Ev'rybody's in despair / Ev'ry girl and boy / But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here / Ev'rybody's gonna jump for joy

Quinn The Eskimo

(The Mighty Quinn)
Bob Dylan

Ev'rybody's building the big ships and the boats
Some are building monuments
Others, jotting down notes
Ev'rybody's in despair
Ev'ry girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev'rybody's gonna jump for joy

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn

I like to do just like the rest
I like my sugar sweet
But guarding fumes and making haste
It ain't my cup of meat
Ev'rybody's 'neath the trees
Feeding pigeons on a limb
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
All the pigeons gonna run to him

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn

A cat's meow and a cow's moo, I can recite 'em all
Just tell me where it hurts yuh, honey
And I'll tell you who to call
Nobody can get no sleep
There's someone on ev'ryone's toes
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev'rybody's gonna wanna doze

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn

Copyright © 1967 Bob Dylan

test, hope they wiggle for you / No Child Left Without A Gyroscope

If you have a child, girl or boy, and the child does not own a gyroscope, I am dropping a dime on you with the Child Welfare authorities. They make gyroscopes with pretty designs -- sparkles -- for girls now, they're not all butch and austere anymore.

Gyroscopes precess.

postage stamp received from newly discovered Planet Björkguðmundsdóttir / Bob will be programming in PowerBasic soon

Click image, see what it gets you.

The Very Strange Array Near Thud
Bulletin No. 4
821.44.3911.66

Discovery, Imaging and
Contact with Planet
Björkguðmundsdóttir

Following the recent discovery of a new planet in the Vleeptron-Hoon-Yobbo-Mollyringwald solar system, and successful imaging of Planet Björkguðmundsdóttir, TVSANT has received a postage stamp from Planet B. No letter, no card, no package -- just one stamp. Here it is.

However, several TVSANT researchers believe the stamp depicts 3 satellites or moons of Björkguðmundsdóttir. If so, this is the first imaging of these moons.

But at the moment TVSANT is pretty clueless what this stamp is all about or trying to communicate. It could be an advertisement for deodorants.

ALTERNATIVE THEORY B

What also may be going on here is a stamp composed of images generated by code in the language or dialect PowerBasic -- generated certainly not by me, but posted on the programmer's website as examples of what PowerBasic lets the programmer do, and what it does for the programmer.

Last night when all the creatures of the house were deeply sleeping I went clickety click and bought

Items to be shipped now
-----------------------
PBCW500: PowerBASIC Console Compiler 5
1 copy at $169.00 each = $169.00
Shipping by UPS Ground / USPS = $10.00
TOTAL: $179.00
Paying by: CCARD

Once your order has been paid and processed, an invoice will be mailed to your billing address with a complete list of all charges.

And I guess it will get here Monday. Then I guess I will stick a CD into PowerCow and it will guide me through the installation process. And immediately I can pick up programing in a familiar dialect of BASIC, which was invented at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire USA in 1964 by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz and (if this entity exists) God, so that morons like me could make a computer figure out a Hohmann Transfer Orbit, so I can send a rocket to Mars in the most efficient possible way.

Or churn out Lottery Numbers which are Untouched By Human Influence -- pure Lucky Numbers that have nothing to do with your niece's birthday or how many gallons of gas you filled up with today, or the number of the last train car that didn't fall off the bridge and into the river.

In other words, since 1973,

Basic
All-Purpose
Symbolic
Instruction
Code

has permitted me to blunder through a lot of very interesting Number Crap -- well, any goddam thing the computer could possibly do, BASIC was how I told the computer to do it, and the computer would then do it.

So after Monday or thenabouts, I'm back in business, with the tool I need to realize my modest ambition of Understanding Everything, and then Ruling Planet Earth Benevolently.

I just really didn't want to have to learn a different lingo. Screw Pascal. Screw C++. Who needs them when you have BASIC?

The buzz is that when Aliens from Beyond the Solar System pop the hood on our Voyager probes, they will find BASIC doing the thinking and navigating and decision-making. And conclude from that that Earthoids make their Machines Dance in BASIC, with some Machine/Assembly Modules tossed in for speed.

That conclusion would be simultaneously Wrong and Very Flattering. It would show us to other sentients as Wise, Straightforward, not afraid of Simplicity, Direct, Blunt, Sometimes Crude -- but always getting the Right Answer.

Lo-Tek Rules.

Kemeny and Kurtz envisioned a high-level programming language which any clever person could figure out, and begin programming and solving his/her problems after only one night's study. Art historians. Model ship makers. Traders in precious stones. Economists and Accountants. Choreographers and Chemists. Nurses, wine and cognac producers, hydroponic gardeners who only visit the rented house once a month.

Rats, okay, let me see if I can find the name of the artist/programmer who made the Three Satellites of Planet Björkguðmundsdóttir. Ah, okay, it is Copyright (c) 2008 by Perfect Sync, Inc. of Traverse City, Michigan USA, and apparently they cranked out these bright, shiny, colorful Platonic Objects using PowerBasic. That was good enough for me.

I'm particularly grateful to Professor Emeritus J.C. Sprott of the University of Wisconsin for also advising me to leap on PowerBasic. He and his work on chaos and complex systems are mentioned in the PowerBasic Wikipedia wiki. (PowerBasic seems previously to have been Borland TurboBasic.)

It's been a year since I could scream at my computer and get it to jump to my tune. But, like The Brain, or Dexter in his basement Laboratory, soon I will use PowerBasic to Rule Planet Earth, and make it straighten up and fly right. Expect lower fuel/petrol prices around late 2011, and KFC will sell gizzards in its restaurants in New England.

Though the world is fast asleep / Though your pillow's soft and deep / You're not sleepy as you seem / Stay awake, don't nod and dream

"Stay Awake" is possibly the creepiest lullaby ever written -- like so much of the Disney movie product while Walt was still running things at the studio. Now it's all pretty ponies and halvah and Robin Williams voiceovers and cheap plastic action figures and doll crap. But the early Disney movies -- every one of them had something bizarrely, sometimes even artistically, unique, even if a lot of it systematically terrified millions of children.

The most frightening of all Sci-Fi monsters, The Monster From The Id, wasn't a Disney movie ("Forbidden Planet" was MGM), but The Monster itself was a contract job from the Disney animators. All you had to say to those guys and gals was "Make it real scary," and they started licking their chops and rolling up their sleeves and drawing sketches.

"Mary Poppins" had that weird Disney feel of a movie written by a committee that didn't meet in the same room very often. Sequences jump from one unconnected set of events and emotions to the next unrelated events and emotions with no effort whatsoever to guide the audience through the abrupt leap. The actors are not particularly encouraged to supply any extra comprehension.

In 1988, producer Hal Willner began contacting musicians to contribute to a compilation album, "Stay Awake," of new interpretations of classic Disney music and songs. Every artist said he or she was initially thrilled at the chance to sing a song etched in his or her memory since they were four years old.

And then reported how very emotionally difficult these seemingly simple songs were, the strange elements and convolutions the adults now encountered as they studied the songs again. All the artists said they had great difficulty doing justice to the Disney songs, figuring out how to arrange it and sing it.

Sun Ra and His Arkestra sang "Pink Elephants on Parade" from "Dumbo," one of many Disney films themed around murdering a child's mother or beloved pet as the child watches. As mom is chained awaiting her execution, she sings the lullaby "Baby Mine" to her unloved big-eared baby Dumbo. Bonnie Raitt sings "Baby Mine."

Every track on "Stay Awake" is magnificent -- in all the album is the most wonderfully unexpected re-visit to early childhood -- an hour of being simultaneously adult and five years old again, an intense experience I never imagined I could have. Tom Waits sings "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho," the 7 Dwarfs' marching song. Yma Sumac, the 8-Octave Inca Pagan Love Priestess (I saw her and listened to her ultrasonics at a New York City night club), sings "I Wonder" from "Sleeping Beauty." This is the craziest collection of brilliant musicians, singing the weirdest, most troubling songs, ever to share a CD.

Sister Jane and brother Michael Banks have had a wonderful, thrilling, magic, amazing day in London, carefully attended to by the very strange nanny Mary Poppins. Night has fallen, and now washed and teeth brushed and plunked into their beds, they inform Mary Poppins that they absolutely refuse to fall asleep, then or ever.

Mary Poppins agrees this is a fine idea indeed, and sings a lullaby to help them achieve their hearts' desire.

Stay awake, don't rest your head
Don't lie down upon your bed
While the moon drifts in the skies
Stay awake, don't close your eyes

Though the world is fast asleep
Though your pillow's soft and deep
You're not sleepy as you seem
Stay awake, don't nod and dream
Stay awake, don't nod and dream

"Stay Awake" was composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. Julie Andrews sang the original, Suzanne Vega sings the 1988 cover.

Elmer Elevator the Maine Coon Cat

Click on the image, he gets bigger.

Elmer Elevator, the Maine Coon cat, died at the vet Tuesday. He was our wedding kitten to one another nine years ago. The "Bubba San's" was the registered name the breeder stuck him with.

"Elmer Elevator" was the name of the boy hero of my favorite kid book, "My Father's Dragon." He ran away to Wild Island to free a baby dragon the mean jungle animals had tied up, to force the baby dragon to fly them back and forth over the crocodile-infested river. An old alley cat Elmer Elevator had fed and let sleep by the kitchen fire had told him about the dragon, because she used to be a ship's cat and had sailed all over the world.

For the first few months, every night when we were asleep in the dark bedroom, Elmer the kitten would savagely attack our feet, and we'd wake up screaming. We thought he was wild and insane. Eventually we saw a documentary about a park ranger who took in an orphan bobcat. Wiggling feet under the bedclothes triggers their instinct to leap on prey crawling underneath snow. The ranger had to teach himself to sleep perfectly still, as we did. Eventually Elmer grew out of it.

An e-mail (slightly amended) to a friend:

======

Thanks, he was really sweet. Today was devoted to watching how the other three cats are figuring out that something's terribly wrong. The crazy old Siamese was in love with him, so we also called him Tyrone Purrer. And Benny (Benedict Spinoza Cat) and Elmer were just inseparable bestest friends, like Spongebob and Patrick; they hunted together (although Benny thinks the backyard squirrels are his fun playmates).

In Elmer's hunting prime he always brought us back the meatier half of full-grown rabbits -- disgusting, but actually quite tasty-looking, and we were always careful to praise him -- one of us would distract him with a loud show of congratulations while the other one quietly shoved the carcass into a sandwich bag and made it vanish.

He was about 2/3 bobcat. My guess is that a very long time ago there was an unfortunate romantic accident in the woods between some kind of housecat and a bobcat. A more familiar face and fur pattern makes them look raccoon-ish, but of course that's impossible, there wasn't a drop of raccoon in him. He had enormous paws, like catcher's mitts.

We worried about him and traffic, but I'm so glad we let him have his right to be an outdoor hunter. It was clearly the life he loved. We don't own them, they've chosen, they've agreed to live with us, and we have no right to make the house their prison, even if our motives are loving and pure. (Jailers always believe their motives are loving and pure. The prisoners may have a different opinion.)

He would attack and run off full-grown dogs (though we asked him not to). When Spring comes, a lot of neighbors are going to miss him, because we heard from them from 5 or 6 blocks away that he roamed and freeloaded that far away. He was a very memorable-looking cat. He used to lie in wait in the bushes and rush out to attack the mailman, who was probably just too ashamed to be known as the mailman who maced a cat. (Elmer was just playing with him.)

He liked me to spin him around in the office swivel chair, and never tired of it. I gave him a great spin just last week.

B

Save the Clement Street Iron Bridge!

Click to enlarge.

Gonna grind out a few hundred of these fliers -- in the style of the colonial New England broadside -- and tape 'em up all over town. In the middle of the night, in the dark, furtively.

If somebody -- the dumb useless Mayor and her Flunky Comatose City Council -- doesn't get their ass in gear and fix and save this Bridge, it's just going to be allowed to rot until the state highway department says it's beyond repair and must be torn down.

And replaced with some undistinguished piece of modern shit.

Save the beautiful bridge now!

* * *

Repair and re-open the Clement Street Iron Bridge.

For 111 years, this beautiful one-lane wrought-iron bridge over the Mill River kept families and neighbors connected, and increased Northampton's commerce and prosperity.

Today the Bridge is a useless, rusting nuisance and eyesore.

Each day the Bridge is open, 15,000 neighbors quickly and conveniently reach their workplaces, schools, shops, homes and health providers.

In every season, each practical trip is a beautiful journey through forest, farm, mountains and villages.

The Bridge is a keystone of our infrastructure, and a treasure of nature and rare architecture.

Planet Björkguðmundsdóttir discovered & imaged!!! / PIZZAQ: What on Earth is exactly like it?

Click image for larger & more detailed

The announcement says it all. This is a Great Moment for Astronomy in the Dwingeloo-2 Galaxy. It's a particularly great moment for The Very Strange Array Near Thud!

It's an odd-looking sort of planet, n'est-ce pas?

Well, okay, here's some Pizza ...

Somewhere on Earth, there is a Thing that looks Exactly Like this stange Planet Björkguðmundsdóttir!!!

Find it, tell me what it is, where, who, etc. and win 9 Slices of White Spinach Pizza!

INSERT COIN TO THROW SHOES AT PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH / "It is the farewell kiss, you dog!"

Click image, gets bigger.

Okay, I am Copyrighting and Patenting this Video Game

(C)(tm)(R) 2009 by Robert Merkin
All Rights Reserved

so now all I have to do is learn C++ and write the code. But this is going to make me rich. Particularly in the Arab and Muslim world, this sucker is going to be an Arcade Smash from Baghdad to Jakarta.

But don't sell the European and the North and South American market short -- throwing your shoes at George Bush's head is going to be a Big Hit all over Planet Earth.

If you hit his head with both your shoes, you get a Bonus Shoe, so if you're really good at throwing shoes, you can rack up a very big score.

If the new free sovereign democratic government of Iraq ever lets Muntazer al-Zaidi out of prison and the jail guards stop beating the crap out of him, I'll make him a partner in the Video Game -- I couldn't have done this without him, and I need him for the Voice Talent, so the game can scream, in Arabic, English, French, German, Turkish, Ladino, Yiddish, Italian, Suomi, etc.:

"It is the farewell kiss,
you dog!"

==================

Reuters / Thomson Reuters
newswire UK
Tuesday 30 December 2008

Trial delayed for Iraqi
who threw shoes at Bush

by Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- The trial of an Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad has been postponed pending an appeal over whether the incident amounted to an assault, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

TV journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi is charged with assault against a foreign head of state, which could carry a 15-year prison term, after he hurled both his shoes at Bush during a joint news conference with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki this month and called him a dog.

Zaidi's lawyer Dhiaa al-Saadi told Reuters the defense was appealing to have the charge reduced to insulting a visiting head of state, which would carry a two-year maximum sentence, because throwing shoes could not have put Bush in actual danger.

"Have you ever heard of anyone being killed by a shoe?" al-Saadi said.

"In Europe, they throw eggs and rotten tomatoes to insult. In Iraq, throwing a shoe is a symbol of disrespect."

Iraqi High Judicial Council spokesman Abdul Satar Birqadr said Zaidi's appeal request would be examined, resulting in a delay in the trial which was to have begun on Wednesday.

"Due to a legal appeal presented by defendant Muntazer al-Zaidi's lawyers to the Federal Appeal Court, the case has been referred to this court for study," Birqadr said in a statement. "Therefore, the Central Criminal Court has adjourned the case pending (its) ruling."

U.S.-backed Maliki has condemned the outburst, which made Zaidi an icon in Iraq and the Middle East. Public sympathy for the shoe-thrower means Maliki may wish to avoid a tough punishment being imposed on Zaidi ahead of provincial elections next month.

The trial will be closely watched for signs of unfair treatment. The defendant's lawyer has said his client was severely beaten following the incident.

Two brothers who have visited Zaidi in prison in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone compound say he bears signs of having been abused, including a missing tooth, and bruises on his arms and legs.

His lawyer also says Zaidi was initially denied legal representation.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Sami Aboudi)

- 30 -

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved.

===========

Aljazeera (TV news, Qatar)
UPDATED ON:
Wednesday 17 December 2008
16:31 Mecca time / 13:31 GMT

Bush shoe-thrower 'tortured'

[image:] The two shoes narrowly missed the US president as he gave a news conference in Baghdad.

An Iraqi journalist arrested after throwing his shoes at the US president has been tortured during his detention, his brother has said.

Muntazer al-Zaidi, who called George Bush "a dog" during his attack, was beaten by security guards after his arrest, Durgham al-Zaidi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

"We know that [Muntazer] has been tortured and his hand was broken. I asked them to go and check on him in the Green Zone [in Baghdad]," he said.

Al-Baghdadia television, Muntazer's employer, reported that al-Zaidi had been "seriously injured" while in custody.

The channel has urged the Iraqi government to allow lawyers and the Iraqi Red Crescent [Muslim affiliate of Red Cross] to visit him.

The Iraqi military has denied that al-Zaidi has been mistreated while in detention.

'Handed to judiciary'

Al-Zaidi has admitted "aggression against a president" during an appearance before a judge, a judicial spokesman said on Tuesday.

"Al-Zaidi was brought today before the investigating judge in the presence of a defence lawyer and a prosecutor," Abdul Satar Birqadr, a spokesman for Iraq's High Judicial Council, said.

"He admits the action he carried out."

The referral of the case to the Iraqi judiciary is usually the first stage of review proceedings that could lead to a criminal trial being held.

Al-Zaidi will remain in custody until the judge has completed his investigation, Birqadr said.

The court may send him for trial under a clause in the Iraqi penal code that makes it an offence to try to murder Iraqi or foreign presidents.

The sentence could be up to 15 years jail, Birqadr said.

Support for attack

Al-Zaidi's attack on Bush, who ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, has been met with broad support across the Arab world.

Iraqis calling for al-Zaidi's release from custody held a second day of protests on Tuesday, with hundreds of students marching in Baghdad.

The demonstrations came a day after thousands of people turned out in Baghdad's Sadr City in a show of support for al-Zaidi.

But the Iraqi government on Monday called al-Zaidi's outburst against Bush a "barbaric and ignominious act".

The outgoing US leader, who was making a surprise visit to Baghdad, had just told reporters that while the war in Iraq was not over "it is decisively on its way to being won," when al-Zaidi hurled abuse - and his footwear - at Bush.

Bush, who had been giving a joint press statement with Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, ducked behind a podium as the shoes narrowly missed his head.

In Arab culture, showing the soles of the feet is a sign of contempt and the shoe-throwing incident is a reminder of the widespread opposition to the US-led invasion.

Bush's visit to the Iraqi capital came just 37 days before he hands the presidency over to Barack Obama, who has vowed to withdraw troops from Iraq.

- 30 -

Number of comments : 27

Joe
Australia 17/12/2008

Barbaric and ignominious act?

So if throwing a shoe is a barbaric and ignominious act that could incur in a 15 year jail term, then what should the continuous death of civilian by US forces be called? Get real Mr. Nuri al-Maliki. Stop being a puppet and do the right thing. Stand by your people!

Lawrence Muhammad
United States 17/12/2008

VOTE Al-Zaidi in 2009 Iraq Election - Test Democracy

VOTE FOR Al-Zaidi in IRAQ 2009 ELECTION (TEST DEMOCRACY)

nubiasahara
Afghanistan 17/12/2008

Turtured?

cowards, Mr. Zadi is a hero.

Mano
United States 17/12/2008

Free al-Zaidi-he had no serious intent to injure

May this brave man be freed. He carried an important message to Bush and the world - you cannot carry out practices that kill or injure innocents, you cannot simply destroy - that the ends do not justify the means. Everyone knew there were no WMDs. Bush had his own reasons. If he had concern for Iraq, he would have first tried communication and diplomacy. Someone had to make this statement for Iraqis, when the thick wall of protection for Bush could be penetrated so Bush could face the truth

Ekk
Canada 17/12/2008

[B]ush shoe-thrower tortured

"Al-Zaidi's attack on Bush, who ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, has been met with broad support across the Arab world." This should say/read: Al-Zaidi's attack on Bush, who ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought death and destruction to its innocent people has been met with broad support across the world.

hookin bull
Afghanistan 17/12/2008

Bush shoe-thrower tortured

It is way to bad this person is being held and charged. I wished the [Philadelphia USA baseball team] Phillies would hire him to pitch for them. The only thing he did wrong was miss hitting Bush's knucklehead.

Mike
Canada 17/12/2008

Release al-Zaidi

C'mon!! Mr. al-Zaidi was a man obviously acting with legitimate outrage! Even the U.S. President, Mr. Bush had a sense of humour about it. It certainly was not ideal, but Mr. al-Zaidi had every right to his outburst! TORTURE!!! Habeus-corpus! Produce the body!!! He threw his shoes he did not fire a bullet! We want to see the condition of Mr. al-Zaidi! Let us see the man!

Otto
Sweden 17/12/2008

Al-Zaidi investigation

In the days of Saddam only those considerd enemys of the regime had to fear for there lives. Now everyone in Iraq is at risk being killd mutelated etc, at any moment...The man(Bush)who is responsible for this situation is indeed much lower than a pair of shoes ... Al-Zaidi should be freed and hounord. I just feel sorry for the dog being compered with Bush ... even dogs are better than a creature like Bush...

Richard, OIF Veteran
United States 17/12/2008

Muntazer al-Zaidi

If Durgham al-Zaidi says that his brother was tortured, does that make it true? My family and I are Middle Eastern-Americans and I have travelled throughout the region much of my life. I was in Iraq recently and spoke to Iraqi's throughout Al-Anbar. I don't recall too many Iraqis sharing Muntazar al-Zaidi's sentiments. Most Iraqi's ... yes, Sunnis too ... appear to be glad to have been shed of the yoke of Saddam Hussein, and happy to be rid of al-Qaeda leaders too.

faruq
United States 17/12/2008

Throwing the shoes at a world leader demonstrate that the Iraqi are still not ready for democracy. They think with their heart instead of their head.

cathy
Canada 17/12/2008

bush shoe thrower

Iraqis should be thankful for the billions of tax dollars that they got for free and help to get there democracy back.Trowing shoes is not a answer to there problem. Wish you luck guys and happy holidays.

Azael
United States 17/12/2008

This is a hero?

Why is this shoe throwing fool still called a journalist? A journalist job is to remain impartial and report, not act like a child. This moron just set Iraqi journalism back and perpetuated the Arab stereo type of an uncultured society. And about the torture, I'm sure this will be blamed on Bush too. Ironically, if it was Saddam he threw shoes at he would be dead now.

Bryan
United States 17/12/2008

Shoe Thrower

There are many of us here in the United States who sincerely hope that Mr. al-Zaidi will be released without further harm. He is not only a hero in the Middle East but also here where we would like this shoe throwing thing to catch on. The main stream media in the United States have never displayed such courage and perhaps al-Zaidi will serve as a better role model. We thought President Bush looked pretty agile though, ducking to avoid the size 10's.

Carolyn
United States 18/12/2008

Muntazer al-Zaidi

Well, the Maliki puppet government ought to know very well what constitutes "barbaric and ignominious act[s]". I think that it is shameful for the Maliki puppet government to imprison and injure an Iraqi citizen for telling the truth. There are many here in the US who think Mr. al-Zaidi deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his actions. Tonight in San Francisco there will be a vigil in solidarity.

Jeff
United States 18/12/2008

Shoe thrower - Release al-Zaidi!!!

Until al-Zaidi threw his shoes and said what he said, there hasn't been such a heroic and just display of liberty since the anonymous student stood faced down a tank in Tiananmen Square nearly 20 years ago! Bravo to al-Zaidi, and BOTH President-elect Obama and dumb-ass W.

Bush should immediately call for al-Zaidi to be released, unharmed.

And the opportunity to sincerely APOLOGIZE to the Iraqis for the tragedy that has been this occupation should not be missed. Man up, please!

Reginaldo
Brazil 18/12/2008

Freedom

8 Years ago this gentleman would have not been able to get away, in any way shape or form, with this semi-violent resistance. I'm sure Mr. Bush was glad, as am I, to see that the Iraqi people are able to live in a country where they're not afraid of the government coming after them. Let's all just calm down, be real people and we can work through our problems with our words, like big boys and girls. Seriously.

John
United States 18/12/2008

All we ask

Attacking a head of state is a crime. Attacking a head of state who liberated 26 million people in a country is a sign of thanklesness and ignorance! If the soldiers of the United States were in Iraq for oil then we would be spending $10 Billion Iraqi Dollars a month to stabilize the country, not $10 Billion U.S. Dollars! All we have ever asked for when liberating a country is a place to bury our dead. Pray for peace, for there is no one more against war than the ones ordered to fight.

jeff
United States 18/12/2008

shoe-throwing incident

in response to mano from the U.S. you suggest communication and diplomacy. what do you think the previous 10-15 years were about? And to all calling this gentleman a hero and forever condemning the U.S. ask yourselves if Iraq is better off now than with saddam and what would happen to Iraq if we left Iraq today. What do you think Iran would ultimately do?

Fuad
Ethiopia 18/12/2008

Bravo Zaidi

Zaidi displays not only his own anger but also the Iraqi people as well. Bush left many iraqis homeless, widow(widower) and orphanto, least the few. Were I zaidi, I would throw not 2 shoes as many as I can. May one day US will suffer what an Iraqi people went through.

Insha Allah.

Karrie
Korea (South) 18/12/2008

lets be fair

he has acted behalf of the world. If he is to sentenced to 15 years how about the murder who have ordered to invade Iraq and resulted in hundred thousands of casualties. Bush needs to be brought to the war court and get the penalty he deserves

Pablo Rojas
Costa Rica 18/12/2008

Costa Rica supported the war against Iraq ...

.... yes, my country appeared like one of the "American allies" to the war against Iraq, something that fills to us of shame, but I believe that this attack if it must of be supported! well done!

Mike and Lillie
United States 18/12/2008

Mr. al-Zaidi

We wish to ask for amnesty for Mr. al-Zaidi. To 80 percent of Americans, Mr. al-Zaidi's anger and frustration that led to his act is completely understandable and should be forgiven. We are equally angry and frustrated at all the damage that has been done to our country and to Iraq by Mr. Bush and cannot wait to see him out of office. We look forward to our new President-elect who we believe will be able to initiate a cooperative and respectful relationship with Iraq.

BillyLee
Afghanistan 20/12/2008

shoe thrower

this man should run for the president of Afghanistan. He is a hero in this country for sure. Mr Bush should have Mr Zaidi's shoe apprpriately placed where it belongs

Tim
Japan 21/12/2008

Shoe throwing

Come on, people! There are still those who think this whole endeavour was about freeing the oppressed by a country that financed and armed the oppressor! Bull! Had that journalist been on target, millions would be cheering even louder! I am sick of American arrogance. End this occupation now, Obama. I know you have yet to take office, but use your influence as soon as you can and end this monster's folly!

Jim
United Arab Emirates 18/12/2008

Throwing shoes

Come on people .... this is just a display of a barbaric act. Personally, I don't care for Bush, but the shoe throwing just doesn't wash in the western world. Most people will look at this as a cowardly display of an uncivilized person. I hope they throw the coward in jail!

S.Sandoval
United States 18/12/2008

Bush Shoe Thrower

I am proud to be American .... that being said I am NOT proud of the IDIOT and his cabinet that has "Lead" this country for the past 8 years, our country is in turmoil in almost every aspect. I only wish this brave man would have hit Bush in his Arrogant Head. As for being tortured ... I totally believe it. It would have a scene if Bush was forced to come back with a black eye or a big knot on his head! Too Hilarious .... Respect for a president should be automatic though I have none for G.W.Bush

David
Iraq 21/12/2008

The real reason why

Talking to the Iraqis in the Green Zone they said he was tortured, but not because he threw a show at George Bush. He disrespected a guest to Iraq which they told me was a cultural thing (similar to the shoe throwing). Iraqis will be Iraqis and the U.S. can not force them to be westerners. Again for all of you who believe the U.S. forces are going around killing civilians read the counter insurgency manual free online. It is our main mission to protect Iraqi citizens with our lives.

First Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron / Happy New Year 2009! / the Shape of Time!

Click, it gets bigger

Ach! Why didn't I study piano, like my brother? Why didn't I study art, like you?

Talentless, undisciplined, ignorant and lazy are No Way to go through Life!

But anyway, Happy New Year from Vleeptron and our neighboring planets Hoon, Yobbo, Mollyringwald, and the recently discovered planet Bjorkgudmundsdottir. The real name of the planet is in Icelandic and has all kinds of diacriticals and Funny Letters, but if an e-mail miracle happens, it really looks like this:

Björkguðmundsdóttir

This is a jazz-up of a design I zipped out last New Year, my typical snatch-and-grab 20-minute collage of web images. But another Real Artist Pal of mine liked it, so I looked at the basic elements a second time and wondered if I could recycle it and make it look less Trailer-Parky.

Time, it turns out, has a Shape, you can draw it and see it and even use cardboard and scissors and tape to make a Solid Thing out of it, and put it on your nick-nack shelf. The shape is a tip-to-tip pair of inverted ice-cream cones.

The blue plane is called the Hypersurface of the Present. We're stuck on it inescapably. It moves straight up and takes us with it.

The point where the cones meet is Now or Right Now or This Instant. We have all of us floated to it up the Past Cone, and having touched this Point, then float above it into the Future Cone.

Everything outside these Cones -- well, actually, it doesn't exist, Nothing is there, or if Something is there, we don't yet have the brains to perceive it or describe it. All perceivable existence -- including our fuzzy memories and our hazy skills at prophesy -- lies within the two cones. (The angle is a nice perfect simple 45 degrees.)

Last year I was trying to find images to say Happy New Year, but I hate inevitable obligatory cliches; I went looking for a way to say

Past --> Now --> Future

that wasn't one of those cliches. Well, this is Not A Cliche, that is all I can claim for it.

Except for the Light Cone itself, every image is filched. The perforation dingbats are the work of the art student Adina Weinand at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, where I think she majors in Print Paper Book [production and design?]. The dingbats (there are three more motif blocks) were an assignment to illustrate: Balance, Texture or Pattern, Rhythm, Tension.

My Artist Pal (& equally ancient army buddy) was wholly innocent of Mail Art, but I kept sending him my crappy stamps, and Donald Evans images (he was already a big Saul Steinberg fan), and now the poor man is bigtime Contaminated with Mail Art, he is just grinding out them faux stamps like there was no tomorrow.

Wishing you a wonderful year ahead in the Future Cone, and for all of us everywhere Peace.

Bob

P.S. did you recognize the crazy Ape Stamp as Beardsley's illustration of Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue"? I'd really like to see all his illustrations for Poe.

"Barack the Magic Negro" -- right-wingers sing it as a funny joke, as Americans shrink and recoil from the Republican Party

Yeah yeah click image

Okay, what is going on here?

Following the huge election victory of Barack Obama and a parallel wave of Democratic House and Senate victories, the US Republican Party -- Bush's party -- is in very sick shape. They have no power or influence, they have no money, this is the season when most Americans view the Republican Party as an aberrant, loopy, foot-shooting bunch of marginalized whacko fringe losers.

As smoothly as Obama went from little-known junior US senator from Illinois to defeat Hillary Clinton and become US President-elect, the Republicans ran Campaign 2008 in a toxic, fœtid swamp of mistakes, invocations of Holy Republican All-White Jesus, loopy choices like Sarah Palin, a lousy, wholly out-of-touch presidential candidate, and an incompetent, desperate staff.

Well, somebody's got to lead the Republican National Committee in its moment of pain and powerlessness, and one fellow who has stepped up to seek the job is Mike Huckabee's clever and effective campaign manager, Chip Saltsman.

Saltsman is beginning his campaign for GOP chairman by diving into the first pile of hot steaming controversial dung he could find, all by himself, with no one to blame for his Mother Of All Fool Public Stunts.

Let's face it: In the 20th Century, Republicans have become the Party Of and For White People. African-Americans think of the modern Republican Party (Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president) as a party uncomfortable with and hostile to the concerns of African-Americans. Hispanics also voted overwhelmingly Democrat in November.

Numerically, if the Republicans stay All White, and cannot effectively reach out to blacks and Hispanics and lure big chunks of them into the Republican Party, the Republican Party will proudly, conservatively shrink, wither away, and die, the Republican Party will become a Fringe Party with no further influence on American politics.

So Chip Saltsman begins his bid to run the Republican National Committee for the next four years with this stunt. This guy has the political instincts of Sarah Palin, and sees the Big Picture about as clearly as Stevie Wonder.

He joins a long string of national-level Republicans who keep screwing the pooch by opening their big mouths, when they don't have to, about black and racial issues -- and offending the crap out of more and more white voters who just don't want to be anywhere near this current crop of Republicans.

When you have to scamper around the cable screaming "I'm not a racist! Some of my best friends are Negroes! I was just making a joke!" -- well, it's time to vanish and stop embarrassing all the Republicans who have hopes of ever becoming popular and powerful again.

==================

Agence France-Presse (AFP)
newswire France
Tuesday 30 December 2008

'Magic Negro' song
embarrasses
struggling Republicans

NEW YORK (AFP) — A senior Republican's distribution of a song titled "Barack the Magic Negro" has triggered a nasty battle for the soul of the struggling party.

Furious debates filled political blogs Tuesday, deepening Republican splits as the party tries to chart a course out of the political wilderness.

Chip Saltsman, campaigning to become chairman of the Republican National Committee, says he sent CDs of the song about president-elect Barack Obama, the first African American to win the White House, as a joke.

Opponents say that the joke proves the Republican party is badly out of touch.

The song "is a racist, hateful, sophomoric act," one blogger posted on the Politico.com site. "I can't wait until all you ethnic puritan-maniacs are retired, voted out, or six feet under."

Even some prominent Republicans are expressing disquiet.

An online commentator for the National Review magazine, a pillar of US conservatism, attacked Saltsman, saying: "The use of the term 'Negro' in the song rubs me the wrong way."

Newt Gingrich, a former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, told the New York Times that the song was "inappropriate" and said the flap should disqualify Saltsman from consideration as party head.

The song spoofs veteran black activist Al Sharpton supposedly complaining that Obama is not a proper African American. It has been viewed more than 279,000 times on YouTube.

Set to the theme tune of children's film "Puff the Magic Dragon," the song opens with: "Barack the Magic Negro lives in DC."

The song goes:

"The LA Times, they called him that
'cause he's not authentic like me.
Yeah, the guy from the LA paper
said he makes guilty whites feel good.
They'll vote for him, and not for me
'cause he's not from the hood."

Republicans are struggling to recover from their crushing defeat by the Democrats in the November presidential and congressional races -- in part because of low support from ethnic minorities.

The wording of the song, particularly the now rare use of the word "negro," touched on the ultra-sensitive topic of race, an area where Republicans have often been painted as being behind the times.

Adding to the embarrassment, it has emerged that another candidate for the Republican National Committee chairmanship, Katon Dawson, recently resigned from a country club that allows only white members.

Saltsman was quoted by The Hill newspaper as saying he meant to be "light-hearted."

The satirist who wrote the song, Paul Shanklin, accused critics of being "extremely politically correct," McClatchy Newspapers reported Tuesday.

Politico quoted another senior Republican on Tuesday as saying that the whole thing was overblown.

"When I found out what this was about I had to ask, 'boy, what's the big deal here?' because there wasn't any," Mark Ellis, Republican chairman in Maine, said.

Right wing radio king Rush Limbaugh points out that the theme of the song -- that whites see Obama as an unthreatening black and therefore electable -- refers to a column by a black journalist in the liberal-leaning LA Times.

The March 2007 article by David Ehrenstein was titled "Obama the 'Magic Negro.'"

"It's the left that's the racists. It's the left that looks at people's skin color and doesn't see it for what it should be or what it is. They notice it. They're the ones that are racists out there," Limbaugh fumes in the transcript of a radio show prominently posted on his website.

Matt Lewis, a blogger on news.aol.com/political-machine, said Tuesday that racist or not, Saltsman had sinned politically.

"Republicans who care about public relations also might want to think twice about electing someone who is either (1) out of touch with general societal mores, (2) lacks the ability to self-censor or self-edit, (3) simply doesn't care what people think."

- 30 -

=============

Here are the lyrics to "Barack the Magic Negro," a song (to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon") written and sung on Rush Limbaugh's conservative radio show by political satirist Paul Shanklin, impersonating the voice of the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times, they called him that
‘Cause he’s not authentic like me.

Yeah, the guy from the L.A. paper
Said he makes guilty whites feel good
They’ll vote for him, and not for me
‘Cause he’s not from the hood.

See, real black men, like Snoop Dog,
Or me, or Farrakhan
Have talked the talk, and walked the walk.
Not come in late and won!

[refrain]

Oh, Barack the Magic Negro, lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times, they called him that
‘Cause he’s black, but not authentically.
Oh, Barack the Magic Negro, lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times, they called him that
‘Cause he’s black, but not authentically.

Some say Barack’s “articulate”
And bright and new and “clean.”
The media sure loves this guy,
A white interloper’s dream!

But, when you vote for president,
Watch out, and don’t be fooled!
Don’t vote the Magic Negro in –
‘Cause — ’cause I won’t have nothing after all these years of sacrifice

And I won’t get justice. This is about justice. This isn’t about me, it’s about justice.

It’s about buffet. I don’t have no buffet and there won’t be any church contributions,

And there’ll be no cash in the collection plate.

There ain’t gonna be no cash money, no walkin’ around money, no phoning money.

Now, Barack going to come in here and –

================

The Los Angeles Times
dead tree AM daily broadsheet
Los Angeles, California USA
Monday 19 March 2007

Obama the 'Magic Negro'

......The Illinois senator lends himself
......to white America's idealized,
......less-than-real black man.

by David Ehrenstein

L.A.-based DAVID EHRENSTEIN writes about Hollywood and politics.

AS EVERY CARBON-BASED life form on this planet surely knows, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is running for president. Since making his announcement, there has been no end of commentary about him in all quarters — musing over his charisma and the prospect he offers of being the first African American to be elected to the White House.

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

Poitier really poured on the "magic" in "Lilies of the Field" (for which he won a best actor Oscar) and "To Sir, With Love" (which, along with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," made him a No. 1 box-office attraction). In these films, Poitier triumphs through yeoman service to his white benefactors. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is particularly striking in this regard, as it posits miscegenation without evoking sex. (Talk about magic!)

The same can't quite be said of Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy," "Seven" and the seemingly endless series of films in which he plays ersatz paterfamilias to a white woman bedeviled by a serial killer. But at least he survives, unlike Crothers in "The Shining," in which psychic premonitions inspire him to rescue a white family he barely knows and get killed for his trouble. This heart-tug trope is parodied in Gus Van Sant's "Elephant." The film's sole black student at a Columbine-like high school arrives in the midst of a slaughter, helps a girl escape and is immediately gunned down. See what helping the white man gets you?

And what does the white man get out of the bargain? That's a question asked by John Guare in "Six Degrees of Separation," his brilliant retelling of the true saga of David Hampton — a young, personable gay con man who in the 1980s passed himself off as the son of none other than the real Sidney Poitier. Though he started small, using the ruse to get into Studio 54, Hampton discovered that countless gullible, well-heeled New Yorkers, vulnerable to the Magic Negro myth, were only too eager to believe in his baroque fantasy. (One of the few who wasn't fooled was Andy Warhol, who was astonished his underlings believed Hampton's whoppers. Clearly Warhol had no need for the accouterment of interracial "goodwill.")

But the same can't be said of most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in: as Poitier's "real" fake son.

The senator's famously stem-winding stump speeches have been drawing huge crowds to hear him talk of uniting rather than dividing. A praiseworthy goal. Consequently, even the mild criticisms thrown his way have been waved away, "magically." He used to smoke, but now he doesn't; he racked up a bunch of delinquent parking tickets, but he paid them all back with an apology. And hey, is looking good in a bathing suit a bad thing?

The only mud that momentarily stuck was criticism (white and black alike) concerning Obama's alleged "inauthenticty," as compared to such sterling examples of "genuine" blackness as Al Sharpton and Snoop Dogg. Speaking as an African American whose last name has led to his racial "credentials" being challenged — often several times a day — I know how pesky this sort of thing can be.

Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

- 30 -

============

Puff (The Magic Dragon)
(Lipton/Yarrow)

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee

Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Oh!

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail,
Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name. Oh!

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave,
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave. Oh!

"Waltz with Bashir" -- a strange film uses anime to tell Israeli soldiers' memories of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres

The New York Times
Friday 26 December 2008

Inside a Veteran's Nightmare

Movie Review
Waltz with Bashir
Ari Folman and David Polonsky / Sony Pictures Classics

by A. O. Scott

“Waltz With Bashir” is a memoir, a history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film.

Directed by Ari Folman, an Israeli filmmaker whose struggle to make sense of his experience as a soldier in the Lebanon war of 1982 shapes its story, “Waltz” is by no means the world’s only animated documentary, a phrase that sounds at first like a cinematic oxymoron. Movies like Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” and Brett Morgen’s “Chicago 10” have used animation to make reality seem more vivid and more strange, producing odd and fascinating experiments.

But Mr. Folman has gone further, creating something that is not only unique but also exemplary, a work of astonishing aesthetic integrity and searing moral power.

That it is also a cartoon is not incidental to this achievement. Art Spiegelman, in “Maus,” turned an unlikely medium — the talking-animal comic book — into a profound and original vehicle for contemplation of the Holocaust. Similarly Mr. Folman, crucially assisted by his art director, David Polonsky, and director of animation, Yoni Goodman, has adapted techniques often (if unfairly) dismissed as trivial into an intense and revealing meditation on a historical catastrophe and its aftermath. “Waltz With Bashir” will certainly enrich and complicate your understanding of its specific subject — the Lebanon War and, in particular, the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Phalangist fighters at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps — but it may also change the way you think about how movies can confront history.

Why did Mr. Folman, who has worked on more conventional documentaries in the past, decide to use animation in this one? The answer to the question is another question: How else could he have recorded dreams, hallucinations and distorted memories, his own and those of other veterans? The core of “Waltz With Bashir” is a series of conversations between the director, depicted with graying hair and a thoughtful demeanor, and other middle-aged Israeli men who were in Lebanon in the summer of 1982, when the Israeli Defense Forces pushed up through the southern part of the country toward Beirut. Most of them were in the western part of that city from the 16th to the 18th of September, when Christian militiamen slaughtered as many as 3,000 civilians, ostensibly to avenge the death of Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon’s newly elected president, who had been assassinated a few days before.

More than 20 years later Mr. Folman confronts his interlocutors amid the trappings of their relatively calm daily lives. (All the interview subjects speak in their own voices except for two, whose dialogue has been dubbed.) One lives in the Netherlands, where he owns a chain of falafel restaurants. Another appears in a martial arts studio. Others reminisce in their apartments or in bars, and as each tells his story, the scene dissolves and we see a younger version of the same man — usually leaner, perhaps cleaner-shaven or not as bald but still recognizable — in the nightmarish landscape of war. The freedom afforded by animation — a realm where the prosaic standards of verisimilitude and the inconvenient laws of physics can be flouted at will — allows Mr. Folman to blend grimly literal images with surreal flights of fantasy, humor and horror.

At one point a soldier, passed out on the deck of a transport boat, dreams of a giant naked woman who climbs out of the water and cradles him in her arms. At other times rough, cynical pop songs (with lyrics like “Good Morning Lebanon” and “Today I Bombed Beirut”) play out over montages of chaos and destruction. Mr. Folman is haunted by a weird recollection of naked soldiers walking onto the beach in Beirut as the city’s bombed-out skyline is illuminated by flares.

These are highly personal images, culled from admittedly unreliable memories, but it is precisely their subjectivity that makes them so vivid and authentic. “Waltz With Bashir” is not, and could not be, the definitive account of the Lebanon war or the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Instead it’s a collage and an inquiry. “Can’t a film be therapeutic?” one of Mr. Folman’s friends asks him early in the movie, and in a way everything that follows is an attempt to answer that question and interrogate its premise. It depends on what is meant by therapy, and on who is undergoing it.

The complicity of the Israeli command in the atrocities at Sabra and Shatila was established by an Israeli government report by the Kahan Commission in 1983, which found the military indirectly responsible for the actions of the Phalangists.

What no commission of inquiry can precisely define is the responsibility of the ordinary soldiers who were nearby, witnessing the slaughter and allowing it to continue. And this ethical question becomes more and more urgent as Mr. Folman’s patient probing brings him closer to the awful facts his mind had suppressed for so long.

Since it was shown in Cannes last year, “Waltz With Bashir” has attracted a lot of attention and a measure of controversy, some of it surrounding the very last moments of the film, in which the animation stops and the audience is confronted with graphic, horrifying images of real dead bodies. This ending shows just how far Mr. Folman is prepared to go, not in the service of shock for its own sake, but rather in his pursuit of clarity and truth.

The Israelis who were witnesses and (mostly inadvertent) accomplices to the killing, and who came home from the war to lives of relative normalcy and tranquillity, have the time and the means to reflect, to explore, to engage in therapy. The victims are beyond any of that, and the blunt literalness of this film’s denouement is a reminder of that unbridgeable gap between the living and the dead. It is also Mr. Folman’s way of acknowledging that imagination has its limits, and that even the most ambitious and serious work of art will come up short against the brutal facts of life.

“Waltz With Bashir” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has graphic violence, sex and brief nudity.

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Ari Folman; animation by Bridgit Folman; art director and illustrator, David Polonsky; director of animation, Yoni Goodman; edited by Nili Feller; music by Max Richter; produced by Mr. Folman, Yael Nahlieli, Ms. Folman, Serge Lalou, Gerhard Meixner and Roman Paul; released by Sony Pictures Classics. In Hebrew, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes.

- 30 -

Key Attributes of TKDL / The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

What we got here is a page from the

a collaborative effort begun by the government of India. The Indian government was concerned that the integrity of this traditional knowledge was under attack by commercial interests, and wished to use the copyright law to protect this information and defend it from corruption.

The knowledge and wisdom of the past has legal rights!

Specifically, this describes a section from the AYURVEDA , a collection of scientific knowledge from India circa 1500 AD. I don't even know if the original was in Sanskrit or more modern languages. Note that they're storing this in English.

More than that, You Tell Me what is going on here. Be the first to Leave A Comment. Make Vleeptron Wise. Can we have a meaningful, mutually comprehensible dialogue with the intellectual elite of India from 500 years ago? What are they trying to tell us? Are we smart enough to get it? What are the implications of this ancient knowledge for us? Is Big Pharma already translating and distributing this stuff in syringes, suppositories and pill bottles worldwide?

Leave A Comment. It would be nice to hear from someone in Mumbai, as a reflection that the smartest resources in this great city were back on-line and ready for some hot, steamy delicious Vleeptron Pizza. Bangalore also very much welcome, Bangaloreans are very Go-Ahead guys, Pakistanis, also the Ramanujan Institute. Is anybody on this line from Tamil Nadu? Sri Lanka? The Maldives? Gujurat? Make Vleeptron wise. We're in Northampton Massachusetts USA, we got two pretty good Indian restaurants, that's it, that's what we know.

====================

Key Attributes of TKDL

AT/154

Title of Traditional Knowledge Resource	Knowledge Known Since
Laghumadh¦kapu¾p¢diph¢´°aª	500 Years

TKRC CODE :

A01A-1/1207, A01A-1/1592, A01A-1/1686, A01A-1/2080, A01A-1/2113, A01A-1/558, A01A-1/921, A01A-3/30, A01A-3/33, A01D-20/11, A01D-20/42, A01D-22/05, A01D-22/10

IPC Code :

A61K 36/185,A61K 36/48,A61K 36/899,A61K 36/899,A61K 36/87,A61K 36/23,A61K 36/85,A61K 9/08,A61K 9/14, A61K 31/70,A61P 1/04, A61P 29/00, A61P 25/00, A61P 25/02,A61P 43/00, A61P 3/12,A61P 25/00, A61P 21/00,A61P 25/00, A61P 25/26

DETAILS OF PROCESS / FORMULATION :

1. Laghumadh¦kapu¾p¢diph¢´°aª is a therapeutic single / compound formulation consisting of useful parts of following ingredient(s) : Madhuca longifolia (Koen.) Macbr. Syn.: M. indica J.F. Gmel. (Mahua,Mowra, Illipe,Butter tree), Gmelina arborea Roxb. (gumhar), Pterocarpus santalinus Linn. f. (red sandal wood), Coriandrum sativum Linn. (Chinese parsley, Chinese-parsley, coriander), Vetiveria zizanioides (Linn.) Nash (vetivergrass, Cuscus, Vetiver ), Vitis vinifera Linn. (wine grape ) 2. Therapeutic composition / formulation is mentioned below :

1	Madhuca longifolia (Koen.) Macbr. Syn.: M. indica J.F. Gmel. (Mahua,Mowra, Illipe,Butter tree)	Flower			1	Part
2	Gmelina arborea Roxb. (gumhar)	Root			1	Part
3	Pterocarpus santalinus Linn. f. (red sandal wood)	Stem bark			1	Part
4	Coriandrum sativum Linn. (Chinese parsley, Chinese-parsley, coriander)	Seed			1	Part
5	Vetiveria zizanioides (Linn.) Nash (vetivergrass, Cuscus, Vetiver )	Root			1	Part
6	Vitis vinifera Linn. (wine grape )	Fruit			1	Part

3. Therapeutic composition mentioned above is prepared as PH¡³¯A :(HOT INFUSION) Ph¢´°a is a preparation in which powdered plant material is soaked in boiling water for some time, and then filtered to obtain Ph¢´°a (hot infusion). 4. A composition as described above is formulated as Hot infusion . 5. The dose of above mentioned therapeutic composition is 100 ml . 6. It is given with adjuvant of Saccharum officinarum Linn. , Granular sugar . 7. Mode of administration : Oral administration . 8. It is Pittadosa alleviating . 9. It is useful in the treatment of Polydipsia / Excessive thirst , Burning sensation , Syncope/Fainting , Giddiness/Vertigo

LIST OF DOCUMENTS WITH DATE OF PUBLICATION (PRIOR ART) :
¹¢r¬gadhar¢c¢rya	¹¢r¬gadhara Sa¼hit¢ - Translated by Smt. Shailaja Srivastava : Chaukhamba Orientalia, Varanasi, Edn. 2nd, 1998. [Time of origin 13th century ]