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The Blogmanac: "On This Day" ... and much more
Think universally. Act terrestrially.
For in a hard-working society, it is rare and even subversive to celebrate too much, to revel and keep on reveling: to stop whatever you're doing and rave, pray, throw things, go into trances, jump over bonfires, drape yourself in flowers, stay up all night, and scoop the froth from the sea.
Anneli Rufus*
"BERLIN (Reuters) - A German firm has begun offering sunglasses and prescription spectacles with detachable frame arms that double as chopsticks or forks.
"The glasses designer says there is growing demand from time-pressured sushi fans eating their favorite food on the go."
The First Lady sleeps, President Lumwedder creeps to the fridge for a snack at midnight. Froot Loops in a bowl, a banana, bread roll, so ... down the mouth hole with little control, and everything’s feelin' … all right!
That amiable grin, that milk on his chin, his customary ease with bananas, the President's proud, "I ain't one of the crowd" – he says it aloud – "I ain't one of the crowd, and no one can fill these pajamas.
"I'm Irving Lumwedder, ain't nobody better. Man, I'm smokin'!! That's nuthin! I'm bitchin! I'm loaded with sass, I'm the toppest of brass! I'm the greatest, I'm gas, I'm jumpin' Jack Flash, I'm the Chief of the damn Oval Kitchen!
"Emails purporting to contain evidence of Osama bin Laden's suicide contain a 'Trojan horse' that can allow hackers to take over infected computers, security experts warned.
"'Computer users who fall for the bin Laden hoax may be hit by a Trojan horse,' the antivirus firm Sophos warned, naming the new scheme the Hackarmy Trojan horse.
"'Thousands of messages have been posted onto internet message boards and usenet newsgroups claiming that journalists from CNN found the terrorist leader's hanged body earlier this week,' the security firm said.
"The messages point to a website where a file can be downloaded, purporting to contain photographs. In reality, Sophos said, the file contains a Trojan horse which can allow hackers to gain remote control of an infected computer." Source: Sydney Morning Herald
[Good to see that the highly experienced and esteemed Australian journalist Paul McGeough's important story about Allawi is getting some coverage at last in the USA (but nowhere near enough). Golly, even the Kansas City Star has the story, albeit a week late. I'd almost given up hope. If Allawi is a murderer, some reassessment is called for.]
Iraq rumors reflect debate over need for a strongman
"Is there any truth to these tales that Allawi has shot suspects? The stories have been denied by Allawi and dismissed by members of his interim government, the U.S. Embassy and a State Department spokesman. The Iraqi press has refrained from making any mention of the story. On the other hand, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook urged the Red Cross to investigate the allegations.
"The most complete version of the story appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian newspaper. Two anonymous sources claimed that they had witnessed Allawi executing six handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners in a Baghdad jail." Source: SFGate.com
[Nora's comment to me: Can you just imagine the Red Cross reporting Allawi to himself?]
Red Cross named jail before alleged killings by PM By Paul McGeough in Amman
"The International Committee of the Red Cross had urged an investigation of the brutal treatment of prisoners at the Baghdad prison where Iraq's new Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, is alleged to have executed as many as six suspected insurgents.
"The Red Cross request was made six months before the killings were said to have taken place at the maximum security Al-Amariyah police station prison.
"Almost a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, a report by the Red Cross to the US occupation forces named the station as one of six run by Iraqi authorities in Baghdad at which detainees were subjected to the same coercive interrogation tactics used on prisoners by the fallen regime.
"The report says that one group of prisoners 'allegedly had water poured on their legs and [then] had electrical shocks administered to them with stripped tips of electrical wires'. Others had shown scars that they said were from burns inflicted by cigarettes.
"Two informants who said they had witnessed the alleged executions last month confirmed that the practices – including the use of electrical shocks – were still used on detainees at Al-Amariyah.
"The Red Cross report, dated February this year, states: 'During interrogation, the detaining authorities allegedly whipped [them] with cables on the back; kicked them in the lower parts of the body, including in the testicles; handcuffed and left them hanging from the iron bars of the cell windows or doors, in painful positions for several hours at a time.'" Source: Sydney Morning Herald
The Bush administration's overtime pay take-away will be a huge windfall to Big Business and employers—and a pay cut for millions of working families. In fact, a new study from the Economic Policy Institute predicts that 6 million workers stand to lose their right to overtime pay beginning Aug. 23, when the Bush Fair Labor Standards Act changes are scheduled to take effect.
The Bush Administration went forward with the new rules despite widespread concern over its impact from Republicans as well as Democrats. This shouldn't surprise anybody. The fox is in the henhouse at the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Bush Labor Department's top spokesperson on overtime pay, Ed Frank, previously worked as the top spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Business—the main special interest representing businesses that want to take away workers' overtime pay.
This is why it is so important that people take action today. Please click on the link below to send a message to your senators and representatives urging them to block the overtime pay take-away. Congress is going home until September on Friday. It is important to urge them to act today.
It isn't surprising that businesses are going all out to take away overtime pay. The math on this is pretty stunning. If, for example, the average worker earns $4,000 a year in overtime pay, for every 1 million workers who lose overtime pay this would be a $4 billion windfall for employers—right out of the pockets of working people. (The $4,000 figure is only used as an illustration. Actual overtime pay may be greater or less.) [Emphasis added. -v]
The Bush administration's overtime pay take-away is wholesale looting of the paychecks of working families by an administration beholden to its special interest donors.
Please click below to act and then forward this message to your friends, family and co-workers, urging them to act as well.
"Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the specter of mobile chemical labs, dirty nuclear bombs, anthrax spores, sarin gas, and other weapons of mass destruction has fueled popular fears and inspired countless anti-terrorism initiatives.
"While the fear of bombing and attacks is real, here is a surprising fact: The most deadly weapon in the world today is legal, accessible and dirt cheap.
"The AK-47, the M-16 and other so-called 'small arms' are responsible for the deaths of half a million people each year. About 300,000 people – mostly civilians – are killed in wars, coups d'etat and other armed conflicts each year by small arms. Another 200,000 people are killed each year in homicides, suicides, unintentional shootings and shootings by law enforcement officers using these weapons. In addition to those killed, an estimated 1.5 million people are wounded by small arms annually. If we take into account their cumulative impact, small arms are truly weapons of mass destruction ...
"While small arms are deadly and dangerous, they are also profitable - which makes them difficult to regulate and control. According to data collected by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, they account for more than $4 billion in profits each year. The United States has the dubious honor of being the largest exporter, with $741.4 million in sales in 2003, which accounts for 18 percent of the market. The U.S. also purchased $602.5 million in small arms and munitions in 2003, making it the largest importer of small arms, as well.
"The failure of nations like the United States to curb the manufacture of these deadly weapons has a devastating impact on human rights, development and the war against terrorism."
"The Independent Media Institute (IMI), parent organization of AlterNet, has filed a legal challenge to Fox that seeks to strip Fox of its 'Fair and Balanced' trademark registration. Your financial support will help us to counteract the bias of corporate media represented by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Fox News. For a limited time, if you donate $30 or more, we'll send you a copy of Robert Greenwald's powerful new 'Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism' DVD. We appreciate your support."
"The information paradox on black holes was resolved by Prof Stephen Hawking when he rejected his earlier theory that they irretrievably swallow up everything, writes Daniel McConnell
"Internationally renowned scientist Prof Stephen Hawking announced in Dublin yesterday that he had solved one of the 'major problems in theoretical physics'.
"His new theory, however, which states that information can actually be recovered from black holes, is unlikely to end the long-standing debate within the science community that has been running for over 30 years ...
"Black holes were often thought of as being void areas of space into which energy and matter can fall and disappear forever. In 1974 Prof Hawking discovered that, in fact, they are not completely 'black' but that they emit radiation, now known as Hawking radiation. This discovery led to what has been known as the information paradox on black holes which has puzzled the international science community ever since ...
"Prof Hawking conceded that his previous theory that all information was lost was incorrect and the assembled crowd witnessed the conclusion of a long-standing bet between him, Prof Kip Thorne and Prof John Preskill."
The recent death by shark attack of a surfer in Western Australia roused a great deal of emotional debate, as it always does when such a tragedy happens.
Sharks were in the news, and certainly not in a good light. Last week there were tough guys on boats with rifles, and the federal government is talking drum lines and shark nets at huge expense. Memo to non-target species, such as dolphins, whales and dugongs: Watch out!
Now, I'm the first person to shudder at the thought of sharks. I confess that when I swim in salt water I have sharks somewhere in the back of my mind. I find them extremely scary, and I think most people do. And I am in favour of placement of shark nets at popular beaches, which is a practice we have had in Australia for perhaps 70 or 80 years.
But let's get this in perspective:
The chances of being killed by a shark in Australia are less than being killed by lightning strike, dog bite, or bee sting. Far less than death by gun shot, plane crash or industrial accident.
It has become a political issue because of the big bucks and big corporations involved in the very large tourism industry. Caught in the middle are numerous species of animal that are either endangered or vulnerable to species extinction. Let's not forget the huge role large creatures play in any ecosystem.
"Contrary to their reputation, sharks are an increasingly threatened group of animals. Sitting at the top of the food chain, many shark species are not used to being the victim of other predators. Over the millions of years they have swum the oceans, sharks have evolved reproductive strategies that suit animals that would naturally only ever die of old age. ... they reach sexual maturity late in life, produce few young and only after long gestation periods. This means they are not easily able to replenish their numbers when their mortality rate increases and are extremely vulnerable to over-fishing.
"Shark over-fishing is a serious global problem, as species struggle to cope with the increasing demands, for example for fish and chips in the west and for shark fin soup in Asian cuisine. Many shark species are suffering population crashes and local extinctions are becoming common." Endangered Australian sharks
July 22, 1376 The Pied Piper came to Hamelin (Hameln), a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and led the children out of town.
The story of the Pied Piper (Rattenfänger) of Hamelin was popularised in German by the Brothers Grimm and in English by the poet Robert Browning in his narrative poem of that name.
It comes from an old German legend translated into English in 1605 by Richard Verstegan, who gave this as the date. (A 14th-century account gives the date as June 26, 1284.) The oldest remaining source is a note in Latin prose, made one and a half centuries later (1430 - 1450) as an addition to a 14th-century manuscript from Lüneburg.
We do know that something remarkable happened in medieval Hamelin that changed the town forever. Somehow, 130 of the town's children were taken away, and the grief imprinted itself on the village’s soul such that even the town church had a stained-glass window installed that showed the children being led away by this stranger. The stranger, dressed in pied, or multicoloured, clothing, offered to rid the town of Hamelin of its plague of rats, for an agreed price. He played his pipe and the rats followed his beguiling tune down to the Weser River, all drowning. The burghers of Hamelin refused to pay the piper, so he began piping his charming song and the town's children, entranced, followed him to a mountain cave, which as if by magic sealed itself shut.
Many people have proposed explanations for the famous legend. Perhaps the most likely is that the Bishop Bruno of Olmütz (now Olomouc) went on a Crusade recruitment drive for his diocese ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
[It's not a fence, as the media insist on calling it. It is taller and thicker than the Berlin Wall and much longer by far. And it's not a security barrier. It's an old-fashioned land grab.]
"The Federal Government says Australia has good reasons for voting against a United Nations resolution demanding Israel comply with a ruling to dismantle its West Bank barrier.
"The vote was passed with the support of 150 nations but Australia was one of six countries to oppose the resolution, along with Israel and the United States." Source: ABC (Oz) News
"The construction of the Israeli separation wall began on the 16th June 2002. For the most part the barrier, which could eventually extend over 750km, consists of a series of 25 foot high concrete walls, trenches, barbed wire and electrified fencing with numerous watch towers, electronic sensors, thermal imaging and video cameras, unmanned aerial vehicles, sniper towers, and roads for patrol vehicles.
"The Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign’s most recent map of the Wall’s path, finalized November 2003, reveals that if completed in its entirety, nearly 50% of the West Bank population will be affected by the Wall through loss of land, imprisonment into ghettos, or isolation into Israeli de facto annexed areas." Palestine Monitor Fact Sheet
1969 Apollo Program: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin became the first humans to walk on its surface.
[From the vantage point of Australia, Apollo 11 landed on this day, July 21, although it was still July 20 in some other parts of the world. In fact, in UT (Universal Time), it was July 21, at 0256 hours. This raises the conundrum: If we in Australia saw it on the 21st, did we see it before the Americans, Africans and Europeans, who saw it on the 20th, or after them? I’ll leave you to figure that one out, as it’s way too hard for your almanackist.]
What did Armstrong really say?
"That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
These are some of the most famous, and most eloquent, words ever uttered, indelibly engraved on the global consciousness by Neil Armstrong on that day in July 1969. And yet, if he said "… one small step for man", leaving out the indefinite article, the sentence doesn't make much sense. What did he really say, and were his words scripted for him by PR suits at NASA?
In an article in the December 1983 Esquire, author George Plimpton revealed all. The words were all of Armstrong's own composition, according to the publicity-shy astronaut himself, as well as his colleagues and NASA officials. Armstrong didn't even consider what he might say until after he and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface, because, he wasn’t sure he would get a chance to speak on the moon at all.
"I thought the chances of a successful touchdown on the moon's surface were about even money – fifty-fifty," Armstrong told Plimpton, "An awful lot of the puzzle had not been filled in; so much had not even been tried. Most people don’t realise how difficult the mission was. So it didn’t seem to me there was much point in thinking up something to say if we’d have to abort the landing."
As for the words: it sounded like he said "That’s one small step for man", rather than "for a man", which would have made more sense. In fact, Armstrong claims that he did say "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" (the way it appears in every book of quotable quotes issued since 1969). He told Esquire that the 'a' went missing in the transmission, which was through a voice-activated system called VOX. "Vox can lose you a syllable every so often," Armstrong explained – thus ending another of life’s little mysteries.
Do you think Armstrong's version is true? Play the 133kb .wav file ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
One of the songs of the sixties that endures because it's just so bloody good is Creeque Alley by the Mamas and Papas, from good ol' 1967.
With uplifting beat, singalong tune and very clever lyrics ("Broke, busted, disgusted, agents can't be trusted", it was definitely one of the best by this US band. Matter of fact, their work was very uneven, with some brilliant highs and woeful lows, no doubt influenced by the tons of smack and oceans of booze Papa John Phillips consumed.
Then there was the band's own version of musical chairs: "Musical Mama Michelle", also known as Mmmmmm; she was shtooping band member Denny Doherty and sort of forgot to mention it for a while to hubby John. (Some other Olympics-class players of Mmmmmm include Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Lou Adler, Denny Doherty, Roman Polanski, Mick Jagger, Rudolph Nureyev, and Gene Clark, the mail man and the visiting Pakistani cricket team.) Both the band and Michelle's water bed collapsed under all the pressure.
In an era of abstruse lyrics, Creeque Alley was particularly hard to grok because the lyrics were about the band itself. Now there's a site that explains or guesses what it's all about.
I've been on a 37-year journey to enlightenment and now I can rest; I have arrived at the mountain top.
"LONDON (AlertNet) - An umbrella organisation of Britain's largest aid agencies appeals to the public for money to help thousands of people forced to flee their homes in Darfur, western Sudan.
"The appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) will go towards providing shelter, clean water and basic necessities for displaced people in Sudan and across the border in Chad.
"Fighting in Darfur has driven more than one million people from their homes.
"After years of conflict between Arab nomads and African farmers, rebels took up arms last year, accusing Khartoum of arming Janjaweed to loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
"A DEC statement said thousands of people were arriving every day at camps in Darfur with nothing but the clothes they stood up in ...
"'Floodwaters from recent rains are washing human and animal waste into water sources, raising fears of outbreaks of disease such as cholera and diarrhoea,' said the statement." Source and full text
Khartoum 'backs Darfur militias'
"A human rights group says it has proof that Sudan's government has been supporting Arab militias accused of killing thousands in Darfur.
"New York-based Human Rights Watch says it has government documents showing that officials directed recruitment, arming and support of the Janjaweed.
"U2 have called in the police after a CD featuring unfinished tracks from their forthcoming album was stolen at a photo shoot in France. The new album, their first since 2000, is likely to be called Vertigo, and the tracks on the CD have already started appearing on P2P networks such as Overnet.
"Edge said on the U2.com website: 'A large slice of two years' work lifted via a piece of round plastic. It doesn't seem credible but that's what's just happened to us... and it was my CD.' Should have kept an eye on it then."
"Thousands of Brazilians have become devotees of Orkut (http://www.orkut.com), a popular new social-networking site from Web search leader Google Inc.
"Orkut allows members to organize themselves into online communities of friends, and friends of friends, to discuss everything from chess to sandwiches.
"But the rush of Brazilians to join Orkut and rival social networking sites has upset some online users, who complain of a proliferation of messages posted in Portuguese, Brazil's native tongue.
"Some users have even started communities specifically for people to air their gripes on this issue. [My emphasis. Are my eyes deceiving me? Who said the net was only there for English-speakers? - N]
"The United States has at least 153 million Internet users, compared with Brazil's 20 million. Still, Orkut said Brazilians dominated its membership roster in June, outnumbering Americans for the first time."
July 19, 1971 British comic Marty Feldman appeared for the defence in the Oz Trial at the sombre London criminal court, the Old Bailey, calling the judge "a boring old fart".
The Oz case was the longest obscenity trial in British legal history. The original sentences of up to 15 months for Richard Neville and the other defendants sparked a wave of protest from many, including John Lennon. With Yoko Ono, Lennon joined the protest march against the prosecution and organised the recording of 'God Save Oz' by the Elastic Oz Band, released on Apple Records.
At the time in Britain, conspiracy to pervert the course of public morals carried a life sentence and the defence of the Oz magazine defendants was an important libertarian cause. The fuss and hilarious court case were all about Issue 28, 'The Schoolkids Issue', which was worked on by school students as well as the staff.
Oz magazine was an underground magazine launched on April 1, 1963, in Sydney, Australia, where its editors – Richard Neville, Richard Walsh, and Martin Sharp – were charged under obscenity laws. In 1971, after the magazine shifted to England in 1966, Neville, Felix Dennis, and Jim Anderson were put on trial for corrupting public morals. Oz finally ceased publication in 1973.
Where did they go from there? Felix Dennis, who was given a lesser sentence, because the court viewed him as "very much less intelligent" than Neville and Anderson, went on to become one of Britain's wealthiest and most prominent publishers. OZ co-founder Richard Walsh became one of Australia's most prominent conservative publishers. Richard Neville is one of Australia's best selling authors and a prominent media figure. Martin Sharp is one of Australia’s best-known visual artists.
The lawyers The Oz defence barrister, John Mortimer, is one of Britain's best-selling authors and creator of the acclaimed Rumpole of the Bailey books and TV series, and Brideshead Revisited. His assisting counsel, Geoffrey Robertson, is a prominent Queen's Counsel as well as a well-known Australian media identity. He has argued many landmark cases in the European Court of Human Rights, the House of Lords, the Privy Council and Commonwealth courts. He has conducted a number of missions on behalf of Amnesty International. He is the author of numerous books, and a play, The Trials of Oz, which won a BAFTA 'Best Play' nomination, and was the recipient of a 1993 Freedom of Information Award. He was recently appointed to the Appeals Chamber of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, and is a Visiting Professor in Law at several universities.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Well, it's the 200th day of the year, and it's been 1035 days since Bush said he'd catch Osama bin Laden dead or alive, pardner!
Are we taking bets on whether bin Laden will be caught before the US election? I can't quite get out of my head the prestigious British journal, The Guardian, reporting credible anecdotal evidence months ago that the Pakistanis and Americans have had him surrounded for a long time now.
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[Good to see that the highly experienced and esteemed Australian journalist Paul McGeough's important story about Allawi is getting some coverage at last in the USA (but nowhere near enough). Golly, even the 
"Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the specter of mobile chemical labs, dirty nuclear bombs, anthrax spores, sarin gas, and other weapons of mass destruction has fueled popular fears and inspired countless anti-terrorism initiatives.
"The information paradox on black holes was resolved by Prof Stephen Hawking when he rejected his earlier theory that they irretrievably swallow up everything, writes Daniel McConnell
The recent death by shark attack of a surfer in Western Australia roused a great deal of emotional debate, as it always does when such a tragedy happens.
July 22, 1376 The Pied Piper came to Hamelin (Hameln), a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and led the children out of town. 
[It's not a fence, as the media insist on calling it. It is taller and thicker than the Berlin Wall and much longer by far. And it's not a security barrier. It's an old-fashioned land grab.]
1969 Apollo Program: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin became the first humans to walk on its surface.
One for the oldtimers and retro-hippies:
"LONDON (AlertNet) - An umbrella organisation of Britain's largest aid agencies appeals to the public for money to help thousands of people forced to flee their homes in Darfur, western Sudan.
"U2 have called in the police after a CD featuring unfinished tracks from their forthcoming album was stolen at a photo shoot in France. The new album, their first since 2000, is likely to be called Vertigo, and the tracks on the CD have already started appearing on P2P networks such as Overnet.
Oz magazine was an underground magazine launched on April 1, 1963, in Sydney, Australia, where its editors – Richard Neville, Richard Walsh, and Martin Sharp – were charged under obscenity laws. In 1971, after the magazine shifted to England in 1966, Neville, Felix Dennis, and Jim Anderson were put on trial for corrupting public morals. Oz finally ceased publication in 1973. 
Well, it's the 200th day of the year, and it's been 1035 days since Bush said he'd catch Osama bin Laden dead or alive, pardner! 