November 22, 2008

“Count on Bush to try to pardon the unpardonable—Like Karl Rove, Harriet Myers and others with whom he likely conspired to thwart the rule of law…James Madison, ”the father of the Constitution”, argued. ‘(If) the President be connected in any suspicious manner, with any person and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him’

                –Sarah H. Arnold in The Nation

THOSE FAMILIAR DOT com and dot org addresses will begin to seem old-fashioned later next year when the Assigned Names and Numbers section of the Internet Corp. starts allowing people whatever domain names they want. “Everything from ‘soup’ to ‘nuts’ explains Forbes in a story amusingly headed Um.whatever.  The mag predicts it will force companies to register every possible variation on their Web brands before cyber squatters try to shake them down. The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (bet you never heard that group before!) estimates the cost of such defenses will run to $1.6 billion.

WHY SHOULD AIRLINES be charging for overweight baggage without taking into account the (over)weight of some of the passengers? asks a reader of the Independent. He claims that it’s unfair for passengers to all pay the same price for tickets, as long as there’s a surcharge for baggage. “The present pricing structure”, he complains,  “amounts to a subsidy of the obese by the healthy”.

EVEN THE QUEEN of England is eschewing new clothes in these recessionary times, it’s reported, making do with recycling her (huge) wardrobe, But London mayor Boris Johnson thinks she is not setting a good example. “This is not the moment for dowdiness and self-sufficiency” he writes in the Daily Telegraph. “This is the moment for a life-affirming splurge”.

NEW WAYS OF CREATING biofuels are clearly going to be an endless source of stories, many of them centering around the hitherto-unappreciated value of nasty, little bugs. Now it’s the turn of e-coli which apparently can be mixed with sugarcane in vats of water, producing what Popular Science calls “the same hydrocarbon configuration as petroleum”. This is the work of a San Francisco company called L59 which says the product, which can be skimmed off the top and poured right into a car’s gas tank, will be mass produced by 2011.

ALTHOUGH WIDELY USED for buying from vending machines or purchasing train tickets in Japan, cell phones have not taken off to that extent in the U.S. But a recent experiment by San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), was successful enough to give impetus to the trend, writes Stores columnist Tracy Mullin, who is CEO of the National Retail Federation. As it costs BART six cents to process every dollar bill taken in, cell phone payments could save substantial sums.

SPURRED BY THE FACT that there are twice as many slaves in the world today as when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, musician Justin Dillon and Fair Trade Pictures have produced a documentary, Call + Response  which investigates the trafficking in human labor which reportedly involves 27 million adults and children. It is a business said to be worth $32 billion a year. Dillon says he aims to jolt the public from its “obliviousness (and/or) despair” and have them actually take a stand. “Awareness is a 90s word” he declares. “It’s now about action”.

PERENNIALLY LISTED  among America’s top half-dozen novelists, Cormac McCarthy was the winner of a McArthur ‘genius’ award and won the Pulitzer prize last year for his novel, The Road. This year, the movie from  his book, No Country for Old Men, won four Academy Awards, inevitably reviving criticisms of his ‘excessive’ use of violence. But the 75-year-old author answered this accusation many years ago. “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed” he explained. “I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everybody would live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your lie vacuous”.

THE WILCOCK WEB: If people can’t afford to buy cars, how does it help to give the auto makers billions of dollars?….. Columnist Thomas Friedman suggested Steve Jobs should be invited to run one of the auto companies, bringing the sort of innovation the companies seem incapable of implementing…..Rumors abound that a new administration will reintroduce broadcasting’s old Fairness Doctrine which would oblige stations to balance rants from the likes of Rush Limbaugh with opposite views, are now said to be unlikely…. Overheard: “I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but he turned out to be an optical Aleutian”…... Don't bigamists and polygamists have an equal right to have the marriage laws rearranged to their preference?....University of Alabama scientists have devised a spray which allows flowers to survive lower temperatures. This, they predict, could allow bananas to be grown 200 miles further north…. After wasting billions while continuing to counter growing opposition, the proponents of stuffing nuclear waste under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, are now trying to digest the fact that the site “does not meet the international standards for a repository” says the NYT… Affluent home-owners in the gated Parisian community of Villa Montgomery are protesting in the streets about a plan to build low-income housing near to their exclusive community….Coming soon to cable: The Ski Channel…. Inspired by Oxford University research demonstrating that potato chips eaten to the sound of loud crunching taste better, chef Heston Blumenthal plays “seaside sounds” when he serves oysters… Fortune carried a story about a French watchmaker named Richard Mille whose wares sell for $525,000. Doubt that we’d shed many tears for a man who was mugged while wearing one… Importing the idea from Australia, British pubs may start selling ‘schooners’ of beer (2/3rds of a pint) for drinkers who think a pint is too much… Those insanely exorbitant hourly rates charged by lawyers may start being replaced by flat fees if unemployment keeps spreading in the legal profession predicts a top legal eagle….. “Tough times don’t last, tough people do. remember?--Gregory Peck (1916-2003)

11/15/08

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