October 4, 2004 Vol. 6, No. 40

Table of Contents:

General News

Computer Industry News

Humor

Movies

Letters

General News

Six Years Later

(A reprint of my annual anniversary item, with small adjustments).

As of Oct. 16, it's been six years since fury at the Clinton impeachment drove me to write this weekly blog--an impeachment, we now find out, that even Republicans didn't want, but was forced on the nation by Dick "The Hammer" Armey. Anyway, I either had to start a column or check into the booby hatch. PSACOT gave me a forum in which to express, to an audience (no matter how small) my feelings about that political circus. It has since evolved into a combination of diary for me and my family and bulletin board for my clever friends--in short, a personal column. Like, but not as good as, former San Francisco Chronicle columnist Adair Lara or ongoing columnist Jon Carroll. Or, to take a national example, former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen, the mother of the personal column concept (even though Stanton Delaplane and Charles McCabe of the San Francisco Chronicle actually beat her to it).

PSACOT is also a revival of sorts. I don't believe anyone who reads this column except Peter Peckarsky would remember the original P.S. A Column On Things, which ran in ERGO, MIT's objectivist newspaper from September 1970 to March 1971, and The Tech, MIT's semi-official student newspaper, from March 1971 to May 1971. Those were among my happiest days as a journalist. If I had truly understood the fulfillment a personal column gave me, perhaps I would have fought harder to keep it, or revived it when I became editor-in-chief two years later, or tried to practice the craft (and become the father of the personal column).

Ironically, this column, born in a political circus, celebrates its sixth anniversary during another political circus. I am as passionate about this one as I was the impeachment.

Bush running for his first election to the presidency (October surprise, here we come) has roots that extend to the right-wing, Republican conspiracy to overturn elections they cannot win fair and square, or to change the rules in the middle of the game. That conspiracy now includes the 1996 presidential election (impeachment), the 2000 election (fraud and illicit Supreme Court chicanery), redistricting in Texas and Colorado (not the way the game has been played for 230 or so years), the 2002 California Gubernatorial election and, now, the 2004 election. See a pattern?

Still, I expect you'll read as much or more about Marlow and Rae and their doings, and my classroom, as you will about politics in this forum. Maybe I'm just mellowing with age.

Headline

Marlow in The Netherlands

Marlow is in The Netherlands right now, at Leiden University, working on her degree in International Relations. Here's what's new from her:

So I did end up going to Amsterdam Saturday for the demonstration on the Museumplein. There were three main unions represented. The attendance was over 200,000 making it the fourth largest protest in the Netherlands, ever. It comes over some anti-nuclear protests in the eighties and another labor protest last decade. Since the main issue on the table had to do with retirement and pension the average age of the crowd was older than I'm used to seeing at demonstrations, and of course a little more subdued as a result. There were people drinking and smoking in the crowd, but mainly there was music and speeches by the labor leaders.

This whole weekend is an extended October 3rd holiday. October 3rd is the anniversary of the day that William of Orange freed Leiden from the Spanish siege that had almost starved all the residents of the city (many others died of the plague). I ate some herring... The desserts are all really good, but mostly that's because they're fried, have lots of butter, or have lots of powdered sugar. The rides all looked pretty familiar from other amusement parks and fairs. The real day of celebration is supposed to be Monday, since you can't celebrate on a Sunday, and everyone wanted a day off from school anyway.

How Big Is The Coalition

The Bush-Cheney exaggerations about the Coalition of the Bribed and Coerced (John Kerry was right, even if he does have to back off for political reasons), aka the Coalition of the Willing, are so wild as to amount to effective lying. They speak over and over of the number of nations involved.

See Bush exaggerating size of coalition, experts say 34 nations provided troops in first war, by Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post.

I decided to do some original research, because I felt sure the Gulf War coalition member nations represented more population than the Iraq War coalition--making it a bigger and more important coalition. I was right.

Gulf War I members: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.

Talk about complicated sourcing! The Gulf War I list came from The Associated Press, January 21, 2003: A war in Iraq would focus on Saddam Hussein as the 'center of gravity', By Richard Pyle, Associated Press Writer. He, in turn, cites "Contributions to the Multinational Coalition," The Middle East, 8th ed. (Washington, D.C.; Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1994).

Iraq War members: Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, USA.

The Iraq War list came from Coalition of the Willing List, Map and Troop Numbers, a great page that slices and dices the numbers several ways.

These population totals are based on 2002 U.S. Census Bureau estimates of world population. You can see my worksheets for Gulf War and Iraq War.

Gulf War Allies: population 1,326,835,000 people. Iraq War allies: population 992,349. There are lots of ways to measure an alliance; by number of troops (Gulf War swamps Iraq War), by dollars (Gulf War: paid in full. Iraq War: We're on our own) and by population of the members. By that yardstick, this is a 25% smaller coalition. The administration's deceptive use of "number of countries in coalition" is just that--deceptive. For the Gulf War we had 30+ large countries with us. For Iraq, we had 30+ small countries. (Note that I gave Iraq the benefit of the doubt by including several countries that have since dropped out).

Feel free to share the URL of this original research with your friends.

Political Notes

Shorts:

***

PSALM 2004
Bush is my shepherd, I shall be in want.
He maketh me lie down on park benches.
He leadeth me beside the still factories,
He restores my doubts about the Republican Party.
He leadeth me into the paths of unemployment for his cronies' sake.
Yea, though no weapons of mass destruction have been found, he
maketh me continue to fear evil.
His tax cuts for the rich and his deficit spending discomfort me.
He anointeth me with never-ending debt.
Verily my days of savings and assets are kaput.
Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me all the days of his
administration,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

Computer Industry News

Craig Reynolds' Technobriefs

Humor

Headline

Movies

Dirty Shame

I have seen most of John Water's movies from the last 20 years;

And Ursula Andress, the great actress from the 60s for whom Ursula Udders is named in the film, is 68 this year. That's just frightening.

Shaun Of The Dead

Funny. Hysterically funny. Laugh out loud funny. I really don't know how the British do it. Mind-bogglingly bloody and horrible as well, but really, really funny. Kudos to writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, and to Wright again as director. If you think it is time the horror genre was sent up, way up, this is the movie for you. A great cameo by Bill Nighy, who played the dissolute rocker in last year's hysterically funny Love Actually, another British film.

These descriptions from IMDB are accurate:

Tagline: A romantic comedy. With zombies. (more)

Plot Outline: A man decides to turn his moribund life around by winning back his ex-girlfriend, reconciling his relationship with his mother and dealing with an entire community that has returned from the dead to eat the living.

Letters

Headline