Dowbrigade

Check
out this synopis for a second-tier cable movie which appeared two months
ago (how did we miss it!). Does anyone out there happen to have a copy?

Oil
Storm examines what happens when a Category 6 hurricane in the Gulf
of Mexico slams into Louisiana, crushing the city of New Orleans and crippling
the vital pipeline for refined oil that is Port Fourchon. It examines the
ripple effect of that event and the ensuing cascade of disasters associated
with it.

As the country reels from the loss of life and energy reserves associated
with thehurrricane’s fury, the price of crude oil skyrickets and the United
States government sets forth to take immediate action..

Uncanny – not only does life immitate art, but it
seems that in 21st century America, quite appropriately, it immitates
a made-for-TV
movie……

from FX

History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives
who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest
military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should
be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances
that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering
deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings
we’ve blown up, and weakening America’s national security.

Gary Hart in the Washington Post

History may deal with them, but we must deal with the monster behind
them and the one they leave behind…

A 16-year-old boy invented a hamster-powered mobile phone charger as part
of his GCSE science project.

Peter Ash, of Lawford, Somerset, attached a generator to his hamster’s
exercise wheel and connected it to his phone charger.

Elvis does the legwork while Peter charges his phone in an economically
and environmentally friendly way.

He came up with the idea after his sister Sarah complained that Elvis
was keeping her awake at night by playing for hours on his exercise wheel.

"I thought the wheel could be made to do something useful so I connected
a system of gears and a turbine," he said.

"Every two minutes Elvis spends on his wheel gives me about thirty
minutes talk time on my phone."

The teenage inventor was given a C for his project and has been awarded
a D overall for the course.

from Ananova

Those of us who fancy ourselves part-time pundits
can sometimes become so downcast and upset over the senseless violence,
moral bankruptcy, blatant lies, cruel hypocrisy and doomed hedonism of
our times, that we are blinded to the truly miraculous stories that are
all around us.

For example, everything we learned about economics,
both as an undergrad in the People’s Republic of Cambridge and in graduate
school in the heart of the current Neo-con conspiracy, Austin, Texas, tells us
our economy should be in deep do do. Petroleum, the motor of our economy,
has burst through the roof.

A barrel of oil, according to the DOE,
cost on average $11.91 in 1998. Today we closed at $67.30 That’s
a tidy 567% run up in the past 7 years.

Now, oil does much more than run our automobiles and
heat our homes.  It is used to run factories, public installations,
the military, generate electricity and move each and every product, food
item, letter and package from sender to receiver and provider to consumer.
The price of oil is a component of the price of every single product
we consume, as well as being an important raw material for the pharmaceutical,
plastics and agronomic industries.

So the economy must be in an incredible tailspin, right?
Companies must be losing money right and left, the prices for fuel intensive
services like airfares should be doubling and tripling, and the overall
economy should be sputtering and stalling. Not according to the President’s
economic advisors.

They tell us a miracle has occurred! The explosion of
oil prices isn’t slowing down the economy! In fact, it is growing, the
recovery is strengthening, the consumers are still spending. Our economy is impervious
to the laws of economics!

Never mind that bankruptcies are at an all-time high,
that thousands of people are turning out to apply for a few dozen jobs,
that the country has a negative saving rate, and that personal (apart
from mortgages) debt is over $18,700 for every family in the United States.
Forget the record deficits in the balance of trade and the Federal budget,
and
the mounting national debt. Corporate earnings are up! The Dow Jones
Industrial is near post-9/11 highs. Unemployment is low! Life is good.
It’s a miracle!

Another thing. Every time we go to the supermarket,
we can’t help but notice that it seems that the prices are going up,
up, up. Hillshire Ham used to be $4.99 and now it costs $7.99. Last summer
lobster was $7.99 and this summer they are $10.99.  The co-pay on
our health plan just went from $10 to $15. Our car insurance goes up
every year despite the fact that the white whale is one year older. Tuition
keeps jumping, and so does the cable bill. We stopped being able to afford
Red Sox or Celtics tickets two or three seasons ago. Joe the barber in
Harvard Square just jumped from $11 to $14.

But, according to the Federal
Government, inflation
is less than 3% per year! It’s incredible! It’s another miracle!  We
suppose all those increases in food, gas and housing are balanced by
decreases in high tech gear and telecommunications. Actually, our last
computer cost more than our previous one, and so did our current TV,
and now that we think about it, our phone, internet and cable bills keep
going up. But we must be the exception to the rule.

It’s enough to convince even the most cynical skeptic
that the good Lord is indeed watching out for  the good old USA,
and we are blessed and chosen to bring capitalist enlightenment to the
rest of the world.  The old rules don’t apply to us, obviously,
and everyone else is just going to have to get used to it.

It’s simply incredible.

PARIS
(Reuters) – Americans seem to be schizophrenic when it comes to their
opinion of France.

Arrogant is the best way to describe the French, according to nearly three
out of every 10 Americans, but almost as many would call them open, a Le
Figaro magazine poll showed on Thursday.

Some two thirds of Americans see France as a land of liberty and human
rights in which people can freely practice their religion, and yet almost
one third call it an anti-Semitic country.

Relations between the United States and France are expected to improve
in the coming years by 36 percent of Americans and to deteriorate by 22
percent.

But the cliches associated with France tend to be more positive than negative
— ask Americans what best symbolizes France and the good things in life
come to the fore, with Paris, wine, and gastronomy topping the list, while
strikes barely get a mention.

That’s funny – the Dowbrigade always thought the three
best things to come out of France since the Crusades were French Fries,
French Dressing and French Kissing.

from Reuters

An American Indian tribe with land along the Grand
Canyon is planning to build a glass-bottomed walkway that will jut out
70 feet from the canyon’s edge.

The horseshoe-shaped skywalk, expected to open in January, is part of the
Hualapai Tribe’s $40 million effort to turn 1,000 acres of reservation
land into a tourist destination that will also feature an Indian village
and Western-themed town.

The walkway, with a glass bottom and sides, will be supported by steel
beams and will accommodate 120 people, though it is designed to hold 72
million pounds, said

Well, obviously they are counting on the continuing
obesification of America…

Sheri Yellowhawk, chief executive officer
of the Grand Canyon Resort Corp.,
the tribal-owned
company that
is overseeing
the
project.

"You’re basically looking 4,000 feet down. It’s a whole new way to
experience the Grand Canyon," Yellowhawk said.

Admission will be $25.

The project is still seeking an insurer, said architect David Jin.

Note to Yellowhawk: Outsource the insurance. We hear
that are some crackerjack insurance companies in North Korea…

from AP

LONDON (AFP) – London Zoo unveiled a new
exhibition — eight humans prowling around wearing little more than fig
leaves to cover their modesty.

The "Human Zoo" is intended to show the basic nature of human
beings as they frolick throughout the August bank holiday weekend.

"We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague
species and to communicate the importance of man’s place in the planet’s
ecosystem," London Zoo said.

Man is a plague species? Is that like "Language is a
virus"? Or are they speculating that humanity is actually an infection
on the body of Gaia?

Seeing
Humans in the zoo would be more interesting if they paraded a
steady stream of animals by the cages to laugh and jeer
at
the hapless hominids.

Humans on display, like the Calvin
Klein models on display
24-7 in a giant doll house in Times Square, strike a nerve because they
expose the voyeuristic core of most popular entertainment. From the Homeland
Security fanatics to the paparazzi, to celebrity blogging, to reality
TV, we are obsessed with spying on each other. Human lives laid bare
to the unflinching gaze of a rapt audience is the ultimate entertainment.

This is definitely the wave of the future, but watching
people in such a limited, low-tech setting as a zoo is way too retro
to catch on in a big way. Micro cameras, floating camera platforms,
live embedded feeds and stealth surveillance techniques will be much
more popular with the mass audiences of the future. Still, the fig leaves
are a nice touch….

from APF

A Cape Cod doctor who prescribed nearly one-third of the
painkiller OxyContin in all of Massachusetts in 2004 lost his license
to practice
medicine yesterday as state regulators declared him ”an immediate and
serious threat to the public safety and welfare."

Dr. Michael R. Brown, who practices in Sandwich, had been the target
of a protest earlier this month from parents calling him ”Dr. Feel Good" and
accusing him of overprescribing the addictive drug to children.

The emergency license suspension by the Board of Registration in Medicine
capped a week of deepening troubles for Brown, 52, who was arrested by
Sandwich police on Monday night on charges of buying back painkillers
he had prescribed to a patient.

At yesterday’s hearing in Boston, officials said, the board investigator
presented evidence that Brown was the single leading prescriber of OxyContin
in the entire state, with his prescriptions accounting for 288,859 of the
922,985 OxyContin tablets sold through pharmacies in 2004.

Yowza! No wonder he needed to be so heavily medicated. That’s over 791
tablets every day, including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The
guy was clearly suffering from repetitive stress injury.

How did we miss this guy, before he got popped? Perhaps our contacts
were protecting him for themselves. Actually, we don’t see what
all the fuss with oxycontin is all about. We’ll take an old-fashioned
dilaudid No.4 or a Bronfman cocktail anyday…..

from the Boston Globe

He was the first anchor to take over a network evening
newscast in the 21st century, so it was probably inevitable that Brian
Williams would begin channeling his inner Gawker by getting his own daily
blog.

"There is no better way to say this than to whip
out a cliche from the old cliche bag or drawer," Mr. Williams said
in an interview. "We are trying to lift the veil. We’re trying to
expose ourselves as a collection of humans grappling with how to spend
our precious 22 minutes each night."

"I said to my wife," he added, " ‘I don’t have a therapist. I
have my blog.’ "

The Dowbrigade has said the same thing to Norma
Yvonne, many times. Unfortunately, she always responds with an
aphorism "You get what you pay for". We’re still not exactly sure what
she means.

This is a good thing, we think, if it allows us
to see the man behind the curtain.  We plan to monitor the Brian
Williams blog for a while and see if it really exposes the inner workings of the
media machine. If it does, it will be interesting to observe the
reactions of William’s colleagues and bosses….

story from the
New York Times

Brian William’s Blog
(the Daily Nightly)

NEWBURYPORT — A 19-year-old man from Salisbury was
supposed to be cleaning up a cemetery last week as part of court-ordered
community work after he broke into an apartment building last fall.

Instead, officials said, Neil J. Goodwin Jr. invaded the tomb of a Civil
War veteran, pulled apart the 142-year-old skeleton, and then played with
the bones, balancing the skull on his shoulder and posing for pictures.

”It’s bizarre, absolutely bizarre," said Lieutenant Richard Siemasko
of the Newburyport police. ”I can’t even imagine what was in his head.
This is just a whole new level of weird for me."

Goodwin pleaded not guilty yesterday in Newburyport District Court to a
charge of desecrating a corpse and breaking into a tomb, both felonies.
Prosecutors said he was doing community service in the Old Hill Burying
Ground on Aug. 17 when he kicked in the thin marble entrance to a tomb
marked ”1863 Pierce" and twisted off the spine, collarbone, and skull.

”Every time you think you have seen it all, something like this happens," Siemasko
said. ”We just can’t understand why anyone would do this."

story from the Boston Globe

Brigitte
Bardot, the 1950s and 1960s film star turned animal rights campaigner,
has called on the French government to halt the reported use by fishermen
on the island of Reunion of live puppies and kittens as shark bait.

"It is imperative that the government does something to end this practice," she
said in a letter to the minister for French overseas territories, Francois
Baroin, a copy of which was given to AFP Thursday.

According to Clicanoo, a newspaper in Reunion, a French island located
in the Indian Ocean, a six-month-old puppy was found last month with hooks
implanted in its snout and one of its legs.

The French Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA) told the daily the
dog was the victim of cruel fishermen who attract sharks by throwing puppies
or kittens into the water, tied to fishing lines, and wait for the predators
to swallow the thrashing animals.

And they call themselves civilized?

story from APF