Q: Negrodamus, what mistakes did Michael Jackson make before he got arrested?

Negrodamus: Michael Jackson should have not been a singer. Michael Jackson should have been a priest; then he would have just been transferred.

Q: Negrodamus, Why is President Bush so sure Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?

Negrodamus: Because he has the receipt.

[...]

-January 31, 2004, in Tacoma, Washington--Sheraton Tacoma Hotel, 1320
Broadway Plaza, Tacoma, WA 98402, (253) 572-3200.

-February 7, 2004, in Boise, Idaho--Red Lion Hotel Downtowner, 1800
Fairview Avenue, Boise, ID 83702, (208) 344-7691.

-February 21, 2004, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota--Holiday Inn City
Centre, 100 W. 8th St., Sioux Falls, SD 57104, (605) 339-2000.

-February 28, 2004, in Madison, Wisconsin--Sheraton Madison Hotel, 706
John Nolen Drive, Madison, WI 53703, (608) 251-2300.

-March 6, 2004, in Binghamton, New York--NYS Office of General Services,
Binghamton State Office Building, 44 Hawley Street, Binghamton, NY
13901, (607) 722-0000 (This location may change).

"CSR, in other words, can merely become a branch of PR. Sometimes this looks like the only reason for spurts of development activity by large companies. Shell, for instance, was at the forefront of CSR in Britain, following the joint public relations disasters of the Nigerian government's execution of human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and the row over Shell's plan to dump the Brent Spar North Sea oil platform - both in 1995. Certainly for some, such as those living in Umuechem, Shell's CSR programme has brought no tangible benefits.

"Christian Aid, of course, supports responsible and ethical action by business. The problem with CSR, we say, is that it is unable to deliver on its grand promises. The case studies in this report highlight that the corporate world's commitments to responsible behaviour are not borne out by the experience of many who are supposed to benefit from them. In some cases, the rhetoric and the reality are simply contradictory.

Percentage change between 2001 and 2002 in Saudi Arabia's PR spending in the United States: +1,700

Percentage of lawsuits decided last year under the Americans with Disabilities Act that were won by employers: 94.5

Apparently, Rehnquist reponded that "suggestions that Scalia should have recused from the Cheney case have 'no precedent.'"

"A Justice must examine the question of recusal on his own even without a motion, and any party to a case may file a motion to recuse," Rehnquist wrote. "And anyone at all is free to criticize the action of a Justice -- as to recusal or as to the merits -- after the case has been decided. But I think that any suggestion by you . . . as to why a Justice should recuse himself in a pending case is ill considered."

Al Kamen reports a pretty interesting tidbit about the Center's director today:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed, in a regulation
entitled "Security Holder Director Nominations," new rules to make
corporate directors more accountable to shareholders through new
nomination procedures.

When the SEC proposes these things, there's always a comment period,
a time for interested folks to opine on the proposal. Sometimes the
responses come from pointy-headed academics not knowledgeable in the
ways of the world.

But one academic, Wendy Gramm, formerly chairwoman of the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission and now the director of the regulatory
studies program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
is well-versed in these issues. And Gramm thinks the new regulation
is a bad idea:

"While some boards of directors have acted contrary to the interests
of shareholders," she wrote in her comments, "the SEC has provided
no quantitative or even qualitative data to support its assertions
that this problem of misalignment [of interests of the board and the
shareholders] is widespread enough to warrant a federal regulation
or that the proposed rule will address the problem."

One can only hope the SEC listens to Gramm, since she is well-versed
in the failure of corporate boards to represent shareholder
interests. She joined the Enron Board of Directors in 1993 -- after
helping draft new CFTC rules that exempted some of Enron's more
creative dealings from regulation. She also served on its famous
audit committee. From 1996 until its demise, Enron donated $50,000
to the Mercatus Center.

"The purpose of the program is to expand the implementation
of the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) as mandated in
FY 2004 Senate appropriations language. NVDRS will assist state
governments to assess the extent of the violence related deaths in
their states, identify risk factors and develop and evaluate violence
prevention program efforts. This program addresses the ``Healthy People
2010'' focus area of Injury and Violence Prevention.

"...the ten most corrupt states in the country are:

"Mississippi, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alaska, Illinois, Montana, South Dakota, Kentucky, Florida, and New York.

"The ten least corrupt states in the country are:

"Nebraska, Oregon, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Utah, Minnesota, Arizona, Arkansas, and Wisconsin.

"The 50 states were ranked by corruption rate -- the number of public corruption convictions in the state over a ten-year period (1993 to 2002) per 100,000 population.

BRANCACCIO: In the sacred annals of Washington lore 'tis written that when God looked out upon the heavens and the Earth and pronounced good all that God had made, Helen Thomas had to check it out for herself. So it came to pass that she was the first reporter to find the worm in the apple and the snake in the grass. Apocryphal, of course.

Nonetheless, many consider Helen Thomas the mother of tough questions, the goddess of healthy skepticism, the queen of the raised eyebrow.

She's been asking tough questions at White House press conferences for four decades, and every President in my lifetime and every press secretary, including our man Bill Moyers, has the scars to prove it.

Helen Thomas began her Presidential beat with John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, and she's had a front row seat to history ever since.

As dean of the press corps, Helen Thomas would always be called on to ask the first question.

After she retired from UPI four years ago Hearst Newspapers offered her a job as a columnist. Her latest book is called THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES, MR. PRESIDENT.

From his first news conference, President Bush seemed less than thrilled by Thomas's questions.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, ma'am. You're next.

THOMAS: Why do you refuse to respect the wall between church and state, and you know that the mixing of religion and government for centuries has led to slaughter?

BRANCACCIO: And it was at a news conference a week before the outbreak of war in Iraq that the President declined to signal her to ask the first question.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Ron Fournier.

BRANCACCIO: In fact, she didn't get the chance to ask any questions at all.

[...]

BRANCACCIO: And there's no consequence to asking very tough questions?

THOMAS: I am in the back row now.

BRANCACCIO: You're in the back row.

THOMAS: Yes. And I'm not called on. I think that's a consequence. But that's alright.

There's a neat article on the site about Wesley Clark.

"The artist, Dror Feiler, who created the piece along with Swede Gunilla Skold, said in a telephone interview Saturday that he was shocked by the diplomat's action. "I'm very surprised that an ambassador, who is supposed to be a so-called diplomat, is acting in the manner of a soccer hooligan. I can't understand why he is trying to stop the freedom of speech and our democratic rights in Sweden," he said.

One day, I was on a panel with Judge Kollar-Kotelly. We met before the panel, and I said that it was a pleasure to meet her, and warned her that I had a case before her at the time. She said hello and that we shouldn't carry the conversation any further! That's the appropriate response. Contact between lawyers and a judge is improper unless the other party is present. Contact between an actual party and the judge is even worse.

The long term risk is that Scalia (with Bush v. Gore, the recent Texas redistricting case, and now this) is making the Supreme Court look too political. Courts lost their legitimacy when this type of monkey-business occurs.

LA Times reports:

"Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana, just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force, the Los Angeles Times says in its Saturday editions. "

[...]

"But Scalia rejected that concern Friday, telling the Times, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."

[...]

The Times notes that pair arrived Jan. 5 on Gulfstream jets and were guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of Diamond Services Corp., an oil services company in Amelia, La. The Associated Press in Morgan City, La., reported the trip on the day the vice president and his entourage departed.

"If you want to get a sense of the spirit of this Christmas season -- the commercial version, at least -- you might pick up a copy of Advertising Age magazine. There you will find such articles as "Young Girls Targeted by Makeup Companies," which describes the efforts of cosmetics firms to make 8-year- olds feel a need to paint their faces -- to sell "kid makeup," the magazine says.

"The United States is overextended, not just militarily but economically. We are trying to do too much, borrow too much, spend too much, and sooner or later we will have to suffer the consequences. We are a country in the beginning stages of what can best be described as hegemonic decay. Empires take decades if not centuries to wither, a process more clearly viewed through a rearview mirror; Edward Gibbon's masterful account of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is perhaps the greatest example of this truth. But here and now, we're much less inclined to Gibbon's viewpoint than we are to Alfred E. Newman's. "What, we worry?" is pretty much the national motto when it comes to our finance-based economy and its future prospects.

"Most slaughter establishments use penetrative captive bolt stun guns to render cattle unconscious, quickly and painlessly prior to slaughter. Penetrative captive bolt stun guns have steel bolts, powered by either compressed air or a blank cartridge. The bolt is driven into the animal's brain. In the past, captive bolt stun guns were often built or modified to inject compressed air into the cranium of cattle, so as to disrupt the brain structures and induce total and prolonged unconsciousness, to ensure that cattle were slaughtered in a humane manner. Studies have shown that penetrative captive bolt stunners that incorporate air-injection can force visible pieces of brain and other CNS tissue into the circulatory system of stunned cattle.

* Meat products that might contain brain, spinal cord, or central nervous system tissue. These include cow brains, head cheese, neck bones, cheek meat, and ox-tail from cattle.

* Products that contain beef extracted by "advanced meat recovery" (AMR) machines that squeeze out the last bits of meat from cow carcasses. A 2002 government survey found that one in three samples of this reclaimed meat was contaminated with spinal cord and other central nervous system tissue. AMR beef may be used in some hot dogs, taco fillings, pizza toppings, sausages, and beef jerky made from ground or chopped meat. Manufacturers are not required to identify AMR beef on food labels.

Another mad cow rule from USDA today reads:

"From January through August 2002, FSIS conducted a survey of AMR products derived from the vertebral column of cattle to establish a baseline for the prevalence of spinal cord and DRG tissue in beef AMR products... In the 2002 Beef AMR Survey, the Agency found that while some establishments were able to consistently produce beef AMR product that was free of spinal cord and DRG tissue, a majority of the establishments had difficulty keeping spinal cord and DRG out of their AMR products. Overall, FSIS found that that approximately 76% (25 of 34) of the establishments whose AMR product was tested had positive laboratory results for spinal cord, DRG, or both in their final beef AMR products. The survey also found that approximately 35% (89 of 256) of all final AMR product samples that were tested had positive laboratory results for spinal cord, DRG, or both.

Today's is a real goodie: "This new regulation is a prophylactic measure designed, in part, to prevent human exposure to the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) agent by ensuring that AMR systems are not a means of introducing central nervous system tissue into product labeled as "meat.''

"FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) is amending the meat inspection regulations in Parts 301, 318, and 320 of the Code of Federal Regulations by modifying the definition of "meat;'' adding or modifying non-compliance criteria for bone solids, bone marrow, brain, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, and DRG (dorsal root ganglia); requiring the development, implementation, and maintenance of a written program, including documentation and recordkeeping requirements, for ensuring process control; and declaring inedible the skulls and vertebral column bones from cattle that are 30 months of age and older...if skulls or vertebral column bones from cattle
30 months of age and older are used in AMR systems, the product exiting the AMR system is adulterated, and the product and the spent bone materials are inedible and cannot be use used for human food. For AMR product derived from the bones of cattle younger than 30 months, the presence of CNS-type tissues will render the product misbranded.

"Similarly, for AMR product derived from the bones of livestock other than cattle, the presence of CNS-type tissues will result in misbranding. For AMR product derived from the bones of all livestock, the restrictions associated with bone solids and bone marrow also relate to misbranding.

"FSIS is amending Sec. 301.2(b), the definition of "meat'' to make it clear that boneless meat may not include significant portions of bone or related components, such as bone marrow, or any amount of CNS-type tissues. Therefore, product produced using an AMR system must not include significant amounts of bone or related components. It also must not include any brain, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, or DRG.

Ha! Meat appears within quote marks!

This annoucement also describes "AMR," Advanced Meat Recovery:

"The AMR Process

"AMR systems are newer models of systems that have been used since
the 1960s. The new systems emulate the physical action of hand-held
high-speed knives for the removal of skeletal muscle tissue from bone
through the use of hydraulic pressure. AMR systems apply pressure to
detach the meat (skeletal muscle) tissue from the bones in a ``hard
separation'' process. Desinewers that typically use belt pressure
against a rotating perforated steel drum then separate meat from
connective tissue, sinews, and other non-meat components in a ``soft
separation'' process. In addition to vertebrae, typical bones processed
by piston-driven AMR systems are brisket bones (breast or lower chest),
rib bones, flat bones (scapulas), and hip bones (pelvis).

"AMR product is an intermediate product that is typically blended at
about 5 to 12 percent of the formulation of ground products derived
from manufacturing trimmings. Descriptive labeling for the product of
AMR includes ``(species) trimmings, finely textured,'' ``finely ground
(species),'' or any other term that accurately reflects its form.

"AMR technology enables processors to remove attached skeletal
muscle tissue from livestock bones without incorporating significant
amounts of bone and bone products into the final meat product. When
produced properly, product from AMR systems is comparable to meat
derived by hand deboning and can be labeled as ``meat'' (9 CFR 301.2).
Under the FSIS regulations, spinal cord is not a component of meat, and
therefore, product from AMR systems identified as ``meat'' that
contains spinal cord is misbranded. Until today, FSIS has not taken
regulatory action against ``meat'' containing DRG and other CNS-type
tissues.

Article 1

[...]

2-b. Use of student social security numbers restricted.

S 2-b. Use of student social security numbers restricted. No public or private elementary or secondary school or college as defined in section two of this article shall display any student`s social security number to identify such student for posting or public listing of grades, on class rosters or other lists provided to teachers, on student identification cards, in student directories or similar listings, or, unless specifically authorized or required by law, for any public identification purpose.

"...in a New York Times news story on Dec. 22 about embattled media magnate Conrad M. Black, that columnist George F. Will, whose work is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, had been a member of an advisory board set up by Black and had received a $25,000 per diem for each meeting attended. Will had included a few lines from a speech by Black in his column on March 4, 2003, just before the Iraq war, without disclosing his past financial relationship.

[...]

"...Will is a veteran columnist, an erudite expresser of conservative political views. His column is among the most popular in America, distributed to some 465 papers. When asked in the Times news story whether he should have disclosed this relationship in a column in which he invokes Black's views, Will was quoted as saying: "My business is my business. Got it?"

"Will has been at the center of disclosure issues before. In 1980, he appeared on ABC's "Nightline" to praise Ronald Reagan's performance in a debate with Jimmy Carter and it was later disclosed that he had helped coach Reagan for the debate. Undoubtedly, a fair share of the complaints about Will this time probably come from readers who oppose his political views.

In one article, Kathleen Day explains that

"Mutual fund investors might not be surprised to learn that the companies that manage their funds actively lobby Congress and the states regarding regulation of their industry. But they may be startled to learn that these managers have lobbied hard over the past decade for policies that investor and consumer advocates say often run counter to the interests of average mutual fund shareholders.

"And what many investors surely do not realize is that they are footing much of the bill for the lobbying effort, industry critics say. In a sour addition to recent revelations of widespread misconduct in the $7.1 trillion industry by fund managers and brokerages, the fund industry has, among other causes, lobbied to keep proxy votes secret and has persuaded legislators in Maryland and Massachusetts to adopt a lenient definition of what makes a fund director independent.

"The Investment Company Institute, the lobbying group for mutual fund managers, says a portion of the $31 million it received last year in annual membership dues was billed to mutual fund shareholders, though it doesn't know the exact amount, according to spokesman John Collins.

Many fund managers charge shareholders at least half of the cost of ICI dues, with many others charging all of it to them, said C. Meyrick Payne of Management Practice Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in advising independent directors on mutual fund boards. Directors must approve fees and other expenses that are paid to fund managers out of shareholder money.

"We still live in a capitalist system," Payne said. "So if managers can make shareholders pay, they will."

"Few funds, however, tell shareholders they are paying, industry and government lawyers say. Most opt instead to include the charge in disclosure material under the general heading "other expenses," which is what large, well known fund complexes such as Fidelity and Putnam do.

"To Russel Kinnel, director of mutual fund analysis at Morningstar Inc., most of the ICI's efforts are geared toward helping portfolio managers, not shareholders.

A few pages later, Albert Crenshaw tells us about how mutual fund companies are charging investors marketing fees for closed funds--funds that don't need advertising because you can't even buy into them anymore!

"Last year S&P did a study of closed funds and the 12b-1 fees they charged. According to S&P, whose database includes more than 15,000 funds, as of Dec. 8, some 605 funds were closed, and of those, 153 with a total of 274 share classes were listed as charging an average 12b-1 fee of 0.64 percent of the fund's assets annually. Some 94 were charging the legal maximum of 1 percent.

"In this angry, devastating examination of "the House of Bush," Kevin Phillips asks the question that seems to have occurred to no one else: How did these people get so entitled? How is it that a family in no way distinguished by genuine accomplishment, moral and/or political conviction or exceptional intelligence has managed to lay claim as a matter of right to the American presidency, and how is it -- this is the real puzzler -- that the American people seem to have acquiesced in this presumption? How did we manage to put ourselves in the hands of a family that clearly believes it has dynastic stature, with all the privileges and entitlements attendant thereto, and behaves accordingly?

Good question!

"...significantly more boys and 9th graders said that they would have sex in the next 12 months, and significantly more girls and 8th graders said they would have sex before completing high school. Over the year, the percentage of all students who reported they had experienced sexual intercourse increased from 5.8% to 12.4%. When examined by gender and age group, the increases were statistically significant for 8th graders and for girls.

Some positive benefits included increased parent-child communication, and apparently, the plan was well-implemented administratively.

Via the Feminist Majority Foundation.

"I can remember when -- in a suburban Washington childhood in the '60s and '70s -- walking was common, routine even. We walked to the shopping center, walked to school. I can even remember walking on the Beltway in suburban Maryland the night before the roadway opened.

"But somewhere between then and now, walking as an option in suburban America seems to have virtually disappeared. The facts bear this out. Between 1980 and today, the number of children walking to school has fallen from 70 percent to less than 10 nationwide. Walking as a means of getting from here to there is 36 times more dangerous than driving, according to the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a research and advocacy group. Nationally, only 5 percent of all trips are made on foot, but pedestrians account for more than 13 percent of all traffic fatalities.

"Nationally, 78,000 pedestrians were struck and injured by cars in 2001, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; 4,882 were killed. By the late '90s in Montgomery County, pedestrian deaths were starting to outnumber homicides.

"The 10 to 2 vote, with one abstention and one member absent, ended a prohibition on the pills enacted in April when the trustees, known as the Board of Visitors, ordered the health center to cease distributing the pills that had been available to students for the previous eight years. That vote was 7 to 6.

"In a pointed rebuff to abortion opponents who had pressed for the ban, the resolution also said the board "further grants authority for all future health-related decisions pertaining to students to the administration and its medical staff."

"The ban had galvanized a large segment of the student body on the Harrisonburg, Va., campus, prompting petition drives urging a reversal of the ban and pickets outside the homes of some trustees who had voted for it.

The Ford Expedition is really just a F-150 pickup. It costs 24k to make, but they sell it for $36k. The Lincoln Navigator is just a dressed up Expedition that sells for $46k! I can't believe that such an expensive car is on a pickup truck frame! That's just as cheap as bolting on ground effects to a Honda Civic!

"The Truth, underneath all the rationalizations (for buying S.U.V.s), seemed to be that S.U.V. buyers thought of big, heavy vehicles as safe: they found comfort in being surrounded by so much rubber and steel. To the engineers, of course, that didn't make any sense, either: if consumers really wanted something that was big and heavy and comforting, they ought to buy minivans, since minivans, with their unit-body construction, do much better in accidents than S.U.V.s"

The issue is continued in an online Q & A:

Does the relationship between passive safety and active safety change when the roads of the nation become lousy with S.U.V.s? In other words, when light trucks were only twenty per cent of the nation's vehicle fleet, active safety might have worked better. Does there come a point, at fifty per cent and rising, when how we judge a safe car has to change?

I would actually make the opposite case. If every car on the road was a Mini, then the cost of an accident would be quite small: if you are in a Mini and you hit a Mini, you aren't going to be that bad off. So, in the old days, the premium on active safety wasn't so large. On the other hand, if every car on the road is an S.U.V., the cost of an accident grows substantially. When a Ford Explorer hits a Chevy TrailBlazer, both parties suffer enormously. And, if a Ford Explorer hits a Mini, the Mini driver is a dead man. I’m more interested in active safety now than ever before. As a non-S.U.V. owner, I simply cannot afford to get into any accident at all these days.

*Intelligence community overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.

*Intelligence community appears to have been unduly influenced by policymakers' views.

*Officials misrepresented threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missiles programs over and above intelligence findings.

"Climate change over the past 30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and has been implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of species' distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a power-law relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be 'committed to extinction'."

"EPA guidelines say that if a person eats fish twice a week, it should contain no more than 4 to 6 parts per billion of PCBs. The study found that PCB levels in farmed salmon sold in the United States and Canada averaged about five times that amount: 30 parts per billion. On average, farmed salmon had concentrations of health-threatening contaminants 10 times as high as those found in wild salmon."

Certainly defrauding the public is more like terrorism than smoking marijuana!

Coverage in the Washington Post indicates that the audit is based on voluntary responses, rather than an independent review of records and files: "In most audits, investigators can compel access to objective data -- bank statements, legal documents and the like," said Barbara A. Blaine, founder of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "In this case, the interviewers had to rely largely on subjective material that was given voluntarily, and given by essentially the same men who have, for decades, fought to keep the crimes of clergy concealed."

And not all areas are in compliance...

Ever had this problem?

Problem: You come to from a blackout to discover you are about to be married.

Solution: A troubling situation at best, but you must remain calm. First, glance around casually. Does it appear to be an expensive wedding? An expensive wedding is a strong signal that there will be a great deal of free libations at the reception and a liquor-laden honeymoon. In that case you should say, “I do,” reap the benefits of the association, then demand an annulment at honeymoon’s end on the grounds of “extreme mental cruelty.”
However, if the wedding appears to lean toward the “cash bar/motel honeymoon” side you should feign a massive heart attack. Clutch your heart, gasp, “Oh, bejesus!” and keel over backwards. When the ambulance arrives at the hospital, jump up, bow slightly to the attendant paramedics, and dash to the nearest pub.

Five hundred years ago, Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that "A prince...should appear, upon seeing and hearing him, to be all mercy, all faithfulness, all integrity, all kindness, all religion. And there is nothing more necessary than to seem to possess this last quality...

[...]

"This situation resembles the one foreseen by the futurist and
science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who died in 1982. He depicted
a world devoid of vacant space, where every conceivable surface is
plastered with advertising. In that world, commercials are no longer
confined to television; they have evolved into free-flying robotic
pests that hypnotize consumers into buying that new car and smoking
the hot new brand of cigarettes.

[...]

"At least for the moment, a medium that was hailed as the ultimate
venue for education and self-improvement is mired in the age-old
conflict between the salesman who wants his foot in the door, no
matter what, and the angry person who wants nothing more than to be
left alone.

Just last week, I went to Pasta Mia. Washingtonians rave about that restaurant. There is regularly a line to get in, even in the cold. The restaurant was not great--I would put it on par with the Olive Garden. Yeah, that mediocre. My friend and I had both white and red-sauce based pastas, and neither was remarkable. I cook either dish better, and that's sad. Pasta Mia, at least my initial impression of it, is a restaurant that people like because the portions are big, not because the portions are good.

With that said, in Adams-Morgan, The Reef, Perry's, Ijoti, and El Tamarindo are good restaurants. Perry's, however, is overpriced. Everyone raves about Lauriol Plaza, but aside from the salsa, the food *sucks.*

Not too long ago, I got a cold entree at Utopia. Not really sure why people like Utopia... On U Street, Coppi's and Ben's Chili Bowl are both excellent.

There is also a great burrito place stuffed in an alley on 20th St., near Ii Ricchi, an excellent upscale restaurant. My favorite Washington DC restaurant is Giovanni's Trattu, on Jefferson Place, just south of Dupont Circule. I once went to Galileo, and it did not live up to its four-star prices. Similarly, Kincaid's was disappointing, based on the price.

All of this is an introduction to a great site with information about good restaurants--Chowhound isn't for foodies, people who "eat where they're told; they eagerly follow trends and rarely go where Zagat hasn't gone before. Chowhounds, on the other hand, blaze trails, combing gleefully through neighborhoods for hidden culinary treasure. They despise hype, and while they appreciate refined ambiance and service, they can't be fooled by mere flash."

The implication about Zagat in DC is right--Zagat rates many restaurants based on their popularity. Zagat is also heavily edited--they even have a section on their site for comments they couldn't print.

There are some interesting things in this report. If you look at the companies listed, you'll see that basically every big drug company is on it. In fact, over 50% of the companies were with health care corporations, according to CCR. 23% were defense contractors.

Here are the top ten. "HCA" is a Tennessee health care company. An asterisk * means that the settlement was accompanied by a criminal plea agreement.
1) HCA *
2) HCA *
3) TAP Pharmaceuticals Products Inc. *
4) Abbott Labs *
5) Fresenius Medical Care of North America *
6) SmithKline Beecham Clinical Labs
7) National Medical Enterprises *
8) AstraZeneca *
9) Bayer Corp. *
10) First American Health Care Of Georgia

Check out the full report. Warning: it is a PDF!

Ed Levine just wrote a detailed summary of bagels in New York for the Times:

"...I set out, scarcely a month ago, to eat bagels in all five boroughs and to determine, to the best of my palate's ability, what makes a great and authentic New York bagel. I visited more than 50 establishments. I ate more than three times that number of bagels. In the process, I both horrified practitioners of the carbohydrate-phobic Atkins diet and discovered no less than half a dozen varieties of bagel so good they need no cheese, butter or smoked fish to accompany them.

"Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side, I salute you! Terrace Bagels, in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, huzzah! Cheers to Bagel Oasis, in Fresh Meadows, Queens, and to Murray's Bagels in Chelsea. Hot Bialys in Jamaica, Queens? Bagelry in Murray Hill? They are all superb.

[...]

Levine clearly defines what constitutes a bagel:
"A bagel is a round bread made of simple, elegant ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast and malt. Its dough is boiled, then baked, and the result should be a rich caramel color; it should not be pale and blond. A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it instead of a whoosh. A bagel should be eaten warm and, ideally, should be no more than four or five hours old when consumed.

"All else is not a bagel.

Via Reenhead.

"...advertising is not badly needed in an economy of scarcity, because total demand is usually equal to or in excess of total supply, and every producer can normally sell as much as he produces. It is when potential supply outstrips demand--that is, when abundance prevails--that advertising begins to fulfill a really essential economic function. In this situation the producer knows that the limitation upon his operations and upon his growth no longer lies, as it lay historically, in his productive capacity, for he can always produce as much as the market will absorb; the limitation has shifted to the market, and it is selling capacity which controls his growth. Moreover, every other producer of the same kind of article is also in position to expand output indefinitely, and this means that the advertiser must distinguish his product, if not on essential grounds, then on trivial ones, and that he must drive home this distinction by employing a brand name and by keeping this name always before the public. In a situation of limited supply the scarcity of his product will assure his place in the market, but in a situation of indefinitely expandable supply his brand is his only means of assuring himself of such a place.

[...]

We are dealing...with one of the very limited group of institutions which can properly be called "instruments of social control." These institutions guide the life of the individual be conceiving of him in a distinctive way and encouraging him to conform as far as possible to the concept. For instance, the church, representing the force of religion, conceives of man as an immortal soul; our schools and colleges, representing the force of learning, conceive of him as a being whose behavior is guided by reason; our business and industry, representing the force of the economic free-enterprise system, conceive of him as a productive agent who can create goods or render services that are useful to mankind. Advertising, of course, is committed to none of these views and entertains them only incidentally.

[...]

Advertising appeals primarily to the desires, the wants--cultivated or natural--of the individual, and it sometimes offers as its goal a power to command the envy of others by outstripping them in the consumption of goods and services.

[...]

In contrast with these (the church and school, "which have conducted themselves with a considerable degree of social responsibility"), advertising has in its dynamics no motivation to see the improvement of the individual or to impart qualities of social usefulness, unless conformity to material values may be so characterized. And, though it wields an immense social influence, comparable to the influence of religion and learning, it has no social goals and no social responsibility for what it does with its influence, so long as it refrains from palpable violations of truth and decency. It is this lack of institutional responsibility, this lack of inherent social purpose to balance social power, which, I would argue, is the basic cause for concern about the role of advertising...What is basic is that advertising, as such, with all its vast power to influence values and conduct, cannot ever lost sight of the fact that it ultimately regards man as a consumer and defines its own mission as one of stimulating him to consume or to desire to consume.

Here's a report from the Athens Daily News.

I found a great set of murals near 24th and Harrison. Here are some of them. I'll post more soon.

In this one, people are shown breaking chains of servitude.

This is a detail of a collage mural.

Greed mural!