August 31, 2003

MEDIA AND IRAQ

Rami G. Khouri has an interesting op-ed piece in today's LA times (link), regarding the Administration's contention that the arab media are inciting violence in Iraq. I agree: personally, I find the reporting outside the US to be much more balanced (contrary to most of my co-workers, who think that CNN and Fox are the epitome of equity).

August 27, 2003

GREAT NEWS ON LABOR DAY

According to FairEconomy.org, "Median CEO pay skyrocketed 44 percent from 2001 to 2002 at the 50 companies with the most announced layoffs in 2001, while overall CEO pay rose only 6 percent." Sheesh, that's just disgraceful. What, do they get rewarded for pink-slipping?

SO CLOSE YOU CAN TOUCH IT

sort of what I saw in the eastern sky

I was out in the high desert last night and got a glimpse of the red planet. Very cool. I think when I move to Arizona I'll buy a telescope... not much use for it here in LA with all the light pollution.

TEACHING THE TEST

It was interesting... I read about SAT math scores rising (link) and then on the same day there's an article about people as young as 13 doing SAT preparation courses (another link). Being Canadian, I've always found the whole SAT thing fascinating as I never had to take one. I guess it's not really surprising that scores go up, given that people are preparing for up to 4 years before the exam. Maybe I'm just a purist: isn't the SAT supposed to test college readiness, not one's ability to take an exam? Maybe we should focus on improving education in general, rather than prepping earlier and earlier...

August 25, 2003

WRINKLES, WRINKLES EVERYWHERE

OK, I'll admit that maybe I'm not very sensitive to this topic because I'm not too wrinkled yet, but it still amazes me what people are willing to do in the (temporary) pursuit of youth. In today's LA Times health section (link), there is an enumeration of the new "injectables" (spurred on by the success of botox) that are FDA approved or awaiting approval. Several of the technologies involve the use of microspheres, which are basically little plastic balls. One is made from acid from rooster combs. I wonder if the rooster donors get little toupees?

August 23, 2003

RULING SEEMS BALANCED AND FAIR

It looks like Al Franken can keep the title on his new book: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right -- on Friday a judge rejected Fox News' claim that consumers would mistakenly think that Fox and/or Bill O'Reilly were endorsing the book. Franken's statement was classic, including the line: "As far as the personal attacks go, when I read 'intoxicated or deranged' and 'shrill and unstable' in their complaint, I thought for a moment I was a Fox commentator." Tee hee :) Story from the LA Times.

WHAT THE HECK IS "egosurf"?

Those wacky British muggles are at it again! More words for the Oxford Dictionary of English! They say they add words that "well-known and have proven they can pass the test of time". Don't be a cyberslacker, surf on over here to see the story. It's bootylicious.

ATTACK OF THE ELFS

It looks like the Bush administration is ready to relax emission regulations for power plants (see story here). Maybe the energy problems in the northeast last week will give them the break they were looking for. Woo hoo! Energy companies get richer and air gets easier to see. Meanwhile, environmentalists everywhere are tarnished by the actions of the Earth Liberation Front, who caused millions of dollars in damage to some southern California dealerships and their inventory (see story in the LA Times).

August 21, 2003

A couple of interesting books

Ok, maybe not literature (not even close, really) but I'm currently reading a couple of interesting books. Scott Ritter's Frontier Justice in which he holds back no punches on the Bush administration's approach to Iraq, and USC professor Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear, a look at the genesis of American violence. Both very interesting.

August 16, 2003

trying to score the test

The results of California's standardized tests are out (click here for a report on your local school) and I don't know whether to be encouraged or outraged. Scores are up, but seem (to the untrained eye at least) to just track socio-economic status. Now 46 schools face federal sanctions because their students aren't "proficient." (The exact definition of that term is still ellusive.)

See the article in today's LA Times.

August 15, 2003

Hare-raising Story

"Scientists in China have used cloning techniques to create hybrid embryos that contain a mix of DNA from humans and rabbits, according to a report in a scientific journal." Whaaaaa? Apparently they're looking for a cheap source of stem cells. Why rabbits? I guess they must have a lot of them in China. Plus, rabbits breed like, well, rabbits.

Click here for the story...

Who's got the power?

Woo hoo! My first entry!

This east-coast blackout is affecting all of us. Last night's Daily Show was cancelled and replaced with MS-TDS. It was entertaining to see Stephen Colbert do is Brian Williams/Stone Phillips/Tom Brokaw immitation...

August 14, 2003

meet al

Al hails from Alberta. Right now he's somewhere in the US, though his exact location can't be confirmed. Sometimes he rides a motorbike. One of his cats is named Roux. He is well-informed and has a great sense of humor. I leave you in his capable hands. Be good.

August 13, 2003

guest bloggers needed

There will be sporadic blogging over the next two weeks. Somehow, my life is getting in the way of the blog. Wait, I meant it the other way around. I'm staying with my folks in Northern Cal. Besides trying to remain sane, I plan to read, write new material, watch a few movies, and figure out who I'm going to vote for in the three-ring circus known as the recall election. Email me if you want to guest.

August 12, 2003

global woman

Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) is in Edinburgh promoting her new book, Global Woman, in which she argues that those "who hire cleaners and nannies so women are free to go out to work are contributing towards a new exploitative 'servant economy' which is destroying families in the developing world." The main blame, she says, lies with men who fail to share the burdens of the home. The article is too short to allow her to make a convincing argument, I think.

so who's the fox?

Doris Lessing calls Tony Blair a "rabbit" and reminisces about a meeting with Henry Kissinger during which he talked about a "kitten bomb."

harper's weekly review

is here. Sample item: "General Richard Sanchez said that he was scaling back aggressive roundups of Iraqis in the search for Saddam Hussein and Baath Party loyalists because he was afraid that "maybe our iron-fisted approach to the conduct of ops was beginning to alienate Iraqis. I started to get those sensings from multiple sources." Someone give this man a prize.

August 11, 2003

recall annoyances

I could rant on and on about this, but then Tarek pretty much says it all.

Elsewhere, this Reuters headline keeps popping up on my homepage: Schwarzenegger Upbeat, Avoids Outlining Policies. And why should he? He's got a 10-point lead by speaking in bumper stickers and flashing his plastic-surgery enhanced smile. And the recall is only 6 weeks away.

a storm is brewing

The Washington Post has a very thorough article by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus that charges there is "a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support." In addition, they say, "On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied."

orhan pamuk on istanbul

Orhan Pamuk writes about Istanbul for the BBC's Sense of the City series.

election tees

Essential recall campaign gear for Californians.
Link via Turbanhead.

August 09, 2003

2003 O. Henry awards

I just found out that my friend Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has made the 2003 O. Henry awards for her story "The American Embassy," which appeared in the Canadian journal Prism International. You can read an excerpt of the story here.

Here are a few places where you can read the writing of the lovely and amazing Ngozi Adichie: "Half of a Yellow Sun" in the current issue of Zoetrope All-Story (it originally appeared in Lit Pot.) "Heart Is Where the Home Was," a non-fiction piece for Topic Magazine. And of course the novel Purple Hibiscus, which comes out in October.

ubu roi becomes king baabu

Wole Soyinka describes adapting and setting up the satirical play "Ubu Roi" by Alfred Jarry, and its relevance for a Zimbabwe ruled by Robert Mugabe (and, indeed, for the Uganda of Idi-Amin or the Zaire of Mobutu or, or, or...)

oops department

Looks like Esquire reversed its decision to have Jayson Blair do a review of "Shattered Glass."

steve martin's take on WMD

"So if you're asking me did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, I'm saying, well, it all depends on what you mean by 'have'." Read on.

August 08, 2003

order up

My pal Maryanne Stahl's new book, The Opposite Shore, is now available, so order your copy now. Oh, and here's an excerpt.

beat author's book on film

The Guardian has a profile of Alexander Trocchi, the beat author whose novel Young Adam was made into a movie that caused quite a stir at Cannes this year. I really shouldn't use two relative clauses back to back like that.

it's official

California is the laughing stock of the nation, what with Gary Coleman's gubernatorial run sponsored by a Bay Area weekly newspaper and the 99 cent stores trying to put a 99-year-old (get it? get it?) man on the ballot. I tell you, the only thing that can restore some dignity to all this madness and put the Democrats back in the race again is if Sean Penn announces he'll run. Arnold vs. Sean. Now that's something I'd like to see.

immunity for big oil

"[A] two-page executive order [signed by President Bush two months ago] seemed to completely shield [U.S.] oil companies from liability — even if it could be proved that they had committed human rights violations, bribed officials or caused great environmental damage in the course of their Iraqi-related business." Read on.
There's not much you can say after something like this.

Update: The executive order is available here.

August 07, 2003

for your reading lists

Tim Pears picks ten "revolutionary" novels in this Guardian piece. He picked political novels, he says, beause "a novel can't change the world. But a great novel opens the mind like nothing else. And when the mind opens, so too does the future"
What should/shouldn't have made the list? Discuss.

struggling authors, take note

You could design your own cover art, travel the country dressed in a riduculous outfit, or arm-wrestle a guy to get him to buy your book, like Eragon author Christopher Paolini. Or you could call a different book club every day, as did Lucia, Lucia author Adriana Trigiani.

Link via PL.

rant of the week

You might not have caught this (in between the Kobe and Arnold news), but Mike Hawash, the Intel Engineer whose detention without charge back in April sparked dozens of protests* (and thousands of mentions on the Internet, including on this very site) has pled guilty to a "federal charge of conspiring to help the Taliban in Afghanistan." I can only imagine how this is going to play. Ashcroft supporters will start screaming "See, See!!" and all the civil libertarians who supported the man will look like fools.
I feel sorry for Hawash's friends, who banded together to create a website and seek funds for his defense, for his wife and children, who are waking up to find a man they probably never knew, for American Muslims, who inherit another liar and terrorist whom they have to dissociate with, and for all those who may be unrightfully detained in the future--few will be inclined to believe them now, even if they are held without having the right to know the charges against them. What a waste.

*I still think it was wrong of the FBI to hold Hawash for so long without charging him and without access to his lawyers. But there you have it.

Update: Tarek has some caveats to that plea, worth reading. Via Tacitus.

August 06, 2003

cool new fiction

If you liked Land-Grant College Review as much as I did, then you'll really enjoy this new piece they have up by the talented Mikhail Iossel: "Some Of The World Transactions My Father Has Missed Due To His Death On September 14, 1999."

time to clean out the attic

Newsweek's Malcom Jones writes about the surge in used-book sales. Says he, "I own a couple of Cormac McCarthy hardcovers from the ’80s, for instance, that are now worth $1,500 each. My indifference to collecting took a beating the day I discovered those prices online." Heh. What's in your attic?

CSM opinion piece on american muslims

I came across this interesting opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor in which Ahmed Nassef argues that Muslim practices should be tailored to fit life in America. I found myself agreeing with him that there is "a gulf between the highly conservative nature of most Muslim American institutions and the liberal views of many [American Muslims.]" It didn't surprise me to learn that most American Muslims don't attend mosque or participate in major religious celebrations, or that many mosques are run by Wahhabi clerics--it's hard for supporters of more liberal rites to compete with Saudi money.
But I didn't buy Nassef's claim that the conservatism is more of a characteristic of Muslim immigrants as opposed to native-born American Muslims (perhaps because I've seen far too many conservatives in the latter camp, and far too many liberals in the former.) I also disagreed with his claim that "progressive Muslims in America are taking their inspiration from Islamic scholars trained in Western universities who tend to be critical of authoritarian interpretations of Islam and who treat the real diversity of Muslim societies more inclusively." I think it's a bit too simplistic to claim that liberal interpretations are the apanages of Western training (for example, mosques run by clerics who follow the Malekite rites are pretty liberal.) The proposition also tends to bring up that whole East-West dichotomy, which I don't find particularly illuminating. But the article makes quite a good read. Read it in full here.

fact checking is for losers

or so it seems. Howard Kurtz talks about the naked-women-in-paintball-games hoax and how major media screwed up.

another rowling

Louisa Young writes about her brief reign as the "next J.K. Rowling."

August 05, 2003

get well soon

Amy Tan has contracted Lyme Disease, says the Washington Post is this atrociously titled article. Symptoms include fatigue, memory loss, and "dropping first letters of words when writing by hand and replacing words with similar-sounding gibberish when speaking." What a nightmare.

this one's for you, Eggerheads

This summer, the Guardian is publishing a bunch of new short stories by famous authors. Dave Eggers made the list this weekend, with "Something Might Plummet, Something Might Soar" and it starts like this:
"Mrs Gunderson. Whahaooaoooa. Mrs Gunderson. This is about Mrs Gunderson and it gets dirty. "

Read the entire story here.

hemon on sarajevo

The BBC is asking different writers to talk about the city they live in, the fiction it has produced, and literary works set there. Aleksandar Hemon talks about Sarajevo. The program also includes Orhan Pamuk on Istanbul and Zadie Smith on London.

will she or won't she?

Although I'm leery of the recall vote, the election may actually turn out to be quite interesting.* (Whether it's actually good for California is another thing altogether.) For example, it sounds as though Arianna Huffington might indeed run. The woman is a bit of mystery to me (as is Christopher Hitchens, actually.) She's moved from being a darling of the right to a leftist pundit who has it in for pigs at the trough. (Meanwhile Hitchens transformed himself from a leftist critic of Henry Kissinger to a supporter of Cheney, Wolfowitz et al.) It boggles the mind. Then again, change is a part of life.
Anyway, Arianna has been playing coy about whether she'll run for governor of California. She hasn't announced her candidacy yet, but the L.A. Weekly makes it sound as though this will happen shortly.

*Oooh. Where was I? I just heard that Larry Flynt is running. And Gary Coleman. Kato Kaelin, where are you?

August 04, 2003

plimpton memoir

The AP reports that George Plimpton is writing a memoir, due out in 2006 by Little, Brown. He'll have a lot of ground to cover: his attempts at sports, his friendships with literary and political legends, those rumors about the Paris Review being a CIA cover, etc. Well, maybe he won't cover that last one. Still, should be interesting.

summer reading list - 1

I dug out Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus. I'd already read (and loved) "Eli the Fanatic," and so I started the book from the end, reading the short stories first, before going on to the novella Goodbye, Columbus.

saudi role in 9/11

There are already leaks as to what the 28 pages that have been censored prior to the release of the 9/11 report by the Joint Congressional Committee on Intelligence last week might contain. The New York Times, for example, reports that "two Saudi citizens who had at least indirect links with two hijackers were probably Saudi intelligence agents and may have reported to Saudi government officials." The two Saudi citizens are named Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, and the two hijackers referred to here are Al-Midhar and Al-Hazmi. The NY Times article goes on: "According to the unclassified parts of the report, Mr. al-Bayoumi first befriended Mr. al-Mihdhar and Mr. al-Hazmi in January 2000 when they arrived in Los Angeles from Bangkok, after attending a meeting in Malaysia with other operatives of al Qaeda. The two men stayed in Mr. al-Bayoumi's apartment for several days. He helped them find their own apartment, paid their first month's rent and security deposit, and threw a party to help them get settled in the local Arabic community. Law enforcement officials have said, though, that Mr. Almidhar repaid Mr. al-Bayoumi and added that there was no evidence Mr. al-Bayoumi or Mr. Bassnan ever provided any other money to Mr. Almidhar or Mr. Hazmi. That point, the officials said, helps to explain why Mr. al-Bayoumi has not been accused of any crime, like providing material support to terrorists."
Wait a minute. One of these guys had direct contact with one of the hijackers, paid his security deposit, and partied with him, and yet didn't even get detained as a material witness? I know that the fact that he left the US prior to 9/11 and never returned makes this understandably hard. However, I can't help but compare that with the case of Ansar Mahmood, a legal US resident who had the misfortune to pay the security deposit of a Pakistani couple who were here illegally. He's been charged with "harbouring illegal immigrants" and is awaiting deportation. I bet he wishes he had a Saudi passport. All kidding aside, the discrepancy in the way these two cases were handled makes one wonder how we're supposed to feel safer.

up and coming

Jeune Afrique has a quick profile of Moroccan filmmaker Laila Marrakchi.

stone reader update

A few years ago, in a rush to find something to read on a plane, filmmaker Mark Moskowitz decided to pick up his old copy of Dow Mossman's The Stones of Summer, a book that had been lying around, unread, on his bookshelf, for more than two decades. He fell in love with the book, and decided to track down the author and his book. The author seemed to have disappeared, and there were only a few copies of the book still in print, which Moskowitz bought (all of them.) Then Moskowitz channelled this new obsession into a documentary about Dow Mossman, called Stone Reader, which became a cult favorite in the US. The BBC has just purchased the movie and the Guardian's Andrew Anthony reviews it. If you haven't seen this documentary, here's its website, where you can find screenings near you.

August 01, 2003

props to maud

She's been very active on her blog lately and she's also had the coolest people do guest stints on Fridays. Hop on over and visit.

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