Dowbrigade

Rush Reviews Standing CPR

Nobody is shocked by Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears "honoring" Madonna
by making out with her at the Mtv Music Awards, but everyone is acting
as if they are. One year, there was none of this sort of thing at the
Awards and the columnists freaked out the next day. Now it’s mandatory
that some staged "outrage" occur. It’s boring and anything
but spontaneous or scandalous.

This is simply an example of our culture’s decline: people acting like
fools because they think they have to. You know, we keep hearing how
these terrorists hate our amoral culture. Isn’t it possible, some might
ask, that some Al-Qaeda thug could see this kissing (and more of them
are watching in their caves than will ever admit it) and decide to punish
us? Who knows what they might do!

from Rush
Limbaugh

Suburban sprawl appears to be contributing to the nation’s obesity epidemic,
making people less likely to walk and more likely to be overweight, researchers
reported yesterday.

In the first comprehensive examination of whether suburbs spreading across
the U.S. landscape are affecting Americans’ health, the researchers studied
more than 200,000 people in 448 counties, producing the first concrete
evidence supporting suspicions that sprawl is aggravating the nation’s
growing weight crisis.

People who live in the most spread-out areas spend fewer minutes each month
walking and weigh about six pounds more on average than those who live
in the most densely populated places. Probably as a result, they are almost
as prone to high blood pressure as cigarette smokers, the researchers found.

from the Washington Post

Hindu
Holy men attend the third ‘Shahi Snan’ (grand bath) at the ongoing Kumbh
Mela (sacred Hindu pilgrimage) in Trimbakeshwar, near Nasik, which
is some 180 km (112.5 miles) northeast of Bombay August 27, 2003. Hundreds
of thousands of Hindu devotees gathered to take a holy dip in a pond filled
with water from the river Godavari in Trimbakeshwar during the third ‘shahi
snan’ in the month-long religious event. from Reuters

On the way back from Trujillo, a lovely Colonial city on the Pacific coast,
in the middle of the night, we were kidnapped by a band from the Tupac
Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). We were released unharmed in our underwear
some time later, but that is another story, best left for another time.

Soon after our safe return to Boston, I was required, as I am every year,
to fill out a form for the Boston University office of public affairs,
a form listing my academic and professional affiliations and my areas of
special knowledge or expertise. Actually, I hadn’t a clue as to what this
information was used for and so, half in jest and with my hostage experience
fresh in memory, I listed "International Terrorism" along with "Educational
Technology" and "Cooperative Learning".

Two years later, in March 1993, the day of the first attempt to blow up
the World Trade Center, I got a call from the BU public affairs office.
"A reporter from Channel 56 would like to ask you a few questions about
the terrorist attack in New York", she said.

Always obliging, I agreed, although at the time I had no idea why Channel
56 would want to talk to me, having forgotten completely about the form
I had filled out two years previously. But I was game, and being a news
addict and highly opinionated individual, had no problem passing myself
off as a professorial if not professional expert in the area.

Afterwards I figured out how they got my name and why they mistakenly thought
I was an expert in international terrorism, but by then it was too late.
I started getting more calls, from the other TV channels, from the Herald,
even from Newsday in New York.

When a TV station wanted to film an interview, I would tell them to stop
by my office at Harvard. In actuality at that time my “Office” was a messy
conference room on the sixth floor of Sever Hall which I shared with 15
other ESL teachers, but I arranged to meet them in a book-lined corner
of the Sever library, where I would sit in a big leather armchair, wave
a borrowed pipe and pontificate on the sorry lack of anti-terrorist awareness.

They always asked the same questions, and I always gave the same answers.
The ominous closing inquiry was always, "So, Prof. Feldman, do you think
there will be more of these attacks in the future?".

"Absolutely. Indubiously. Undoubtedly". I figured if there were no more
attacks it wouldn’t be news and so no one would remember what I had predicted;
if there
were future attacks it would make me look prescient.

I’m not sure which of the news organizations finally did their homework
and figured out that I was closer to being a terrorist than a terrorism
expert, but the interview requests gradually dried up. By the time the
terrorists got serious, I was off of the watch list.

However, I haven’t given up. My predictions WERE prescient, and I hear
there are big bucks in the anti-terrorism expert business these days. However,
this time I think I will bypass the University Public Affairs Office. Send
interview requests directly to the Dowbrigade.

BBC correspondent Valerie Jones, at the scene of the blast outside
the Imam Ali Mosque, said the crowds were chanting against Saddam Hussein
and the US forces.

"They are blaming Saddam Hussein supporters for the attack but also they
are starting to rather vehemently blame the Americans for not providing
them security," our correspondent said.

from the
BBC