Dowbrigade

A
toy being sold from Florida to Boston depicts an airliner crashing into
twin towers as the trophy for a candy cache. We are trying to track down
any unrecalled packages, as these will certainly become collectors items.  

It
is hard to imagine a more tasteless display of crass commercialism,
which virtually guarantees it a place as an American classic. Any alert
readers spotting these gems should snatch up as many as they can get
their hands on….

The toys are packaged with candy sold at Hispanic groceries.
They were distributed
as far away as Boston.

The company that sold them, but now has recalled them, is called Lisy
Corporation, a Miami-based spice, snack and candy company.

"We gave our people, immediately, the authority to get it from the stores
and to send it back," comments Luis Padron, Lisy Corportation.

Upon realizing the nature of the toy, and the product number 9-0-1-1
on each toy, Lisy Corp. sent a letter to stores saying the toy "resembles
the Twin Towers and an airplane. [It is] "totally inappropriate".

from Channel
9 Orlando

August 27, 2004 (Torino, Italy) – Scientists fear that
emerging evidence may suggest a new outbreak of the Ebola virus, which,
in addition to threatening
human lives, would threaten tens of thousands of great apes "in this case
gorillas and chimpanzees" in the Republic of Congo. The announcement was made
by the International Primatological Society (IPS) and Great Ape Survival Project
(GRASP) at the IPS’s 20th Congress, being held this week in Turin, Italy.

Fewer than 100,000 western lowland gorillas remain on Earth.
A study published in the journal Nature last year suggested that when
an ebola
outbreak affects a given area, more than 80 percent of all great apes
living in that area die of the disease

from Conservation International

This sort of thing is obviously why the military
and the administration are resisting public hearings or trials for these
guys…

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – A Yemeni prisoner confessed to being
a member of Al Qaeda
during
a
preliminary
hearing
before a military commission Thursday, but was cut off in mid-sentence
by the presiding official and was not allowed to complete his statement.

In a show-stopping moment in the third day of military hearings for suspected
terrorists, Ali Hamza Ahamad Sulayman al Bahlul said in Arabic: "People
of the entire globe, know that I testify that the American government put me
under no pressure. I am from Al Qaeda and the relationship between me and Sept
11th…"

Bahlul was halted by retired Army Col. Peter Brownback
III, who told his four fellow commission members serving as judges to
disregard the statement. Brownback said the trial had not reached the
stage at which the detainee could offer a plea.

from the Los Angeles Times

The
Dowbrigade and Norma Yvonne are thinking of driving down to NYC on Sunday
to attend/cover the massive protest planned for the day before the opening
of the RNC. Scheduled for the 41st anniversary of the legendary "March
on Washington" which galvanized public opinion against the war in Viernam,
Sunday’s protest was origially scheduled to mount up in Central Park
and march down Fifth Avenue to the Madison Sq. Garden, site of the convention.

But the City has refused permits to the protesters,
and offered to relocate them – off of the island of Manhattan. No one
seems to know exactly what will happen Sunday, although the latest news
reports say the protesters do have a permit for the march part of their
protest, which is now scheduled to wind up at historic Union Square. What
will happen when up to a quarter of a million people end up in Union
Square, just in time for Sunday brunch, surrounded by New York’s Finest, remains to be seen. Whatever
happens will certainly be worth Blogging, and we want to be there.

Do any of our readers know if there are any support
facilities for bloggers visiting the city to blog the convention from
the outside? Any
blogger meet-ups, or gathering places, or informal command centers? Are
there any other bloggers or blog-readers who would be interested in trying
to hook up? Let us know, we are looking forward to an interesting mix
of a day in the park and a day at the zoo.

protest story from CNN

We are currently working on a virtual import project with our
foreign business students, in which they choose a product from their
home market they think would sell well in Boston, and via the internet go
through all of the steps involved in purchasing, packaging, shipping,
paying
duties
and
fees, and distributing said product, to see if there really is a profitable
business in there somewhere. We first tested a version of this project
way back in 1989, before the WWW, purely via email, between a class at
Boston
University and one at Hebron University in the occupied West Bank between
Israel and Jordan.  Things were really getting interesting, with
some serious inquiries from NGO’s about possibly funding some of the
Palestinian students’ project products, when the university was shut
down as part of the first Intifada But the idea lives on.

In the first
stage the students just brainstorm what products are produced in their
home region and which ones might find a market here in Boston. We emphasize
that not all ideas are good ideas, and that not even all good ideas make
good businesses. As an example, on the spur of the moment, we asked them
if they remembered "honestlawyer.com".

Well, do any of YOU remember honestlawyer.com? We thought
not. But this started us thinking about why this idea wouldn’t fly. The
legal profession is an example of a job with a built-in dichotomy of
values, a Janus-like schizophrenia in roles, and a psychological difficulty
little appreciated or discussed among practitioners.

Our lawyers are our surrogates in a very vicious arena
of public confrontation, where the course of lives can hang in the balance.
Everybody wants a mean unscrupulous bastard for a lawyer, who knows all
the tricks and when to use them, without, of course, transgressing on
the law itself. At the same time, we want a lawyer we can confide in
and trust not to screw US. The lawyer is required to have one personality
when facing the opposition – crafty, shifty, ingenious, dangerous, opportunistic,
merciless,and a completely other one when facing the client – honest,
straightforward,
trustworthy, friendly. The strain must be incredible.

The position of President of the United States is in
many ways similar and presents unique psychological challenges to those
who aspire to it. This is the essential dichotomy in modern democracy;
we want a mean bastard as our President, a guy who will hunt down and
exterminate the vermin who prey on Americans, a cutthroat negotiator
who knows all the tricks and won’t be out-tricked or outsmarted by some dastardly
foreign dictator, but at the same time we demand a principled saint
on the home front, an honest and straight-shooting man of firm moral
values and a patriarchal love for his people.

We learned what happens when we elect a genuinely moral
man when we voted Jimmy Carter into the Oval Office. History may judge
differently but current consensus seems to be that his was the most unsuccessful
Presidency since Warren Harding. He just wasn’t a mean enough son of
a bitch to fend off the jackals in Washington, let alone the international
mad dogs who were crazy enough to want to mess with the U S of A.

Luckily, this time it looks like we have a couple of
pretty evenly matched sleazy unscrupulous political infighters
ready to go toe to toe, no holds barred, which should provide for some
entertaining
mud-slinging
and dirty tricks over the next 2 months, as well as produce a President
who can allow Americans to continue to stride the world and declare "Our
bastard’s meaner than your bastard."

It was not without some trepidation that the Dowbrigade
waited in the bowels of Logan Airport for the arrival of AA flight 286
from San Jose, California. Aboard, at least in theory, were 12 Japanese
undergraduate business majors who would be under our tutelage for the
next 4 weeks. Not a very big group, and not a very long program, but
in these Ameraphobic times we need all the live bodies we can get on
campus.

Didn’t have much data on the incoming crew. 10 girls and two guys. 19
and 20 years old. From a rural backwater on some southern island. Low
TOEFL
scores. First time in America, first time out of Japan, first time away
from their parents, most of them. A perfect recipe for trouble.

We were supposed to meet the flight and bustle the bunch off to their hotel,
scenically situated in the heart of the Theater District Since flight 286
wasn’t due until after 10 pm, and by the time we got their luggage and
made it to the hotel and checked in it would be past midnight, and they
were supposed to be on campus and ready for their first class at 9 the
next morning. we had volunteered to stay the night at the hotel with them,
and in the morning show them how to get to campus on the T.

Bragging on the fact that we were looking forward to a night at a fancy
downtown hotel on the clock for our employer we discovered that the hotel
in question, although quite upscale and respectable, was considered a "festive" hotel,
so to speak, catering to theater people of unconventional lifestyle.

Which we think is absolutely fantastic and a great opportunity for these
Japanese kids, who according to their PR, are here to "explore the
diversity of the American business environment". We couldn’t think
of a more appropriate or conducive setting for their exploration.

Suddenly, our reverie was interrupted. They were calling flight 268, baggage
on carousel A. We staked it out and waited. And waited. We were about to
give up, and were considering the exact tone of our plaintive call back
to headquarters, when we spied a nervous knot of Asians oozing in slow
stutter steps, toward the baggage belt.

A rough head count reported about a dozen, and with no other groups of
Asians to be seen, this had to be our guys. We approached and confirmed.
There were 13 of them, actually, although the last was a teacher, Hiroko,
who was easy to mistake for one of the students, especially for the Dowbrigade,
who has always been at a hopeless loss in estimating the ages of women.

They were stunned and staggered, and seemed almost completely incapable
of understanding normal spoken English. We asked them how their flight
was, and was met with blank stares. We asked if they knew which carousel
their luggage would be on (a little test, as we already knew) and were
met with idiot grins and nodding heads. Hell, we figured, they just got
off a 27 hour flight, if we were arriving in Japan like that we would be
in a lot worse shape than they are.

It was now half an hour after the flight arrived, and none of their bags
had appeared yet. It seemed that all of the other people who arrived at
the same time as my guys had long ago taken their suitcases and left. We
were mentally running down the lost baggage routine when we noticed that
the group had shrunk to 10. We hadn’t even left the airport and we were
already losing students, not to mention luggage.

Turns out Hiroko the teacher and two of the students had left to go back
to the gate, because one of the girls though she had left her cell phone
on the plane. Great.

Just as the bags finally hove into sight, the missing three reappeared,
sans cell phone, and also claimed their luggage. When the last piece was
safely in hand, following precise instructions, we phoned Back Bay Limo
company to send a pair of vans to take us to the hotel. With body language
and over-enunciation we got them to grasp the concept "follow me" and
led them to the curb outside baggage area A.

Once we arrived, the place was all we had hoped it would be. Funky and
comfy and impeccable decorated, the joint was literally in the midst of
all the big theaters and just a couple of blocks from the Boston Common.
The night desk clerk who registered us was very friendly and efficient,
and the students were off to their rooms before midnight.

We stayed in the small but comfortable lobby chatting up the desk clerk
until we started having second thoughts about just how friendly he was,
and tottled off to bed ourselves.

The room was neither luxurious nor spacious, but like the lobby was elegant
and comfortable, if a bit cramped. As we were only expecting to spend about
6 hours there, it was no big deal. We slept.

In the morning everyone was downstairs early to check out the "continental
breakfast" They were running on nervous energy, chattering away in
Japanese and avoiding us like we were the Man. Well, it was Monday morning
and they were supposed to be in class in a few minutes. Of course, to them
it was 9 at night, Japan time.

We knew they would run out of gas and collapse sometime in the next 48
hours, but they were young, healthy students and could take the shock.
And quite a shock it was – everything was different than it had been the
last time they woke up. New climate, new language, new customs, new faces,
new food, new smells, new transportation system, cars on the wrong side
of the road. No wonder they were shell-shocked.

Breakfast was dry cereal, coffee, milk, juice, and make-your-own waffles.
We served ourselves a quick cup of coffee and an OJ and sat down to observe
the visiting wildlife. They seemed like pretty normal 19-year olds, jabbering
away, listing to diskmans, de rigueur T-shirts and jeans. But there was
a lot of nervous giggling and herding going on. They were scared and insecure.
We hadn’t heard a single word of English yet, which was starting to worry
us, in our professional capacity.

As we sat, sipping our coffee and sizing up the human resources we will
be working with during the upcoming weeks, a tall portly officious-looking
dude approached and asked, "Are you in charge of this group?" He
looked professionally perturbed, and his rather obvious rug was slightly
askew to the left.

With typical Dowbrigade gallantry we tried to deny this, and slough the
guy off to Hiroko, "Not me. I’m just one of their teachers the university
sent over to show them how to get to campus. The person in charge is that
woman over there, who came with them from Japan."

Didn’t work. "I’d like to see you both in my office right now," he
huffed officiously.

His office, like every other room we had seen so far, was stylish but cramped,
as though the Queer Eye guys had done over a broom closet. He told us to
take a seat, although both of the available chairs were covered with notebooks,
sheafs of paper, magazines and leather-bound address and appointment books.
We cleared one off for Hiroko, piled all of the junk on the other, and
stood.

“I have to inform you, that although we were delighted to accept your group
on short notice, there are certain rules of behavior that we insist on
in our hotel. There was a major disaster this morning in the breakfast
room."

We winced, invisibly we hoped, and our imagination began working overtime.
Did one of the students come down naked? Had there been a butter-knife
fight over the last sweet roll? Had someone had an attack or epileptic
fit before we had come down? We waited breathlessly for the disastrous
news.

"First of all," began the overstuffed gentleman, who appeared to be
the day manager, "all of your students came down for breakfast at
the same time. As you can see, our breakfast room is quite small. From
now on, I would like you to make a schedule so that no more than 3 students
eats breakfast at one time."

Sure, we thought, we can schedule them in 15 minute slots starting at 7
am. Everyone know the Japanese are a severely regimented people. They should
take to it like ducks to water.

"But much worse than that," continued the manager in sonorous tones, "is
the manner in which they mistreated the breakfast machinery. They attempted
to use the waffle iron without spraying it with the protective cooking
lubricant, and the batter stuck to the metal, requiring a member of my
staff to clean it before it could be used again. They also used 72 ounces
of hot water, most of which they left lying in cups around the service
area. If this continues, we will be forced to ask your group to find lodging
elsewhere."

We had had about enough of this ridiculous rant. "Excuse me, but these
students just got off of a 27-hour international flight. They have never
been to the United States before. They are not familiar with American breakfast
customs or your machines. Perhaps if a member of your staff could quickly
explain how to use them these problems could be avoided."

He looked shocked and offended at the suggestion. "I can’t spare a
member of my staff," he huffed, "and for that reason I am telling
YOU, and I expect you to inform the students. I will NOT tolerate another
major disaster such as we had this morning."

We had about had it with this guy. "I must say, you are a very fortunate
establishment. I guess in all the years you have been open you have never
had a guest suffer a heart attack in the breakfast room, never had a fist
fight between estranged lovers, never had a theater queen throw a drunken
hissy fit in the lobby, or start a fire smoking crack in one of your rooms?
Boy, if this qualifies as a major disaster, you guys have been really lucky,
so far…."

He was aghast, at a loss for words, uncertain whether to just toss me out
or call the cops. Luckily, Hiroko broke in and defused the situation. "Please
forgive us, this is our first day in your country. I will speak to the
students and make sure they don’t touch any of the equipment. I assure
you it will not happen again. Now, please with your permission, I must
get them ready to attend class."

He let us go, his discontent at not having had the opportunity to put us
in our place counterbalanced by relief at getting us out of his office
and his hotel as quickly as possible. We thanked Hiroko for the assist
and began herding the flock towards the Boylston Street subway station.
A new semester had begun.

Postscript: It is now day four of this group’s four week program, and we
are relieved to report that they DO know how to speak English a little,
although they remain intimidated and reluctant to do so. Our main job over
the coming weeks is to give them enough confidence and comfort to start
using the English they already know, which they learned in Japan. Four
weeks is really too little time to teach them much new stuff. Mostly, this
is a chance for them to learn a little about American culture and to activate
all of the passive English knowledge they have been accumulating for years
at home.

Terrorists will paralyze the Internet on August 26,
a Russian expert in antivirus programs said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a conference hosted by Russian Information Agency Novosti,
Aleksandr Gostev from Kaspersky Labs said information on this terrorist
attack was published on special websites. He did not elaborate.

from the
Moscow News

Truth
eventually eclipses fiction, even legendary folk tales like the stories
of Babe, Paul Bunyons giant blue ox……

For a glimpse of what post-human athletes may look like
beginning in the 2012 or 2016 Olympics, take a look at an obscure breed
of cattle called the Belgian Blue.

Belgian Blues are unlike any cows you’ve ever seen. They have a genetic
mutation that means they do not have effective myostatin, a substance
that curbs muscle growth. A result is that Belgian Blues are all bulging
muscles without a spot of fat, like bovine caricatures of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

from Nickolas Kristof in the New York Times

Vs.

Mystery solved.  The Olympic
sport we chanced across
the other day and couldn’t identify was none other than the ever-popular
HANDBALL!! Obviously, the reason we had never seen it before is that
when, in the past, we heard about handball, we thought of the American
sport of the same name, which we always associate with New York City
but which we understand is also popular in California as well as other
urbs
across the country. Handball brings to our mind sweaty swarthy
hard-edged city-dwellers whose hands are constantly calloused and wrapped
in fraying
once-white athletic tape. It was played on cramped courts carved from
the urban landscape; cement, brick, occasionally wood, a poorer relative
to swanky squash.

But NO, the Olympic variety is a horse of a different
color. Played by teams of 7, it is a crazy combination of basketball,
Fulbito and water polo without the water.  Bob Ryan, in today’s
Boston
Globe, set us straight and explains the basic rules better than
we can. This is undoubtably because he, a true professional, sat through an entire match, which
apparently last 90 minutes.

The object is to throw a ball about the size of a large
grapefruit with the texture of a volleyball into a goal that is 2 meters
high and 3 meters wide. Each team has a goalkeeper and six other players.
The goalie, as is the case in other sports, has to be borderline crazy
because he has zero protection and must try to stop shots that are thrown
very hard from very close. The court is 40 meters by 20 meters, and there
is a semicircular line with a diameter of 15 meters that forms a goal
area. Only the goalie can be inside that area.

Ryan predicts an American medal in 2 or 3 Olympic cycles
(we didn’t qualify this time), as soon as we get enough "renegade" basketball
and hockey players to sign on, in hopes of Olympic fame and fortune.  Good
luck.

from the Boston Globe

What
a shame we have to work during the Olympics. Missing so many events is
making us think seriously for the first time
about getting a TiVo.  On the other hand, by flipping through the
4 or 5 channels in the NBC family which are sharing the broadcast, cable
serendipity has brought us to a surprise ball of obscure events, mythical
matchups, personal and international dramas, and occasionally, a complete
surprise.

Today, for example, we were channel surfing in the afternoon
when we came across an Olympic sport WE HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE.  As
an inveterate sports fan and true believer in the lofty ideals and gritty
reality of this quadrennial extravaganza, up until that moment we would
have bet a considerable sum of money that we were familiar with ALL of
the Olympic events, even recent bastard children like Synchronized Diving
and Rhythmic Gymnastics.

Anyway, in this new sport we saw what appeared
to be about 7-10 women on a side, tossing (but not dribbling or kicking)
an orange rubber ball into a small low net somewhat akin to a lacrosse
net.  There were no bats, baskets, pads, racquets or special equipment
at all. The game was played indoors, on what looked like a wooden court,
with lines painted indicating penalty areas, sidelines, etc. What could
it be? We wouldn’t have accepted it as an Olympic sport at all if not
for the huge Olympic symbol painted on the middle of the field of play.

Later, we enjoyed watching several fights between Russians
and Cubans, who seem to be between themselves, dominating the later rounds
of the Olympic boxing championships. This is obviously because the boxers
in those countries have relatively little access to the professional
ranks and the millions that lie along that path. Nevertheless, one wonders
why some ambitious boxing promoters haven’t lured some of these world
champions into the shady world of professional boxing long before now.
Perhaps their style and training to score points rather than do damage
makes them worthless as professional pugilists.

On the other side of that coin, the American boxers, who
used to dominate the medals stand, especially at welter weight and above,
have been quickly given the boot this time around.  Again, they
are unaccustomed to the scoring system and up against fighters with
years more experience. It’s no wonder they are losing. America will dominate
Olympic Boxing again when we develop a few thousand talented fighters
who can afford to turn up their noses a\t the millions of dollars being
dangled in the pro boxing game and dedicate the best years of their
lives to learning the rules and acquiring the skills of Olympic boxing.
Maybe if we recruit among Shakers, Mormons and Krishna’s, although we
understand the Krishna’s have become quite capitalistic lately.

Getting back to the Russian vs. Cuban boxers, it was a
bit like watching Brazil vs. Germany in soccer.  A single minded
modern sports machine against a creative celebration of sport as art.
A disciplined
band of northern European Aryans marching triple time in formation taking
on a slap-happy band of Latin sports lovers dancing their way to fame.
Power vs. Touch. An efficient crew of killers taking on a gang of Devil-may-Care of soul brothers. Old world vs. new world. Death vs. Life.

In soccer over recent years, and in boxing today in
Greece, Life won out over Death, Creativity over Control. Unfortunately,
in the world at large, this is the exception rather than the rule.

One
of our favorite theories of the inevitability of Blogging holds that
eventually, whenever something noteworthy or memorable happens in the
world there will be a blogger nearby to witness and record. Well, Saturday
it was our turn, and although it’s not the kind of news we find at all
compelling, there was a CBS satelite uplink broadcasting van parked
in front of our house for most of the day yesterday, so we feel obligated
to at least mention the incident.

On Saturday afternoon, at about 4:30 in the afternoon,
on the leading edge of a cold front sweeping across the region from West
to East, our neighborhood in Watertown, MA was hit by intense, high winds
of short duration. Judging from our days as a Navy meteorologist
at McMurdo Station near the South Pole, we would estimate the gusts
at upward of 65 mph. The wind tore up trees, blocked the streets, damaged
homes,
and
tore
half the roof off of the cupola of St. Stephens, an Armenian Church on
the corner, which is why the network trucks showed up. Fortunately, no
one was hurt.

story and photo by Dowbrigade.