Culture in america and other mythologies

2003-10-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

Rove, McClellan Interviewed in CIA Probe

10/23/03

White House - AP Cabinet & State - Yahoo!

By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The FBI (news - web sites) has interviewed more than three dozen Bush administration officials, including political adviser Karl Rove and press secretary Scott McClellan, in its investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA (news - web sites) officer's identity.

The interviews have extended beyond the White House to other government agencies. The Defense and State departments and the CIA itself also are part of the probe.

The focus, however, remains on the White House, two law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity. While the initial, informal interviews have yielded no major breaks, the FBI is satisfied that the dozen agents assigned to the probe are making progress and have not encountered any stalling tactics, the officials said Thursday.

So far, no grand jury subpoenas have been issued, they said.

Boxloads of documents have been forwarded to the FBI team, including White House phone logs and e-mails. More documents are being produced, as the contents of individual items sometimes lead agents to request additional materials, one official said.

Investigators want to know who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July. Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed to discredit his assertions that the Bush administration exaggerated Iraq (news - web sites)'s nuclear capabilities to build the case for war.

Leaking of classified information, such as an undercover officer's name, is a criminal offense.

Democrats repeatedly have urged Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) to appoint a special counsel or recuse himself because of his close political ties to the White House. They also question why the Justice Department (news - web sites) waited several days after the investigation began to ask White House staffers to preserve documents.

"It demands a full, fair and fearless investigation that is above politics," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "But so far, the way this probe has been conducted falls quite short of that bar."

Ashcroft, who has strongly condemned the leak, has not ruled out stepping aside but has said he believes his agency can conduct a thorough, impartial investigation.

Ashcroft's public statements about the leak mirror those included in a review he sent to Congress almost exactly one year ago — long before the Plame case.

Leaks can compromise intelligence sources and methods and damage military operations, Ashcroft said in the review, requested by Congress as part of the 2002 intelligence authorization bill. Those responsible for them should be punished, he said.

"Until those who, without authority, reveal classified material are deterred by the real prospect of productive investigations and strict application of appropriate penalties, they will have no reason to stop their harmful actions," Ashcroft wrote.

Government agencies and departments should swiftly pursue investigations of suspected leaks and immediately request Justice Department involvement if a crime appears to have been committed, Ashcroft said.

Democrats have raised questions about the months that passed between publication of Plame's name by Novak in July and the initiation three weeks ago of a formal Justice Department investigation. Justice officials say it took the CIA that long to complete a questionnaire used to justify an investigation.

Despite the talk of progress in the probe, President Bush ( news -web sites ) himself has said the leaker's identity may never be found. In his review a year ago, Ashcroft noted that only one non-espionage leak case has been successfully prosecuted in the past half-century.

"In most cases, identifying the individual who disclosed classified information without authority has been difficult, at best," Ashcroft wrote.

___

On the Net:

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov

2003-10-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

Salon.com Life | Cholesterol gene linked to longevity
By Lindsey Tanner

Oct. 14, 2003 | CHICAGO (AP) --

One reason some people live into their 90s and beyond may be a genetic variation that makes the cholesterol particles in their blood really big.

``Supersize it'' is not usually associated with good health, but evidence increasingly is showing that bigger is indeed better when it comes to the lipoprotein particles that carry cholesterol through the bloodstream.

Smaller particles, it is believed, can more easily embed themselves in the blood vessel walls, contributing to the fatty buildups that lead to heart attacks and strokes.

A study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the tendency to have large cholesterol particles can be inborn.

The study, led by Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, found that people in their late 90s and beyond are more likely to have a gene variation that causes large particles of both HDL cholesterol _ the good variety _ and LDL cholesterol, the bad kind.

``We basically think the size is necessary for longevity,'' Barzilai said.

The results are intriguing and support the notion that ``exceptional longevity may depend, at least in part, on inheriting `good' genes,'' said Anna McCormick of the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the study.

Nevertheless, while genes probably determine particle size, recent research has suggested that exercise can enlarge the particles.

Doctors do not routinely test for HDL and LDL particle size, but a few companies offer such tests commercially. If the findings are confirmed, they could lead to wider testing. Moreover, research is already under way on a cholesterol-lowering drug that also makes the particles bigger.

And Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, said the findings suggest that large HDL and LDL particles may protect against all sorts of life-shortening ailments, not just heart disease.

The study involved 213 people of Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, Jewish descent, ages 95 to 107, along with 216 of their children. The researchers also used a comparison group made up of 258 of the children's spouses and neighbors.

The gene variation was found in nearly 25 percent of the old people but in just 8.6 percent of the younger comparison group, a threefold difference. The related children were twice as likely to have the mutation as the comparison group.

The Ashkenazi group and their children also had greater levels of HDL cholesterol in their blood and substantially larger HDL and LDL particles than the comparison subjects.

2003-10-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

Hotter Log Enters the Market
Fake logs made of sawdust and paraffin, invented in the 1950's, are a popular alternative to real firewood. But ersatz logs have also been fashioned out of cardboard, almond shells, corn cobs, peach pits - and now, recycled coffee grounds.

This month the Java Log will go on sale for the first time in the United States. The log is about 65 percent used coffee grounds, which, said Rod Sprules, who came up with the idea, burn brighter and hotter than sawdust logs while producing 88 percent less carbon monoxide than firewood.

Mr. Sprules, a Canadian engineer living in Ottawa, had the first inkling of the Java Log idea 10 years ago while he was designing a heated suit for search-and-rescue technicians."

2003-10-05T22:59:00.001-07:00

National Center For Policy Research For Women & Families

2003-10-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

National Center For Policy Research For Women & Families

2003-10-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Developmental Sex Differences
Is sexual selection related to differences in the physical, social, and psychological development of boys and girls? The goal of this chapter is to address this question by examining the pattern of sex differences across a variety of domains and by relating these sex differences to adult sex differences in the nature of intrasexual competition, parental investment, and so on. Developmental sex differences in the pattern of physical development, infancy, play patterns, social development, and parenting influences are described in the respective sections below. The pattern that emerges across these sections is consistent with the view that many developmental sex differences are indeed related to sexual selection and involve a largely self-directed preparation for engaging in the reproductive activities described in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. In keeping with the position presented in Chapter 6, this self-directed preparation is manifested in terms of differences in the types of activities in which girls and boys prefer to engage and results in an adaptation of functional systems to local conditions. "

2003-09-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

NY Times: Head of Group Backing Right to Abortion to Step Down

September 22, 2003
By ELIZABETH BECKER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 %u2014 Kate Michelman said today that she would step down as president of Naral Pro-Choice America, ending 18 years at the helm of the country's most vocal group advocating abortion as a legal right for women.

Ms. Michelman, 61, became one of the grandes dames of the reproductive rights debate by interpreting her mandate broadly. She campaigned for state and national politicians who supported abortion rights, testified at Congressional hearings, started national advertising campaigns, worked to expand access to clinics providing abortions, and protested and marched in the streets.

She said she would leave her post on April 30, 2004, to care for her ailing husband and their daughter. Ms. Michelman said she gave the group's board at least six months' notice, allowing her to lead a march in Washington on April 25 in favor of abortion rights.

For all of her efforts, Ms. Michelman said today in an interview that her opponents had been gaining ground and might win the debate.

'Women face today as grave a threat as ever to their Constitutional right to personal privacy and to a choice,' she said.

Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade granting the right to abortion, states have enacted more than 350 laws restricting it. As a result of these restrictions and growing fears of violent retaliation against doctors who perform abortions, Ms. Michelman said, as many as 90 percent of American counties do not have abortion facilities.

'Americans have become complacent in the belief that this right will never be taken away, and they are wrong,' she said.

Ms. Michelman was a frequent target of opponents of abortion. They argued that her compassion for the woman with an unwanted pregnancy did not extend to any moral concern about the terminated pregnancy.

Ms. Michelman regularly countered that accusation with the story of her own abortion in 1970. She was a recently abandoned mother of three young daughters on welfare when she found out she was pregnant.

'It was a very, very difficult decision to make to have an abortion,' she said.

Then she discovered it would be even more difficult to have the abortion. Her only recourse outside of an illegal abortion was to win permission from her estranged husband and from an all-male hospital board, she said.

'It was a humiliating process that changed my life,' she said. 'From then on I was personally and professionally dedicated to advancing the right of women to choose.'

Her activism also has roots in her teenage years in Defiance, Ohio, where she became involved in civil rights protests to help immigrants.

She earned her university degree in developmental psychology and did clinical work in early childhood development.

'My lifelong work on behalf of women's rights derives from my work with these disadvantaged mothers, many of whom had no choice over whether to have children and very little means for raising them,' she said.

Later she became executive director of Planned Parenthood in Harrisburg, Pa., concentrating on expanding reproductive health services.

But it was as the leader of what was then known as the National Abortion Rights Action League that Ms. Michelman became a familiar name and then a familiar face on television in the increasingly polarized and violent debate over abortion and women's reproductive rights.

She used that spotlight to promote national candidates, including Bill Clinton, whom she praised as the 'first fully pro-choice president.'

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

2003-09-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

MSNBC News: FDA approves new Seasonale birth-control pill: "

"It's the convenience, not being bogged down, not having to plan vacations or just lifestyle around seven days of bleeding.
---SHANNON ZAICHENKO
Study volunteer

THE PILLS aren't a new chemical. They contain the same combination of low-dose estrogen and progestin found in many oral contraceptives.
Nor is the idea of menstrual suppression new. For decades, many doctors have told women how they can skip a period by continually taking the active birth-control pills in each month's supply and ignoring the week of dummy pills in each packet.
But Seasonale promises to make the option a little more convenient, with packaging that gives women 12 straight weeks of active pills and then a week of dummy pills for their period. And the Food and Drug Administration's approval means menstrual suppression could become more common, as Seasonale's advertising alerts women to the option.

BREAKTHROUGH BLEEDING MORE COMMON
Seasonale isn't perfect, the FDA cautioned.
While women have fewer scheduled periods, studies show Seasonale users have about twice the risk of unexpected "breakthrough" bleeding between periods as woman taking conventional monthly cycle pills, especially in the first few cycles of use.

Also, 7.7 percent of Seasonale users dropped out of studies of the drug citing unacceptable bleeding, compared with 1.8 percent of women taking conventional monthly pills. Some Seasonale users had so much breakthrough bleeding that their total days of bleeding over a year were no less with the new drug than with regular pills, FDA said.
So the agency ordered that Seasonale's label state that women must weigh that inconvenience against fewer regular periods.
"Each woman will respond to this product somewhat differently," said FDA's Dr. Scott Monroe. "Some will find they respond entirely as the product was designed to function, and others will have increased intermenstrual bleeding to the extent that they choose not to continue with the product."

read more by clicking on the link above.

2003-09-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Bush and Congress Days Away from Criminalizing Safe Medical Procedures!

Anti-choice leaders - including President Bush - are very close to criminalizing safe medical procedures. It would be the first time the government ever made this kind of intrusion into the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. The Senate is scheduled to hold one final debate this Monday, September 15, on S.3, the so-called "Partial-Birth"” Abortion Ban Act.

2003-06-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

California Marijuana Grower Sentenced to a Day in Prison
By DEAN E. MURPHY

SAN FRANCISCO, June 4 A convicted marijuana grower was sentenced to one day in prison and fined $1,000 by a federal judge today, the most lenient sentence allowed under law.

The defendant, Ed Rosenthal, had faced a possible sentence of 100 years in prison and a potential fine of $4.5 million for his conviction in January on felony charges of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy.

"We are all delighted with what we view as as fair and just a sentence that could be imposed under the circumstances of Ed having suffered a conviction," one of Mr. Rosenthal's lawyers, Dennis P. Riordan, said.

Federal authorities arrested Mr. Rosenthal last year for growing marijuana to be sold for medicinal uses under the auspices of the City of Oakland's medicinal marijuana ordinance.

Though the Oakland ordinance is permitted under a 1996 California state proposition, there is no provision for growing marijuana under federal drug laws.

The judge, Charles R. Breyer of Federal District Court, had not allowed Mr. Rosenthal to raise medicinal marijuana as a defense, leading some jurors to later complain that they had been misled by the court. After convicting Mr. Rosenthal, several jurors requested a new trial, and when that failed, wrote to Judge Breyer urging leniency.

At a hearing today, Judge Breyer said it was reasonable to conclude that Mr. Rosenthal had believed he was acting legally. By making that determination, the judge was able to skirt some minimum sentence requirements, which could have put Mr. Rosenthal in prison for at least five years, his lawyers said.

In addition to the fine and day in jail, Judge Breyer sentenced Mr. Rosenthal to three years of court supervision.

"Today has just put my faith back into this judicial system again," said Pamela Klarkowski, one of the jurors who had written to the judge. "It's just wonderful to see mercy involved in our judicial system."

Mr. Rosenthal left the courtroom a free man, as Judge Breyer awarded him credit for a day spent in jail.

But Mr. Rosenthal, 58, the author of a dozen cannabis self-help books, declared that Judge Breyer "did me no favors" and "made me a felon" as part of a "corrupted system." He called on the judge to resign for not having allowed the medicinal marijuana defense, and he vowed to fight to overturn laws banning marijuana.

"This is Day 1 in the crusade to bring down the marijuana laws," Mr. Rosenthal said at a news conference held on a parking lot rented by his supporters. "The federal government makes no distinction between medical and recreational marijuana. They're right. All marijuana should be legal."

Mr. Riordan and another of Mr. Rosenthal's lawyers, Robert V. Eye, said they disagreed with Mr. Rosenthal's characterization of Judge Breyer. Mr. Eye said the judge's handling of the sentence was a reminder that "justice can be done." Nonetheless, the two lawyers said, the case would be appealed in an effort to clear Mr. Rosenthal's name.

Though there was general consensus that the sentencing today did not amount to a legal breakthrough for advocates of medical marijuana, some predicted it would embolden the movement to challenge federal drug laws. Nine states, including California, allow the sick and dying to smoke or grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.

"I think 20 years from now, when historians look back at how the federal war on medical marijuana ended, this will be the hinge point," said Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group in Washington.

But Richard Meyer, a spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, said the sentencing would have no effect on the agency's work.

"We are not listening to them," Mr. Meyer said of the marijuana advocates. "We will continue to protect the public from the dangers of all illegal drugs."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

2003-06-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

Battling the Chaos in the Public Schools' Arts Classes

June 5, 2003
By ROBIN POGREBIN

At the Heritage High School in East Harlem, students in a
class on three-dimensional art make life-size sculptures in
the tradition of George Segal from chicken wire and
papier-mâché. In advanced band, students practice the theme
from the movie "Spider-Man" on clarinets, flutes, trumpets, electric bass and drums.

Across town, at P.S. 8 in Washington Heights, the art
teacher hauls her supplies from classroom to classroom in
shopping bags or on a cart because there is no art room.
The school's instruments lie silent in their cases because
there is no band teacher. And the students use pencils to
plunk their gap-toothed xylophones because there are not
enough proper mallets to go around.

The glaring disparity in arts education between these two
schools is typical in New York City. Throughout the school
system the quality of arts programs varies widely from
school to school, depending on the commitment of its
district, principal, teachers and parent body and the
involvement of outside providers.

"It's completely hodgepodge," said Eva S. Moskowitz,
chairwoman of the City Council's Education Committee. "We
have in some schools almost no arts, in many schools no
music, schools that are not taking advantage of the
cultural resources of the city, arts educators who may be
asked to decorate the school for Halloween."

Some schools treat art as essential, with extensive
cultural programs that are integrated into the rest of the
curriculum. The Heritage School, for example, where most of
the students are from low-income households in Upper
Manhattan, was pioneered by a university arts educator
devoted to making the arts central to general learning.

Other schools, like P.S. 8, offer art just once a week with
bare-bones materials like construction paper and Elmer's
glue and instruction that bears little or no relationship
to students' other learning.

To address the inequities, the schools chancellor, Joel I.
Klein, wants to create a uniform citywide arts curriculum
for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, along the
lines of his plan for uniform curriculums in all subjects.
The curriculum would establish standards in dance, music,
theater and the visual arts for the city's 1,100 schools by
September of next year.

"Some schools do spectacularly well on the arts; some
schools don't," Mr. Klein said. "There is too much
unevenness."

Moreover, the city has no way to monitor arts education
over all - whether a school has an art room, an art teacher
and adequate supplies and how much each school spends on
providing art to each student, if anything at all. In the
past, some schools have diverted their arts money to other
areas, Mr. Klein said, adding that he plans to establish
some "budgetary accountability."

Mr. Klein has appointed Caroline Kennedy to oversee the new
arts curriculum and Angelo Gimondo to be senior
instructional manager for the arts. Mr. Gimondo will leave
his post as superintendent of District 30 in Jackson
Heights, Queens, a district known for its strong cultural
programs.

"We face a new era in the history of arts education in the
city's schools," Dr. Gimondo said in testimony at a recent
City Council hearing on arts education. "Every child should
receive regular instruction in the arts in one or more
disciplines and arts instruction integrated in other
subjects."

To devise a new arts curriculum aligned with New York State
standards, Dr. Gimondo is establishing committees of
educators and artists with Kate D. Levin, the commissioner
of cultural affairs.

"It's too much of a patchwork," Ms. Levin said. "Some
children get extraordinary exposure. Some get next to
nothing."

Money for arts education was eliminated during the 1970's
budget crisis. Over the next 20 years there was no
systemwide arts education; cultural programs were provided
by school administrators who made it a priority and outside
nonprofit groups. "Because arts education is not tested, it
tends to be treated as something that does not have equal
value in the curriculum," said Hollis Headrick, executive
director of the Center for Arts Education, a nonprofit
group in Manhattan.

In fiscal year 1997, New York City's Education Department
began to receive Project Arts support, an allocation to
supplement education activities. Starting at $25 million,
the fund grew to a high of $75 million in 2000 and 2001. In
2002 and 2003, the allocation dropped to $52 million. Mr.
Klein said next year's appropriation would increase to
$67.5 million.

Many educators say this level of support is woefully
inadequate. "In a city that prides itself on being the arts
capital of the world, that is not reflected in the
provision of the arts in the public schools," said Judith
Burton, a professor of art education at Teachers College at
Columbia University.

She helped create the Heritage School, at Lexington Avenue
and 106th Street, in 1994. Half the student body there is
assigned to the school; the other half is selected based on
academic and attendance records but not on artistic
ability. Students at Heritage, in grades 9 through 12, have
art every day; teachers in various disciplines coordinate
their courses with arts instruction; and six students have
curatorial internships at the Museum of Modern Art.

When studying the Harlem Renaissance, for example, the
students visited the Studio Museum of Harlem, attended
"Harlem Song" at the Apollo Theater, read Langston Hughes
and did art projects related to that period of history.

While educators generally agree that the benefits of an
integrated arts curriculum are difficult to measure, the
Heritage School sees positive academic results from its
culture-oriented curriculum. "Kids start with average or
below-average achievement, and they end up with high
achievement," said Peter Dillon, the principal. "A lot of
it is good teaching. But we also feel art has a lot to do
with it."

At P.S. 8, by contrast, the art room has been divided in
two because of overcrowding, and neither half is used for
art. The school, at Amsterdam Avenue and 167th Street, was
built for 650 students and has 800. The remaining "art
room" is more like a closet, so the art teacher, Jocelyn
Castillo, carries classroom supplies in shopping bags. "I'm
constantly pressed," she said. "They have to clean up in
three minutes, I have to be somewhere in two minutes and I
feel like I'm rushing their creativity."

Maria-Stella Fountoulakis, who teaches music, has only one
period a week to teach 30 students at a time how to read
music. She gives one student free piano lessons after
school. "Some of them have already accepted failure as
their way," she said.

Over the last 30 years, the city's cultural organizations
have done a great deal to compensate for the deficit in
arts education or to complement what schools do offer.
About 400 providers are involved in the city schools, with
programs ranging from kindergarten concerts at Carnegie
Hall to sketch classes for junior high school students at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art to horticultural research
projects for high school students at the Brooklyn Botanic
Garden. Many of these programs are threatened under Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg's proposed budget cuts, cultural
groups say.

Several nonprofit groups also have a strong presence in the
schools, like Studio in a School and Arts Connection. The
Education Department plans to make these offerings more
consistent throughout the system. Arts educators stress
that taking a group of kids to a Broadway show is not
enough; schools need artistic programming week in and week
out.

Parents associations in some schools raise substantial
money to pay teachers and pay for supplies. Part of Ms.
Kennedy's mandate is to encourage private contributions to
the city's arts programs. The Annenberg Foundation has
awarded two $12 million challenge grants to the Center for
Arts Education to stimulate the restoration of arts
education in New York City public schools.

The Heritage School, which has a budget of $2 million,
receives $500,000 a year from five foundations, including
$125,000 from George Soros's After-School Corporation and
$125,000 from the Robin Hood Foundation.

But Mr. Dillon, the principal, said private institutions
should not be as essential as they have become. "It's sort
of appalling that public institutions have to raise private
money to do what they're supposed to do anyway," he said.

2003-04-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between and occupying force and a liberating force?
Will the Old Man of the Mountain come back?
Will the Assassins return?

2003-03-17T14:31:00.000-08:00

is this some kind of religious war?
is this some kind of imperialist war?
is this some kind of arrogant war?
and who will pay in the end
should war be the answer, like it was in Viet Nam, like it was in Korea
should destablizing a government be the aim of another governent, like the CIA in Angola
should teaching governments how to intimidate its population, like the CIA and its School of the Americas
and who will die in the end
are we all to be vicitims of an illegitimate government with a foreign policy not seen since the time of the Crusades
do we actually need the apocalyspe to occur
what is the difference between nuclear annihilation and the Rapture?
who do you like is actively seeking the crown of the anti christ?

2003-03-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

http://nytimes.com/2003/03/12/arts/music/12POPL.html

Antiwar Song, With Whimsy
By NEIL STRAUSS

OS ANGELES
"Now how many people must get killed?" begins the latest antiwar refrain from the pop world. "For oil families' pockets to get filled?" The song is "In a World Gone Mad," which was released yesterday with no advance fanfare by the Beastie Boys. Though not commercially available as a single, the song is available free at the Beastie Boys Web site (http://www.beastieboys.com) and is being distributed to disc jockeys, who were unaware of it until they began receiving copies yesterday.

"We were working on our record, and we realized that by the time we finished a record that it might be a bit late to get out some of the things we wanted to comment on," said Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, speaking by telephone yesterday. "So we figured we'd finish the song and post it."

The single is also meant to serve as more than a protest song. The band said that it wanted to send a message to the rest of the world that not every American backed the foreign policy of the current administration. "I think a big part of wanting to do the song was just hearing Bush make these speeches, seeing how the rest of the world was reacting to it, and feeling like Bush doesn't represent us," Mr. Yauch said. "One of the purposes is to let people in other parts of the world know that the messages he's sending out aren't necessarily the view of all Americans. And it's also to say to people in the United States who might be uncomfortable protesting that it's all right to do that. One thing that the U.S. administration has been trying to do is give the feeling that it's un-American to protest."

Though the song has a similar title to the Beenie Man reggae song "World Gone Mad," which laments social conditions and asks the president for an explanation, the Beastie Boys said they were unaware of the other song. Their song mixes lyrics advocating nonviolence and multilateral disarmament with the band's sense of whimsy. Thus a deep thought is followed immediately by a rhyme like "They're layin' on the syrup thick/We ain't waffles, we ain't havin' it."

"Part of music is being able to enjoy yourself, too," Mr. Yauch said. "Some of the most powerful commentary that there's been on the Bush administration has been Will Farrell on `Saturday Night Live.' It's goofing around, but it has a huge impact."

2003-02-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

Do not follow in the footsteps of ancient masters, rather seek what they sought.
--Basho, Japanese poet

2003-02-06T10:22:00.000-08:00

Young, Jobless, Hopeless Young, Jobless, Hopeless
By BOB HERBERT

CHICAGO -- You see them in many parts of the city, hanging out on frigid street corners, skylarking at the malls or bowling alleys, hustling for money wherever they can, drifting in some cases into the devastating clutches of drug-selling, gang membership, prostitution and worse.

In Chicago there are nearly 100,000 young people, ages 16 to 24, who are out of work, out of school and all but out of hope. In New York City there are more than 200,000. Nationwide, according to a new study by a team from Northeastern University in Boston, the figure is a staggering 5.5 million and growing.

This army of undereducated, jobless young people, disconnected in most instances from society's mainstream, is restless and unhappy, and poses a severe long-term threat to the nation's well-being on many fronts.

Audrey Roberts, a 17-year-old who just recently landed a job at a fast-food restaurant on Chicago's West Side, talked to me about some of the experiences she and her out-of-work friends have had to endure.

"The stuff you hear about on the news," she said, "that's our everyday life. I've seen girls get raped, beaten up. I saw a boy get his head blown away. That happened right in front of me. I said, 'Oh my God!' I just stood there."

The shooting was over a dice game that was being played one afternoon by boys who had nothing better to do with their time, she said.

It's an article of faith among politicians and members of the media that the recession we continue to experience is a mild one. But it has hit broad sections of the nation's young people with a ferocity that has left many of them stunned.

"I don't think I can take it much longer," said Angjell Brackins, a 19-year-old South Side resident. "I get up in the morning. I take a bath. I put on my clothes. I go outside."

She has tried for months to find a job, she said, filling out application after application, to no avail. "I'll do any kind of work if they'll just hire me. It doesn't matter, as long as it's a job."

The report from Northeastern, titled "Left Behind in the Labor Market," found that joblessness among out-of-school youths between 16 and 24 had surged by 12 percent since the year 2000. Washington's mindless response to this burgeoning crisis has been to slash ? and in some cases eliminate ? the few struggling programs aimed at bolstering youth employment and training.

Education and career decisions made during the late teens and early 20's are crucial to the lifetime employment and earnings prospects of an individual. Those who do not do well during this period seldom catch up to the rest of the population.

"Our ability to generate family stability and safe communities is strongly influenced by this," said Dr. Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern and the lead author of the study.

When you have 5?1/2 million young people wandering around without diplomas, without jobs and without prospects, you might as well hand them T-shirts to wear that say "We're Trouble."

Without help, they will not become part of a skilled work force. And they will become a drain on the nation's resources. One way or another, the rest of us will end up supporting them.

"It's just heartbreaking," said Jack Wuest, who runs the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, which commissioned the study. "These kids need a fair shake and they're not getting it."

The Bush administration, committed to a war with Iraq and obsessed with tax cuts for the wealthy, has no interest in these youngsters. And very few others in a position to help are willing to go to bat for them.

In a long series of conversations with young unemployed and undereducated Chicagoans, I did not hear much of anything in the way of aspirations. Whether boys or girls, men or women, those who were interviewed seemed for the most part already defeated. They did not talk about finding the perfect job. They did not talk about being in love and eventually marrying and raising a family. They did not express a desire to someday own their own home.

There was, to tell the truth, a remarkable absence of positive comments and emotions of any kind. There was a widespread sense of frustration, and some anger. But mostly there was just sadness.

2003-02-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

Mobilizing a Theater of Protest. Again.

February 6, 2003

By JULIE SALAMON

When Sam Hamill, a poet and founder of Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, Wash., was invited to a poetry symposium by Laura Bush last month, his response was to send e-mail messages to 50 friends and colleagues asking them for antiwar poems to send to Mrs. Bush. In four days he received 1,500 responses.

"I didn't know there were 1,500 poets in America," he said. After learning of the protest, the White House postponed the symposium on the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Noelia Rodriguez, Ms. Bush's press secretary, said: "While Mrs. Bush respects and believes in the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes that it would be inappropriate to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum."

For those opposing war with Iraq, the cancellation of the poetry symposium symbolizes the part the arts can play in politics. Hearing the drumbeat of a new war, through readings, concerts, art exhibitions and theater, artists are trying to recapture their place as catalysts for public debate and dissent.

If the immediate artistic response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington was the theater of grief, some of the nation's poets, musicians, writers, actors and playwrights have moved on to the theater of protest. The prospect of an imminent military confrontation with Iraq has incited a new sense of creative urgency.

"I don't think it's an accident that in totalitarian societies they always arrest the artists first, though we don't seem particularly dangerous," said Andr? Gregory, the theater director and actor. "I think the responsibility of the artist, each of us in our way, is to tell the truth. And the truth generally involves a great deal of ambiguity, and in times of war ambiguity and paradox are the first things to go. People want simple black and white answers."

With Wallace Shawn, his collaborator in "My Dinner With Andr?," Mr. Gregory presented a theater piece at Cooper Union in October called "An Evening of Conscience," along with a variety show of well-known performers including Edward Asner, Eve Ensler, Tony Kushner, Danny Glover and Pete Seeger. That event was sponsored by Not in Our Name, a nonprofit group formed by writers, artists and academics in May to organize opposition to the war. Among those who have endorsed the group's "statement of conscience" are Alice Walker, Barbara Kingsolver and the artistic directors of the Goodman Theater and the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago.

Grace Paley, a writer of short stories and a lifelong political activist, was one of those who responded to Mr. Hamill's call for poems. Ms. Paley, one of the founders of the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961, said she was impressed by how fast writers responded. "Some of us were in the street about the Vietnam War in 1961, but there were no big demonstrations for four years," she said. "This is moving much faster, but so is Bush."

Ms. Paley and her husband, Robert Nichols, also a writer, for the last several weeks have been attending weekly vigils against the war on the bridge between New Hampshire and Vermont, where the couple lives. On the bridge someone placed a sign that said, "A million bitter enemies will be born out of this war."

For those like Ms. Paley, this protest is part of a life spent speaking out against the direction of American politics. But for many artists and performers of the post-Vietnam generation, the threat of military action has focused inchoate feelings of distress.

"We oppose this war for slightly different reasons and slightly different politics and philosophies, but we have come together to say we oppose this war and the attack on civil liberties since Sept. 11," said Anne de Mare, a playwright and a founder of Theaters Against War, or THAW. This group, which began meeting about two months ago, includes the actress Kathleen Chalfant, best know for her performance in "Wit," and Linda Chapman, associate artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop.

Theaters Against War has signed on 43 theaters to participate in a day of protest on March 2, which will include staged readings and performances, as well as street theater events around New York City.

The artistic response has spread beyond New York. The Asian Arts Initiative, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, for example, is accepting proposals for a performance series called "Everywhere Is War: An Artists Exchange," scheduled for June 20, featuring dance, music, spoken word and theater.

The Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., is presenting "Good Morning, America" through March 2, an exhibition of artistic responses to life and politics in the United States after Sept. 11.

Among the works is a video piece called "America's Army" by Barbara Pollack. It is a videotaped portrait of Ms. Pollack's son, Max, playing an interactive game produced by the United States Army for teenage boys. Within 10 minutes Max's digital character on the screen goes through basic training, enters a war zone and is killed in action.

In Berkeley, Calif., on Friday night, Ani DiFranco, Ozomatli, and Michael Franti and Spearhead performed at a sold-out concert to raise money for antiwar organizations. Ms. DiFranco's work has always had a political, mainly feminist slant, and Ozomatli, a Latino band, has also performed for a variety of causes, but Mr. Franti's group has specialized in a utopian, feel-good style he has called "hippie hop." The Berkeley concert also featured Saul Williams, the poet-rapper, who wrote the Not in Our Name theme song, which includes this lyric: "It's not about retaliation,/your history of war does nothing more/than scar imagination."

And in Pittsburgh a steelworker-turned-troubadour named Mike Stout opened a recent meeting of antiwar protesters. "I would say Joan Baez and Phil Ochs have found many worthy successors," said Staughton Lynd, a retired lawyer now living near Youngstown, Ohio. He said he organized the first march on Washington against the Vietnam War in April 1965 and has been protesting ever since, with a special focus on prisoner's rights.

Perhaps surprisingly, some of the artists who were ready to march against the Vietnam War are not as eager to raise their voices now, when the focus is Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary , is more likely to be singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," once the anthem of the Vietnam protest movement, in elementary-school classes than on the street. Mr. Yarrow has kept a distance from organized rallies against the United States buildup to war in Iraq.

For the last four years he has been using familiar protest music in Operation Respect, an educational program intended to teach children what he calls "nonviolent conflict-resolution tools," a project that requires the endorsement of local school boards and national politicians.

"I am urgently trying to find common ground on a nonpartisan basis to reach for nonviolent solutions through the social and emotional growth of children," he said. "I do not believe that adults are really capable of changing what is in their hearts. Therefore I believe we should create conditions for peace in the future in the children before they're taught to hate and to fear."

Similarly, Edward Sorel, the illustrator and a pacifist, said he cannot get a handle on how to depict the current political situation through his work. "Vietnam was a clear case of us being not only in the wrong place but on the wrong side," he said. "It was much easier than this. Here one group of religious fanatics represented by George Bush and Mr. Ashcroft is pitted against religious fanatics even more despotic than they are. I find the whole thing very confusing. So I take my tranquilizer and go to funny movies."

Still, some celebrities have predictably hopped on board, giving antiwar sentiments the kind of theatricality television loves. The pop singer Sheryl Crowe showed up at the American Music Awards wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, "War Is Not the Answer."

Actors who routinely speak out on behalf of political causes, like Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen and Tim Robbins, have taken part in organized rallies; others, like George Clooney, have merely made anti-Bush remarks while promoting their movies and ended up fodder for attack by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and other conservative commentators. At the televised Sundance awards, the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, one of the hosts, concluded with an antiwar statement.

These forays into politics by Hollywood figures can backfire, and sometimes from their own political na?vet?. Sean Penn took a trip to Iraq ? what he called a "fact-finding mission" ? and wound up in a battle with Mr. O'Reilly, who specializes in his own kind of political theater.

For Kathryn Blume, a 35-year-old playwright, actor and occasional yoga instructor, political awakening occurred on Jan. 4. That is when she heard about Theaters Against War and the group's plans to have a series of theatrical protests in March.

Ms. Blume had been working on a screenplay adaptation of Aristophanes' "Lysistrata." The play tells the story of women from opposing states who unite to end the Peloponnesian War by withholding sex from their mates until the men agree to lay down their swords.

When Ms. Blume learned of the protests planned by Theaters Against War, she said, "it was like setting a match to tinder." Within 24 hours she and a friend, Sharron Bower, casting director for the Mint Theater, decided to organize a day of readings of "Lysistrata" around the world.

The two women began sending e-mail messages. Ms. Blume then called a producer at National Public Radio, which did a piece about the project on Jan. 16, and that set off another round of responses. More than 313 readings of the play have been scheduled for March 3 in homes and theaters, and during a live Internet broadcast taking place in New Zealand, Norway and England. People have signed on in 28 countries.

One reading will take place in the home of Rita Mills, an office manager for an auto dealer in Tucson. Ms. Mills, 50, had never heard of the play but was intrigued when she heard Ms. Blume discussing it on NPR. "I'm not a huge activist," Ms. Mills said. "I just think the war is atrocious, and it's wrong." Her grown son's girlfriend dug up an old copy of the play she had held onto from high school. After reading the text, Ms. Mills decided this was perfect material for her writers' group..

"We don't sit around and talk about war," Ms. Mills said. "It seems so far away from us in Tucson, in this little neighborhood we live in. But it's everywhere on the television, it's in your face. This play is a way for people to get together and say something for peace, all these people all over the world doing the same thing. This has to have some effect on somebody somewhere."

Copyright 2003?The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

2003-01-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

NY Times: Bait and Switch
Behind the veil of President Bush's rhetoric is a Darwinian political philosophy that, if clearly understood, would repel the majority of Americans.

2003-01-17T07:41:00.000-08:00

Entertainment - Variety Celebrity/Gossip

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=765&ncid=787&e=7&u=/nm/20030117/people_nm/crime_britain_rappers_dc

Men Who Shoot Rappers Debate Guns at London Expo
01/17/03

By Pete Harrison

LONDON (Reuters) - A photograph of bad-boy rapper Eminem (news - web sites) glowered down from the wall of a North London gallery opening this week, his neck and chest spattered with blood, fingers on both hands crossed for luck.

In another photograph he held a gun; in another a chainsaw. Critics of hip-hop culture, among them British Culture Minister Kim Howells, might have found ample evidence here to support their theory that the often gruesome images and lyrics are fueling violent crime.

Howells raised hackles throughout the music industry earlier this month by blasting what he called the hateful lyrics of "these macho idiot rappers." He charged them with creating a culture in which killing was fashionable.

"Complete and utter bull," said American George Dubose, attending the opening of "Hip Hop Immortals" in London's Proud Camden gallery. He was one of the many photographers on show who work daily alongside some of hip-hop's most notorious figures.

Howells' remarks came after Britain's growing gun culture was underlined by the New Year shooting of two teenage girls outside a party, apparently mown down in the crossfire of a gangland shootout.

Gun crime soared 35 percent last year, according to government figures.

"If you're looking to point fingers, the biggest influence is from movies, from television, from video games," said Dubose. "Don't go after the rap kids. Go after Hollywood."

Dubose is the man behind some of hip hop's most enduring images, and some that do little to cool the critics.

In one from 1993, American rapper Biggie Smalls, better known as Notorious B.I.G., cradles an Uzi sub-machinegun as he kneels before a graffiti-scrawled Brooklyn wall. Four years after the picture was taken, Smalls was shot dead.

Many of those pictured at the exhibition have since been gunned down -- most notably Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur and Run-DMC's Jaz Master Jay.

Alex Proud, who owns and runs the gallery, blamed the media for creating the perception that guns and hip hop are inextricably linked.

"There's this obsession with blaming things on any culture that's alien," he said. "Or alien to the white middle class."

One of the most striking images at the exhibition is one of Jam Master Jay's gold chain, taken by Jonathan Mannion one year before the rapper was executed in a recording studio in the New York borough of Queens.

"He was buried in that chain," said Mannion. "These extra-curricular activities are so unnecessary."

Nitin Vadukul, who takes credit for the blood-spattered portrait of Eminem, said the violence was not surprising when authorities themselves turn to violence when diplomacy fails.

"If you can't sort out an argument without a gun, then something's seriously gone wrong," he said, "and look at us now, heading into a war with Iraq."

2002-10-28T09:38:00.000-08:00

Greta & The Blue Torpedo by Tim Badger & Mark Badger

2002-10-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

Art: What's Original, Anyway?

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,55592,00.html

By Kendra Mayfield

If current copyright laws had been on the books when jazz musicians
were borrowing riffs from other artists in the 1930s and Looney Tunes
illustrators were creating cartoons in the 1940s, entire art genres
such as hip-hop, collage and Pop Art might never have existed.

The debate over whether artists can use copyrighted materials entered
the national spotlight this week as the Supreme Court heard opening
arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft, a case in which plaintiffs are
seeking to overturn the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act.

To acknowledge this landmark case, an exhibit will celebrate
"degenerate art" in a corporate age: art and ideas on the fringes of
intellectual property law.

The exhibit, Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age,
will take place in New York from Nov. 13 to Dec. 6 and in Chicago
from Jan. 25 to Feb. 22.

"Almost all art, to a certain extent, is unoriginal," said Carrie
McLaren, publisher of Stay Free! magazine and organizer of the exhibit.
"(In) an environment where you can have free exchange of ideas, you
get better art."

The show will examine the intersection between intellectual property
and the First Amendment. Some pieces have been the focus of court
battles, while others have eluded copyright lawyers.

Digital rights activists argue that creativity is under assault with
the recent passage of laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Current copyright laws discourage the creation of new works, McLaren
said. For example, filmmakers typically screen anything that appears
on camera for copyright violations.

"That effectively makes filmmaking off limits for anyone who's not a
millionaire," McLaren said.

Some digital rights advocates believe that Eldred v. Ashcroft could
shift the balance of power.

"The fact that the Supreme Court is taking this case is a major
opportunity for this discussion," McLaren said. "It shows that the court
is concerned about the First Amendment implications of copyright."

Timed with the exhibit's opening in November, a panel discussion at
New York University will focus on some of the aspects of using and
archiving artworks that appropriate copyrighted or trademarked material.

"Understanding the sociopolitical implications of the current
copyright regime is of particular concern at this time," said Meg McLagan,
an assistant professor of anthropology at NYU, "given the challenges
posed by corporate attempts to limit access to works that should be
moving into the public domain." McLagan is the panel's moderator.

Exhibit organizer McLaren hopes Illegal Art will "wake people up" to
restrictive copyright legislation. "When people see this exhibit they
won't want to support the laws that make this type of work illegal,"
she said.

The exhibit surveys a variety of mediums -- from collage to audio and
film -- and includes pieces that flout intellectual property law by
violating copyrights or infringing on trademarks.

The visual art exhibit, viewable online, features murdered Disney
characters, a parody of the Starbucks logo and a painting of a lace
doily that incorporates the Texaco logo.

The exhibit's site also highlights illegal films and videos that
appropriate others' intellectual property through the use of found
footage, unauthorized music, or shots of copyrighted or trademarked
material.

Site visitors can also download illegal MP3s, including recycled
lyrics from 2 Live Crew's parody of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" and
Vanilla Ice's 1990 hit "Ice Ice Baby," which borrowed the main riff
from David Bowie and Queen's song "Under Pressure."

The site includes links to audio works by experimental music and art
collective Negativland, longtime advocates of the concept of fair use
since the group was forced to cease performing and distributing a
parody of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" in 1995.

Since the early '90s, "these issues have become more and more
mainstream," said Mark Hosler, one of Negativland's founding members.

Groups like Negativland have felt the repercussions of the digital
copyright wars. In 1998, Negativland's CD manufacturer refused to press
the band's latest album because of concerns over the inclusion of
unlicensed samples.

"It really has impacted us very directly," Hosler said. "It seems
like the content owners don't care any more about what we're doing. But
in terms of getting (CDs with samples) manufactured, that's the
problem."

A compilation CD of music featuring plundered hits by Negativland,
Public Enemy, John Oswald and other artists will be given away free at
Illegal Art events in New York and Chicago.

The free CD, which includes several tracks that were sued out of
existence, could create some legal entanglements of its own.

But the exhibit's organizers insist that its material is fair game.

"Since we're criticizing and educating about this, we think it falls
under fair use," McLaren said. "We wanted to have more discussion and
debate about this. We're not just throwing this stuff out there."

2002-10-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

A New Hat for a Bishop, but Perhaps Not a Red One

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

FOR 16 years, Archbishop Renato R. Martino — depending on whom you ask — has either served as the life-affirming conscience of the United Nations, or sought to impose the strict moral doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church on a secular world.

Whatever may be true, his run is over. Archbishop Martino is leaving at the end of next month as the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations. The pope has appointed him president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, a job that usually brings with it a red cardinal's hat. "It's not automatic," Archbishop Martino cautions. "I'll do my job whatever."

The archbishop has agreed to talk about himself despite what he considers hostile reactions in the press to his relentless stand in United Nations forums against abortion.

Before a word can be exchanged with the archbishop, who is a native of Salerno, on the Amalfi Coast of southern Italy, he offers true Italian espresso, not the swill-like American coffee that he is sure a visitor had at breakfast. The interview ends with a discussion of another drink, namely his recipe for limoncello, a potent, syrupy liqueur he makes for friends. (Sadly, no limoncello is offered.)

Upstairs in the grand reception room at the mission on 39th Street off Madison Avenue, the archbishop immediately points out the floor, a glorious and vast expanse of 2,400 hand-painted ceramic tiles installed by an artisan from Vietri sul Mare, a neighbor of Salerno. Amid baroque decorative motifs dominated by dazzling Amalfi blues, the tiles depict four coats of arms.

Consider them a map of Archbishop Martino's life.

The archbishop, who turns 70 on Nov. 23, has spent 41 years in the diplomatic service of the Holy See, serving in Nicaragua, the Philippines, Lebanon, Canada and Brazil. He says his greatest victories at the United Nations have come during its periodic conferences, where the Vatican is often under fire by advocates for women for seeking to impose a religious agenda.

The archbishop refers to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. He is proud, he says, of fighting for language in the first principle of the Rio declaration: "Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development."

"Imagine," he says. "If the United Nations loses that perspective, of serving human beings, for what else does the United Nations exist?"

At the Cairo population conference in 1994, the Vatican struggled successfully for language in the final declaration saying, "In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning." But it also suffered defeats, including adoption of the principle that where abortion is legal, it should be safe.

Most of this comes from memory. The diplomat in Archbishop Martino frequently summons his assistant, Olivetta Danese, to provide documents with exact wording.

Demonstrating that all politics is local, Archbishop Martino even stayed away from a Franciscan awards dinner at the Plaza Hotel on Oct. 4 honoring Gov. George E. Pataki's wife, Libby, even though he was co-chairman of the event. He said he had received complaints that Mrs. Pataki was in favor of abortion rights.

"I do not want to do anything which can put in doubt my position regarding abortion," he said.

The archbishop is known as a man who mixes easily with people of power and means. He often went fishing off Montauk, N.Y., with one donor family that he was close to. Donors helped him establish a foundation called Path to Peace, which supports the work of the mission and owns its building, which it rents to the mission for a nominal sum. Archbishop Martino will remain its president.

ARCHBISHOP MARTINO says his family can trace its history back to the 13th century. His father was an engineer and World War I veteran with a distaste for fascism. The archbishop says Mussolini did some good things, but brought tragedy to Italy by entering into World War II, not an uncommon view in Italy.

The archbishop says his experience as a child in wartime Salerno brought a hatred of war. He remembers rations of two ounces of bread a day, errant troops from all sides in the countryside where he took refuge, an old woman named Mamma Lucia who would collect the bodies of soldiers.

"War is bloodshed, is destruction, is famine," he says. "I remember." Later, he draws a link between the war and his war on abortion. "I defend life because I saw death and destruction."

Those memories focused his opposition to the gulf war, which he says he worked energetically to avert. He also opposes military action now against Iraq. "This kind of war, a pre-emptive war, has no moral justification," he says, a view also expressed by other Vatican officials.

Archbishop Martino speaks often of the pope, recalling the dates and details of encounters and papal visits to the United States. He shows his appointment letter for Justice and Peace proudly, pointing out the pope's slightly wavering signature. He says he does not feel like he is abandoning the field at the United Nations at a critical time.

"The pope gave me another job, which is in line with what I have done for 16 years," he says. "In a different capacity, I can also work for peace."

Copyright The New York Times Company

2002-10-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Most and Least Unmarried States

According to 2000 Census data, Vermont has a higher percentage of unmarried partners living together than any other state; Alabama's percentage is the lowest. Here are the top and bottom 10 states in terms of the percentages:
States with Highest Percentages of Unmarried Cohabiting Partners (including same sex and different sex):

1. Vermont - highest percentage of unmarried couples living together
2. Alaska
3. Maine
4. Nevada
5. New Hampshire
6. New Mexico
7. Oregon
8. Arizona
9. Washington
10. Delaware

States with Lowest Percentages of Unmarried Cohabiting Partners (including same sex and different sex):
1. Alabama - lowest percentage of unmarrieds
2. Utah
3. Arkansas
4. Oklahoma
5. Kansas
6. Tennessee
7. North Dakota
8. Texas
9. Nebraska
10. Mississippi

States with Laws (Rarely Enforced) Making Unmarried Cohabitation Illegal:
Florida
Massachusetts
Michigan
Mississippi
North Carolina
North Dakota
Virginia
West Virginia

The following states' laws against "fornication" may also make cohabitation illegal:
Washington, D.C., Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah.
Source: Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples, 2001, with updates based on more recent news articles.

2002-10-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

Public neglect, official inaction fuel rise of US poverty

By David R. Francis
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Proportionately more Americans are poor. The income of middle-class households has slipped a little. Income inequality has worsened a bit.

Those are the highlights of Census Bureau reports last week on poverty and income in the United States in 2001.

Poverty usually increases when the economy weakens and unemployment rises. But boom or slump, the US has a higher poverty level by most measures than any other industrialized nation. To many poverty experts, Americans don't seem to care enough to end this embarrassment.

"It's real simple: We choose not to," says Timothy Smeeding, an economist at Syracuse University's Maxwell School. "It's not a priority."

President Bush proposed a tax cut that benefits primarily the well off. Congress approved it with some Democratic help.

As to a hike in the minimum wage that might lift some families out of poverty or at least make them less poor, it's been frozen in Congress for years, though Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts hopes to attach a minimum-wage boost to a pension reform bill before Congress adjourns for the November elections.

In contrast, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has tackled his country's high level of child poverty head on.

"A very ambitious program," says Jane Waldfogel, an economist at Columbia University, New York. It's estimated that 1 million British children have already been lifted out of poverty.

Starting in 1998, the British government offered universal childcare for 4-year-olds. Next year, 3-year-olds will be eligible under the plan.

Mr. Blair's Labour government has introduced a national minimum wage at a relatively higher level than in the US.

Britain's "Sure Start" program, helps provide children up to 3 years old with home visits, family support, and health services. It covers proportionately more children than early Head Start in the US. Adolescents in poor families get money to stay in school.

Britain's equivalent of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is more generous than the US program. It provides poorly paid workers with extra income. To a degree, it offsets the free market's tendency to pay those at the bottom less than needed to raise a family properly.

In the US, the poverty rate for children in the 1990s was worse than in 19 other rich countries, according to a study by Sheldon Danziger, an economist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Referring to Mr. Bush's campaign slogan, he titled the study, "No Child Left Behind?" – with a question mark.

It shows that 22.3 percent of children in 1997 lived in families with incomes less than half the median. The median is the level where half of households have more income, half have less income.

By this measure, Italy had 20.2 percent, Britain 19.8 percent (perhaps less today), Sweden 2.6 percent, Germany 10.6 percent. The overall average was 10.8 percent.

Asked why the US devotes relatively less effort to reducing child poverty, Mr. Danziger notes the popular view that poor people are poor because they don't study hard enough at school or don't work hard enough at work. They accept less the idea that institutional factors, such as inadequate schools, also are important. Or that government can offset to a degree the disadvantage of inept parents.

"Americans have a relative distrust of government," he adds.

A political factor may be that poor Americans are also poor voters. Politicians have less to fear from their voting power.

"They don't have the money to buy influence either," says Mr. Smeeding, thinking of campaign contributions.

During the l990s, shrinking unemployment did reduce poverty. The percentage of households that were poor fell from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 11.3 in 2000 and back up to 11.7 percent last year. The experts figure poverty is growing again this year.

"The best way to lower poverty is to run a full-employment economy," says Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "You need a tight labor market to deliver the fruits of the economy to the lower 20 percent."

Beyond this, government programs could lift more working Americans out of poverty. Mr. Bernstein estimates that a boost in the national minimum wage from its present $5.15 an hour to the proposed $6.65 an hour could trim two-tenths to three-tenths of a percentage point off the poverty level.

If all eligible families with children participated fully in key federal safety net programs, 3.8 million people could escape poverty, an analysis by the Urban Institute in Washington, finds. This 20 percent reduction in poverty is a rationale for improving access to such programs as food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, welfare, and the EITC.

For comparison, the number of poor Americans rose 1.3 million to 32.9 million last year.

The number of households on welfare has been cut to about 2 million – an extremely low level. But many of the often single mothers pushed or encouraged into work still can't adequately feed, clothe, or otherwise provide for their children.

An extra $30 billion invested in reducing poverty would help a lot, Smeeding says. "Can't we be a little more creative?"

Copyright 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

from the September 30, 2002 edition

2002-10-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

british stimulus

2002-09-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

Associated Press: Court to Rule on Releasing Pregnancy Data
The Iowa Supreme Court agreed Friday to review a judge's ruling ordering the state's Planned Parenthood chapter to turn over pregnancy test results to investigators.

Buena Vista County investigators are seeking the records in an effort to identify a dead baby boy found in May at a recycling center in Storm Lake, in northwestern Iowa.

Planned Parenthood says the test results are confidential medical records.

Planned Parenthood appealed an order to turn over the names and addresses of all women with a positive pregnancy test between Aug. 15, 2001, and May 30, 2002.

Judge Frank B. Nelson of State District Court had ordered the information to be turned over by Aug. 17, but the Supreme Court granted Planned Parenthood a delay. A hearing is expected the week of Dec. 9.

Philip E. Havens, the county attorney for Buena Vista County, contends that the results are not medical records because employees who perform pregnancy tests do not have to be doctors or nurses.

2002-08-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Pope, Again, Heads Home and, Again, Rumors Fly
"I've pretty much used up my advance, and now my editors are hoping that I'll outlive the pope."
ROBERT BLAIR KAISER,who is 71, on a book he will write on Pope John Paul II's successor.

2002-08-14T19:11:00.000-07:00

When I was a child I felt as if my every move was recorded, that I was the personal project of someone, to watch and observe. Not in the ufo abduction sense, but that this was a matter of being human and perceiving a point of order in the universe. Over the years, this feeling is relatively gone, but not entirely. When I was born the tradegies of Jackson and Kent States has just occured, Nixon maintained his secret war and was working his way to Watergate, and the US still did not understand the Situationists. The US is not known for its sense of irony, hence the situation we find presented to us. I wonder why sometimes that I had a fear that the dominate culture would impose bad versions of 20 year old spectacles designed to lull the general population that all is well in the land of Nod. Everyone involved with the dominate culture's propaganda is essentially brained washed into accepting it as reality and truth. I fear that everyone within the concern of the US is living in an Orwellian nightmare of Lovecraftian proportions. The question is how do I rid myself of this nightmare, of being watched and observed. Accept it as faith, go insane from the paranoia, sit and do nothing?

2002-08-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

Tens of Thousands Flee Prague as Floods Invade Historic Center
A blindfolded rhinoceros being evacuated at Prague's zoo on Tuesday as floodwaters continued rising.

2002-07-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

NY Times: A Protected Space, Where Art Comes Calling
excerpt:
A CONVERSATION WITH JANOS MARTON

By ERICA GOODE

If Dr. Janos Marton ran the world, there would be protected spaces everywhere for people with mental illness to create paintings and sculptures, drawings and lithographs, installations, murals and collages, poetry and novels, songs and symphonies.

The abandoned buildings on the grounds of old state hospitals would be turned into sheltered workshops.
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Warehouses in urban centers, where the mentally ill pace the streets and scrounge meals from garbage cans, would become safe harbors, working studios filled with color and form.

Delusion and hallucination, pain and sorrow, fear and manic exuberance would find their outlet in something quite simple, the creation of works of art.

Dr. Marton's vision is hardly an idle one. At the Living Museum, housed in Building 75 of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, the state hospital's former main kitchen and dining areas, he is the director of just such an "art asylum," a refuge where in the 19 years since the museum opened more than 800 men and women have shed their identities as psychiatric patients and bloomed instead as artists.

Their work has been widely exhibited, most recently at the Queens Museum. Several artists have attained prominence in the world of outsider art.

"Artists at the Living Museum don't really care about the diagnoses: they ignore labels," Dr. Marton wrote in the catalog for the Queens Museum show. "What counts is their behavior, the outcome of their labor. It's not therapy. It's art that matters."

2002-07-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Mutual Admiration Society

The Mutual Admiration Society is an international organization dedicated to food, fun, and frivolity. The mission of The MAd Society is to further their view of the world as " wacky, not tacky! "
Floundered in 1983, The MAd Society has sponsored many artistic endeavors, silly parties and generally avant events, with the notion that life is for living, so you might as well have a good time before being confronted by the pointless, meaningless eternity of non-existence that awaits you... or something like that.

2002-07-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

The Village Voice: Your Grocery List Could Spark a Terror Probe
excerpt:

Katherine Albrecht, a crusader against grocery loyalty cards and invasive marketing, notes in a paper to be published in the Denver Law Review, "Virginia Congressmen Jim Moran (D-VA) and Tom Davis (R-VA) recently introduced legislation that would require all states' driver's licenses and ID cards to contain an embedded computer chip capable of accepting 'data or software written to the license or card by non-governmental devices.' " The mandatory "smart chips" would carry bank and debit card data so that citizens could use their ID cards "for a variety of commercial applications." Even library records, shopping coupons, and health records could be stored on the chips.

Adding to this vision of technological dystopia, companies are already developing cameras and other scanners that can seamlessly trace individuals as they wander through stores, going so far as to zoom in on their faces should they linger over an item, to provide retailers with ever more data.

2002-07-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

"With their gifts of intelligence and heart, they represent the future," the pope said in brief remarks after his nine-hour flight from Rome. "But they also bear the marks of a humanity that too often does not know peace or justice."

"Too many lives begin and end without joy, without hope," he said, adding that because of that, young people needed to "commit themselves, in the strength of their faith in Jesus Christ, to the great cause of peace and human solidarity."

2002-07-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Painterly Sermons Mix Severe and Sensual
excerpts:
Atheists, secularists and rationalists might want to visit a museum show in Raleigh before deciding that there is no vengeful God who punishes the wicked with eternal suffering and rewards the righteous with heavenly bliss.

The North Carolina Museum of Art is showing works by a little-known painter who was born in 1888, trained in New York and London as a portraitist, spent most of his life as an evangelical preacher, and then, in his 70's, began producing astonishingly vivid works depicting the torments of hell and the rewards of heaven.

The picture that Mr. Steel describes as Long's masterpiece, called "Apocalyptic Scene With Philosophers and Historical Figures," recalls the work of Breughel and embraces many of Long's themes. It is a sprawling panorama, but balanced and composed with a skill that reflects Long's artistic training. On the left side of the picture, naked figures, many of them female, fall headlong into the pit of hell, where devils wait to burn and flog them. Among those already being tormented are Stalin, Hitler and Mao.

Observing from the shore of this lake of fire, evidently contemplating their responsibility for the cataclysm, are a rogue's gallery of humanistic thinkers, among them Marx, Freud, Descartes, Nietzsche and Einstein. Scantily clad women, one of whom looks like Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel," watch in horror as a skeleton points their way to the pit. From a vantage point above, the painter himself watches, smiling and chatting with none other than Dante, who also warned humanity about the perils that await sinners after death.

"He was a paradox of well-heeled intellectualism and fist-shaking, foot-stomping Southern fundamentalism," Brad Thomas, a co-curator of the show, writes in the catalog. "His early training in the tradition of academic portraiture provided him the skill to realistically render anything he could imagine on canvas. Yet he would turn his back on many of the tenets of his academic training to forge a highly personal, even eccentric style that would express his fundamental beliefs about mankind's need for salvation and the pernicious influence of secular culture."

2002-06-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

My name is Yossarian Jones. I am named after a fictional character whose story has become an intricate part in explaining bureacratic culture in a very Zen like manner. In accepting the term "catch 22" into the social language, does that make it a fiction as well. Read fiction as in myth, not as in untrue. Is the culture looking at itself in terms of generalized archtypes, which are layered one on the other until even the shape of it is lost. Believe that some thought it a good idea to cover up an unused door with wallpaper.
Is my being named after a fictional character make me fictional as well? Or is it all in the recounting, of memory, of history, is that where the fiction re: myth exist.
My parents add a bit of a twist to the naming mythology which is me. Jones is there actual shared last name, and at the time of my conception and birth, Jones had its own cultural implications. In the culture at the time the Jones surname was applied in three separate social distinctions: anglo middle class male; afro urban class male; anglo pornographic female; afro avenging female. Since my parents were of the afro persuasion with a dip or two of anglo, they had no problem in naming me after a character whose own heritage is an open question, and my being female who was to carry two surnames, would add to the mystery or rather mythology.