Dowbrigade

Five
finalists of the Miss
Universe 2005 contest pose on the stage at the
final round at Impact Arena in Bangkok, Thailand Tuesday, May 31, 2005.
They are from left, Miss Mexico Laura Elizondo Erhard, Miss Puerto Rico
Cynthia Olavarria, Miss
Dominican Repubublic Renata Sone, Miss Canada Natalie Glebova and Miss
Venezuela Monica Spear. (AP Photo/Rungroj Yongrit, Pool)

No one has ever accused the Dowbrigade of being just another pretty
face, although we do consider ourself a lover of beauty. After attending
the
Miss Universe event
last year in Quito, Ecuador, it was inevitable that we would follow
the current edition, just completed in Bangkok, Thailand, another city
of which we have many fond memories.

We were even more interested considering that this year, four of the five finalists were
from Latin America, which only accounts for about 5% of the planets population.
The question came up in class today: Does Latin America really contain
a predominance of the most beautiful women in the world, or is the Miss
Universe pageant somehow fixed, or influenced by the nation origins of
the judges or sponsors?

The answer, in the humble opinion of the Dowbrigade, is yes on both
counts. Obviously, we agree that the most beautiful women in the world
are from Latin America, having married two of them. Not only are they
exquisite, they are  smart, athletic, and empowered, without having
sacrificed any of their femininity.

At the same time, the pageant itself is obviously influenced by the
standards of beauty in the countries that fund it, and by the comparative
purchasing power of the millions of viewers that actually sit through
the thing on live television. This year’s winner, Miss Canada, was born
in Russia. It is also interesting to note that of the 3 North American
countries, two were among the five finalists. Last year in Quito,
Miss Australia took home the top prize. Not only the Miss
Universe
pageant,
but ultimately
all of our public images of female perfection are provided by advertisers
and marketing professionals.

Quite simply, beauty and sex capture eyeballs and sell products. Back
in college, one of the Dowbrigade’s fields of study was Psychophysiology,
the relation between the human brain and body.  We got to mess around
in a lab with all sorts of mad-scientist gear, used to measure just about
every parameter of human physical response you can imagine.

There were long wires tipped in slippery silvery electrodes, used to
measure everything from Galvanized Skin Resistance (sweat, basically,
used in lie detectors) to electrical responses in the heart and brain
(electrocardiogram and encephlograms), to beams of light that reflected
on the eyeball to record where a subject is looking, cameras to record pupil dilation, BP cuffs, vacuum bags to measure and analyze respiration,
and
tons more cool toys; But our favorite was the penometer, a wired, smoking-jacket-like
sheath which enclosed the male member and measured its degree of engorgement
while the subject was submitted to various stimuli.

We are absolutely sure that the mega-corporations that sponsor the Miss
Universe pageant have run extensive tests with male and female subjects
from a variety of high-income, high beauty-pagent-viewership nations,
using the Penometer and whatever is its female equivalent, to determine
in an objective way what is the most stimulating standard of physical
beauty available within the strict limits of permissible public broadcast
established by the FCC. Apparently, according to the latest test groups,
Latinas are hot.

The search for physical beauty is an endless and lucrative motor for
the world economy and permeates all aspects of our culture and society.  For
the past several months, for example, we have noticed something different
on the area of Commonwealth Avenue on the college campus where our office
is located.

Last week
we finally figured it out. Gone from #930 was the Boston University Corporate Education
Center, which for the past decade has trained IT
geeks for major Boston business, and was, we thought, a promising new-wave
revenue stream pointing toward an attractive avenue of future development. Cheesy
and crassly commercial, but a sign of the times.

But the times they are achangin’. In place of the Corporate Education
Center was the following sign:

The BU Corporate Training Center had been replaced with the BU Cosmetic
Surgery Salon! Wow! Who knew that BU has it own Cosmo Center?  Note
that this is not a center to learn about or how to do cosmetic
surgery.  It
is a clinic offering these services to students and members of the community!
We
imagine they
are making this a major point in their pitch to the archetypical BU student,
the Jewish American Princesses of Long Island: "And for one, low price
of $60,000 we include a year’s tuition, a boob or nose job, and two other
elective surgeries of your choice."

We must
admit, however, that the one area in which BU surpasses its cross-river
rivals is in the delectability of those members of its community
colloquially know, in the past, as co-eds. Castigate our crude chauvinism
if you must, but BU women are much hotter than those at Harvard or MIT.  Why
this should be remains a mystery, but for examples one need look no further
than BU graduate Geena Davis, soon to reappear as President
of the United States, but in our mind forever enshrined, together
with Samuel L. Jackson, in
that classic of American cinematography, "The
Long Kiss Goodnight."
She remains, in our mind at least, as the premiere kick-ass female action hero,
above pretenders like Sigourney Waver or Angelina Jolie.

We wonder where they moved the computer geeks to.  Somewhere out
of sight, obviously, although we are sure they would have been willing
to collaborate with Advancing the Science of Beauty.

Miss Universe article from the Moscow Times

The Shocking-but-False story of America’s Blackstronauts.

A video spoof in the style of Ken Burns.

Thanks to John D.

SEOUL (Reuters) – Candy is dandy for North Korean children trying
to grow tall, strong and smart in a country battling chronic food shortages.

North Korea has developed a candy it claims is good for children and will
help them increase their height, weight and IQ, a pro-North Korea newspaper
published in Japan said on Friday.

"Unlike medications that help growth by clinical methods or hormonal
effects, the growth nutritional candy has no negative side effects," the
Choson Sinbo said, based on an interview with the head of a nutritional
research
center in the North.

Unlike sugar-packed and chocolate-covered sweets, the North is hoping that
children in the reclusive state will enjoy munching on their nutritional
candy made of seaweed, beans, carrots and sesame seeds, the newspaper said.

Who knew that one could make candy out of beans, carrots and seaweed
that would produce the New Superman? Obviously a plot on the part of
the Sugar Cartels to keep this information from the public. We’ll try
to remember to keep an eye out for tall, heavy, smart North Koreans in
15 or 20 years…

from Reuters

NEW
YORK – The Dowbrigade has learned, from his confidential but strategically
placed sources, that the current unprecedented cold,
rainy weather affecting the Boston area may not be an entirely natural
phenomena.

Reports out of the CDD
National Emergency Preparedness Center in Washington, and
confirmed by a a highly placed official in the National
Weather Service on condition of anonymity, suggest that a lovelorn
physicist, long-time resident of Cambridge, may be affecting the weather
in an attempt to get back at the woman who left him for her Pilates instructor.

The individual in question has not been officially named
as a suspect in the bad weather, but is rather being referred to as "a
person of interest." According to sources at MIT, where
he is believed to have graduated from, he has been identified as Percy
Farquand. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Farquand, described by MIT officials as "One of
the most brilliant undergraduates we have had on campus in 50 years," graduated
in the late 1990′s with a double major on meteorology and geomagnetism
and immediately went to work for the US Government, first with NASA and
then the top-secret NIA.

According to Filbert Cunningham, who described himself
as "a close personal friend of Percy, before he went off the deep
end,"
Farquand’s long-time girlfriend, an exotic dancer from Danvers, accompanied
him to Houston, and later to an "undisclosed location" near
a classified military base, but she eventually grew bored, and frustrated
by the separation
from her friends. Eventually, she left Farquand and moved back
to Boston.

Friends and acquaintances date the separation as the
point at which the brilliant young researcher became dangerously estranged
from reality.
"He would call at all hours of the day and night," according
to the young woman’s roommate. At first he was polite, but then he
started threatening to do things I didn’t understand. He was talkin’
crazy, but all scientific-like."

After repeated attempts to convince his ex to return
to his side, Farquand began threatening not only the woman and her family,
but the entire city of Boston and the New England region. "You’re
going to be sorry, it’s all your fault, you don’t know who you are dealing
with here," he reportedly ranted, "I can PUT OUT THE SUN. I
can CANCEL SUMMER!"

It is unknown how Farquand is managing to affect the
weather on such a massive scale, but his last known research was dealing
with using Super-Magnets to create localized anomalies in the Earth’s
magnetic
field.

Meanwhile, military sources report that Farquand is
AWOL from his latest security-related research position in a classified
army base. Rumors have placed him everywhere from Goa to Sri Lanka to
Paraguay.

The object of his unnatural desires, a 24-year-old from
Easter Island, has been "sequestered" by authorities hoping
to convince Farquand to ease up on the Northeast.  She has reportedly
agreed to relocate outside of New England, but refuses to apologize
or return
to the "mad
scientist".

"That man crazier than a vampire bat on crack
cocaine. No way am I going back to that pathetic geek." In addition,
she is supposedly demanding a sizable "re-settlement" payment
from the federal government, which is hoping that at least removing her
from
the region
will remove
Farquand’s motivation for wreaking weather havoc. Improving weather during the next few days would be an indication that the Federal strategy has worked, for the time being at least. Meteorologists across
the region are standing by…

Those
of us who do not believe in coincidence are doomed to spending significant
time looking for the correlations in juxtapositions of events such as
the following. First came the case of the Parking Nazi, in Jamaica Plain,
a leafy counter-culture neighborhood in the City of Boston.

The
Parking Nazi was one of those ubiquitous urban pains-in-the-ass, who
occasionally go completely off the deep end and become serious public
nuisances. He was obsessed with parking and vehicles violations on his
street. Not just blocking hydrants or lack of a neighborhood parking sticker.
This guy had a list of violations, which included parking on the street
if you had a driveway, out of date registration or inspection stickers,
out-of-state licence plates, taking up more than one space, vanity plates
and bumper stickers, and parking for more than 24 hours without moving.

And, like all true Nazis, he was into "enforcement". He would
start with nasty letters, stuck on windshields, detailing violations and
threatening police, FBI and IRS action. Repeated violations merited escalated
measures including smearing cars with chocolate syrup and feces, scratching
and spray painting. Thank God this guy is off the street (he was arrested
Tuesday).

Things got really macabre yesterday, however, with the news that a 97-year
old woman had been murdered on the same street that the Parking Nazi
was working!

A 97-year-old woman was found dead in her home in Jamaica Plain early
yesterday, and police officers with knowledge of the investigation said
she had been beaten and was wrapped in a blanket.

One of the officers and a neighbor said that a window leading into the
victim’s first-floor apartment had been broken. The officer also said
that her part of the three-family house on St. John Street had been
ransacked.

Minutes before she died, the woman, whom neighbors and friends identified
as Gerda T. Bissett, hit a medical alarm button she usually wore around
her neck to summon help, said the police officers, who spoke on condition
of anonymity. Police, fire, and medical personnel responded at around
4 a.m., police said. They broke down the door and found Bissett dead
on the floor of a bedroom near the front door, the police officers said.

What kind of sick bastard would kill a 97-year old woman who weighed
97 pounds? There is serious evil afoot in Jamaica Plain, and if the Parking
Nazi hadn’t been in custody, he would have been at the top of the suspect
list.

Then, on the local news coverage of the murder last night, who should
pop up as the spokesperson for the "tight-knit" street association
of the Nazi Street of Death, but Julie
Goodridge, who was one-half of the first same-sex marriage in Massachusetts,
and a plaintiff in tech landmark court case that changed the law and started
the same-sex marriage controversy that continues to rage across the nation.
She also lives on this quiet street in JP

Finally, the news stories are all quoting the district’s representative.on
the Boston City Council, up and coming Boston Pol, and instigator of the
Boston
Wi-Fi Summit, John Tobin!

Our mind is working overtime, and yet we can’t get a handle on the disparate
threads of this nexus of news. What is happening in Jamaica Plain? Is
it something in the water? Biblical retribution for such a concentration
of philistine sin? What is the connection between the Parking Nazi, the
murdered great-great-great grandmother, same-sex marriage and Councilor
Tobin? These are the questions that keep us up at night…

Parking
Nazi story from the Herald

murder
story from the Globe

John Tobin’s web site (no comment,
so far)

WAGGAMAN,
        La. — A public school
teacher fed up with his students’ behavior found a way to berate them
in the context of a class assignment. The Jefferson Parish teacher
wrote and distributed a two-page essay to his fourth-grade
      students saying he hated his job,
blasting the children’s “animal”behavior, and even identifying some of
them by name.
       
 Titled
“I Wonder Why?” the essay ended with an assignment for each student to
write a 200-word essay on how the teacher should treat them.
       
       
“Make sure you tell me why I need to treat you a certain way,” the
assignment reads. “I want to make sure that I no longer cheat and act
unfairly.”
       
In the
essay, the teacher detailed the loud, disobedient behavior of his students on a particular day
and how some ridiculed him while others accused   him of cheating
for a competing class during a spelling bee. The teacher  said he was tired because
pain from a root canal had kept him awake most  of the previous night.

Without
breaking our cardinal rule to never blog about specific students, we
can certainly say we have seen our share of “animal” behavior, 
usually involving the ingestion of food or the excretion of bodily
fluids.  Despite often having been insulted, frustrated to the
point of tears or profoundly offended by student  behavior, we
have never lashed out in retaliation, either orally or in writing. Of
course, there was the time an entire class reported that “a dog had
eaten their homework” which was rather  strange seeing as they
were all foreign students living in dorm rooms. We subsequently forced
them to march down to the Student Center wearing their underwear on the
outside of their clothes, but we were tired because  a massive
inadvertent dose of Methylenedioxyamphetamine had kept us awake most of
the previous night.

from the Washington Post
     

        we can certainly say we have seen our share of "animal" behavior,
        usually involving the ingestion of food or the excretion of bodily fluids.
        Despite often having been insulted, frustrated to the point of tears or
        profoundly offended by student behavior, we have never lashed out in retaliation,
        either orally or in writing. Of course, there was the time an entire class
        reported that "a dog had eaten their homework" which was rather
        strange seeing as they were all foreign students living in dorm rooms.
        We subsequently forced them to march down to the Student Center wearing
        their underwear on the outside of their clothes, but we were tired because
        a massive inadvertent dose of Methylenedioxyamphetamine had kept us awake
        most of the previous night.
     

        Post
     

Another Nor ‘easter lashes the recently unwrapped windows
and assaults our apartment from all sides. It’s hard not to allow the
weather to affect one’s mood, especially when it is nasty. It is sometimes
hard to remember that nature is always beautiful and awesome in its majesty,
and that any day you can get out of bed and stand on two good legs and
see the world with two god eyes, is a great day,

Today, again, was rainy and windy and so cold we could
see our breath as we hustled around town, head down and bundled up against
the elements. All day there was a driving drizzle of a temperature dropping
dangerously close to that of sleet, which has with the coming of night
grown into a howling tempest. A chorus of local channel Cassandras wail
on about Ocean-front flooding, astronomical high tides, isolated blackouts.

Nor’easters, the typical vicious storms that attack
the East Coast three or four times a winter, are more usual, although
no more welcome, in January, February or even March.  Not in May,
two days before Memorial Day Weekend, official start to the summer season,
when they arrive like alien invaders from a cold and distant planet.

Distinguished
by their high winds and copious precipitation, they get their name
from the prevailing wind direction and track of the storm. There are
two
kinds of Nor’Easters, fast ones and slow ones, and the slow ones are
the worst
because they just park themselves off the Massachusetts coast, beyond
Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, over the Georges Bank and suck up
ocean water which they dump in a variety of formats all over New England.

The numbers, for those who think that way, are scarier
than the recent Red Sox slump. Today set an all-time record for lowest
high temperature – 45 degrees. It has rained on 20 of 25 days so far
in May, and barring a sudden heat wave will go down as the coldest May
in Boston since they started keeping track.

So it is partly as an exercise in creativity, and partly
as a defense against depression, that we would like to essay a few reasons
that the present inclement weather can be seen as a GOOD thing, or at
least not the end of the world.

First, there is the Einsteinian rationalization.  Everything
is relative.  After a  couple of weeks in January in which
a glass of ice in direct sunlight wouldn’t melt a drop, 45 degrees, even
35 (what it is now with the wind chill), can seem tropical.  We
have had students from Siberia, out on the frozen Charles River in their
shirtsleeves, ice fishing (vodka was involved, and we didn’t catch anything).It’s
all in the mind.

Then there is the "lots of people have it worse" line
of reasoning.  If we working stiffs are having a hard time, think
what it must be like to be homeless in this weather? Drenched and shivering, ducking under bridges and into doorways just looking for someplace warm and dry.

And even among those
with a roof over their heads, some poor people can’t afford heat, and
sit, shivering in their living rooms.  People like the Dowbrigade,
who is so hard-headed and cheap that he refused to buy more heating oil
when he ran out in April, right before the coldest May on record, on the theory that “summer is right around the corner” and “the price is sure to go down before next winter.” As our dear mother would say, “And this is what an Ivy League education gets you?”

Moving on down the list, there is the Garden Factor
to take into account. In fact, since we planted our flowers and vegetables
six weeks ago, in mid-April, we haven’t had to water them once. If April
showers bring May flowers, the May deluge should make our plants huge
– if they don’t drown.

Also, we suppose we should be thankful that this storm
DID arrive late.  According to one local weathercaster, if this
had been a more typical Nor ‘easter in the depths of winter, it would
have dumped over FOUR FEET of snow on our lucky asses.

Finally, we can use this Sirens song of Mother Nature
(the window panes are rattling in their frames in a most unsettling way)
as motivation.  Motivation, that is, to finally move away from this
benighted metrological cesspool, somewhere the sun makes at least an
occasional appearance and human beings are not constantly spit on and
laughed at by the climate itself

Oh, and to remind us not to let the weather affect our
mood…..

New
Belgian identity cards have been printed with spelling mistakes in a bid
to fool forgers.

The identity cards include the country name in the three official Belgian
languages of French, German and Dutch as well as English.

Instead of ‘Belgien’ in German, the ID cars incorrectly say ‘Belgine’
and instead of ‘Belgium’ in English, they say ‘Belguim’.

According to Luc Vanneste, of the government department in charge of issuing
the cards, other errors will be printed on the card to further confound
fraudsters.

He said a similar system had proved successful in the United States.

What! The Dowbrigade whips out his driver’s liscence and begins scouring
for mispellings…..Of course, as one of the worst spellers to ever have
been admitted to the English Teacher’s Guild, how would we know?

Better idea – SCAN the liscence, and then OCR it, and run it through
the spell-checker in our word processor. We will blog the results when
they come in from our highly qualified tech team.

In the meantime, has anyone heard of this nefarious government plot
to INTENTIONALLY plant misspelling in official U.S. government documents?
Is Dan Quayle working for the Department of Homeland Security? Do they need copywriters? This could
explain a lot…..

from Ananova

As
predicted in this space as early as last November, the moderate wing
of the Republican party ("Rational Republicans") is feeling its way towards
a
"Middle Path" strategy in preparation for an eventual split with the
"Evangelical Republicans" and a strong run at the Presidency in 2008.

Under the inspirational, if egomaniacal, leadership
of John Mc Cain, they are reaching out to moderate Democrats, "Realists"
who realize that the traditional Democratic party is dead in the water
and taking on bilge faster than they can bail.

We continue to believe that Colin Powell is a major
player in this emerging coalition, but as astute observers will note,
he is nowhere to be seen. In the considered opinion of the Dowbrigade
he is laying low publicly but extremely active behind the scenes, pulling
strings and praying he didn’t stay aboard the Bush battleship too long
to avoid being infected
with the Bush plague in the minds of the electorate.

He is obviously
praying for that salvation of career politicians in the age of sound
bites and rapidly revolving news cycles – the impaired memory of the
electorate – but his dog and pony show in front
of the
United
Nations is going to be hard to forget, and easy for electoral opponents
to drag out of the archives in all its self-righteous prestidigitation.

Unless,
of course, that opposition is the Bush Regime itself, which would
be put in the contorted position of exposing the
perfidy of the ex Secretory of State while avoiding the fact that
said perfidy was at its own behest.  We look forward to an entertaining
and amusing campaign…

WASHINGTON — The caller could barely contain his
anger. ”Who appointed Mc Cain to be head of the Republican Party?" he
asked.

”The media," responded conservative talk radio host
Laura Ingraham.

For at least a decade, the political right has dominated
Republican primaries, making it difficult for moderates such as Mc
Cain to emerge as the party’s nominee for president. But with the Monday
night
agreement, greeted with dismay by interest groups on both the left
and the right, the Arizona senator threw down an early gauntlet, openly
defying
the party’s conservative base.

”The strategy all along is to transcend the swamp
fever of the right, and build a different kind of coalition — with
fiscal
conservatives, national defense hawks, and moderates who are discomfited
by the influence of the religious right," said Marshall Wittmann,
a former top Mc Cain aide and onetime legislative director for the
Christian Coalition.

from the Boston Globe

Unholy Alliance – related analysis from the Dowbrigade

On a cold rainy night in Boston, Memorial Day around the corner though Spring hasn’t sprung, let alone Summer, it is nice to remember another world, in its way as different and as fantastic as Star Wars, but in reality only 18 hours away, by plane and bus…

The legends in this collection can trace their origins to the Chavin culture.
Reaching its height between 400 and 600 B.C., the Chavin civilization was known
for its intense design skill, fueled by ritual use of psychedelic snuff, especially
visible in their advanced textile and metal work. After a prolonged and gradual
decline, they were eventually conquered by the Incas less than a hundred years
before the arrival of the Spaniards.

The Heart Sickness

Before the existence of the tiny town of Huacllan, in the same spot lived
the tribe of the  Wallas. The cacique (chief), a man much respected
and feared for his honor and his cruelty had a daughter named Kori (Gold),
whom he adored.

Kori was secretly in love with a man with a disfigured face, which made
him horrible to look  at. And despite her strict father, she married
him in secret.

The caique discovered what his daughter had done, and mortally wounded to
the depths of  his heart, he swore revenge, and had his son-in-law secretly
poisoned.

The beautiful young widow asked to move away from the palace. She traveled
to the coast,  intending to settled on the beach in front of the ocean,
whose immensity would help her  forget her loss.

But when she had barely arrived at Kuta-Kocha, near the heights of Huacllan,
she felt a  terrible pain in her heart. She became sick, and could not
continue her travels. She remained  their, and her servants built a
beautiful palace, from whose roof one could contemplate the green llanura
whose enchantment dissipated her sadness.

And time passed.

A powerful Inca who was traveling through the area to bring it into his civilzed
reign, arrived  at the palace of the sad princess. During the time he
remained as her guest, she told him of  her sickness. The generous ruler
took pity on her, and promised to bring, from the distant  land of Quito,
a magical stone.

The king kept his promise. When he got back to Cuzco, and on the way to Kuta-Kocha,
he  left the miraculous stone in her garden. Upon leaving, he said:

"Put a few small pieces in boiling water, and then drink it."

Since that time, every time the pain and the sorrow tortured her, beautiful
Kori drank the  potion that the king had given her.

With the passing of the years, the prodigio appeared. The princess was cured.

And from the furthest corners of the land her subjects began to appear to
ask for a small  piece of the miraculous stone, to cure their sicknesses
of the heart.

This stone still exists, although it is now quite small, for those who know
of its existence still visit it, to chip off little pieces.

Links to all ten of the Legends

Anyone who is into Skateboarding, or Basketball, or
outrageous video, should check out this off-the-walls 60-second video
clip of what a bunch of professional boarders do when they get bored
with spins, flips and catching air. According to Sports Illustrated,
no trick photography was used, although there were obviously some misses
that were edited out…

from DC Shoes