I eat lots of nuts

Macadamia, cashew, peanut, almond. I do not eat them raw. I have eaten more macadamia nuts in the last three months than in the first forty-two years of my life. I have also been eating great heaps of banana chips. Has my complexion been affected? My whiskers seems stubblier and fall away in little pale nubbins.

Reading

"The Marquise of O— and Other Stories" Heinrich von Kleist
"Elephant Bill" J. H. Williams
"On Beauty" Zadie Smith

The Year 1981

1. Super Freak - Rick James (*)
2. Let's Groove - Earth, Wind and Fire (*)
3. Just the Two of Us - Grover Washington Jr & Bill Withers
4. Celebration - Kool and The Gang (*)
5. Jessie's Girl - Rick Springfield (**)
6. Don't Stop Believin' - Journey
7. Endless Love - Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross
8. Give It To Me Baby - Rick James (**)
9. Back In Black - AC/DC
10. Same Old Lang Syne - Dan Fogelberg
11. I Love You - Climax Blues Band
12. Lady (You Bring Me Up) - Commodores
13. She's A Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked) - Carl Carlton
14. America - Neil Diamond
15. Fantastic Voyage - Lakeside
16. Start Me Up - Rolling Stones
17. In The Air Tonight - Phi Collins
18. Double Dutch Bus - Frankie Smith
19. Hey Nineteen - Steely Dan
20. We're in This Love Together - Al Jarreau
21. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da - Police
22. Woman - John Lennon
23. Waiting For A Girl Like You - Foreigner (**)
24. Love T.K.O. - Teddy Pendergast
25. Urgent - Foreigner (***)
26. Fire and Ice - Pat Benatar
27. Being With You - Smokey Robinson
28. The Tide Is High - Blondie (**)
29. Don't Stand So Close To Me - Police
30. Tempted - Squeeze (*)
31. Treat Me Right - Pat Benatar
32. Our Lips Are Sealed - Go Go's (*)
33. Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me) - Gap Band
34. Who's Making Love - Blues Brothers
35. Guilty - Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb (*)
36. Winner Takes All - Abba
37. Queen of Hearts - Juice Newton
38. Controversy - Prince
39. The Stroke - Billy Squier
40. Watching the Wheels - John Lennon
41. Say Goodbye to Hollywood - Billy Joel
42. Fashion - David Bowie (***)
43. My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone) - Chilliwack
44. No Reply At All - Genesis
45. The Old Songs - Barry Manilow
46. All Those Years Ago - George Harrison
47. Slow Hand - Pointer Sisters
48. 8th Wonder - Sugarhill Gang
49. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - Police (*)
50. Winning - Santana
51. Rapture - Blondie (***)
52. Jones vs. Jones - Kool and the Gang
53. 9 to 5 - Dolly Parton
54. Tom Saywer - Rush
55. Elvira - Oak Ridge Boys
56. Private Eyes - Hall and Oates
57. (Ghost) Riders In The Sky - The Outlaws
58. Working in the Coal Mine - Devo
59. Keep on Loving You - REO Speedwagon
60. Super Trooper - Abba
61. Physical - Olivia Newton John (**)
62. Wasn't That a Party - The Rovers
63. Ah! Leah - Donnie Iris
64. Arc of a Diver - Steve Winwood
65. While You See a Chance - Steve Winwood
66. Teacher, Teacher - Rockpile (***)
67. Hello Again - Neil Diamond
68. Skateaway - Dire Straites
69. Sukiyaki - A Taste Of Honey
70. Sign of the Gypsy Queen - April Wine
71. (There's) No Getting Over Me - Ronnie Milsap
72. All American Girls - Sister Sledge
73. Boy from New York City - Manhattan Transfer
74. Morning Train (9 to 5) - Sheena Easton
75. This Little Girl - Gary U.S. Bonds

Reading

"Are Women Human?" Catharine MacKinnon
"Koba the Dread" Martin Amis
"The Saga of the Volsungs"

S is for Q

What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?

You will sink in a mire. You like to think you're normal, but deep down you really just want to strip off your clothes and roll around in chicken fat. Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

You have 0 unread messages

What is up with that?

Noam Shalit

An Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit was captured on the twenty-fifth of June by a Palestinian group operating in Israel. Yesterday Gilad's father Noam visited Palestinian victims of Israeli shelling in a Tel Aviv hospital to express his sympathy and repeat his request that negotiations for his son's release move forward. A soldier is not the same as a civilian, certainly, but Noam Shalit's act is deeply humane and I was very moved by this story.

Reading

"Scoop" Evelyn Waugh
"Machiavellian Intelligence" many evolutionary biologists
"Coriolanus" William Shakespeare

Odor

I suppose fingerprints and armpits. Shouldn't we all have distinct odors? To hear a bloodhound tell it, we do. But I have been sniffing people for the past couple of weeks and, though I've been complimented by pros for my finetuned nose, I can't smell much at all at such moments. A woman in my office smells like the shavings in a hamster cage and another smelled vaguely nice today, but the first may be a result of her upholstery and the second could be hormonal. Not to be confused with pheremonal. I definitely have a scent--Eames calls it musk. But to be a proper officeworker I've subdued it. I sniffed my shirt today: I've worn it two days running and it barely speaks my name. I love my scent and that of a few others. I want to know more people's scents. I am without fear.

People who say "yo"

No. This will not do.

Reference

The New York Public Library telephone reference desk. Every day, except Sundays and holidays, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, anyone, of any age, from anywhere in the world, can telephone 212-340-0849 and ask a question. The library staff will not answer crossword or contest questions, do children's homework, or answer philosophical speculations.

Isn't that neat?

Robert M. Gates-scummier

From the New York Times, Nov. 4, 1991

Mr. Gates' Past, The C.I.A.'s Future

When the Senate votes tomorrow on the nomination of Robert Gates, it will be judging more than his fitness to lead the Central Intelligence Agency out of the past. It will be judging its own fitness to oversee intelligence.

The confirmation hearings did little to dispel doubts that Mr. Gates misled Congress during the Iran-contra scandal. They reinforced suspicions that he tailored intelligence estimates to please his superiors. And they raised questions about his role during the Iran-Iraq war.

Even so, the Senate Intelligence Committee chose to give Mr. Gates the benefit of the doubt, voting 11 to 4 in favor of confirmation. That vote sends and unfortunate message: Instead of overseeing intelligence, the Committee chose to look the other way. Now it's up to the Senate to confront Mr. Gates's past and say he's not fit to lead the C.I.A. into the future.

The Iran-contra question is simple. Did Mr. Gates know about the illegal diversion of proceeds from arms sales to Iran to the Nicaraguan contras? In 1985 and again in 1987, he told Congress he knew nothing about it. He clings to his story--despite evidence that he was warned about it in some detail by subordinates.

Charges that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence assessments, leaving Congress in the dark and more amenable to Administration policy, stand unrefuted. He now acknowledges suppressing dissent to a 1985 intelligence estimate justifying the covert sale of arms to Iran.

Then, when he was accused of `killing' estimates that showed waning Soviet activity in the third world, he obliquely acknowledged that he `may have found a specific paper inadequate.'

Further, Mr. Gates distributed an assessment making the case for Soviet complicity in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and endorsed it, enthusiastically, as `the C.I.A.'s first comprehensive examination' of the issue. A C.I.A. post-mortem found that `no one at the working level other than the two primary authors of the paper * * * agreed with [its] thrust.'

The hearings left another question dangling: did Mr. Gates play a role in suspected intelligence-sharing and arms transfers with Iraq? The C.I.A., the committee concludes, shared vital intelligence with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and failed to report it to Congressional intelligence committees, as required by law.

A related question, let unanswered and still troubling to some senators, was whether the C.I.A., which is supposed to monitor suspicious arms deals, looked the other way while U.S. companies unlawfully armed Iraq as well as Iran.

All three reservations about Mr. Gates--his denying knowledge of Iran-contra, slanting intelligence and winking at reporting requirements--suggest that he is a man used to doing business the old way. Yet a new era requires new ways. The Senate would mortgage the C.I.A.'s future to its past and deny Congress's constitutional role of oversight if it confirmed Mr. Gates as C.I.A. director.

Robert M. Gates-scum

GATES NOMINATION (Senate - November 07, 1991)
[Page: S16305]

[Begin insert]
SENATOR TOM HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. President, at the outset of the confirmation hearings, I had serious reservations about the nominee. The confirmation hearings only raised more questions and greater doubts. Questions and doubts about Mr. Gates' past activities, managerial style, judgment, lapses in memory and analytical abilities. Questions and doubts about his role in the Iran-Contra Affair and in providing military intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war; and questions and doubts about whether he will be able to remove the ideological blinders reflected in his writings and speeches or whether Mr. Gates is so rooted in the past, that he will not be able to lead the Agency into the post-cold war era. Because of these concerns, I have concluded that Mr. Gates is not the right person for the important job of overseeing our intelligence operations in this New World.

Mr. President, Robert Gates is a career Soviet analyst and former Deputy Director of the CIA who was wrong about what CIA analyst Harold Ford described as `the central analytic target of the past few years: the probable fortunes of the USSR and the Soviet European bloc.' And I believe that the committee report points out one possible reason why the CIA failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to testimony, Mr. Gates was busy pursuing hypotheses and making unsubstantiated arguments attempting to show Soviet expansion in the Third World, instead of looking for or paying attention to facts that pointed in the opposite direction. Why? Why, as Mentor Moynihan has pointed out, was the CIA able to tell Presidents everything about the Soviet Union except the fact that it was falling apart?

Mr. Gates was also wrong about the Soviet threat to Iran in 1985. The 1985 Special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stressed possible Soviet inroads into Iran. Gates admits that the analysis was an anomaly. It was a clear departure from previous analyses and almost immediately proven wrong by subsequent events. Gates was involved in preparing that analysis. According to Hal Ford, whose testimony the nominee never refuted, Gates leaned heavily on the Iran Estimate, in effect, `insisting on his own views and discouraging dissent.' What was the result? The 1985 estimate was skewed and contributed to the biggest foreign policy debacle of the Reagan administration, the sale of arms to Iran.

Mr. President, Graham Fuller, the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, suggested that the 1985 SNIE estimate was based on intuition in the absence of hard evidence. I agree there is nothing wrong with preparing worse case scenarios or using `intuition' as opposed to hard evidence in the preparation of analysis, provided it is made clear to policymakers that the finished analysis is based on intuition and not hard evidence. It is the job of the CIA to sort out fact from fiction, not convert one into the other.

Mr. President, I also have doubts and questions about Mr. Gates' role in the secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq. Robert Gates served as assistant to the Director of the CIA in 1981 and as Deputy Director for Intelligence for 1982 to 1986. In that capacity he helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually involved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986. The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests. The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping and narrative texts provided to Saddam, may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran but also in the recent gulf war. Saddam Hussein may have discovered the value of underground land lines as opposed to radio communications after he was give our intelligence information. That made it more difficult for the allied coalition to get quick and accurate intelligence during the gulf war. Further, after the Persian Gulf war, our intelligence community was surprised at the extent of Iraq's nuclear program. One reason Saddam may have hidden his nuclear program so effectively from detection was because of his knowledge of our satellite photos. What also concerns me about that operation is that we spend millions of dollars keeping secrets from the Soviets and then we give it to Saddam who sells them to the Soviets. In short, the coddling of Saddam was a mistake of the first order.

Mr. President, I've stated a very simple case for rejecting the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the CIA. The fact that he was wrong on major issues which in some instances led to foreign policy debacles. I haven't addressed concerns about the allegations of his politicization of intelligence analysis, his apparently poor managerial style or still unanswered questions about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Regarding the Iran-Contra affair, I should mention that I was quite disturbed to hear testimony that portrayed Robert Gates as someone concerned about Agency's role and not sufficiently concerned about pursuing possible illegal Government activities. In his opening statement before the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Gates said that he should have taken more seriously `the possibility of impropriety or possible wrongdoing in the Government and pursued this possibility more aggressively.' I agree.

I should also mention, Mr. President, that aside from Mr. Gates' poor judgment in not pursuing the possibility of Government wrongdoing more aggressively, I still find it incredible that the Deputy Director of CIA was not aware of that major covert operation. How could such a high ranking official not know about the CIA's efforts to support the Contras? Did he purposely avoid trying to find out what was happening? The testimony seemed to indicate he did. Gates' selective lapses in recall about the affair by a man with a photographic memory raises serious doubts.

The U.S. Congress and the American people depend on accurate and reliable intelligence information. Our expenditures on defense and other areas are often decided on the basis of that information. We cannot afford to waste billion of dollars in the future. After reviewing the record, I do not believe that the Central Intelligence Agency under the directorship of Robert Gates will provide the clear intelligence assessments necessary for Congress to make decisions to deal with the future threats confronting our nation.

Mr. President, I do not believe that Robert Gates is the right person to lead the CIA at this time. The cold war is over and it's time for some of the old warriors to rest. Now we must take a fresh new look at the world, think new thoughts and reassess the future role of the intelligence community. I urge my colleagues to vote against Robert Gates.

Life's cruelest blows

The adoption of the unprecedented policy of banning short trousers from Kiss (Taipei's Super Disco) some time between fall 1988 and summer 1996.

The closing of Hermann's Salads on Geary Boulevard between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, replaced by a Gap.

The death of Midnight.

The destruction of the Embarcadero Freeway.

Various romantic disappointments.

The closing of Playland by the Sea.

Whiskers.

"Remain in Light"

The time I had to siphon shark shit out of a large tank at Steinhart.

Why life is wonderful

There are so many things to dislike! Waking up each day, I know that my life has purpose because I will discover new things to bitch about. Here's today's: the phrase "grace with -- presence." It's now on the banned and forbidden list.

Reading

"The Autograph Man" Zadie Smith
"A Social History of Truth" Steven Shapin
"Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu" Honoré de Balzac
"Runaway Slaves" John Hope Franklin & Loren Schweninger
"Dionysos at Large" Marcel Detienne

Unclothed

Yesterday I removed a good portion of my hair to play the part of Magwitch more thoroughly. This morning I scraped off the remainder. I feel so very naked.

The Bridge

Every couple of weeks, some unhappy soul kills himself by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. I walked down the middle of the bridge nearly twenty years ago unscathed: the bridge was closed to car traffic in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. But I've never found walking across the bridge much fun. It's very windy and the noise of cars is unpleasant. One can't say much for the view, which has nothing on that from the Marin headlands. But it's the most photographed structure in America and I've gotten a fair amount of use out of it. After seeing a documentary on Saturday that shows a half dozen men and women plunge to their death from the bridge, I'm in favor of erecting tall barriers all along the pedestrian (east) side of the bridge. Why wasn't this done long ago? I don't mind if people kill themselves but what if those jumpers hit a seal or a grouper?

Fatwa #1

Colds are to last no longer than seventy-two hours.

Me?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Those who spurn god together stay together

Religion % have been divorced
Jews 30%
Born-again Christians 27%
Other Christians 24%
Atheists, Agnostics 21%

I did not write this

There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep. Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today in H's journal about me - that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn't like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us) . . . Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal.

Banned words and phrases

on the same page
down time
merely
alas
terrorist
sea change
welter
all good
I'm confused
graced us with his presence
notwithstanding the fact that
a phyletic vestige with no current adaptive value

History and Politicians

Rumsfeld claimed yesterday that the lesson learned from World War Two is that appeasement does not work. He's such an ignoramus. There is no such thing as a lesson learned from a single historical event. Appeasement worked extraordinarily well for imperial China over many centuries, as emperors routinely bought off aggressive neighbors by showering them with hugely valuable gifts. Liberals use Vietnam in the same way: the lesson of that quagmire is don't pour lots of troops into conflicts with guerrillas. This is stupid too. Why have we allowed the political discourse in this country to become so historiographically impoverished?

Farallon, part 2

Time exists on the slack hypotenuse
Strung between sky and gutflutter,
Each peak and valley of pulsing wet
Taking us further from our footing

From what it feels like to lean, to stand
Without being threatened, without the surround
Speaking, without splashing. Sea lions applaud
The lurching circus of lenses and the odd wince.

Farallon, part 1

We ride upon the thin edge of the water
Casting our image on it, withdrawing from
The fatiguing guesswork we had about wet
About what it's like to look up from deep down.

The thing supporting us, keeping us from
Slipping deep into the softly rolling water
Is part of a whale, its image of us as a film
Infecting its dark eye, itching its attention.

Other things ride around the slick of oily us
Barking, fluttering, wanting to be less wet
And less adhesive. Water claims them thickly.
Us it salts, rolls, moves about on its tongue.

We meet the wanderers out here where land fails
Slipping suddenly into utter dimness. Water
Draws a sort of penitential piss from the boat
Which burps and moves utterly nowhere.

Roger Clay's Proposal

I may be oversusceptible to news
But what I see in the papers leaves me numb.
The bomb. The ultimatum. Wires hum—
Adult impersonators giving interviews,

As if that helped. What would? I've thought of it.
With all due ceremony—flags unfurled,
Choirs, priests—the leaders of a sobered world
Should meet, kneel down, and, joining hands, submit

To execution: say in Rome or Nice—
Towns whose economy depends on crowds.
Ah, but those boys, their heads aren't in the clouds.
They would find reasons not to die for peace.

Damn them. I'd give my life. Each day I meet
Men like me, young, indignant. We're not cranks.
Will some of them step up? That's plenty. Thanks.
Now let's move before we get cold feet.

Music we'll need, and short, clear speeches given
Days of maximum coverage in the press.
We'll emphasize disinterestedness,
Drive the point home that someone could be driven

To do this. Where to go? Why not Japan,
Land of the honorable suicide.
And will the world change heart? Until we've tried,
No one can say it will not. No one can.


by James Merrill

Nuts

Feeling distinctly preverbal today. Want to do nothing but eat macadamia nuts, drink apple juice, and stare out the window.

Hiroshima Day on August 6

On August 6 1945, at a quarter after eight in the morning, Hiroshima was destroyed by the United States and a nuclear bomb named Little Boy. By December 140,000 human beings had died. The American attack on Nagasaki, on August 9, killed 74,000 more. Never forget.

Hello

This is just to say hello to Howard.

rats

www.ratlife.org

I learned about this from an article on research on rodents that appeared in the recent issue of AV Magazine.

Quid pro quid

If I slap a man and he kills my mother and father as retribution, are their deaths justified?

Easily the most irritating poem I've read this century

Irish Poetry
by Billy Collins

That morning under a pale hood of sky
I heard the unambiguous scrape of spackling
against the side of our wickered, penitential house.

The day mirled and clabbered
in the thick, stony light,
and the rooks’ feathered narling
astounded the salt waves, the plush coast.

I lugged a bucket past the forked
coercion of a tree, up toward
the pious and nictitating preeminence of a school,
hunkered there in its gully of learning.

Only later, by the galvanized washstand,
while gaunt, phosphorescent heifers
swam beyond the windows,
did the whorled and sparky gib of the indefinite
wobble me into knowledge.

Then, I heard the ghost-clink of milk bottle
on the rough threshold
and understood the meadow-bells
that trembled over a nimbus of ragwort—
the whole afternoon lambent, corrugated, puddle-mad.

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0706/poem_178394.html

synonymology

What's another word for thesaurus?

Van Gogh bullshit

All that hooey about van Gogh never selling a painting, or selling only a single painting for the equivalent of eighty dollars, is crap. He sold lots of sketches and small paintings in Paris, as Gauguin pointed out in "Avant et aprés." See the van Gogh volume in the Time-Life Library of Art, pp. 75–76. See also the tale of van Gogh's lost works, on p. 71. Lots of these were sold too, it happens.

Fascinating

http://tinyurl.com/ea75e

Byronic kisses

Byron makes a date with a young Greek woman for midnight at the Parthenon. Lady Elgin has a rendezvous there at the same time. Chekhovian confusion and a kiss.

Pirates

During his return from Greece, Byron discovers that he is traveling with a shipment of Elginian booty. He also learns, from a singularly garrulous soprano, that Elgin has been humiliated by his adultrous wife, has lost any chance of a diplomatic career, and is broke. When North African pirates board the ship, Byron determines to save the Pathenonian booty from savages who might dump it in the ocean.

Byron vs. Elgin

The two lords never met, but they will in my opera. Picture the beautiful young poet landing a headbutt on poor Elgin's already infirm nose. All in the name of Greek self-determination.

Who is Hermester Barrington?

http://www.geocities.com/nodotus/peeps.html

http://tinyurl.com/lxbyb

http://tinyurl.com/faggj

http://www.geocities.com/nodotus/index.html

Music

I've discovered the archive of musical performances at KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" web page and have recently listened to The Guillemots, Rosanne Cash, Jackie Greene, and Jenny Lewis. These performances are archived in video and audio, meaning that one can see a bit about how a radio studio works. The host's interviewing skills are limited, certainly (e.g., when Rosanne Cash explains that she wrote _Black Cadillac_ over the course of a time when she lost her parents and stepmother, commenting "Luckily, I don't think I'll ever have to write this kind of record again," the host replies, "Well, I guess not. Obviously. Um . . .") and one often wants to skip through the talk portions. The music is marvelous.

Visit http://tinyurl.com/3yamn

"The Marbles"

An opera in two acts and two songs

Book and libretto by Samuel Ross Gilbert

(1) A naked and pale male figure appears at center
stage with the rising sun. As he sings we learn that
he is Dionysus, the pedimental figure from the east
side of the Parthenon. His aria is a paean to a savior
whose imminent coming will liberate him from his 2,200
year imprisonment.

(2) Morning on the Acropolis. A British couple, an
Italian painter, a hunchback, a team of Greek workers.
Huge carved blocks are being wrestled from the
Parthenon frieze. The couple, we learn, are the Earl
of Elgin, ambassador to Constantinople, and his
frivolous wife Mary. While Elgin sings of his plans to
improve British taste through these fifth-century-BC
masterpieces, Mary talks of her health, how sick she
was on the crossing, etc.

(3) Evening in London. Elgin, his health devastated,
is divorcing his faithless wife. He has ruined himself
with the taste-improvement enterprise. His nose has
come off, erased by some Turkish bug. He visits the
temporary hall where his loot is housed, and despite
the praise of ghastly figures--Canova, Visconti,
Hayson, West, Fuseli--he can only hear the lasting
curses of Byron, champion of the modern Greek.

(4) Dionysus reappears, sings a plaintive ode to the
Thames and hints of another savior to come.

Seagulls, Woodpeckers, and a Fox

Yesterday morning I saw a red fox in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Two years ago I'd seen one in Strybing Arboretum. There are all sorts of plants and animals in the park. For example, I saw an orange fish that looked something like a goldfish and must have been over two feet long in Mallard Lake, which lies close to the south edge of the park at Twenty-Eighth Avenue. And in addition to the many Red-eared Sliders in Spreckels Lake, I saw another turtle that looked like a Spiny Softshell (http://tinyurl.com/psuxh). I sat by that lake for an hour, inspecting the seagulls floating on the water and referring frequently to "The Sibley Guide to Birds." Gulls are not easly identified and I've too often postponed the tedious work involved in learning to distinguish a Western Gull from a Herring Gull. Having stared and stared, I am now confident that more staring is needed. Eared Grebes paddled by, Barn Swallows and Tree Swallows skimmed the water. I sauntered through the woods west of the lake, circled Middle Lake, and walked home.

Once home, I learned the following: David Sibley, author of the guide I'd used to study the Western Gulls on Spreckels Lake, has the audacity to dispute the identification of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker by the Cornell team. The audacity! Worse still, Kenn Kaufman concurs. It's so damned easy to be a sceptic, isn't it. I choose to believe. Faith is a personal thing.

More answers

• What time did you get up this morning?

7:15 PST. Birds atwitter; starlings in the rosemary. Moved the car. Noted absence of newspaper on front porch. Ate nuts and dried fruit.

• Diamonds or pearls?

Diamonds in my teeth, pearls round my neck.

• What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

"Dave Chapelle's Block Party" Four stars

• What is your favorite TV show?

No TV for me. I have enjoyed "I, Claudius," "Family Feud," and "Bigtime Wrestling."

• What did you have for breakfast?

Chorizo, ham, and a cheese omelette.

• What is your middle name?

Ross Applesauce

• What is your favorite cuisine?

Salad

• What food do you dislike?

Innards, Brussels sprouts, 臭豆腐, Coca Cola, 7 Up, scotch, bottled salad dressing, foie gras

• What is your favorite potato chip?

Kettle brand rippled with salt and pepper in the big bag

• What is your favorite CD at the moment?

Manze & Egarr playing Mozart sonatas; Sinead singing reggae; Salif Keita's "Moffou"

• What kind of car do you drive?

Red Honda Civic

• Favorite sandwich?

BLAT or Reuben

• What characteristics do you despise?

Lack of critical thinking

• What are your favorite clothes?

My Bottes Sauvages, my fox hat, my Tibetan coat, my Glen plaid Peter Tilton suit, my 826 Valencia t-shirt, my OP shorts w/ many velcro closures, socks my mom knitted for me

• If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you
go?

1988 Ubud

• What color is your bathroom?

Off-white and gold chrome

• Favorite brand of clothing?

None

• Where would you want to retire to?

A city inhabited by beloved friends and family

• Favorite time of day?

Sunset

• Where were you born?

Children's Hospital in San Francisco

• Favorite sport to watch?

Tennis

• Coke or Pepsi?

No

• Are you a morning person or night owl?

Not really

• Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone?

My opera proceeds apace.

• What did you want to be when you were little?

A private dick.

• What is a favorite childhood memory?

Roof jumping with Teddy and Michael

• What are the different jobs you have had in your life?

Volunteer aquarist at Steinhart, clerical librarian at Regenstein, espressist at Espresso Yourself, counter guy at Mr. Soup, pasta maker and driver at Auntie Pasta, English teacher, journalist, driver for Super Shuttle, photocopy guy at IBM, research assistant, teaching assistant, editor, writer

• Nicknames?

Mule, Shazam, Shasm, Applesauce, Ginger Lemon Creme

• Any piercings?

No

• Eye color?

Brown

• Ever been to Africa?

No but possibly to the Cape later this year

• Ever been toilet papering?

No

• Been in a car accident?

Once while Mom was driving, twice while I was driving, once while Dave Crane was driving

• Favorite day of the week?

No

• Favorite restaurant?

Pasta Linea

• Favorite flower?

Dutchman's pipe, Eschscholzia californica, peonies, Calypso bulbosa

• Favorite ice cream?

Maggie Mudd asphalt

• Favorite fast food restaurant?

A potsticker place in Yonghe halfway between Jennifer's rooftop apartment and my unfurnished suite

• Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?

Caves Augé

• Bedtime?

Highly variable. Generally before midnight.

• Last person(s) you went to dinner with?

Won Sun and Steffen

• What are you listening to right now?

Sweet silence

• What is your favorite color?

Paisley

• How many tattoos do you have?

None

• Who sent the e-mail message you got before this one?

Colby

Losers

In Elgin's case, his nose. In Nelson's, his eye, his teeth, his arm.

Where would we be?

My friends and I lean very heavily on certain words and turns of phrase. We all use the word "actually" far too much. Second place goes to "essentially," the hot new adverb that Levon and MiJin use as frequently as they draw breath. When I was young it was "obviously," a word many of my friends and all my family members would have paid to have amputated from my glossary. We begin questions with "so" and we try to summon conversational inspiration with the ritual words "but" and "um." Some need five false starts to get through a sentence. Others would be speechless if deprived of certain formulations. I loathe "Be well." It's even worse than "Take care," which I first heard from Don Lindgren (of New York State) in 1981, long before it became current in California. To the next bozo who orders me to "be well" I'm going to reply, "Be swell." Meaning swollen like Augustus Gloop.

Dessert of terrorists

Detainee ate one Hostess Cupcake with interrogation team.

Passing fancy

I'm thinking of becoming a mushroom. Or a toadstool.

San Francisco Ballet-Robbins Program

Dreaming, a young dancer on the sunny floor of a dance salle. He contracts, stretches, rises—the flute has summoned him. While he dances, hips forward, another dancer enters the practice room. She is young, flirtatious, utterly narcissistic. Whenever he catches her aloft she tosses her long black hair and stares into the mirror that lies somewhere between her and us.

Yuan Yuan Tan (譚元元) dances the role of the nymph in San Francisco Ballet's first staging of Jerome Robbins's "Afternoon of a Faun." Who cares who dances the faun's part?

Diet of terrorists

Detainee is offered a fish sandwich, French fries, coke and a yogurt parfait.

(see http://tinyurl.com/q8jl6)

Weather report

Rain hurried down
Then all was sunny
Now a gentle breeze
Reminds me

"Brokeback Mountain"

To understand what Ennis Del Mar feels for Jack Twist, you need to smell the blood on their shirts. It's not only the blood of cowboys thrown by spooked horses, of husbands protecting their wives from disrespectful scum (and themselves from the implication that they are not manly enough to silence lowlifes), of sheep ripped apart by prowling wolves, it's also the blood of every queer man and women killed by thugs unleashed by Bible-thumping TV and radio evangelists. It's the blood that passes turbulently from father to son, that marks a father's daughter as chattel exchanged for a promise to submit, to give in to the father and yield to him the knife that slices through the animal's dead body. To understand Ennis you need to see that a certain way of squaring the shoulders and a reliance on very few words could make the difference between being hung dead on a barbed wire fence and surviving until cancer gets you. To understand Ennis you need to see why he lifts his hand against his wife. The blood on their shirts is the blood they shed so that they would be taken for men, not queers. And the same blood marked the unspoken oath that both swore as they began their retreat from Brokeback Mountain.

Dream

I would like to wake tomorrow and find that America is home to a large indigenous population of echidnas.

Walken on air

Three and a half minutes of pure joy. http://www.astralwerks.com/fbs/woc/

Where the cow goes

Her blood: plywood adhesives, fertilizer, fire extinguisher foam, dyes

Her fat: plastics, tires, crayons, cosmetics, lubricants, soaps, detergents, cough syrup, ink, shaving ream, fabric softeners, synthetic rubber, jet engine lubricants, textiles, corrosion inhibitors, metal-machining lubricants

Her bones: for refining sugar and making ceramics, cleaning and polishing compounds

Her collagen: yogurt, matches, bank notes, cardboard glue, paper

Nature

That which is not man's creation is natural. An elephant on the rampage is natural. A mudslide is natural. Countless extinctions are natural.

Man did not invent rape: it is natural. Same-sex sex is common among many species: it is natural. Violence and aggression are natural.

Man's aggression is natural, unless it is an aggression aimed at plants and animals and soil and water and air, in which case it is anti-natural.

Cats are curious; curiosity is natural.

The "Cesar" Trilogy

The appeal of the three movies based on Marcel Pagnol's popular plays is their local flavor, the marvelous physical acting of Raimu, Fernand Charpin, Paul Dullac and Alida Rouffe, and the irresistible story of love and war between the generations in 1930s Marseilles. "Marius," "Fanny" and "Cesar" are the most delightful movies ever made.

Alice Waters named her restaurants after two of the characters from the movies.

The Philosopher of Life

Along the beach you watch for crabs,
Sideways thoughts that give you hope
In a desert zone licked by not yet
Saltless water, thick enough to tread on.

I am studying you studying her:
Your wife, by lamplight,
Tired of her home.

They comfort you, the homely crabs,
Catching the stick you extend,
Their sidelong society your balm.

Nature

Are human beings natural? Are cities natural? Is it natural to kill? Is it natural to ignore the suffering of strangers? What is the relation between ethics and nature? What should dictate the form that ethics take? How do we determine what's dictated by genetic predispositions? Should political decisions have anything to do with ethics?

What is the relation between happiness and contact with wild places? What is the relationship between unhappiness and intense urbanization? Why is there such a tension between industry and nature?

Under what circumstances is killing justified? What is the difference between killing a human being and killing a chimpanzee? Is there a difference between killing an infant and killing an aged person? Is it permissible to kill nonhuman animals?

Top of the pops

American Music Club "San Francisco"
The Band "Music from Big Pink"
The Beatles "Abbey Road"
The Beautiful South "Miaow"
The Clash "London Calling"
Elvis Costello "My Aim Is True"
Joni Mitchell "Blue"/"Hejira"
Randy Newman "Sail Away"
Prefab Sprout "Steve McQueen"
Jonathan Richman "Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers"
The Roches "Keep on Doing"
Rolling Stones "Beggars Banquet"
Rufus Wainwright eponymous

When it's late and I'm not quite awake

That's when there is faint music, a sense of longing, and the tug of recollections. I rouse myself, move to the front windows, look out on silent streets. And am wonderfully solitary.

Clementines

Some people know I love clementines. This is why Ken Olsen is a man I admire. He grows clementines and other things on his twenty acres in Lindsay, California.The clementines he grows are magnificent and I bought five pounds last Saturday from the woolly-haired guy who helps out at Ken's Ferry Plaza stand.

Ken educated me about the soft spots and the black spots one sometimes finds on his fruit. But I can't remember the details.

Crucifiction

I am back.

Rendition

When the United States's political and military leaders decide to pass a prisoner to a foreign government, why do they do so? Do they do so because, as spokesmen for the United States government claim, foreign governments possess linguistic and cultural skills that enable them to better understand prisoners? Do they do so with confidence in the formal agreement that these prisoners will not be tortured?

When the New York Times quotes Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the United States, as saying, "We do interrogations based on our understanding of the culture. We're not in the business of torturing anyone," perhaps the New York Times should also quote the following passage found on the United States Department of State website:

The Government [of Egypt] respected human rights in some areas; however, its record was poor, and in many areas serious problems remained. [. . .] The security forces continued to mistreat and torture prisoners, arbitrarily arrest and detain persons, hold detainees in prolonged pretrial detention, and occasionally engage in mass arrests. Local police killed, tortured, and otherwise abused both criminal suspects and other persons. [. . .] (http://tinyurl.com/b4py4)

I have to wonder, when the United States government founds claims about connections between Iraq and international terrorist groups on the testimony of a prisoner remanded to Egyptian custody, whether the government is hoping that a certain kind of material will result from interrogations carried out by a country with a "poor" human rights record.

Please see this excellent article: http://tinyurl.com/dgnoy

For my birthday

I'd like a day without anger (my own, that is).

The Paris story

It's progressing.

Adolescence

A friend told me the other day that I make decisions very quickly and never revisit them. Another friend said that I suffer from insecurities arising out of repeated failures to complete big projects. But what about the little projects I fail to complete? Still, there's hope: my dad says I look good with short hair.

Hope

Maybe if I read more Thoreau, write the Paris story, finish the first fifty pages of the business book, string Rachel's beads and ride my bike more often things will get better.

I had a thought yesterday: my dissertation.

What I Feel

My life is slipping away from me.

Blue Balls

http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

A phrase I hate

You have 0 unread messages.

Gallic Truths

Myth: Parisians are fashionable.

Truth: Parisians don't wear shorts and t-shirts.


Myth: Les trottoirs sont crottoirs.

Truth: Les crottes sont dans les egouts et les caniveaux.


Myth: Everyone smokes.

Truth: Guillaume does not, but many do.


Myth: The French are mean and snooty.

Truth: The French are short and have big noses.

Torture and Killing in Afghanistan

I talked to an MP who said that he was in charge of holding detainees and that the CIA would just come and take the detainees away. They would be like, “How many detainees do you have?” and he knew he has seventeen detainees but the OGA would be like, “No, you have sixteen,” so he’d be like “All right. I have sixteen.” And who knows where that detainee went.

-Account of Officer C, 82nd Airborne Division
Human Rights Watch
"Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division"
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/4.htm#_Toc115161403

Note: The soldiers with whom Human Rights Watch spoke had served as guards in Afghanistan and had observed interrogations at FOB Tiger in Iraq, and said that civilian interrogators at those locations had also used coercive methods against prisoners. These interrogators were always referred to by the U.S. military abbreviation OGA, which stands for “Other Government Agencies.” It was assumed that such persons were with the CIA, but because OGA also includes other civilian agencies, the soldiers with whom Human Rights Watch spoke said they could not be sure.

Today is World Vegan Day

Take a vegan to lunch today. Then eat him.

Pop

My new favorite tunes. http://www.thepartyparty.com/

A friend replies, number 14

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

feeling shame


Where would you like to live?

Paris


What is your idea of earthly happiness?

hiking in Central Italy


To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

faults due to generosity


Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

Julien Sorel
Zeno Cosini (La coscienza di Zeno)


Who are your favorite characters in history?

Socrates
Montaigne


Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

a few witches


Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?

Natascia Rostova (War and Peace)
la Sanseverina (La Chartreuse de Parme)


Your favorite painter?

Piero della Francesca


Your favorite musician?

Mozart



The quality you most admire in a man?

generosity


The quality you most admire in a woman?

generosity


Your favorite virtue?

generosity


Your favorite occupation?

walking


Who would you have liked to be?

myself (with some corrections)

Poem 22

To hear a gong above the sound of wheels
Is impossible. He twitches, a sudden birdlike
Distancing from the city. Hammers of horn
Fall on keys, resonate, are hushed.

From the ocean come orchestras,
To the ocean oil and ash. And from the lip
Of the volcano a faint rumble--then silence.

A friend replies, number 13

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Besides having failed to have a family or maintain a
love relationship?...A day at work with no chocolate.


Where would you like to live?

At the edge of a lake bordered by trees, where there
is moss, where I can hear the croaking of frogs at
night.


What is your idea of earthly happiness?

That moment when, in the midst of a difficult
conversation, you and your conversational partner
begin to understand each other, when the fear
dissipates and the empathy rises. (That and a swim in
the above lake.)

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

Sloth, narcissism.


Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

They are rarely heroes, but I always appreciate Haruki
Murakami’s protagonists, they’re so lost.


Who are your favorite characters in history?

Growing up I had a crush on Albert Einstein, mostly
because his intelligence was questioned when he was
young. It relieved me to know that someone so
brilliant could be thought to be mentally deficient.
Also, there was a soldier during the Bosnian war who
was ordered to shoot a group of civilians standing
over a ditch. When he questioned the order he was
told that he didn’t have to shoot them if he didn’t
want, instead he could put his gun down & go stand by
them. He did so, and he was killed.


Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

Maybe Marian Wright Edelman. Maybe I have to think
about this one more.


Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?

Easily Karana, Island of the Blue Dolphins.


Your favorite painter?

Stanley Spencer, (not the religious or worker
stuff...mostly the nudes & self portraits). But I am
loving Basquiat these days.

Your favorite musician?

Probably Ani DiFranco, yeah, I know. But then, I can
always listen to The Band, & Art Pepper, too, & then
there’s that Les McCann/ Eddie Harris album.


The quality you most admire in a man?

Self-knowledge, compassion.


The quality you most admire in a woman?

Self-knowledge, compassion.


Your favorite virtue?

Virtues are overrated, even the word “virtuous”
irritates me.


Your favorite occupation?

I suppose artist, of any sort.


Who would you have liked to be?

Myself, but much better.

France

Late next month I will be in France for nine days, staying in Paris's 5th arrondissement, a few blocks south of the Seine, quite close to the city's leading educational institutions. To prepare for my trip I have been reading weather reports, reading "La misere du monde," watching French movies, and worrying about the exchange rate.

Poem 21

Spliffing and berting the bowl of my swim,
Loose hair a pinwheel of radiant cream,
I'm as big as Tony Alba and Vincent van Gogh
When I surge from the coping and
Burst in the flow.

Poem 20

The moon hides her face in my notebook
And I am French, small, suffering.

Poem 19

On the rocks in the water the dipper
bobs and plunges and feeds
under the bridge by the road

Under me a ball of granite
and around me the stream
and the sound of the water

The bird goes on the stream
goes on the road goes on and on

Things we saw at Point Reyes

Tall pines in the mist, a pale nudibranch with a row of circles down its back, a loon chased by a seal, cliffhanging succulents, huckleberry trees heavy with fruit, a herd of multicolored fallow deer, a rubber boa, two garter snakes, mule deer, a dead jellyfish, boys with backpacks toting firewood, a beetle giving another a piggyback ride, the sea, ceanothus bushes, a tall horse, a Japanese woman wearing a Japanese hat, a pelican carcase, a solitary heron, a fallen tree that might serve perfectly as a bench, ferns, trees blackened by the Mount Vision fire with white lichen growing on them, a rock shaped like a face with spectacles, a man who told us we were in Mexico, poison oak.

A friend replies, number 12

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Not being able to be with the ones I love the most. The 18th and 19th hours of a long long work day/night. When the body is not willing and the mind has turned into mush. Finishing those last few tasks as the sun rises. The world moving in infinite exciting directions around you, while you're toiling like a slave at some menial meaningless task. It's a soul killer.


Where would you like to live?

A victorian house on a wooded plot with a stream running through the backyard. I would like to have toads on my property. Owls are also a must. Maybe somewhere near Bodega Bay.


What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Earthly happiness is limited. I want to love and be loved, be validated by my peers. Air my soul out in distant lands. Make beautiful music for people to enjoy. Laugh until I'm out of breath. A lane of my own on the freeway.


To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

Internet porn, coffee, ice cream


Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

Jesus, Bertie Wooster, James Bond


Who are your favorite characters in history?

Jesus, Gandhi, �


Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

Janet Reno, Mother Theresa, single moms.


Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?

Emma Woodhouse, Agent 99.


Your favorite painter?

I don't know, maybe Elizabeth Peyton�


Your favorite musician?

Forgive me for saying the obvious: John Lennon.


The quality you most admire in a man?

Big balls and speaks the truth.


The quality you most admire in a woman?

Nice rack and speaks the truth.


Your favorite virtue?

Truth.


Your favorite occupation?

Berlin. Least favorite would be Iraq.


Who would you have liked to be?

An civil engineer, or architect with panache and hutspa (I don't know how to spell that word).

My prostate

from BBC News

Vegan diet 'cuts prostate cancer risk'

A vegan diet may have health benefits

A vegan diet might lower the risk of developing prostate cancer, say researchers.

They have found that men who eat a vegan diet have lower levels of a growth factor that is associated with prostate cancer than either meat-eaters or vegetarians.

The research's publication comes after controversy about claims that dairy-free diets prevent breast cancer.

Earlier studies have suggested that the risk of prostate cancer is increased by high levels of the growth factor IGF-I.

Other research has shown that prostate cancer rates are generally low in countries with a low consumption of meat and dairy products.

The new study, by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund's Cancer Epidemiology Unit in Oxford, reveals IGF-I levels are 9% lower in vegans than in meat-eaters.

First evidence

Dr Tim Key, senior scientist at the charity, said: "Previous studies have shown that men with prostate cancer have higher levels of IGF-I and that even small differences in the circulating level are predictive of prostate cancer risk.

"Our study shows that the circulating level of IGF-I is different in vegan men than it is in non-vegans, including vegetarians.

"The lower levels of IGF-I found in vegan men might reduce their risk of prostate cancer."

There has been much coverage in the media about the possible effect of a dairy-free diet on breast and prostate cancer risk.

However, until now there has been no scientific evidence to prove the anti-cancer benefits of a vegan diet.

Dr Key said: "More research is needed before it would be possible to say whether having a vegan diet reduces a man's risk of prostate cancer."

The study, carried out in 696 British men, also found IGF-1 levels were slightly lower in vegetarians than meat-eaters.

The men in the study were taken from a larger European study (EPIC), which is looking at the relationship between diet and cancer to follow-up and check for prostate cancer in men with different dietary habits.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/782959.stm

Also interesting: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/70/3/525S

Stones

There we were, four people, on the lake shore. Waves shhhhed among the pebbles. The smallest of us took a keen interest in the pebbles. Her flesh grew rosy in the cool lake water. A yellow lab took an interest in her rosy flesh. Bill Gates waved from across the way. It had all the makings of tragedy. I closed my eyes and focused on the blackberry seed between my incisors.

Inheritance

I inherited my father's long bones but not his ears. I inherited my mother's fine fair hair but not her eyes.

Why I live where I do

Alexandria is a most marvelous place, thieving, whoring, filling one's heart with buzzing confusion. Venice sends shimmers across one's days. I've visited these cities with Durrell and Roeg and others as my guides, but never have I set foot in them. After living in Chicago, Taipei, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Beijing, I have always returned to the city where I was born, where my mother lives, where I run into Nat in the library and dream of the lives that might have been.

Many of my old friends have moved. Three live near Los Angeles, one in western Massachusetts. My sister left San Francisco a couple of years ago. My father hasn't lived here for a decade.

My work is mediated through the internet -- I could be anywhere. San Francisco is expensive and I often skip a meal or two to pay my rent. And it's a saddening place for me, a futile social experiment in a time of war and hatred, a place where I'm no longer fully integrated, a bit of a backwater.

But it's the only place I've ever thought of as my home, the only place I've felt no need to defend because its existence is as much an unchangeable given as my own. I love the other places I've lived and to say I love San Francisco is not quite accurate. I am the city, maybe. Maybe that's close.

Interview with Alistair Crooke

Interview: Fostering Muslim-West dialogue
By Humayun Chaudhry

Monday 08 August 2005, 17:32 Makka Time, 14:32 GMT

Alastair Crooke is a former official with Britain's MI6 intelligence agency who has worked in some of the world's most dangerous hotspots.

He spent many years in the Arab and Muslim world and engaged in dialogue with Hamas and Hizb Allah, as well as facing paramilitary forces and drug cartels in Latin America and militias in Africa.

His last posting, based in Jerusalem, was as a senior adviser to the EU high representative on foreign affairs, Javier Solana.

During this time, Crooke helped end the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002 and worked to mediate the summer 2003 ceasefire between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces.

Now retired and leading his own non-profit organisation, Conflicts Forum, Crooke hopes to foster a broader dialogue between the Muslim world and the West.

Aljazeera.net spoke to him on the phone while he was in Lebanon recently.

We asked him about the London and Sharm al-Shaikh bombings, the war on terror and dialogue with Islamist groups.

Do you believe the London attacks are a consequence of Britain's participation in the war on Iraq?

I believe there is no causal motivation that has been established yet for what happened in London, on the two occasions, so I think it's difficult to say what is the causal trigger to these two events.

But I think it's very clear that there has been a great deal of anger and hostility that has risen from Muslims everywhere, from not only events in Iraq - that is an important element - but much more widely, in Afghanistan, but also the Palestinian issue and others, that has radicalised many young Muslims, not only in the UK but everywhere.

Would it be fair to say that Britain's role in Iraq increased the terror threat to the UK?

I think what one can say is, the role of Iraq - the events in Iraq - the way they have turned out, has increased the radicalisation of particularly young Muslims and here in the region [the Middle East].

It's very clear not only in Britain but even here in Lebanon in the camps [about 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in camps in Lebanon], people are angry and concerned about what they see happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even the policy towards Iran.

How do you explain the apparent increase in bombings taking place around the world, most recently seen in London and Egypt? What is happening?

What I think we see is a division in views that is taking place. I think we have on the one hand groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hizb Allah who are trying to build a Muslim society, and to get a stake in society and in power, by working through the electoral process, by trying to work or to try to contrive the reforms that will allow them, if you like, from the bottom up, popular Islamism.

You see that very clearly taking place in Egypt, where there is a process of drawing on a popular desire to see elections, changes and reforms - and trying to mobilise that popular support in order to get a stake in power, whereby they can bring about the changes that conform with what their constituencies are looking to.

On the other hand, I think there is a different trend which sees the project of decolonisation after the last European war having been incomplete and having failed, and amongst some of this trend, you get the sense that you have to break the system in order to make the system. You've actually got to bring down the structures in order to start again.

That accommodation ultimately will fail because the West won't allow groups like Hamas, Hizb Allah and others to participate fully in the electoral process. So they are looking to another way of doing that, in which they are challenging, if you like, completing the process of decolonisation. They believe you have to pull the structure down and start again.

I think this dichotomy was elegantly described by Muqtada al-Sadr [a Shia Muslim cleric in Iraq] in a recent interview, in which he said, 'Look, there are some of my brothers who believe that by working with the provisional government, they can work to bring about an end to the occupation of Iraq. Well, I wish them luck with that, but I believe ultimately they will fail because the United States will not allow it. That is why I believe that first by resistance we must bring about the end of occupation, and only then will it be possible to create a state, a Muslim state, in Iraq'.

And I think that is something of the dilemma we are facing, that I think what we saw in Egypt is [both trends] taking place at the same time. On the one hand, you have the Muslim Brotherhood and the other groups working politically, challenging for power through the electoral process, and we see the bombs that took place in Sharm al-Shaikh - we don't yet know the full motivation - which may represent the other trend, which says, you've got to collapse the system before you can really rebuild a fair and just society.

You make a distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hizb Allah, and al-Qaida or al-Qaida related-groups, that are more global in their actions?

I think there is a big difference between the two, in that what you have is Hamas, Hizb Allah, Jammat Islamiya, Muslim Brotherhood and these groups.

They may be seen on the one hand through the optic of using resistance or violence, in support of their objectives, but these groups all favour elections, they look for reform, they're looking for constitutional change in their society, and that is an important difference between these groups and some of the other Salafi, Takfiri, extreme radical groups who are looking for polarisation.

So what does al-Qaida want?

Well, I'm afraid I'm one of those people in the West that thinks this title, al-Qaida, has become so overused and used so widely, that I mean that's it's impossible any longer to say.

I don't think there is that organisational structure that is so often presented in the West, but I think it is quite clear the main objective is the removal of Western armies from Muslim lands and an ability to create a just society in Muslim lands. But their methodology is very different.

This is to oversimplify it, but it has some objectives which were evident in 1998 [the year Osama bin Laden declared a fatwa calling on his followers to kill American nationals and allies of the US, and the year of the East Africa embassy bombings] which was about polarisation and radicalisation and a short circuiting of the route to an Islamic society by an act of "shock and awe" that would radicalise the ummah [global Muslim community] and bring about an instant change.

But for many Muslims and many groups - including the Islamists - they would say it has alienated much of the ummah by the type and nature of the violence that has been used to radicalise the situation. And also some would say that it has made the conditions for Muslims worse off because of "the war on terror".

And certainly, some groups might point to the situation of the Palestinians as an example and say it has greatly deteriorated. So what have these acts achieved?

Do you think America is waging the ''war on terror'' in an effective manner?

You have to go back and say, what is a war? "Terror" -whatever that means - I don't use that word because I don't think it's necessarily helpful to understanding what we're dealing with.

And certainly, if we are, it's why I prefer to use such words as political insurgency - an incipient political insurgency - because an insurgency is basically about psychology and politics and that's what we have been trying to understand, and that's what we have to deal with.

But I think there are two things that are very important to understand. One is that in dealing with the situation we have now, the first thing is the West often muddles together things that are so completely different. They group Hamas and Hizb Allah and put them in the same box and say all of this is "Islamist terrorism".

They couldn't be more poles apart. Just [recently] for example, I heard that there is an assassination list put out by some of these radical groups which contain Hizb Allah names on it, proposing that they should be assassinated.

There is a world of difference between bunching them together - the struggle and the difference between [these] groups.

The other thing that is important to understand is we often talk about anger and hostility, but there is also a feeling in the West that it is just anger and hostility to the West and that, if only things settle down in Iraq and if Muslims are more educated and get a little bit more money, it will all go away and vanish and things will become stable again.

I think that is to miss the point.

There is anger, and there is this hostility, but there is also beneath that a substantive critique of Western policies, of Western economic structures of our financial system, of our trade policy, of our development policy, of our foreign policies and also an alternative view of how a society should be. In other words, the challenge that they are not necessarily universal values.

So I think we should just not regard this as a froth of anger that will be dissipated, if only a little more money and investment is poured into the [affected places].

I think the anger may diminish, but there beneath this, a substantive and real critique needs to be addressed by the West and not denied by them.

US President George Bush says that extremist groups like al-Qaida hate the democracy and values the West represents. Is this a correct view and understanding of what motivates such groups?

This is completely wrong. Muslims everywhere - and the polls underline this very clearly - reflect the same values: They do not hate our values, but they do hate our policies.

The problem is with our policies and politics.

Polls show very clearly that Muslims support elections, they want popular participation in government. They want effective and good governance and they want reform. And these are the same values as European and American societies.

There is no difference on values.

Muslim values expressed in the polls represent no threat to our societies.

Perhaps they will look for a society that is underpinned with ethical values not only in a personal sphere but in an institutional sphere, and in a sphere of governance in order to avoid what they see as some of the weaknesses of a secular liberal democracy, but that is not a challenge, or an existential threat to our societies.

Why do you believe it is important to talk to groups that use such tactics as suicide bombings?

I don't want to imply that that is a condoning of these tactics, but what we are looking at is we are talking to those groups that have sometimes used political violence, but these are groups that should also be seen, on the other hand, [as groups] who do support elections, who do support positive reform and change, and who reflect significant Muslim constituencies.

They have a real legitimacy. They clearly have many people who support their activities and vote for them and express their support.

So they do have a real legitimacy, which the West must not sweep under the carpet and pretend it's not there.

With the other groups [such as al-Qaida], there is no indication of whether they have a clear legitimacy. Maybe some arguments that they make have some resonance, perhaps or not within the whole of Muslim societies, but some sectors of it.

There's no formal way of judging the degree to which there is legitimacy for their views, as opposed to some ephemeral resonance that some arguments have within Muslim society, so there is a big difference, I believe.

The other difference is, if they're looking for polarisation and radicalisation, then I'll doubt if they want to talk to anyone.

Should governments not take the principled stand that they should not negotiate with those who use such indiscriminate carnage?

We need to find the most effective way to break a cycle of violence and we need to address it in a number of ways.

One of the clear things I'm saying is that once you look and understand that this is also about politics, it means we have to have a political approach, as well as a need to protect our societies too.

Every society has to protect its citizens, that is the duty of a government.

But it is also important to look at it more widely and to understand possibly that by labelling and lumping together groups like Hamas and Hizb Allah and others that clearly are wanting to participate ... to try to deny them political space, to isolate and demonize them and disempower their discourse is the wrong way to go about it.

You have moderates and young people - even people here in the camps in Lebanon - who would say to their political leaders, "Look, see where your moderation has got you? See what you've succeeded in? Your still labelled a terrorist, you are still hunted down and killed and it has achieved for you nothing."

If that continues, it would be not surprising if people - young people - will say there's no point [in positive participation].

Maybe the radical groups have got the right idea in this, if you like.

It's a challenge between those who believe you can work through the system to bring change and those who believe you've got to break it and start from the beginning.

Is there a democratic transformation, or an "Arab spring" under way in the Middle East - in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine - and is this because of the policies of George Bush?

Well firstly, I'm not sure that's what we have got.

I mean, we may have had some events taking place, but elections in Palestine have not taken place. Parliamentary elections we have yet to see... taking place, even the completion of the municipal election.

I was in Paris recently, and I read that Hamas should be excluded from participating in the elections. I think that was a call from Silvan Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister. So, in short, it's fine to have elections as long as you vote only for Fatah [the ruling Palestinian party of President Mahmoud Abbas] effectively is the message.

The question about Iraq is a difficult one. What has the invasion achieved so far?

In Lebanon, the turnout, although people were excited and enthusiastic about the elections, the turnout was very low in areas because people felt disenfranchised and they didn't feel that the elections - although these are changed circumstances from what had existed in previous elections - were not necessarily offering a real choice.

You're presently in Lebanon. What lessons can today's Iraq learn from Lebanon's history?

Lebanon has shown the possibility for internal accommodation and for pluralism. And I think it is to the credit of parties, and I say even those parties that are classified or regarded like Hizb Allah, as "terrorist".

Hizb Allah has played a very important role here in these recent months in trying to ensure stability in the region and to help the process towards a pluralistic outcome.

So you will find that even the groups that are quite often criticised in the West have played a positive role in helping towards creating stability and a political process. It is a credit to not only Hizb Allah, but to the other groups as well in the positive changes they are achieving.

I know it's still very tense and there are many challenges ahead, but to that extent, it's been very positive.

Would you say that a slide into civil war in Iraq is preventable?

I don't know. I'm sitting here in Lebanon. And I think to know those things you have to be on the ground [in Iraq], so it's difficult to say.

http://tinyurl.com/7rj4p

Poem 18

Shaking sand from the shoes of my sister
I watch the lamp-wrapping fogs
And lingering on the stoop, I persist, or,
Better, you persist in naming my nieces

According to the periodic table,
Slinging their names into the mist
Until Helium rings against
Jenny's undone laces and catches hold.

I've an aversion to the way you walk.
It's as though your mother bound your feet.
The fogs slink around your ankles
Healing all the harm of family.

Poem 17

Rearranging vowels in the mouth of a Finn
How he marks his turf
Telling time, he unwinds a consonant
How he finds the fart

Premises:
Old = Primitive
Neurotic = Taboo
Suppressed = Present

Poem 16

Standing in the tobacco field, the damp flap of wings overhead.

Biting off each word, rearranging them into new phrases.

We made them of leather, the bindings, and we painted them with gold.

Pale sunless skies of summer
The telephone excitable
The three women finding humor
In the office crucible

Where the onion has been its essence lingers.

Penguins still flying, yeti still slugging

http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf

A stranger replies

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Finding myself lost in a Central American jungle after having been
brutally dumped and then having a boa constrictor drop out of a tree and onto my back. While I'm being swallowed alive, the last thing I hear is a skil saw cutting through sheet metal.

Or, and this is based on a dream I recently had, dating Gary Coleman and trying very hard to feel like I'm in love with him while we're sitting on a couch with my parents.


Where would you like to live?

Where the sheets smell of pumpkin and the shelves are lined with fresh hay. Or Mongolia. Or maybe Copenhagen. Or Iowa City, Iowa. Or how about in a teeny-tiny invisible capsule that I could fly around in, spying on people all over the world -- that would be cool, wouldn't it?


What is your idea of earthly happiness?

True and unconditional love. Free beer. Swimming in lakes and rivers at night. A warm bed.


To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

This one is hard to answer, as once I feel indulgent, those things no longer seem like faults.


Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

There's a character in a George Saunders short story entitled "The
Falls." His name is Morse. And bear with me, but here is the initial
description of him:

"Morse was tall and thin and gray and sepulchral as a church about to be condemned. His pants were too short, and his face periodically broke into a tense, involuntary grin that quickly receded, as if he had just suffered a sharp pain. At work he was known to punctuate his conversations with brief wild laughs and gusts of inchoate enthusiasm and subsequent embarrassment, expressed by a sudden plunging of the hands into his pockets, after which he would yank his hands out of his pockets, too ashamed of his own shame to stand there merely grimacing for even an instant longer."

So this guy is unsure of himself and indecisive. But by the end of the story he makes this incredibly heroic, doomed decision. So him.
Also Humbert Humbert & Hazel Motes.


Who are your favorite characters in history?

A.A. Milne, Christopher Milne, Saul, MLK, the poor guy who accidentally cut down the oldest ironwood tree in North America, Cabeza de Vaca.


Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

Freddy Mercury, Martha Stewart, Valerie Solanas, Lydia Davis.


Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?

Mrs. Dalloway, Julie Hecht's narrator in _Do The Windows Open_ (who strongly favors the author, I understand), Judith Fellowes, Martha (_Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?_).


Your favorite painter?

Chuck Close.


Your favorite musician?

Will Oldham.


The quality you most admire in a man?

Fecklessness & talent. I like men who say really smart things but who aren't aware that they're smart. Gentleness. Bravery. Modesty.


The quality you most admire in a woman?

Wit, interests & skills beyond what might be considered "feminine"
stuff. Open-mindedness. Likes to kick it with the ladies just as much as with the mens. Modesty. Loyalty.


Your favorite virtue?

Compassion. And the ability to swear a lot without offending anyone.


Your favorite occupation?

Reading, writing, eating meals, watching a really good movie & then
talking about it afterwards, listening to music.


Who would you have liked to be?

Me, only incredibly wealthy and able to boss everyone around.

A friend replies, number 11

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Knowing on Saturday eve I am supposed to leave for the army the next morning. I still dream about that sometimes and wake up choked. Worse than that, losing my beloved ones frightens me to the degree of inconceivability.


Where would you like to live?

As far as possible from anything related to an army.


What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Sleep 6 hours in a night, and be able to read a good novel without being interrupted in the middle. Then playing with [my son] Asaf on the beach. Won't resist slow passionate sex, an interesting CD, and a good movie either.


To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

All of the above (ideas of earthly happiness).


Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

Hmmm. So many. A few I can think of right now are: Ferinand Bardamu (Celine, "A Journey to the End of the Night," 1932); Hanno (Thomas Mann, "Buddenbrooks," 1901); John Marcher (Henry James, "The Beast in the Jungle," 1903), the narrator of "Wittgenstein's Nephew" (Thomas Bernhard, 1982), the narrator of Georges Perec's "W or the Memory of a Whildhood " (1975).


Who are your favorite characters in history?

The European Jewish intellectuals: Benjamin, Kafka, Celan, Primo Levi, Ernst Cassirer, even Leon Blum.


Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

Helene Grimaud, Martha Argerich, Adrienne Rich. Women who have second thoughts about men.


Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?

Gina (David Fogel, "In Front of the Ocean," 1932); Briony (Ian McEwan, "Atonment," 2000); all Viriginia Woolf's horoines; Proust's female heroines.


Your favorite painter?

This week it would be Paul Klee again, thanks to a small sketch of an emptry room from 1917.


Your favorite musician?

Hmmm. Today it would be a mixture of Murcof (an electronic music artist) and Schumann (thanks to the beautifull "Pletnev Plays Schumann"). Tomorrow it'll be others.


The quality you most admire in a man?

Intellectual honesty.


The quality you most admire in a woman?

Same, plus.


Your favorite virtue?

Kindness.


Your favorite occupation?

Pausing. (While holding an interesting book in one hand, a good cake in the other, a cup of strong coffee on the table, and Dietrich Fischer Diskau singing in the background.)


Who would you have liked to be?

An author, a painter, an experimental musician, a traveler, a wondering Jew.

Video of Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Marvelous. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/index.html#.

Gus Van Sant, "Last Days"

It's less that, as my friend David said, Van Sant has abandoned "bourgeois framing" than that he's returned to the wandering, loping style he used to great effect in "Mala Noche" and "My Own Private Idaho." A number of directors are challenging their viewers with super long shots, held almost beyond endurance, these days. Tsai Ming-liang in "Goodbye, Dragon Inn"; Abbas Kiarostami in "Five Dedicated to Ozu"; now Van Sant. It's as though we're witnessing a haunting by the ghost of Antonioni (he's not dead, but he might as well be).

From the very beginning of "Last Days," which was filmed in the woods of New York state, the loping, aimless, muttering figure at the center of the story is adrift, and I worried that the big stone house he prowls and flees and hunts through would drag him to the bottom of his merciless sea.

What is his face to us? A beautiful blank, less expressive of his existential exhaustion than his costume shape-shifting. The music he makes as we watch through a window tells the tale far better than any line he ever speaks or could speak.

Rumsfeld's solution to extremism

In an essay published in yesterday's Financial Times, Donald Rumsfeld, whom we might begin to distrust after two grossly wrongheaded endorsements in bad intelligence gathering (Team B in the 1970s and assessments of Iraq's weaponry more recently), declared it "essential that we take care in understanding what motivates -- and does not motivate -- extremists to commit mass murder." I certainly think this statement unassailable. But Rumsfeld does not make any attempt to understand what motivates terrorists in his essay. Instead he simply assails the "empty justifications" that terrorists give for their actions.

We need better than this.

The essay, entitled "There can be no moderate solutions to extremism," amounts to an apology for the use of violence to counter violence and offers reassuring statements such as "[The extremists] failed on September 11. They are failing in Iraq and Afghanistan." By what measure does the secretary of defense assess failure?

A friend replies, number 10

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

untimely death of people one cares about

Where would you like to live?

near water with a useful city in hailing distance

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

creating fulltime with my family nearby

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

ice cream

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

monkey wrench gang

Who are your favorite characters in history?

odysseus

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?

singers

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?

aglaya (from the brothers karamazov)

Your favorite painter?

seurat?

Your favorite musician?

david byrne/elvis costello

The quality you most admire in a man?

telling truth to power without violence

The quality you most admire in a woman?

telling truth to power without violence

Your favorite virtue?

compassion

Your favorite occupation?

naturalist

Who would you have liked to be?

Tom Paine

A change in American policy

The Financial Times ran a story in today's edition describing an important change in the Bush administration's approach to international Islamist terrorism. Instead of the military strategy that has done nothing but increase the number of terrorist attacks around the world, the goal will be to "develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to discredit and demystify extremists' ideology and promote moderate Islamic voices."

This should have been the first step taken by any American leader aware of the international support for anti-American terrorism that has been growing for over a decade. The bombs, assassinations, destruction of civil infrastructure and immoderate rhetoric that have been official American policy since the attacks of September 11 legitimize terrorist violence. The continuing American support for the international arms trade and the failure to set an example in the area of nuclear weapons disarmament deliver the same message.

As long as we practice torture and kill innocents in the pursuit of those who declare themselves our enemies, we foster a culture of violent retribution and racist disregard for the suffering of Afghanis, Iraqis and others who do not look like white America.

I will write a letter to President Bush today, praising him for adopting this new polocy of outreach to the Muslim world.