Posted 5:23 AM

Some good global news
Charlene is passionately fond of oriental rugs, especially tribal rugs, which are simpler and more idiosyncratic than the ornate products of city workshops. She pores over rug books; and the arrival of HALI is a high point of her month. On rare occasions we can even afford to buy one.

I've always felt a certain sadness attach to them though, because I've assumed that, like most skills of simple tribal folk, they were doomed to become lost arts.

Turns out, not so. I was reading the latest HALI over her shoulder, and pointed to a carpet I liked.

Oh yes, she said, that's modern. I said You're kidding, it doesn't look Turkish.... I was referring to the DOBAG Project, a co-op founded in Turkey 1981 that encourages villagers in traditional weaving. (Click here to see a shop in SF that sells them).

Charlene said, It's not just DOBAG now, there are a lot of good traditional carpets being made. In the last 6 years or so there's been a resurgence of both traditional handweaving and traditional natural dyeing. There are groups like DOBAG; also many business people who are actively encouraging good rugmaking, often among refugee groups ... They do it because that's what the market is asking for now. it's capitalism at its best.

Posted 2:54 PM

Matt Welch writes some pure wisdom on the steel tariffs:

Here’s my question: besides nuclear war & all, what are the most devastating potential after-effects of Sept. 11? I would say the erection of trade barriers ranks among them. In a time of recession, war, tightening borders and a thriving anti-globalization movement, it is not hard to imagine anti-trade sentiment spilling out from the Buchanan/Nader margins into the mainstream. Bush has the raw power and alleged moral certitude to avoid this kind of embarrassing, short-sighted bullshit, but he chose not to. Slashing trade barriers in the G-8 countries is the single fastest way for poor & desperate countries to become rich & hopeful, period. Why do they hate us? Maybe it’s because, from time to time, we’re full of shit, and abuse our dominant global position for short-term political gain. That’s not the stuff of “chosen ones,” George – that’s positively Clintonian. Remember, globalization was all the rage in 1910, too…

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Posted 1:23 PM

Five men were bragging about how smart their dogs were. One was an engineer, the second was an accountant, the third a chemist, the fourth was a computer tech, and the fifth was a government worker.

To show off, the engineer called to his dog. "T-square, do your stuff." T-square trotted over to a desk, took out some paper and a pen and promptly drew a circle, a square, and a triangle. Everyone agreed that was pretty incredible.

But the accountant said his dog could do better. He commanded "Spreadsheet, do your stuff." Spreadsheet went out into the kitchen and returned with a dozen cookies. He divided them into 4 equal piles of 3 cookies each. Everyone agreed that was good.

But the chemist said his dog could do better. He called to his dog and said, "Fallout, do your stuff." Fallout got up, walked over to the fridge, took out a quart of milk, got a 10 ounce glass from the cupboard and poured exactly 8 ounces without spilling a drop. Everyone agreed that was more than a little impressive, but the computer tech knew he could top them all.

"Hard Drive, have at it." Hard Drive crossed the room and booted the computer, checked for viruses, upgraded the operating system, sent an email, and installed a cool new game. That was a tough act to follow.

They turned to the government worker and said, "What can your dog do?" The government worker called to his dog and said, "Coffee Break, do your stuff, Boy." Coffee Break jumped to his feet, ate the cookies, drank the milk, erased all the files on the computer, sexually assaulted the four other dogs, claimed he injured his back while doing so, filed a grievance report for unsafe working conditions, put in for Workers Compensation and went home for a six-month paid leave.

Posted 4:29 PM

A small peeve: I think Bill Quick and Glenn Reynolds are giants, long may they flourish. But I also think they do too many 'teaser posts.' You know, the ones that say; "Take a look at THIS", and you have to follow the link to find out what it is.

Me I don't have the time to examine every shell on the Blogshore. In fact I really shouldn't be spending time on this. Maybe when my DSL comes next week I'll feel differently.

Meanwhile, take a look at this.
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Posted 8:16 AM

Interesting article by Paul Boutin on Wi-Fi wireless Internet connections, and why they won't take off for a while yet:

... Remember cellphones in the old days?" says Surf and Sip's Ehrlinspiel. "You had to sign up with a different service for the next town over, because there was no roaming. And you had to carry different phones for different cities."

Ticoll agrees the growth will be bottom-up rather than top-down. "This is going to happen as a patchwork quilt in people's homes, offices, factories," he says. "As it becomes economical, fun and easy, then we'll have a mess on our hands. Classic North American wireless strategy."

And that's when the big phone companies will finally step in, just as they did with cellphones -- making an already successful service more homogenous, seamless and mass-market friendly...

Posted 6:57 PM

Since we know that, in fact, exactly 100 percent of the
19 hijackers on 9-11 were of Middle Eastern descent, why don't we
focus on them ducks? Since we know that explicitly zero percent of
75-year-old women in tennis shoes have hijacked an airplane, why don't
we let the little ladies move along? To do otherwise is wasteful and
.. defies common sense." --Kathleen Parker

I'm in a grumpy-air-traveller mood, because Charlene has to fly to LA for the day. She always gets frisked. Perhaps she fits some profile of a Polish terrorist. Idiots.
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Posted 4:59 PM

Christopher Ruddy writes on how the media would rather not notice Bill Simon's win:

Finally, both NBC and CBS ended their news reports, "And in another key race ...," mentioning, briefly, Simon's win. CBS didn't even bother to show a photo. NBC showed a soundless clip of Simon at his victory party last night. That was it.

The California governor's race has been a national story for months now. The New York Times had even given it front-page coverage.

But now that the race is settled and the result is clear, the big media would prefer to put this one behind us.

The fair headline from this story should be: "California Republicans Soundly Reject Liberal Candidate."

But I guarantee you will never see that on the cover of any major paper.

Had Riordan won, you can bet the covers of papers like the Times would have blazed: "California Republicans Reject Well-Financed Conservative, Want Party to Move to Center

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Posted 10:04 AM

According to initial buoyant reports in early February, enraged travelers rose up in a savage attack on the secretary of transportation. Hope was dashed when later reports indicated that the irritated travelers were actually rival warlords, the airport was the Kabul Airport, and Norman Mineta was still with us. --Ann Coulter

Posted 4:09 PM

Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence,
than the body can live and move without a soul.

--John Adams

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Posted 6:49 AM

Interesting discussion by Suman Palit and Richard Bennett, about Anglosphere vs. Englishphere.

The Anglosphere is defined by civil society, individual liberty, democracy and free-markets. The Englishsphere, [ in India] on the other hand, is defined by English-mangling, chai-sipping, squash-playing, society fatcats whose only claim to fame is a dubious experiment with socialistic capitalism.

But it has ever been thus. England has always been a place where freedom bubbles up from below. Never down from the top.

It's like some mysterious virus that gets passed among the common people. England ships off its convicts and debtors, dissenters and puritans, bankrupts, malcontents, and penniless adventurers. She dumps them on some malarial shore. Then things begin to happen.

India was different, because many of the English who went there were from the upper classes. The real purpose of the Empire was to provide jobs for people who wanted to avoid going into trade. I think India got a big dose of the wrong part of England. But the virus spreads anyway.

Maybe it really is something in the language. Perhaps speaking English has certain effects on the developing brain. There's something going on here.

Posted 4:12 PM

Charlene: I saw a rolling oxymoron today. A Cadillac SUV! It was huge. It was so ugly. With a big cow-catcher grill with a Cadillac emblem on it. I think this is the end -- the SUV fad is over ...

Me, I hate the ones that look like urban-wierdo basketball shoes...
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Posted 11:50 AM

However, in some ways Ann Coulter is a bit obtuse. You will recall that Dawson expressed the utmost respectful friendliness towards her, but she just let the opportunity slip by. Now an even better writer has appeared on the scene. Too late, Ann. Dawson seems happy, and that really makes me feel good.

I've never written a review of Claire's book, because her world of government bureaucracy is just too alien to me. But I can tell you she writes very well. Do read her book, you won't be bored. I've heard that it's been picked up by a big publisher, but I don't have the details.
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Posted 11:10 AM

I caught a bit of Ann Coulter on the radio. She was raving about what a catastrophe Norman Minetta is. Some things she said, (from memory):

If before Sept. 11 you had asked Stanford or Harvard how to make air transportation worse, they would have thrown up their hands and said it's impossible. It only took government 10 minutes to do the job ...

Now a person can't even pay $2,000 to go to the head of the line. Capitalism uses the market to decide who should skip the long lines, who's time is that valuable. But we can't have capitalism -- it's so non-egalitarian. So now what decides who goes to the head of the line? Political power. Congressmen and Cabinet Secretaries get to go first.

Man does she get wound up. I love her. I can't believe she can talk so fast and still be coherent. A girl thing, I guess. She said she started writing a book about liberals and quickly had 600 pages -- so it's being published as two 300 page books. First one coming this June.

Posted 4:42 PM

i was reading a good post on Shadow government by Dale Amon at Samizdata:

I remember laughing to myself about mediots (media idiots) who castigated President Bush for not immediately flying back to Washington DC after the attack. I simply could not understand how anyone could concievably make it into US national media without knowing about the well oiled but never before used procedures which bind the President and other top federal officials during an attack.

I don't it's stupidity, or not exactly. It's just that if you are a reporter, you try to figure out a formula for a particular type of story, then repeat it over and over. The perfect news story is the swallows returning to Capistrano. You can use the same story every year until swallows go extinct.

There is a formula at work here. The event is Building comes down and kills X people. If X= tens, you show the Mayor amidst the rubble. If X = 100's, the Governor will be there. If X = 1,000's, it is expected that the President will show up, or at least comment. Bush was possibly criticized just because newspeople were flapping around feeling helpless and confused when the story didn't take the expected shape.