a Turkish diplomat's kid, blacks, whites, young, old, Rock n Roll, Soul, Rhythm & Blues, Stones, Led Zep, Cream ...

Ahmet Ertegun, a Turkish diplomat’s son whose Atlantic label was a major force in American music. (Jim Cooper / the Associated Press)

We've all been educated for decades now. Turn on CNN, turn on Fox, turn on CBS, NBC, ABC: Whites, blacks, Turks, Muslims, Christians, Jews, young, old, they all hate each other and all they want to do is to try to kill and exterminate each other.

Understanding? Cooperation? Respect? Forget it. Get real.

That's the way the USA is, that's the way the Earth is. There's no hope. Give it up. Buy a machine gun. Steal some high explosives. Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out.

I've got about 300 vinyl LP albums and a gazillion CDs. When I see the Atlantic label, I smile before I even know what the album is. I already know it's going to be beautiful, it's going to thrill my soul and make me happy.

And this ain't a bad way to go: At 83, backstage at a Rolling Stones concert.

~ ~ ~

The New York Times
Saturday 16 December 2006

A Mogul Who Helped
Mold Pop Culture

by JON PARELES

The sheer improbability of Ahmet Ertegun’s career makes it an all-American success story: the tale of an outsider, from Turkey no less, who loved African-American music so much that he became a major force in pop history. Points of friction in American culture -- class, ethnicity, race, religion -- mostly provided him with sparks.

Mr. Ertegun, who died on Thursday at 83, was an old-school music mogul, a self-invented character with the urge to start a record company. He was, by all accounts, a charmer: a man of wealth and taste who had stories to tell, a shrewd business sense and a keen appreciation of all sorts of pleasure. He wasn’t a musician, but he had an ear for a hit, one that served him for half a century.

When Mr. Ertegun and a partner floated Atlantic Records in 1947 with a $10,000 loan from a dentist, it was one among many small independent labels trying to serve the taste of postwar America. But as the others had their handfuls of hit singles and disappeared, Atlantic kept growing. With Mr. Ertegun as chairman, the job he held until his death, it was a major label by the 1960s, the home of multimillion-sellers like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones in the 1970s and the core of the Warner Music conglomerate that continues to survive in the currently embattled recording business.

David Geffen, the entertainment mogul, said yesterday that he had once asked Mr. Ertegun how to make money in the music business. Mr. Ertegun said he would demonstrate, got up from his chair, hunched over and shuffled slowly across the room. Mr. Geffen didn’t understand, so Mr. Ertegun did it twice more. Finally he explained: "‘If you’re lucky, you bump into a genius, and a genius will make you rich in the music business,’" Mr. Geffen recalled. "Ahmet bumped into an awful lot of geniuses."

He looked for those geniuses in places where no one would expect to find the European-educated son of a Turkish diplomat. Living in a segregated Washington, Mr. Ertegun was drawn to jazz and to rhythm and blues, and he began a lifetime habit of going to dives to hear the real thing. Mr. Ertegun moved easily between high society and the kind of ghetto basement club where he first heard Ruth Brown, whose hits through the 1950s were the label’s bulwark. He sought out singers who had something startling, something untamed, in their voices: singers like Ms. Brown, Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, the Coasters, Solomon Burke and Aretha Franklin.

He cherished the down-home passion he heard. But his outsider’s ear may have helped him produce music that could aim for an audience beyond what the record business was calling "race music." Even on low-budget recordings -- for years, Atlantic’s Midtown Manhattan business office by day was its recording studio by night -- he and his control-room collaborators sought a sonic clarity and definition that made Atlantic’s singles stand out on the radio. Unlike his 1950s contemporaries at Chess Records (home of Chuck Berry) and Sun Records (where Elvis Presley made his debut), Mr. Ertegun didn’t gear Atlantic’s songs particularly toward teenagers. Although Ruth Brown sounded girlish in a song like "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean," many of Atlantic’s 1950s rhythm and blues songs were simply steeped in the blues.

Part of what Mr. Ertegun also heard in his cherished singers was the sound of the gospel church. Mr. Charles merged the beat and the call-and-response of sanctified church music with considerably more secular implications in songs like "What’d I Say." Mr. Ertegun, who was born a Muslim, worked with church-rooted African-American musicians and Jewish producers, notably Jerry Wexler, on many Atlantic hits; that interfaith coalition helped forge soul music. Before her stint at Atlantic, Ms. Franklin had made albums for Columbia Records, but she had sung ballads and jazz standards. When she recorded for Atlantic, her sound moved back toward the church and she became the Queen of Soul.

After the 1950s, Mr. Ertegun was more a deal maker than a control-room producer. But his ear stayed reliable. Atlantic picked up the Southern soul of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, and when British rockers began recycling American blues and rhythm and blues, he latched on to bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin. Atlantic’s R&B pedigree helped bring the Rolling Stones to the label for their commercial heyday in the 1970s, leading to decades of society-column photos of Mick Jagger with Mr. Ertegun. (Mr. Ertegun died after being injured in a fall backstage before a Rolling Stones concert on Oct. 29.) But Mr. Ertegun didn’t abandon his business judgment. When the Stones received a lucrative offer from Virgin Records for their next contract, Mr. Ertegun let them go.

Like other labels of the ’40s and ’50s, Atlantic made contracts with its early artists that now seem exploitative. On the eve of the label’s 40th anniversary, Ruth Brown made loud public complaints about her lack of royalties, and Atlantic agreed to waive unrecouped debts for Ms. Brown and other musicians on its early roster, and to pay 20 years of back royalties. The label also contributed nearly $2 million to start the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which pressured other labels toward royalty reform and gave money to needy musicians.

Mr. Ertegun was also a prime mover in starting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, another nod to history. In 2005 he told the online magazine Slate that he wanted his legacy to be that "I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music."

Through the decades, Mr. Ertegun never stopped visiting his beloved dives, from R&B lounges to punk clubs. He always stood out, dressed in his bespoke suits and expensive shoes; he never lost his Turkish accent. But he was an outsider who had become something more than an insider, an American phenomenon who proved the best way to cross boundaries was with the promise of a good time.

- 30 -

Baker-Hamilton report vs. The Great Noble Patriotic War in Iraq

I don't know if this is ever going to appear in The Sioux City Journal. So read it on Vleeptron. Then read the sick-o right-wing crap that inspired it.

* * *

Letter to the Editor
Sioux City Journal
Sioux City, South Dakota USA

To the Editor:

In "Should Bush listen to the Iraq Study Group?" (14 December) Michael McNeil has hosed up some predictable neo-con attacks on the Baker-Hamilton Iraq commission report, and paints a picture of a bad plan for America contaminated with politics lacking in principles and values.

In short, as the Baker-Hamilton commission has offered ways to rescue our American soldiers and Marines from being useless targets in the worsening religious/ethnic civil war in Iraq, McNeil is touting and recycling the advice of the very ideological lunatics who gave us The Mother Of All Bad Plans and the most politically contaminated of all advice to America.

McNeil is recommending Americans listen to the same flag-waving drunk drivers who started this pre-lost war.

A hint of McNeil's prejudices can be seen in his description of Rush Limbaugh as "mainstream radio host." You have to be politically to the right of Joe McCarthy to call Limbaugh "mainstream."

The War in Iraq has now lasted longer than it took America to achieve unconditional victory against Germany, Italy and Japan in World War Two. About 3000 of our neighbors' sons and daughters have come home in flag-draped coffins. You can see what Bush and these neo-cons have done at

www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin_photos/dover/

The Baker-Hamilton commission has no magic, simple solution, but McNeil never compares the commission's recommendations with The Elephant in the Bathtub: Bush's disaster of starting the Iraq War in the first place. If you notice the elephant and make the comparison, Baker-Hamilton looks refreshingly wise and sane.

A plan to get America out of Iraq and safeguard our neighbors' children has to be more deserving of our consideration and more precious to America than another blundering decade of this war, with no positive accomplishments for America, and thousands more military coffins.

McNeil waves his flag and screams: Stay the course!

He can cheerlead for more of this doomed war with perfect safety. This war, there's no draft.

McNeil quotes neocon Jonah Goldberg: "Nowhere does the commission ever seriously consider how to win the war in Iraq. Why?"

Because there is no military way to win the war in Iraq. We've sent the world's mightiest military to the barn and ordered it to milk cows; we've handed the world's mightiest military a pile of straw and ordered our troops to spin gold.

That most Americans have no direct memories of the Vietnam War is no excuse for the lunatic advice McNeil wants us to follow in Iraq. Whoever's advice our political elite follow, our cornerstone must be the wise use and the safeguarding of our soldiers and Marines.

Endlessly letting them die, be maimed, return with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, with no achievements possible, is not a plan, and it certainly does not reflect "values" or "principles." It's a continuing criminal conspiracy.

Bob Merkin
Northampton Massachusetts
US Army 1969-1971

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

Sioux City Journal
Sioux City, South Dakota USA
Thursday 14 December 2006

Should Bush listen
to the Iraq Study Group

by Michael McNeil

In a textbook example of how the mainstream media like to couch a news development with subtle bias, the Iraq Study Group has been trumpeted across the land. The press is yammering about the importance of the president swallowing the report whole and adopting all of its recommendations. Sources that are supportive of this view are typically referred to as "non-partisan" or at least referenced in a way that disguises any liberal leanings or agenda (such as when the liberal Brookings Institute is simply referred to as a "policy think tank"). In the spirit of equal time, I have assembled my own study group for the president’s consideration.

The Iraq Study Group was created to critique our Iraq policy. My fictitious panel was formed to critique their report. Let’s call it the ISG Study Group (the Iraq Study Group Study Group). Cut me some slack. It’s the best I could come up with on two hours' sleep.

Writing for National Review, moderate columnist and author Jonah Goldberg weighed in on Dec. 8 concerning the report. His objective analysis follows: "In short, Baker did not seek to find a solution for Iraq at all. His mission was to stuff a grab bag with enough mundane blather that nine graybeards plus Sandra Day O’Connor could assent without really risking anything. Indeed, former Justice O’Connor was a perfect choice given her preternatural gift for reaching decisions with no discernible principle to them other than the need to please everybody a little. Yogi Berra once said, 'If you come to a fork in the road, take it.' That, it seems, was the commission’s approach." His column later succinctly remarked, "Nowhere does the commission ever seriously consider how to win the war in Iraq. Why? Because winning is no longer a possible consensus position. And pulling out isn’t a consensus position either. So rather than a real strategy about Iraq, we get Laodicean tripe about how the Iraq Study Group is our last best hope to unite Americans. I’m sorry, but that wasn’t its mandate."

Mr. Goldberg isn’t the only policy analyst who takes issue with the group's findings. Writing for the non-partisan policy think tank World Net Daily (on Friday), highly respected commentator Joseph Farah sees the two major findings as: engaging Iran and Syria in resolving the Iraq conflict and fast-tracking the creation of a Palestinian state by carving up Israel. He finds fault with this: "One shouldn't have to point out at this late date that Syria and Iran represent the principal problem in the region, not the solution. But, for moral relativists like Baker and others with less impure motives who just don't understand the Middle East, I guess it is necessary to restate the obvious."

Mainstream radio host Rush Limbaugh contributed to the ISG Study Group’s critique by quoting Margaret Thatcher during his Dec. 7 program on the subject of "consensus" which has been the operative buzz word to describe the report: "To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects."

Well said. That quote will serve as the ISG Study Group’s summary of last week’s policy report. As noted earlier, the panel includes myself and three other moderate voices who are non-partisan and have only the best interests of the nation at heart.

Michael McNeil is a free-lance writer from Dakota City, Neb. You can write to him in care of The Journal or at lvrcomments@hotmail.com.

easy PizzaQ <-- CORRECTED / also no guesses yet about the Zero-Friktion Thrill Ride on Hoon

George Fox (1624 - 1691), English religious leader and mystic visionary regarded as the founder of the Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. It's his fault Vleeptron needs your help to solve this new PizzaQ.

Okay, nobody has made a guess or come up with the Correct Answer about the track for the new ride at Lenny and Spike's Zero-Friktion (and Zero-Insurance) Thrill Park on Hoon.

I was sure that offering schnapps miniatures instead of pizza slices would attract a New Generation of Guessers, the Generation that buys or shoplifts or downloads its music in an intangible, virtual form. (The DeeJays at WOZQ say it's now common for them to broadcast and webcast .mp3s from their laptops and iPods. But they still have nifty turntables to play the library's old vinyl -- Music You Can See and Touch.)

But nobody, Young or Old, is guessing or answering this schnappsQ about the Thrill Ride.

Is it Hint Time? Okay, hmmmm ... well, there's a CH Connection and a UK connection and a DE connection to this question.

And a wonderful arcane obscure very long fancy word that's in your dictionary, but has been in a Word Coma for a very long time.

That's it, no more hints for now. But please hurry up, Lenny and Spike and their new pal AaaaaaaaahnDrayUh the Smith College EngineerGrrl want to know how to make their new thrill ride the fastest and most dangerous ride in the Zero-Friktion Youth Thrill Park on Hoon.

Anyway, Here's a new PizzaQ, it ain't hard, you don't have to take a university course in Abstract Algebra to get it, you don't even have to use the computer. Pencil and paper and wet human brain, that should do it. (The actor Ed Begley Jr. can compute the date of Easter Sunday for any given year in his head, but that's just sort of strange.)

This one's an Authentic True Real World Problem.

For the first time in decades, Bob has had to weasel out of a Volunteer Gig which will fall on Christmas Day. My Team Leader has been very gracious and understanding, and has totally refrained from Guilt-Tripping me (I'm very easy to Guilt-Trip), but I still feel like worthless slime trash.

CORRECTED PIZZAQ:

Our Homeless Shelter Team, the Cookin' Quakers, cooks and serves dinner the 4th Monday of every month.

For the rest of the 21st Century, how often will we cook and serve on Christmas Day?

4 Slices of Green (spinach) and Red (tomato sauce) Pizza, delivered down the Correct Answerer's chimney in the middle of the night.

You can do this. I did this in 10 minutes. You can do this.

penguins move thru transparent tubes between metal spheres

The Bunyip is a supercomputer at the Australian National University at Canberra.

If the penguins have stopped moving, click your browser's RELOAD button.

schnappsQ: Lenny + Spike's Zero-Friktion Thrill Park on Planet Hoon

click, maybe it gets clearer

Okay, you know I don't like to talk much about Planet Hoon. It has some absolutely spectacular and really cheap ethnic food (I love the vèëéèèëéèèëéè) and some of the nastiest goddam music clubs in the whole Dwingeloo-2 Galaxy.

But the fact is, Hoon makes me sort of uncomfortable, and I don't like to visit it very often. (Unless there's a really great music act there which is banned from playing on Vleeptron because of the Youth Music High Standards & Morals Act).

Hoon sort of doesn't have very many Laws or Rules. It's a Wild and Free sort of planet, like the USA used to be, and like Tallin is.

So it's hardly surprising that my backpacking Youth Acquaintances from Earth, Lenny and Spike, ended up on Hoon.

I just got an e-mail from the boys. Somehow they hooked up with AaaaaaahnDrayUh, one of the student deejays at WOZQ-FM who is on an extended sabbatical from her studies at the new Engineering Department of Smith College, down the road from my house in Northampton. Like her new buds Lenny & Spike, she found the Zeta Beam somehow and ended up on Hoon. She's sort of sweet on Spike, but when Spike isn't around, Lenny will do. Sometimes they're all around.

Like most WOZQ deejays, she sux as a student, but she's really smart, and she showed Lenny and Spike how to cook up a gizmo that cancels all Friction within 200 meters.

No shit, she really did that.

And that's how Lenny + Spike's Zero-Friktion Thrill Park was born. So far it's got 3 really awesome rides, and no seatbelts or confinement bars or safety headgear or liability insurance. they sell cheap beer and peppermint and cherry schnapps, they don't ask for i.d., and whenever it's warmer than -322C, they have outdoor music concerts under the 4 or 5 moons of Hoon with some really bitchin rad phat acts.

Here's the rough sketch for their 4th ride.

2 or 3 or 4 or 5 teenagers shove themselves into a Sphere and get locked in. then Spike or Lenny gives the sphere a little nudge, and it rolls onto the track, and everything that happens after that is entirely a function of Gravity. (Hoon has Gravity, it's a Law there.)

But No Friction between the sphere and the track. AaaaaaahnDrayUh's gizmo nulls all the Friction. So that sucker can really pick up some Speed.

However, as you can see, the original design for a Straight Down Ramp track was REJECTED by the Hoon Thrill Ride Inspector. It was just too fucking slow.

Now AaaaaaahnDrayUh has to figure out a different kind of track that will be faster than a Straight Down Ramp.

In fact she has set herself the Challenge of designing a track which will get the Sphere from its starting point at P(0) to the subsequent point P(1) in the least possible time.

Maybe you're as smart as AaaaaahnDrayUh, or maybe smarter. And Lenny and Spike would really appreciate it if you could solve this PizzaQ, so they can get their new Thrill Ride approved by the Inspector.

They don't give away pizza, but if you can show age i.d. they're giving the winner 3 miniatures of fruit-flavored schnapps. That stuff kix ass!

Mercury, Jupiter, Mars -- Look to the skies! (last line of "The Thing" 1951)

In the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, about 30 minutes before dawn Sunday 10 December, look east-southeast not too high above the horizon to see Mercury, Mars and Jupiter remarkably near each other. From Starry Night.

New York Post's front page, Thursday 7 December 06

The New York Post -- get ready for a shock -- is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

A few years ago, some media critic dubbed The Post "scratch and sniff journalism."

If The New York Times is aimed at an average reader with 2+ years of college, The New York Post is aimed at an average reader who didn't quite snag that high school diploma.

Trouble reading big words, mostly, trouble with math, trouble with history, poor impulse control ...

Well, whatever The New York Post is, this is its front page Thursday [7 December 2006], its reaction to the release of the report of the Iraq study commission headed by former Treasury Secretary James Baker (the monkey on the left) and former Congressman Lee Hamilton.

This front page has, astonishingly, grabbed all the reaction attention in the U.S. media -- as if it were some sort of news or political statement by itself, comparable in significance to the Baker-Hamilton report.

Well, it is news. And so are the recent photos of Britney Spears running around in a miniskirt without panties.

I have no snooty right to say "This isn't news."

Britney Spears without panties is news. And so is The New York Post's front page about the Baker-Hamilton report.

Should America surrender in Iraq?

Certainly not.

We should just get all our troops the fuck out of there as soon as humanly possible, before 3000 more of our neighbors' children are killed for nothing.

When they're all home safe, then we can call the whole Iraq thing Victory and throw a big parade.

Apparently what The Post and thinkers like The Post believe America should do is redouble our efforts to commit some sort of drunken blundering never-ending military suicide -- the word "Vietnam" keeps coming to mind -- indefinitely, and Good Things will happen for America.

I stopped taking LSD decades ago. Now I know who's been taking it since I stopped. Bush. Murdoch. Rumsfeld. Kerry. McCain. Limbaugh.

The Baker-Hamilton Commission was supposed to be a last-ditch possibility that the Bush administration, with its commander-in-chief powers, might sober up and come to its senses about the catastrophe Bush flung America into. Baker and Hamilton aren't exactly radical left-wing anarchist pacifist Quaker hippies.

It's pretty clear Bush will never take anybody's good advice if it points toward ending this war.

He won't suffer. As his constitutional time winds down, Bush will concentrate on raising money for his presidential library.

Our soldiers and Marines will suffer, be maimed, and die. A huge bloc of Asia will be destabilized and will overflow with violence and refugees for decades -- just as Southeast Asia is only now recovering from the massive destabilization our Vietnam War left behind.

Vleeptron has previously run a post about whom Bush does take war advice from: God. According to several political figures he met in the Middle East, Bush claims God directly commanded him to overthrow Sadaam Hussein.

Well, yes, I have to admit, God trumps Baker, Hamilton and their commission of elder statespersons. No wonder he's not listening to them.

Call me when this Bad Trip is over. The results of the November election were a sort of political Intervention -- Congress and Bush couldn't stop themselves, so the voters fired a bunch of Republicans and flipped control of both houses of Congress.

Call me when a sufficient number of these psychos are finally in Rehab. Washington's addiction to continuing this war, Washington's inability to even consider tapering off or ending military operations in Iraq -- this is foreign policy by Mel Gibson in a sports car careening down the highway after half a bottle of tequila.

Alleluja! Exultate, jubilate! / anybody got any decent Xmas music?

Christmas Cat, by Edward Gorey

Post this date to F_Minor, Internet Home of the Worldwide Glenn Gould Kult:

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

Okay, it's that ghastly season again where music lovers have to wear industrial noise-cancelling ear gear for a month.

First off, so I won't be spanked for an OT ... Did GG ever record anything that qualifies as Christmas Music? I sure wouldn't mind filling the living room with it.

(The default around here is John Denver and the Muppets, and Alvin and the Chipmunks.)

So ... can anybody recommend his/her favorite Hi-Quality Christmas Music? Something you can play for Yule guests without feeling ashamed?

One Yuletide decades ago, my former in-laws gifted us with a huge 4-LP set of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Greatest Christmas Hits, and expected us to play it constantly during their visit. The thing made me so ill that I snuck it down to the Public Library at midnight and shoved it through the Book Deposit hole with a message taped to it:

We're sorry we can't give this record a good home. Please give this record a good home. Merry Christmas and Thank You.

If this CD is still for sale, I enhusiastically recommend

A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert

Sony Classical SK 48235

Kathleen Battle, soprano
Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano
Wynton Marsalis, trumpet
Andre Previn (conductor, pianist)
Nancy Allen, harp
The American Boychoir
The Christmas Concert Chorus
The Orchestra of St. Luke's

(recorded live 8 December 1991)

featuring

* The Twelve Days of Christmas
* Gesu Bambino
* "Alleluja" from "Exultate, jubilate"
* We Three Kings of Orient Are
* I Wonder As I Wander
* Go Tell It On The Mountain
* Evening Prayer (from "Hansel und Gretel")
* Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming
* Maria Wiegenlied
* The Holly and the Ivy

... and about 20 other old chestnuts roasting on an open fire, but you'll never hear them performed more beautifully. This hour of Christmas Music doesn't sound in the least like fingernails on a blackboard.

So what do you guys got?

Wishing everyone a musically beautiful Christmas!

Bob

Regardez sur ton ordinateur! @ 22:08 GMT French colonial jungle people gonna shoot a rocket into orbit!

bien sur, cliquez ici!

The Ariane rocket, some scantily clad
jungle dancers, the French Department
of Guiana, Devil's Island, some crazy
thing whizzing around in space.

If the crazy rocket (filched from
the old Flash Gordon movie) is stuck,
click your RELOAD button
and it should start flying around again.

THE LAUNCH READINESS REVIEW (RAL) took place in Kourou on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 and authorized count-down operations for the WildBlue-1 & AMC 18 launch.

For its fifth launch of the year Arianespace will boost two communications satellites into orbit: WildBlue-1 for American operator WildBlue Communications, and AMC-18 for SES Americom.

Arianespace’s selection by a new American operator and the largest private satellite operator in the United States is clear international recognition of this top-quality launch service.

It will be launched from the Ariane launch complex N° 3 (ELA3), in Kourou, French Guiana.

THE ARIANE 5 "ECA" LAUNCHER LIFT-OFF for this Flight is scheduled during the night of October 13, 2006 as soon as possible within the following launch window:

GMT: Between 10:08 pm and 10:51 pm on December 8, 2006.
PARIS: Between 11:08 pm and 11:51 pm on December 8, 2006.
WASHINGTON: Between 05:08 pm and 05:51 pm on December 8, 2006.
KOUROU: Between 07:08 pm and 07:51 pm on December 8, 2006.

Follow the launch live on the internet:

CLICK HERE!!! CLICK HERE!!! IT REALLY WORKS!!! WITH ROCKET SCIENTISTS SPEAKING FRENCH!!!

(Starting 20 minutes before lift-off).

Video streaming will be available in RealMedia and WindowsMedia formats.

La Revue d’Aptitude au Lancement (RAL) s’est d?roul?e le mercredi 6 d?cembre ? Kourou et a autoris? les op?rations de chronologie pour le Vol Ariane 5 ECA -- WildBlue-1 et AMC 18. Pour son 5e lancement de l’ann?e, Arianespace mettra en orbite une charge utile compos?e du satellite WildBlue-1 pour l’op?rateur am?ricain WildBlue Communications et du satellite AMC 18 pour l’op?rateur am?ricain SES Americom.

Le lancement sera effectu? depuis l'Ensemble de Lancement Ariane n° 3 (ELA 3) ? Kourou en Guyane fran?aise.

Le d?collage du lanceur Ariane 5 ECA est pr?vu le plus t?t possible dans la fen?tre de lancement suivante :

GMT : De 22h08 ? 22h51 le 8 d?cembre 2006.
PARIS : De 23h08 ? 23h51 le 8 d?cembre 2006.
WASHINGTON : De 17h08 ? 17h51 le 8 d?cembre 2006.
KOUROU : De 19h08 ? 19h51 le 8 d?cembre 2006.

Suivez le lancement en direct sur Internet : http://www.videocorner.tv/index.php?langue=fr
(Diffusion ? partir de H-20 mn).

Des flux aux formats RealMedia et WindowsMedia seront disponibles.

Vous pouvez vous d?sinscrire de cette liste de diffusion ? tout moment en cliquant sur ce lien :

BOO!!! which Holy Scripture terrifies you the most?

The Book that's scaring some loud
Americans idiots and bigots
as 4 January 2007 approaches.

a rant & snort from jameskpolka, a sentient from Vleeptron. to the sentients in Minnesota.

On 4 January 2007, for what's certainly the first time in American history, a newly-elected member of Congress will swear his oath on the Koran.

At least two National Media Assholes have gone ripshit ballistic about this.

Below the Vleeptron Rant, read the nice Opinion column from the Minnesota Daily News which triggered it.

=======================
comment by jameskpolka:
=======================

Traditionally American presidents choose their own Bible to take the inaugural oath. Joe Lieberman has recently been a Jewish near-miss, but if he'd hit the bullseye, on which Bible would he have taken the oath?

To most Americans, "The Bible" means the Old and the New Testament, but to a Jew, The Bible means only the Old Testament (which Jews don't call "The Old Testament," because that implies that God made a subsequent "New Testament" or Covenant with humankind).

To the politically addled and the bigotted, what sort of national outrage will the first presidential oath on the Tanakh be?

I live in Massachusetts, far from and nearly deaf and blind to the local political details of Minneapolis. But after Keith Ellison's victory, I watched a MacNeil/Lehrer segment about the local circumstances surrounding his win.

His most enthusiastic supporters and his most vigorous defenders against Islamophobia seem to have been Jewish politicians in the Twin Cities and in the statehouse. Minnesota is a notoriously and blessedly enlightened political culture, and these interviewed Jews -- they looked exactly like my cousins and aunts and uncles -- were scrupulously concerned only with Ellison's character, competence and political achievements.

Minnesota's Jewish voters have been asked to follow nasty religious red herrings to the ballot box before. They rejected those old traps of religious prejudice, and they rejected the new ones aimed against Ellison.

I've read big chunks of N.J. Dawood's Penguin translation of the Koran. Meaning utterly no disrespect, but its contents closely resemble the contents of my Tanakh and the contents of my Christian neighbors' New Testament. In all three scriptures, a reader stuck in Today is asked to gaze back upon ancient miracles, ancient God-man intimate conversations and commands, glimpses of Paradise and Hell, bestial crimes and atrocities committed by human beings, life everlasting -- and unhappy volumes of violent, sanctified curses and insults aimed at neighboring tribes and nations and their different religious beliefs.

Koran, Tanakh, New Testament -- it's tough for anyone who passed high school physics or biology to regard either scripture as fact or as the true revealed word of God. Since Newton and the Enlightenment, civilization has pretty much demanded all its intellectual leaders to take these ancient chronicles with a grain (or eight) of salt. Since Darwin, Russell and Mendel, it's become even tougher to embrace the literal truth of these literarily wondrous chronicles.

Where these scriptures remain great and important in 2006, where we are still wise to teach them to our children, are their identical and parallel demands that all who claim to follow these words live up to their radiant insights of morals, ethics, justice, honesty and brotherhood.

At this grotesque and shameful Muslim-bashing moment in America, I am deeply pleased that Minnesota's enlightened Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and atheist voters chose to send a qualified Muslim to Congress, and it will fill my American heart with pride and warmth to watch Ellison take his oath on the Koran.

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

The Minnesota Daily
(Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota USA)
Wednesday 6 December 2006

Opinion

Keith Ellison,
agent provocateur
du jour

Is our congressman-elect from the 5th District the new Borat, exposing hatred and bigotry in America?

by Adri Mehra

Less than a month after being elected the first Muslim American ever to serve in the U.S. Congress, the Man with the Quran is already burning the piñata at the white kids' birthday party.

U.S. Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told the press shortly after his election that he would be placing his hand upon Islam's holiest book, instead of the Bible, while he takes the oath of office Jan. 4.

Naturally, this has stoked the flames of resentment from the anti-Islam, anti-Ellison and frankly anti-American component of the religious Reichstag that controls conservative debate on talk radio.

Just three weeks after syndicated talking head Glenn Beck asked Ellison on CNN Headline News to prove he wasn't working with "our enemies" (Muslims, apparently), everyone's favorite Jew-for-Jesus commentator Dennis Prager is saying Ellison's Quran plan "undermines America" and "America should not give a hoot -- America is interested in only one book - the Bible -- If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress."

Prager goes on to compare Ellison's choice of the Quran to a hypothetical racist picking Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" for their oath-taking ceremony and that "Ellison's doing so will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones."

That sort of mind-spew of cultural hatred isn't worth discussing here if I can't devote the rest of the column to it.

But isn't the oath of office about upholding the Constitution, and not the Bible? Why swear on any book when we have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Are not those the primary sources of our democratic value system?

And isn't this whole messy burrito, as Ellison himself has stated, "what freedom of religion is all about?"

Instead, the religious right has turned this into a litmus test of Ellison's patriotism or, worse, his moral fiber, as if being of a different faith were a basis upon which to question it.

But really, this reactionary portion of the debate is child's play at best, poisonous race-baiting at its worst.

But to paraphrase pop music bard Billy Joel, Keith didn't start this "fire" - it was always burning, since the world's been turning.

Which is to say that Ellison is neither the first nor last to be persona non grata in the cranky old boys' club of American politics.

Like Paul Wellstone 15 years before him, Ellison will by turns be labeled a funky, well-needed firebrand and the oratorial equivalent of a large-mouthed bass.

But, after 12 long years of a sleepy center-right DFL and the brusque twilight of Wellstone-style prairie populism, isn't a loud progressive voice exactly what this democracy is historically due for, whether or not you sympathize with its content?

As Billy Joel advised us on "Angry Young Man" from his 1976 album "Turnstiles":

"Give a moment or two to the angry young man / with his working class ties and his radical plans / He's been stabbed in the back, he's been misunderstood, but it's a comfort to know his intentions are good."

It's been a comfort getting to know you, Mr. Ellison. Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound from you -- funny, but it's still rock 'n' roll to me.

Adri Mehra welcomes comments at amehra@mndaily.com

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

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Posted on 2006-12-06 at 11:31:00
Morisano from Santa Barbara, CA writes:

It is so refreshing to find a sensible voice out there, a voice that should be recognized as American, rather than what these cowering conservatives are projecting. The scariest part is that this debate, this questioning of Keith Ellison's patriotism and morality is all actually happening. This isn't a fictional situation - these fatheads do not need a Borat to expose their religious and ethnic bigotry. They're quite capable and confident doing it themselves.

It is one thing for these neo-cons to have qualms about the election of Mr. Ellison, but what makes matters worse is that these fatheads are on the airwaves, broadcasting their ignorance. If it is true that "America is interested in only one book - the Bible," as Mr. Prager claims, then it is our country, our culture, our "faith" that breeds the extremists. We now live in a country where if you are a devout Muslim, and desire to pray, you will be accosted by the FBI and left stranded by US Airways! It's neo-McCarthyism. I admire your suggestion that elected officials scrap the biblical oath and rather swear to uphold the Bill of Rights and the Constitution - documents which stand for freedoms that many, especially the "anti-American component of the religious Reichstag" (love that) are forgetting!

PS - love the Billy Joel quotations.

Morisano's Rating: 5

Murtha and Abscam / Deal or No Deal / Real Classy Guy

It's Congressional Ethics Night on Vleeptron.

If you Google "Abscam" and "Murtha", you get some violent anti-Murtha sites by people who are ripshit about Murtha's anti-Iraq-War activities.

This is Wikipedia's take on U.S. Rep. John Murtha's involvement in the FBI's Abscam corruption sting.

Leave all the nasty Comments you want, but Wikipedia's just not political, I keep finding it thoroughly factually reliable, with no perceivable political axe to grind.

But anyway, here's a guy making a run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2008, here's what he was up to in 1980. Or so says Wikipedia. With links to watch the video and make up your own mind.

But Vleeptron calls your attention to the Congressional ethics rules at the time: Every member was obligated to report any bribe attempt to the FBI.

Murtha didn't.

Oh -- there was one guy, Senator Larry Pressler (Republican of South Dakota) ...

=================
from Wikipedia:
=================

... refused to take the bribe, saying [while secretly being filmed] at the time, "Wait a minute, what you are suggesting may be illegal." He immediately reported the incident to the FBI. When Senator Pressler was told Walter Cronkite referred to him on the evening news as a "hero" he stated, "I do not consider myself a hero ... what have we come to if turning down a bribe is 'heroic'?"

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

Abscam (sometimes ABSCAM) was an FBI sting operation run out of the FBI's Hauppauge, Long Island, [New York] office. The operation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property but was converted to a public corruption investigation.

The investigation ultimately led to the conviction of a United States Senator, six members of the House of Representatives, the Mayor of Camden, New Jersey, members of the Philadelphia City Council, and an inspector for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

How the sting worked

The FBI set up "Abdul Enterprises, Ltd." in 1978. FBI employees posed as Middle Eastern businessmen in videotaped talks with government officials, where they offered money in return for political favors to a non-existent sheik. A house (4407 W St. NW, Washington, DC), along with a yacht in Florida and hotel rooms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, were used to set up meetings between various public officials and a mysterious Arab sheik named Abdul who wanted:

* To purchase asylum in the U.S.
* To involve them in an investment scheme
* To get help in getting his money out of his country

Much of the operation was directed by Melvin Weinberg, a convicted con artist, who was hired by the FBI for that purpose. It was the first major operation by the FBI to trap corrupt public officials; up until 1970 only ten members of Congress had ever been convicted of accepting bribes.

On February 2, 1980, reports surfaced that FBI personnel were targeting members of Congress in a sting operation. The media dubbed the operation "Abscam" after the name of the company.

Convictions

Of the thirty-one targeted officials, one senator, Harrison A. Williams (Democrat, New Jersey), and five members of the House of Representatives

* John Jenrette (D-South Carolina)
* Richard Kelly (R-Florida)
* Raymond Lederer (D-Pennsylvania)
* Michael "Ozzie" Myers (D-Pennsylvania)
* Frank Thompson (D-New Jersey)

were convicted of bribery and conspiracy in separate trials in 1981. While most of the politicians resigned, Myers had to be expelled and Williams did not resign until the vote on his expulsion was almost due. Five other government officials were convicted, including the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Angelo Errichetti; members of the Philadelphia City Council; and an inspector for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

[see the Wikipedia article for the conviction and imprisonment of U.S. Senator Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ), now deceased.]

John Murtha's involvement

Congressman John Murtha (Democrat-Pennsylvania) was not indicted or prosecuted, though he was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator.

An excerpt of the FBI videotaped Murtha as saying, "I'm not interested ... at this point. [If] we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't," to $50,000 cash right after Murtha had offered to provide names of businesses and banks in his district where money could be legally invested. [6]

Links to the actual videos of his involvement can be found at the following two links (Warning NSFW, Strong Language) [7] and [8] Full length versions of the tape [9] show that the FBI undercover operative repeatedly attempted to offer Rep. Murtha money, whereby Rep. Murtha declined.

The U.S. Attorneys Office declined prosecution of Mr. Murtha, reasoning that the Congressman's intent was to obtain investment in his district, the very premise of the FBI operation. Retired FBI Agents familiar with the investigation felt that Murtha was "stringing along" a group of "businessmen", seeing whether they would "put up or shut up" and invest in Western Pennsylvania. [citation needed] Mr. Murtha's district had been extremely hard hit economically. Full length viewing of the tape reveal Murtha citing prospective investment opportunities that could return "500 or 1000" miners to work.

In November 1980, the Justice Department announced that Murtha would not face prosecution for his part in the scandal. In July 1981, the House ethics committee also chose not to file charges against Congressman Murtha, following a mostly party line vote, after which Republican E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., the panel's special counsel, abruptly resigned in protest. House ethics rules require members to immediately report any bribe offers to the FBI; Murtha failed to make such a report in clear violation of these rules.

Mr. Murtha has been reelected by his constituency for 13 terms in 26 years despite his involvement in ABSCAM and his failure to report the videotaped bribe offer, as required by House ethics rules.

the Yiddish lesson / Bob shares his feeling about the AIPAC momzers with The Forward / Forverts

One of the most moving and beautiful spiritual experiences an American Christian federal lawmaker can have is to take a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and spend a week walking in Jesus' footsteps -- Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Jerusalem.

I'm not a Christian, and I'm not in direct, regular communication with Jesus, as so many leading figures in American politics are or regularly claim to be.

I wish I were. It's a real handicap to know what to think about a woman's right to abortion or same-sex marriage or federal licenses for Native-American casinos without clear and direct marching orders from Jesus or God.

Those who take their policy and voting guidance directly from Jesus have it all over clueless, secular me as I blunder through political controversies with no higher authority to guide me than obsessive reading, thinking, and lengthy discussions with my neighbors, who are mostly ordinary mortals without a cell phone * speed-dial code to Jesus' private line.

But His birthday's just around the corner, and I wonder what He'd think of many of these congressional Pilgrimages to follow in His footsteps if He found out they were all-expense-paid freebies by special-interest lobbying groups.

Imagine how surprised the humble Pilgrim will be when he confronts his Savior on Calvary, and Jesus asks: "Who's paying for this fact-finding junket, Larry?"

The good news is that it's not the American taxpayer.

The bad news is that it's not the American taxpayer.

The worse news is that it's not Larry.

So where's the harm?

Like Einstein was wont to do, try this Thought Experiment.

You're just a humble, ordinary American voter. You have an issue that's very important to you. For your issue to thrive, you'll need the help and understanding of many members of Congress.

Well -- to be really blunt and crude, you're going to need their votes on upcoming legislation.

You'd like to spend a week sitting next to your Congresswoman or your Senator, in the air-conditioned Mercedes tour bus, in the First Class section of an intercontinental airliner, or better yet, in the intimacy of a private luxury jet, in the Ritz Hotel bar, in a really magnifique 5-star restaurant in a dreamy faraway city, in the Sky Box at an Eagles game. Just you and your lawmakers all alone for hours and hours, and all the lawmakers paying close and very respectful attention to your every word. So you can chat informally and explain the importance of your issue to your federal legislators.

If you know a way to arrange these secluded rendezvous and these intimate tete-a-tetes, please Leave A Comment.

~ ~ ~

Above, the masthead of the Yiddish edition of The Jewish Daily Forward, for more than a century, in Yiddish and in English, a newspaper obsessively read by the American Jewish community. Jewish "grinhorns" fresh off the boat (FOB) from Eastern Europe fell immediately in love with The Forward. For one thing, if you didn't speak or read a word of English, here was a daily paper in Yiddish. A few months later, when you were ready to take a whack at reading English, the same paper was for sale in that lingo and its alphabet.

Here was a daily paper written by European Jewish immigrants for European Jewish immigrants, to guide them gently and expertly through the frightening maze of their crazy new American life, laws and customs -- which, in 1900, differed slightly from those left behind in the shtetels of Tsarist Russia.

It was certainly not anti-religious, but it was entirely secular. The Forward was always happy to feature the opinions of prominent rabbis and religious leaders, but The Forward served the new life of its readership entirely through their eyes, and served their real needs. Which, on the Lower East Side of New York City, were no longer entirely Talmudic problems. If an Irish police captain or an Italian city councilor was more likely to have the answer to a Jewish immigrant's problem than Rebbe Saperstein, The Forward skipped the Rebbe and ran the cop's or the councilor's wisdom and advice. Translated into Yiddish.

Yiddish is pretty much German frozen around the 13th century. The freezer was the Ghetto, which isolated European Jews from the natural evolution of the German language; behind the locked walls of the Ghetto, Jews spent centuries mostly just talking to themselves, and Yiddish stratified and eventually developed its own literature, and the authentic status of a unique language.

(1-slice PizzaQ: Who got the Nobel Literature Prize for writing exclusively in Yiddish?)

Yiddish's other oddity is that it's German, all right, with German vocabulary and German grammar -- but written in the Hebrew alphabet (or alephbet). All a German speaker would have to do is familiarize him/herself with the letters and vowels of the Hebrew alephbet, and he/she can versteh about 70 percent of the headlines of a Yiddish newspaper or the window signs of a Yiddish store, probably the menu in an all-Yiddish deli too. There's one around the corner from le Crazy Horse in Paris. (Don't call me a perv, I've never been to Paris.)

The Forward's masthead (above) works this way. After the founders named it The Forward, its staff and readers enthusiastically and universally mispronounced it in their thick Yiddish accents as "Forverts." So Hebrew letter by Hebrew letter, from right to left, you have not FORWARD but FORVERTS. Consonants are the Big Hebrew Things, and vowels (like "aw") usually appear, when they bother to appear at all, underneath the consonants. Except "ooo" (rhymes with the sound an English cow makes) which, when it appears, appears as a single dot to the left of the Consonant Vav, and makes its V sound silent. Unless they don't bother to print the dot, but you're supposed to know they meant to. But you can also write "ooo" with 3 slanted dots under a consonant. Alles ist klar perfekt?

~ ~ ~

This is the first letter I've ever written to The Forward, and I have no idea if they'll run it, so here it is on Vleeptron.

I don't know if there's a more delicious, more wildly spiced flavor to political controversy in any other culture on Earth. Jews scream and we yell and we curse and use the filthiest and most vulgar words and innuendos at each other just to tell one guy he's a schmuck for voting for Kerry and the other guy that he's a meshugineh momzer for voting for Bush. No one ever forgives anyone for shouting an unforgiveable insult, and the next day we have the same screaming argument all over again.

momzer (Hebrew): the Biblical word for bastard

meshugineh (Hebrew): insane

schmuck: the male genital organ

bum (English): a loafer, a liar, an undependable and worthless person; also, an umpire who makes a clearly prejudiced call against The Red Sox.

perp walk (English): a public march past TV crews and newspaper photographers of a just-arrested criminal suspect, usually handcuffed.

schnorrer: a freeloader, a parasite. In "A Night at the Opera," when a chorus of wealthy aristocrats sings

Hooray for Captain Spalding
The African explorer!

Captain Spalding (Groucho Marx) suspiciously mutters:

Did someone call me schnorrer?

Aipac or AIPAC: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a bunch of momzers and ganefs.

~ ~ ~

Letters to the Editor
The Jewish Daily Forward

To the Editor:

"Jewish Groups To Challenge Ethics Reform" by Nathan Guttman (1 December) signals a pathetic, shameful and doomed leap from the starting gate of the new Democratic-led Congress. Even the headline smells like two-day-old sushi.

The finish line will be on the front page of The New York Times a year from now: the list of corporations, lobbyists and special-interest groups who led the PAC with free golf and Holy Land junkets for our new majority friends in Congress and the Senate.

This is a race Jews should scrupulously want to lose, a list whose bottom we should aggressively dive to. The Democrats took the Hill because American voters were disgusted by the Republicans' ethical lapses, missteps, and occasional handcuffed perp walks to federal prison.

To suggest that an authentic tightening of ethics rules in Congress is bad news for Jews -- regardless of your vision for Israel and the American Jewish community, begging to keep Capitol Hill and K Street's porous jet-setting ethics is the guaranteed fast track for worse things for Israel.

Some have noticed that Israel has not had a particularly good year -- which ended when disgusted American voters threw the Republican bums out. We're free to remember them as Friends of Israel -- but our Friends are out of power now.

I'm sorry both parties have tolerated so many bums, schnorrers, momzers and whores. Our concerns for Israel should still be ethically clear enough not to stuff these weak, pathetic jerks full of freebies. When they go down as we've just watched the Republicans go down, our leaders, our lobbies, and Israel tumble painfully with them on front pages and the nightly news. America's voters have just proven that ethics myopia is the poorest of all long-term strategies.

In scheming and scurrying to prevent ethical reform in Congress, AIPAC itself is no friend to America or to Israel, and The Forward does us no favors by fully and fairly pleading their cause of unethical, corrupt, sleazy political behavior.

Robert Merkin
Northampton Massachusetts

~ ~ ~

The Jewish Daily Forward
English edition / New York City USA
Friday 1 December 2006

Jewish Groups To Challenge
Ethics Reform

Aipac, UJC To Face Off With Dems on Junkets, Earmarks

by Nathan Guttman

Two of America’s most influential Jewish organizations are gearing up for their first direct confrontation with the incoming, Democratic-led Congress. The topic: Democratic proposals for congressional ethics and lobbying reform.

At issue are two key congressional perks, targeted for elimination, that Jewish organizations rely on to achieve community goals: overseas junkets, including dozens of trips to Israel each year, funded by Jewish organizations; and an estimated $25 million a year in earmarked funds for Jewish communal projects. Both the trips and the earmarked funding face possible elimination as part of the Democrats’ pledge to fight corruption on Capitol Hill.

Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has said she plans to bring up the ethics reform legislation "within the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress," which will begin its session in January 2007. Activists with several Jewish and pro-Israel groups said they will be working in the coming weeks to head off or soften the specific measures they fear most.

With 41% of voters pointing in exit polls to corruption and scandals as an "extremely important" factor in how they voted last month, the Democratic victory is widely seen as a call for an overhaul of congressional ethical standards.

Most of the ethics reform measures being considered are described as lessons learned from the investigation of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, which revealed a widespread culture of lawmakers accepting free gifts, lavish tours and personal favors in return for their votes.

Democrats are now debating the exact language of ethics reform legislation. The most sweeping proposals call for the establishment of an independent committee to oversee congressional ethics issues. More modest versions would seek only minor changes in the existing rules. Congressional sources predicted this week that in either case, the legislation will include curbs on gifts and trips sponsored by lobbying groups, limitations on earmarked spending and greater transparency in campaign finance.

Jewish groups, though supportive of most measures, are concerned about two aspects of the reform: the ban on privately funded congressional travel, and the limitations on earmarks. Both measures might -- depending on the final language adopted -- restrict actions of Jewish and pro-Israel groups on Capitol Hill.

All-expense-paid tours to Israel are among the most common overseas trips made by members of Congress and their aides. Watchdog groups, using data from congressional filings, have reported that Israel is the leading destination for privately sponsored congressional trips. In the years 2000 to 2005, 164 of the 1,922 overseas congressional visits were to Israel. In the past year, 62 Congress members and staffers visited Israel on trips funded by pro-Israel and Jewish groups. Most of the junkets are sponsored by the main pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, through its sister organization, the American Israel Education Foundation. The foundation is the second-largest sponsor of overseas trips.

Other Jewish groups sending lawmakers and their aides to Israel include United Jewish Communities, the national association of federated Jewish philanthropies. UJC operates through local federations and their affiliated community-relations committees.

The best-known political visit to Israel is probably that of President Bush in 1998, while he was governor of Texas. During the visit, which was funded by the Republican Jewish Coalition, Bush was taken on a helicopter ride over Israel and the West Bank with Ariel Sharon as his tour guide. The president has since mentioned this visit in many speeches on Middle East policy and in meetings with the Jewish community.

Jewish groups are now lobbying Congress to make sure that educational trips, such as those to Israel, be allowed to continue even under the new restrictions being considered. "Trips to Israel sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation have long been considered among the most substantive, educational and valuable trips available for members of Congress," Aipac spokesman Josh Block said. "While in Israel, members have the opportunity to meet with both Israeli and Palestinian officials, academics, journalists, elected officials, hearing from speakers representing diverse views across the political spectrum, and get a personal, firsthand view of issues of great importance to American policy in the Middle East."

Aipac is one of the few lobbying groups that had enacted full disclosure of trip information even before Congress made this disclosure mandatory.

Officials from several Jewish organizations have been holding intense talks with Democratic staffers over the past week to ensure that Israel educational trips will be exempt from the new restrictions, but several sources said it is too early to determine where the Democrats are heading with the legislation. "I believe that we can draft some language that keeps bona fide educational trips kosher and makes boondoggles trayf," said William Daroff, chief Washington representative of UJC.

But for UJC, the travel limitations are only a side issue. The charity network is more worried about another part of the ethics reform legislation, directed at congressional earmarks. These are items that lawmakers are allowed to insert into spending bills to direct federal funds toward specific projects in their districts. The earmark system has been criticized as a backdoor for pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into so-called pork-barrel projects to strengthen lawmakers’ popularity among home voters, or big donors.

From an estimated $64,000,000,000 spent annually through earmarks, Jewish institutions enjoy no more than $25,000,000. Most of that goes to a UJC program, Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. The program is designed to deal with graying neighborhoods or apartment complexes by financing on-site social service programs that allow elderly residents to remain in their homes.

This past year, UJC managed to get NORCs included in the Older Americans Act reauthorization bill, which could pave the way for funding the program without the need for earmarks. For now, however, a ban on earmarks will do away with funding for the program, which operates in 41 cities around the country.

Congressional sources stressed this week that a total ban on earmarks does not seem likely, due to the heavy reliance of lawmakers from both parties on them as a political vehicle. The ethics reform, however, is expected to include requirements that each earmark have the name of its individual sponsoring lawmaker attached. Drafters of this version hope that abuse of earmarks will be reduced if funding perceived as corrupt bears the name of its sponsor.

- 30 -

separating conjoined ("Siamese") twins by using 3D Rapid Prototyping Models

Sure, sure, click.

1. Abigail (Abby) and Brittany (Britty) Hensel, circa 2005.

2. The conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker, watercolor on ivory, circa 1835.

3. August 15, 2002 -- Maria Teresa and Maria de Jesus Quiej-Alvarez were born on 24 July 2001 in a rural village in Guatemala. Together, they weighed 4.4 pounds at birth and, despite their small size, were healthy in every way -- except for being joined at the head.

Over the past year, the girls have remained healthy and happy but they have been severely restricted by their condition. Recently, a nonprofit organization called Healing the Children arranged for the girls to be flown to Los Angeles where a volunteer team of neurosurgeons and plastic surgeons at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Mattel Childrens’ Hospital successfully separated them in a 22-hour-long operation.

Today, both girls are doing well, and the prognosis for both is excellent. Without rapid prototyping, say the doctors, the operation would have been much more difficult.

Copyright © 2002 CAD/CAM Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

4. A traditional 2D X-ray of the Quiej-Alvarez twins' brains. The brains are completely individual and separate, but the brains shared blood vessels, which the surgical team had to separate. The 2D X-ray is of relatively little help in guiding this 3D procedure.

5. The interior of a plastic RP model of one twin's skull/brain after it was separated in a rehearsal of the surgery. The model reveals not just the skull bone, but the maze of blood vessels in 3D precision.

6. An RP 3D solid model of the whole conjoined skull before a surgery rehearsal, in the hands of lead surgeon Henry Kawamoto.

~ ~ ~

"Siamese twins" who survived infancy traditionally found work with travelling carnivals as human oddities. In modern times most USA states have outlawed theatrical performances that feature authentic (not faked) human oddities.

There is, surprisingly enough, another side to this humane advancement from our wise and benevolent state legislators.

First, without the travelling carnivals and circuses, there was utterly no ordinary or "respectable" employment conjoined twins would ever be offered, and there was practically no chance they would ever be accepted and respected in any human community. When their employment by carnivals was outlawed, they and other undisguisable human oddities immediately became state-designated welfare lepers for life. Before this Great Ethical Leap Forward, they had had close, warm, respectful acceptance within and by the close-knit carnival/circus community -- they had family, and a self-earning job for life that featured an enormous amount of travel. (In the USA carnivals and circuses spend the winter off-season in a famous town in Florida.)

Second, these ethical, humane laws were regularly used as leverage for local officials to extort cash from travelling carnivals to grant them permission to perform. If the show featured human oddities, the sheriff or mayor could claim that without a bribe to sweeten things, the law forced him to forbid the show from going on.

The term "Siamese twins" comes from the Siam-born Chang and Eng Bunker (1811 - 1874), who were huge money-makers for the inventor of the modern circus and freak show, Phineas T. Barnum.

Barnum also pressured the Connecticut legislature to outlaw all forms of artificial birth control, including condoms, and the ban included married couples. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in Griswold, and in so doing declared that, however invisible it may seem to the idle reader, the U.S. Constitution indeed contains a guaranteed right of privacy for every citizen. Whether a husband can legally use a condom in New Haven was small potatoes, but Griswold's discovery (some say invention) of the Constitutional right to privacy later became the basis for the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion for American women, and still does. Before Roe v. Wade, American women who sought abortions and medical practitioners who provided them were prosecuted and punished as criminal felons.

The modern medical/anatomical term for Siamese twins is conjoined twins. During prenatal development, they end up sharing tissues, bone structures, organs and blood vessels. The Bunker twins shared only a small amount of cartilege at the hip, and modern surgery could easily and safely have seperated them.

But other twins are far more intimately conjoined. They regularly survive birth and grow into physically and emotionally healthy adults, but for many, separation surgery is either impossible or far too risky.

Surgeons begin separation by using the most modern body imaging techniques -- CAT (Computerized Axial Tomography) and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) are the most famous.

Previous imaging technology -- the classic X-ray photograph invented by Roentgen around 1890 -- could "see" inside the body with great detail, but could only produce 2-dimensional (flat) images.

By a mechanical system of precise rotation of the imaging beam and its receiving sensors in a 360-degree arc surrounding the body or skull, and storing the results as numerical computer data, CAT and MRI offer a huge advance over the X-ray, and can display details of every part and at every depth and angle of the body or skull/brain.

But the images must still be displayed in flat 2D form, typically on a computer screen, "one slice at a time" of the body or the brain. Despite enormously clever and revealing image-display software, we are 3D objects, but doctors could only see us as flat 2D objects.

The stored numerical data from CAT and MRI had, however, an amazing new unexpected magic trick up its sleeve: Rapid Prototyping.

The numerical data could be manipulated, by ordinary geometry and trigonometry, in a computer to describe a solid 3D object. The Rapid Prototyping system -- where a computer-controlled laser precisely evaporates the surface of a special laser-sensitive resin -- takes CAT/MRI data and "creates" a tangible, 3D solid object.

As inidicated in the post about the Rapid Prototype Solid of the Zeta Function, the current limitation of RP is maximum size -- right now, somewhat smaller than a toaster oven.

In medicine, this limitation means that RP can't make solid 3D models of the whole adult human body, useful though such models might be.

But RP can make a near-perfect 3D solid true-size model of a human skull and the brain inside it, or other similar-sized parts of the body.

If you wished, CAT/MRI and RP would let you fill your closet not with dozens of shoes, but with dozens of perfect same-size models of your feet, their bones, and their internal larger circulatory vessels. (Your RP feet would be very different from plaster-cast models of your feet, which would only reproduce the exterior skin surface, and none of the internal structures.)

The first successful use of RP for surgically separating conjoined twins -- within the past decade -- seems to have been for infant twins conjoined at the spine, and the infant spine is a perfect size for RP's current size limits.

Separation surgery is an incredibly lengthy, risky and complicated procedure. Until RP, there was no way to practice the procedure without risk to the patients.

By creating RP solid true-size plastic models of the twins' conjoined spine, the surgical team was able to rehearse the procedure a half-dozen times before subjecting the actual patients to the slightest risk. Without such rehearsals, mid-procedure surprises would very likely have doomed the patients. With the benefit of the RP rehearsals, there were almost no serious surprises, and the surgical team proceeded with smooth choreographed efficiency. The twins were separated and are now healthy and much older.

I still can't find an image of their RP spine. But here's another coinjoined twin separation that depended very heavily on surgical team rehearsals on RP solids of the conjoined skull/brain. These kids are separated and doing fine, too.

from Wikipedia:

Conjoined twins are twins whose bodies are joined together at birth. This happens where the zygote of identical twins fails to completely separate. Conjoined twins occur in an estimated one in 200,000 births, with approximately half being stillborn. The overall survival rate for conjoined twins is between 5% and 25%. Conjoined twins are more likely to be female (70-75%).

okay here's what the PizzaQ thingie is, & how you can win U$1,000,000, & Rapid Prototyping & separating conjoined twins

Click, maybe it gets bigger.

==========

?

some physical form of pi or phi or some nonsense like that?

Posted by abbas to Vleeptron_Z at 11/29/2006 01:36:06 PM

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

so, what is the Thing?

Posted by Jim Olson to Vleeptron_Z at 11/30/2006 07:32:01 PM

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I hadn't heard much from my pal John diP lately, he lives on planet Maine, when he gets hungry he walks to the beach and collects a bucket of clams and then walks a little east and picks a bushel of potatoes, and he has a clambake, maybe with a couple of Atlantic lobsters tossed in.

But then I get this e-mail:

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Hey Bob:
How's the old Zeta Beam working? Has Catherine Zeta Jones ever used
it? Would it survive Tropical Storm Zeta, or a frat party at Zeta Phi?
(chortle, snicker)
John

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and it just totally flies right over my head, so I reply about how the Zeta Beam is broke again and I am waiting for a delivery of new vacuum tubes/valves manufactured by beaten political prisoners in the Peoples Republic of China and I really wish it was working again because of the war in Iraq which is bumming me out.

Essentially he has smashed the PizzaQ Answer into my face with a large speeding bus, and I didn't even notice, I am so distracted this week.

John diP replies:

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Hi Bob:
Bob, you dope. You wrote:

> Oh, there's an open PizzaQ near the top, Identify An Odd
> Visual Object.

In my original message, I wrote:

> > How's the old Zeta Beam working? Has Catherine Zeta Jones ever
> used
> > it? Would it survive Tropical Storm Zeta, or a frat party at Zeta
> Phi?

Get it? Zeta, zeta, zeta? Zeta ... zeta function? Riemann's zeta
function?
The Oldd Visual Object is a three-dimensional model of Riemann's
zeta function. The troughs correspond to places where primes are likely
to live.
John

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

The Riemann Hypothesis is the most important unsolved question in mathematics.

Just to keep your attention -- i.e., if Pizza slices aren't enough -- if you Prove or Disprove the Riemann Hypothesis, some guy named Clay will send you a check for

U$1,000,000

and if this Clay guy hasn't been jiving everybody, the check will not bounce. But that's between you and the Clay guy, Vleeptron was only giving away Pizza.

Okay, now before we Prove or Disprove the Riemann Hypothesis, let's talk a little bit about Rapid Prototyping.

That equation above -- or the many other ways to describe the Zeta Function -- is pretty easy to cram into a digital computer and make the numbers dance around. And draw pretty color pictures on the screen. You got a Big Computer, you can make really fancy pictures of the behavior of the Zeta Function over vast ranges in all sorts of directions. Your Big Computer will be happy to plot the Zeta Function over gazillions of values.

In the 1980s some really clever human beings developed this goop (resin) which is sensitive to a laser beam. You shoot the laser at the goop in the precise places the computer says to aim the laser, and the goop evaporates exactly at those places.

What you get when you're done is a Solid Tangible Object shaped like the numerical data in the computer says a solid object should be shaped.

What pays the rent is that Rapid Prototyping can quick like a bunny make solid models of small industrial parts that were designed with Computer Assisted Design (CAD). You use the model to make the hundreds of real parts you need in a hurry for your new airplane or car or bicycle or toaster oven.

But RP has done some really spiffy things beyond toaster ovens.

A couple of years ago, surgeons wanted to separate infant twins conjoined at their shared spine.

First they shoved the twins into a CAT scan machine and filled its computer with numerical data of the 3D shape of the spine. Then they fed the numerical data into the Rapid Prototyper, and the RP's laser churned out a half dozen real-scale-size solid models of the spine. So the surgeons could practice the incredibly tricky, complicated separation surgery on the RP models before they even touched the conjoined infants.

Oh, it worked, the kids are fine, and playing in seperate rooms now, or going to different elementary schools. They're still twins, but one is There and the other is Here. I'll try to find an image of the RP practice spine.

The first RP Zeta landscape was cranked out as the display centerpiece for a big Riemann Hypothesis party at the Courant Mathematics Institute of New York University about eight years ago, and The New York Times ran a photo of the Dingus.

Well, as you can imagine, the crowd went wild, everybody wanted one of these things, just like the Sony Playstation and the Nintendo Wii. So here's another, from the University of California @ San Diego Supercomputer Center, which seems to own its own Rapid Prototype machine.

The masked bearded fellow holding it a few posts ago (to show that it was smaller than a toaster oven) is Professor Larry Carter, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego, and Senior Fellow of the Supercomputer Center.

(He and his images are all 404'd this morning; either he's gone somewhere else to supercompute, or he's ripshit at goofballs like me filching his images. I was gonna credit him and his Thing as soon as somebody won the Pizza.)

This PizzaQ is intimately related to the Highly Intelligent Question you asked about the Big Prime Number Thing -- which, if I am accurately paraphrasing it, was "Who gives a flying fuck, don't big computers just find these things all by themselves now?"

Vleeptron will address that and related questions shortly, we have been busy and distracted lately.

Oh, but it turns out the Riemann Zeta Function and the Riemann Hypothesis posit very deep questions about the whacky screwy mysterious unpredictable seemingly random pattern of the Prime Numbers within the Natural Numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ...). Riemann was the first to suggest that maybe the pattern of the Primes is NOT whacky screwy mysterious unpredictable and seemingly random after all! And the Zeta Function is (maybe) the key to perceiving the Order and Non-Whackiness of the Prime Numbers!

http://www.musicoftheprimes.com/

There's a REALLY EXCELLENT BOOK about all this called "The Music of the Primes" by Marcus du Sautoy, who is a Really Superb Writer, and it's all about Real Human Beings, not so heavy on the headache aspirin math equations. His website also will tell you how to get the U$1,000,000 and has lots of spiffy and coolio images and things to click on.

Oh, that there Equation above is the Absolutely Simplest Way I can write the Zeta Function on the blackboard. But if the Zeta Function was a car, it would be a Lamborghini or a Masserati or a Jaguar XK-E, and that thing at the top is uhhh sort of a Wal-Mart Skateboard version of it.

Take a handful of extra-strength aspirin and check this out. To get anywhere near the $1,000,000 , you have to ride the Zeta Function through both Real and Imaginary Space, you know, the place where -1 has a square root. As the Maine farmer told the tourist who asked for directions: You can't get there from here.