Fashion experts believe the thong is being rejected because women are looking for more comfortable and less revealing alternatives, such as cut-off “boy shorts”. It is part of a move away from overtly sexual clothing such as push-up bras, crop tops and low-cut jeans.It's true. If I had to use one word to define youth culture today, especially with regard to female sexuality, it's "prudish." Must they all dress like nuns nowadays?
The number of methamphetamine labs seized by authorities in Tennessee during May and June decreased significantly — 49% statewide — compared with the number of busts from the same months in 2004.Isn't it kind of early to celebrate? If I was a committed drug maker (for the record and benefit of the Internet police, I'm not), I would just be biding my time and developing a new strategy. What do we think they will do, turn from a lifetime of intoxicating, lucrative recreational drug-cooking and go back to school to learn a new trade? Because they just can't get their hands on enough tylenol?
The decline is attributed to Tennessee's stringent anti-meth legislation, which became effective May 1, according to the Governor's Task Force on Methamphetamine Abuse.
American voters support the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade decision 65 - 30 percent, the highest level of support in two years of national polls by the independent Quinnipiac University.and this:
By a 61 - 32 percent margin, American voters say U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts should publicly state his position on abortion, but voters are divided on whether the Senate should refuse to confirm Roberts if he doesn't speak up, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. While 43 percent say the Senate would be justified in voting against Roberts if he doesn't explain his position, 47 percent say the Senate would not be justified.Of course, this won't happen. I'm guessing 80+ Senators will vote for him, to not look like obstructionists, despite the smoking gun evidence that Roberts has had bona fide conservative activist intentions in his legal work.
Roberts presented a defense of bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases; he argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs; and he even counseled his boss on how to tell the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow that the administration was cutting off federal funding for the Atlanta center that bears his name.He should have the nerve to argue these things before the committee. He would still probably get confirmed, plus not look like such the truth-hiding weasel.
I'm writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious "Grand Theft Auto" series.The rest of it makes some great and insteresting points(and it's not really about high school football). He makes the case that today's video games require much more of children's minds than anything we played, or anything else they're likely to do if we refuse them their games.
I'd like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids — a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.
I'm talking, of course, about high school football.
“Dont you worry about him. He ll be ready,” Condi said. Condi stood up from the desk. Her legs were long and she smelled like the Xeroxed copies of the information packets they give me each day.No sense in parodying Steinbeck that way. Apparently he was already a pretty good militaristic caricature of himself during the Vietnam War, if a recently unearthed letter to Jack Valenti--which was then passed on to Robert McNamara--is any indication.
“Hello Georgie,” Condi said. “Did you come to see Condi?” Condi rubbed my hair and it tickled.
“Dont go messing up his hair,” Dick said. “Hes got a press conference in a few minutes.”
Condi wiped some spit on her hand and patted down my hair. Her hand was soft and she smelled like Xerox copies coming right out of the machine. “He looks just fine,” Condi said.
"It's a sweet little democracy that Jim orchestrated with no lawyers, in a garage in Venice, California," Densmore told Rolling Stone after filing the suit in 2003. "And he included veto power in case anybody didn't like what went down. I'm just trying to keep the integrity of what we did a long time ago."They can continue playing Doors songs with his blessing (not that he could stop that anyway). Since it's Media Monday, that reminds me of one of my favorite fast reads, the Morrison bio "No One Here Gets Out Alive."
"I could sit around and learn how to play all the songs and imitate Bob Dylan all day," Black says, "but that's not really what everyone's going to be looking forward to, myself included. We want some new original expression."
And how do you build that?
"All you gotta do is say, 'Well, what did Dylan do?' " he says. "He went down to Nashville and worked with a bunch of cats. Enough.
[SNIP]
Producer Tiven collected the veteran musicians who appeared on the album,including organist Spooner Oldham and bassist David Hood (who both played in the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section), renowned soul guitarist Steve Cropper of Booker T. & the MG's and drummer Billy Block.
In my discussion with Judge Roberts last week, I asked him if he would feel comfortable with any of the customary labels - liberal, moderate, conservative. Rejecting those categorizations, he said he would strive for modesty. His goal was to be a modest jurist on a modest court that understands its place in the balance of powers inherent in our Constitution.Considering I assume him to be a raging conservative, I hope he's telling the truth to the Senator. Either way, it sounds perfectly distinguished enough that I expect to hear those words--stability and modesty--in his explanations before the committee. It's a nice line. But I have to ask: why would a person that intelligent enter such a fast track up the judicial career ladder, with the clear purpose and hope of being named to the Court, and then strive to have no real impact, to dream of going essentially unnoticed, with a goal of lessening the power of the elite institution he wants to join? I don't buy it.
He also emphasized the importance of stability. His focus on modesty and stability provide comfort that he would not be an activist but would respect Congressional action and judicial precedent.
For the period 1999–2002, 1.6% of children aged 1–5 years had elevated blood lead levels. This percentage has decreased from 4.4% in the early 1990s.75% seems like quite a big decrease, a victory owing to the increase in no-smoking regulations. The bad news is that they show increased levels of chemicals whose effects are less certain to scientists. "Cadmium" and various "phthalates" (which come from plastic) have all seen increases in our bodies. We will have to stay tuned to find out just what havoc those wreak on us. You can read some or all of the report at the CDC website here.
[SNIP]
Cotinine is a metabolite of nicotine, and serum cotinine levels track exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in people who do not smoke. Higher cotinine levels indicate more exposure to ETS, which is a human carcinogen (cancer-causing agent). Serum cotinine data for the U.S. population are available for 1988–1991 from previous work at CDC, and with this Third Report, data are now available for 1999–2002. From 1988–1991 to 1999–2002, median cotinine levels in nonsmokers decreased 68% for children, 69% for adolescents, and about 75% for adults.
Q White House officials have been very clear through their attorneys or through other leaks to make it known that it was essentially journalists who educated them about who Valerie Plame was, what she did, and her role in sending her husband to Niger. It has now come to light that in fact White House officials were aware, or at least had access to a State Department memo that the President's own Secretary of State at the time had with him when he was traveling on Air Force One to Africa, which indicated both who she was, what she did, and her role in the Niger trip. So did the White House, in fact, know about her through this memo, or not?The NYT:
At the same time in July 2003 that a C.I.A. operative's identity was exposed, two key White House officials who talked to journalists about the officer were also working closely together on a related underlying issue: whether President Bush was correct in suggesting earlier that year that Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear materials from Africa. . . .Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, were helping prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier.Bloomberg (via Think Progress):
Lewis “Scooter'’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity.Kos Diary:
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson. Novak, according to a source familiar with the matter, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor.
Olberman reporting that there will be a piece in WSJ tommorow stating that the Memo was marked "Top Secret", and that it was not to be shared with other nation's intellegence agencies, no matter how how friendly.So, let's get this straight. Rove and Libby saw the "top secret" memo, needed a hammer to question Joe Wilson, told Novak, Russert, Cooper, probably Miller, and maybe many others about Wilson's wife, and then told the grand jury under oath that, no, the journalists had told them. If the 2 of them worked together on this coverup lie, does that add a conspiracy count to the indictment?
(J)ust the other day the government released "America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2005." The news, which has received almost no coverage, is almost uniformly good. "Teen births are at an all-time low" despite Desperate Housewives. Illegal drug use is down. Smoking is flat after several years of decline. Alcohol consumption is flat. In 1993, for every 1,000 juveniles, 52 committed serious violent felonies. In 2003, the most recent for for which data is available, it was down to 15 offenders per 1,000. This despite the Grand Theft Auto series.Poverty is the obscenity too many children experience day and night, not gangsta rap and video games.
Liberals and conservatives alike "know" that our public school system is failing and only drastic changes can turn it around. Except they aren't failing; NAEP scores are up in both the short-term and long-term views. What has gone up in recent years is child poverty....
A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.
Investors exposed to oxytocin, a hormone commonly released during childbirth, breast feeding, and sexual activity, start acting like dupes in financial matters, says a study just published in Nature. Swiss-led researchers let test subjects play a simple trading game with real money. Those administered a dose of the hormone were twice as likely to overcome any fears of betrayal and display 'maximal trust level.' meaning they were more prone to being hosed by an opponentNotably, this study offers no explanation for my own investment foolishiness.
Roberts wrote that the Metro's mandatory arrest policy was not unconstitutional in part because it would not have been "regarded as an unlawful search or seizure under the common law when the Amendment was framed," that is, under the law as it stood in 1791. He described this inquiry as "the usual first step" in assessing Fourth Amendment cases, but really it is not. Instead, it is part of an approach to the law put forward by Justice Scalia, one that has been used inconsistently at best by the Supreme Court, garnering a clear majority's support in only one Fourth Amendment decision. It is an approach that would in essence freeze our rights as they were in 1791.Of all the "mistakes" George Jr. is unlikely to repeat from his father, a Souter-like screwup is at the top. Liberals hoping that his lack of a track record may hide a reasonable protection of our rights are falling right into his trap.
those who know Roberts say he, unlike Souter, is a reliable conservative who can be counted on to undermine if not immediately overturn liberal landmarks like abortion rights and affirmative action. Indicators of his true stripes cited by friends include: clerking for Rehnquist, membership in the Federalist Society, laboring in the Ronald Reagan White House counsel's office and at the Justice Department into the Bush years, working with Kenneth Starr among others, and even his lunchtime conversations at Hogan & Hartson. "He is as conservative as you can get," one friend puts it. In short, Roberts may combine the stealth appeal of Souter with the unwavering ideology of Scalia and Thomas.The Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Bush-appointed Rehnquist-successor will be a scary conservative quartet intact for maybe the next 15 + years. After Rehnquist, the next to go are likely to be Stevens and Ginsburg. If we don't start winning elections and soon, we're not much going to recognize our privacy or first amendment rights by the time 2020 comes around.
(I)f interpreting a document is to be a rational act, if its exercise is to have a goal and a way of assessing progress toward that goal, then it must have an object to aim at, and the only candidate for that object is the author's intention. What other candidate could there be?His books, "Is There a Text in this Class?", "There is No Such Thing as Free Speech", "The Trouble with Principle", "Doing what Comes Naturally", and "Professional Correctness" are all fascinating reads, if you're willing to rethink some of the cliches you have come to depend on as supporting (what you think are) your most deeply held principles. I'm glad to loan you my copy of any of them.
One answer to this question has been given by Justice Antonin Scalia and others under the rubric of "textualism." Textualists insist that what an interpreter seeks to establish is the meaning of the text as it exists apart from anyone's intention. According to Justice Scalia, it is what is "said," not what is "meant," that is "the object of our inquiry."
[SNIP]
Justice Scalia has it backwards: if you're not looking for what is meant, the notion of something being said or written is incoherent. Intention is not something added to language; it is what must already be assumed if what are otherwise mere physical phenomena are to be experienced as language. Intention comes first; language, and with it the possibility of meaning, second. And this means that there can be no "textualist" method, because there is no object - no text without writerly intention - to which would-be textualists could be faithful.
And if there is no object - no plain and lucid text to which interpreters could be faithful - neither is there an object to which interpreters could be unfaithful. Consequently, "judicial activism," usually defined as substituting one's preferred meaning in place of the meaning the text clearly encodes, becomes the name of a crime no one could possibly commit. After all, you can't override a meaning that isn't there.
Because of the way Christians have been portrayed in the media, and because of a few people who "represent" Christians in politics, the general population assumes we are all alike: we sit around singing together, we eat testaments, we love each other but not the environment, we condemn people who drink, we only listen to Christian music. These hilarious misconceptions have often made my affiliation with the Christian music business an incredibly interesting adventure.And, well, now that I've come to some new level of appreciation for her as a rebel (even though I have no idea what "eating testaments" is) I really can't go listening to her songs. I'm afraid it will ruin it. I know, that makes me a terrible person.
What would people be surprised to know about you?
I am a bit of a nut with a pretty goofy sense of humor. I'm also quite a rebel. A harmless one, but a rebel nonetheless.
Given that there are no interesting characters, no car chases or shoot-outs, no violently stirred emotions and no dramatic action, why is the C.S.I. series so riveting? What is it that grips us to the end of the episode, which is scarcely more than an elaborate crossword puzzle with human tissues in the place of clues? My guess is that the answer lies in the inner sanctum at the heart of all three series - the autopsy room. Here the victims surrender all that is left of their unique identities, revealing the wounds and medical anomalies that led to their demise. Once they have been dissected - their ribcages opened like suitcases, brains lifted from their craniums, tissues analysed into their basic components - they have nothing left, not even the faintest claim on existence.That's the next-to-last paragraph. If you want to read the haunting conclusion, and you should, then have a look at the whole thing. The review doesn't so much make me want to watch CSI (I've seen it maybe once), but it does make me want to read more JG. Anyone out there familiar enough with his work to make a non-Crash suggestion for where to go next?
Prescription is pointless, but recommendation is a good thing. Children need to be introduced to art, film and literature - and then make up their own minds. . . I do worry about exposing children to literature, films and theatre before they are ready - and I am particularly jumpy about violent films. But how do you decide when a child is 'ready' for a film? It is fascinatingly ambiguous. The extraordinary thing is that works of art - especially books - change according to age. A book read at 18, reread at 48, may seem entirely different. Age is part of what we bring to a work of art. . . .Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
One of my eight-year-old sons has just finished Pullman's Northern Lights. He didn't really understand it. But it gripped him. And he was incredibly proud to have read it. Maybe he will reread it one day. If he doesn't, he will have missed a fuller, more sophisticated pleasure. But I know I was right not to stop him. Children grow up by reading aspirationally - they don't need to understand everything. They unwrap the world this way. Last summer, my son Leo, 13, played Cobweb in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now, he knows the play off by heart - and while there are lines he does not understand, the language is in his head and will grow up with him.
It's okay, if you like dumb guy comedies, except that there's a gratuitously homophobic thread running through the movie that's kind of surprising for a movie made in 2005.
This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.Sadly, as fun as a Karl Rove perjury conviction would be, we're never going to get proper political justice for the more serious crime of fixing the facts to go to war.
So put aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that matters starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney. It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president went on to repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three speeches in August and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along the way the frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix.
The researchers enlisted 12 congregations of various Christian denominations, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists around the world to pray for some of the patients, giving them names, ages and descriptions of the illness. The researchers then divided the patients into four groups. The first quarter had people praying for them. The second quarter received a nontraditional treatment known as music, imagery and touch (MIT) therapy, which involved breathing techniques, soothing music, touch and other ways to relieve stress, such as calming mental images. The third group received both prayer and MIT, while the fourth received nothing.So, it can't hurt. And there's reason to believe that, like meditation or relaxation, it can be healthy for the person doing the praying. Not sure if that's ironic.
The researchers then followed all the patients for six months to see which patients suffered serious complications, were re-hospitalized or died from heart problems. Overall, there was no difference among the four groups, the researchers report in Saturday's issue of the Lancet medical journal.
I love alan alda, but I was wondering if you had any information about him being a real jerk in real life? Any articles or knowedge of people who have experienced negative encounters with the man? Thanks.Once, while Alan Alda and I were working together at a summer camp, we got one of the counselors so drunk he passed out, and Alda insisted we drive his limp body down to the bus station and prop him up on a bench next to some homeless people. I thought we should at least leave him some phone money in his pocket, but Alda was all like "no way! let him figure it out." He came back to camp the next afternoon and told us Jamie Farr had stopped by on a homeless run and helped him out with some clean clothes and a ride. I don't know if that makes Alda a "jerk" or just a practical joker, but that Jamie Farr is a saint. But if you know of any talk of Alda being a jerk, post it here and I will pass it along to this interested reader.
Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, refused yesterday to back off on his earlier statements connecting Boston's "liberalism" with the Roman Catholic Church pedophile scandal, saying that the city's "sexual license" and "sexual freedom" nurtured an environment where sexual abuse would occur. . . .Poll numbers at DailyKos today show Democratic candidate Robert Casey, Jr. ahead 50-39. If the good people of PA can't see straight on this one, after everything that has happened during Rick's 6-year term, there's no hope for any of us.
"I was just saying that there's an attitude that is very open to sexual freedom that is more predominant" in Boston, Santorum said yesterday. Reminded that the sexual abuse occurred across the country, Santorum said that "at the time [in 2002], there was an indication that there was more of a problem there" in Boston. . . .
US Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, called Santorum "a jerk" and pointed out that the senator tried to use the levers of the federal government to block the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, an act that Santorum likened to "execution." An autopsy found that Schiavo's brain was half the normal size and that she could not see anything.
"This is one of those people who claims to have had eye contact with a blind woman," Frank said.
the expiration of a temporary tax break that allowed companies to write off their investment in new equipment much more rapidly than normal.So, capital gains of the wealthy and corporate taxes on loan from last year kept us out of the range of record-setting obscene debt, instead frolicking openly in the arena of the merely obscene.
That tax break reduced revenue by about $61 billion in 2004, but it merely postponed taxes that companies would have to pay once their equipment was fully depreciated.
A senior White House official cautioned that it was too early to make definitive judgments about whether the tax cuts had fulfilled the promises of "supply side" economics, a Reagan era concept that posits a direct relationship between lower tax rates and faster economic growth.Ya think? Nice of them not to declare absolute victory.
The actions are those of a traitor. What is the difference between Robert Hanssen revealing key secret information for money to the Soviets and Karl Rove revealing it to the proliferators for political gain for the Republican Party and the Bush White House? Both are traitors who traded secrets for gain.Via Truthout
A man who would do what Rove did should not be in the White House in any capacity.
Q [Ed] Does the White House have a credibility problem?
MR. McCLELLAN: Ed, these are all questions that you're bringing up in the context of an investigation that is ongoing --
Q [Ed] I'm not asking about that.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, it's clear that this is coming up in the context of news --
Q [Ed]We could talk about WMDs, a whole range of issues.
MR. McCLELLAN: -- in the context of news reports. And I appreciate those questions. And I think you're trying to get at the specific news reports and wanting me to comment on those specific news reports and --
Q [John] But they're news reports that have been confirmed by Karl Rove's attorney, Scott.
MR. McCLELLAN: John, you can keep jumping in, but I'm going to try to keep going to other people in this room, as well. And we can have constructive dialogue here, I think, but that's not the way to do it.
Q [John] It's not my job to have a constructive dialogue, Scott. Sorry.
[A Canadian store] slipped up and sold 14 copies before realizing its mistake.We're not dealing with nuclear secrets here (or the identity of undercover CIA operatives)--it's a children's book. I haven't read any of them, but what kind of secrets can it have that necessitate unsuspecting shoppers get a court order?
"It was an inadvertent error on behalf of one of our staff," said Geoff Wilson, a spokesman for the Real Canadian Superstore. He said the books were quickly removed.
Justice Kristi Gill last Saturday ordered customers not to talk about the book, copy it, sell it or even read it before it is officially released at 12:01 a.m. July 16.
The order also compels them to return the novel to the publisher, Raincoast Book Distribution Ltd., until the official release.
I'm hearing that Rehnquist announces between 10 and noon tomorrow morning. Oh, lordy, the summer just got complicated.This would be a disaster:
In the last half hour the new rumor that is keeping political geeks awake: Rehnquist and Stevens resign tomorrow.Dear Almighty Deity, go ahead and send the bird flu now. Love, Article 19.
Dr. Shigeru Omi of the World Health Organization said at the opening of a three-day UN conference on bird flu that the virus has "tightened its grip" on the region and is capable of springing major surprises.Does the public even have a clue how influenza viruses are passed? How best to protect ourselves once human contagion is confirmed? What signs to look for that would indicate we are infected? What to do after that if we start showing those signs? I starve a fever, and feed a cold (I think...) but what the hell do I do when the hospitals are overflowing, the nurses are all sick, and I'm paralyzed by fever and pain and blood is coming out of my ears?
"We believe we are at the tipping point. Either we reverse this trend or things will get out of hand," Omi said. "We must have an all-out war against this virus."
Along with the boom of rockets and crackle of firecrackers, the sounds of the Fourth of July include the brassy flourishes and drum-poundings of Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is playing it today at City Hall Plaza, along with Copland's Outdoor Overture. The composer's Lincoln Portrait and Billy the Kid Suite are being performed this weekend by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.The piece points out that Copland's work was recently featured in a US Army promotion...
More than half a century on, and 15 years after Copland's death, these works still define a distinctively American sound. Rodeo even backs James Garner's growl, "Beef. It's what's for dinner." It's hard to imagine a movie about the American West without music inspired by Copland's wide-open sonorities. Copland's scores are part of our national mythology. Their wide-eyed clarity and tunefulness radiate working-class idealism and traditional family values.
Ironically, these celebrations of outdoorsy, big-sky Americana, and of WASP home and hearth, were created by a homosexual Jew from Brooklyn....Copland was one of a group of composers who, starting in the 1930s, cultivated a new nationalist – or at least populist modernist – style. And most of them were gay, including Virgil Thomson, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, David Diamond, Lou Harrison, Paul Bowles, Marc Blitzstein and Ned Rorem....By contrast, most of the pricklier modernists, including Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions, were straight.
I guess we now get to relax for another twenty years until we again notice that Africa remains in utter poverty and we all get together to do it again.That sounds about right to me. But I hope we're both wrong.
[C]omments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general.I guess we can put Ms. Shields in the category of people, like Matt Lauer, who don't know "the history of psychiatry" like Tom does. He's teetering on the edge of some real serious celebrity weirdness, let alone the stupidity.
If any good can come of Mr. Cruise's ridiculous rant, let's hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious disease. Perhaps now is the time to call on doctors, particularly obstetricians and pediatricians, to screen for postpartum depression.
