to close. Nonetheless, nearly half of the 2,500 students who attended it had already left before the current semester, transferring to public universities and other historically black colleges.
Now that Morris Brown has lost its appeal, it can no longer receive money from the United Negro College Fund, which has given it more than $25 million in the last decade. Nor can its remaining students receive federal grants and loans, a near assurance of a second exodus that may make it harder for the college to become financially sound, and, subsequently, regain its accreditation.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 11:37:28 AM |
Another link box to update
I haven't done it yet, but I'll be adding a name to the "Bloggers I might like ta hang with" box. It's Ralph at It's not my fault, you bastards! He's not a political blog guy, it's like life journaling he has going on over there.
I decided he goes on the list because he spotted an error in my page and took the time to tell me about it. Told me some about himself too. Seems like a cool kinda guy. So he's an addition.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/17/2003 12:40:59 AM |
A damn good question
Vanishing Liberties
Where's the Press?
On March 18, the Associated Press reported that at John Carroll University, in a Cleveland suburb, Justice Antonin Scalia said that "most of the rights you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires" because "the Constitution just sets minimums." Accordingly, in wartime, Scalia emphasized, "the protections will be ratcheted down to the constitutional minimum."
A few days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that as a result, we would have to give up some of our liberties. That's two of nine justices we are not likely to be able to depend on.
And in his 1998 book, All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime (Knopf/Vintage), the chief justice of the United States, William Rehnquist, admiringly quoted Francis Biddle, Franklin D. Roosevelt's attorney general: "The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime president." And Rehnquist himself, who will be presiding over the constitutionality of the Bush-Ashcroft assaults on the Constitution, wrote in the same book:
"In time of war, presidents may act in ways that push their legal authority to its outer limits, if not beyond." (Emphasis added.)
Meanwhile, in an invaluable new report by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, "Imbalance of Powers: How Changes to U.S. Law and Policy Since 9/11 Erode Human Rights and Civil Liberties" (available by calling 212-845-5200), a section begins: "A mantle of secrecy continues to envelop the executive branch, largely with the acquiescence of Congress and the courts. [This] makes effective oversight impossible, upsetting the constitutional system of checks and balances."
So where is the oversight going to come from? If at all, first from the people pressuring Congress�provided enough of us know what is happening to our rights and liberties. And that requires, as James Madison said, a vigorous press, because the press has been, he noted, "the beneficent source to which the United States owes much of the light which conducted [us] to the ranks of a free and independent nation."
But the media, with few exceptions, are failing to report consistently, and in depth, precisely how Bush and Ashcroft are undermining our fundamental individual liberties.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/16/2003 04:08:38 PM |
Software update
Yesterday and today were/are light blogging days because I've been doing some planning and developing.
The blogging tool I have under development was slowed because I decided I wanted to be able to develop more complex pages than a simple listing of posts. In essence, I want more than one template per page-by template I don't mean the whole page. I mean the equivalent of what is between the
The plan is to have (at least) three distinct types of postings:
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/16/2003 10:23:53 AM |
My first positive review
. . . comes from this conversation on IsThatLegal? about the Supreme Court case on the University of Michigan's Affirmative Action program:
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/16/2003 12:52:25 AM |
Read it again, for the first time
A Challenge to White Supremacy, 100 Years Later
By FELICIA R. LEE
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."
So wrote W. E. B. DuBois in the opening essay of "The Souls of Black Folk." When it was published 100 years ago this month, the book was something entirely different in American letters. In 14 essays that swooped from music to history to politics, it was both a depiction of black life in America and a meditation on the meaning of blackness.
It was also a groundbreaking challenge to white supremacy. In 1903, an era of lynchings and widespread belief in innate black inferiority, "Souls" was both embraced and reviled. Today it is widely viewed as having recast the black struggle as a quest for constitutional rights and social equality, rather than the accommodation advocated by Booker T. Washington at the turn of the century.
In "Souls" DuBois famously predicted that "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line." He interpreted Negro spirituals. More personally, he wondered aloud if death from diphtheria had spared his 2-year-old son, Burghardt, from a life of indignities.
Now in this centennial year, "The Souls of Black Folk" is being celebrated in a host of events intended to introduce DuBois's most famous book to a new generation. On college and university campuses nationwide, conferences will examine what "Souls" means in the 21st century. At the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta this July, the focus will be on the music, drama and other arts inspired by the book. A staged adaptation of readings from the book had its premiere in New York last week. At least three new books of essays analyzing "Souls" are out.
Some scholars and artists say the centennial celebrations offer a chance to rethink how DuBois and "Souls" have been viewed and studied. "If there's ever a crossover intellectual, it's in the one figure of DuBois," said Robin D. G. Kelley, chairman of the history department at New York University. "DuBois was the most important American intellectual to reflect on the meaning of modernity in the Western world, with influence on all aspects of human science."
But while "Souls" remains widely read by undergraduates, they, too, often meet him in black studies courses, said Mr. Kelley, rather than history, politics or sociology.
"We are in a turn-of-the-century moment again, and the big question is, When will DuBois be embraced by America and be required reading for everyone?" Mr. Kelley said.
DuBois used "Souls" to make the African-American story a universal story of human rights, human suffering and the unequal distribution of wealth worldwide, a story that even DuBois's critics say should beckon a broader audience in the new millennium.
"When he talked about the color line, he wasn't talking about just black people," Mr. Kelley continued. "He was talking about the sources of violence and greed that lead to war."
Last week Mr. Kelley appeared as the narrator during dramatic readings of "Souls" excerpts staged by the playwright Thulani Davis. The show, featuring Danny Glover, Jeffrey Wright and Phylicia Rashad, had its debut at the Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. It will appear with a different cast at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta in July.
"Every generation reads `Souls' differently," said David Nasaw, director of the Center for the Humanities. "It was once seen as a primer for black power." In putting the varied voices onstage one can get a sense of living history from the perspective of a grieving father, a preacher, an intellectual, Mr. Nasaw said, to convey the idea that DuBois "belongs everywhere on the cultural, intellectual strata."
A journalist, historian, sociologist and civil rights leader, DuBois created an extensive body of work that includes sociological treatises, a history of the African slave trade and a novel. Born in 1868, he was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and over the years variously embraced socialism, communism and pan-Africanism. He was the first black American to receive a doctorate from Harvard University. He died a citizen of Ghana in 1963, on the eve of the march on Washington, disillusioned with American politics.
" `The Souls of Black Folk' is probably one of the most commented on and written about books in black American letters, but it has been narrow-cast and reduced to sound bites about double-consciousness and the color line," said Dolan Hubbard, chairman of the English and language arts department at Morgan State University.
"DuBois was a founding father of multiculturalism, of blending races and ideas," Mr. Hubbard said. "You can trace the lineage of black music all the way to hip-hop in `Souls.' And certainly there is the religious imagination, the question of how people deal with the problem of human suffering, a problem as old as Job."
To get people to dig deeper, Mr. Hubbard edited and wrote the introduction to the book "The Souls of Black Folk One Hundred Years Later" (University of Missouri Press, 2003). Its essays are by authors from many disciplines, including whiteness studies, aesthetics, psychology and music. In September Morgan State, a historically black university in Baltimore, will hold a multidisciplinary symposium on DuBois.
Similarly, dozens of scholars and cultural critics met at a conference at the University of Wisconsin at Madison last week. They presented papers on everything from DuBois as a public intellectual to how "Souls" reflects mourning and loss in African-American culture.
DuBois belongs on the bookshelf with commentators on the American social contract like Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Adams, Lord Bryce, Andre Siegried, Richard Hofstadter and Michael Harrington, said David Levering Lewis, a professor of history at Rutgers University who won Pulitzer Prizes in 1994 and 2001 for his two-volume biography of DuBois.
So much of "Souls," Mr. Lewis said, was prophetic about the central questions of American culture and politics. With his idea of double-consciousness � the struggle to reconcile being black with being American � DuBois forecast the way James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison argued that there was no America without black people, Mr. Lewis said.
"If one reads on, he talks about a merger of the two; he was a good Hegelian who looked for synthesis," Mr. Lewis said.
Anniversaries can prompt reading on, but they also risk trapping their subjects in one point in time or eliding their complexity, Mr. Lewis said. He said that is often the case with black thinkers because race is such a complicated topic. DuBois, 35 when "Souls" was published, became more radical with age. Some historians say he has already been marginalized and his legacy diluted.
"I would suspect that what has happened to DuBois is what also happened to King and to Malcolm X," said Manning Marable, director of the Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University. "Their global views are made parochial; they are not seen as international or universal. It's like Martin Luther King frozen on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial saying `I have a dream' but not seen protesting the Vietnam War, or Malcolm saying `by any means necessary' but not seen discussing using the U.N. to protest the condition of black Americans."
Even the famously self-assured DuBois himself worried that his book would not find a wide audience or would be misread. In the "Afterthought" to "The Souls of Black Folk," he wrote: "Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that his book fall not stillborn into the world wilderness."
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/15/2003 07:21:16 AM |
A significant portion of the population has some scary-ass ideas
Americans See Clear Victory in Iraq, Poll Finds
The poll, taken over the weekend, found that for the first time since 2001, a majority of Americans, 62 percent, believe that the nation is winning the war on terrorism. And there has been a sharp drop in the number of people who fear terrorist reprisal attacks in the United States because of the invasion in Iraq. The poll found that 79 percent of respondents approve of Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq, the most support Mr. Bush has received on his Iraq policy.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/15/2003 06:37:20 AM |
If you'll look to your right, you'll see
. . . a link to the beginning of my Campaign '04 sub-site. I think it's pretty obvious this one is going to be a turning point in world history.
I've rearranged things a bit because of the sub-site. I've taken the "Liberal Blogs" link box off the front page here and put them in the Campaign '04 section. I know what I'm replacing it with, but it's not ready, so I ain't saying nothing about it yet.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/15/2003 06:19:51 AM |
CartoonMoebius strip
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/15/2003 05:44:58 AM |
A good article from "Alas, a Blog"
Privilege
Over the years I have spent a great deal of time and energy discussing, researching, and writing about privilege, and the most common response has to be that one. "If I had white privilege, I wouldn't have to do this" or "If I had male privilege, I would be doing this." The problem with this response is that it tends to make privilege out to be some sort of magical state in which the person who has it never suffers -- as though if a person has one form of privilege, the other forms of privilege they may lack are overridden. Or that simply by not having one form of privilege, one can simply ignore and dismiss the privileges they do have.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 03:51:57 PM |
Note to myself
Read this later and write something about it.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 11:03:36 AM |
An addition to "Dropping Knowledge"
Afro-Louisiana History and Slave Genealogy
The Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy online search engine was designed to provide the general public free access to valuable historic records. Users can locate individual slaves who lived in Louisiana between the years of 1718 and 1820 through this easy-to-use, free, public database. Find valuable historical data from over 100,000 descriptions of slaves found in documents in Louisiana between 1718 and 1821 by searching identifiers such as gender, racial designation, or plantation location. Users can even search the origin of the slaves brought to Louisiana in the 18th and 19th centuries to work the New World.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 10:07:22 AM |
Sound familiar?
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 06:12:53 AM |
Posting order
I need to plan these posts better. The fact that they show up in reverse order means the last thing I think of is the first thing presented, so I need to post the serious stuff last.
I'll work it out.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 06:08:19 AM |
I'll figure out a headline later
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 06:02:03 AM |
Cartoon of the week
Note: Ted Rall was in this spot. Then I saw Tom Toles' "submission."
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 05:50:48 AM |
TUPAC SHAKUR
AND THE SEARCH FOR A MODERN FOLK HERO
April 17, 2003
Barker Center
Harvard University
Refreshments 8:00AM - 8:30AM
Introduction 8:30AM - 9:00AM
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -
W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University.
Stephen Mitchell - Professor of Scandanavian & Folklore, Harvard University
Marcyliena Morgan - Associate Professor,Department of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University.
"All Eyez on Me": When Visionary Meets the Vision
Panel 1 Theoretical T.H.U.G. Battles: 9:00AM - 10:30AM
Mapping the Intellectual Legacies of Tupac Shakur
Mark Anthony Neal - Assistant Professor,
State University of New York at Albany, English
Thug Nigga Intellectual: Tupac as Celebrity Gramscian
Murray Forman - Assistant Professor,
Northeastern University, Communication
Tupac Shakur: O.G. (Ostensibly Gone)
Knut Aukrust - Professor of Culture Studies, University of Oslo, Visiting
Scholar in the Folklore at Harvard University.
"Tired Of Hearin' These Voices In My Head": Bakhtin's MC Battle
Break 10:30AM - 10:50AM
Panel 2 "Me Against the World" 10:50AM - 12:00AM
Tupac Shakur and the Hunger for Heroism
Emmett Price - Assistant Professor,
Northeastern University, Department of Music.
From Thug Life to Legend: The Realization of a Black Folk Hero
Greg Dimitriadis - Assistant Professor,
University of Buffalo, Graduate School of Education.
Talking about Tupac: Young People's Perspectives on his Life, Death, and Discursive Rebirth
Cheryl Keyes - Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles.
Redefining the Meaning of Hero in Hiphop Culture:
The Case of Tupac Shakur
Lunch 12:00PM - 2:00PM
Keynote Address
Professor Michael Eric Dyson -
Avalon Professor in the Humanities and African American Studies, University of Pennsylvania.
"Holler if You Hear Me"
Performance
Nicole Hodges - Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California.
The Death of the Last Blackman in the Entire Universe: The Re-Mix
Panel 3 "Keep Ya Head Up": 2:00PM - 3:30PM
Power, Passion, and the Political Potential of Tupac Shakur
Lawrence Bobo - Norman Tishman and Charles M. Diker Professor of Sociology and Afro-American Studies, Harvard University.
"Let Knowledge Drop": Tupac Shakur and the Power of the Black Mind
Dionne Bennett - Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
"How Do We Want It": Feminism and the Legacy of Tupac Shakur
Bakari Kitwana - Author and Adjunct Professor, Kent State University.
"Ride Or Die": Building Bridges between Hip-Hop and Black Power
Closing 3:30PM - 4:00PM
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 05:33:12 AM |
ENGENDERING AFRICANA STUDIES
A SUMMER INSTITUTE
On Critical Theory, Black Womyn Scholarship and Africana Studies
June 29 - July 10, 2003
Sponsored by
THE AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER
AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY
The Summer Institute will focus on the development of critical theory and research on the Experience of Womyn of African Descent as integral to the intellectual, pedagogical, and curricula advancement of the discipline of Africana Studies. The objective of the Institute will be to engage a discourse that will expand the construction of paradigms in Africana Studies such that it will be more fully informed by the standpoint of Black womyn's experiences.
The Institute will also provide an opportunity for exchange between senior scholars of Black Womyn Studies and graduate students and recent Ph.D.s whose work concentrates on Black womyn�s experience(s). Daily seminars will be conducted by leading African American scholars whose work specializes on Black womyn. Applicants accepted as �Fellows� in the Summer Institute will be expected to make presentations on aspects of their work or research interests that relate to Black womyn.
A limited number of Fellowships are available for travel and lodging, in addition to a small stipend. Access to the John Henrik Clarke Library and other Cornell libraries will be available to Fellows for research during their participation in the Summer Institute.
Applications will be accepted through May 10, 2003. To request an application or more information, please contact:
Dr. James E. Turner
Africana Studies and Research Center
Cornell University
310 Triphammer Road
Ithaca NY 14850
Tel: 607.255.0531
Fax: 607.255.0784
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/14/2003 05:31:39 AM |
Congratulations to the winners
THE JEFFERSON MUZZLES
Since 1992, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has celebrated the birth and ideals of its namesake by calling attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech "cannot be limited without being lost."
Announced on or near April 13 -- the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson -- the Jefferson Muzzles are awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment. Because the importance and value of free expression extend far beyond the First Amendment's limit on government censorship, acts of private censorship are not spared consideration for the dubious honor of receiving a Muzzle.
Unfortunately, each year the finalists for the Jefferson Muzzles have emerged from an alarmingly large group of candidates. For each recipient, a dozen could have been substituted. Further, an examination of previous Jefferson Muzzle recipients reveals that the disregard of First Amendment principles is not the byproduct of a particular political outlook but rather that threats to free expression come from all over the political spectrum.
THE 2003 JEFFERSON MUZZLES GO TO ...
United States Attorney General John Ashcroft
The 107th United States Congress
Mayor Tom Bates of Berkeley, California
Cedarville (AR) School Board
Washington, D.C.National Zoo Director Lucy Spelman
Tennessee Arts Commission
McMinnville (TN) City Administrator Herb Llewellyn
Whiting (IN) High School Administration
The North Carolina House of Representatives
Utica High School (MI) Principal Richard Machesky
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/13/2003 11:24:05 PM |
Thinking about this mess we're all going to be in
The right wing of politics in this country has held together remarkably well. From the early 90s until today they�ve shown a remarkable cohesion. They�ve been brutally effective. I�ve been thinking about how they�ve pulled together and why they�ve stayed together.
A big part of their cohesion is having the same goal. This may not be obvious because the right wing has as many factions as the left wing. Each faction has its goals, which differ of course. They wouldn�t be factions if they agreed that totally. For example, social conservatives have different goals than fiscal conservatives, both of which differ from the goals of religious conservatives. Liberals manage to annoy all of them, though. Social conservatives don�t like the cultural changes that would come about when everyone�s rights are truly, equally respected and supported. Fiscal conservative don�t like giving up the money needed to support the government mechanisms to protect everyone�s rights. They may not be against those rights per se, they just don�t want to pay for them, especially if they can actually afford to do so. Religious conservatives don�t like the acceptance of all spiritual traditions that the left champions.
What these factions agree on is, moving the left out of the way is the first step in getting what they want. And the really sad thing is that the left is the inheritor of the values of the Enlightenment, without which most of the right�s foot soldiers would be serfs and peons, literally living the live of the slaves that enabled their culture to advance to this degree.
Up until this point, the major tactics of the right have been those of destroyers. Point out the problems as justification to tearing out the mechanism they claim created them. Destroying is much easier than building, and Bush and crew are about to re-re-rediscover in Iraq. But success is heady, success at building or mangling. And since the Bush regime came into power they�ve been using another very effective tactic. Throwing everything at the wall all at once. The cohesion they�ve displayed makes each item something that must be responded to and more than likely something will get by. This further disrupts the state of affairs, and that disruption will be taken as proof that what is left is still �causing problems� that must be addressed by further dismantling the ineffective framework they attack.
Public schooling is a perfect example of what I�m talking about. The every suggestion right puts forward on public schooling, though their rhetoric is constructed to claim otherwise, has a destructive effect on public schools and their ability to do their job.
Another example is the presidential election of 2000, specifically the recount issue in Florida. Liberals wanted to eliminate the uncertainty in the count. Conservatives bashed the method to used in recounting. Their goal was to demonstrate a recount could not be accurate rather than to get an accurate count.
As I said, destroying is easy. And the right has destroyed enough that they feel they can start getting what they�ve been after.
But can they? It depends on what faction you are. The fiscal conservatives have the best shot at it. They basically have all the money and in Capitalism, the primary religion of the USofA that means a hell of a lot.
Everyone else�especially the foot soldier�is in for a nasty surprise, I think.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/13/2003 10:20:28 PM |
Eating my own dog food
Okay, the article editor for my blogging tool is finally done except for hot-keys for text formattion (bold, italic), which I can pretty much tag on there at the end. I finally figured out how I want to handle templates and I'll be coding that today while watching talking heads on TV. So assuming everything goes well, this I'll start a new section on the software tools and libraries I use, published using the tools I'm developing. Not open source per se, because I'm using a commercial library I own for the article editor. But I'll be using some open source stuff, MPL exclusively, which I'll Identify, discuss, etc.
Just as well. Right now Blogger is having problems with a template server, so this won't be getting published for a minute.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/13/2003 08:03:23 AM |
*Aagh*
Do I actually go back and say "all right, I was wrong about Haloscan?" I'm not able to start topics on other blogs. They aren't taking new accounts right now, and it's not like anyone's gonna leave them.
I'm going to "go and sin no more."
Shit.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/13/2003 07:40:08 AM |