Upgraded the CPU on my Mac Mini from Core Duo 1.6GHz to Core2Duo 2.33GHz – (instructions & discussion) Results are amazing, and the bump in performance, even during transcoding of video, is immediately noticeable.  Note that there was a dramatic increase in fan noise so hope you’ve got your Mini in a closet somewhere as I do.  (UPDATE:  Fan noise was due to broken heatsink screw.  Here‘s an example of why this upgrade was a great idea)
	Created a generic bootable USB OSX Leopard installer on a 16GB Thumb Drive – (instructions & instructions) Upgrades and refreshes are now a breeze.  It’s also got all of my (licensed) apps like Adobe CS and Microsoft Office on board in case I ever lose my hard drive, etc.
	Installed and began regularly using Sxipper for login automation – (install) Apart from making it WAY easier for me to log in to sites and keep track of all of my passwords, this has allowed me to emancipate myself from a broken Firefox configuration that I have beeb married to since the early Betas.
	Hacked my AppleTV and installed XMBC/Boxee – (instructions) Since I already store my media within iTunes, and since Boxee has very limited content avilable at the moment, this was FAIL.  I do find it interesting to see what others are watching, but the only active friend I have is Boxee CEO Avner Ronen.  If Boxee wants me to be a frequent user, it needs to allow me to subscribe to torrent feeds and automagically download the movies to my AppleTV.
	Maxed out the RAM on all of our Macs – (get some) RAM prices are artificially deflated thanks to the manufacturers vastly overestimating the demand for memory following the release of Windows Vista.  My friends @ CanadaRAM have great prices as a result.  Their loss is our productivity gain!

All in all my future wife was quite dismayed at the number of times I broke out the torx screwdriver and cracked open a computer on the ottoman while watching “Long Way Down” but I’m grateful it’s over with.  Happy New Year all!

UPDATED: One more Bonus thing I did!

Installed Nambu on my MBPro and iPhone for managing my Tweets etc. – (discussion & iphone app ) The Nambu Desktop app is in beta, so you can’t get it yet… but the iPhone cllient is available for cheap from the iTunes Music store.  Keep an eye on the Nambu web site for the launch of the Desktop client.  Nambu in both cases revealed a number of Direct Messages I never knew I had… twitter is notoriously bad at revealing these via its web interface.

Seeya.

Mats Sundin in "Summer Rental"

Welcome, Mats Sundin, to Vancouver.  I will enjoy the six months you spend in our fair city, but I won’t expect to see you for much long afterward.  In the meantime, I hope that too many deckchairs aren’t reordered to make room for you, because all of that will be torn down at the end of the season.  Many people are giddy to see you coming here, but I’m not so sure.  Why?

I have become, of late, a student of the NHL’s Salary Cap.  While new Canucks GM Mike Gillis will be painted a hero for the feat of luring Sundin here in a desperate bid to bring The Cup back to the West Coast, there is a reason he was only able to sign Mats for a year, and similarly a reason why Sundin is a hero for sitting half the season out.

The announcement today that this past summer’s $10M bid for Sundin’s services is pro-rated gives Gillis a break on the Cap Rule.  The Canucks couldn’t have afforded Sundin without moving some players at the $10M offer made in July. But if Sundin joins the Canucks after Christmas they’ll be just under halfway through the season, meaning that of the $10M offer he actually stands to collect $5.5M – $6M on the season.  As this table shows the Canucks could find themselves with about $2.5M of breathing room below the cap.

Sounds great, right?

Sure.  But here’s why Mats Sundin might just well be the NHL’s highest-paid Summer Rental ever.

Next July, Alexander Edler’s salary will be bumped from a paltry $550,000 to a princely $3,250,000.  As if that weren’t enough the Sedins, each earning $3,575,000 will become Unrestricted Free Agents which means that their salaries will be largely determined by the marketplace.  That’s bad news.  Guys with their stats will likely be fielding offers of $4.5M to $5M next summer.  Adding insult to injury our senior remaining Swede Mattias Ohlund will be holding his palm out, sacred cow that he has become, and asking for something a little better than his current $3.5M contract as another UFA.  There will also be some significant inflation in Alexandre Burrows rolling off his rookie minimum of $483,333.. let’s target him conservatively at $1.5M.

Doing the math, there are probably at least an extra $6.25M in costs just to keep the current roster active next summer — not including Sundin.  That leaves about $2.5M of room.  So it’s clear that unless the ‘nucks shed some weight over the summer, or unless Sundin sits out next season until, say, March — he’s just another example of a new owner desperate to make an early play for a cup and grabbing what’s available in the short-term.  Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you… it worked for Colorado.

Just about the only thing that could keep Sundin in Vancouver for another year next season would be a substantial increase in the salary cap.  Last year the cap increased by $6.4M, or greater than 12%.  But these are tough economic times and many teams are struggling financially, particularly US expansion franchises.  There is likely to be limited appetite for increases in the cost of doing business for the next couple of seasons.

The Sedins and Ohlund being the untouchables that they are, these obstacles to a Second Season of Sundin are pretty immovable.  Still, it’s worth a shot!  Move a player like Pyatt before the deadline in exchange for someone with a little more promise, and you might have something.  Even with $2.5M of cap room, you could pick up a second summer rental whose annual contract is about $6M with the salary cap’s pro-rating system.

So fans, don’t be too hasty running down to the store to buy your “SUNDIN” Canucks jersey.  The New Era that many bloggers are hailing is likely to be fairly short-lived.

Okay, so let’s say you’re a big Ottawa Senators fan. No shame in that, really.. the team has been in the top three of their division and made the playoffs in every one of the last five seasons, suffering heartbreaking losses to the Leafs, Sabres, and Devils in each.

So for the 2006-2007 season, this was your year. The Sens’ juggernaut march to the Stanley Cup Final seemed almost pre-ordained, and the kids just wouldn’t stop nagging you to take them to a game. Unless you were a City Hall Employee that cost was going to be daunting, so you mortgaged the house, sold the family mini-van, and bought some pricey tickets to the ScotiaBank Place to watch them, ultimately, get eviscerated by the Anaheim Ducks.

Of course, when you got there you probably realized that both the inside and outside of the stadium were a sea of red jerseys. So off you trundled to the souvenir shop to get yourself a new jersey, one for each of the kids, and so on. It turns out that, according to this CBC article, you weren’t alone.. and the ring at the register was music to the ears of Senators’ management. The team, which was in bankruptcy in 2003, sold more jerseys during the postseason this year than they normally do even during the pre-Christmas rush, selling acoutrements to the “Red Army” three to four times their rate during the regular season.

Now comes a disclaimer: when it comes to Bettman‘s NHL, I am a cynic. Where the league has failed completely in any effort to develop revenues from television, licensing, and practically anything else, teams are left to fend for themselves. Thus, unlike other professional sports, the bulk of the pricey salaries of the players is borne by fans attending the games and supporting their teams by purchasing merchandise. There is no other major professional sport like this in the world.

Anyway, you feel great when you’re wearing the team’s uniform: and when that uniform is the same as the guys on the ice. That’s why, when the whole league went from using the white jersey as their home ice jersey to using their dark jerseys for home games three years ago, the fans all dutifully went to the gift shoppe and smacked down another $200 for the big red Sens (or blue Canucks, or ugly teal Sharks) jerseys, relegating the former home whites to the garage. You’re wearing the same togs as Alfredsson, and because you’re Canadian you have that certain ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ that makes you look a little bit like at least one of the 400+ NHL players, and maybe just maybe for a split second that girl in the third row thinks you might be Jason Spezza. Or at least Ian Turnbull. These are just some of the benefits of having just the right team jersey, aren’t they, SuperFan?

So there you are wearing your new $200 investment, watching the Sens lose, and thinking to yourself that at least you and the kids’ll be able to wear your new garments with pride for seasons to come. All hope is not lost, right?

Wrong.

Because the league in its wisdom has inked a deal with RBK to supply new uniforms to all 30 NHL teams, you’re about to be sold up the creek.  Alfredsson’ll be donning a completely new jersey this October.  This means that the life of your spankin’ new jersey will be sadly shortened.  The RBK Edge Uniform, as it is called, is different enough to obsolete your lame (formerly cool) old jersey.  But of course nobody outside of hockey circles knows that… and certainly Senators management were not making it widely understood that such a dramatic change was in the works — to wit, we still haven’t seen the redesigned jerseys for each of the teams, presumably to allow retailers (including the NHL itself) time to blow out old inventory on hapless punters.

This is how the new NHL rewards its (ever decreasing) base of loyal fans.  Bleed, suckers.

washingtonpost.com

Dissertation Could Be Security Threat Student’s Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information

By Laura Blumenfeld Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 8, 2003; Page A01

Sean Gorman’s professor called his dissertation “tedious and unimportant.” Gorman didn’t talk about it when he went on dates because “it was so boring they’d start staring up at the ceiling.” But since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gorman’s work has become so compelling that companies want to seize it, government officials want to suppress it, and al Qaeda operatives — if they could get their hands on it — would find a terrorist treasure map.

Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.

He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: “If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?” In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.

For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society and a secure society.

“I’m this grad student,” said Gorman, 29, amazed by his transformation from geek to cybercommando. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I’d be briefing government officials and private-sector CEOs.”

Invariably, he said, they suggest his work be classified. “Classify my dissertation? Crap. Does this mean I have to redo my PhD?” he said. “They’re worried about national security. I’m worried about getting my degree.” For academics, there always has been the imperative to publish or perish. In Gorman’s case, there’s a new concern: publish and perish.

“He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade — and then they both should burn it,” said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief. “The fiber-optic network is our country’s nervous system.” Every fiber, thin as a hair, carries the impulses responsible for Internet traffic, telephones, cell phones, military communications, bank transfers, air traffic control, signals to the power grids and water systems, among other things.

“You don’t want to give terrorists a road map to blow that up,” he said.

The Washington Post has agreed not to print the results of Gorman’s research, at the insistence of GMU. Some argue that the critical targets should be publicized, because it would force the government and industry to protect them. “It’s a tricky balance,” said Michael Vatis, founder and first director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. Vatis noted the dangerous time gap between exposing the weaknesses and patching them: “But I don’t think security through obscurity is a winning strategy.”

Gorman compiled his mega-map using publicly available material he found on the Internet. None of it was classified. His interest in maps evolved from his childhood, he said, because he “grew up all over the place.” Hunched in the back seat of the family car, he would puzzle over maps, trying to figure out where they should turn. Five years ago, he began work on a master’s degree in geography. His original intention was to map the physical infrastructure of the Internet, to see who was connected, who was not, and to measure its economic impact.

“We just had this research idea, and thought, ‘Okay,’ ” said his research partner, Laurie Schintler, an assistant professor at GMU. “I wasn’t even thinking about implications.”

The implications, however, in the post-Sept. 11 world, were enough to knock the wind out of John M. Derrick Jr., chairman of the board of Pepco Holdings Inc., which provides power to 1.8 million customers. When a reporter showed him sample pages of Gorman’s findings, he exhaled sharply.

“This is why CEOs of major power companies don’t sleep well these days,” Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist. “Why in the world have we been so stupid as a country to have all this information in the public domain? Does that openness still make sense? It sure as hell doesn’t to me.”

Recently, Derrick received an e-mail from an atlas company offering to sell him a color-coded map of the United States with all the electric power generation and transmission systems. He hit the reply button on his e-mail and typed: “With friends like you, we don’t need any enemies in the world.”

Toward the other end of the free speech spectrum are such people as John Young, a New York architect who created a Web site with a friend, featuring aerial pictures of nuclear weapons storage areas, military bases, ports, dams and secret government bunkers, along with driving directions from Mapquest.com. He has been contacted by the FBI, he said, but the site is still up.

“It gives us a great thrill,” Young said. “If it’s banned, it should be published. We like defying authority as a matter of principle.”

This is a time when people are rethinking the idea of innocent information. But it is hardly the first time a university has entangled itself in a war. John McCarthy, who oversees Gorman’s project at GMU’s National Center for Technology and Law, compared this period to World War II, when academics worked on code-breaking and atomic research. McCarthy introduced Gorman to some national security contacts. Gorman’s critical infrastructure project, he said, has opened a dialogue among academia, the public sector and the private sector. The challenge? “Getting everyone to trust each other,” McCarthy said. “It’s a three-way tension that tugs and pulls.”

When Gorman and Schintler presented their findings to government officials, McCarthy recalled, “they said, ‘Pssh, let’s scarf this up and classify it.’ ”

And when they presented them at a forum of chief information officers of the country’s largest financial services companies — clicking on a single cable running into a Manhattan office, for example, and revealing the names of 25 telecommunications providers — the executives suggested that Gorman and Schintler not be allowed to leave the building with the laptop.

Businesses are particularly sensitive about such data. They don’t want to lose consumer confidence, don’t want to be liable for security lapses and don’t want competitors to know about their weaknesses. The CIOs for Wells Fargo and Mellon Financial Corp. attended the meeting. Neither would comment for this story.

Catherine Allen, chief executive of BITS, the technology group for the financial services roundtable, said the attendees were “amazed” and “concerned” to see how interdependent their systems were. Following the presentation, she said, they decided to hold an exercise in an undisclosed Midwestern city this summer. They plan to simulate a cyber assault and a bomb attack jointly with the telecommunications industry and the National Communications System to measure the impact on financial services.

McCarthy hopes that by identifying vulnerabilities, the GMU research will help solve a risk management problem: “We know we can’t have a policeman at every bank and switching facility, so what things do you secure?”

Terrorists, presumably, are exploring the question from the other end. In December 2001, bin Laden appeared in a videotape and urged the destruction of the U.S. economy. He smiled occasionally, leaned into the camera and said, “This economic hemorrhaging continues until today, but requires more blows. And the youth should try to find the joints of the American economy and hit the enemy in these joints, with God’s permission.”

Every day, Gorman tries to identify those “joints,” sitting in a gray cinderblock lab secured by an electronic lock, multiple sign-on codes and a paper shredder. No one other than Gorman, Schintler or their research instructor, Rajendra Kulkarni, is allowed inside; they even take out their own trash. When their computer crashed, they removed the hard drive, froze it, smashed it and rubbed magnets over the surface to erase the data.

The university has imposed the security guidelines. It is trying to build a cooperative relationship with the Department of Homeland Security. Brenton Greene, director for infrastructure coordination at DHS, described the project as “a cookbook of how to exploit the vulnerabilities of our nation’s infrastructure.” He applauds Gorman’s work, as long as he refrains from publishing details. “We would recommend this not be openly distributed,” he said.

Greene is trying to help the center get federal funding. (“The government uses research funding as a carrot to induce people to refrain from speech they would otherwise engage in,” said Kathleen Sullivan, dean of Stanford Law School. “If it were a command, it would be unconstitutional.”)

All this is a bit heavy for Gorman, who is in many ways a typical student. His Christmas lights are still up in July; his living room couch came from a trash pile on the curb. Twice a day, Gorman rows on the Potomac. Out on the water, pulling the oars, he can stop thinking about how someone could bring down the New York Stock Exchange or cripple the Federal Reserve’s ability to transfer money.

On a recent afternoon, he drove his Jeep from the Fairfax campus toward the river. Along the way he talked about his dilemma: not wanting to hurt national security; not wanting to ruin his career as an academic.

“Is this going to completely squash me?” he said, biting his fingernail. GMU has determined that he will publish only the most general aspects of his work. “Academics make their name as an expert in something. . . . If I can’t talk about it, it’s hard to get hired. It’s hard to put ‘classified’ on your list of publications on your résumé.”

As he drove along Route 50, he pointed out a satellite tower and a Verizon installation. Somewhere in Arlington he took a wrong turn and stopped to ask for directions. It has always been that way with him. He’s great at maps, but somehow he ends up lost.

By Peter Greste BBC correspondent in Baghdad It was a single shot – nothing spectacular – but that split-second act of Iraqi resistance might well be recorded as the point at which America turned from liberator to occupier.

The soldier who died was on a foot patrol through the Baghdad University.

There was no sign of imminent danger, according to the politics and engineering students who saw what happened.

The soldier was almost certainly feeling relaxed and at ease as he sipped his soft-drink in the stifling heat.

Like all American troops on patrol here, he was sweating beneath his Kevlar flak-jacket and helmet.

They provided no protection whatsoever from the man who walked through the lunch-time crowd, put a pistol to the back of the soldier’s skull, and pulled the trigger.

Options narrow

The killing was an audacious strike that forced the US military planners here to once more re-think their strategy across Iraq.

We’ve learned, to our cost, that as soon as you let your guard down, the bad guys whack us out of nowhere US soldier “Every time there’s another attack, our bosses look at it and work out how to avoid the same thing happening again,” said Lieutenant Brian Kendrick of the 1st Armoured Division.

“We’re getting new orders all the time, but I’m not sure how you stop that kind of thing, unless we give up the foot patrols. But they are the best way of getting in touch with people, and gathering intel (intelligence)”.

As the steady drum-beat of attacks strike the coalition forces each day, the options for the military planners narrow.

‘Hard to fight back’

There are no more foot patrols through the Baghdad University now.

Soldiers hardly ever leave their armoured Humvee vehicles, and every Iraqi civilian is treated as a potential attacker.

And for every death, there are at least a dozen other attacks that do not make the daily press bulletins.

In military terms, they are barely a pinprick on the rump of the American military, but they are taking their toll on the individual soldiers.

“You can’t ever relax here,” said one.

“There’s no obvious danger, but we’ve learned to our cost that as soon as you let your guard down, the bad guys whack us out of nowhere. But with so many civilians around, it’s hard to fight back.”

But some American troops are.

Sapping morale

Soldiers at a checkpoint recently believed they had spotted a sniper preparing to attack from the roof of a nearby building.

They fired at the position, and went to see what was there.

They found they had indeed killed someone – an 11-year-old boy.

It is a complex, messy and badly defined battlefield that is driving the Americans ever further from the very people they are supposed to be liberating, and sapping morale at the same time.

“I don’t mind doing my duty. That’s why I signed up,” Sergeant Todd Lewis said.

“But the problem is I don’t know how long I’m going to have to do it. I was married two years ago, and I’ve only seen my wife for six months in that time.

“We usually know how long we’re going to be away, but the most our bosses are telling us now is ‘We’ll try to have you home before Christmas’. I don’t think they really know what they’re doing. I certainly don’t,” he said.

In and out?

And so, the question of an exit strategy has now become central to the issue of flagging troop morale.

It exists in broad theoretical terms – the plan is to set up political structures, draft a new constitution, hold elections and then pray that the result will be a Western friendly and oil-rich government in Baghdad.

But that is not the kind of clear “roadmap”, to borrow a term, with defined timetables and obvious way-points along the route that the Iraqi people or coalition soldiers want to see.

“First they said we’d be in and out as quickly as possible,” said Sergeant Lewis.

“Now they’re saying that we’ll be here for as long as it takes to establish freedom and democracy. The longer I’m here, the less sure I am that it will happen.”

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3055553.stm

Published: 2003/07/10 11:42:31 GMT

© BBC MMIII

Retailers Put All Their Grenades in One Basket Full Metal Bonnet by Erik Baard March 4th, 2003 1:00 PM

“A lighthearted and fun gift,” says one merchant.

While Pentagon war planners may be gunning for an attack on Iraq by mid March, heavily armed soldiers have already quietly seized a strategic position: your Easter basket. National retailers like Kmart and Walgreens have stocked their shelves with baskets in which the traditional chocolate rabbit centerpiece has been displaced by plastic military action figures and their make-believe lethal paraphernalia. Tri-state Rite Aid, Genovese, and Wal-Mart stores promise their martial Easter baskets will arrive soon.

At the Astor Place Kmart, the encampment is on display just inside the main entrance. A camouflaged sandy-haired soldier with an American-flag arm patch stands alert in a teal, pink, and yellow basket beneath a pretty green-and-purple bow. Within a doll-arm’s reach are a machine gun, rifle, hand grenade, large knife, pistol, and round of ammunition. In the next basket a buzz-cut blond with a snazzy dress uniform hawks over homeland security, an American eagle shield on his arm, and a machine gun, pistol, Bowie knife, two grenades, truncheon, and handcuffs at the ready.

One must hunt a little harder to find the Easter sniper at Walgreens, but what lies in wait among the bunnies and chicks there is perhaps even more surreal. The Super Wrriors (sic) Battle Set and Placekeepers (sic) Military Men Play Set bristle with toy assault rifles and machine guns, tanks, troop transports, bomber planes, commanded by armored men with shaved heads and sunglasses. The assortment also includes a space-age ray gun and other imaginary hardware for orbital combat. Packets of jellybeans are tossed in as if an afterthought, nestled in the cellophane underbrush like anti-personnel mines.

Not surprisingly, the merger of religious observance and jingoistic lust sparked the ire of Christian leaders. Bishop George Packard, who oversees spiritual care for Episcopalian members of the armed services, worries about practical issues. He’s concerned about creating a backlash against the military, and questions the message sent to Muslims by the melding of a Christian holiday with images of war.

The products themselves, Packard says, are “really, really bizarre. It’s a crass embrace of the far end of a range of options for parents to provide their kids. Easter baskets have been deteriorating for a long time, but they’ve really gone over the edge. I am so disturbed, I am so confounded by this bad taste.”

Other Christian groups agree. Dr. Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention commission on ethics and religious liberty, says, “Well, of course, it certainly would be a jarring note for the celebration of Easter. I certainly wouldn’t buy one for my children, when my children were small.”

The religious leaders noted that the eggs, bunnies, and chicks so intimately associated with the holiday are also unrelated to the narrative of Jesus. They are instead the trappings of Ostara (also known as Eostra), a Teutonic goddess of spring, fertility, and the dawn, who also lends her name to estrogen and the East.

But guns would seem to be at odds with that convergent pagan and Christian spirit of renewal. The juxtaposition is an affront to some soldiers, too. “I call that, myself, a pretty stupid insult and a slap at a religious observance,” says Bruce Zielsdorf, who served 23 years in the air force and is now a spokesperson for the army in New York City. “First they commercialize one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar, and now this? It sounds like some vendor threw some stuff up on a shelf to see what would sell. I can assure you that we were not consulted on any decision to make any such Easter baskets.”

Retailers went on the defensive. “There was no intention on our part to offer up a violent Easter basket. We’re very conscious of what will and what will not offend our customers. It was meant to be a lighthearted and fun gift,” says Kmart spokesperson Abigail Jacobs. “It’s in my opinion a harmless toy included in an Easter basket.”

The reaction to a Voice query at Walgreens contrasted sharply, with company representatives retreating instead of digging in. “Going forward next year, we don’t plan to have Easter baskets with toy soldiers or a military theme. The thinking on these Easter baskets was more toy-related and we didn’t really think about it otherwise,” says Walgreens spokesperson Carol Hively. “We apologize to anybody who is offended or felt that this was inappropriate.”

That’s not enough for Bishop Packard. “Well, isn’t that nice? What about this season? This is when it really counts,” he says. “Kids are eavesdropping on the talk of war and get enveloped in its trauma.”

The armored baskets are only the latest combat-themed toy to hit the shelves. Hasbro’s G.I. Joe is a perennial favorite that’s surged 46 percent amid the war fever, and new ones like Tora Bora “Ted” are still being rolled out by other companies. In the current climate, the plastic soldiers allow children to “role-play out their feelings about war,” says toy industry analyst Reyne Rice of the NPD Group.

Easter provides a way for makers of generic troops to capitalize on the trend. Unlike superhero dolls, war toys don’t come with costly trademarks attached. That lowers the bar to entry for small manufacturers, today typically Chinese. That industry has followed confectioners to transform Easter into the second-largest selling season, Rice says. “Maybe they are trying to promote products in another way, to draw attention to them. Obviously this isn’t the kind of attention they intended,” she says. Kmart’s basket supplier, Megatoys, didn’t return calls.

Most toy-filled baskets contain items like sandbox goodies and cuddly dolls, and this isn’t the first time the toy soldiers have made an appearance. This year, though, the action figures seem to have more prominent shelf positions at the two downtown Kmart and Walgreens stores. Hively says they were particularly strong sellers. Walgreens’ supplier, Wondertreats, justifies its product as the result of careful market analysis. “We don’t determine the mix [of toys]. It’s determined by what the consumers want. We talk to kids and watch kids in stores,” explains Greg Hall, owner of Wondertreats. “They’re exposed to the violence and blood that sells newspapers. We don’t create that, we’re just responding to what customers want.”

Such toys are, however, a frequent focus of children’s advocacy groups like the Lion & Lamb Project, which during the Christmas season highlighted another toy, the Military Forward Command Post, made by Ever Sparkle Industrial, that seemed to cross culture lines in an unsettling way. The Web site for Kay-Bee Toy Stores describes it as “a lifelike replica of a real battlefield headquarter. . . . Two-tiered and loaded with realistic weapons, accessories, furniture and equipment, this set is ready for action.” This “battle-worn playset,” also carried for the holiday season by Kmart, Toys “R” Us and Amazon.com, looks like a dollhouse but has been gutted, torched, and bullet-pocked. A similar toy offered by Hobbylinc.com features a bombed-out farmhouse.

“Parents say, ‘Oh, kids know it’s fantasy,’ and then they want to tell their kids to believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny,” observes Lion & Lamb director Daphne White. “You can’t have it both ways. To market war as something fun and to play around with is sending them a very dangerous message.”

More a family falling out than a clash of civilisations

Many intricate links bind Christianity, Judaism and Islam

William Dalrymple Tuesday December 24, 2002 The Guardian

In late December, the plains of North India turn suddenly cold and grey. Towards evening, as the sun is beginning to set over the village mosques, smoke from the cooking-fires begins to mass in a layer at the level of the tree tops. By dusk, the layer has turned into a vaporous mist which thickens and curdles overnight to form by morning a dense fog.

Some 15 years ago, on just such a bleak dawn, I climbed the steps leading to the mosque at Fatehpur Sikri. It was just before Christmas, I kept thinking, but not only was there not a Christmas tree in sight, there was nothing remotely Christian to be seen – or so I thought.

For when I reached the top of the steps that rose to the Buland Darwaza – the arched gateway leading into the mosque – I saw something that utterly confused me. The calligraphy which framed the arch read as follows: “Jesus, Son of Mary (on whom be peace) said: The World is a Bridge, pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the World endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer, for the rest is unseen.”

The inscription was doubly surprising: not only was I taken aback to find an apparently Christian quotation given centre stage in a Muslim monument, but the inscription itself was unfamiliar. It sounded the sort of thing Jesus might have said, but did he really say that the world was like a bridge? And even if he had, why would a Muslim emperor place such a phrase over the entrance to the main mosque in his capital city?

It was only much later that I began to be able to answer these questions. The phrase emblazoned over the gateway was, I learned, one of hundreds of sayings of Jesus that fill Islamic literature. Some derive from the four gospels, others from now rejected Christian texts like the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, others again from the wider oral culture of the near East – possibly authentic stories which Islam has retained but which western Christianity has lost.

They fill out the reverential picture of Christ painted in the Koran where Jesus is called the Messiah, the Prophet, Word and Spirit of God, though – as in some currents of Christian thought of the period – his outright divinity is questioned.

I have been thinking a lot about that quotation over the last few months. Ever since September 11 the rightwing press here have been united in a virulent Islamophobia. After that atrocity perhaps this is inevitable; but it doesn’t alter the fact that the image these writers are projecting of Islam is ludicrously unbalanced. For the links that bind Christianity, Judaism and Islam are so deep, and so intricately woven, that the more you learn about them, the more the occasional confrontations between them begin to seem like a civil war between different streams of the same tradition than any clash of civilisations.

When the Byzantines were first confronted by the Prophet’s armies, they assumed that Islam was merely a form of Christianity: Islam of course accepts much of the Old and New Testaments, obeys the Mosaic laws about circumcision and ablutions, and venerates both Jesus and the Jewish prophets. The early Life of Mohammed relates how, when Mohammed entered Mecca and ordered the destruction of all images, he came upon an icon of the Virgin and Child. Reverently covering it with his cloak, he ordered the icon to be looked on as sacrosanct.

Indeed, the greatest theologian of the early church, Saint John of Damascus, was convinced that Islam was not a new religion, but a variation on a Christian theme. This perception is particularly remarkable as Saint John grew up in Damascus, the hub of the young Islamic world, where he was an intimate friend of the future Caliph al-Yazid; the two boys’ drinking bouts were the subject of much gossip. But, in his old age, Saint John took the habit at the desert monastery of Mar Saba, where he began work on his masterpiece, the Fount of Knowledge. It was here that John wrote his critique of Islam, the first ever penned by a Christian. Intriguingly, John regarded Islam as a form of Christianity related to Arianism which, like Islam, took as its starting point the idea that on Christmas day God could not have become fully human without compromising his divinity.

Used to the often surrealistic scriptures of the Gnostics, John was unworried by the points where the Koran diverges from the gospels – such as the unfamiliar description it gives of the first Christmas. In this version, Jesus is born under a palm tree, shortly after which the Christ child sits up and says: “I am the servant of God. He has given me the Gospel and ordained me a prophet. I was blessed on the day I was born; and blessed I shall be on the day of my death; and may peace be upon me on the day when I shall be raised to life.”

The longer you spend in the Christian communities of India and the Middle East, the more you realise the extent to which eastern Christian practice formed the template for the basic conventions of Islam. Ramadan, for example, bears startling similarities to Lent, which in the eastern Christian churches still involves a gruelling fast. Certainly if a monk from Byzantium were to come back today he would find more that was familiar in the practices and beliefs of a Muslim sufi than he would with an American evangelical. Yet this surprises us because we insist on thinking of Christianity as a thoroughly western religion rather than the oriental faith it actually is.

Last month I came across a Mughal miniature which was painted soon after the Buland Darwaza had been built. It is a nativity scene, but the wise men are Mughal courtiers, Mary is attended by a Mughal serving girl, and the Christ child and his mother are sitting under a palm tree. As this miniature shows, there are certainly major differences between the two faiths – not least the central fact, in mainstream Christianity, of Jesus’s divinity. But Christmas is a feast which Muslims and Christians can share together without reservation. At this moment, in the shadow of an immoral and entirely unnecessary war with Iraq, when the Christian west and Islamic east seem to be engaged in another major confrontation, there has never been a greater need for both sides to realise what they have in common and, as in this miniature, to gather around the Christ child, to pray for peace.

· William Dalrymple, author of From the Holy Mountain, will be speaking at Visions of Palestine on January 9 2003, 6.30pm, at the Royal Geographical Society, London. To reserve a ticket, send a SAE and cheque for £20 to CAABU, 1 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DE, or phone 020-7832 1310

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Happy Holidays To All Of You And Your Families… have fun in 2003!

-Mr. Sappy.

———–

-Ian.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Stewart Reid
> Date: Sun Dec 15, 2002 12:41:10 PM US/Pacific
> To: “Ian Bell (E-mail)”
> Subject: For FOIB Distribution
>
> Today I got the finger,
>
> I had just turned down a typical narrow Vancouver West Side street,
> parked cars on both sides and only room for one car to get through. 
> My thoughts are on Christmas presents to buy, cards to write and where
> to find a dollar store so I can buy some cheap Christmas cards that
> are going to get chucked by January 2.  Oh and I was thinking about my
> driving as I rallied around the corner.  I was immediately forced to
> stop by a car that was about ¾ of the way down the block with no where
> for it to pull over to allow me to pass.  I do the polite thing, stop,
> reverse a bit and pull over.  The car passes and I get a smile and
> wave thanks from the driver, how nice and civil.  On I go another 50
> yards before another car and I are sorting out the same issue,
> fortunately there is room for both of us maneuver – a bit of give and
> take for both our mutual benefit.
>
> As I pull out from this maneuvering I am looking directly a women who
> has just stepped out of her car, both feet firmly planted on the
> pavement.  In an instant I process lots of information – she is decked
> out in running tights and apparel, probably just came from the gym or
> a run in the endowment lands I conjure as our eyes are locked on each
> as I pass by.  Now direct consistent eye contact is rare in Vancouver
> and in an instant I sum up this woman – confident, attractive, kind of
> girl next door good looks, athletic.  That’s what popped in my head as
> that is what we are all apt to do – process what we see, hear, touch,
> smell, etc. typically in a random fashion.  Back to my driving and
> thoughts.
>
> I check the rear view mirror for that last fleeting glance; she is
> stopped in the middle of the road with a firm stance – blatantly
> giving me the finger! With authority even.  And the funny thing is I
> don’t even know why nor get upset.  I am just morbidly curious after
> my rush of positive thoughts over this person.  So what mortal sins
> did I commit?  What driving taboo did I break?  Should I have stopped
> the car, gallantly thrown out a red carpet to allow this woman to
> cross the road? (James Bond has this option in his car I am sure)  Did
> I not even notice that I might have scared the living daylights out of
> her at a blazing 5 km an hour?  What?
>
> But at least I had a smirk on my face because I will never know.  With
> that in mind I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy
> New Year as we sometimes wonder through life’s random events! 
>
> I will be at Greg Kelly’s this Thursday night, 7 PM onwards 1053
> Douglas for Christmas cocktails – the more the merrier as usual.
>
> All the best for 2003
>
> Stewart Reid
>

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DJHS is at it again… DSL was down yesterday all day, so you benefit from his boredom:

DJ Heavy Smurf’s Dirty Mix – 15 Tracks, Length: 72:58 – Mixed on Dec. 11, 2002