Looking to consolidate your time worrying about global crises? Why not worry about North Korea getting SARS? So far neither Korea says they have it. North Korea claims to have set up a vague “brisk” defense against the disease.
Would they really be able to detect it? Or fight it given that their population is starving and
living in basically the dark ages, at least as far as electricity is concerned.
So far SARS has been largely among health care workers and international business travellers. Having a negligible economy and scant tourist traffic, North Korea’s isolation may serve it well with SARS. And even though its refugees flee to China, its border isn’t near the south where most SARS cases are.
More worrying is that the SARS chief victims so far — the nurses and executives — are the people most likely to get the very best care. What happens if starts slipping into the poor underground populations like illegal immigrants?
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Posted 25 April 2003
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After a very busy 20th century, the critical theory is in a bind. For years, university departments and superstar professors have made their reputations on a series of Big Ideas like psychoanalysis, structuralism and post-colonialism. With each new paradigm, it brought the other humanities into its orbit — history, architecture, and music have all felt its influence. At the same time, Theory (big “T”) became more and more removed from public discourse. It was obscured from mere mortals by insider language and obscure citations. Witness the Postmodernism Generator, which produces academic texts from randomly generated but plausibly ridiculous snippets of text. Perhaps mercifully, the Big Ideas have all since fallen out of favor. The wane is perhaps best illustrated by the “Social Text” hoax, in which an NYU physicist managed to get a completely bogus paper published in a prominent journal by adopting en vogue language and flattering the editors. Despite some initial enthusiasm over the completely unremarkable Empire, there is little hope for a new Big Idea that can serve as the framework for published papers and tenures.
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We are not making this up.
The Pentagon is begging the public to stop sending flea and tick collars to troops in Iraq. They appreciate the sentiment, “but the fact is that flea and tick collars are not approved for humans and in fact are quite detrimental to the skin. Our skin is different from that of dogs, and the pesticides tend to burn our skin,” says Army Maj. Dwight Rickard, contingency liaison officer for the Armed Forces Pest Management Board. This isn’t just a case of well-meaning but mentally challenged citizens: a 1999 Rand survery discovered that about 20,000 personnel used flea and tick collars in the first Gulf War, and linked their use to some symptoms of the Gulf War syndrome. Everyone head over to the Darwin Awards and make an appropriate submission.
Thanks to Dahlia for this Agence France-Presse piece with a revealing insight into the lives of the Iraqi secret police. The Mukhabarat, tasked with quashing any “careless whispers”, had a particularly “hard day” after being tomahawked by the United States. They quicly left their “battlestations”, “praying for time”. In addition to their “father figure”, the US found a number of posters on the wall. Among them: “mother’s pride” and “love machine” George Michael. Nothing looks the same in light.
Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo is being interviewed by my main man Aaron Brown on CNN at 11:30p EST tonight. Update: Imagine my disbelief and profound disappointment when our Man from Minnesota got to Today’s Papers without a mention of Mr. Marshall. Instead, some super-blinky expert on training constabulary. But wait! The plot thickens! TPM says he cancelled on short notice. We’re trying to imagine a set of circumstances under which you could not appear on CNN, but could still update your blog…
The reports are new, and the circumstances are sketchy, but the US has captured Abu Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Liberation Front and “mastermind” of the Achille Lauro hijacking. He was apparently in a house on the outskirts of Baghdad when Special Forces grabbed him. CNN is reporting that he’s already tried to enter Syria where he was turned back.
Expect a lot of arguing as to whether this helps the Bush Administration’s policy or not. They will treat this as vindication of their “Iraq support terrorism” argument, which had been weak. The opposition will say that Abu Abbas isn’t a member of Al-Qaeda, so they haven’t vindicated anything.
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Posted 15 April 2003
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Weight Watchers wasn’t always the bastion of cool it is now. It used to be nasty.
The new regime is love, baby.
The Stupid Security Competition is similar to the Darwin awards, but there are fewer dead people and more embarassingly ill-considered security measures. The winners this year include JFK airport, who made a woman drink her own breast milk, and San Francisco General Hospital for placing armed guards at the main entrance to prevent those without photo ID from entering, while leaving all side entrances unattended. San Francisco International Airport also received an award for their shoe-bomb screening method: banging the shoe against a tabletop.
This is perhaps a good time to mention Bruce Schneier, eminent cryptographer and security guru. Most of you haven’t heard of him, which is a pity. His specialty may be computer security, but he’s very good at applying computer security techniques to real-world situations. In his Cryptogram newsletter, he often takes companies and governments to task for ill-considered security measures, what he calls “snake oil.” In the past, he has discussed airport security measures, National ID cards, and the problem with intelligence agencies. He’s whipsmart, and though famous in the tiny computer security community, he deserves a great deal more attention from the general public.
I'm the Chief Technology Strategist for the Red Hat US Public Sector group, an open source and free culture advocate, a picky drinker, an amateur aesthete, and a dog enthusiast.
