"This will place our most experienced unit with our most mobile and agile systems in support of our main effort," Casey said. ...

Officials have said the U.S. plan calls for moving up to 5,000 additional American troops with armored vehicles and tanks into the capital. Some critics believe the move will undermine confidence among Iraqi forces and expose more U.S. soldiers to attacks by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.

U.S. to Move 3,700 Troops to Baghdad
U.S. Command Confirms It Will Move 3,700 Troops to Baghdad to Try to Stop Violence
By RYAN LENZ
The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Saturday that it is moving about 3,700 troops with fast, light-armored vehicles into Baghdad to try to quell violence in the capital. More American soldiers are expected to follow, military officials said.

Cabinet in open revolt over Blair's Israel policy
Gaby Hinsliff in San Francisco, Ned Temko in London and Peter Beaumont in Beirut
Sunday July 30, 2006
Observer

Tony Blair was facing a full-scale cabinet rebellion last night over the Middle East crisis after his former Foreign Secretary warned that Israel's actions risked destabilising all of Lebanon.

Jack Straw, now Leader of the Commons, said in a statement released after meeting Muslim residents of his Blackburn constituency that while he grieved for the innocent Israelis killed, he also mourned the '10 times as many innocent Lebanese men, women and children killed by Israeli fire'.

He said he agreed with the Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells that it was 'very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel', adding: 'These are not surgical strikes but have instead caused death and misery amongst innocent civilians.' Straw said he was worried that 'a continuation of such tactics by Israel could destabilise the already fragile Lebanese nation'.

The New Age
So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You
By GINA KOLATA

The Keller family illustrates what may prove to be one of the most striking shifts in human existence — a change from small, relatively weak and sickly people to humans who are so big and robust that their ancestors seem almost unrecognizable.

New research from around the world has begun to reveal a picture of humans today that is so different from what it was in the past that scientists say they are startled. Over the past 100 years, says one researcher, Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, humans in the industrialized world have undergone “a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.”

The difference does not involve changes in genes, as far as is known, but changes in the human form. It shows up in several ways, from those that are well known and almost taken for granted, like greater heights and longer lives, to ones that are emerging only from comparisons of health records.

Killing time...

This is a fragment from my days of experimenting with the mythic mode of expression.

---

As Griot initiates, you know better than most that the many paths through any condition all lead to different destination. The Griot’s path, understanding the laws of becoming and learning to move freely in all dimensions, makes temporal frustration particularly acute, and the lessons learned from it particularly powerful and useful.

Temporal frustration is one of the major negative repercussion of living in the timestream. Things happen sequentially. As a result, often an event comes rushing at you, and in your rush to get out of its way you stumble into the path of another, equally painful, collision because the current event tends to obstruct one’s view of following events it. This can be…frustrating. Learning to cope with that frustration forces awareness of the temporal dimension of existence, but that alone doesn’t relieve the frustration.

Each year, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts issues a report on wiretapping. The 2005 version makes for fascinating reading, and throws cold water on the idea that the government conducts massive wiretapping operations of 'Net activity. It also throws cold water on the idea that wiretap applications are hard to get.

Big brother wants a window into VoIP at any cost
7/27/2006 5:56:16 PM, by Nate Anderson

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), passed in 1994, has powered its way back onto the front page this summer, and if you 1) live in the US and 2) pay taxes, you might soon be paying to implement it. And if you're a drug-dealing mobster, you might soon be experiencing it.

The FBI wants the ability to tap VoIP calls. To do this, the agency also wants access to all of your network traffic—and it looks like it's on the way to getting it. Following a long set of legal battles, the US Court of Appeals in June upheld 2-1 a newer and broader definition of CALEA's scope that could affect every university and library in the country...

New CALEA amendments

The government hopes to shore up the legal basis for the program by passing amended legislation. The EFF took a look at the amendments and didn't like what it found.

Sounds like they're angling for DHS contracts. 

The reason for the shift is simple: profits. Margins for call center work are in the low double digits, but they can top 30% for higher-end tasks, according to Nasscom. So Genpact, a former General Electric Co. subsidiary spun off two years ago, prefers to take on jobs that let it tap its expertise in analyzing zillions of bits of data to help clients work more efficiently. If call centers happen to be part of the equation, that's fine, but Genpact is reluctant to take up contracts for call centers only.

Call Center? That's So 2004
Outsourcing shops are moving fast into higher-paying businesses

Text mining the New York Times
Posted by Roland Piquepaille @ 9:47 am

Text mining is a computer technique to extract useful information from unstructured text. And it's a difficult task. But now, using a relatively new method named topic modeling, computer scientists from University of California, Irvine (UCI), have analyzed 330,000 stories published by the New York Times between 2000 and 2002 in just a few hours. They were able to automatically isolate topics such as the Tour de France, prices of apartments in Brooklyn or dinosaur bones. This technique could soon be used not only by homeland security experts or libraria

There's an experiment you should do before reading this. If you do, no further proof of anything I say here will be needed. If you don't, you'll have to take my word for it.

During the course of a day, ask any ten people you know to give you one noun. A person, place or thing, proper or general, makes no difference. Don't tell them why you want the word. Write the ten nouns on a piece of paper. Then approach any number of people you wish and ask them to divide the words into two categories such that all the words in one group have some quality that none of the words in the other group has. They can decide on, or invent, any category they wish.

Go ahead. I'll still be here.

Funeral will be Tuesday. Arrangements will be completed today. It wasn't very difficult because Pop thought ahead.

Which leaves me in a peculiar situation.

Folks are telling me I've done this and that over the years. They are handling most of this; my function is mostly calculator with digital memory. They are actually trying to give me a break.

The problem is, my mourning generally takes the form of taking care of survivors. What the hell do I do when what they feel the need to do is to take care of me?

Since I'm a Black guy and this is all about how I see things, I figure I'll have to address the topic sooner or later. I think it best for me to introduce it so I can address it with a little nuance. We really don't want to wait until somebody make me talk about they momma.

A big problem in discussions of racism is that mainstream folks have a top-down approach to looking at it, where minorities have a bottom-up approach.

Which make absolute sense, when you think about it.

What mainstream types (of all races) are looking for is a definition of racism they can use to avoid being racist—or at least avoid being accused of it… all definitions are subject to Godëlian corruption. Minorities, on the other hand, prefer the disparate impact method of identifying racism—it has the advantage of denying purchase to evasive explanations and the disadvantage of all inductive reasoning… it can never state its result categorically.

Trying to define racism is pretty bizarre. It's literally like trying to define pain. No one who has ever felt pain needs a description of it; no one who has ever felt racism needs a description of it. I can work with racism on a conceptual level, but then it breaks out into its individually and collectively expressed parts— discrimination, hatred or fear, institutional racism (known to some of my fellow travellers as white supremacy). Those parts, however, are aspects of one dagger thrust, a single twist of the gut… racism.

By this very subjective description of the issue, it's obvious I take the bottom-up, inductive approach myself, despite its inability to assert racism with mathematical certainty.

First, thank you to those who left the kind comments.

There'll be a couple few posts then I'm out for the day. I'll check for anonymous comments periodically but I won't be playing myself until my father's funeral, which looks like Monday or Tuesday. Normal complaining about the normal shit will return some time in the middle of next week.

Won't leave you hanging with nothing to do though. I'll plumb the archives a bit...for instance, I'd been considering reposting the racism discussion from Blogger days like I did the Reparations discussion. I didn't because I wanted to go over it to make sure it still holds up. It does, but I'm not sure I'd write it like that today. Anyway it will make nice filler for the next few days.

My girl devorah gave me a call, which was especially kind because she just lost her uncle and I was too wrapped up in my shit to give her a call. She's so much cooler than me that my linking to her interview and site isn't promoting her, it's me doing a serious case of name dropping.

Um, drawing a blank here. So let me do the necessary things.

What a coincidence!

[A] former head of Indian intelligence has said publicly the deal will allow India to produce 50 more nuclear warheads a year than it can now, by freeing up existing uranium reserves for military use.

India could make 50 warheads under nuclear deal with Bush
By Justin Huggler in Delhi
Published: 27 July 2006

The US House of Representatives was set to vote yesterday on a nuclear deal with India that threatens to fuel a nuclear arms race in Asia. The deal, a centrepiece of the Bush administration's foreign policy, comes as the US is pressuring Iran and North Korea to halt their nuclear programmes.

That didn't QUITE work out they way you hoped, did it?

"We want to be very, very clear that I'm not trying to 'dis' the president. I'm not trying to distance myself from the president. 

GOP candidate says criticism was a joke
By KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press WriterWed Jul 26, 7:18 PM ET

Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele on Wednesday called President Bush his "homeboy," reversed course on having the president campaign for him and said he was joking when he described his Republican affiliation as a scarlet letter.

The Maryland lieutenant governor, under fire for his comments, told WBAL radio that his remarks were supposed to be off the record with a handful of reporters . Instead, Steele's campaign confirmed Tuesday that he was the unnamed Senate candidate who had assailed the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress in a story in The Washington Post.

RSS Compendium - Web Based Readers
Posted by Allyn on July 24th, 2006

The following is an up to date list of web based RSS readers that I found at allrss.com. There’s a bunch of other RSS information there as well. If you’ve been looking to find one to use; you may find it in this list. 

I've said it before: the only way I could work with the Republican Party is if I had something on them that was a credible threat to their well-being. 

JOE LIEBERMAN, "MARTYR"? :

Scratch one far-fetched Lieberman scenario off the speculation list--Deborah Orin asked whether Republicans might endorse Joe if he loses the Democratic primary:

 

"Absolutely not, no way," says Brian Nick, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

I also saw Fred Barnes on Fox a couple of days ago saying that national Republicans wouldn't put much effort into knocking off Lieberman. If Connecticut Republicans were to field a stronger nominee than the current train-wreck they've got, Barnes explained:

 

they won't get any money from the Republican National Committee. They're not going in and try to defeat a martyr for Bush's policy.

I'm sure Lieberman is touched. But I wouldn't count on it. Remember, the GOP remorselessly savaged several Bush enablers in the 2002 elections.

My father has died.

I don't know if I was really prepared or if I'm just numb right now. 

In a war of attrition, Israel's military can be overextended too.

I do have to change my speculation that Israel will topple Iran. I still think that was the ultimate goal, it's just not working out so well.

Deadliest Day for Israel in Lebanon
By Jonathan Finer and Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 27, 2006; A01

AVIVIM, Israel, July 27 -- More than 100 Hezbollah fighters staged a fierce ambush on Israeli ground forces entering the Lebanese border town of Bint Jbeil before dawn Wednesday, killing at least eight soldiers and wounding 22 with gunfire, mortars and antitank missiles.

Haifa, Suddenly Vulnerable, by Turns Is Stoic and Fearful, Stir-Crazy and Looking to Fight
By STEVEN ERLANGER

The people here are intermittently anxious and combative, troubled and proud at this new challenge that history has thrown at them.

Proud? And history? Stop projecting...it's your government that threw the challenge at you.

Meirav Ben Simchon, 30, has spent 13 days here, and she is in a combative mood. “We can live like this for 10 years if we have to,’’ she said. “We’re a nation of power and belief” — and then she bent down to touch the cracked earth. “No one will take this land away from us,” she said. “No one.”

So what does that say about the Palestinians, who have lived "like this" for multiple decades?

I can see it now...Peter will be like, "Hey Lucy...you got a purdy mouth..." 

Ms. Edwards and Mr. Berlin will spend six months in home detention in New Jersey. They must make restitution of $685,000 to the Internal Revenue Service and pay fines of $20,000 each.

Probation in Money-Laundering Case
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

A former officer at the Bank of New York and her husband were sentenced to five years’ probation yesterday, almost six years after they admitted conspiring to use the bank to launder more than $7 billion from Russia.

The executive, Lucy Edwards, 48, who was a vice president of the bank and based in London, and her husband, Peter Berlin, 51, who ran companies with accounts at the bank, pleaded guilty in February 2000 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors investigating money laundering.

It's too early in the morning and I'm only half way through my coffee. Otherwise I'd go find a reminder for you. But you can probably find it yourself. Dig out the old stuff on the minor paranoid panic this past winter. Find the articles where they explain that Tamiflu was the best shot at protection, but it was still problematic. Find the articles that said the virus would have to mutate to before it could spread human-to-human. Find the articles that said the real problem with flu vaccines is you have to see the actual pathogen before you can develop an effective vaccine.

Drug Maker Says New Bird Flu Vaccine Is Much Stronger
By DENISE GRADY

Everyone will think he's Black then... 

“There’s no appreciable difference between the two of them on Israel,” said David B. Pudlin, the former Democratic majority leader in the Connecticut House, and one of Mr. Lamont’s more prominent Jewish advisers. “It is about Iraq, affirmative action, health care — these are things Jewish voters are going to care about.”

Seriously, there no appreciable difference between any two random American politicians on Israel...unless you count whether of not they speeak out loud about their opinions.

For Some Jews, Israel and Iraq Cloud View on Lieberman
By JENNIFER MEDINA

HARTFORD, July 26 — Lesley Korzennik walked into a diner in Norwalk recently hoping to vent her frustrations with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman — over his continued support for the war, among a litany of other things. “I’m furious at him,” she said.

But when she was asked about how she would vote in the Democratic primary next month, Ms. Korzennik, 46, who says she strongly supports Israel, sighed. “Given all that’s going on in Israel right now,” she said, “I am not going to let Lieberman go.”

With the heat we're expecting next week, I am about to become part of the problem though.

Power Goes Out on Staten Island as Con Ed Patches Up Queens Network
By SEWELL CHAN and DIANE CARDWELL

Still reeling from the end of a lengthy blackout in western Queens, Consolidated Edison found itself grappling with a new power failure yesterday afternoon when 16,000 customers on Staten Island lost electricity for several hours.

The latest power failure occurred as the utility and the city braced for a second summer heat wave that could endanger a fragile electrical network in Queens that is still being repaired.

The survey did not speculate on what caused the shift in opinion, which supports President Bush's original rationale for going to war. Respondents were questioned in early July after the release of a Defense Department intelligence report that revealed coalition forces recovered 500 aging chemical weapons containing mustard or sarin gas nerve agents in Iraq.

What caused the shift is that y'all are just fucking stupid. 

50 percent of U.S. says Iraq had WMDs
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 25, 2006

Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 -- up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both "substantial" and "surprising" in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.

While you play with the open thread, which do you think would be a better avatar? (the newspaper thing worked out well...)

EMBRACING THE NAACP: PRESIDENT BUSH DELIVERS HISTORIC ADDRESS TO WOO AMERICA'S RICHEST & MOST POWERFUL COLOREDS

THE PRESIDENT: ...So let's cut to the chase: Look around this room, and what do you see? Only the most richest and most fabulous coloreds in America, right? And you KNOW that you people are about as representative of regular black folk as my lilly-white Skull & Bones brothers are of your typical piss-ignorant red state crackers. The difference is that you actually bother to pretend like you care about your race's lower-classed losers, while we treat ours like shit, but scare them into voting for us by painting super-spooky portraits of bridezilla homos and crack-addled, hubcap-stealing nigras buying houses nextdoor and– oh, wait, forget that last part.

...A Sun poll of likely voters this month had Steele winning just 23 percent of the black vote in a contest with Cardin. Against former U.S. Rep. and NAACP chief Kweisi Mfume, who is running even with Cardin for the Democratic nomination, Steele's black support drops to 11 percent.

..."The only problem with it is that it's so obviously a tactical maneuver, it may be generally seen as a tactical maneuver."

Really.

I mean, c'mon...how do you talk for an hour and a half with nine reporters at the same time, then turn around and say "Oh, don't use my name"?

Don't you have no dignity? What? Say?

Steele's blunt words stir up speculation
Candidate could be distancing self from Bush
By Matthew Hay Brown
Sun reporter
July 26, 2006

Will an equal sized strip of Israel be a part of this demilitarized zone? 

Israel to Occupy Area of Lebanon as Security Zone
By GREG MYRE and HELENE COOPER

JERUSALEM, July 25 — Almost two weeks into its military assault on Hezbollah, Israel said Tuesday that it would occupy a strip inside southern Lebanon with ground troops until an international force could take its place.

The announcement raised the prospect of a more protracted Israeli involvement in Lebanon than the political and military leadership previously signaled or publicly sought. Officials have talked about limited raids into Lebanon, but now they seem ready to commit ground forces for at least weeks, if not months.

Shocking that they would acquit themselves well. 

In secret committee hearings less than two years ago, Mr. Steinitz said, he and others on the committee debated the army’s plans for an air war against Hezbollah. “We said that you can’t just do it from the air, and not in three days. We said you can do a good job, inflict a heavy blow to Hezbollah and reduce rocketing. But you can’t stop it, and a quarter of Israel will be in the shelters.”

Israel Finding a Difficult Foe in Hezbollah
By STEVEN ERLANGER and THOM SHANKER

JERUSALEM, July 25 — A week ago, Israeli officials said their military had knocked out up to half of Hezbollah’s rocket launchers and suggested that another week or two would finish the job of incapacitating the Lebanese militia. That talk has largely stopped.

I decided not to join the inevitable crowd in undermining your position on chicken-hawkdom. I understood you felt personally offended. Plus the logic of the piece was transparently flawed. For instance, you can't complain about what the name-callers imply because:

• the implication is in your head
• the direct statement...that the greatest supporters of war as political tactic (coincidentally, I'm sure) pulled major strings to avoid military duty
  

Worse, is this nonsense:

If only those who served in uniform during wartime have the moral standing and experience to back a war, then only they have the moral standing and experience to oppose a war. Those who mock the views of "chicken hawks" ought to be just as dismissive of "chicken doves."

DUH. Of COURSE the slur (yes, it's a slur) only applies to war hawks. Make your own damn slur...

Basically, I figured others would handle your rant. Then you had to go there.

Such partisan bigotry from the chairman of a supposedly nonpartisan organization makes it easy to understand why for five years Bush refused to attend the NAACP's annual conventions. More of a mystery is why he changed his mind this year -- and why, rather than attempt to refute Bond's venomous caricature of his party, he seemed to accept it.

Not like the N.A.A.C.P. has earned my undying support, but the above statement proved that George W. Bush is smarter than you.

That's...sad.