Asking For It Again

Deadline Arrives And Iran Isn't Playing Ball

The story so far:
Nobody really cares that much for the average Iranian citizen. The USA certainly doesn't. The old allies of Europe and the anglophone nations certainly don't. The Spanish speaking world really doesn't, and neither does Asia or Africa. So it then falls to the leadership of Iran to look after its people.

The current leadership has argued it must develop nuclear power, but in that process they've deliberately gone towards an opaque path where it could be interepretted that they are developing nuclear weapons - and that's putting it very politely. The world would really like to make sure that they don't. The Iranian leadership, for all its moxy, want to leave that option open. So, in what is turning into a really bad replay of Iraq and the WMD situation, this time, the first world is trying to figure out which shell the nuke is under.

Iran is hoping to rope-a-dope its way to the point of acquiring nuclear weapons after which they can stare down the world with the spectre of a nuclear armageddon. Have I got your attention? Good. Because this is an ugly situation we have here.

Iran's hard-line President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, today claimed that the Islamic country was "united" behind its nuclear programme, on the day of the United Nations' deadline arrived for it to be halted or for Iran to face the prospect of sanctions.

Speaking this morning to a reported audience of thousands in Orumiyeh in north western Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad accused the United States of trying to stir up divisions in Iran opposing the regime - but vowed it would press ahead with its programme.

"I tell them: you are wrong. The Iranian nation is united," he said.

In his speech, Mr Ahmadinejad also criticised the US' rejection of his idea of a televised debate between him and President Bush.

"They say they support dialogue and the free flow of information. But when debate was proposed, they avoided and opposed it," the Iranian President said.

He spoke as the UN-imposed deadline for Iran to halt its programme arrived. The International Atomic Energy Agency was expected to publish a report in Vienna, Austria, detailing the progress of the Iranian programme. If it indicates a nuclear programme is still ongoing and progressing, as expected, the IAEA's report could trigger UN sanctions on Iran by confirming that Tehran has defied a Security Council demand that it freeze uranium enrichment.

Iran could theoretically still announce a full stop to enrichment before today's ultimatum set by the Security Council. But Mr Ahmadinejad's comments this morning made that appear extremely unlikely.

The Security Council had set today as a deadline for Iran to freeze such activities and asked for the IAEA to report on compliance. Members will reconvene next week to decide on whether to impose sanctions.

Now, the analysis on this to date is still the case that American can't afford to go to war with Iran because it has its hands full in Afghanistan and Iraq; Iraq of course is on the verge of civil war. Iran for its money is playing this game of brinksmanship because it has seen how weak in the knees America gets when it comes to North Korea. So the upside of having nuclear bombs is just too good to pass up.
It's a stinking mess.

Who Is Nick Green?

This Year's Surprise Yankee?



Every year there seems to be a surprise Yankee. Last year it was Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small. This year, I think it's a chap called Nick Green. I noticed he started his fourth game yesterday and so I went to Yahoo to look at hs stats and this is what I saw:

2006 TB .077/ .200/ .077 OPS: .277
2006 NYY .300 /.352 /.460 OPS:.812

He sure stunk it up in Tampa earlier this year, but it was only 17 ABs. On the other hand, his short career in NY is already 28 ABs and he's hitting like a very good hitter. If he can sustain this form for the rest of the year it would be AMAZING - the small sample-size caveat still stands. After all, as a wise man said, "Anybody can hit Anything in 60ABs". To be more sober, in a combined 45ABs, he is a .202/.282./.292 OPS .575 player this year, but he may turn out to be something. He's surely more interesting than Bubba Crosby right now.

My old man noticed him last week and asked, "who the hell is Nick Green?"
"Oh, just some guy they picked up off the scrap heap," I replied.
Yet he did okay in the series in Boston. Even yesterday was pretty good too. I guess if you go 3-for-5 you get noticed and the NYT had this story.

Filling in at second, short and third, Green has provided the infield insurance the Yankees had expected from Félix Escalona, at least until Escalona showed up to spring training this season out of shape and played his way down to Class AA Trenton.

General Manager Brian Cashman asked the Yankees’ major league scouting director, Bill Emslie, to find a replacement to play at Class AAA Columbus. That turned out to be Green, whom Tampa Bay sent to the minors after his 3-for-39 (.077) start. The Yankees acquired Green on May 25 for cash considerations. This is his second stint with the Yankees, filling the utility role of Miguel Cairo, who has a strain of his left hamstring.

“I didn’t expect this, the injuries we’ve had,” Green said in the visitors’ clubhouse at Safeco Field before Thursday’s game with the Mariners. “That’s why I’m here. I’m just happy to get one more start.”

A 32nd round pick by the Braves in 1998 — a hometown choice, since he attended high school in Duluth, Ga. — Green advanced through the Atlanta system and was called up in May 2004 after hitting .377 for Class AAA Richmond. Marcus Giles sustained a broken collarbone shortly after Green’s arrival, which is why Green was in the lineup at second base against the Brewers’ Sheets on May 16 (he went 1 for 2 in his second major league game and was the only position player Sheets did not strike out), and against the Diamondbacks’ Johnson two days later (he went 0 for 3).

He batted .273 in 95 games for the Braves and appeared twice in the division series as a pinch-runner against the Astros. But at the end of the next spring, Atlanta traded him to Tampa Bay for pitcher Jorge Sosa. Green hit .239 for the Devil Rays in 2005 with five homers, one against the Yankees. That homer, a three-run shot that beat Carl Pavano, 5-3, on June 22, is the only thing Torre remembered about him as a Devil Ray.

As a Yankee, it did not take long for Green to do something memorable — a two-run homer against the Mets on July 2 in his first official at-bat and second plate appearance. Green, who had been called up June 27 and spent several days working on his swing with the hitting coach Don Mattingly, had been 0 for 25.

“That homer against the Mets was a monster shot,” Torre said. “It just took him a couple of days of taking batting practice, and talking with Donnie, to let the ball get a little closer to him.

“Defensively, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s a lot better than I anticipated, as far as range and arm strength.”

Green will probably be back on the bench Friday in Anaheim, Calif., if Rodriguez is well enough to start, which he understands.

“I’ve been around this game long enough to know I’m around to play good defense, put together quality at-bats and fill in when they need me,” said Green, whose fraternal twin brother Kevin also played briefly in the Atlanta system. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

Still, it's kind of cool to have a good bench player who can hit a bit for a change.
I'd take .300 /.352 /.460 from a bench player any day.

Pluto Demoted, And Other News

Not A Planet, Just A Dwarf Planet


You sort of wonder how this impacts the world. Pluto is no longer considered a planet, but merely a dwarf planet.

The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto's planethood and adding three new planets to Earth's neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines.

Powerful new telescopes, experts said, are changing the way they size up the mysteries of the solar system and beyond. But the scientists showed a soft side, waving plush toys of the Walt Disney character _ and insisting that Pluto's spirit will live on in the exciting discoveries yet to come.

"The word 'planet' and the idea of planets can be emotional because they're something we learn as children," said Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped hammer out the new definition.

"This is really all about science, which is all about getting new facts," he said. "Science has marched on. ... Many more Plutos wait to be discovered."

Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine.

The upside of this new is that the next time somebody says there are 9 planets in the Solar system, you can tell them they're wrong. It still doesn't escape the feeling that these astronomers are playing definitional games. Pluto, for the record has moons. I want to know how something that can have moons not be a planet, but clearly I'm not an astronomer. Maybe it's in line with the war on terror and tightening belts; we can't afford nine planets any more.

UPDATE:
Here's a cool article from the Beeb.

On Thursday, experts approved a definition of a planet that demoted Pluto to a lesser category of object.

But the lead scientist on Nasa's robotic mission to Pluto has lambasted the ruling, calling it "embarrassing".

And the chair of the committee set up to oversee agreement on a definition implied that the vote had effectively been "hijacked".

The vote took place at the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) 10-day General Assembly in Prague. The IAU has been the official naming body for astronomy since 1919.

Only 424 astronomers who remained in Prague for the last day of the meeting took part.

An initial proposal by the IAU to add three new planets to the Solar System - the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's moon Charon and the distant world known as 2003 UB313 - met with considerable opposition at the meeting. Days of heated debate followed during which four separate proposals tabled.

Eventually, the scientists adopted historic guidelines that see Pluto relegated to a secondary category of "dwarf planets".

It looks like it was more political than previously thought.

Countdown To Atlantis Flight

Here is the latest.

During the 11-day mission, three space walks are scheduled to install and activate the new segment, which has a wingspan of 240 feet. Part of the segment will allow the trusses to rotate and keep the solar panels pointed at the sun.

The Atlantis mission is the beginning of a series of flights to complete construction of the space station. In September, a new crew of astronauts - ISS Expedition 14 - is slated to take up residence on the space station, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials expect them to be occupied with assembly tasks, as more modules are added to the station.

Over the next six months to 18 months, astronauts will 'watch the complexity and size of the space station grow,' Melissa Owens, who is involved in managing Expedition 14, said at a NASA briefing Tuesday.

ISS construction began in 1998 and was slated for completion in 2004-05. But the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 halted US space flights until last year, severely delaying construction.

So the ISS project is getting back on line. I know some people who would be very happy about that.

Rev-Head Record On Diesel
The world's fastest Diesel car maxed out at 525kph.
Another article has it at 588kph.

Yesterday Andy Green piloted the 9-metre machine to an FIA-sanctioned speed of 526km/h, today he shattered that record by averaging 563km/h over two passes in opposite directions within one hour.

Running soon after daybreak he recorded 588km/h on his first run and 540km/h on his return.

"It was always our ultimate goal and that was with a slow start to the second run," said Green.

"There is so much more to come as the car is pulling like a train and we still haven't used sixth gear!

"Today's record proves the potential we have always believed JCB Dieselmax to possess. This is another great result for a wonderful team and a testament to British engineering."

Boasting twin JCB444 common rail injection diesels with turbochargers and intercoolers, the JCB Dieselmax generates an impressive 560kW at 3,800 rpm.

Green is no stranger to speed. Not only is he a Royal Air Force jet pilot, but he holds the overall land speed record of 1227km/h, set in 1997 with the jet-propelled ThrustSSC car.

Wow, is the word.

Good Times

The Yankees Sweep The Red Sox In Boston


You can't take what happens during the regular season as indicative of too much. After all they're only 5 games out of 162. The Red Sox still have the more recent World Series win;and that's a situatin that needs a quick remedy. The Yankees are as usual (and damn well ought to be) on a mission to win it all this year. So it is good when they can show them who's boss.

I guess I am an involuntary sadist when it comes to Red Sox fans. It's good when the Yankees beat the Red Sox. The harder the thrashing, the better the feeling. I can't help it. A five game sweep is sweet. As a byproduct, they feel bad, but that's not my responisbility, nor is it my problem.

It's really good when after struggling along with a depleted roster, the youngsters come up good and then you add Bobby Abreu and Corey Lidle who immediately chip in. It's good when everybody on the roster had a hero moment in the 5 games. It's good to see the Yankees won 3 slug fests and a couple of pitching duels. And while the season is nowhere near over, I take that season-high 6.5 game lead as gold.

It turns out the Yankees have not beaten the Red Sox this good since 1951.
They've not done it in Fenway since 1943 when guys like Joe Dimaggio were playing in pinstripes. However, the most important historic citing that's being made is the 1978 'Boston Massacre' where the Yankees marched into Boston 4 games behind and swept the four games to level the standings.

That there is Thurman Munson and Goose Gossage from the series. Now, I saw that sweep on Television as a kid. I think it was the most exciting things I saw in sport until then - (Borg would win No.4 and 5 of his Wimbledons a little later). When I think about it, I think I always have had this weird, irrational, unreasoned faith about the Yankees because of the 1978 'Boston Massacre'.

In the aftermath of 'Boston Massacre II', people are doing post mortems saying it's the gap in the payroll or it's the injury depleted state of the Red Sox, but I would settle for one line: It's the destiny of the Yankees to beat the Red Sox. I know it's weird, irrational, unreasoned, but it's my faith and credo. Wars may rage, markets may tumble, Empires may crumble, but as long as the Yankees beat the Red Sox, I feel great.

"And I-I-I-I Will Always Love You..."

So Sang Whitney Houston

Turns out Osama bin Laden had the hots for Whitney Houston.

Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of terror group al-Qaeda, was such a fan of singer Whitney Houston that he considered marriage and having her husband Bobby Brown killed.

This is but one of several details revealed by a woman who claims she was once the sex slave of America’s most wanted man.

Sudanese poet and novelist Kola Boof, who says she was kept against her will as Bin Laden’s mistress for four months in 1996, makes the revelation in her new autobiography.

In ‘Diary of a Lost Girl’, excerpts of which appear in Harper’s Bazaar magazine, Boof claims: “Osama kept coming back to Whitney Houston. He asked if I knew her personally when I lived in America. I told him I didn’t.

“He told me Whitney was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“He said that he had a paramount desire for her and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting.”

Bin Laden wanted to shower the ‘I Will Always Love You’ singer with presents and convert her to Islam, claimed Boof who, until recently, was a writer for soap opera ‘Days Of Our Lives’.

“He said he wanted to give her a mansion he owned in a suburb of Khartoum.

“He would say how beautiful she is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband — Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women's husbands killed,” the 37-year-old writer claimed.

“He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his colour rule and make her one of his wives.”

Boof claims Bin Laden raped her and kept her prisoner in a hotel in Morocco. She has previously said she had to take her son out of a school in Los Angeles after rumours circulated that his father was the al-Qaeda mastermind.

Yeah, that's really romantic, Osama. I'm sure Whitney would've been really impressed. All this time she's been married to Bobby Brown snorting cocaine, she always wanted to be Osama's sex slave in Khartoum, I'm sure. For sure, for sure.

Other Entertainment News
Paramount is choosing to end a 14 year production deal with everybody's favorite scientologist, Tom Cruise.

"As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone told the Wall Street Journal in an interview posted online. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

Paula Wagner, the actor's longtime partner in his movie company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, struck back at Redstone, calling his comments about the three-time Oscar nominee "offensive" and "undignified."

"Whatever remarks Mr. Redstone would make about Tom Cruise personally or as an actor have no bearing on what this business issue is," she told Reuters. "There must be another agenda that the studio has in mind to take one of their greatest assets and malign him this way."

Five films starring Cruise and co-produced by his company, including the "Mission: Impossible" series, have generated theatrical revenues totaling over $2 billion worldwide during the past decade. And Wagner said his films accounted for about 15 percent of the studio's overall box office gross over that period.

Moreover, Wagner insisted that she and Cruise chose to leave the Paramount lot and establish a new venture financed through a private, revolving equity fund of $100 million.

"We in fact made a decision not to continue our relationship with Paramount Pictures," she said.

Viacom and Paramount executives declined further comment on the situation.

The war of words between Redstone and Wagner marked a bitter end to one of the most lucrative production alliances between a major Hollywood studio and an A-list star.

STAR POWER DIMMED

And it followed other signs that Cruise's stature had been damaged by a string of publicity faux pas ranging from his manic, couch-hopping profession of love for actress Katie Holmes last year on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to his strident denunciations of psychiatry.

Although Cruise recently topped Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's 100 most powerful celebrities, his latest film, "Mission: Impossible III," opened in May to lower-than-expected ticket sales.

Days later a USA Today/Gallup poll found that Cruise's star power had dimmed considerably in the eyes of the public, with more than half of those surveyed registering an "unfavorable" opinion of the actor.

Many cited his off-screen behavior during the past year, including his intense public discussions of his faith in Scientology and his blunt criticism of actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to treat postpartum depression.

Cruise also became the butt of jokes, and a frequent target of tabloid gossip, for his high-profile romance with the much younger Holmes, who recently gave birth to Cruise's first biological child, a daughter named Suri.

Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that Paramount Chairman Brad Grey was in talks with Cruise/Wagner seeking to slash the amount of money the studio pays for the production company -- from over $10 million to $2 million a year.

Wagner disputed those figures, and said the collapse in talks with Paramount did not stem from a disagreement over money but from an opportunity to go "in a new direction."

Yeah right. As if it's never about money when it's in Hollywood. It's like saying they're going to sign up with Jenny Craig for the taste of the special Jenny Craig food. As if! It's always about the weight, isn't it?
I read 'Playboy' for the articles too.

Anyway, it's interesting in as much as we've just wtinessed the collapse of the Tom Cruise 'capital' in the last year. Did anybody actualy like 'War of the Worlds' apart from the poeple who were involved with making it? Did anybody like 'M.I.iii'? Does anybody actually want to see TomKat's baby?
That's life, Tom.

War Crimes Tribunals Are A Crock - Part X

Major Mori Said So


Major Michael Dante Mori is the defense counsel for David Hicks, that poor, poor Adelaide boy stuck in 'Gitmo'. This is from an interview on Andrew Denton's 'Enough Rope'.

ANDREW DENTON: But you really hadn't had a lot of experience in international law at that time, had you.

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: No, no, and, again, stepping into it, I thought I was I going to be involved in court martials, I have plenty of criminal experience dealing with court martials, and that's the laws we would be using. Unfortunately, what I found out that we were in something totally different, something completely made up and resurrected from 1942.

ANDREW DENTON: Which is Military Commissions?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Military Commissions.

ANDREW DENTON: Did you know anything about those?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Nothing, nothing. I had no specialised training in the law of war, I had no specialised training in international law, and so once I get there I realised I really wasn't trained to be involved in this process.

ANDREW DENTON: The Military Commissions in 1942 you're referring to were set up in response to Germans who'd come to America to commit acts of sabotage and needed to be tried.

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Yes.

ANDREW DENTON: And they were set up specifically for those. The Military Commission process you've been through here with David Hicks, you've since come to describe them as: "Show trials set up for political purposes, not legal ends." What's brought you to that conclusion?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: What you found out was, the people that created the system are the same people that were responsible for fighting the war in Afghanistan, setting up and choosing Guantanamo as the detention centre, approving interrogation techniques and being in charge of the interrogations that were going. So what you was a system of, sort of like, the investigators and the gaolers also being in charge of the supposed trial system. There was no independent check and balance on it. Unfortunately they needed to set up a system that would justify what they had already done.

ANDREW DENTON: What is the key difference between a Military Commission and a court martial, the system you were expecting?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: I think it's the independence, the independence of a judge, a judiciary that is in control. Once someone is charged, the independent judge takes control, and that goes from both the trial level and through the appeal process. In the Commission system, it was set up - they created this person, sort of an appointing authority, and I think in Australia maybe more like a DPP. Yet that individual - if I made a motion to dismiss a charge, it would go not to the presiding officers who were on it, but it would have to go to the appointing authority. So it would be like letting the DPP rule on defence motions here in Australia, and that's not a fair system that anyone can support.

ANDREW DENTON: What are the charges actually laid against David Hicks?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Right now he's not charged at all. Obviously the system was thrown out.

ANDREW DENTON: Sure.

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: The charges that they'd come up with before was a charge of conspiracy and attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent, that they made up, and aiding the enemy.

ANDREW DENTON: "An unprivileged belligerent"? Meaning what?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: I don't know what they mean. They made it up.

ANDREW DENTON: So you're his defence counsel...

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Yes.

ANDREW DENTON: ...And you can't even define what the term 'unprivileged belligerent' means. How do you defend that?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Well, their view was, everybody on the Taliban side. Anybody on the Taliban side was a war criminal because they resisted the invasion of their country. I didn't quite understand that. Then it was, as you heard the administration, their position was, "Well they didn't wear proper uniforms." So I started thinking about that. I said, "What about the Northern Alliance? What about the CIA they were fighting in Afghanistan? They weren't wearing proper uniforms." So it really can't be a crime and it's not a crime, but they had to try to fabricate something.

And I'm inclined to agree. Then, moving along, there was this bit which really kicked me off the chair.

ANDREW DENTON: You mentioned the US Supreme Court. A little over a month ago they ruled that the Military Commissions were in violation of US military codes, and also some of the Geneva Convention. Does this bring David Hicks closer to what you would consider a fair trial?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: No, not until we see what the system - there is two issues involved. Obviously, one, by ruling the Commission system was illegal, it raises the issue of has a war crime been committed against David Hicks by him being tried in a system that did not provide a fair trial. The US prosecuted many Japanese for that and it would be a violation Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. What is the Australian Government going to do about that? Because right now he's been a victim of a war crime far greater than he's ever done to anybody else.

The bit in bold, I thought was an interesting point. The logical point is, those guys in Yasukuni Shrine that everybody is fussing about... maybe they didn't get a fair trial either?
In which case, what's the point of trying to build on a false justice like that anyway? Major Michael Mori is saying something that probably needed to be said, but who took notice? You sort of wonder.

Anyway, if you have time, do read through the interview.

This Week's Songs

Art Neuro-Vision Song Fest
I have 2 songs up at iCompositions this week.
The first one is 'Americans' in my Coelacanh project.


This is based on a song Chris and I used to play in Satellite City. It's in the key of C and goes to the top note often which made it really hard to sing live for Michelle. So we shelved it, but I guess I never lost faith in the song.
It's about Orson Welles, Rita Heyworth and 1940s Americana including cheesy USO shows 'for the boys at the front'. It's also about myths and myth-making. I've rewritten the words somewhat in the light of the many years since those days where editing a song meant re-learning material and we just never felt we had the time.

Anyway, this version is notable because I arranged it for a big band sound with some odd embelishments and has me doing an impersonation of Orson Welles' famous Harry Lime speech about Switzerland, peaceful-ness and cuckoo clocks.
It also features 48 tracks of sound; by far the largest thing I've mixed on my Mac. It's quite a hefty piece of work, really.

Do check it out. All you have to do is click the link on the song title above.

The other song is a remix of my old jam tune 'It's All Right'.


It's sort of a groovy little rocker with some side guitar noodling. A little bluesy in parts, but also a little New Wave/Post-Punk. Do check it out by clicking on the link. Let me just say, I like it; I wouldn't have done it otherwise. :)

The Russian Take On Iran


I found this article amongst the Google Headlines. 'KK' is Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Russian State Duma's International Affairs Committee, who is being interviewed on the topic of Iran by one Nargiz Asadova.

NA: As such, if Iran yields and agrees to allow other countries to undertake uranium enrichment on its behalf, this will mean that Iran is de facto admitting that it is somehow fundamentally different from the other countries that participate in the NNPT. For example, it is distinguished by its political system, a system that does not inspire trust in most other parts of the world.

KK: In general, the fact that the Iranian nuclear dossier was taken to the UN Security Council in the first place amounts to a crisis of trust. The international community has no complaints about the current stage of Iran's nuclear program, but there is no certainty that the program will develop according to the guidelines that Iran itself is currently setting forth. The world is afraid of a repeat of the North Korean scenario, in which Pyongyang diligently followed all the prescriptions laid down by the IAEC and all of its duties concerning non-proliferation, only to move on to a weaponry program, without a single pang of conscience, as soon as it had reached the necessary level of technical expertise. The international community suspects that Iran could theoretically take the same path.

NA: Does this mean that there are no legal foundations for pursuing the case against Iran?

KK: As far as I know, at this stage no legal foundations exist. Such grounds could arise only in the case of supporting conclusions made by the IAEC's inspectors. If the inspectors arrive, inspect Iran's nuclear facilities, and find evidence of activities that are forbidden by the NNPT, then there will be legal grounds for completely undeniable accusations to be addressed to Iran. At this time, such legal grounds do not exist, so the position of the international community is to try and offer Iran incentives to act in good faith and to act not only like a national government that exists independently from the rest of the world, but like a member of the international community – that is, to agree to meet halfway and to first rid itself of those elements of mistrust felt by the international community towards the country and its nuclear program. And this mistrust is chiefly provoked by Tehran itself, by that string of absurd – in my opinion – pronouncements in which its leadership rejected Israel's right to exist and denied the Holocaust.

NA: In your opinion, what will Iran gain by this kind of behavior?

KK: It seems to me that Iran is deriving great pleasure from the current situation, because, as I have already said, the legal situation is ambiguous. Thus, Tehran is behaving in the following manner: I am going to do what I think is necessary, and I will then see what you can do with me. In addition, of course, Iran aspires to a leadership position in the Islamic world. This is absolutely clear. The country has a very potent economy and a large population, and it – or its leaders, in any case – need some victories, whether small or large (even a moral victory would do) over the so-called West. This seems to me to be the primary motivation driving Iran's current leadership. But this primary motive is a lie. It is false because the opposition of the Asian and European worlds, the Western and the Eastern, the Islamic and the Christian – all of these are false oppositions. Any nation that tries to ground itself upon these oppositions is making a global strategic error of colossal proportions.

That's really interesting all the same. The Russians think Iran is playing by the IAEC rules and the NPT. What Iran is doing wrong is that they've made themselves less transparent in the due process stakes, and that unless they disclose all things to do with their nuclear programme, they're going to be singled out for their non-disclosure. Therefore, the Russians appear they accept Tehran's position that the Iranian nuclear programme is peaceful until proven otherwise; yet they recognise the Pyonogyang precedent (where the North Koreans suddenly went to weapons and close off inspections) in taking that position.

Turning The Corner

The Ozone Hole
In the 1980s, the Ozone Hole was hotly debated, but eventually resulted in the Montreal Protocol. It seems it's working, but not as fast as we thought.

Over huge areas of Europe, North America and Asia in the northern hemisphere and over southern Australasia, Latin America and Africa, the layer would be back to pre-1980 levels by 2049, the agencies said.

This was five years later than forecast in the last major scientific report in 2002.

The agencies' message came in an official summary of a report by 250 scientists to be issued next year on the effects of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which committed signatory nations progressively to ban the use of ozone-harmful products.

"The early signs that the atmosphere is healing demonstrate that the Montreal Protocol is working," said Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP.

"But the delayed recovery is a warning that we cannot take the ozone layer for granted and must maintain and accelerate our efforts to phase out harmful chemicals," he said in a statement issued in Geneva and Nairobi.

Over Antarctica, where so-called "ozone holes" have grown over the past 30 years, recovery was likely to be delayed until 2065, 15 years later than earlier hoped.

"While these latest projections of ozone recovery are disappointing, the good news is that the level of ozone-depleting substances continues to decline from its 1992-94 peak in the troposphere and the 1990s peak in the stratosphere," said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud.

I take th egood news that international efforts to curb the Ozone depletion worked, and it didn't kill us to do it. Now, the challenge is on for Global Warming and Global Dimming to be tackled properly.

Is This It?

Microsoft's Answer To The iPod



Here's the link to Gizmodo. It's like a UFO sighting photo - blurry and out of focus, but that's what the world of Microsoft afficianados have to look forward to. I myself have a 60GB video iPod so this product really doesn't do it for me. I will say this: It's got a much bigger screen than an iPod.

Sim Leaguers
Here's a cool article. It's a very nice article, but this bit in particluar cracked me up:

Almost as gratifying, he says, has been the interest his games have attracted among major leaguers. While living in suburban Milwaukee in the 1980s, Cieslinski often played pickup basketball against some of the Brewers players. Jim Gantner, Bob McClure and future Hall of Famer Paul Molitor took the biggest interest in the game. He later became friendly with some of the Baltimore Orioles players, enticing Dennis Martinez, Tippy Martinez, Lenn Sakata and others to give his game a try.

"I remember my first game vs. Paul Molitor was in the Brewer clubhouse," Cieslinski recalled. "Paul was managing the Brewers, and of course he had himself leading off. Sure enough, he hit a leadoff homer! Paul grasped just how realistic the game was immediately. Dennis Martinez was a tremendous amount of fun to play because he was so animated. When he was pitching [rolling the dice] it was like he was rolling curveballs and fastballs with the dice."

Paul Molitor grasped how realistic the game was when his alter-ego hit a lead off homerun. Pretty funny.

Yanks Win 26-15 In 18 Innings


...in a manner of speaking. The Yankees won a doubleheader in Boston 12-4, then 14-10 to get a jump start in the 5 game series.

"We kept looking up and it kept being the fourth inning. It was nuts," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "I'm proud of it, especially in this ballpark, where every game seems like it's the longest game in history."

The teams combined for 41 runs and 61 hits. Twenty pitchers -- that's counting Mike Myers and Scott Proctor twice -- threw 783 pitches. In all, the teams played 8:40 minutes of baseball, from Jason Johnson's first pitch at 1:10 p.m. until Mariano Rivera covered first to retire Wily Mo Pena at 12:52 a.m.

"I don't even remember half of it," said Derek Jeter, who hit a bases-clearing double in a seven-run seventh inning to give New York an 11-10 lead.

"It feels great," Jeter said sarcastically, "especially when we have another one in a few hours."

Chien-Ming Wang (14-5) beat Jason Johnson (3-12) in the first game.

Johnny Damon had six of New York's 34 hits on the day, including a pair of two-run homers. Bobby Abreu had four hits to lead the Yankees to a 12-4 victory in the early game, then added two more in the sequel as the Yankees guaranteed that they will leave town after the five-game series with the division lead.

"It was a long, frustrating day," said Red Sox second baseman Mark Loretta, who had three doubles in the first game and went 3-for-6 with four RBIs in the second for Boston, which has lost nine of 13. "We have our work cut out for us in this series."

The night game surpassed the 4:27 it took the Dodgers and Giants to play on Oct. 5, 2001. Because the park was cleared between games, the Elias Sports Bureau does not count it as a doubleheader. The longest doubleheader, between the Rangers and White Sox on May 24, 1995, took 7:39.

So the longest game in MLB history plus another game... What a day. Kind of really glad they came away winners in both.

What Separates Us From Chimps

108 Letters Of Destiny
This is interesting.
I'm quoting it wholus bolus because it's so interesting. My apologies to 'The Guardian'.

James Randerson, science correspondent
Thursday August 17, 2006
The Guardian

Scientists have identified perhaps the most crucial genetic region that makes us human. By comparing human DNA with that of chimpanzees and other animals they have found the region of the genome subjected to the strongest natural selection since we shared a common ancestor with chimps.
The 108-letter stretch of DNA contains two genes that appear to control brain development. The researchers speculate that the blistering pace of evolution indicates that they may have been crucial in the rapid increase in brain size and complexity that occurred in the human lineage. Our brains are three times larger than our closest relatives, the chimps.

"It's evolving incredibly rapidly," said Katherine Pollard at the University of California in Davis. "It's really an extreme case." Most of the 15m or so differences between the chimp genome and our own are random, inconsequential changes that make no difference to our appearance or abilities. To sort the interesting changes from the less influential ones, Professor Pollard looked further down the evolutionary tree to find regions of DNA that really are useful. She and her colleagues first looked for bits of the genome that are nearly identical in the mouse, rat and chimpanzee. These shared a common ancestor around 80m years ago, so the scientists reasoned that any DNA region that had not changed much in this time must be crucial for survival and that changes in its sequence would lead to problems rapidly weeded out by natural selection.

They then trawled these conserved regions for instances where the human equivalent had changed a lot. The beauty of the technique, according to experts, is that they did not have to know what the DNA was actually doing. Top of the list is a 108-letter sequence called HAR1 (Human Accelerated Region 1) which contains two genes. This region differs by just two changes between chimps and chickens, which shared a common ancestor around 310m years ago. But since humans and chimps split 5m years ago there have been 18 changes.

"There has been tremendous pressure for millions of years to keep the sequence as it was. Then something happened in our lineage," said Pierre Vanderhaueghen at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium.

He was able to get clues by adding colour labelled chemicals that would stick to the RNA product produced by the genes to slices of brain tissue from human foetuses. The brains were obtained from aborted or miscarried foetuses and were used with the consent of the mothers.

His results showed that one of the genes is expressed strongly in the developing neocortex during weeks seven to nine of pregnancy. "It's a very exciting finding because it is expressed in cells that have a fundamental role in the design and development of the mammalian cortex," said co-author David Haussler, also at the University of California.

Of course some people are in denial of evolution so they're probably in denial of their 108 letter legacy.

Atlantis Scheduled To Launch

Working On The ISS
Forgotten in the myriad problems of the Space Shuttle has been the International Space Station. They're working to rectify that.

NASA officials say they will hold two briefings next week concerning the current and next mission to the International Space Station.

Officials said the briefings will focus on the station`s ongoing Expedition 13 mission and the upcoming Expedition 14 mission, which is scheduled to be launched next month.

The briefings -- originating at NASA`s Johnson Space Center in Houston -- will be broadcast live on NASA TV, available at the space agency`s Web site. Questions from news media representatives will be taken at various NASA locations across the nation.

Participants of the Expedition 14 preflight briefing at 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday will be Kirk Shireman, deputy International Space Station program manager; Melissa Owens, Expedition 14 increment manager, and Ginger Kerrick, Expedition 14 lead flight director.

Scheduled to take part in the Expedition 13 recap briefing at 3 p.m. EDT Tuesday are Merri Sanchez, Expedition 13 increment manager; Cathy Koerner, Expedition 13 lead flight director; Julie Robinson, deputy International Space Station program scientist, and Dr. Stevan Gilmore, Expedition 13 flight surgeon.

Well, the next Atlantis flight will signal going back to business.

NASA managers on Wednesday unanimously picked Aug. 27 for the first attempt to launch the space shuttle Atlantis on a mission to resume construction of the international space station — but two precariously attached bolts securing a crucial antenna could delay those plans.

Engineers suspect that two of the bolts are too short on the KU-band antenna, which transmits images and other essential data between the space shuttle and Mission Control. They want to make sure the bolts are secure enough so that the antenna doesn't fly off while in the payload bay during a launch, which could cause catastrophic damage.

“We're not going to fly if we think there's a possibility the antenna will come off,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

Atlantis has flown with those bolts without trouble since they were first installed two decades ago. The problem was discovered last week, after Atlantis was rolled to the launch pad, when a review of paperwork on bolts on NASA's three space shuttles was ordered because a related problem was found in Discovery.

Back to hauling materials for the space truck.

Humourless In Tehran?

Those Who Cannot Take It, Probably Shouldn't Be Dishing It Out


Lately, in this part of history, Iranians on the whole are not funny. I can't think of the last home-grown Persian to set the world alight with their wit and humour. Maybe the last one was Darius?
So it comes as no surprise that the Iran Cartoon Organisation 'Hamshari' has organised a (drum roll...) 'Holocaust Cartoon Competition'. I'm actually laughing that they can have such an organisation in a theocratic society. Either the Theocrats aren't doing their jobs properly, or we're talking about a bunch of very unfunny people calling themselves funny. Which is much funnier than the comp itself:

More than 200 Holocaust cartoons from around the world are on display at a museum in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Organisers of the exhibition say they are testing the West's commitment to freedom of speech.

A competition to choose the drawings was announced in February, in response caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by European newspapers.

Israel's Holocaust authority, Yad Vashem, criticised the exhibition, calling it a "flashing red light".

The drawings were chosen from nearly 1,200 entries received from various countries including the United States, Indonesia and Turkey.

One of the cartoons shows the Statue of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in one hand and giving a Nazi salute with the other.

Cartoon controversy

The Iran Cartoon Organisation and Hamshahri newspaper are putting on the exhibition.

Organiser Masoud Shojai said: "You see they allow the Prophet to be insulted. But when we talk about the Holocaust, they consider it so holy that they punish people for questioning it."

The publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad sparked protests around the world earlier this year.

Nice. You gotta laugh at the petty tit-for-tat mentality, proivided you still have a sense of humour intact. When you think bout it, I can't see the West getting too hot under the collar about the holocaust given how there has been such a long tradition of anti-semitism there. I think hypocrisy is such a refined art in the West, they will simply shrug this off with a smile.

In that sense the 'Holocaust Cartoon Competition' misses the mark; it merely hits the Jews. What they should have organised was a cartoon competition lampooning Jesus and Christianity; except there's a very long tradition of that in the West already.
Either way what is not funny, is not funny; it doesn't necessarily mean we can't take a joke. It would've been so good if they could have come up with something funny.

Freedom of Speech is a rather big tree to try and cut down with a theocratically-sponsored cartoon organization.

Laughing Off The Holocaust

The cutting edge of comedy is elsewhere.

LONDON (Reuters) - Two stand-up comics accused of making light of the Holocaust at the Edinburgh Fringe festival hit back at their critics on Tuesday, igniting a debate about where, if anywhere, to draw the line in comedy.

The famously irreverent Fringe is renowned for over-the-top humour, and this year religion has been a popular target of ridicule in a trend welcomed by commentators arguing for freedom of speech over religious sensitivity.

But Jamie Glassman, a Jewish comedy writer who has worked on the often outrageous "Da Ali G Show", said at least two comedians had gone too far and reflected broader anti-Jewish sentiment at the festival which he called "shocking".

"Stand-up comedy is as good a prism as any through which to look at the changing attitudes in our society," Glassman wrote in the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

"If my past few days are anything to go by then it is becoming increasingly acceptable to hate the Jews. Again."

One Edinburgh comedian singled out in the article was Reginald D. Hunter, an African-American with a show called "Pride and Prejudice and Niggas".

At one point Hunter says he should go to Austria, where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust, get arrested for saying Germany's genocide against Jews did not happen, and tell the judge he was talking about the Rwandan holocaust all along.

"The joke isn't about the Jews, it is about freedom of thought and freedom of expression," Hunter told Reuters.

He referred to the Holocaust as "one of those things considered to be off-limits; that's what I'm poking fun at.

"There have been loads of holocausts. Jews have the honour of having their Holocaust known as the Holocaust and that's fine. That's the way the world works."

Hunter said he found it "amazing" Glassman could extract anti-Semitism from his act.

Also criticised was Australian Steve Hughes, whose show "Storm" includes a gag that indirectly equates playing cowboys and Indians to playing Nazis and Jews.

Glassman recounted how at the show he attended audience members shouted "Throw them in the oven" in response to the joke, but Hughes defended his routine and said his remarks were taken out of context. He said the actual joke was:

"I grew up playing cowboys and Indians, which as an adult I can see is very strange; that you market the genocide of an indigenous people as a game for kids.

"Australians are far from perfect - I've never played Cops and Aboriginals, and you wouldn't play Nazis and Jews!"

Hughes added that he was not responsible for what hecklers shouted during his act.

But he did apologise for describing Richard Perle, formerly chairman of the Defence Policy Board Advisory Committee under George W. Bush's administration, as "that fucking Jew".

They should be inviting the Iranians just to show them where the Western comic sensibility is actually at right now.

15th August Blowup

It's That Time Of Year



Today marks the 61st anniversary of the end of World War II. The Prime Minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi has taken this opportunity to attend ceremonies at the Yasukini Shrine, which has prompted the predictable responses from South Korea and China.

More interestingly, it was the first time in 21 years since Yasuhiro Nakasone attended the ceremonies on 15th of August that a Japanese prime minister attended the Yasukuni Shrine in this context.

Here are some thoughts on this day.

1) Japan lost World War II. Nobody is even disputing this historic fact. It's not even something Mr. Koizumi is disputing. In fact he says he goes there to pray for continued peace. So it seeems rather petty to not let the Prime Minister of Japan honour the war dead and pray for peace on the dday the war ended. Sometimes what a person says should be taken for face value. It's not as if people are physically getting harmed by his visit. It's only hurting the puffed up pride of these other countries.

2) It doesn't really seem remotely likely that Japan will go on the war path so likening the Prime Minsterial visit to a prelude to war as the South koreans are doing, is over-reacting. There does seem to be a lot of political mileage to be made in South Korea and China on these issues. Both the Communists in China and the current South Korean government have significant domestic problems on hand, so it always helps to demonise the Japanese... except they have significant economic ties with Japan and Japan hasn't been a problem for 61 years. So what do they do? They complain about 62 years ago. They really should put their energy into looking after their own backyards.

3) Most people in Japan are *over* it. Not only are they over World War II, they're over the post-war period. 61 years is enough time for the events to be seen as history. They're probably even *over* this debate.
The young just don't get what the paranoia is about.

Kuroki, 20: "It is pointless to talk about the past again and again. So I think Koizumi visiting Yasukuni is OK. But then if I put myself in the position of the Chinese or Koreans, it's not so easy to say what I just said. It's a complicated issue."

Hideyuki 21: "I can't understand what his intention was in going to Yasukuni. I want him to think about the country and the situation it is in. It is now certain that our relationship with Korea and China will only get worse. When he visited the shrine, there was inconsistency to his action. He says that he went there as an individual, so he paid out of his pocket. But when he signed his name, he wrote Prime Minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi. He was also formally dressed and went inside where ordinary citizens are not allowed to go."

Ryo, 18: "I am interested in this issue, but do not know enough about it yet. I've got some catching up to do. I personally think that his visit was OK. The Japan of today only exists because of those people of the past, including the Class A war criminals. I think this applies to all other nations. I think it's good to pay one's respects and pray for those who sacrificed their lives for the nation. I cannot understand why he gets criticized so much. Japan is an independent nation and has the right to handle its internal affairs. So we shouldn't be affected by what other countries say on the matter."

Kana 18: "I think it's good that Koizumi visited the shrine. I do not have a strong reason to support this, other than the fact that those people who sacrificed their lives are enshrined there."

These are not nationalists or war-mongers. They're just honest reactions by young people in Japan. They don't understand what the problematic is in the first place. And it is no bloody wonder they don't understand, because the issue is borne out of the rhetoric-fuelled imagination of paranoid Chinese and Korean politicians .

The notion that China has, of perpetually persuing Japan over WWII is inadequate to diplomacy. Similarly, the posturing of South Korea is probably a reflection of the low national self-esteem. This fueling of the fire with rhetoric that they do is clearly part of the problem, if not the problem itself.

4) There are always ignorant idiots in the gallery throwing peanuts. Alexander Downer had this to say:

ALEXANDER Downer today openly criticised the Japanese prime minister for visiting a controversial World War II shrine because among those honoured at the site was a "class A" war criminal.

In tougher comments than those made in Japan two weeks ago, the Australian Foreign Minister said Junichiro Koizumi's pilgrimage to the shrine made people feel the Japanese were not showing respect to the dead from other nations.

"From Australia's point of view we understand the prime minister of Japan wanting to show respect to Japanese soldiers killed in the second world war, whatever the rights and wrongs of the second world war and we (Australia) have very strong views about that history," he said during a photo-opportunity with the South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon.

"Our concern has been the presence of the remains of Class A war criminals also in the Yasakuni shrine and I said to the Japanese prime minister - that's what makes people around the region and around the world feel uncomfortable, not the paying of respect to soldiers who died in the second world war but the fact that included in the shrine are the remains of several Class A war criminals."

"He (Koizumi) told me, he understood that point of view but that in Japan it wasn't possible to separate souls in a way we might understand in our own culture.

"Of course what makes us uncomfortable about this issue, is the presence of the Class A war criminals."

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon expressed anger and dismay at the visit which he said was especially disturbing because it happened on South Korean independence day.

He said Korea hoped future leaders of Japan would stop visiting the shrine.

South Korean people were "frustrated and angry" at the visit and so were other East Asian nations including China, he said.

What a putz.
It's easy for Mr. Downer to ride on the coat-tails of a South Korean foreign minister and chime in with his little remark. If it were true that Mr. Koizumi's visit was offensive to the other nations, then it is conceivable to argue that Mr. Howard's visits to the Australian War Memorial are offensive to Japan and Germany. It's amazing that he wants to buy into this, let alone argue such a manifestly stupid line. I guess he's not exactly known for his scintillating intellect.

The other laughable line in there is that today is South Korea's independence day. While that may be true, the said independence only happened as a result of the end of World War II, so maybe Mr. Ban Ki-Moon should read his history books a little more closely, and get a wider perspective on the world. I'm pretty sure the Japanese Prime Minister Mr. Koizumi is not interested in the significance of this date to the Koreans over the significance of the date to the Japanese.
Any suggestion like Mr. Ban's that Mr. Koizumi should do so is absurd.

61 years - Think about that for a moment.
In that time Japan has not waged any wars. It has barely sent some peacekeepers to Iraq to build infrastructure after the recent US invasion. That's it on their ledger, and it does not look like they'll do anything resembling an invasionof China. They've drawn a bitter lesson from WWII and stuck to it.

Meanwhile China's had many a military conflict under the Communists, with the Korean War, Tibet, India and Vietnam. They haven't exactly been Peaceful Percy. You sort of wonder who it is that needs to face up squarely with their history of aggression.

UPDATE:
Here's what Junicihro Koizumi had to say for himself:

At a separate ceremony to remember the war dead, Mr Koizumi expressed deep remorse and condolences for the “considerable damage and pain” caused by Japan to its Asian neighbours. But he stubbornly defended his decision to visit the shrine on the most sensitive and controversial of all days — the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in 1945.

“People say, ‘Don’t do anything that annoys China or South Korea, so Asian diplomacy will be in good shape’,” Mr Koizumi said after his early-morning visit. “But I don’t think that’s the case. If Bush of the United States tells me not to go, would I stop? No, I would still go even then. But President Bush would not say anything so immature. I have visited the shrine in the past to pray for those who had to sacrifice themselves. The visit is not dedicated to the Class-A war criminals. I am not going to the shrine in order to encourage Shinto or to glorify and justify Japan’s past militarism.”

So I wonder on what grounds you could say he had an ulterior Nationalist agenda, when it seems he had a deeply personal reason to be there because it marked the end of the WWII. A lot of people will think that is unsatisfactory as an explanation but isn't that the nature of politics where everybody finds something to gripe about?

Pluto Is Not A Dog

It Might Not Ecven Be A Planet
That's according to this article.

"The pivotal question is the status of Pluto, which is clearly very different from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune," Owen Gingerich, professor of Astronomy and History of Science emeritus a the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Reuters.

Debate has raged within the scientific community over the status of Pluto for decades after the planet was found to be only one four-hundredths of the mass of the earth.

That discussion intensified in 2003 when astronomers at the California Institute of Technology discovered UB 313. Nicknamed Xena after the character in the television show, UB 313 is one of more than a dozen celestial bodies in our solar system found to be larger than Pluto.

Xena and Pluto are large icy bodies that reside in the Kuiper Belt -- where thousands of floating bodies travel -- beyond Neptune. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope put Xena's diameter at 1,490 miles or so. That is slightly bigger than Pluto, which measures 1,422 miles across.

Well more planets as opposed to fewer would be gas. Seems to be a spoilsport sort of mentation that wants to *sowngrade* Pluto from a planet to *something else without a name yet*. That's just me, though.

UPDATE:
Reuters is now reporting that the solar planet numbers may go from 9 to 12.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The question of whether Pluto is a real planet, hotly debated by scientists for decades, came to a head on Wednesday when the global astronomers' body proposed a definition of a planet that raises their number to 12 from nine.

The definition set out by a committee of the International Astronomers Union (IAU) answers the key question: How small can a body be and still be called a planet? in a way that leaves Pluto's status intact -- but modified.

Some 2,500 astronomers and scientists from round the world, attending an IAU conference in the Czech capital, have to weigh the committee's two-part definition, on which IAU members will vote on August 24.

To be called a planet, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star, and must be large enough in mass for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape, the seven-member committee said.

The need to define, for the first time, what it takes to be a planet stems from technological advances that enable astronomers to look further into space and to measure more precisely the size of celestial bodies in our solar system.

Pluto would remain a planet but would fall into a newly created category called Plutons, which are distinguished from classical planets in that they take longer than 200 years to orbit the sun.

Pluto would be joined in this category by two other celestial bodies, Xena and Charon, while another, Ceres, would be known as a dwarf planet.

In all, 12 planets would be listed in our solar system, at least for the time being.

12!
And the only thing Forbes can think of is the new wave of textbooks and toys that will make for better business.

The idea that our nine-planet solar system may soon join the obsolete world of eight-track tapes and slide rules should send science teachers, textbook writers and toymakers back to the cosmic drawing board.

"Does it make our products obsolete?" asked Kim McLynn, spokeswoman for Illinois-based Learning Resources, which makes an inflatable solar system and a Planet Quest game. "Wow, a whole new universe."

Though not approved yet, the 76-year-old lineup of the solar system's planets would grow to 12 under a proposal by leading astronomers. Their recommendation will be decided by a vote of the International Astronomical Union on Aug. 24.

For people who make their living on the old Mercury-through-Pluto system, a change in the planets means quick but welcome revisions, no matter how costly.

"This is, of course, a huge headache for publishers," said Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a New York-based research institute that follows educational textbooks. Last-minute changes are expensive, but won't break any publisher, he said.

For example, Pearson Prentice Hall has science texts for next year going before California's textbook approval board and will try to get the 12-planet revision in for the state officials to review, said Julia Osborne, the publisher's science editorial director.

"It's worth it because this is such an exciting thing," Osborne said. But 2006 textbooks are already at schools, she said, so for "most students this fall it will be out of date."

Because schools keep textbooks for five to 10 years, it will be about seven years before most school books have 12 planets in them, said Osborne and Sewall.

Pity Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of PBS' "Star Gazer" show. His very first book, a full-length cartoon guide to naked-eye astronomy, features an entire chapter on the solar system - the nine-planet version.

It won't be out for four more weeks - after the world's astronomers are likely to open the solar system doors to three new planets: Ceres, Charon, and one nicknamed Xena to be renamed later.

"My book is out-of-date before it even hits the bookstands," Horkheimer said. "It's kind of like buying a computer. By the time you get it out of the box and get it hooked up, it's already obsolete."

At the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the main pavilion has a model of the solar system - the sun and nine planets (Earth is the size of a softball). The planetarium will likely have to add three new planets.

"They're pretty small," said astronomy director Geza Gyuk of the proposed new planets. "Maybe we can bring in a pingpong ball and that'll do the trick."

The Adler already has a planetary anachronism. When it opened 76 years ago, plaques had already been commissioned for just eight planets. Pluto was discovered a few months laterGyuk doesn't see the Adler adding plaques for Pluto or the three proposed planets because "we just don't have space."

For the several thousand planetariums around the world, this is more exciting than difficult, said Susan Reynolds Button, president-elect of the International Planetarium Society.

"It's not a problem," Reynolds Button said. "We already have the visuals. We already have the equipment to do it. It's just a matter of presenting new data."

Reynolds Button, who used to take planetarium shows to schools, said the addition of three new planets "is a real nice juicy topic to get kids excited about."

Dan Reidy, a sixth-grade science teacher in Moultonborough, N.H., was sitting in his classroom preparing for the new school year and gazing at his model of the solar system. He usually asks his students, "What's wrong with this picture?" The correct answer is that the planet sizes and their distances from the sun are all out of proportion.

If the planet lineup changes, there will be something else wrong with his model.

Reidy will also have to figure out where to place the new planets on a large parachute-cloth solar system map that demonstrates proper size and scale, but he said it was exciting.

The race to change solar system toys more permanently is already on.

Discovery Channel Store spokeswoman Pamela Rucker predicted new 12-planet toys could be in stores in time for the Christmas season.

"We're already starting to work on 12 planets," said McLynn of Learning Resources.

The more things change...

Idiot Watch
This is tragic.

The latest issue of Science has a statistical analysis that gets into some of the whys and hows of the strange relationship the US public has with the science of evolution. The results are really best analyzed in two parts. The first compares the US's acceptance of evolution with that in 32 European countries plus Japan. The results produce the graph at right (it's part of the original article, but has been reproduced in several locations on the web already, so I'll join in). The US places next-to-last both in terms of accepting the accuracy of the theory of evolution, and in terms of considering it absolutely false. The country we're racing to the bottom is Turkey, which news reports suggest has some obvious issues with both the quality of the national education system and religious fundamentalism. Edging us out is Cyprus, which is currently partitioned as the result of a centuries-old conflict.


But within the grim figures generated by the "Yes/No/Unsure" question are some interesting subtleties. When asked whether species adapt and go extinct over millions of years in a question that did not use the term "evolution," nearly 80 percent of US respondents felt it was true; only six percent called the statement false. Which is good, until you consider that this indicates that the majority of the public must have no grasp of the concept underlying all of biology. The lack of scientific literacy also came screaming through in indications that nearly half the respondents had no idea about the degree to which humans share DNA sequences with other mammals, and half were either unsure or wrong about whether early humans shared the planet with dinosaurs. The high degree of uncertainty probably explains why at least two percent of respondents could apparently agree that humans both did and did not evolve from earlier species. The authors also note that the amount of uncertainty over evolution has actually increased in the last 10 years.

It's interesting while at the same time being absolutely awful.

Weekend World Watch

The Ceasefire In Lebanon
I love how they propose a ceasfire and leading up to the deadline, both sides try to get as much of their killing in before the sunset clause kicks in.

Israel used the countdown to the ceasefire to try to kill Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, by bombing what it believed was his underground hideout in Beirut.

In the fiercest bombardment that the capital has felt since this conflict began, 23 missiles landed in the southern suburbs within two minutes from Israeli jets and warships.

The main target was an apartment block in the Rweiss neighbourhood, where Israeli officials claimed Hezbollah leaders were using a basement as a command-and-control centre.

Rescue workers clawed at the wreckage of eight buildings and a mosque, which were destroyed in the attacks.

Hezbollah released a statement last night claiming that Sheikh Nasrallah and his key lieutenants were safe and had not been in the area.

After news of the postponement of the Cabinet meeting was announced in Beirut, there were five more strikes on the same area of the capital.

Israel also stepped up its air and artillery blitz against south Lebanon, with Israeli troops pressing to take control of as much territory as possible toward the Litani river before the scheduled truce.

Naturally, Hezbollah says they won't disarm. I have no snarky quip for this. The facts alone are demonstrative of the depth to which humanity can sink.

My Song of the Week


I've done a re-mix of my song 'Miracle of Love'.
I did it because I wasn't happy with the version I put up last year which featured audio I recorded on the PC in 2003. The problem was that the vocal premix was distorted and I could no longer go back to the source to re-do the premix. Also, since then I've been learning a fair bit on how to mix songs on my Mac, not to mention the recent addition of nearfield monitors to my setup. This has meant a wholesale review of all the mixes of my tracks, which inevitably led to a reworking of this track.

The gal in the pickie is Kate Beckinsale who in my opinion looks like she has been lobotomised; or perhaps she's just had the mother of all orgasms and can't string a coherent sentence together as a result. I guess that too would be a kind of miracle of love. Or she was on drugs during the photo shoot, but I kind of like the way she looks totally stunned.

So what's new? The vocals. The rhythm guitar in the left channel, but mostly, the mix has been oveerhauled from scratch. So check it out. Here's the link.

UPDATE:
Woohoo! 25 listeners. Kind of sad, really. I'm really disappointed in iComposition's users sometimes. I guess it's all musicians who want other people to listen to their stuff, but don't want to listen to other people's stuff. Still, the general lack of interest is just awful.

The Pleiades Mailbag
Here's this week's contents of the Pleiades Mailbag:
The ice in Greenland is melting away very fast.

The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

According to the scientists' data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean.

"We have only been watching the ice cap melt during a relatively short period," physicist Jianli Chen said Thursday, "but we are seeing the strongest evidence of it yet, and in the near future the pace of melting will accelerate even more."

The same satellites tracking Greenland's ice cap also are monitoring the melt rate of Antarctica's ice cover, and there too the melting is adding to the global rise in sea level, according to another team of scientists.

Next to Antarctica, Greenland is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth and holds about 10 percent of the world's supply. The increasing flow of fresh water -- most of it from glaciers melting on Greenland's eastern coast -- is already beginning to change the composition of the ocean's salt water currents flowing past Northwestern Europe, the scientists say.

The result could be a critical change in the composition of the main ocean current that flows past Europe's northern edge, blocking off warmer waters that normally flow there and -- ironically -- making Northern Europe's weather colder than normal, at least temporarily, while the rest of the globe continues warming.

That's not very good at all.

Also, do check out this link if you think the war in Lebanon sucks: Electronic Intifada.

On a lighter note, why 'Miami Vice' was shot on High definition Video and not film. This cuaght my attention:

Why bother? One reason is that high-definition allows the image to be manipulated on the set.

"It's like your television set," Mann says. "You can alter contrast, alter brightness." This "makes it into a much more painterly medium than simply recording on film. We alter things all the time."

Beebe agrees: "It's a whole new ball game for filmmakers to have that ability [to adjust] right in front of you."

The high-definition cameras also offer an incredible depth of field, especially at night. One can almost sense the humidity and the highly charged atmosphere of night-time Miami because the cameras capture the billowy clouds, lightning and the city lights.

"You wouldn't be seeing any of those lights beyond [the actors] with a normal focal length lens," Mann says. "It would all be out-of-focus dots."

Now that's interesting.

Here's another article on the Archimedes decoding that we reported last week.

Fantasy Team Report
My baseball Combat Wombats were dethroned from the umber 1 spot his week. This was probably reflective of the 2-4 week the Yankees had.

My AFL teaam was knocked out clean by the 'Happy Hermits' who scored a mighty 1940 points to my 1730.What can you do?
So that is that for the season.

Yasukuni Watch

The Day Japan Surrendered Unconditionally
15th of August is looming again. The way people gripe and bitch, you'd think Japan won World War II. Anywway, here's an interesting article.
Koreshige Anami, the former Japanese ambassador to China sent a telegram to Prime Minister Koizumi not to go to the Yasukuni Shrine last year. It was a highly irregular missive, which was also ignored.

阿南惟茂（あなみ・これしげ）前駐中国大使が在任中の昨年の終戦記念日を前に、小泉純一郎首相に対して靖国神社参拝を中止するよう要請する公電を打っていたことが１１日、関係者の話で分かった。日中関係悪化を憂慮したとみられるが、現職大使がこうした形で首相に意見具申するのは「異例」（外務省幹部）。公電は外務省を通じて首相官邸に届けられたが、小泉首相は１０月１７日、就任後５回目の参拝に踏み切り、結果として受け入れられなかった。

　阿南氏は同省アジア局長などを歴任、対中関係を重視する、いわゆる「チャイナスクール」の筆頭格だが、１９４５年、ポツダム宣言受諾に反対し自決した故阿南惟幾（あなみ・これちか）陸相の子息としても知られる。惟幾氏は靖国神社に合祀（ごうし）され、阿南氏は「遺族」の立場にもある。

　阿南氏は取材に対し、具体的なコメントを避けている。公電を打った日時は明確ではないが、昨年の７月前後とみられる。数枚にわたる長文で（１）中国側にとって２００５年は「抗日戦争勝利６０周年」という記念すべき年（２）０５年前半からデモが頻発するなど中国国民の反日感情が高ぶっている—などを理由に小泉首相に参拝を中止するよう求めている。外務省は小泉首相あてだったため、そのまま首相官邸に伝えた、という。

　昨年７月前後は郵政民営化関連法案をめぐる攻防が激化、７月初めの衆院本会議でかろうじて可決。しかし、８月の参院本会議採決で否決の見通しが強まる中、局面打開や有終の美を飾るため、小泉首相が公約である「８・１５」参拝を実行するのではないかという見方が広まっていたことも背景にあったと思われる。

　阿南氏は今年３月、離任にあたり「靖国問題は政治問題化しており参拝方法を変えても解決しない。参拝するか、しないか、しかない」と、間接的に小泉首相の参拝を批判する趣旨の報告を関係者に行っている。

　一方、首相は昨年の参拝後、記者団に対し「心の問題に他人が干渉すべきではない。外国政府がいけないとかいう問題ではない」と述べ、中国などへの不快感を示した。

So it turns out Ambassador Anami was advising against the visits during his tenure. He was a proper careerist diplomat after all; not some political appointment in support of agitating China. Interesting.
Meanwhile, it has come to light that Jianng Ze-Min has always been in line to make it Chinese policy to criticise Japan at every turn, 'eternally into the future'. The link is from the Nikkei Newspaper, which is centrist, and even they're not very kind towards this discovery:

「日本に対し、台湾問題は深く徹底的に話さなければならない。歴史問題は終始強調しなくてはならず、永遠に話さなくてはならない」。中国の江沢民前国家主席が1998年、対日政策の基本方針としてこう述べていたことが、10日に売り出された「江沢民文選」で明らかになった。

　江氏の発言は、同年8月に海外駐在大使らを集めて開いた会議での演説の一節。戦後日本が「軍国主義をいまだ徹底的に清算していない」との認識を示し「警戒しなければならない」と語った。台湾については、まず日本人が「自らの不沈空母」と位置づけ「その衣鉢を米国の一部の人が継いだ」と指摘した。

　発言の3カ月後、江氏は中国の国家主席として初めて訪日し、小渕恵三首相（当時）との会談などで「正確な歴史認識」を繰り返し求めた。これに対し日本国内では「中国はいつまで歴史カードを切り続けるのか」といった反発が広がり、その後、日中の政治関係はぎくしゃくしていった

Jiang Ze-Min states that Japan is still miliatristic. I don't know on what grounds he asserts this fiction except for the fact that Japan has some capability to defend herself. As for this expression, 'unsinkable aircraft', it actually does not refer to Taiwan aas Jiang believes, but rather a moniker former PM Nakasone applied to Japan in referring to her security treaty with the USA.

So it seems to me China really is running its Foreign Policy on misunderstanding and a reckless lack of proper assessment. Not that we're surprised by a heavily ideologised country believing in its own propaganda as 'fact'. So onward into the future goes China's rather undiplomatic foreign policy. However it has to be said that it's a real drag both parties are stiffening up over positions that are largely faulty and unfactual.

Then there is this business of 'awareness of history'. It's a phrase that seems to come straight out of the Communist re-education camps. You sort of wonder if Jiang has an awareness of how bizarre this sounds in light of what is understood to be history as documented fact. There seems to be a total lack of epistemology in Chinese political thought. It contrasts starkly with say, Donald Rumsfeld's famous "known unknowns and unknown unknowns" speech. In other words, you get the feeling that they believe that people believe any old stuff that they say because nobody will try to verify or falsify claims.

Of course this is why you need freedom of speech and transparency, neither of which is in abundance in Communist China.

The Day Japan Ate The Whole World' s Tuna Stock


This is far more worrying than the Chinese sabre-rattling.

AUSTRALIA'S top fisheries manager has revealed Japan illegally took $2 billion worth of southern bluefin tuna, effectively killing the stock commercially.

An investigation into the imperilled fishery found Japanese fishers and suppliers from other countries caught up to three times the Japanese quota each year for the past 20 years, and hid it.

The Australian Fisheries Management Authority's managing director, Richard McLoughlin, said it was an enormous international fraud. "Essentially the Japanese have stolen $2 billion worth of fish from the international community, and have been sitting in meetings for 15 years saying they are as pure as the driven snow. And it's outrageous."

Mr McLoughlin was speaking at an ANU seminar in a speech recorded and posted on the internet. The official findings of the inquiry were presented at an international meeting in Canberra in July, but remained confidential.

Mr McLoughlin's revelations raised the prospect yesterday that other fisheries in the Pacific and Indian oceans were pilfered. There were also renewed calls for southern bluefin to be protected under international wildlife law.

One of the world's most expensive fish, southern bluefin migrate around the temperate waters of Australia and grow to about 200 kilograms. A $280 million industry is based on catching the fish in the Great Australian Bight and cage-fattening at Port Lincoln.

The Japanese overcatch was uncovered by Australian industry figures who scrutinised publicly available market documents.

Literally, that's a lot of sushi.
One of the main reasons why the Japanese fisheries department fights so hard over the whaling issue is because it sees tuna as the next battleground. Whales, are the thin end of the wedge. Yet common sense tells us that with the depletion of world's fish stocks, sushi prices as they stand in Japan are way too under-priced. More recently, it's become really hard to find tuna in Sushi restaurant in Sydney, reflecting the scarcity and therefore the high prices.

Thailand Watch

Oddly Enough, A Country Full Of Odd News


For some reason, Thailand is a treasuretrove of 'Oddly Enough' headlines. This week it is condoms.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai cultural watchdogs have banned a line of condoms whose name translates as "Good Penetration," saying the suggestive label could draw youngsters into having sex earlier, newspapers reported Tuesday.

The condoms are actually named "Tom Dundee" after the stage name of a popular country singer, but Culture Ministry officials said this was inappropriate and offended good norms and culture, the Thai Rath tabloid said.

"Dundee" in Thai means "Good Penetration."

"Although the name is not vulgar or rude, it is ambiguous, boastful and provocative," said Ladda Tangsupachai of the Cultural Watch Center.

"It could entice excessive consumption and lure children and youths with little maturity to start having sexual activities before their appropriate age," she added.

Dundee, whose real name is Puntiva Poomiprates, defended lending his stage name to the condom brand.

He said he was merely following a government policy to promote safe sex in a country where over 500,000 people have HIV or AIDS, and indicators point to climbing infection rates among the young.

"You can't stop human desire, no matter how old they are, so it is better to protect them," Puntiva told Reuters, adding that he had been telling his audiences about the risks of AIDS and unwanted pregnancy for years.

In Thailand, condom producers have to seek approval from both the Health and Culture ministries.

Hooray for the Thailand Culture Ministry for providing us such earth-shattering news.

Look Back And Wonder

My Mod Roots? That Would Make Me A Phony
Fair warning: This entry is going to be a stream-of-consciousness trip through my CD and LP shelf. It might get a little obscure.

I've been listening to a lot of Paul Weller lately as I picked up even more of his work for $10 per CD at one of these dodgy CD shops. Some of his work with The Jam on the double CD The Jam: Gold has been really interesting as it sounds nothing like the way I remember them. Indeed, they sound freshly-minted with New Wave, and hardly punk.


Man, Weller looks so young on the right hand side there. He reminds me a bit of the way James looked when I first met him aeons ago. :)

In fact it's been pretty hard to pin-point the initial moment of my contact with the Weller oeuvre but I'm sure I've been interested in his work for a long time without having the luxury of being able to throw money at his work until recently. I guess he was at the end of the queue and his time came up. However what put him on the queue in the first place is his guitar work on 'And Through The Wire' on Peter Gabriel 3.


It's a right little rocker and my favourite moment on the first side of the album which has many colours and moods. More famously it is the first side of that album that gave us THAT Phil Collins Sound on 'Intruder' but it is Weller's guitar work on 'And Through The Wire' that has kept that album in my high estimation through the years (That, and 'Not One Of Us', another guitar-rock rave up).

Peter Gabriel never quite makes it back to guitar rock after that moment in his career. Not that he was ever big on guitar players letting it rip; the other great post-Genesis guitar moments are all on Peter Gabriel 1 & Peter Gabriel 2. Have you listened to 'White Shadow' lately? Anyway, Weller's moment on PG3 is about the last good guitar moment in Gabriel's oeuvre.

Having lavished that bit of praise, the reason he was at the end of my queue-of-interesting -artists was because I have long owned a copy of 'In The City'. As first albums go, this one is pretty underwhelming.


So much so I dreaded to hear their second album. Purist Jam fans will always find a reason why this album is a great album. However if you were coming from where I'm coming from when I was a teen (wind-milling my black Les Paul Custom knock-off), then this album was a big disappointment for the $5.00 I shelled out. That's exactly $5.00 for the 2nd hand copy that was possibly better spent on buying a 2nd hand Rick Wakeman solo LP. Possibly - not definitely. Sometimes when you experiment, you come up a cropper. I figured, live and learn, it's a foolish man who rushes in to make the same mistake twice, right?

The other reason he stayed at the end of the queue was the fact that I was suspicious of the 'mod revival' that was springing up around me in the early 1980s. The Mod Revival. If you can remember that as a first hand experience, you're definitely a Gen-Xer.

The way it manifested in Sydney was the line of Vespas outside the Valhalla Cinema whn they played the doublee bill of 'Quadrophenia' and 'The Kids Are Alright'. It's a far cry from Brighton and there never really was a big brawl between the bikers and the Vespa-boys, but you know, it really was a bit hokey. It seemed contradictory for there to be a retrospective revival fad for something that was about being on the cutting edge. It's like trying to come up with a re-heated souffle.

Plus the bands were shi'ites. I never liked The Sunnyboys. I never liked Spy Versus Spy. They were really un-musical bands, short of about 10 good songs per 10 song album. Then, there was The Jam. It was too easy to tar with the same brush.

Then, there was the inherent phoniness of being in Sydney Australia and trying to vicariously identify with such a British phenomenon. I reasoned: It's got to be crap because the authentic moment of Mod had passed into history, so it felt like everybody was faking it, and the only thing holding the revival together was everybody's commitment to keep on faking it. No wonder it promptly died with the advent of New Wave. Meanwhile I figured, better to plug oneself into the authentic sound of history than the phony moment. Everybody else had more fun. I turned into a record geek. :)

It's not a better way to be, it's just that one is rarely there to get the authentic experience of the authentic moment in recorded music; therefore one must choose one's poison. I chose to be phony in order to get at the authentic experience, partly because I am in no way British so I'm already doomed to phoniness in listening to mod rock to start off with. It's the same phoniness of a 14 year old kid today who tells you how GREAT Jimi Hendrix is/was.
"Jimi was the real deal, but come on, you were born while the 3rd Jimi revival fad was on 14 years ago!"
At that point I was like that kid.

Anyway... with my once-bitten-twice-shy wallet and suspicions about The Jam, I sat out the heroic demise of The Jam as well as the Style Council period of Weller's career. Instead, I listened to The Who, which of course is a phony experience of an authentic moment rather than an authentic experience of a phoney moment. Now, I'm not here to write about the superiority of The Who over The Jam or any such boring nonsense. I'm just saying I chose to miss the actual moment unfolding in front of me (The Jam) and chose history (The Who).

Let me explain that bit.
It's the peculiar predicament of people who are interested in the music instead of the fashion of pop. You have to dig deep into the history of pop and rock to arrive at an understanding of how this music works, where it comes from and why it's doing what it does. By the time one has investigated the history, one is no longer a consumer, but a cultural investor in the passage of pop music. At that moment, one is inevitably a phony. And it makes one wonder if it's not all wasted on the masses, and suddenly you're like Rob Gordon and the Musical Moron Twins in 'High Fiedlity'. :)


You don't have the The Who without the Beatles, you don't have the Beatles without Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis. You don't have The Jam without The Who, and you don't have this blog here without any of these musos. We see each of them suffer under 'the anxiety of influence' as critic Harold Bloom termed it, while the Madonnas and the Britney Spears of the music world go careening through the marketplace like errant comets.

Meanwhile, we in record-buying land (as opposed to mp3-download land) shelling out our cash have to sit and ponder if there really is a zeitgeist in there to be deciphered or if it's just worthless time-consuming crap; another diversion on our inevitable road to death. Meanwhile a new generation of kids are discovering Jimi Hendrix and they're tellng you he is the greatest, most mind-blowing guitarist that ever walked this earth - as if that thought never crossed our sorry minds - or as if we never got told that by aa 14 year old 10 years ago.
"Kid, check out Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Danny Gatton, and Frank Zappa and get back to me on Monday!"

Just to wrap up this discussion, one of my favorite Who songs from their early period is 'So Sad About Us' off A Quick On While He's Away.


The song got described as inconsequential pop fluff by David Marsh (or words to that effect) in his seminal book about The Who, 'Hope I Die Before I Get Old'. Yet I've always thought it was a hidden classic in their song catalogue. It's got a great chord progression, moon-and-june-lyrics about a break up, and a knockout of a great melody just to be sure. And lo and behold I'm not the only person who thinks so because The Jam did a cover of it; and it's more musically credible than the Sex Pistols' version of 'Substitute'.

In fact, in the 2000 charity concert DVD of The Who, Paul Weller makes an appearance as one of the guests and sings 'So Sad About Us' with Pete Townshend.


It's a pretty cool moment for that song.
You get the feeling that Weller really is/was about the music and not the flash/image. Moreover, he is a real record fan. While it took me years to get around to listening to Weller's work because all along I was suspicious of his phoniness, there was actual aa side door into his work. When it really comes down to it, it seems he truly was a music fan just like you or me; and therefore the same kind of phony as you or me.

Flicking through his page on Wikipedia, you get the feeling he wasn't happy with his own phoniness as he eschewed being the voice of his generation. Well, I applaud that. In interviews, Weller is a lot more boring to listen to than Townshend. In his recent interview for the Times which is available as a podcast, he goes on and on about bus rides and tours. He says he cannot fathom why fans have a deeper interest in his life outside of music. It's quite remarkable in how bland the man is in conversation.