Daily Archives: Tuesday, 20051115
who are you and what do you look like?
Reply to this entry by posting a picture of yourself in the comments, then post this sentence in your own journal:
You do the Hokey-Kokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about
You put your whole self in,
You put your whole self out;
You put your whole self in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the Hokey-Kokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about
(in honour of simon, who teaches everyone that it’s "Hokey-Kokey")
250
after i decided to update, but before i even got to write anything, i was interrupted by spam. i wonder how many times that’s going to happen this evening?
i have a new avatar, which is also a piece of jewelry – approximately life size – which is currently in my ear, but not permanently… it’s only 4 gauge, and i’m shooting for 0 gauge, because there’s a plug at laughing buddha (micro$not and flash required to view) that i really want…
i got email from josh today about Drunk Puppet Night… apparently the venue that we’re used to, the Re-Bar, has been sold, and the new owners are art snobs and apparently don’t go for the kind of art we do, so DPN6 has been put off until late february or early march, and the new venue is in columbia city somewhere… i’ve heard of it, but i’ve never actually been there. and i still want to produce a frank-zappa-related puppet show, but probably not this year.
three more spams… 8/
also, i got email from simon about the upcoming moisture festival benefit, which will feature, among other things, the Fremont Players’ version of Babes In The Wood, and the Fremont Philharmonic. more details as they come in.
$3 billion planned for viewers to buy digital converters
By William Neikirk
Tribune senior correspondent
Published November 12, 20051
WASHINGTON — While considering slashes in Medicaid and student loan programs, Congress is about to set aside up to $3 billion to help millions of Americans with old non-digital television sets buy converter boxes.
Each converter box is expected to cost the government $40 to $60, but supporters of the legislation don’t want to take any chances of being accused of denying Americans their right to a TV picture when broadcasting goes all digital.
Depending on how much money is allocated, the funding would go to purchase as many as 60 million “set-top” electronic boxes to make it possible for old, broadcast-only TV sets to continue receiving a picture when the broadcasting industry converts to all-digital transmission as soon as the end of 2008. Conservative groups have criticized the proposed expenditure as a giveaway, but the TV provision has received less attention because it is included in deficit-reduction legislation that has generated an uproar in the House for its spending reductions in programs affecting the poor, such as Medicaid and food stamps.
The GOP leadership yanked the budget bill from the floor on Thursday because leaders had failed to gather enough votes to pass it, and its outlook is now uncertain. Some of the House’s spending cuts could be killed to make the bill more palatable, but there is no indication that the television provision is in jeopardy. The Senate has already passed its budget measure.
James Gatusso, a technology expert at the Heritage Foundation, called it “a subsidy for old TV sets,” and not the wisest use of federal money at a time of large deficits.
Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget-watchdog group, said that helping poor people buy converter boxes appears justified, but he added: “When the government subsidizes anything, it usually goes to people who don’t need it. I suspect that will be the case here.”
The money would be doled out without regard to income, though families that have broadcast-only sets tend to be poorer, industry officials said.
Both the House and Senate bills would require the industry to convert to all-digital broadcasting by a specific date–on Dec. 31, 2008, in the House bill and April 7, 2009, in the Senate measure. Old analog, or non-digital, sets could not receive a picture unless they are hooked to a cable or satellite system.
These provisions created some controversy, but nowhere near the uproar over proposed cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and student loan programs as well as tax cuts. One reason is that the government would take over the broadcasting spectrum and auction it off to private companies, raising $10 billion to $28 billion.
Rather than risk an uproar by millions of Americans, including an estimated 21 million households that have only non-digital sets, lawmakers decided to pre-empt the complaints with a purchase plan similar to one tried recently in Berlin.
“The potential for consumer outrage over one day waking up and finding out that you are simply incapable of receiving local news, information about a hurricane or tornado alert, or entertainment programs, is enormous,” said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters.
Some conservative groups have criticized the proposed expenditure as excessive and unnecessary, complaining that it subsidizes old technology and amounts to little more than a government giveaway.
“I think it’s way too much,” said Gatusso, the Heritage Foundation analyst. He said neither bill requires people to reveal whether they have a cable or satellite hookup, and that subsidies would go to people who have extra broadcast-only TVs in bedrooms or dens.
“It certainly has elements of paying a bribe, but oftentimes paying a bribe is the better part of deficit reduction,” countered Barry Bosworth, a Brookings Institution economist. “By making this payment, they [Congress] will free up a spectrum that can be sold for money.”
There is big money to be made in the transition from analog to digital television, Gatusso said, adding that many companies have their eye on buying some of the spectrum so they can offer new wireless and broadband services. That will be the biggest corporate payoff, he said.
But two electronics firms, LG Electronics Inc. (which has Zenith as a subsidiary) and Thomson SA have been selected by the broadcasting industry to develop “high-quality, low-cost” prototype electronic boxes for manufacturers.
Congress has been debating the conversion to all-digital broadcasting for years, and now the industry offers both a digital signal and an analog signal, which has been in use since the first U.S. telecast in the late 1920s. But GOP leaders decided this year that it was time to set a hard date for the conversion, and then soften the financial impact by buying the converters for analog sets.
The House plan authorizes spending $990 million so the government can issue $40 coupons (a $10 co-pay would be required) to buy converter boxes, while the Senate authorizes $3 billion for a purchasing program with unspecified details as to how the money would be distributed. The House bill would limit the number of coupons per household to two.
Wharton said there are 73 million non-digital TV sets in the U.S. not hooked to cable or satellite. About 45 million of these are in 21 million households with no digital or satellite connections, he said, and many of those are low-income people. But Congress rejected limiting the subsidy to low-income families on grounds that it would be too difficult to administer.
Gatusso said the cost estimate has grown dramatically in the past year. When such legislation was considered a year ago, the estimate for buying converter boxes was as low as $100 million, only to jump as high as $3 billion in the Senate bill. “It is just astonishing,” he said. “It really is a classic example of foot-in-the-door spending.”
But Bosworth wasn’t as upset at the spending. “I would argue that it is a small price to pay,” he said, adding that one of the hallmarks of American government is that it “tries to protect the losers instead of picking winners.”
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), one of the GOP moderates who protested provisions in the deficit-reduction act, had high praise for the television subsidy. “The economic development aspects of this bill are vastly understated,” he said.
The spectrum now in the hands of broadcasters will help launch a new wave of wireless and broadband businesses that enable the U.S. to better compete with Asia, he said.
By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska – President Bush escalated the bitter debate over the Iraq war on Monday, hurling back at Democratic critics the worries they once expressed that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat to the world.
“They spoke the truth then and they’re speaking politics now,” Bush charged.
Bush went on the attack after Democrats accused the president of manipulating and withholding some pre-war intelligence and misleading Americans about the rationale for war.
“Some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past,” Bush said. “They’re playing politics with this issue and they are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. That is irresponsible.”
The president spoke to cheering troops at this military base at a refueling stop for Air Force One on the first leg of an eight-day journey to Japan,
South Korea, China and Mongolia.
During the stopover, he also met privately with families of four slain service members.
After a Latin American trip with meager results earlier this month, the administration kept expectations low for Asia.
“I don’t think you’re going to see headline breakthroughs,” National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said on Air Force One. He dashed any prospect that Japan would lift its ban on American beef imports during Bush’s visit and said a dispute with China over trade and currency would remain an issue after the president returns home.
On Sunday, Hadley acknowledged “we were wrong” about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, but he insisted in a CNN interview that the president did not manipulate intelligence or mislead the American people.
Iraq and a host of other problems, from the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina to the indictment of a senior White House official in the CIA leak investigation, have taken a heavy toll on the president. Nearing the end of his fifth year in office, Bush has the lowest approval rating of his presidency and a majority of Americans say Bush is not honest and they disapprove of his handling of foreign policy and the war on terrorism. Heading for Asia, Bush hoped to improve his standing on the world stage.
“Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people,” Bush said.
He quoted pre-war remarks by three senior Democrats as evidence of that Democrats had shared the administration’s fears that were the rationale for invading Iraq in 2003. Bush did not name them, but White House counselor Dan Bartlett filled in the blanks.
“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.” – Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
“The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as (Saddam Hussein) is in power.” – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
“Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the president’s approaching this in the right fashion.” – Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then the Democratic whip.
“The truth is that investigations of the intelligence on Iraq have concluded that only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world – and that person was Saddam Hussein,” Bush charged.
In the Senate, 29 Democrats voted with 48 Republicans for the war authorization measure in late 2002, including 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen.
John Kerry of Massachusetts, and his running mate, John Edwards of North Carolina. Both have recently been harshly critical of Bush’s conduct of the war and its aftermath.
On Capitol Hill, top Democrats stood their ground in claiming Bush misled Congress and the country. “The war in Iraq was and remains one of the great acts of misleading and deception in American history,” Kerry told a news conference.
Bush is expected to get a warmer welcome in Asia than he did earlier this month in Argentina at the Summit of the Americas, where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez led a protest against U.S. policies and Bush failed to gain support from the 34 nations attending for a hemisphere-wide free trade zone.
Japan, the first stop on Bush’s trip, and Mongolia, the last, are likely to give him the most enthusiastic response, while China and South Korea probably will be cooler but respectful.
In South Korea, Bush also will attend the Asia Pacific Economic Conference summit in Busan, where 21 member states are expected to agree to support global free-trade talks. The summit also is expected to agree to put early-warning and information-sharing systems in place in case of bird flu outbreaks.
“It is good for the president to show up in Asia and say, `We care about Asia,’ because that is in doubt in the region,” said Ed Lincoln, senior fellow in Asia and Economic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
At Bush’s first stop, in Kyoto, Japan, the president will deliver what aides bill as the speech of the trip on the power of democracy, not only to better individual lives but contribute to the long-term prosperity of nations.
Robin Lloyd
Thu Nov 3,10:00 AM ET
PITTSBURGH – Anger is good for you, as long as you keep it below a boil, according to new psychology research based on face reading.
People who respond to stressful situations with short-term anger or indignation have a sense of control and optimism that lacks in those who respond with fear.
“These are the most exciting data I’ve ever collected,” Carnegie Mellon psychologist Jennifer Lerner told a gathering of science writers here last month.
Lerner harassed 92 UCLA students by having experimenters ask subjects to count backward on camera by 13s starting with an odd number like 6,233, telling them it was an intelligence test and then telling them they weren’t counting fast enough and to speed it up as they went along.
Wrong answers meant subjects had to start all over again.
Another test involved counting backwards by sevens from 9,095.
So angry …
The video cameras caught subjects’ facial expressions during the tests, ranging from deer-in-the-headlights to seriously upset. The researchers identified fear, anger and disgust using a psychologist’s coding system that considers the flexing of particular sets of small muscles in the face.
The researchers also recorded people’s blood pressure, pulse and secretion of a high-stress hormone called cortisol, which can be measured in the saliva and collected with a cotton swab.
The people whose faces showed more fear during the had higher blood pressure and higher levels of the hormone. The findings were the same for men and women.
Lerner previously studied Americans’ emotional response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks two months afterward and found that anger triggers feelings of certainty and control. People who reacted with anger were more optimistic about risk and more likely to favor an aggressive response to terrorism.
Go ahead, get angry
So in maddening situations in which anger or indignation are justified, anger is not a bad idea, the thinking goes. In fact, it’s adaptive, Lerner says, and it’s a healthier response than fear.
Chronic, explosive anger or a hostile outlook on the world is still bad for you, contributing to heart disease and high blood pressure, research shows.
The new research supports the idea that humans have more than one uniform response to stress and that fear and anger provoke different responses from our nervous systems and the parts of our brain, such as the pituitary, that deal with tough situations.
The results were published in a recent issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry.
Reuters
Sunday, November 13, 2005; 10:31 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) – Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of U.S. President George W. Bush, ruled out running for president in 2008 but left open the possibility of a subsequent bid in an interview with a German magazine published on Sunday.
Jeb Bush, who is scheduled to visit Germany this week, told Focus weekly he had not thought much about running for the office held by his father and older brother except to rule out the next election at the end of George W. Bush’s second term.
“You should never say never. But for the 2008 election, my answer is definitely no,” he said, in comments translated into German by the magazine.
Asked whether his answer meant a later challenge was possible, he said: “Let’s say there’s a vague chance.”
Bush, 52, said he spoke frequently with his brother and visited the White House whenever he was in Washington but he said the two mainly discussed family matters or sport.
i keep thinking that it’s just about over, and today someone reminded me that we’ve got 3 more years of that twerp… and if his brother even thinks about running for the white house it will be a sad day indeed for this country… 8/
so this is what a meme is…
another spam…
and speaking of spam, i’ve seen the “SARE_*” rules in SpamAssassin, but i’ve never known what SARE is… until now…