Open Directory - Computers: Robotics: "A comprehensive collection of content, community, and tools available on the subject of Mobile Robotics.
AceUplink - Offers information, forums, tutorials and downloads. Includes a wide range of content, but with a particular bias towards robotic simulation games.
Android World - Lots of information on androids and specific android projects.
Animatronics.org - Pictures, movies and information about animatronics. Includes information on the mechanics, electronics, and programming of modern animtronic systems.
BBC Robot World - Offers news, reviews and history of robots, as well as robot building guides and a discussion forum.
Boilerplate - A Victorian-era robot, his story and pictures. A 1/6 scale replica stands over 12' high and has articulated limbs, illuminating 'eyes,' and wind-up 'guts'. Very interesting.
Channel 4 - Robots - The tie-in page to the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, shown on Channel 4 in the UK. Includes a virtual robot constructor, where you can design and test a robot visually.
CompInfo - Robotics - A huge directory of robotics sites.
Cybug-Space - Educational products including digital logic trainers and insect-like robots.
Georgia Tech MARS - The Georgia Tech branch of MARS involves multi-level learning in hybrid deliberative/reactive mobile robot architectural software systems.
The Handy Board - 6811-based microcontroller system that lets you build mobile robots for educational, hobbyist, and industrial purposes. Used to run robot design courses and competitions at the university and high school level.
The Honda Humanoid Robot - Information about Honda's Humanoid Robot.
How Stuff Works - The Singing Fish - Photographed autopsy of the popular singing fish novelty fad reveals its robotic-like subsystems with complete informative descrip"

David Limbaugh: Liberals in denial: " Because conservatives, according to Hertzberg, thrive on hate. 'For the radiocon audience, political hate (beg ITAL) is comedy and drama. To their ears, it's music"

WhiteHouseforSale.org | Home Page: "The vehicle of choice in this part of Texas is the pickup truck. But the gravel parking lot of the Crawford Community Center on Saturday looked like the showroom of a luxury car dealer. Rows of Mercedes, Jaguars, Lexuses and Cadillacs -- at least one bearing the license plates of a Texas state official -- were lined up out front. Party-going Pioneers and Rangers were escorted onto shuttle buses, which drove them out to the Broken Spoke Ranch."

Dean tapped into pure hatred by rank-and-file Democrats of the reigning Republican: "He has tapped into pure hatred by rank-and-file Democrats of the reigning Republican that I have never seen in 44 years of campaign watching. Not Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or even Bill Clinton generated such animosity"

What makes Dean so distasteful to his Democratic detractors is that he is not part of the establishment and unlikely ever to become part of it. The native New Yorker has become a flinty Vermonter, looking a little like a Calvin Coolidge of the left.

This ''he can't win'' argument did not stop Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter from being nominated, and the last two actually were elected. The party faithful liked the purity of those candidates and did not care about electability, and the same might be proved true of the Anti-Bush.

Web surfing could get 'disorder' classification - 2003-08-06 - The Business Journal of Tampa Bay: "In the journal 'Depression and Anxiety,' UF psychiatrists propose criteria for establishing a disorder marked by extreme Web surfing, e-mailing or other online time.
In separate studies, researchers found people who spent more than 30 hours a week online"

Problematic use would be described as impulse control impairment not attributed to another known disorder,

Daily Kos: Political analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation: "But the killing is significant. We have now officially lost more people after Bush's 'mission accomplished' speech than before. The total is now 257 Americans lost, and 301 if you include the Brits.
53 Americans have been killed since Bush's 'bring them on' moment.
And military families are now organizing against Bush"

Soros has pulled together a coalition of labor, environmental, and women's organizations and will help fund a $75 million effort to oust Bush. The money will be spent in 17 states

Bush Misuses Science, Report Says (washingtonpost.com): "'The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists,' "

An editor at Science, for example, recently said in print that the administration was injecting politics into arenas of science "once immune to this kind of manipulation."

And the editors of the Lancet noted "growing evidence of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific] panels on the basis of their political or religious opinions" and warned against "any further right-wing incursions" on those panels

Bush has appointed to key scientific advisory committees numerous people with political, rather than scientific, credentials. For example, his appointee to a presidential AIDS advisory committee, marketing consultant Jerry Thacker, has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" and referred to AIDS as the "gay plague."

Liberal legal elite plans comeback: "She also said Bush officials were undoing �the logic of evidence � they have created this evidence-free zone we�re now inhabiting in Washington,� an apparent reference to Bush�s justification for war with Iraq. (Clinton voted for last October�s congressional resolution authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq.)
Bush administration officials, Clinton warned, are �focused and relentless and absolutely undeterrable.� She added, �If the American public really understood much of this administration�s agenda, they would reject it.�"

“a Who’s Who of people working toward causes I care about, using the law to advance causes that I think are important.”

Despair of the Jobless: "'since the business cycle expansion began in November 2001, payrolls have contracted by 1 million (1.2 million in the private sector), making this the weakest recovery in terms of employment since the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] began tracking monthly data in 1939.'"

There is not even a sense of urgency.

The simple truth is that the interests of the Bush administration's primary constituency, corporate America, do not coincide with the fundamental interests of workaday Americans.

Salt of the Earth: "Here's Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma: 'Could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.'"

His handlers hope that the images will protect him from awkward questions about his actual polluter-friendly policies and, most important, his refusal to face up to politically inconvenient environmental dangers.

So here's the question: will we avoid the fate of past civilizations that destroyed their environments, and hence themselves? And the answer is: not if Mr. Bush can help it

Yahoo! News - Antidepressants Grow New Brain Cells - U.S. Study: "depression can shrink the hippocampus, a brain region crucial to learning and memory but only recently found to be involved in depression. Major stress and trauma -- both depression triggers -- can also cause the shrinkage.
'We have known that antidepressants influence the birth of neurons in the hippocampus."

To make sure that the new brain cells in the hippocampus was the source of the lifted depression, Hen and colleagues at Yale University and in France worked with genetically engineered mice, using X-rays to kill newly growing cells in the hippocampus.


These mice did not respond as they normally would to antidepressants. Mice which were given fluoxetine, an antidepressant sold under the brand-name Prozac by Eli Lilly and Co., and were then given X-rays did not resume grooming as would be expected.


Mice who received no X-rays and were killed after being dosed for 11 or 28 days with fluoxetine showed significant growth of new brain cells.

A drug in a different class, the tricyclic imipramine, also stimulated the growth of neurons

Experts say that 16 percent of Americans -- more than 30 million people -- will suffer major depression at some point in their lives.


The NIMH says major depression is now the No. 1 leading cause of disability around the world.

Yahoo! News - Debate Resumes on the Safety of Depression's Wonder Drugs: "
With S.S.R.I.'s now the most prescribed drugs for depression, it is easy to forget how high passions ran when the F.D.A. convened an expert panel in 1991 to weigh claims that Prozac and other S.S.R.I.'s may cause some patients to become suicidal. The panel's hearing in Bethesda, Md., was mobbed; its chairman wore a bulletproof vest"

Well I wanted to start a project at robots.net, but my certification is too low so I guess I'll start it here. Let's begin with a drawing

\ \ \
Well, this is going to take forever. I think I'll try something different

Create a new account

I first became interested in robots in 1974. I was taking a computer science courses, and I saw the cover of a magazine called Psychology Today. It had a picture of a robotic arm and talked about artificial intelligence. I became intensly interested in neural networks in the late eighties. I have experimented with some extremely rudimentary designs that have applied very simple mechanical principles. I am currently trying to come up with a simple design for a mechanical arm and hand. My purpose is to design and build something that can be easily and cheaply reproduced. My ultimate goal is to have this arm and hand be able to participate in the construction and maintaince of copies of itself. In this way I hope to get multiple robots interacting with each other. I realize that this is an rather unbelieveably ambitious project. I am trying to keep it reduced to its rawest essentials. Writing about it now does fill me with some degree of hopelessness. I think that it quite good for me however to be finally publically stating this as a goal.

Entropy Gradient Reversals - The Rise of the Stupid Network: "the Intelligent Network was a telephone company attempt to engineer vendor independence, more automatic operation, and some 'intelligent' new services into existing network architecture. However, even as it rolls out and matures, the Intelligent Network is being superseded by a Stupid Network,
with nothing but dumb transport in the middle, and intelligent user-controlled endpoints,
whose design is guided by plenty, not scarcity,
where transport is guided by the needs of the data, not the design assumptions of the network. "

kuro5hin.org || The rise of Stupid Everything: "If you build intelligence into your networks you are optimising them for a single purpose at the expense of their flexibility. Any gains you make from this optimisation will be overtaken by general gains in the medium term, leaving you behind in the long term as unexpected uses are found for more general networks"

CNN.com - Santa Fe lawbreakers sentenced to tai chi and tea - Aug. 6, 2003: "De Francis believes that some Asian traditions such as tai chi and tea ceremony teach people to find calmness in their thoughts and, 'find an inner opponent, rather than outer opponent, to do battle with.' "

Participants serve each other herbal tea with Kava Kava, a natural calming agent, and finish the class with an acupuncture treatment for relaxation.

The 43 Facial Muscles That Reveal: "Q. What are the basic human emotions?
A. There are seven that have very clear facial signals � anger, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt and happiness.
Q. Isn't love a basic human emotion?
A. Romantic and parental love are more enduring than emotions, though they are highly emotionally laden. I don't just feel happy with my daughter. Sometimes I'm worried, sometimes I'm surprised, and sometimes I might feel anger. It's an attachment, not a fleeting emotional state. A mood, by the way, is different still. It doesn't last as long as an attachment, though it can last for hours or even longer."

close observers who, without training, are able to spot subtle cues about concealed emotions that we call microexpressions. These are very fast intense expressions of concealed emotions that most people miss because they typically last less than a quarter of a second.

In a fake smile, only the zygomatic major muscle, which runs from the cheekbone to the corner of the lips, moves. In a real smile, the eyebrows and the skin between the upper eyelid and the eyebrow come down very slightly. The muscle involved is the orbicularis oculi, pars lateralis

Crucial to how we feel is being aware of how we are feeling in the moment. The sine qua non of that is to realize that you are being emotional in the first place. The earlier you recognize an emotion, the more choice you will have in dealing with it.

In Buddhist terms, it's recognizing the spark before the flame. In Western terms, it's trying to increase the gap between impulse and saying or doing something you might regret later.

The Probability That a Real-Estate Agent Is Cheating You (and Other Riddles of Modern Life): "In Levitt's view, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions. His particular gift is the ability to ask such questions. For instance: If drug dealers make so much money, why do they still live with their mothers? Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What really caused crime rates to plunge during the past decade? Do real-estate agents have their clients' best interests at heart? Why do black parents give their children names that may hurt their career prospects? Do schoolteachers cheat to meet high-stakes testing standards? Is sumo wrestling corrupt"

He is an intuitionist. He sifts through a pile of data to find a story that no one else had found. He devises a way to measure an effect that veteran economists had declared unmeasurable.

''Unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime.''

focusing very much on the issue of reverse causality,''

The problem was that his data couldn't tell him who was a good candidate and who wasn't. It was therefore impossible to tease out the effect of the money. As with the police/crime rate puzzle, he had to trick the data

''If you own a gun and have a swimming pool in the yard, the swimming pool is almost 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.''

Is black culture a cause of racial inequality or is it a consequence?

Everything Is Political: " agency's analysts find that they are no longer helping to formulate policy; instead, their job is to rationalize decisions that have already been made. And more and more, they find that they are expected to play up evidence, however weak, that seems to support the administration's case, while suppressing evidence that doesn't.
Am I describing the C.I.A.? The E.P.A.? The National Institutes of Health? Actually, I'm talking about the Treasury Department, but the ambiguity is no coincidence. Across the board, the Bush administration has politicized policy analys"

you ought to be worried about the decisions of an administration that systematically misleads itself. A leader who is told only what he wants to hear is all too likely to make bad decisions about the economy, the environment and beyond.

Creativity as an Ingredient of Madness: "'Follow a woman and she will flee,' he wrote on one. 'Flee a woman and she will follow you like a shadow.'"

Neocon Coup at the Department d'État: "7.) Ignore the real threat. While the neocons are preoccupying the country with Iraq and a coup at the department d'état, Al Qaeda may have blown up a Marriott in Indonesia and are plotting attacks here"

Slashdot | Will Humanoid Robots Take All the Jobs by 2050?: "I will make this prediction: by 2008, every meal in every fast food restaurant will be ordered from a kiosk like this, or from a similar system embedded in each table.

Yeah, I'm going to go with a no on this one. Everyone said the same thing when ATMs came around, 'Oh no, they're going to replace actual tellers!' But it didn't, banks still hire quite frequently for bank tellers."

Average number of Neurons in the human brain (excluding the cerebellum): 20.000.0000.0000
- Average number of connections per neuron: 1.000
Each neuron can perform about 200 calculations per second, per connexion.

So, we have 20.000.0000.0000 X 1.000 X 200 = 4.000 TeraOps

Think of all the cool personal service jobs that will be available in the robo-industrialists' homes. They have to have a way to spend all those robo-trillions in a way that shows their friends that they are HYPER-rich.

Reminds me of a book Player Piano [rosettabooks.com] by Kurt Vonnegut. It's a story about an America where machines control everything, and engineers and managers who design the machines are at the top of society. Most people either have to join the army or the Wreaks N' Wrecks (menial labor for little pay). Everybody's standards of living are high because the machines produce everthing they need, but everybody is miserable because they don't feel they have a purpose

The electronics Industry is so automated that the total world supply of CPU's is made by less than a thousand persons and that number drops every day

its quite amazing how we have coped for many hundreds of years, yet, in the next 20, we'll go belly-up.


We need to consider the possibility of symbiosis (sp?), or mutually beneficial pairing of humans and machines in order to survive this crisis. We can't get rid of machines, so we must incorporate them in our minds and bodies to keep from being overwhelmed by them

In a highly automated society it makes sense to have a high quality of life even for the unemployed (gasp! socialist!), which implies a decent social welfare system. It's either that, or concentrate the power of the economy in the hands of a few people, and write off the rest of the population as superfluous

Wired News: How Robots Will Steal Your Job: "But many techies who discussed Brain's essay on the geek site Slashdot found Brain's projections less than convincing. "

Another poster said that although it's common for futuristic fear-mongering to accompany the introduction of new technologies, people do manage to find new jobs to replace those that have been automated.

Robotic Nation, by Marshall Brain: "When a significant portion of the normal American population is permanently living in government welfare dormitories because of unemployment, what we will have is a third-world nation"- I hate Luddites, but they do get all the publicity. Can I prove them wrong? Not with words.

Persuaders or Partisans (washingtonpost.com): "As for intensity, Tomasky cites a Journal editorial soon after the Clintonites arrived in Washington, describing administration figures as 'pod people from a 'Star Trek' episode . . . genetically bred to inhabit the public sector.' "

Howard Dean's campaign chief, Joe Trippi, offered his man some very Zen-like advice, reports Roger Simon in U.S. News:

" 'I tell him the only way he can win is to believe in his heart he cannot win,' Trippi says. 'We've got to act like we have nothing to lose.' . . .

"Dean has his own complex feelings about Bush. 'I think we were all sort of hoodwinked by George Bush,' Dean says. 'Everything he said he was going to do in the campaign he did the opposite of. He is a divider, not a uniter, there is nothing compassionate about him or about his presidency, and he just couldn't give a damn about the American people.' Anger? What anger?"

In London's Sunday Times, Andrew Sullivan flirts -- ever so briefly -- with the Dean candidacy:

"It's hard not to root for him as a candidate. He feels alive; he seems fresh; he seems different. . . .

"Dean has also mastered the appearance at least of being a conviction politician. He is nationally most famous for backing the law in Vermont that granted gay couples identical benefits to straight married couples in a compromise called 'civil unions.' Far from running away from this, as other Democrats have done, Dean has defended it on simple equality grounds. And it doesn't seem to have hurt him much. . . .

"So where's the catch? In a word: national security. . . . When Baghdad was liberated, and Saddam removed from power, Dean came up with his most memorable line yet: 'I suppose it's a good thing.'

" 'I suppose.' How could anyone be that ambivalent about Saddam's removal? Even those who opposed the war acknowledge for the most part that Saddam was an evil monster. But for Dean, that huge humanitarian advance was balanced by dismay at a success for an administration he loathed. Of course, that naked partisanship is why he appeals

Daily Kos: Political analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation: "But what about the precedent?' argue the critics. Well, the precedent has been set. There's no going back. And rather than cry about the recall being illegal or undemocratic (it's neither -- it's valid state law), I'm learning the lessons.
Because the next time a Republican governor is elected, I plan on launching an immediate recall effort against that official. And I'm sure I won't be alone.
The GOP broke a seal that never should've been cracked, and they will get payback."

The Corner on National Review Online: "Partnership for a Drug-Free America prefers crude scaremongering to reasoned discussion.
Wait a minute. What am I saying? Of course that's what they prefer. They are drug warriors. "

TAPPED: August 2003 Archives: "Maybe one of Lieberman's high-priced consultants could sit him down and explain to him the fact that the Democrats are already in the political wilderness. And that they got there with him at the helm, as the vice presidential candidate in 2000. Yeah, yeah, we all know that Gore and Lieberman won the popular vote and if weren't for the Supreme Court . . . blah, blah, blah. Tapped sympathizes, really. But the fact of the matter is that you don't lose the game in the final play; that election was Gore and Lieberman's to lose and they lost it. Politically, it's not 1972; it's 1973. But things are actually worse this time around, because Nixon was a relatively liberal Republican and Bush is a conservative radical. Combined with the loss of the House in 1994 and of the Senate in 2000 and 2002, the situation facing the Dems in 2003 is much more dire than it was three decades ago, or even in 1992. No candidate who doesn't get this can win the Democratic nomination. It's not a question of avoiding the wilderness; it's a question of finding someone to lead Democrats out of it. Because they are already in there, and deep.
Posted at 10:55 AM"

GOING DOWN SWINGING. Tapped has long thought that Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) would be a better candidate if he'd stop droning sonorously and just run hard on his own record. So Tapped was intrigued to read over the weekend that Lieberman had decided to become the anti-Dean. Certainly, it's a great role for some candidate to take, especially in a race where everyone is running in ideological drag. After all, Dean is a moderate running as a liberal; Kerry is a liberal running as a moderate; Edwards is a conservative (for a Democrat) running as a moderate; and Lieberman is a moderate running as a conservative

To begin with, there's no evidence that the era of big government is actually over, and saying it doesn't make it so. Even Andrew Sullivan, in this great formulation from his blog, notes that "the difference between Republicans and Democrats right now is not between big and small government. It's between the Democrats' Big, Solvent Government and the Republicans' Big, Insolvent Government."

we are all fiscal conservatives now. The Democratic presidential candidates have been acknowledging this, with wonderment, for several months in their tours through conference rooms full of insiders -- but the transformation has yet to reach the level of conventional wisdom

If The New York Times or The Washington Post had been explicitly partisan papers, for instance, Tapped is convinced neither of President Bush's tax cuts would have passed Congress at the size they did. Debates over the effects of Bush's policies were covered not on empirical grounds but as "he said, she said" arguments. It was a national disgrace.

increasingly discontented libertarians at CATO who are busy blasting Bush for being "the most gratuitous big spender to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter. One could say that he has become the 'Mother of All Big Spenders.'"

ABCNEWS.com : Thousands Enslaved by Ireland's Catholic Church: "Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in 'moral danger' all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to 'wash away their sins.'
They were completely cut off from their families, and many lost touch with them forever.
Stripped of their identities, the girls were given numbers instead of names. They were forbidden to speak, except to pray. If they broke any rule or tried to escape, the nuns beat them over the head with heavy iron keys, put them into solitary confinement or shipped them off to a mental hospital.
Over a period of 150 years, an estimated 30,000 women were forced into this brutal penance, carried out in secret, behind high convent walls. "

ABCNEWS.com : Thieves Carry Off Man's Dream House: "Thieves made off with Miller's entire cottage, which nestled outside the town of El Dorado in rural Northern California. They took everything � the doors, the shingles, the plumbing, the toothbrush, the bed � everything.
'I drove down the road to where this place should have been and I looked down and there wasn't a house,' Miller said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. 'It's not a big house � just about 10 by 20 [feet]. And, you know, you're kind of amazed. You expect maybe you'll be robbed, but you don't expect somebody to come and take the house.'
They not only took the wooden house, they took a generator, a water tank and even pulled the wheels off a rusted-out 1972 pickup truck.
'You know, it's a great place up there in El Dorado County, in the Sierra foothills but there are some bad people,' said Miller, a retired engineer who lives in Berkeley.
The nearest neighbor to the vacation home lives about a mile away and didn't see anything, Miller said, but he has put up fliers all over the area asking 'Have you seen my house?'
He said that between the fliers and the media coverage the case has been receiving he has been starting to get calls from people who think maybe they have seen the house, and he is hopeful that he will get it back. "

ABCNEWS.com : Fighting Cancer With Companionship: "a new study at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where researchers worked with men and their partners, teaching couples meditation techniques and developing special diets. They hope to prove that these factors can help control the disease"

The couples also practice meditation, which not only makes the dietary change easier to handle, but also helps with the stress of "living with" cancer.

"They felt better about themselves, they were less anxious, depression levels went down," said Carmody. "That's good for their health and perhaps impacts on the progression of a life-threatening disease."

Edward Said: Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping of Arabs: "At least since World War II, American strategic interests in the Middle East have been, first, to ensure supplies of oil and, second, to guarantee at enormous cost the strength and domination of Israel over its neighbors.
Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control "

The media runs the vilest racist stereotypes about Arabs--see, for example, a piece by Cynthia Ozick in the Wall Street Journal in which she speaks of Palestinians as having "reared children unlike any other children, removed from ordinary norms and behaviors" and of Palestinian culture as "the life force traduced, cultism raised to a sinister spiritualism."

We are in for many more years of turmoil and misery in the Middle East, where one of the main problems is, to put it as plainly as possible, U.S. power. What the U.S. refuses to see clearly it can hardly hope to remedy

Lisa Walsh Thomas: Killing Mustafa Hussein: "after the three adults were killed and killed again and again (ten to twenty anti-tank missiles, depending upon the source, but undeniably by a 50-to-1 ratio), 14-year old Mustafa, grandson to Saddam Hussein, held off eighty or more soldiers until he too was finally overcome and shot to death.
Were it not for the pathos of Mustafa's still being a child, the events would evoke the last scene in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.' "

Circuit design evolving in distributed digital world
New Scientist: " Dividing the evolutionary process up into different 'islands' in this way guarantees greater 'genetic diversity' and better overall results, Garvie says."

all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees

Certainly, appointees sharing particular viewpoints are expected to congregate, and that an overwhelming number of these appointees have such organizational ties is neither conspiratorial nor unusual. What is unusual is the way this network operates solely with its membership across the various agencies -- in particular the State Department, the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President.

Groupthink. Defined as "reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view," groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted "fact," and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view

Saddam is not yet sitting before a war crimes tribunal. Nor have the key decision-makers in the Pentagon been forced to account for the odd set of circumstances that placed us as a long-term occupying force in the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit planHoustonChronicle.com - The Pentagon has some explaining to do: "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "

Tristero: "'I want my country back...I'm tired of listening to fundamentalist preachers.' Howard Dean (3/15/03)"

Wired News: Bush Impeached? Wanna Bet?: "•Which country will the White House threaten next?

•Who will be the next foreign leader to move off the CIA payroll and onto the White House's 'most wanted' list?

•Which corporation with close ties to the White House will be the next cloaked in scandal?

The AAM will begin registering traders in September and plans to open for business Oct. "

that was when Argentina went wrong, missing a crucial opportunity while the economy was going gangbusters to reduce its vulnerability to crisis.
constant borrowing was causing its debt load to increase, from 29 percent of gross domestic product in 1993 to 41 percent of GDP in 1998.

"If you get the money so easily as we did, it's very tough to tell the politicians, 'Don't spend more, be more prudent,' because the money was there, and they knew it,"

a vicious circle emerged: The slump caused tax revenue to fall, which widened the budget deficit, which aroused concern about the government's ability to service its debt, which caused markets to drop, which deepened the recession, and so onArgentina Didn't Fall on Its Own (washingtonpost.com): "'Argentina obviously stands as much as Enron' in showing that 'things have been done and said by our industry which were realized at the time to be wrong, to be self-serving.' "

"The moral tension in politics is to have an openness to the ideal while retaining the capacity to be pragmatic and get something accomplished,"As Governor, Dean Was Fiscal Conservative (washingtonpost.com): "'The national role reversal is that Democrats have become the party of the balanced budget,' "

the public is now split on whether to continue in the direction Bush is headed on foreign policy (47 percent) or go off in a significantly different direction (46 percent). That's a substantial change from last month when the public wanted to continue in Bush's direction by a 14 point margin.
TOMPAINE.com - Mr. Vulnerability: "Democrats are now favored by 17 points over Republicans on the economy. "

"The DLC and even Lieberman would probably be best off by running their own positive campaigns rather than whining about other candidates or whining about unions or whatever," he said. "People in our party who critique us probably do more damage to us than the Republicans do."
AP Wire | 08/04/2003 | Lieberman, Dean Differ on Dem. Identity: "Now the Connecticut senator is looking to boost his campaign by becoming the anti-Dean."

Disdain for Bush Simmers in Democratic Strongholds: "She said of Mr. Bush: 'I've never felt comfortable with him. He almost seems to have a mission to attack working people.'"

common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression

Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

Uncertainty avoidance

Need for cognitive closure

Terror management

The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.07.22.2003 - Researchers help define what makes a political conservative: " a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way, the authors commented in a published reply to the articl"

The Middle East Cease-Fire Feels Ephemeral: " There is a false belief on each side that the other has had its fill of suffering and will now change its ways. "

Homes Where Sex Offenders Are Able to Police Each Other: "'Basically, we keep each other in line. Basically, we keep each other in check.'
So after he drifted into a neighbor's room the other day to visit a friend who is also a convicted child molester, he quickly reported to his landlady that he had spied a tiny photograph of a blond girl. A day later, corrections officers who work closely with the landlady searched the room and confiscated a huge stash of pornographic pictures and videos, a miniature Barbie doll and a stack of photographs of children.
Within hours Flash's neighbor was under arrest for violating the conditions of his probation and was on his way back to jail. "

another lesson can be derived from the images. "I think that publishing the photos showed the extent of brutality of the American troops," he said.
"America condemned the display of its soldiers who were taken as prisoners of war and American soldiers who were killed during the US invasion of Iraq on grounds that the act [by the former Iraqi regime] violated the Geneva Convention," said a 69- year-old consultant engineer who asked to remain anonymous

"America fumed at the display of a few soldiers killed during the US war on Iraq. How then should we feel when two symbols of a former regime are murdered and then put on display in such a humiliating way? That Uday and Qusay were despotic is absolutely no justification for the US murder -- otherwise what would courts be for?"

"The US was afraid that a trial would reveal embarrassing facts against America."

"It's ridiculous when a superpower like America uses all those helicopters, tanks and no less than 200 Special Forces soldiers to kill four people, including a child, and even rejoices in the act as a victory," scoffed Salah Gabr, a university professor. "It just shows how cowardly Americans are; they were actually too frightened to engage in a real battle with three almost unarmed men."

"Gloating over corpses is not my idea of behaviour characteristic of a civilised people. You can't claim to be fighting in the name of freedom and act in such a manner."

"Where is the UN?" exclaimed Riham angrily. "And where are human rights organisations? Why is everybody keeping silent? The US is declaring itself the only power in the world, portraying itself as an angel and everyone else as devils." Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Disgusting display

Saddam remained convinced that an ambiguous stance about the status of Iraq's weapons programs would deter an American attack.


"He repeatedly told me: 'These foreigners, they only respect strength, they must be made to believe we are strong,'" the aide said


Saddam's aide suggested the brinkmanship ultimately backfired because U.S. policy switched in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, from containing the Iraqi leader, to going after those who could supply terrorists with deadly weapons.

He described Saddam as almost "totally ignorant" of how Western democracies functioned and attributed his failure to grasp the impact of Sept. 11 to the fact that he increasingly surrounded himself with yes-men and loyalists who were not qualified to give him expert advice on economic, military or foreign policy matters.

Yahoo! News - Aide: Saddam Did Get Rid of Iraq WMD: "The strategy, which turned out to be a serious miscalculation, was designed to make the Iraqi dictator look strong in the eyes of the Arab world"

Yahoo! News - Antidepressants May Protect Brain from Damage: "A lot of previous research in animals has shown that antidepressants do not harm the brain or the neurons, but that instead, there is a clear-cut benefit, Sheline noted. Her team's study now shows the same is true for humans. "

But Gill Sperlein, the company's general counsel, said the pornography industry might be suffering even more significant losses than the music industry because of Internet piracy. The only way to stop it, he said, is to "send a message that we will prosecute infringers and create a deterrent effect."

"We can't compete with free,"
Efforts to Stop Music Swapping Draw More Fire: "The recording industry argues that Internet service providers are benefiting from digital piracy, as subscribers sign up for their services in part because of the appeal of finding free copyrighted music"

Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies: "The report urges further investigation of the two men and their contacts with the hijackers, because of unresolved questions about their relationship and whether they had any involvement in the 9/11 plot"

"These folks don't want to govern," Mr. Barrientos, a former chairman of the Senate Democratic caucus, said. "They want to ruleOn the Lam, Texas Democrats Rough It: "He and the other senators, who earn $600 a month for what is basically a part-time job, are paying their own way in Albuquerque, where their hotel rooms average $115. All said that while in New Mexico they were refusing per diem payments, which run $1,700 a month."

Months Before Debut, Movie on Death of Jesus Causes Stir: "'You can't buy that kind of publicity,' he said."

At one point, Judge took some nearby newspapers and placed them on the floor to soak up the blood. Some witnesses heard Judge apologize for the mess.Boston Globe Online / City & Region / Refusing help, woman gives birth aboard T: "About 90 seconds later, Chin said, ''I saw a head, then full baby fall out from her skirt, hit the floor sideways and slide the length of the doorway, stopping when he bumped up against the next row of seats. Still she stared out the window. Either she didn't know it happened or didn't want to acknowledge it.''
Judge bent down, picked up the baby and wrapped it in her scarf, Chin said.
As passengers slowly realized what had happened, witnesses said"

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | New Law for Israeli-Palestinian Couples: "The law would prevent Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who marry Israeli Arabs from obtaining residency permits in Israel.
The vote was 53 in favor, 25 against and one abstention, a spokeswoman for the parliament said.
``We see this law as the implementation of the transfer policy by the state of Israel,'' said Jafar Savah from Mossawa, an advocacy center for Israeli Arabs, referring to a plan by far right groups to transfer Israeli Arabs to other Arab countries. "

Campaign Klatsch (washingtonpost.com): "the mechanics of fundraising in the McCain-Feingold environment. It begins, he says, with a simple principle: 'Campaign finance reform has raised the importance of the group rather than the individual.' "

U.S. Shifts Rhetoric On Its Goals in Iraq (washingtonpost.com): " a different rationale for the war against Saddam Hussein: using Iraq as the 'linchpin' to transform the Middle East and thereby reduce the terrorist threat to the United States. " Finally, a little truth! They had to make up a bunch of reasons to build up support. Really when you think about it, it is very common. Some would say it is very defensible.

the United States would spread its values through Iraq and the Middle East much as it transformed Europe in the second half of the 20th century

Condoleezza Rice compared the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to Pearl Harbor