• Quote of the Day:
"I have no problem whatsoever in walking on red carpets, because I've certainly washed enough of them in my life."
Benedita da Silva, a former maid who became Rio de Janeiro's first black woman governor
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/17/international/americas/17FPRO.html
• Number of the Day: 2.4
Percent of SUV drivers in New York who use cellphones while driving, three times the percentage of car drivers. Overall usage dropped from 2.3 percent to 1.1 percent since a state law banned drivers from using cell phones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/19/nyregion/19CELL.html
• Yesterday's quote, link and number

Um, remember the Pentagon? You know, where 184 people, more than the number who died in the Oklahoma City bombing, were killed September 11? It was somewhat forgotten in the shadow of the World Trade Center ruins, and now workers are moving back in to the damaged section. I can't believe how little coverage the Pentagon has gotten compared to Ground Zero, and even this piece is unoriginal, reading like military propaganda until about halfway through:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-08-20-pentagon_x.htm

Boom? Bust? Both?
Here's why I'm so freaking confused about the economy: two blurbs, both from the front page of USA Today's Money section yesterday:

Economic recovery may have 'hit a wall' in July; Chances of a double-dip recession have increased to 20% or more
WASHINGTON -- Anxious economists are downgrading their forecasts, and some crucial sectors of the economy are pushing the likelihood of a rebound into next year because of the abrupt slowdown in the economic recovery."

Rally extends into 4th week
Investors fixated on the chances of a double-dip recession and whether CEOs would sign off on the books may have missed something more important: a rally. Stocks rose for a fourth-consecutive week for the first time since May 2001.

Recession? Consumer spending is good, the housing market is booming, and the GDP was up 6.1 percent in the first quarter. This is complicated. Alan Blinder, formerly of the Federal Reserve and now economics professor at Princeton, wrote last month in the NY Times:

Those who get their economic news from television may come away with the impression that the economy and the stock market are two sides of the same coin. If the market is heading south, then the economy must be, too. But it's not true. The United States economy is most emphatically not falling right now. The stock market may be the TV star. But it is the economy that generates the jobs and puts the food on our tables. And fortunately, the economy is doing much better than the market.

It's confusing, so the media focuses on "national mood" news about the economy that oversimplifies things, said Wall St. bigwig Holman W. Jenkins Jr. last month at Slate:

Thank you for not using the words "restore investor confidence." Have you noticed how almost every solution touted by everybody sounds like it's meant to jolly up investors so they start throwing money at stocks again? I swear if you read Hank Paulson's speech or listen to anything Harvey Pitt says, it seems as if they think the best reform is one that serves its psychological purpose without changing anything substantively.
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067448&&entry=2067602

My advice is to read the rest of Blinder's breakdown for an accessible explanation of where we stand.
...2002_08_18_nbiermafile_archive.html#80488773

Notebook Reader is back, after a hiatus, of which there might be more thanks to my schedule over the next few weeks. Anyway, women gaining ground in governor's races and other important discourse below the media's hype radar in today's edition:
...2002_08_18_nbiermafile_archive.html#80488395
Previous Reader

Thought of the Day: would we be better of if everyone went to college?
Of course we would. And yet ... As I was chewing on this NYT piece and this e-mail from the prof who runs the History News Network, I started thinking about some of the contrarian talking points. I believe it was Ellul who said the problem with higher education is that rather than creating the most well-adjusted citizens, it can become a detached elitist left-wing subculture. Indeed, if you're interested in the most extreme left-wing groups, look at the student organization bulletin board at a college campus, not the lunchroom at the factory or other places the educated look down their noses at. College faculties are collections of 60s holdovers, often liberal with blinders. As a liberal myself, I'm not completely disappointed by this, and I'm grateful to my college for taking me beyond simple-minded conservatism. But at mainstream state colleges and universities across the nation, students are gettting their supposed wisdom filtered through very narrow channels.

We'd have at least two other major problems if everyone went to college. First, alcoholism would go up, as America's otherwise potentially useful underclassmen would continue to drink themselves stupid every weekend. This is enlightenment? It's bacchanalia behind the ivy. And then there's the mind-numbing success narrative--many colleges breed in students the belief that people are there just to sit, take notes and tests, receive a formal-looking piece of paper, for the sole purpose of getting a high-paying job. Fewer schools inspire students to love learning more than money, to be promiscuously curious about the world, to become not just a learned but a perpetually learning adult, interested in the fullness of life. Sometimes I wonder if you learn the most, and the best, outside the classroom. That's why I'm shelving my graduate school plans for the time being to be a journalist, where I get to actually go out and see the world and talk to people, rather than just read about it in a dorm room or library.
What do you think?
Previous Thought

• Money&Culture from this morning's newsstand:

"Boom shared by all races in Chicago"
Chicago Sun-Times front page headline, August 20

"Rich 90s failed to lift all: Income disparity between races widened greatly, census analysis shows"
Chicago Tribune front page headline, August 20

Actually, both are right. As the Trib says: "The good news: Poverty and unemployment among all racial and ethnic groups fell in the city and region as a whole, although this data was collected before the current economic downturn. Nevertheless, in Chicago, nearly 30 percent of blacks, 20 percent of Latinos and nearly 18 percent of Asians lived in poverty in 1999. That's compared with just 8.2 percent of whites who reported incomes below the poverty line."
• Income-by-neighborhood census chart

• Etymology Today from M-W: ambrosia \am-BROH-zhuh or am-BROH-zhee-uh\
*1 a : the food of the Greek and Roman gods b : the ointment or perfume of the gods 2 : something extremely pleasing to taste or smell 3 : a dessert made of oranges and shredded coconut

"Ambrosia" literally means "immortality" in Greek; it is derived from the Greek word "ambrotos," meaning "immortal," which combines the prefix "a-" (meaning "not") with "-mbrotos" (meaning "mortal"). In Greek and Roman mythology, only the immortals -- gods and goddesses -- could eat ambrosia. Those mythological gods and goddesses also drank "nectar," the original sense of which refers to the "drink of the gods." "Nectar" (in Greek, "nektar") may have implied immortality as well, as it probably translates literally as "overcoming death." (Even today, you'll often find the words "ambrosia" and "nectar" in each other's company.) While the "ambrosia" of the gods offered immortality, we mere mortals use "ambrosia" in reference to things that just taste or smell especially delicious.
Previous E.T.

• Link of the Day: www.politicalpredictions.org
"Holding unsuspecting media types accountable for their oracular pronouncements." Lists bold and often unfounded predictions by pundits for the purpose of public ridicule.

• Quote of the Day:
"My favorite part is just seeing those monstrous jets roaring with their thrusters. It's just a nice family thing."
Gary Solomon III, Chicago resident attending the city's Air and Water Show. How exactly do those two things go together?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208190200aug19.story

• Number of the Day: 17: Percent increase in free trips claimed by frequent fliers in the last 12 months, adding to the airline industry's headaches.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/17/business/17MILE.html

Recycled Thought of the Day: One of my college mentors, Bill Romanowski, adds helpfully to my thought here and article elsewhere on the American view of morality

It's what I call the Wizard of Oz syndrome. Dorothy and her friends have within themselves everything they need to secure their own destiny and salvation, and their journey helps them realize that. As Christians we realize we don't do it on our own. We need God. It's a very different way of looking at the world.

Even evangelical Christians sometimes trip up on this and frame personal salvation as an Oprah-style improvement exercise. Romanowski's fascinating book has won the Gold Medallion from the Christian Publishers Association, a well-deserved honor from an unlikely source.

Calvin College news release:
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2002_03/romo_award.htm

• History&Today It's the 25th anniversary of the death of Groucho Marx:
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020819/4371184s.htm

• Blog Watch:
The latest blog headlines being linked around lately...more at my Blogathon page.
How could a tech-savvy paper like the San Jose Mercury-News write a intro-to-blogs story so late in the game?
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/3883026.htm
Newsweek also tries to keep up:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/795156.asp
On file:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/books/review/05SHULEVT.html
http://www.epnworld-reporter.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/229/Top_Journalist_Weblogs.html
A journalist's view from Pakistan:
http://www.petermaass.com/weblog/
Somewhat related: The NYT says college papers are much more popular on dead trees than online:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/19/technology/19PAPE.html?todaysheadlines

It's good, but unlikely, to see the staid old NY Times continue to try to prove its progressive mettle by deciding to list same-sex unions in its Weddings pages. 'We recognize society remains divided about the legal and religious definition of marriage,'' says editor Howell Raines, but "we acknowledge the newsworthiness of a growing and visible trend in society toward public celebrations of commitment by gay and lesbian couples ... The Styles pages will treat same sex celebrations as a discrete phenomenon meriting coverage in their own right.'' NYT-owned Boston Globe will mull this over:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/230/nation/N_Y_Times_to_print_same_sex_unions-.shtml

Latest Trib piece: another of my valuable contributions to major public discourse: How To Waste Time:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/showcase/chi-0208190164aug19.story
more of my Trib articles

E-mails Eric Zorn: "Only one time in the nearly 20 years that the Tribune has been electronically archived has any writer touched on the question of what the Q in Q-Tip might stand for. Today, however, it happened twice..."

That was in my story and in Dawn Turner Trice's column, "Caring teacher left lasting mark on 1st graders." "I had watched the way he listened intently to enthusiastic and wide-eyed students who always had something important to say or ask, like: "Tell me again, when is `Y' a vowel?" and "Do you know what the `Q' in Q-Tip stands for?"

The only other citing was a Tribune Magazine report ten years ago on an author of a book of little-known facts. So I helped made history. My epitaph is nearly complete.

• Etymology Today from M-W: canard \kuh-NARD\
1 : a false or unfounded report or story; especially: a fabricated report 2 : an airplane with horizontal stabilizing and control surfaces in front of supporting surfaces; also : a small airfoil in front of the wing of an aircraft that increases the aircraft's stability

The French had an old saying (going back to Middle French), "vendre des canards a moitie," literally, "to half-sell ducks." It meant "to fool" or "to cheat." That expression led to the use of "canard," the French word for "duck," to mean "a hoax" or "a fabrication." English speakers adopted this "canard" in the mid-1800s. The aeronautical sense of "canard," used from the early days of flying, comes from the stubby duck-like appearance of the aircraft. "Canard" can even mean simply "duck" in English as well, but this use is limited to the specialized realm of cooking. The French word itself is ultimately derived from "caner," Old French for "cackle," a word of imitative origin.

Previous E.T.

• Places&Culture from


LAKE LOUISE VILLAGE, Alberta, Aug. 13 — It is the most famous picture postcard image of Canada's Rocky Mountain splendor: lovely Lake Louise shimmering under the giant Victoria glacier and surrounded by a dense forest of spruce and fir trees. Normally, the only interruption to the tranquillity is the occasional thunderous clap of ice breaking off the glacier, bringing cries of glee from tourists paddling canoes below. But the emerald lake in Banff National Park has become a battleground between a large Canadian hotel chain and environmentalists who say they must make a stand here to save the country's 39 national parks from developers
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/international/americas/14CANA.html

The only sound in this flat green settlement on the Mississippi River is the whisper of leaves. Just off the Grande Rue, at a shrine beside the abandoned rectory of the gothic brick Immaculate Conception Church, visitors press a green button on a wall to look inside. An automated door swings open to reveal a view of the Liberty Bell of the West. No one is in there. No one seems left in Kaskaskia, the first capital of the state of Illinois, from 1818 to 1820. The bell, 11 years older than the one in Philadelphia and almost as large, was King Louis XV's gift to French settlers here. More than 2,000 people lived here once. But the Census Bureau found only 9 in 2000, down from 32 in 1990. Flood upon flood, most recently the Great Flood of 1993, have left Kaskaskia an island with more egrets than people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/16/national/16GHOS.html

Everywhere you turn on Washington's fashionable Embassy Row, a new palace-size building is under construction, a testament to the frenzied competition of other nations to gain attention in the capital of the last remaining superpower. More than a dozen countries have built or are in the midst of building embassies the size of castles. They come adorned with faux towers and real waterfalls in what one diplomat called "neo-this and made-up-that architecture." From these castle-bastions, foreign diplomats conduct what they call the new Washington diplomacy, an explosion of events geared to reaching the broadest possible audience in hopes of being heard above the din of other countries competing for the same elusive prize of influence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/17/international/17EMBA.html
Previous P&C

• Quote of the Day:
"The hinge of a door is never crowded with insects."
Chinese proverb
• Link of the Day: www.phonespell.org
What does your phone number spell? I entered mine and it said it doesn't spell anything. I was strangely disappointed.
• Number of the Day: 4
Rank of Canada, up from 9 one year ago, among 14 countries as a response to this Harris Poll question: "If you could spend a vacation in any country in the world, outside the United States, and you would not have to worry about the cost, what one country would you choose?"
http://www.pollingreport.com/places.htm#Foreign

Letter from an ex-dot-commer:

Today is my last day at a web design company I’ve worked for since August 1999. In the span of three years, I have: survived 13 rounds of lay-offs; moved offices twice; sat in five different cubicles; received three complimentary massages; drank, approximately, 732 free beverages, mostly seltzer; reported to four different supervisors, bosses, or mentors; received one promotion, two department changes, and a raise; been paid twice what my mother earns as a teacher, and made more than three times what my father was paid at my age, with child; sat frozen at my desk by a large window overlooking Park Avenue, unable to move even my fingers, in complete panic and fear, having no idea what was happening or why; watched a friend vomit outside our office once the leftover IPO champagne was finished after-hours; complained about my boss in front of her husband, the CEO, who generously gave me a job in the first place and then, wracked by guilt and shamed, approached him and apologized, nearly freaking out, explaining the whole thing and about to cry and then a little startled, even more ashamed when he laughed, patted my shoulder, and explained he hadn’t heard a thing but ‘it didn’t really matter anyway’...

And it goes on like this!
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/letters/rosecrans/quitter.shtml

• History&Today: On the 945th anniversary of Macbeth's death, it's worth revisiting a defense of the real-life namesake of Shakespeare's play, says

"The real Macbeth, it seems, was Lord of Moray in the 11th century and was, by the standards of the time, a decent and an honourable man," wrote Brendan McWilliam in The Irish Times in 1995. "He legitimately succeeded Duncan I as king of Scotland -- not by stabbing the latter as he slept, but after killing him in battle in a fair fight. Moreover, Macbeth's 17-year reign was genial and a prosperous time for Scotland and came to an end . . . when Duncan's son Malcolm assassinated poor Macbeth at Dunsinane near Perth."

Who knew?

They're practicing for tomorrow's air show here on the lakeshore, and it's scaring the $*&! out of me. If you don't know there's an air show on, you'd think it's the second coming of September 11 in the Loop, as planes streak over skyscrapers and drown out conversations. It took me three or four flyovers before I stopped being startled.

One liberal and one conservative rant for today: From yesterday, Mickey Kaus deconstructs a NY Times series slanted to scare people about child welfare.
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2069339&#scare
From my file, Molly Ivins bashes simple-mindedness on school prayer:

We had one of those "What was he thinking?" moments with Gov. Rick (Goodhair) Perry the other day. The only governor we've got decided to bring back that old bone of contention: prayer in the schools. Nice timing, guv.The very first clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes freedom of conscience. The majority does not rule anyone's faith. If we wanted the state to coerce faith, we would have voted for the Taliban. Look, as we all know, the religious majority in Texas is hardshell Southern Baptist. Splendid people, the Southern Baptists, but the fact is, if the rest of us had wanted to join their church, we would have done so. Our next biggest faith is Catholicism, and if the governor wants to spend the rest of his term convincing Baptists to say "Hail Mary," that's fine by me. As is obvious to all but those of the most limited intelligence and the governor, by the time you get the Catholics, Jews, Episcopalians, Methodists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Church of Christers, Buddhists, Sikhs, New Agers and the County Line Salt of the Earth Church of the Predestinarian Faith to sign off on one prayer, it begins "To Whom It May Concern, If There Is a Whom." Prayer in school is quite perfectly legal, and is especially common before algebra exams. Mandatory prayer organized by, led by and broadcast over the public address system by paid agents of the state is unconstitutional.Matthew 6: 5 and 6.

WILL HAS A WEBLOG: http://refvem.blogspot.com/

Bring your thinking caps. I met Will in a class at Calvin. It is hard work for him to be boring--he is so well-read and well-spoken that he intriguingly tackles philosophy, religion, literature, and a little of everything else in his thinking, and now in his weblog. I'll bookmark it to the left.

In an e-mail, he says in a few words what I was trying to say in many more: "I love the liturgy because it reminds me of who God is, not who I am, which is all contemporary services do for me." I'll let that be today's Thought of the Day.

Important follow-up to my breakdown of personal media and public responsibility--this provocative memo about writing vs. reporting from the Arizona Republic. "We have to get reporters away from the mistaken notion that we are writers first and reporters second. ... We are not about writing. We are about getting facts and telling people about them." Recipe for boredom and irrelevance right there. Although I'm sympathetic to the problem of lazy reporting, I think bad writing is actually one of the top three problems in media. I've rebutted this the way I want to in my earlier rant, and I'll again link to this fabulous Wash. Monthly symposium on objectivity:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1999/9901.symposium.html
The Phoenix New Times, which posted the memo, spoofs the Republic in this PDF. Good for some chuckles.

Architecture Watch: Manhattan's Citicorp Center gets a sturdier leg. Roughly the 24th anniversary of the quiet panic surrounding the realization that the building was in grave danger of being toppled by an approaching hurricane, which prompted welders to stiffen in clandestinely during the night. Here's yesterdays NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/15/nyregion/15TOWE.html
And the website for PBS' documentary that featured the bizarre '78 episode:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/citicorp.html
My pictures of the building last summer:
http://nbierma-ny.freeservers.com/pictures/citicorp.html
Previous Architecture Watch

• Word of the Day from M-W: tatterdemalion \tat-er-dih-MAIL-yun\
1 *a : ragged or disreputable in appearance b : being in a decayed state or condition : dilapidated 2 : beggarly, disreputable

The exact origin of "tatterdemalion" is uncertain, but it's probably connected somehow to either the noun "tatter" ("a torn scrap or shred") or the adjective "tattered" ("ragged" or "wearing ragged clothes"). We do know that "tatterdemalion" has been used in print since the 1600s. In its first documented use in 1611, it was used as a noun (as it still can be) in reference to a person in ragged clothing -- the type we might also call a ragamuffin. ("Ragamuffin," incidentally, predates "tatterdemalion" in this sense. Like "tatterdemalion," it may have been formed by combining a known word, "rag," with a fanciful ending.) Within three years of the first appearance of "tatterdemalion," it came to be used as an adjective for anything or anyone ragged or disreputable.

Never mind, someone stole my pool car. So...
Thoughts&Culture from

Anyone who doesn't recognize the power of "post" in intellectual strategy just hasn't been watching. It can gel loosely related phenomena into a major intellectual movement or cultural vanguard without having to be very precise about what unites them or what they are rather than what they are not. Postmodernism is the reigning example. ... Those who study, articulate or propound the beliefs and practices by which most of humanity tries to place itself in relationship with the transcendent should post themselves. They should simply drop that old-fashioned word "religion." What they are about, they should announce, is "postsecularism."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/03/national/03BELI.html

out of the office until this afternoon; re-enjoy this past week until then...

• Quote of the Day:
"Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words."
St. Francis of Assisi

The slow but necessary death of the college lecture, "that mysterious process by means of which the contents of the professor's notebooks are transferred by means of the fountain pen to the pages of the student's notebook without passing through the mind of either," from

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/education/14LES.html

Vanilla Coke is off to a good start, says Time. Unlike New Coke, and Pepsi's latest creation, Pepsi Blue, which tastes and looks like Windex, Vanilla Coke actually tastes good.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020812-333893,00.html

Thought of the day: time and worship
"I like connecting to something older." I think those were the exact words of my friend yesterday on the topic of church worship. We each attend Fourth Presbyterian here in Chicago and appreciate the formality, the beauty of the cathedral, the interesting preaching and intellectual engagement. His quote may seem a fogey-ish statement for two men under 40 to endorse, but we both have our problems with the Overhead Projector Revolution in churches over the past two decades--play the drums, make some noise, flash the words onto the overhead, and POOF! you have Instant Relevant Worship (TM). It's emotional, it's engaging, but it's also fleeting, here one moment and gone the next--just another momentary flash pulsating at us in our modern MTV culture. It doesn't feel connected to anything that came before it, nor, like my friend said, does it often have clear theological roots, which may make you roll your eyes but can anchor and sustain the experience of worship.

Connecting to something older. We seem to have dwindling opportunities to do so today. Touring historic sites, voting, celebrating Christmas--these rituals place us in time, in the context of something larger, tying us to other human experiences beside our own. In an MTV world there are no such ties, little context, little that is larger than yourself except for the projections of performers before you. So each Sunday I like to sit in church, try to take it all in, let my eyes leap to the grand arches of the building around me, sing or recite familiar words, participate in the ongoing story and fellowship of the Church, and feel my soul come out of its media-battered shell during a rare hour of actual peace and renewal.
Previous Thought

• Word of the Day from M-W: purfle \PER-ful\
to ornament the border or edges of

Today we use "purfle" mostly in reference to setting a decorative inlaid border around the body of a guitar or violin, a process known as "purfling." In the past, "purfle" got the most use in connection with adornment of garments. "The Bishop of Ely . . . wore a robe of scarlet . . . purfled with minever," reported an English clergyman in 1840, for example. We embellished our language with "purfle," first as "purfilen" in the 1300s, when we took it with its meaning from Middle French "porfiler." Related to "purfle" is "filigree," which is used as a noun for ornamental work made of fine wire, and also as a verb meaning "to adorn with filigree." "Purfle" and "filigree" share the Latin source "filum," which means "thread."

• Money&Culture File
Now is the time that gold—solid, immutable, real—should be rocketing toward $800 per ounce, yet the yellow metal has confounded its long-suffering devotees by remaining tethered to the $300-per-ounce level, where it has been stuck for years. Either things are not as bad as they seem, or gold may finally be losing its ancient status as the investment of last resort. "About time," mutters the ghost of John Maynard Keynes, who long ago pronounced gold "a barbarous relic."
http://slate.msn.com//?id=2069302

Deep in the pine forest of the Russian north, a battle is being fought over the shape of a Russian economy increasingly concentrated in the hands of just a few tycoons. ... The scene is more than just a fine piece of Russian corporate theater. These are the front lines of a phenomenon that has transformed the economy in the last three years. A handful of large business groups have been moving through systematically, buying up entire industries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/international/europe/13RUSS.html

Consumer Reports does the math on book buying and other essentials in its back-to-school guide. Wait a minute, when did DVD's become must-haves for schoolgoers? Heck, in grade school I was glad to get colored pencils.
http://www.consumerreports.com

Chicago Architecture Watch: 311 S. Wacker changes hands:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/showcase/chi-0208100147aug10.story

A related thought to below: I've noticed a couple of examples of so-called gentlemen's agreements lately--there was the case of the out-of-town Broadway review and talk show bookings. I was just thinking, isn't the term "gentleman's agreement" very British, very deferential, and in the light of my rant below, very un-American? But again, we value these things to keep society ticking.

Thought of the Day: the tension between democracy and power.
America was founded as the anti-Britain, rejecting hierarchy and elitism in favor of democratic ideals. That was the idea anyway (see the Dec. of Independence). It was part ideology, part geography--the new continent had so much more land mass that the equation of land ownership with power no longer made sense: there was enough breathing room for anybody to be anyone they wanted, own as much land as they wanted, and escape from the tight, stuffy social hierarchy of Britain. Hierarchy works better on a small continent than in an vast, untamed new wilderness. Then again, no one was stuffier or more elite than the Founding Fathers--a well-educated, aristocratic breed who valued deference, looked down upon women, and calculated slaves to be 3/5 of of a person. Egalitarian these guys were not.

Since then our economic ideals have always seemed to clash with our democratic ones--we don't really want egalitarianism--anyone being just as important, having just as much power, as anyone else--we just vaguely think we sort of want it. Otherwise we wouldn't so laud the powerful and envy the rich. Otherwise we wouldn't view the poor as an undeserving, underachieving lot that just has to work hard, the American way, in order to prosper (I would submit most of the poor are hard-working, and most of the rich are not and some of them never were). I was re-reading Anna Deavere Smith's Talk to Me and came across this quote from Hayden White, professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz:

The assumption is that the free market and democracy go hand in hand. If you buy into the free market, you have to take a certain amount of unemployment, a certain amount of exploitation, a certain amount of corruption, and so forth. It has nothing to do with democracy. ...That's been the greatest triumph of Western capitalism, to identify democracy with the free market.

Insert Enron rant here. Now, of course our economic mechanisms look good compared to the tyranny of Communist and dictator states, and I don't want to downplay that. I'm just saying that I think we value power more than democracy would suggest we would: if we really believed "all men [sic] are created equal," we wouldn't willingly play politics so much in our workplaces, our homes, our churches, heck, our softball leagues. We value seniority, putting in your dues. I was comiserating with a reporter here at the Tribune about how the mentality is that you graduate to the Tribune from other places, not necessarily that you are a better writer than someone with less newspaper experience, which some major newspaper reporters indeed are not. Then I was thinking about this scenefrom Mr. Holland's Opus the other night where Mr. Holland is waiting in the lunch line in his first day of school, and the football coach comes along and tells him to move to the front of the line: teachers don't wait with the students. "High school is not a democracy," the coach says. We value these imbalances in power, however small a scale they may be on. We function according to seniority, putting in your dues, earning it. Sometimes that has little or nothing to do with equality.

Previous Thought
Footnote:This tension between equality and elitism has throbbed through American political thought. Walter Lippman was one of the great American journalists, and yet he believed news should come from an oligarchy of elite journalists--ministers of culture. As I wrote before, do we really want everyone to vote? Similarly, look at Argentina--this creep is democratically elected, and the U.S. supports a coup that removes him (he's back now). We're saying, we, an elite few, know better than the masses--there is no inherent wisdom in democratic decisions (as I believe Tocqueville put it: the tyranny of the majority).

• Word of the Day from M-W: perpend \per-PEND\
1 : to reflect on carefully : ponder; 2 : to be attentive : reflect

"Perpend" isn't used often these days, but when it does show up it is frequently imperative. As such, its use can be compared to the phrase "mark my words." "Perpend" arrived in English in the 15th century from the Latin verb "perpendere," which in turn comes from "pendere," meaning "to weigh." Appropriately, our English word essentially means "to weigh carefully in the mind." "Pendere" has several descendants in English, including "append," "compendium," "expend," and "suspend." "Perpend" can also be a noun meaning "a brick or large stone reaching through a wall" or "a wall built of such stones," but that "perpend" comes from a Middle French source and is unrelated to the verb.

• Places&Culture from


"Last year we did only 50 roof gardens. So far this year we have already had 200 orders." The realization that Tokyo is becoming a vast "heat island" is behind the boom in roof gardens. Here, centuries of gradual climate change are telescoping into decades. "Over the last century, Tokyo temperatures have increased five times as fast as global warming," said Takehiro Mikami, a professor of climatology at Tokyo Metropolitan University. While the world's average mean temperature has increased by one degree Fahrenheit since 1900, Tokyo's has increased by 5.2 degrees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/international/asia/13TOKY.html

Avenir P. Ovsyanov was only 20 but can still recount in exacting detail how in 1957 he helped destroy this city's German soul.Following orders from local Soviet bosses, Mr. Ovsyanov's military engineering class bored hundreds of holes in the ruins of the city's 13th-century castle, packed them with dynamite and began blasting away 700 years of history. It is perhaps a fitting twist of fate that now, as director of the region's historical preservation department, Mr. Ovsyanov's job is to protect — or recover, as is more often the case — the art, culture and history lost first by war and then by Soviet rule.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/international/europe/13KALI.html

The Harlem Little League was founded in 1989 by Dwight and Iris Raiford at the urging of their son Joshua, who was 9. They struck a deal; if he agreed to take piano lessons, they would start a Little League program in Harlem. The league's early fields had broken glass, discarded crack vials and tire ruts. But the Raifords and other volunteers worked to make the fields safe places to play, and the league has grown from 129 players in its first year to nearly 700 now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/14/sports/baseball/14LITT.html
(log in with member name and password of "nbiermaread")

• Quote of the Day:
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."
Charles Schultz
• Link of the Day: www.crazythoughts.com
Imponderables include:
If they develop a supersonic train, will they give it a whistle?
Do fish ever get thirsty?
What happened to the first 6 ups?
If you keep trying to prove Murphy's Law, will something keep going wrong?

Meager offerings here today, I know (in quantity but not quality!). I've been busy polishing a piece for the Trib. Thought of the Day, Notebook Reader and other favorites return tomorrow.

No, there aren't any pirates in Pittsburgh, says Answer Guy in
http://msn.espn.go.com/magazine/vol5no17answerguy.html

It's true, says the stellar urban legends site Snopes.com: this Billy Ripken card contains an obscenity:
http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/ripken.htm

It's a movie kind of day (see below...): Saw A Few Good Men recently, with one of the all-time well-acted scenes with Jack Nicholson in the courtroom at the end. Worth reading in this script I found:
http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/fewgood.shtml

Watched Mr. Holland's Opus with my wife last night--one of the richest movies to have such a low ratio of action-per-minute. But very meaningful, especially for this soul-searching college grad.

I thought Jay Thomas looked familiar, playing the football coach, but I haven't seen anything IMDB says he's been in. Which includes Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire, that creepy Fox-ploitation nightmare he hosted a couple years ago. What kind of measure of your career is it to say you've been in Mr. Holland's Opus and Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Is that supposed to be versatility?

Word of the Day from M-W: palmary \PAL-muh-ree or PAHL-muh-ree\
outstanding, best

English speakers have been using "palmary" since the 1600s, and its history stretches back even further than that. It was the ancient Romans who first used their "palmarius" to describe someone or something extraordinary. "Palmarius" literally translates as "deserving the palm." But what does that mean exactly? Was it inspired by palms of hands coming together in applause? That would be a good guess, but the direct inspiration for "palmarius" was the palm leaf given to a victor in a sports
competition. That other palm, the one on the hand, is loosely related. The Romans thought the palm tree's leaves resembled an outstretched palm of the hand; they thus used their word "palma" for both meanings, just as we do with "palm" in English.

A scientific breakdown of Signs from

• In 1991, British artists Doug Bower and Dave Chorley confessed to having created the [crop circles] that started the craze, and several Web sites now provide detailed instructions on how to make your own.

• Let's consider why man-eating is an unlikely motivation. First, our proteins and fats and nucleic acids almost certainly would not agree with an independently evolved alien digestive system. Second, any civilization that can travel between the stars necessarily has access to tremendous reserves of energy and materials. Finding a snack is not going to be a problem. And even if terrestrial flesh were a unique taste treat, wouldn't cows make a better choice? They have a lot more meat and put up less of a fight.

• A civilization that can travel through light years of empty space probably would not need to send scouts onto the ground to find conveniently located farms and then knock down their corn.
http://www.discover.com/science_news/features/gthere.html?article=feat_signs.html

• Link of the Day: www.coolsig.com
You know those pithy quotes and funny quips people insert after their e-mail signatures? The best are collected here.
• Number of the Day: 27:
Percent of male drinkers who have at least one drink a day, compared with 10% of female drinkers.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr020809.asp

Less than a month until the first anniversary of September 11, so it's as good a time as any for a couple of reality checks to keep it in perspective. This is not to deman the horror and suffering of the attacks, only to go beyond the simplification of the mainstream media.

First of all, more Americans die from food poisoning each year than died in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks (the Centers for Disease Control estimates 5,000 Americans die of food poisoning each year). About 40,000 Americans die of gunfire each year, while slightly more die of Alzheimers. Almost 100,000 Americans per year die in accidents, while over 700,000 die of heart disease. In other words, far more Americans die at each other's hands (thanks to guns or drunk driving) or of disease than are killed by al-Qaeda. And yet the constant stream of headlines each morning suggests that terrorists are the primary threat to our existence and happiness.
CDC stats: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

I e-mailed Rick Shenkman, a history professor at George Mason University who runs the left-leaning History News Network, and asked him what he thought was the greatest myth about September 11. Here's his thorough answer.
...2002_08_11_nbiermafile_archive.html#80146941
From Chimes: Sept. 11 not a turning point.

Thought of the Day: when to go to war?
Right now there's so much talk in the media about whether and when we're going to attack Iraq that Saddam Hussein may as well fire all his spies and get a subscription to The Washington Post. What was raised in a story meeting here this morning is, What is the tipping point that makes us go to war? What makes it OK, when is it agreed to be necessary, when do all but the pacifists (a noble breed, it should be noted) quiet down and march or cheer? The question is made all the more poignant by a stellar Time magazine cover piece on the pre-9/11 plans to attack al-Qaeda. Throughout, it seems leaders pocketed the plans as an effect of 1) labyrinthine Washington bureacracy and 2) the paralysis of public opinion--the country wouldn't have supported the messy business without more palpable cause, which September 11 horrifyingly provided.

Back to Iraq, which seems to have nothing to do with September 11 but is now public enemy number one. If we don't attack them and they nuke us or someone we like, will we have numerous more magazine stories on What We Should Have Done and Donald Rumsfeld wearing a T-shirt to press conferences that says I Told You So? On the other hand, if we go in there tomorrow, will we be just as predictably subjected to the scores of naysayers, the Congressional opponents sounding righteous and snide about a president's supposed hubris?

The Gulf War introduced a war fought on TV. This possible round two may be the first one planned on TV.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020812/story.html
Previous Thought

Word of the Day from M-W: oneiric \oh-NYE-rik\
of or relating to dreams, dreamy

The notion of using the Greek noun "oneiros" (meaning "dream") to form the English adjective "oneiric" wasn't dreamed up until the mid-19th century. But back in the early 1600s, linguistic dreamers came up with a few "oneiros" spin-offs, giving English "oneirocriticism," "oneirocritical," and "oneirocritic" (each referring to dream interpreters or interpretation). The surge in "oneiros" derivatives at that time may have been fueled by the current interest among English scholars in _Oneirocritica_, a book about dream interpretation by 2nd century Greek soothsayer Artemidorus Daldianus.

Why the Trib, for all my beefs about it, will always be the authoritative newspaper in Chicago, and the Sun-Times will always be a second-rate goofoff: An S-T front page teaser this morning:
"Jennifer To Brad: 'Time To Shave.'"

Then again, I did do a sidebar on Friday for the Trib on tabloid headlines about Angelina Jolie...

Only You Can Prevent Suicide: From a memo last week to Tribune employees:
Tragically, in the past 15 months, two employees have lost their lives here at the Tower through apparent suicide. Sadly, these isolated incidents serve as an important reminder that we all should try to look out for the well being of our fellow employees. If you are concerned about a coworker, contact your supervisor, a Human Resources manager, or Tribune's medical director, Dr. Mary Beth Richmond at ext. [xxxx]. If you are having trouble coping with difficult or stressful situations, there is a resource available to help you: Tribune's Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

Employee Assistance. I feel better about life already. While I'm ranting about the inanimate corporate being that is the Trib Co., here's a breakdown from NewCity of the Trib's takeover of Chicago Magazine:
...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#80037667

P.J. O'Rourke interview in
"on the Middle East, the universality of the absurd, and his beef with Mark Twain."
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-08-08.htm

Morning news from

Buffeted by the economic slowdown and the fallout from Sept. 11, US Airways last evening filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. Following the terrorist attacks, the airline industry is facing its most dramatic period of upheaval since deregulation 24 years ago. ... Arlington, Va.-based US Airways, which carried 56 million passengers last year, is the first major carrier to declare bankruptcy since the attacks.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/nation/US_Airways_seeks_Ch_11_protection+.shtml

For years, medical researchers were largely immune from lawsuits. While other doctors faced a wave of malpractice suits, researchers seeking cures for diseases such as cancer found patients eager to participate in experiments and unlikely to hire a lawyer if something went wrong. But the death of Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 changed all that. ...
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/metro/Lawsuits_target_medical_research+.shtml

Calling himself ''the currently designated fall guy,'' the Maryland scientist at the center of the anthrax investigation denied yesterday that he is responsible for the mailings that killed five people and infected 13 others last fall. Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army research scientist described by federal investigators as a ''person of interest'' in the anthrax probe, said he had nothing to do with the mailings and decried the intense scrutiny he has been under.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/224/nation/Scientist_denies_role_in_anthrax+.shtml

more BG headlines

• Link of the Day: www.oxymoronlist.com
You may have too much of a life to compile literally hundreds of oxymorons in alphabetical order, but these people don't!
• Number of the Day: 126
Factor by which shortstop Alex Rodriguez's salary is larger than the lowest-paid player in Major League Baseball. The league minimum for player salaries, $200,000, is almost five times the U.S. median household annual income.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61496-2002Aug8.html

Is it just me, or is there something a little incongruous about Garrison Keillor forming something called "Grand Prairie LLP." Such a confluence of a corporate boardroom-ism and America's down-home, mom-and-apple-pie-in-the-heartland icon is somewhat disconcerting:
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/3826503.htm

China's hover-train highlights the weekend edition of my Notebook Reader:
...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#80037199
Yesterday's Reader

Let the Pulitzer nominations begin: My sidebar with trimmed tabloid headlines about Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton runs on the Tempo front in this morning's Tribune. How's that for quality journalism. Are we challenging our audience as much as catering to them? Or would you say that these two obviously mentally unstable celebrities have brought it on themselves and deserve our gawks?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/showcase/chi-0208090003aug09.story

Thought of the day: religious freedom
We were founded by pilgrims fleeing an overbearing religious institution. Now religious conservatives (disclosure: I'm a Christian liberal) say our country needs to get back to its roots by listening to our religious institutions. I thought of this while reading Harpers last night and coming across a note about divorced mothers in Nigeria. If you're divorced and pregnant in that country's northern states, you are stoned to death for adultery, no questions asked. A new law will defer the sentence for one and a half years to allow the mother to care for the newborn. As horrified as I was, I couldn't help thinking: this is very compelling enforcement of sexual morality--as opposed to the United States, where, thanks to the sexual revolution, people interlock genitals at the drop of a hat. But is this what the Bill Bennett's of the world desire?

Clearly not, and that's where the irony comes in. These conservatives are so gung-ho about American Freedom as a sort of faith unto itself--the belief that the spread free expression and capitalism will lift poor nations from their depths (also deconstructed nicely in the latest Harper's), as if wisdom and goodness were somehow inherent to free expression and free markets--America itself is proof they're not. But it is this very engine of freedom that empowered the sexual revolution, that empowered the pilgrims to thumb their noses at the Church in the first place--in both cases, people were saying, "I know better than you, and because I love Freedom I'm going to do what I want." Now surely I can locate some middle ground between America's bacchanal sexual mores and Nigeria's Taliban-like oppression, and so can Bennett. But is there not a tension between conservatives' desire to promote freedom and religious authority at the same time?
What do you think?
Yesterday's Thought

• Word of the Day from M-W: mordacious
1 : biting or given to biting; 2 : biting or sharp in manner or style : caustic

The Earl of Carnarvan, referred to in 1650 as "mordacious," didn't go around biting people; it was his "biting" sarcasm that inspired that description. The word's association with literal biting didn't come up until later, occurring first in an 18th-century reference to "mordacious" bats. The "caustic" sense of "mordacious" is the more frequent use these days, but admittedly, neither sense is especially common. If you prefer a less esoteric option you can choose "mordant," a synonym that sees a bit more use. Both adjectives descend from Latin "mordere," a verb meaning (literally) "to bite or sting." If you want to sink your teeth into more "mordere" derivatives, you might use "mordacity" to refer to a biting quality of speech, or substitute "mordancy" for "incisiveness" or "harshness."

• Places&Culture File
As a journalist and cultural critic, to me economic news is at its best when it is about people, places and culture and is not just a dry listing of stock prices and earnings reports. A classic example is this piece by Mark Lewis in Slate from earlier this summer that dug into the colorful cultural context of a little-noticed news item: the de-listing of Bethlehem Steel from the NYSE. The little town of Bethlehem (Penn.) produced the guts of Rockefeller Center, the Golden Gate Bridge, Chicago's Merchandise Mart, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, and Madison Square Garden, and that's just where the story begins. Worth another look:
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067068
• more cultural economics from Slate: Adam Smith and stock options:
http://www.slate.msn.com/?id=2068693

more Places&Culture from


Old-timers here still arrive by pickup truck to have their coffee and biscuits at Marty's, a plain-looking restaurant that has been a fixture for decades. Nouveau Bentonville, on the other hand, gravitates to a soaring space called the Market at Pinnacle Point, which appeared out of nowhere two years ago just down the highway in Rogers, surrounded by an office-and-shopping complex filled with Fortune 500 companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/07/business/07SHOP.html

Dr. Donald E. Nemer does not like to make people in pain wait. So when the patient of a vacationing dentist called with a toothache one recent afternoon, Dr. Nemer squeezed him into a full schedule already made fuller by a walk-in denture readjustment, an emergency filling and an unscheduled root canal. Yet Dr. Nemer himself has been waiting for four years to retire, as a shortage of dentists in rural stretches of the upper Midwest reaches crisis proportions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/07/health/07DENT.html

For countless tourists over two and a half centuries, the Trevi Fountain has been a source of awe and a wellspring of hope, promising another visit to the Eternal City, and a wish fulfilled, to anyone who tosses coins into its gurgling waters. For Roberto Cercelletta, it has been a lucrative pool of clandestine profit. What tourists gave, Mr. Cercelletta took away — six days a week, under the cover of early-morning darkness, with a rake or magnet or his own hands, as he splashed through the late Baroque masterpiece like Anita Ekberg in "La Dolce Vita," albeit less cinematically. Early this morning, when he took his usual dip under Neptune's feet, police officers were watching, and arrested him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/07/international/europe/07ROME.html

On its face, it sounded like the perfect share-the-wealth plan. Amid the sugarcane fields here on the island of Negros, one of the Philippines' most powerful tycoons, Eduardo M. Cojuangco Jr., the chairman of the beer and food conglomerate San Miguel, offered nearly 1,800 peasants who worked about 10,000 acres of land under his control a free stake in a plantation venture he would run. A "corporative," he dubbed it. But ever since that deal five years ago, the "shareholders" have not received their share of the plantation's profits, nor seen a statement of what those profits are. Instead, they have been paid an annual dividend of roughly $200, a sum critics denounce as a pay-off to discourage the peasants from asserting their rights to the land.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02PHIL.html

I recently received a couple variations of the years-old Nigerian e-mail hoax, As a public service I'm posting them here. A word of advice: when the letter says, The following information are required from you urgently: Your personal telephone and fax numbers, your banking details where the money will be transferred, your full names and contact address and your date of birth (indicate sex and marital status) --WALK AWAY! Unbelievably, the Washington Post says over 300 people, who bled $20 million, didn't.
...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#79993736
links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A64335-2002Apr28
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2609884,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,53115,00.html
http://www.motherlandnigeria.com/scam_page.html
http://www.quatloos.com/cm-niger/nigerian_scam_letter_museum.htm
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/naffpub.pdf

Urban Issues Watch: I'm keeping an eye on city issues and thought for my book on theology and the city, so I clipped this piece from


The four-day "Cities and Globalization" summit at the 71st annual Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs conference explores issues facing Canadian cities trying to cope with globalization at a time when most decision-making power lies with the provincial and federal governments. Some of the issues that the conference will be addressing are: How local communities can turn globalization to their advantage and mitigate any destructive effects; How cities and regions can carve out an identity and maintain their historic role as economic engines, immigration melting pots and cultural powerhouses; How other foreign cities are evolving to survive in the global economy.
http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?...

Also see: in-depth review of the American angle on this at
http://www.thepublicinterest.com/current/article1.html

Frank Deford on skating and the Russian mafia at
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/...

Headlines that actually matter: Russian floods...China chooses Australia for big gas deal...Planet Earth gets pudgy...and more in today's edition of my Notebook Reader:
...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#79988845
Yesterday's Reader

I was looking for a way to include these longtime bloggers in my blogging story last week, but it didn't happen. They're worth a read:
WilWheaton.net
NeilGaiman.com
And here's one I included in the full Blogathon blog but not the story, that's worth a bookmark:
AndyDeHnart.com

• Thought of the day: the ambiguity of human nature:
Are people basically bad or basically good? Ever since the Enlightenment the consensus has seemed to be "good" after centuries of "bad," but since the genocide-laced 20th Century we haven't been so sure. My own strand of Christianity--Calvinist Protestantism, has always said "bad," and not to be a pessimist, but I agree. Every human being is vulnerable to his or her own pride, lusts, envy, and every human being hurts others because of them. We all need mending, the type of self-transformation which Oprah-variety cheerleading suggests you do yourself (more here) but which reason holds can only come from a higher power (i.e. the Cross).

I'm a little torn by the "bad" verdict, though, because human goodness, programmed into our DNA before evil entered the world, still shines through in striking moments. Here on the streets of Chicago I can see strangers being kind to each other, patiently giving directions to tourists, giving up their seats on the bus to older riders; more profoundly, the altruism poured out at Ground Zero on September 11 almost seems to support America's view of its own righteousness, if not the simple-minded moralism of President Bush's good-vs-evil worldview (although the silly relativism of liberals hardly holds much water, either--unless you think Osama bin Laden was just expressing his equally valid point of view). But the "bad" seeps through in subtle, countless ways. Americans have long believed most people are good, evil is the result of a few evil people, and evil can be reduced by eliminating evil people--this view, the Hollywood Catechism, is the basis for 99 percent of American movies. By contrast, I believe all people have latent evil in them and evil can be reduced only by divine transformation (cue the Cross again). If President Bush still doubts this, he should ask his friend Ken Lay, a seemingly righteous man who succumbed to his own lust for power and devastated the lives of many he had been called to serve. There's nothing morally clear about your outer projection--no such thin as national or geographical righteousness--only every human being's struggle to balance the good and evil within them, a hopeless struggle without the Cross.
Yesterday's Thought

• Sports&Culture: Keith Olbermann in

If David McCullough's next biography informs me that one of the few remaining unprofiled Founding Fathers had, in 1775, christened his plow oxen "Lexington" and "Concord," I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Appropriating the transcendent for our own personal use -- whether to make a buck or enhance the meaning of our lives -- is all-American. Still, there is something over-the-top about Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden's selection of his team's 2002 slogan, "Let's Roll."
http://salon.com/news/sports/col/olbermann/2002/08/07/lets_roll/index2.html

Thomas Friedman's Sunday column, worth a second look, from


The State Department, in a real profile in courage, said it was "deeply disappointed" by the conviction of Mr. Ibrahim, who holds a U.S. passport. "Disappointed"? I'm disappointed when the Baltimore Orioles lose. When an Egyptian president we give $2 billion a year to jails a pro-American democracy advocate, I'm "outraged" and expect America to do something about it. ... This ties in with a larger concern that human rights activists share toward America today — a concern that post-9/11 America is not interested anymore in law and order, just order, and it's not interested in peace and quiet, but just quiet. ... How about before we go trying to liberate a whole country — Iraq — we first liberate just one man, one good man, who is now sitting in an Egyptian jail for pursuing the very democratic ideals that we profess to stand for.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/opinion/04FRIE.html

• Link of the day: www.allfreeessays.com
The joke's on you if you try to cheat (you slime) and download these papers to turn in as your own--they're not that good!

• Number of the day: 14,000
ATM's in the national network of Bank of America--2,000 of which, in California, will feature on-screen ads on a trial basis.
http://www.morningnewsbeat.com/#MNB1

• Quote of the day:
"People have been asking me how this happened, and I have to tell them, 'I don't know.'"
Jefferson County (Ky) deputy coroner Richard Siclari, after a local family found the wrong body lying in the casket at the funeral of their son, who turned out to be alive in a nearby hospital.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/...

A letter-writer to MediaNews happens to make a useful addition to my thoughts yesterday on personal media, and this young newspaperman is all for the letter-writer's plan to let the rookies rule the roost!
...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#79954729

That's one small step for woman: Jennifer Granholm wins her primary on her way to being Michigan's first woman governor. Wouldn't that be a welcome sight. Although we should probably guard against making too much of her being a woman and too little of her as a politician; that's a reverse form of sexism. Coverage in the Detroit News and Free Press.

Editor Ann Marie Lipinski says her vision for the Chicago Tribune is to be "the leading citizen of this great metropolis." This morning my assignment was to prepare a sidebar highlighting the bizarre developments in the Angelina Jolie-Billy Bob Thornton breakup. Sigh. Speaking of leading citizen, the Trib's Jim Kirk writes of his employer:

The Chicago Tribune's $35 million purchase of Chicago magazine again raised the specter of big media's influence on readers and advertisers by having one company own the area's top-selling newspaper, the top-rated radio station, a big TV station, a professional baseball team, a cable station and Internet sites--and now a city magazine.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208070308aug07.story

How exactly is this good for Chicago? Double sigh.

After weeks of worrying someone on the sardine-ish subway will slip their hand into my bag and snatch something valuable, I emerged from the El last week with a gray pen clipped to the front pocket of my bag. Sorry! If anyone wants to claim it let me know.

Oh, no, not a return to summer shark news! Other probing questions, including the fate of Germany's chancellor and the future of San Fransisco's WW2 memorial, in today's edition of my Notebook Reader:
...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#79945369
Yesterday's Reader

• Thought of the Day: Would we be better off with lower voter turnout?
The conventional wisdom is that the public is increasingly cynical, detached, disengaged, uninformed, overentertained, and downright disrespectfully neglectful of its privilege to vote. All of which is true, as I've ranted before. But what is the alternative? The utopian vision is that the masses would embrace enlightenment, crave information about politicians and policies, and make wise choices with high standards that would force our leaders to be more principled, clear, intellectual, and substantive.

The more realistic vision is this: the public would benefit little from consuming more news (case made beautifully in this article), which, in TV's case, oversimplifies, cheesifies, and ignores issues in favor of images, and which, in newspapers' case, are mostly about political strategy and not public policy. So if driftwood apathetic moderates did glance over at the news more often and/or vote, it would mean an influx of people who are ill-informed to make good decisions, fueling the current problem of making politics a glamor-and-sound-bite contest. And we saw in 2000 the problem of candidates paying attention to the middle--a watered-down contest that was so stale it turned everybody off. If fewer people voted, only the die-hards would be left and candidates would feel free to be more ideological and worry more about coming up with useful ideas than selling platitudes as though at a shopping mall.

Besides, if more people voted, it would only make politicians feel more powerful, and their Macy-balloon-sized egos are big enough already, thank you.

This is all a little tongue-in-cheek, I hope you realize, prompted by reading this sentence in the Detroit News this morning about yesterday's Michigan primary: "Turnout was sluggish in some locations, despite -- or because of -- sunny and cool conditions through Metro Detroit." If the democratic future of our country depends on the weather, we are worse off than I feared.
What do you think?
Yesterday's Thought

I meant to post this, too. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick is one of the few to actually ask what exactly Zacarias Moussaoui is being tried for:

Scrutinizing the indictment, three possibilities emerge: the government is not presenting crucial evidence tying Mr. Moussaoui to the Sept. 11 attacks; the government has no evidence tying Mr. Moussaoui to the Sept. 11 attacks; or federal conspiracy law is so infinitely elastic that Mr. Moussaoui could receive the death penalty for simply buying knives, learning to fly and training in Qaeda camps.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/02LITH.html

(I was, though, bugged by the grammatical error is the first sentence, which suggests that the possibilities themselves have done the scrutinizing. Grrr.)

I meant to post this last week: who has lived as much 20th Century American cultural history as Irv Kupcinet, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist who turned 90 last week? He's been a newspaper columnist, an actor, and a football player, ref, and announcer, just to begin with:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/31kupstory.html

• Thoughts&Culture File:
Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad vs McWorld
Capitalism is not too strong; democracy is too weak. We have not grown too hubristic as producers and consumers; we have grown too timid as citizens, acquiescing to deregulation and privatization (airlines, accounting firms, banks, media conglomerates, you name it) and a growing tyranny of money over politics. ... Market fundamentalism, which defined the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, encourages a myth of omnipotent markets. But this is as foolish and wrong-headed as the myth of omnipotent states, which reigned from the New Deal to the Great Society. It tricks people into believing their own common power represents some bureaucrat's hegemony over them, and that buying power is the same as voting power. But consumers are not citizens, and markets cannot exercise democratic sovereignty. The ascendant market ideology claims to free us, but it actually robs us of the civic freedom by which we control the social consequences of our private choices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/opinion/29BARB.html

R.C. Longworth, Chicago Tribune
Through small steps, like the cheese verdict, and big ones, like the creation of a single currency, Europe today is less than a United States of Europe but much more than a loose group of nations doing business with each other. The European Union is unique in history, and its success has emerged only gradually through a system so complex that it is barely understood by many Europeans and almost not at all by Americans. This success and this American incomprehension are causing real trans-Atlantic problems. The EU has emerged at age 45 as a partner and rival to the United States, potent in some areas such as trade and incomplete in other areas such as defense. The way it operates, through tortuous negotiations and compromise, baffles and frustrates the hard-driving unilateralists of Washington, who are increasingly intolerant of the slow-motion decision-making of their closest allies. European officials say they want to keep Washington happy. But they aren't willing to abandon a union and a process that has turned their continent from a war-flattened wasteland to a landscape of peace and prosperity unprecedented in European history, just to please the Americans.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0207310289jul31.story

Analysis of analysis: All things Madden in today's Salon. This covers it well. But in the discussion about whether people are tuning into Monday Night Football for Madden or for the game, what about the fact that a huge chunk of MNF watchers are at sports bars, where the sound may be off or drowned out? (These folks aren't counted by Nielsen, by the way, last I checked, which is never mentioned in stories about MNF's ratings.) It seems that should be part of the Madden and MNF speculation.
http://www.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2002/08/06/madden/index.html

A footnote from Quentin Schultze on personal media and public responsibility:

I think the personal voice is important for "good" journalism, which stands above plain reporting (or telegraphic reporting) in my book. But the personal needs to be tied to the public, to the common, shared interest (and shared good).

I've been thinking about this in relation to the future of newspapers, which are captive to old-fashioned standards of "objectivity," which so neutralize and paralyze the text that they become almost unreadably boring (great read on this here). The opposite problem is columnists (and increasingly reporters) raving wildly off the top of their head, merely puffing up their own egos and peering for their own reflection in the mediated space. I was trying to toe the middle ground with my blogging piece in the Tribune and make it personal but also responsible and useful. This balance must be the future of newspapers. As fantastic LA Times columnist Steve Lopez says in a must-read
Howard Kurtz profile today:

A column ought to have blood pumping through it... [Too many people today] don't feel a human connection to this newspaper.
That's exactly it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47872-2002Aug5.html

This image thing is fun, and will inevitably lead to the gratuitous posting of various pictures hereafter. You've been warned. Here's a photo of Hawaii's Kalauea volcano spewing lava last Friday. It's been going for 19 years.

I feel bad about this. Should I? I was glad to get a mailing the other day from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, since they sometimes send you return address labels in the unsuccessful (in my case) attempt to collect a donation. Alas, I was greatly disappointed to instead get a calendar. I need those labels!

<--This is just a completely random, irrelevant attempt to post this picture of Boston from yesterday's Boston Globe, just to see how images work in weblogs...

I grit my teeth and include a simplistic romantic riff about the American frontier from the boilerplate-predictable Wall Street Journal in my Notebook Reader today, trying to prove I'm not all left-wing-conspiracy:
...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#79899774
Yesterday's Reader

My friend Nathan checks back in from Canada, this time from the Hudson Bay, where he's again rubbed sensitive local government the wrong way--...2002_08_04_nbiermafile_archive.html#79852287--and passes along this story from the Globe and Mail, which has a little bit of everything--drama, power, pastries--all in one article.

Thought of the day: the constant push-pull tension of relationships. I should be able to dig this up, but one of the theories I studied last spring in a communications class was the push-pull phenomenon of relationships: in a relationship with another person, we are in constant tension between the need to get closer and the need to pull away. The two are always butting heads, and which one emerges, and when, explains most interpersonal conflict and most solutions to it. This is usually said of romance, but I think it holds for friendships. We are constantly calculating, or just constantly in emotional flux, weighing or feeling our need to get closer to someone else, to open ourselves up more to them and invest more in them, versus our need to pull back, maintain our space, stay in our safety zone.

It's not just psychobabble; it's simple math. It's science. It's abstract art.

For me the question is poignant when it comes to my new marriage. Now is the time to mark my territory, right? To be heard, to announce where I stand, for now we are establishing lifelong patterns of communication and problem-solving. But at the same time I need to get closer to my wife, to pour myself out for her, to take risks by being more vulnerable to her. So which do I do--stand my ground or be vulnerable? When do I do which? This is why relationships are so complicated in a broken world--we all are struggling with this tension, this fluctuation, and we all resolve it in different ways at different times. Pull back, and we can harm ourselves by thinking ourselves righteous and ignoring (or solely shouldering) our own brokenness. Get closer, and another person can hurt you, since they are broken, too. It is this tenuous equilbrium that defines practically all emotional human interaction.

There actually is a town called Knockemstiff, Ohio, says Tim Jones in today's Trib:

Knockemstiff is one of the peculiar historical pleasures that is ignored as Ohio prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary next year. The rough-and-tumble history of the town is sketchy and largely anecdotal, but unlike oddly named places such as Tightwad, Mo., Nimrod, Minn., and Monkey's Eyebrow, Ky., Knockemstiff's history, until recently, has been true to the town's name. Especially at the Bull Pen Bar, where life resembled the bar scene in "Star Wars."http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208060175aug06.story

Election Day handicapping from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49504-2002Aug6.html

Daley blasts Trib: Boy, who do you root for in this one--a consistently arrogant city government or the overbearing Tribune Co.? What a clash of disagreeable titans. The city is blocking the Trib's longed-for expansion of Wrigley Field, seemingly for stubborn, nose-thumbing reasons--Daley wants to slap back at the other major power in town. It's your job to criticize me; it's your job to bring negative news, not good news ... You want people to fight with each other, you want to bring out the worst of society. Hizzoner sure picks his spots--he unburdened himself of this rant "at a news conference unveiling a program for at-risk youth."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0208040388aug04.story

How'd we get here? Says the smirking Sun-Times:
A vindictive mayor grappling with a budget crunch on the eve of re-election. A corporate "culture of arrogance." An astounding string of public relations blunders by a company that's supposed to be in the communications business.

But, the S-T says, it's not all a battle of pride: Throughout the weekend, sports talk shows were filled with speculation that Mayor Daley had finally gotten even with the Chicago Tribune for the newspaper's crusade against the renovation of Soldier Field. But that explanation--as plausible as it seems for a mayor who loves to get even--conveniently ignores the fact that Daley has a history of siding with local residents on development issues.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-wrig06.html

Ah, politics in Chicago. A sport only die-hard fans can bear to watch.