Dowbrigade

"Don’t you think Jerry Falwell reminds you a lot more of the Pharisees
than he does of the teachings of Jesus? And don’t you think this campaign
ought to be about evicting the money changers from the temple?”

Howard Dean in Iowa yesterday, following up on his promise to inject
more religion into his campaign.  Careful what you wish for, Howard…

The Dowbrigade thought he was tracking the current Democratic campaign
pretty closely, but a
quiz in today’s NY Times reveals how inadequate
our best efforts were. Obviously, we need to spend at least a couple
of extra
hours a day boning up on the lives, positions and personal preferences
of the Magnificent Nine.  Here is a sample question and a link to
the whole quiz:

Match each of the nine candidates (Carol Moseley Braun
and Messrs. Clark, Dean,
Edwards,
Gephardt,
Kerry,
Kucinich,
Lieberman
and
Sharpton)
with a campaign slogan.

a) For an America That Will Inspire the World Once More
b) The Courage to Do What’s Right for America
c) Take the "Men Only" Sign Off the White House Door
d) Real Solutions for America
e) Take This Country Back
f) Integrity, Independence, Ideas
g) New American Patriotism
h) Fighting for Fundamental Human Rights
i) Stop George Bush and Fight for America’s Middle Class

Take the Quiz at the New York Times

McLEAN,
Va., Dec. 27 (AP) When the Central Intelligence Agency’s gadget makers
invented
a listening device for the Asian jungles, they disguised it so the enemy
would not be tempted to pick it up and examine it: The device looked
like tiger droppings.

The guise worked. The fist-size, brown transmitter detected troop movements
along the trails during fighting in Vietnam, a quiet success for a little-known
group of researchers inside the C.I.A.

The office, known as the Directorate of Science and Technology,
is celebrating its 40th anniversary by revealing a few dozen of its secrets
for a new museum inside its headquarters near Washington.

Keith Melton, a leading historian of intelligence, calls it "the finest
spy museum you’ll never see." It is accessible only to C.I.A. employees
and guests to those closed quarters.

In 2000, the C.I.A. built a catfish called Charlie, a remarkably realistic
swimming robot. The agency will not disclose much about the fish’s mission,
but experts speculated that it collects water samples near suspected chemical
or nuclear plants.

The agency is not showing off just its successes. It invented a remot
e-controlled
dragonfly for delivering tiny listening devices outside windows, but the
so-called insectothopter could not fly straight in winds.

from The
New York Times

MINNEAPOLIS
(AP) – A naked man got stuck in the chimney of a bookstore early Christmas
morning. Don’t worry, it wasn’t Santa Claus.

The 34-year-old man was treated Thursday for bruises and abrasions at Hennepin
County Medical Center after being found naked and lodged in the furnace
flue at Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore. He was expected to be charged with attempted
burglary on Friday.

“He was lucky,” said police Lt. Mike Sauro. “He was only stuck in that
chimney for a few hours. It’s kind of a happy ending, because if he had
been in there until that store opened Friday morning, it’s my judgment
he would have died.

“He doesn’t appear to be a hard-core criminal, just stupid.”

from AP (thanks,
Ma)

The
deck of playing cards has become the 21st century version of wanted
posters, trading cards or commemorative dinner plates. The Dowbrigade
still remembers the first deck of non-standard playing cards he ever
saw, at Beaver Camp for Boys, when he was 10 or 11. To this day he
finds himself strangely fascinated
by redheads with one boob bigger than the other, like that most memorable
8 of Hearts.

The latest entry in this Deck of Shame is the Wall Street’s Most Wanted,
which has selected its 54 miscreants on the basis of "Corporate Excesses,
Poor Corporate Goverance, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Fraud and
Executive Greed."

The honorees include: Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow, William
Harrison, Dennis Kozlowski, Martha Stewart, Richard Scrushy, Mark Swartz,
Don Carty. Harvey Pitt, Jack Welch, Putnam Investment, Bernie Ebbers,
Scott Sullivan and Frank Quattrone

from wallstreetmostwanted.com

BAM,
Iran (Reuters) – A pre-dawn earthquake razed much of the ancient Silk
Road city of Bam in Iran on Friday, killing more than 20,000 people and
injuring tens of thousands more, government officials said.

About 70 per cent of the buildings in the historic city, a popular tourist
spot some 1,000 km (600 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran, had collapsed
and many residents were trapped under the rubble, state television said.

"Rescue workers have found more bodies. The figure is now more than
20,000," a
senior government official said. The quake at about 5:30 a.m. (9 p.m. EST
Thursday) measured 6.3 on the Richter scale.

Other officials said around 50,000 people were injured in and around
the city, which, with its environs, had a population of some 200,000
people.

Bam was without water, electricity or gas as night fell and temperatures
headed below freezing. Residents set fires to stay warm and made torches
from palm branches for light as they dug with bare hands for survivors.

from Reuters

For
years the Dowbrigade has been using the Harper’s Index with his advanced
ESL students.  The Harpers Index is a monthly list of surprising
or unexpected or counterintuitive statistical
facts, written in a strange hybrid form expressing equivalency, but
gramatically neither statement nor question. Here are some examples from last
month’s list:

Percentage by which the Defense Department proposed cutting its budget
this year by closing its Peacekeeping Institute: 0.001

Ratio of the institute’s budget to the estimated price ofJennifer Lopez’s
engagement ring: 3:4

First year in which the definition of "turkey" in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary went beyond fowl: 1949

Grams by which the amount of fat in McDonald’s fattiest salad exceeds that
in its fattiest burger: 3

First the students were instructed to rewrite the items as gramatically correct statements
– for example, "McDonald’s fattiest salad has three grams of fat more than
its fattiest burger."

Next they would rewrite them again as questions and answers. Q: "How many
more grams of fat does McDonalds fattiest salad have than its fattiest burger?"
A: Three grams

Finally, and here is where the higher order language functions kick in,
they had to answer the question "And the point is?" (Salads can have more
grease and fat than burgers, at least at MickyD’s)

Students love figuring out what the point is, and pursuing the subsequent
conversational strands ("What could they possibly put in their salads to
make them greasier than their burgers?")

However I remember lamenting several years ago that the monthly lists
were unavailable on the Harpers magazine web site. No more. Now, they have
an archive of past indexes, and on the first of each month post the previous
month’s list.  The items are even linked to Harper’s stories and other
resources! Great resource for teachers.

from Harpers

Cool little quiz over at quizilla.com, called "What kind of post-modernist
are you?" I’m not really sure what a post-modernist is, except that I
think it has something to do with deconstructionism.

Thanks to Ryan
Overbey for the tip. Here are our results….

You are a Cyberculture Floozie. The theoretical aspects of postmodernism
interest you only insofar as they can be used to make cool blinky things.
You probably take psychedelics and know at least one programming language
(HTML counts!). Other postmodernists call you a corporate whore. They’re
probably just jealous because you make more money than them.

They were doing pretty good until the money part….

from Quizilla

The holiday spirit was dampened and Christmas dinner ruined at Buckingham Palace by a combination dog fignt / cat fight involving The Queen of England, her daughter Princess Anne, a bull terrier named Dottie and the Queen’s favorite Corgi, name of Pharos. Note the gratuitous use of Latin. American papers should do more of that, lends a note of class to a tawdry genre…

THE Queen was last night heartbroken over the death of her beloved corgi
Pharos, savaged by Princess Anne’s danger dog Dottie.

The lethal attack by the English bull terrier was the last straw for
Her Majesty at the end of another "annus horribilis"
.

It happened on Monday afternoon as the Royal Family gathered for Christmas
at Sandringham in Norfolk.

Anne arrived with Dottie – the dog that mauled two children last year,
leading to the prosecution of the princess and her other bull terrier
Eglantyne. Princess Anne is said to be distraught at incident.

As the door was opened by a servant, the Queen’s corgis raced down the
main staircase to greet Anne.
But Dottie went for Pharos – the Queen’s oldest corgi – savaging its
hind legs and breaking one in three places.

Growls and yelps were heard through the corridors as the attack went
on. The Queen, who is recovering from a knee operation, heard the commotion
and hobbled downstairs. But Pharos – for whom she had already made up
a Christmas stocking packed with treats like doggy doughnuts and chocolate
drops – was terribly injured.

He was treated by Royal vets and kept in intensive care but had to be
put down yesterday.

A Royal insider said the 77-year-old Queen, who has had Pharos for more
than a decade, was "absolutely devastated"

SIDEBAR:

Dogs so like their owners

By MEL HUNTER

PSYCHOLOGIST Dr Glenn Wilson claimed that pets can reflect the personality
of the owner.He said: "To some degree you do choose a pet which connects
with your personality.

"For example, a psychopath might go for a rottweiler. That may be a stereotype
but I am sure there is some truth in it.

"A timid-minded person is far more likely to go for a kitten than a big
dog."

Dr Wilson, of the University of London, said a dog could almost be a
substitute child. He went on: "Just like a naughty child, you can’t just
let a dog go because it is badly behaved. In fact, naughtiness is somehow
endearing.

"The connection between royals and their pets may be even stronger because
the animals can’t answer back " and they don’t tell tales."

Top pet shrink Dr Roger Mugford said: "Bull terriers are not a breed
known to be aggressive to humans but if you have one that’s bad it will
hit the headlines.Fights can start if one dog looks at another the wrong
way, just like with humans. All dogs enjoy fighting but bull terriers
are good at it."

from the
Sun

As
the top prize gets closer and closer, The Remaking of Howard Dean is
reaching a fevered pitch. What with Michael Jackson embracing the Nation
of Islam, hearing that Dean is embracing his Christian roots is all part
of a heart-warmingly fashionable "Rush to Religion" this holiday season.
Makes the Dowbrigade want to rush out and embrace some Old Tyme Religious
Values like ritual human sacrifice
and temple prostitution.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Presidential contender Howard B. Dean, who has said
little about religion while campaigning except to emphasize the separation
of church and state, described himself in an interview with the Globe
as a committed believer in Jesus Christ and said he expects to increasingly
include references to Jesus and God in his speeches as he stumps in
the South.

Dean, 55, who practices Congregationalism but does not often attend
church and whose wife and children are Jewish, explained the move as
a desire
to share his beliefs with audiences willing to listen. In the Globe interview,
Dean said that Jesus was an important influence in his life and that
he would probably share with some voters the model Jesus has served for
him.

He acknowledged that he was raised in the "Northeast" tradition
of not discussing religious beliefs in public, and said he held back
in New Hampshire, where that is the practice. But in other areas, such
as the South, he said, he would discuss his beliefs more openly.

While attending Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, he
met his wife, Judith Steinberg, who is Jewish. The two were married by
a judge, and neither opted to convert, Dean said, because both felt strongly
about their respective religions.

"We considered becoming Unitarian as sort of a compromise that wasn’t
going to respect either person’s tradition," Dean said. "But
you know, our religions mattered enough that we didn’t really want to
change."

The couple’s two children, Anne, a sophomore at Yale University, and
Paul, a high school senior in Burlington, were given their choice of
religion. Both chose Judaism.

from the Boston Globe

In this
exclusive photo by Dave Winer, Sen. Lieberman warily eyes the Dowbrigade,
as your intrepid reporter, pen in one hand and beer in the other, grills
him on the issues
of the day.

In an exclusive interview at a bar in Manchester, New Hampshire, where
he has now taken an apartment, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut discussed
his move, his reasons for declining to campaign in Iowa, and his position
on the devastation currently affecting educational programs geared to
foreign students. The Dowbrigade caught up to the candidate after a long
day on the campaign trail, on
the 4th
day
of Chanukah,
in
an establishment
called
P.J. O’Toole’s.

Sen. Lieberman was astonishingly easy to approach. Basically, all the
Dowbrigade had to do was sit down on the unoccupied bar stool to his
left. The candidate immediately offered his hand and introduced himself.
He asked where we were from and what we did for a living. He seemed genuinely
interested, and was remarkably easy to talk to.

When he heard that the Dowbrigade is about to lose his job at Boston
University due to the difficulties of foreign university students in
obtaining visas to study in the US post 9/11, Lieberman said, "I will
definitely do something about that after I am elected. The immigration
authority
in this country is in a shambles."

When asked why he chose to eschew the Iowa caucuses and instead move
into New Hampshire full-time, he mentioned he is not spending all his
time in NH. Iowa, he said, was shaping up as a showdown between Dean
and Gephart, and he preferred to stay out of it.  He mentioned that
9 other states, including NH, would be decided within a few weeks at
the end of January and the beginning of February, and he preferred to
invest his efforts there.

Sen. Lieberman was noncommittal when asked how long he planned to maintain
his residence after the January 27th primary. "We’ll see," he said, with
a twinkle in his eye.