Dowbrigade

A major research institution has just announced the
discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element
has been named "Governmentium." Governmentium has one neutron,
12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 deputy assistant neutrons,
giving it an atomic mass of 311. These 311 particles are held together
by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like
particles called peons. Because Governmentium has no electrons, it is
inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with
which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes
one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally take
less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years;
it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a
portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time because
each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming
isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists
to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain
quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to
as "Critical Morass." When catalyzed with money, Governmentium
becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy
because it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.

Seems like a pretty significant difference of opinion in the top
levels of the current administration if the President and the Secretary
of Defense can’t even get their cover story straight.

PRESIDENT BUSH raised
the possibility for the first time of closing down the US
detention
facility
at Guantanamo
Bay.

Mr Bush, responding to heightened criticism, said that his Administration
was exploring all alternatives to imprisoning terrorist suspects at the
naval base in Cuba, which currently holds 520 prisoners

meanwhile….

"I know of no one in the U.S. government, in the executive branch,
that is considering closing Guantanamo," Rumsfeld told reporters,
within hours of Bush’s comments being broadcast in the Fox News interview.

However, on closer examination, it seems strangely reassuring that the
serious and sober SecDef doesn’t consider the goofy G-man as being "anyone
in the US Government". Even thinking that Dubya is really in control
of the apparatus of power is like believeing, in one of those impossible, hideous moments of unreal clarity, that the kid in the infant seat with the toy steering wheel is
really driving the car.

from ABC

SHANGHAI, Wednesday, June 8 – In its latest measure to tighten policing
of the Internet, China has begun requiring bloggers and owners of personal
Web sites to register with the government or be forced offline.

The new regulations, announced in March, took effect this week, with a
warning on the Web site of the Information Ministry that the sites of those
who failed to comply would be shut down.

The measures come against the backdrop of explosive growth of Internet
use in China, and the development of Web logs and personal sites as alternative
sources of news, as in many other countries.

The new measures against personal Internet activity come after months
of increasingly restrictive controls of Internet usage at other levels,
whether through heavy investment in technologies that allow the government
to monitor and censor use or through tightened rules governing Internet
cafes and Web servers.

In March, for example, bulletin boards operated by the country’s most
prominent universities were blocked to off-campus Internet users as part
of what was called a campaign to strengthen ideological education of
college students.

Users of Internet cafes must also now produce identification and are
issued user numbers, which make it easy to follow the activities of individuals.
Web administrators at popular online services have also been warned that
they will be held responsible for politically offensive communications,
thereby enlisting them in the policing efforts. It is now common for
administrators to remove from their servers any messages they deem politically
sensitive.

Is it possible, in a nation the size of China, to control access to
and use of a technology as ubiquitous as the internet? While this question
is still up in the air, it has become clear that the Chinese aim to try.
The thinking here is that they will be superficially
successful, for
a time, among the mainstream of Chinese users, but that on the fringes,
among the techo-saavy elite and those with foreign ties, the virtual
dike will leak. Eventually, as pressure for change increases, the
cracks will widen, and when an eventual viable challenge to the Chinese
Communist Party emerges, cyberspace and the blogosphere will constitute
its first patch of liberated territory.

Read the Berkman
Center study on Chinese government efforts to control
the internet.

article from the New York Times

NEW YORK — When General Motors Corp. wanted to stop
speculation this spring that it might eliminate its Pontiac and Buick
brands, vice chairman Bob Lutz took his case directly to dealers and
customers, who were up in arms.

He wrote on the company’s blog.

”The media coverage on the auto industry of late has done much to paint an ugly
portrait of General Motors," began Lutz’s entry on GM’s FastLane Blog, launched
in January. The March 30 entry went on to say that widely reported remarks he
made to analysts had been ”taken out of context" and that the automaker
would not shed the brands.

As we have been warning for quite some time, it
is becoming appear ant that while Blogs are undoubtedly a powerful,
in some ways revolutionary,
advance in mass communication, there is nothing inherently anti-establishment
or liberating in their power, which can be channeled by anyone who understands
the principles of promotion and can operate a keyboard.

So it is not surprising to see the Masters of the Mainstream
Media, who currently control the national attention span, are under blog-attack
not only by a legion of Pajamahadeen but also by the political and economic
power centers with which it is at odds. Corporate and political blogs
have been around since the dawn of the ‘Sphere, but now CEO’s, PR departments,
political parties and national candidates are blogging.

Can it we long before we see the Official CIA Iraq
Blog, the Official Ronald McDonald Blog, Condi Nasty’s World, and the
counter-attack of the media moguls, the CNN Blog, Rupert Murdock’s Blog,
the Saddam Hussein Blog and Dan Rather in Pajamas.

from the Boston Globe

BOSTON
— Two Waterville, Maine, teenagers are in hot water after one was arrested
on suspicion of skateboarding nude through the center of town as his
friend videotaped the stunt.

Jason Bowbly, 18, allegedly skateboarded through a parking lot about
4 p.m. on Friday, May 13, clad only with a strategically placed sock
puppet.

A worker in a nearby office said he went outside to see what the commotion
was all about.

"I didn’t believe it. I had to see it," a bemused Charles Roy said. "And
I came right back in after I saw it."

Another witness said she was the person who called a disbelieving police
department on Bodley.

"They didn’t believe me at first, they made me repeat it again," Eva
Michaud said.

Video: Watch
Full Report On Skateboarder

from local
6.com

A fascinating conversation between Canadian archeologist Dave Pollard,
and himself…

RS:Dave, you say you don’t have the patience to do knowledge
consulting work anymore.
Why
is that?

Me: Well, I’ve recently been doing a lot of research and reading on the
state of the world and on human nature, and I’ve come to the conclusion
that
we are living in the last century of human civilization. So I’ve become
a little impatient with projects I don’t think are that important in the
larger scheme of things.

RS:(strange look) Wow, that’s a depressing thought. It must be tough to
do anything with that negative a perspective on life and the future.

Me: Actually, it’s very liberating, and I’m more at peace than I have
been at any time in my life. Because I’ve come to believe that the end
of civilization
is something we can’t do anything about, nor is it anybody’s ‘fault’,
or even necessarily a bad thing. As Canadian archaeologist Ronald Wright
says,
if we destroy the ecosystem that sustains us "nature will merely shrug
and conclude that letting apes run the laboratory was fun for a while but
in the end a bad idea".

Here, here.  The Dowbrigade has been a believer in the essentially
doomed nature of human civilization all his life.  We even started
a religion, The Doomed, based on that basic tenet. We also agree with
Pollard’s conclusion, expressed later in his little auto-interview, that
we should all just relax and enjoy the show, because there is nothing
we can do about our fate. "We are nothing more or less than six billion
creatures individually doing what we are driven to do moment by moment.
We have been driven to overpopulate and despoil the planet and exhaust
its resources by our DNA, and in so doing we are merely following Darwin’s
law."

from How to Save the World

The downside of dyslexia,
of course, is the annoying difficulty in learning to read, and the occasional
confusion, even after all these years, as
to which handle is the hot water, and which the cold. But there is an
upside – the dyslexic notices all sorts of symmetries and reverse relationships
most people overlook.

The Dowbrigade is among the approximately 8% of males who exhibit
some degree of dyslexia.  Interestingly, less than 1% of females
do so, one of the first-hand factors which puts us in the camp of those
who see significant differences, in function if not in form (although
the jury is still out  on that one), between the brains of men and
women.

Dyslexia usually causes confusion in left-right orientation. In the
Dowbrigade, in addition to the aforementioned faucet foibles, it was
chiefly manifest in interchangeable "b" and "d", which afflicted our
writing until the 6th or 7th grade, and may have an eerie echo in the Dowbrigade logo.

Even today, we sometimes get confused by similar names. Leonard Elmore
and Elmore Leonard, Little Richard and Richard Little, George Michael
and Michael George, Georgie Girl and Boy George.

Lately, we have been spending a lot of time at two sites with similar
sounding names. Partly to keep them clear in our own confused mind, let
us delineate the differences between BLOG BRIDGE and BRIDGE BLOGS.

Blog Bridge is the amazing
new RSS reader and aggregator from Pito
Salas. Sure, it makes it easy
to subscribe, arrange, view and blog from anything with an RSS feed.  But
what really sets it apart is that it is written completely in Java,
which means that it is platform-independent, works on any computer connected
to the interenet, and it remembers not only what you are subscribed to,
but which articles you
have already
read,
or saved, or filed to read later. From anywhere, on any machine.

Being used to the much simpler aggregator built into Manila, it took
us a while to discover the utility of moving feeds into channels and
groups, but now it seems second nature.  There are suggested sample
groupings to get beginners started, pre-packaged packets of feeds, which
you can easily modify by adding and dropping feeds.

Bridge
Blogs, on the other hand, are another matter altogether.  One
of the most exciting initiatives at the Berkman Center, this Wiki-based
project aims to use blogs as literal and virtual bridges between cultures,
between nations, and between people. There are many possible ways to
do this, and the organizers are hoping that users will come up with many
more. Ideas include blogs written for readers in other locations, blogs
that engender discussions between participants in different cultures,
bloggers partnering up and translating and reposting each other’s stories,
and blogs facilitating international projects.

This is a goal we fervently believe in and want very much to contribute
to. We have been "nominated" and have accepted the responsibility for
the Ecuador
Wiki within the Bridge
Blog project. Any readers with ideas
or resources related to Ecuadorian blogging can send me info there or
here.

Actually, the Dowbrigade has been working on Bridge
Blogging since before
the invention of the World Wide Web.  Back in the day when the internet
consisted pretty much of email and Gopher, we organized an email based
Import-Export Simulation Project between a groups of students at Harvard,
Boston University and the University in Nablus, the West Bank as it
was known then or Palestine as it will soon be known again.

Teams were formed between American and Palestinian college students,
who investigated goods produced in their local areas as possible objects
of exportation to the other market. Together they had to choose one product
to move in each direction, and research packing, shipping and customs
charges. It worked surprisingly well, and the students were really into
it.

We were actually in contact with some NGOs trying to piece together
a viable economy for a future Palestinian state, reviewing some of the
student team plans for possible real world funding.  We had visions of solving the stalemate in the Middle East, and getting rich at the same time. Unfortunately,
at this point the first Intafada got
worse, and the Israeli authorities closed down the university. By 1991,
the project was dead.

It was written up, however, as "Import-Export E-mail Business Simulation";
a chapter in Virtual Connections, edited by Mark Warschauer, University
of Hawaii Press, 1995. Ever since, we have been fanatical about using
the internet to bridge the physical and cultural distances between people.
Bridge Blogging will fit right
in to our worldview.

Now, if only we can figure out a way to make some money off if it. After all, Blog is Gold, backwards.

BlogBridge

Global Voices Online

Bridge Blogs Ecuador Wiki

If
the entire Muslim world is ready to riot in the streets because some
trailer trash squatting in Cuba put his Koran down on the porcelain
throne, imagine how they would react to a giant, night-stalking bat-like
pederast from hell, who stalks a city, sodomizing Muslim men, women
and CHILDREN, for God’s sale! Well, imagine no longer…

CHAKE CHAKE, Tanzania (Reuters)
– Mohammed Juma starts to sweat and fidget as he recalls
his
rape by
Popo
Bawa,
the most
feared
spirit-monster
of the Zanzibar spice islands.

"We believe reading the Koran is our only defense, nothing else," says
the 41-year-old driver and father of four. "But Popo Bawa is real,
and well prepared."

Vacationers on the Indian Ocean islands tend to smile dismissively at accounts
in guidebooks of the bat-like ogre said to prey on men, women and children.
But for superstitious Zanzibaris a visit from the sodomizing gremlin is
no joke.

Although no one ever has seen it, belief in the monster and his unnatural
lust is so strong that entire villages will sleep out of doors for protection:
Popo
Bawa (Swahili for Bat’s Wing) prefers to attack behind closed doors at night.

This Popo Bawa character sounds like a sure hit in Hollywood! A
dark and torn hero, who knows what drove him to his incessant search
for satisfaction? Check out the following testimonials:

"I couldn’t call out for help to my husband who was lying asleep beside
me. Popo Bawa is strong: He really presses down on you. And it took such a long
time: One hour! Eventually I lost consciousness. And I was one of many who were
attacked."

Just what Hollywood needs – a strong leading man with staying power…

"I felt my mouth becoming bigger and bigger. I started losing
my ability to form words. My feeling was that my lower lip had stretched
to
my lap. I felt weak in my body. I became very sweaty. My experience was
like that of a neighbor of mine who said his head seemed to grow to an
enormous size."

Now the Dowbrigade is on familiar territory. We have felt exactly like
that, many times. Of course, we had no idea we were about to be raped
by a giant bat-like creature, nor do we have any memory of any such attack
(and one would expect to be at least somewhat sore). Nevertheless, in
the world of devils and demons, anything is possible.

The monster favors Pemba, the poorer and more backward of the archipelago’s
twin islands despite being home to the clove plantations that provide the
mainstay of Zanzibar’s economy.

We favor the poorer and more backward regions of most of the countries
we visit, and can understand Popo Bawa’s attraction to the Cloves as
well.

He also becomes active at election time: a habit that is testing
nerves ahead of polls due in October.

Wow! This is just uncanny! He sounds like an American politician!
Popo Bawa for President!

from Reuters

Friday,
May 13 – A Russian woman had her fingers badly bitten when she tried to clean her
son’s fish tank, not realising it was full of piranhas. The woman, from
Saransk, told doctors she thought they were just well fed goldfish and
wanted to do her son a favour.

But as she put her hands in to catch the fish they launched a frenzied
attack on her hand, clamping onto her fingers and not letting go. She only
managed to get the fish off her hand by banging them against the side of
the fish tank, and then called an ambulance to take her to hospital.

Doctors who treated her said she had been lucky not to lose her hand in
the attack and that she needed extensive surgery.

The woman lost most of the flesh from two fingers in the attack, local
media reported. A neighbour said: "She had no idea the pet fish in
the tank were predators."

from Ananova

The
Dowbrigade is going crazy ,again. Doncha just hate it when, unexpectedly,
one of your main work tools alters its behavior, loses abilities, or
makes you change the way you do things due to "updates" or
changed preferences? One of the reasons it bothers us so much is because
we lack the patience or technical acumen to figure out what changed,
or how.

Yes, there was a specific point that prompted this
whine. Since we upgrades to OSX three years ago, our main browser has
been Safari, which we have grown comfortable and accustomed to using
daily, although the machine in our office is running Firefox in an
attempt to diversify and feign hipness.

Anyway, one of the useful features we like about Safari
is that by right-clicking on an image, we get a drop down menu including "Save
image as…" which allows me to rename and place the image in
the folder we desire. It even remembers the last folder we stored something
in, so we can often complete the entire operation in two clicks.

But last week sometime, on our main desktop machine,
that hidden command somehow morphed into "Save image to desktop" which
unceremoniously drops a copy of the image on the desktop, under whatever
long and twisted name the distant designers have given it, from where
it takes upwards of half a dozen clicks to dig it out, rename it, and
stick it in our images folder. Worse, after we have done this
several times, our desktop is so cluttered with image icons that we
cannot tell which one is the one we just downloaded, as the "Save
to desktop" command at no point allows you to see the name of
the image you are saving!

As usual, we ended up questioning our own memory,
sanity and intelligence. But on our trusty iBook, Safari still allows
us to "Save image as…" and to select a name and a place
for each one. What happened to the Safari on our desktop machine?
We have searched the preference panels in vain for an option to turn
this valuable command back on.

We suspect the disappearance is due to the insidious
and silent "upgrades" mandated by Apple’s Automatic Updater.
The only other logical explanation is that we somehow inadvertently
changed a preference setting that we now cannot find in order to change
it back. It wouldn’t be the first time.

This is really bothering us, as we use graphic images
in almost every posting and we have been wasting time and getting frustrated
poking around our desktop looking for the pictures we just saved, trying
to guess what tr_8843.pic.small90738882.jpg depicts without having
to open it up.

Any Mac users out there? Anyone familiar with Safari? Are
we finally going crazy? Has anyone else noticed this change? It the
loss of "Save image as…" an "upgrade" or a "downgrade"?
If it is an upgrade, is there any way to downgrade it back the way
it used to be?

On a related note, if any readers have installed the
new RSS Safari for Tiger, does it have "Save image as…" or "Save
image to desktop"?

Unfortunately it bothers us enough that if we can’t
get "Same image as…" back, we will be doing all our blogging
on the laptop or moving permanently to Firefox (which has other problems
related to blogging in html as we do) May the Software Gods save us
before we drown in desktop debris!

Followup: Sam Kass set us straight and solved the problem – see comment below!

The Dowbrigade is going crazy ,again. Doncha just
hate it when, unexpectedly, one of your main work tools alters its
behavior,
loses
abilities,
or makes
you
change the way you do things due to "updates" or changed preferences?
One of the reasons it bothers us so much is because we lack the patience
or technical acumen to figure out what changed, or how.

Yes, there was a specific point that prompted this whine.
Since we upgrades to OSX three years ago, our main browser has been Safari,
which we have grown comfortable and accustomed to using daily, although
the machine in our office is running Firefox in an attempt to diversify
and feign hipness.

Anyway, one of the useful features we like about Safari
is that by right-clicking on an image, we get a drop down menu including
"Save image as…" which allows me to rename and place the image in the
folder we desire. It even remembers the last folder we stored something
in, so we can often complete the entire operation in two clicks.

But last week sometime, on our main desktop machine,
that hidden command somehow morphed into "Save image to desktop" which
unceremoniously drops a copy of the image on the desktop, under whatever
long and twisted name the distant designers have given it, from where
it takes upwards of half a dozen clicks to dig it out, rename it, and
stick it in our images folder.  Worse, after we have done this several
times, our desktop is so cluttered with image icons that we cannot tell
which one is the one we just downloaded, as the "Save to desktop" command
at no point allows you to see the name of the image you are saving!

As usual, we ended up questioning our own memory, sanity
and intelligence. But on our trusty iBook, Safari still allows us to
"Save image as…" and to select a name and a place for each one.  What
happened to the Safari on our desktop machine? We have searched the preference
panels in vain for an option to turn this valuable command back on.

We suspect the disappearance is due to the insidious
and silent "upgrades" mandated by Apple’s Automatic Updater. The only
other logical explanation is that we somehow inadvertently changed a
preference setting that we now cannot find in order to change it back.  It
wouldn’t be the first time.

This is really bothering us, as we use graphic images
in almost every posting and we have been wasting time and getting frustrated
poking around our desktop looking for the pictures we just saved, trying
to guess what tr_8843.pic.small90738882.jpg depicts without having to
open it up.

Is anyone out there familiar with Safari?  Anyone
else noticed this change? It the loss of "Save image as…" an "upgrade"
or a "downgrade"? Is there any alternative to doing all our blogging
on the laptop or moving permanently to Firefox (which has other problems
related to blogging in html)? Save us before we drown in desktop debris!