Quartz City

Here’s something to tide us over while we wait for the next episode of Xiao Xiao’s stick figure action theater.

Watergate personality (I guess it’s fair to say that they’re “personalities” now), John Dean is going to reveal the identity of Woodward and Bernstein’s “Deep Throat” source on June 17th - the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in.

Ever notice that a lot of Watergate players are all named John? Inspired a lot of Buckaroo Banzai jokes.

And why aren’t we getting the straight dope here?

America is the most unequal society in the industrialized West. The richest 20 per cent of Americans earn nine times more than the poorest 20 per cent, a scale of inequality half as great again as in Japan, Germany and France. At the very top of American society, incomes and wealth have reached stupendous proportions. The country boasts some three million millionaires, and the richest 1 per cent of the population hold 38 per cent of its wealth, a concentration more marked than in any comparable country.

This inequality is the most brutal fact of American life. Nor is it excused by more mobility and opportunity than other societies, America’s great conceit. The reality is that US society is polarizing and its social arteries hardening. The sumptuousness and bleakness of the respective lifestyles of rich and poor represent a scale of difference in opportunity and wealth that is almost medieval - and a standing offense to the American expectation that everyone has the opportunity for life, liberty and happiness.

*swoon* Vintage 1985 video from Apple. See a nostalgic demonstration of PageMaker 1.0 with a Mac 128 and a Laserwriter. See Apple blow it with their infamous 1988 “HeloCar” advertising campaign.

Since Google is now taking reference questions, Jenny of the Shifted Librarian puts it up against the Ask New York Public Library service. No great surprise as to who replies with the more thorough answer.

“Google is now a clearinghouse for reference questions. Curious about the accuracy, cost and timeliness of the new service, I ask both Google and NYPL’s Ask Librarians Online the same question, “What is the origin of the term ’shoestring’ as it is used to refer to a small budget?”

Each site has a requirement; Google wants money, and NYPL wants your library card number. I told Google that I would pay up to four US dollars for an answer, and have not heard back. NYPL, happy enough to know that I had a card, answered in about 22 hours.

You don’t have to have an NYPL card to receive a timely, accurate and detailed answer from a librarian. Tons of libraries are doing it; some require cards and other do not.” [The Rogue Librarian]

Check out the NYPL’s detailed and authoritative answer, including the sources (a print title and a fee-based database). Not only that, the answer is already indexed in Google! As Drew Barrymore said in Charlie’s Angels, “And that’s kicking your ass!”

Wherever future space travelers go - ramen will be there with them.

“We will develop the ultimate instant noodle product,” Kyodo news agency quoted a Nissin official as saying.

Even the Establishment gets tired of people…

It is late at night and the rain beats down on the windshield of your patrol car. A Chevy Blazer speeds by, dousing your vehicle with a spray of fine mist. As the wipers clear your view, you notice that something is strange about that Blazer. The rear license plate had a lot of funny writing on it. They were obviously not plates from your state, but they didn’t seem to be plates from any other state you’d ever seen before, either.

Who would make up their own plates? It seems a little odd. But you pull out into the road and accelerate to catch up to the Blazer. It’s hard to see the plates because of the rain, but they are clearly not legitimate plates. In fact, you can just barely make out the wording on them: “Sovereign Private Property…Immunity Declared at Law…Non-Commercial American.” This is a little bit more exotic than a “Save our Lakes” specialty plate. You turn on your lights.

The Blazer ignores them, keeps going. Irritated, you turn on the siren. Finally, the vehicle in front of you pulls over to the side of the road. You get out of the patrol car, curse the rain, and walk up to the Blazer. The back of the vehicle is festooned with bumper stickers. “End Judicial Dictatorship.” “FREEDOM wasn’t won with a REGISTERED GUN.” “Sovereign Forever, New World Order–Never.” You’ve never seen stickers like this before. Judicial dictatorship?

As you walk past the vehicle, you see a message in vinyl letters posted on one of the side windows: “No One Is Bound to Obey an Unconstitutional Law and No Courts Are Bound To Enforce It, 16th Am Jur 2 Ed 256.” You reach the driver-side door. The window rolls down part-way and an angry face greets you. It is attached to a middle-aged man, Caucasian, scraggly hair, dressed in work clothes.

“Could you roll down your window, sir?” you ask.

“Are you arresting me?” the driver asks belligerently.

“Sir, could you please roll down your window?”

Instead of complying, the driver hands you a folded up sheet of paper. You pull out your flashlight to take a look at it, trying to protect it from the rain. It seems about as strange as the license plates and the bumper stickers.

“NOTICE TO ARRESTING OFFICER WITH MIRANDA WARNING,” it reads. It identifies the driver as a “Civil Rights Investigator.” It’s hard to read the fine print on the document, but it seems to be saying that you cannot arrest the driver without a warrant unless you immediately take him to a judge to determine if the arrest was lawful. It threatens to sue you “in your INDIVIDUAL capacity” if you improperly arrest him without a warrant. Near the bottom it states that if you ignore these warnings, “it will show bad faith on your part and prima facie evidence of your deliberate indifference to Constitutionally mandated rights.”

You shine the flashlight on the driver. He is smiling at you.

What do you do?

In the words of Jenny at the Shifted Librarian, this is such a great idea that it needs to get all the press it can.

Like all revolutionary ideas, Best’s is deceptively simple. His site-a model of user-friendliness-asks New York City public school teachers to write a one-page summary of class projects and the amount of money it would cost to fund them. Potential donors scan the list and decide which project to fund. No contrived grant applications. No fancy buildings full of grant reviewers and well-paid foundation executives. No grant-making process at all.

Bill Moyers’ Now show on PBS last night looks at the current media monopolies, in particular the current AT&T/Comcast cable television merger and the Clear Channel octopus.

Pretty good overview of the current conflicts, but no mention was made of the current attack on Internet broadcasting.

One man turns raving about obscure and out-of-print books into a comedic art form.