Anthony Lewis: The feeling of a coup -- "We are learning something these days about the power of a willful president. Without a popular mandate, George W. Bush is making radical changes that will have long-term consequences for this country and the world. He is making them in a hurry, and for the moment there are no checks or balances to stop him." (NY Times, free registration required)

The White house has nixed another Clinton-era regulation, which called for denial of federal contracts to companies who violate workplace safety rules. Industry is pleased, the AFL-CIO is not.

Paramount has canceled 'Dr. Laura'.

This weekend marks a record-setting solar coronal mass ejection. Atmospheric electrical disturbances created an equivalent of the Northern Lights as far south as southern New Mexico, although we didn't see anything here. The sunspot that fuels this phenomenon is 13 times the size of Earth.

'Duck and cover' is back, only this time it's not about atomic weapons.

International outcry over US abandonment of climate treaty -- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says Bush believes the costs of the treaty outweigh the benefits. [Reuters]

"The apparent collapse of the Kyoto treaty was welcomed by the Global Climate Coalition, a US industrial group that campaigns on the environment issue." [BBC]

Kevin Sweeney: "This move is national capitulation. Bush is handing off the torch, declaring himself -- declaring us -- to be unworthy of leadership."

Washington Post: Conan the politician -- Can Arnold save California?

Nuclear scientists boycott polygraph tests -- Some nuclear scientists at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico are refusing to take lie-detector tests, citing personal questions unrelated to national security. [Reuters]

BBC: Saudi Arabia bans Pokemon -- "The religious edict issued over the weekend said the Pokemon video game and cards have symbols that include 'the star of David, which everyone knows is connected to international Zionism and is Israel's national emblem.'"

Reuters: Human cloning plans face Congressional scrutiny -- "A U.S. fertility specialist and the leader of a group that believes in extraterrestrials are set to testify at a congressional hearing on Wednesday about their controversial plans to clone people." More at CNN.

Washington Post: U.S. aims to pull out of warming treaty -- "The White House recently sought advice from the State Department about how the United States can legally withdraw its signature from a landmark 1997 global warming agreement, signaling its intent to pull out despite efforts by European and Japanese leaders to try to keep the agreement alive, an administration source said yesterday."

NY Times: The President on the Economy -- "What is most worrisome about the president's speech is that it shows an alarming lack of appreciation for the role that the prudent management of public finances played in the past decade's economic expansion." (Free registration required)

Washington Post: Bush team has 'right' credentials -- "President Bush is quietly building the most conservative administration in modern times, surpassing even Ronald Reagan in the ideological commitment of his appointments, White House officials and prominent conservatives say."

Dan Gillmor: "George W. Bush is only a conservative in the current, hard-line sense of a once-meaningful word that's been hijacked and perverted by the hardline right wing of the Republican Party. Bush is a radical right-winger, and he's going to transform the government -- and America -- if he can get away with it."

President Bush, who seems recently to have been using coin-tosses to inform his pronouncements on the economy, has announced that the economy is in a downturn and we'd better "do something."

Washington Post: New Report Says Second Gunman Fired at Kennedy -- "...It was more than 96 percent certain that there was a shot from the grassy knoll to the right of the president's limousine, in addition to the three shots from a book depository window above and behind the president's limousine."

Reuters: Supreme Court to review execution of retarded -- The high court will decide "whether execution of mentally retarded people convicted of capital crimes violated American standards of decency and should be struck down as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment."

Jackson Diehl: World is pulling for Powell -- "...The deeper source of Powell's popularity is that, in an administration still debating the first rough cuts of policy, he comes closest to representing the pragmatic continuity that most of the world would like to see in the United States."

Chicago Tribune: Blind Justice -- "A president who is considering someone for a judgeship ought to know the bad as well as the good about his candidate. ABA screening wouldn't stop Bush from choosing whomever he wants--only from knowing what he should know about his candidate until it's too late."

NY Times: The White House and the Bar -- "Mr. Bush's removal of the A.B.A. [American Bar Association] from the screening process is another signal that he appears willing to grant the most conservative elements within his party, led by Attorney General John Ashcroft, control over judicial matters. Right-wing Republicans have long made the selection of conservative judges one of their chief objectives."

Cartoon pioneer William Hanna is dead at 90.

I guess it's officially Spring!

NY Times: Warning from Microsoft on false digital signatures-- "The Microsoft Corporation warned computer users today that someone posing electronically as a company executive had fooled VeriSign Inc, a provider of digital signatures, into issuing fraudulent electronic certificates in Microsoft's name." (Free registration required)

CNN: 'Mir has completed its triumphant mission' --"Residents and visitors to the South Pacific islands of Fiji saw first-hand the space station's farewell tour as Mir broke into pieces and streaked across the skies before its splashdown in a remote area between New Zealand and Chile."

BBC: Boats refuse to leave Mir target -- "A fleet of tuna fishing boats is refusing to leave an area of the Pacific Ocean where the Russian Mir space station is set to crash on Friday." The American fishermen say they've had a terrible season, the tuna are now biting, and they're staying put.

SF Chronicle: Utilities demand huge rate hikes as part of any deal to sell transmission lines to the State of California.

LA Times: Energy overcharge of $5.5 billion is alleged -- "Wholesale electricity suppliers overcharged California by about $5.5 billion between May and last month, and that money should be refunded to the state's taxpayers and financially strapped utilities, the state power grid operator said Wednesday." The plot thickens...

BBC: Swarms of dead stars may account for part of the universe's "missing mass."

NY Times: Republicans' budget plans ignore arctic oil drilling -- "In a newly released budget for 2002, Republicans on the House Budget Committee declined to include any anticipated revenue from oil drilling in the Alaskan refuge, saying the issue would mean too big a fight for the budget process to deal with."(Free registration required)

Reuters: "Forty years after one of the most notorious battles of the Cold War, former foes from the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba came face-to-face on Thursday for the first time to share experiences and research."

Salon: Bush dismantles environmental rules -- "The Bush administration is rescinding new standards for arsenic in drinking water and proposing to lift new requirements on mining interests as its latest challenges to environmental regulations issued during the final days of the Clinton presidency." The arsenic issue is of particular interest to residents of New Mexico and Rocky Mountain states, due to the legacy of hard-rock mining. This is something like the fourth time in eight days that Dubya has caved in to special-interest groups.

Vice President Cheney urges construction of more nuclear power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, calling the Kyoto treaty "seriously flawed", since it does not place restrictions on developing nations such as China and India. The U.S. is the richest nation on earth and consumes a disproportionate amount of energy (with its attendant byproducts, like CO2). However, we cannot seem to tolerate any adjustment of our upward consumption spiral; nor any accommodation or sacrifice that would allow other nations to "catch up" in standard of living while at the same time helping to reduce CO2 emissions. Perhaps the issue is not that the Kyoto treaty is flawed, but that the current administration thinks conservation is bad for the economy.

George W. Bush's weblog -- Nice to see the prez has gotten on the blog bandwagon. ;-)

AP: Kids charged for wielding paper gun -- At a New Jersey school, "two second-graders playing cops and robbers with a paper gun were charged with making terrorist threats." This sounds insane, except that one of the eight-year-olds stood up in class and said "I'm going to kill you all." Totally inappropriate, but does it warrant being arrested by the police?

CNN: Mir maneuvers before risky plunge -- "Mir has dropped to an orbit of 132 miles (220 km) and is scheduled to crash in the Pacific Ocean early Friday." I hope these guys know how to aim.

Boeing is leaving Seattle after 85 years.

Anthony Lewis: Mandate of Heaven? -- "Mr. Bush has turned government policy sharply to the right on one issue after another.... Now the administration is preparing to deliver on what is the core interest of many ideological conservatives: judicial appointments." (NY Times, free registration required)

Lance Morrow: Is Bush treading the path paved by Gingrich? -- "But I suspect that in starting to abandon the middle and seeming to move breezily and callously right on certain issues (the environment comes to mind, and pro-business policies that look to some like simple, blatant payoffs), Bush, who is not Ronald Reagan, may be misjudging American tolerances and setting himself up for more trouble than his ideology knows how to handle."

BBC: Only the net can save politics -- "A research report produced by web campaigners Citizens Online and a left-leaning think tank says that mass media, soundbites and spin are producing an increasingly disillusioned electorate and policies that ride roughshod over national opinion."

Reuters: Web-savvy busboy allegedly duped tycoons -- "A restaurant worker allegedly masterminded the largest theft of identities in Internet history and is suspected of stealing millions of dollars from celebrities, billionaires and executives such as Steven Spielberg and Ted Turner, the New York Post said on Tuesday." More at CNN.

NY Times: Microsoft confronts privacy fears -- "Microsoft officials today tried to defuse privacy and security concerns about its new .Net Internet strategy by saying the new technology would let computer users control how much personal information they make available for commercial use." (Free registration required)

Reuters: In latest twist, Bush 'very confident' on economy -- Maybe somebody finally convinced Dubya that he and Cheney were helping sink the economy in order to justify their tax-cut plan? Several noted economists have pointed out that Mr. Bush should not talk about the economy, period; leave that to Alan Greenspan.

AP: Rolling blackouts ordered in California -- "Traffic lights and computer screens went dark Monday in Beverly Hills, Silicon Valley and other communities up and down California as rolling blackouts swept across the state for the first time." And it isn't even summer yet...

Microsoft's Hailstorm: The next great thing?

Dan Gillmor: "Microsoft wants us to essentially move our lives onto its computers -- financial transactions, calendars, address books, documents, you name it. This is the ultimate in centralization. Leaving aside the unreliability of the big computer systems the company now runs . . . the idea of confiding in Microsoft with my most personal information is, well, nutty."

Microsoft gave a "Hailstorm" presentation last Thursday (15th) to invited developers (who had to sign non-disclosure agreements), followed by an "official" (on-the-record) roll-out this morning. Hailstorm is part of Microsoft's larger .Net (dot-Net) vision.

Scobleizer: "This is how Microsoft defined HailStorm to the developers on March 15: HailStorm connects Internet services, applications and devices -- and transforms them into a user's personal network -- on their behalf, with their permission.

CNET: Microsoft's Hailstorm unleashed: "The company envisions HailStorm as helping to move the Web to an end-user subscription model in which consumers pay to use a service.."

The Register: Pay-to-Play: Microsoft erects .NET tollgate -- "Microsoft promises to make Hailstorm a 'business center', piped through the Passport hub. In other words, it's pay-to-play."

If Microsoft Passport sounds neat-o, read Joel Spolsky's Does Issuing Passports Make Microsoft a Country?, from July, 2000.

Earthlink privacy question

Update: Apparently the suspicious "tag" transmitted within customers' HTTP requests only provides data about such things as screen resolution and screen size. Earthlink states that they "plan to someday use this information to tailor their web site presentations to best match the user's environment."

Steve Gibson: Earthlink Network's Privacy Promises Have a Hollow Ring --"Are users of EarthLink's web browser receiving a unique tag so that they can be tracked and identified ó without cookies ó anywhere they go on the Internet?" ID tags? Super-cookies? This is totally bizarre, given the company's recent privacy promotion ad campaign. On the other hand, Earthlink's privacy policy also includes some nice waffling: "...EarthLink may disclose personal information about Visitors or Members, or information regarding your use of the Services or Web sites accessible through our Services, for any reason if, in our sole discretion, we believe that it is reasonable to do so...." In the interim, Gibson is trying to contact Earthlink and get an explanation.

Genetically engineered corn is everywhere

Washington Post: Biotech corn is test case for industry -- "Booth is among several dozen people nationwide who believe they suffered allergic reactions from eating StarLink corn last fall. Their cases are being investigated by the FDA and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The outcome of that investigation could have enormous ramifications for the future of biotech food." Anaphylactic shock is not funny...

LA Times: Bio-corn tainted 430 million bushels, its maker says -- Starlink genetically engineered corn appears to have escaped into the wild.

From the Meat & Syntax Dept.

Salon: Bushonics speakers strike back -- "We're mad as hell and we won't be misunderestimated anymore!"

Wired: Will it be a world of herbivores? -- "If things keep going the way they have been, Europe could become a continent of vegetarians. And maybe the rest of the world will follow suit."

kuro5hin: US Gov't scientist fired for web post -- "Ian Thomas, a scientist with the USGS, was fired after posting a map to his web site, that showed the distribution of caribou calving areas in the politically-sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). This action, which was in line with 20,000 other maps he's produced over the last few years, caused Mr. Thomas to be unceremoniously terminated without notice. His website and work [was] taken offline entirely, and it is believed this was politically motivated. ANWR is a rather sensitive and controversial topic lately in government and environmental circles, with the Bush administration wanting to open it up for petroleum exploration."

Washington Post: The President's 'principles' -- "The [campaign finance] reform he supports is a sham; the likely effect, if his position prevails, would be to perpetuate the system by which he and members of Congress were elected, which is precisely the system of office-buying the reformers seek to dismantle."

Reuters: Bush economist says CO2 caps could cause blackouts -- "...White House chief economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey said carbon dioxide caps could cause more energy blackouts like the ones that have plagued California....'We need more refineries, we need more power plants, we need more pipelines.'" So much for the Kyoto Treaty; I wonder what Christine Todd Whitman is thinking right now.

AP: Calif. population fuels power crisis -- "With California increasingly crowded and congested, some are hoping rolling blackouts and higher utility bills will help keep the state's population in check to maintain a semblance of the famous California lifestyle."

Balloon invasion from Mars!

Alien gas-bag death-ray machines descended on Tomé this morning, spreading havoc and panicking residents, equines, canines, and bovines.

Seriously, this is an annual local event, staged on the Sunday nearest St. Patrick's Day. (No, we did not have any green beer!) Fortunately the new filly didn't try to jump the fence.

Reuters: Italy threatens to pull plug on Vatican radio -- "An ecological battle between the Vatican and Italy heated up when Italian Environment Minister Willer Bordon threatened to cut off the electricity to Vatican Radio." Italy has very strict laws regarding excessive electromagnetic radiation; apparently the Vatican's transmitters are exceeding legal limits.

Uninformed Consent -- The Seattle Times is running an incredible investigative series on the prestigious Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. In one instance, patients were prodded into an experimental cancer treatment program in which the physicians and the clinic held direct financial interests in the drugs being tested. Full disclosure of the financial entanglements was not made to the patients, nor the fact that alternative, safer methods of treatment exist. In all, twenty people allegedly died of causes directly attributable to this experiment.

CNN: What are the odds Mir will land on your head? Apparently about 2 billion to one.

Another Florida kid has been sentenced to life in prison without parole, again reflecting Florida's tough stance on juvenile crime. In both this and the Tate case, Amnesty International has pointed out that the sentences violate international law.

After a week of beautiful, Spring-like weather, it's supposed to snow today. Unreal.

Andrew Leonard: Bush's shaky hand -- "In a calculated attempt to build political support for tax cuts and dump responsibility for the economy on the Clinton administration, Bush is helping to create the very reality that the vast majority of Americans want to avoid."

Bush and bankruptcy "reform"

Reuters: Senate clears bankruptcy overhaul -- "The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved legislation backed by banks and credit card companies that would overhaul the U.S. bankruptcy code to make it harder for individuals to wipe out their debts." President Bush has pen in hand, poised, ready to sign it into law.

Is this legislation payback to MBNA, the largest single Bush campaign contributor, the largest credit-card issuer in the nation, which sends out millions of credit solicitations annually and which has been clamoring for bankruptcy "reform?"

Yes, our present system has been abused by some irresponsible individuals, including wealthy people who run up debt, then shield assets in expensive homes which can't be touched. On the other hand, there are many hard-working, over-extended wage-earners across the nation, who have had the misfortune to be laid off from their job or have been devasted by medical calamity and cannot pay their bills. I personally knew someone who fit the latter category -- a wonderful, hard-working guy, nearly wiped out by a stroke.

It's a pity that many families will now have to choose between eating and paying their bills; and we may indeed see an increase in poverty. However, perhaps Americans need to wise up to the fact that they are being used as sucker-bait by credit-card companies and advertisers.

Dan Gillmor: "You don't see much sense of responsibility from the credit-card industry, which practically begs its customers to run up those overwhelming debts. You don't see responsibility from Congress, which runs up a multi-trillion-dollar national debt and tells our children and grandchildren to pay it off."

CNN: California bars utilities from laying off employees -- "PUC Commissioner Carl Wood said levels of service and reliability are closely tied to staffing levels. Wood acknowledged the financial plight of the nearly bankrupt utilities [PG&E and SoCal Edison], but added that 'cutting service at the expense of consumers is not the solution.'"

NY Times: Welcome to the World Wide Web. Passport, please? -- "Suddenly, the seemingly borderless Internet is ramming up against real borders. The imposition of jurisdictional laws could mean that online publishers decide either to keep some material off the Internet entirely, for fear of criminal and civil charges filed in different countries or even different states, or to install online gates and checkpoints around their sites, giving access to only certain viewers." What is disturbing here is that new technology is available, albeit imperfect, which can determine your geographic location and block you from sites that do not comply with your local laws. The outcome of the French government's case against Yahoo will be significant. (Free registration required)

Business 2.0: The porn law that won't die -- "The Child Online Protection Act, ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court, has sparked debate. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to review the case." (Thank you, John "Dancing is Dangerous" Ashcroft.) The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in originally tossing out COPA, opined that cyberspace was without boundaries, and that there was no way for web sites to restrict access based on geographic location. That does not now appear to be the case (see NY Times piece, above). Since COPA relies on vague language, such as "harmful to minors," the U.S. Supreme Court may wind up in the eerie position of having to determine what constitutes a "community" in the digital era.

Environment? Isn't that something Gore invented?

Washington Post: Bush drops a call for emissions cuts -- "President Bush has decided not to seek reductions in the carbon dioxide emissions of the nation's power plants, reversing himself on a campaign pledge after encountering strong resistance from the coal and oil industries and from Republican allies on Capitol Hill."

Salon: George's noxious revision: "Bush's decision was widely described as the work of energy industry partisans in his administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham....The move is particularly embarrassing for [EPA chief Christine Todd] Whitman, who told the G-8 Environment Summit in Trieste, Italy, earlier this month that the administration was committed to reducing CO2 emissions...."

AP: Bush: Calif. blackouts inevitable -- However, the administration "issued its strongest opposition yet to addressing the problem with federal controls on wholesale power prices."

Salon: Top 10 reasons to welcome global temperature enhancement

Reuters: Taliban kills cows to atone for 'delay' on statues -- "The Taliban ordered the slaughter of 100 cows on Thursday to atone for its 'delay' in destroying Afghanistan's historic statues of the Buddha."

AP: Better Business Bureau tries to stop Web links -- If the BBB had its way, you would have to have their permission to link to their site. This is totally absurd and counter to the nature of the Web.

Apple's high-priced G4 Cube may become a collector's item. With some systems costing around $7,000, I would hate to have bought one of these, only to find that it will (likely) be discontinued. Bah on over-priced proprietary hardware.

After the last presidential election, a lot of people quipped that at least there were no riots or tanks in the streets. Here is how the public deals with unpopular decisions in Guatemala.

Ariana Huffington: It's not about church and state -- "...The debate we should be having is not on the hoary hot-button issue of the separation of church and state, but on two critically important questions at the heart of the initiative: How do you turn around troubled lives when so many of our social problems involve human behavior -- especially addiction and violence? And what is the proper role for government to play?"

CNN: Child Net protection act will be put to legal test -- "The law's supporters say a mandate is needed to combat an epidemic of minors accessing adult content on computers at schools and libraries. Opponents counter that filtering software is a clumsy, subjective tool that all too often blocks harmless Web sites. Furthermore, opponents say, a government-imposed mandate is a poor substitute for parental supervision, private use of filters and public education efforts."

Bruce Shapiro: Let the hogfest begin - "This, then, is where Washington is headed in the first weeks of the Bush era. In the federal judiciary and in Congress, the drive is on to turn America's bankruptcy courts from a consumer safety valve into taxpayer-supported collection agencies -- for the same credit companies that have sold Americans a crushing mountain of personal debt. No system of commerce, as Conrad is fond of saying, can long survive without a debt-relief mechanism. But now American bankruptcy law has become just another beachhead in corporations' long drive to deregulate greed."

Reuters: American jet kills friendly troops in bombing run -- "A U.S. Navy F/A-18 warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on a group of military observers and killed five U.S. soldiers and a New Zealander during an exercise in the Kuwaiti desert near Iraq's border, officials said."

Gary Kamiya: Childhood's end -- "...In the age of retribution, better that childhood die than that a guilty person not suffer the full, satisfying measure of our wrath."

CNN: Defense to appeal teen's life sentence. It is worth noting that Broward County Judge Joel Lazarus' hands were apparently tied, under Florida law. It is also worth noting that this nightmare is the result of rejecting a plea-bargain offer. "The prosecution had offered a plea deal for three years in juvenile hall, one year of house arrest and 10 years of probation and counseling. Lionel's mother rejected the offer."

Reuters: 14-year-old boy gets life sentence -- As further evidence that Americans have concluded that our children are irredeemable, 14-year-old Lionel Tate was sentenced in Florida to life in prison without possibility of parole. Tate, who was 12 years old at the time, killed a younger playmate.

Salon: Deadly consequences -- 'Zero tolerance' policies may be backfiring, making schools less safe.

MSNBC: America is crumbling -- "From its roads to its dams and schools, Americaís public works are crumbling and putting lives at risk, a national civil engineering association said Thursday." Needed infrastructure repairs are estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over five years, from unsafe dams, unsafe bridges and deteriorating highways, to the electrical grid,. Or, as one pundit noted today, Bush can give the money to Americans so they can repair the broken axles on their cars from all the potholes.

Reuters: Hundreds of couples want clones -- "The scientists have said they will conduct the experiment in an unidentified Mediterranean country to try to escape the mounting opposition. Several countries already have banned human cloning research."

BBC: Human cloning: the 'terrible odds' -- "...There are limits on how far the desire to be a parent justifies grabbing any form of technology in order to meet our desires."

NY Times: Parkinson's research is set back by failure of fetal cell implants -- "A carefully controlled study that tried to treat Parkinson's disease by implanting cells from aborted fetuses into patients' brains not only failed to show an overall benefit but also revealed a disastrous side effect, scientists report." (Free registration required)

Robert Salladay: Too close to home -- "His heart was just missed, and the family is thankful for the randomness of certain trajectories."

Reuters: House passes heart of Bush tax cut -- The bill to create four lower tax brackets passed 230-198, largely along party lines. "'This is a partisan process,' House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri told reporters. 'This is happening without a budget, without hearings, without input from anybody ... This is a continuation of a my way or the highway leadership. George Bush has not changed the climate in Washington.'" Republicans responded that Democrats don't want tax cuts and are full of sour grapes.

MSNBC: Monarch butterflies feared poisoned -- "Environmentalists fear that [Mexican] loggers seeking access to protected forest might have deliberately wiped out millions of Monarch butterflies that migrate annually from Canada to Mexico for the winter."

Wired: Mac OS X Ready to Ware -- "Start the presses, Apple has finalized the code for its much-anticipated operating system. Mac enthusiasts say its impending release will be a historic event."

BBC: 'Quick' demise for the dinosaurs -- New evidence suggests that their extinction occurred over a mere 10,000 years.

Newsbytes: Bill Gates for President -- "If the White House intends to emulate the private sector, our study provides a guide to the corporate model it should follow."

Motley Fool: Immortality could be possible -- Interesting interview with Human Genome Sciences' CEO Dr. William Haseltine. Where we gonna put all these people? ;-)

CNN: Wolf training encourages cattle-friendly behavior

Wired: The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet? -- "The Grid evolved from the early desire to connect supercomputers into 'metacomputers' that could be remotely controlled. The word 'grid' was borrowed from the electricity grid, to imply that any compatible device could be plugged in anywhere on the Grid and be guaranteed a certain level of resources, regardless of where those resources might come from." Fix the power grid first, OK?

Salon: Ready for some lockjaw? -- Wyeth-Aerst's recent decision to quit making tetanus vaccine has medical professionals worried. Currently, there is a national shortage of adult tetanus toxoid (I called my doctor, and they said "Sorry"). This is one disease you don't want to get.

Correction to comment below: Charles "Andy" Williams may be tried as an adult in California but would not be subject to the death penalty due to his age.

Reuters: "He just has a gentle kind heart. The person I saw on TV yesterday in the police car was empty. That wasn't the boy who came and ate dinner at our house and called me mom."

One of the pieces I read yesterday pointed out that high school kids aren't blaming gun laws (or lack thereof) or poor parenting for these tragedies -- they are blaming their peers for being cruel bastards. The same thread emerged after the Columbine shootings.

I've been mulling over Meredith Maran's comments (see yesterday) that we "warehouse" our kids in "factories." Santana High School's student body numbers 1900; the suburban high school I attended had, I believe, a student body of 500. Given the staff-to-student ratio and the fact that teachers are grossly underpaid, perhaps Ms. Maran has a valid point that our educational system is dehumanizing. I don't know...

In the meantime, yes, what happened was terrible; and California, in its law-and-order zeal, will try to prosecute this kid as an adult (meaning he could face the death penalty). Weird...

Atlantic Monthly: The Reinvention of Privacy -- "It used to be that business and technology were considered the enemies of privacy. Not anymore."

The Register: Amazon division hacked, thousands of CCs exposed -- "The intruders are believed to have downloaded the customer records, including credit card details, names and addresses, but it is not known whether any of the credit cards has been used fraudulently." Bibliofind, part of amazon.com, specializes in rare and out-of-print books. The site was shut down while system administrators attempt to restore security. Apparently the hacking had been going on for four months before anyone noticed.

Salon has several very interesting, provocative stories today, mostly about the Santee school shooting, but also about Vice President Cheney:

In Worthless lives, Meredith Maran argues that we will continue to see school shootings until we quit "warehousing" our kids in "factories" and return to them a sense that they matter.

Been there, done that looks at the disturbingly unruffled media-savvy response of Santana High School students in front of the TV cameras.

Kevin Sweeney calls the Bush camp Heartless for downplaying the seriousness of Dick Cheney's condition. We should all be rooting for this man, and the President should take this opportunity to remind Americans about what really matters in life. Sweeney also notes, "There is eeriness in the denial.... It lends credence to the notion that the White House is petrified of a Bush presidency without Cheney, the man behind the curtain who is holding so much together."

Lastly, Jake tapper discovers, by way of a prominent cardiologist, that the White House is spinning Cheney's condition.

Good news for modem users! ZDNet reports that dial-up modems will get faster, thanks to the adoption of the new V.92 standard. While inbound data will not exceed 56k, outbound data will be upped to 48k; the connection process will be faster; and a data connection can be put on hold to take voice call, then resumed where the user left off. For folks in areas where DSL or cable service is not available (and for whom satellite service is problematic), this is great.

Santee, California, is reeling from the latest school shooting.

Vice President Cheney is recovering from another angioplasty and stent placement.

New York Times: A bit of perspective on the dot-com backlash -- "...The faulty premise to the anti-Net backlash is that the Internet's transforming power is negated by some investors' failure to profit from it. One forgets how many railroads and radio manufacturers failed in their day....The Internet is all about democratizing access to information and breaking down geographic barriers -- two threatening developments for any seller's profit margins." (Free registration required)

AP: Taliban destroys ancient Buddhas -- "Words fail me to describe adequately my feelings of consternation and powerlessness as I see the reports of the irreversible damage that is being done to Afghanistan's exceptional cultural heritage." More at CNN. This sort of cultural and artistic eradication, which has occurred throughout history, is sad.

Reuters: Hacker gets hold of top secret U.S. space codes -- "An unidentified computer hacker has got hold of top secret U.S. computer system codes for guiding space ships, rockets and satellites, a lawyer in Sweden said on Friday."

SJ Merc: House panel approves tax rate cuts -- The House Ways and Means Committee Thursday gave a rubber-stamp approval to President Bush's controversial $1.6 trillion tax-cut plan, without any debate or discussion.

Chris Gulker: Why the future is out on The Edge -- Great article on peer-to-peer (P2P) computing, clients and servers, your desktop PC as a server, and more. Is P2P the 'next big thing,' or will it go the way of 'Push' and pen computing?

ENN: Time running out for orangutans in the wild -- "Unless logging and poaching are greatly curbed, the largest natural population of orangutans may vanish from the planet over the next decade."

The Times: Emissions may be capped in U-turn by Republicans -- Environmentalists are cautiously happy, having had valid concerns over President Bush's agenda. The Times notes, however, "The new approach may be an attempt to shore up [Bush's] green credentials, with a battle looming with environmentalists over his determination to open up a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration."

NRDC: Health Trumps Cost of Clean Air, High Court Backs EPA Unanimously -- "The nation's health, not industry's pocketbook, must guide the government in fighting air pollution, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The justices voted unanimously that the Environmental Protection Agency may not consider the amount of money that the regulated businesses spend in meeting air-quality standards. They also ruled that the EPA wasn't seizing Congress' lawmaking powers when it set tougher smog and soot standards."

Wired: Privacy at work? Be serious -- "If you feel your privacy at work has been eroding lately, it's probably more than just your imagination. Experts say companies are under increasing pressure to monitor employees electronically, and workers should assume they are being watched."

Salon: The age of overwork -- Interesting interview with Jill Andresky Fraser, author of "White-Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate America." Fraser talks about the new white-collar sweatshops. "People made what they thought of as short-term sacrifices, which became accepted as the way American business has to be in order to be competitive in the global marketplace. And then we didn't have any choice anymore."