I watched the debate. I could not believe how some members of congress struggled with the word AUTONOMOUS. Half looked like they were reading something - and couldn't read.

It was so very political. They were so transparent. Our country is clearly in trouble.

Congress Condemns Schiavo to Undeath!

"Mars scientists and engineers are elated about a dust-busting blast that has struck the Spirit rover at its Gusev crater exploration site.

Turns out that a martian whirlwind – dubbed a dust devil – likely zoomed over the robot high up in the Columbia Hills. That fleeting flyby effectively cleaned Spirit’s solar arrays, giving the robot a new lease on life.

Engineers report that the rover’s power reading quickly shot up to almost as high as when the rover landed on Mars over a year ago."

LB

Spirit Gets A Dust Devil Once-Over

] I have a lasting admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev. It is
] an admiration shared by all who know that, but for his
] initiatives, the world might still be living under the
] shadow of the catastrophe of a nuclear war - and that the
] transition from the communist to the post-communist era
] in eastern Europe, and in most non-Caucasian parts of the
] former USSR, has proceeded without significant bloodshed.
] His place in history is secure.
]
]
] But did perestroika bring about a second Russian
] revolution? No. It brought the collapse of the system
] built on the 1917 revolution, followed by a period of
] social, economic and cultural ruin, from which the
] peoples of Russia have by no means yet fully emerged.
] Recovery from this catastrophe is already taking much
] longer than it took Russia to recover from the world
] wars.
]
]
] Whatever will emerge from this era of post-Soviet
] catastrophe was not envisaged, let alone prepared, by
] perestroika, not even after the supporters of perestroika
] had realised that their project of a reformed communism,
] or even a social-democratised USSR, was unrealisable. It
] was not even envisaged by those who came to believe that
] the aim should be a fully capitalist system of the
] liberal western - more precisely, the American - model.
]
]
] The end of perestroika precipitated Russia into a space
] void of any real policy, except the unrestricted free
] market recommendations of western economists who were
] even more ignorant of how the Soviet economy functioned
] than their Russian followers were of how western
] capitalism operated. On neither side was there serious
] consideration of the necessarily lengthy and complex
] problems of transition. Nor, when the collapse came,
] given its speed, could there have been.

article by historian Eric Hobsbawm

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The last of the utopian projects

] Let us now praise Paul Wolfowitz. Let us now take another
] look at the man who has pursued - longer and more
] forcefully than almost anyone else - the supposedly
] utopian notion that people across the Muslim world might
] actually hunger for freedom.

interesting article even for an old leftie like me

David Brooks | Credit where it's due: To Paul Wolfowitz

] Chechen leader and resistance commander Aslan Maskhadov
] was killed on 8 March in a special operation in
] Tolstoi-Yurt, north of Grozny, Russian agencies reported,
] citing Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the Russian
] federal forces in the North Caucasus. Maskhadov's envoy
] in London, Akhmed Zakaev, confirmed Maskhadov's death in
] a telephone call to RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service later
] on 8 March.
]
]
] The Chechen State Defense Committee of which Maskhadov
] was chairman has issued a statement, posted on
] chechenpress.co.uk, saying that it assumes full executive
] and legislative power in accordance with the Chechen
] Constitution. AFP on 8 March quoted Zakaev as saying that
] the committee will meet within days to name a new
] chairman. Kavkazweb.net quoted Zakaev as explicitly
] excluding the transfer of power to radical field
] commander Shamil Basaev, the next in seniority and
] experience after Maskhadov, and the commander most
] qualified and able to coordinate and control future
] resistance activities in the North Caucasus. Zakaev
] pointed out that Basaev is no longer a member of the
] State Defense Committee, but he added that it is
] essential to take into account Basaev's authority with
] the various resistance detachments, which are capable of
] operating autonomously for months at a time. Zakaev
] denied that any split in the ranks of the resistance is
] imminent, pointing out that a similar situation arose in
] 1996 following the death of then Chechen President
] Djokhar Dudaev.
]

RADIO FREE EUROPE/ RADIO LIBERTY

] Suppose you lived in a world where there were two kinds
] of truth: a public truth, which everyone professed but
] nobody really believed, and a private truth, representing
] your real inner convictions which could never be said
] openly for fear of giving offense.
]
] .
]
] Put crudely like this, such a world could seem an
] Orwellian nightmare, recalling the last years of Soviet
] Russia with its dull conformity to discredited beliefs.
] But in practice, social and linguistic constructions of
] this kind are universal. Mostly, in our own societies, we
] take them for granted and don't question them. What we
] find differing between cultures, and even between social
] levels of a culture, is the degree of formality and
] importance given to these conventions.
]
] .
]
] At one extreme, in Japanese culture, the words tatamae
] and honne - often translated as appearance and reality -
] distinguish precisely two such "truths," the one formal
] and public, the other unspoken and private. That such a
] distinction can actually be labeled tells us much about
] the formality of Japanese life and the corresponding
] difficulty for outsiders in reading what linguists call
] the "register" - the meaningful context for an utterance
] - and therefore in understanding what is really being
] said. Many a Western business executive must have left a
] meeting sure of a positive outcome, on the basis of the
] Japanese assurance "Zensho shimasu" (I will do my best).
] Unfortunately this phrase is merely a polite way of
] saying no.
]
] .

Meanwhile: Yours sincerely (if that's all right with you)

] The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck
] pushed out the boundaries of knowledge in a rather
] improbable way when it was recorded by Dutch researcher
] Kees Moeliker.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Research | Necrophilia among ducks ruffles research feathers

] The IRA says it has ordered anyone involved to come
] forward over the brutal stabbing of a Northern Ireland
] Catholic man that has plunged the group and its political
] ally Sinn Fein into crisis.
]
]
] The IRA said in a statement it had met the family of
] murdered forklift truck driver Robert McCartney and
] offered to shoot the men responsible for his death, but
] added the family wanted the killers dealt with by the
] courts.

Top News Article | Reuters.co.uk

] From 60s hippies to 90s film-makers and 21st-century art
] galleries, each generation has rediscovered the
] misanthropic, sex-obsessed cartoonist Robert Crumb. Now
] it is to happen again: in coming days he will be the
] subject of two retrospectives, a film season and a new
] biography. To celebrate, the Guardian this week will
] publish a selection of new and little-known Crumbs, along
] with some more familiar works. Today, Simon Hattenstone
] introduces the series by interviewing him at his home in
] the south of France.

Guardian Unlimited | Arts special reports | 'When I was four, I knew I was weird'

] Apple's attorney Riley countered by saying that free
] speech protection applied only to legitimate members of
] the press and not to website publishers. Freedom of the
] press was for the press, meaning the traditional media,
] he said.

The judge ruled in favor of Apple without explanation.

Bloggers not protected by Constitution, says Apple