the frig blig

are fueling our little garden patch these days. Here’s our corn:
and here’s some berries in our raspberry patch:
What are you growing today?

As reported this morning on the front pages of newspapers in a town near you, the CIA released (”declassified”) a censored document called the Family Jewels, consisting of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger asking them to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency’s charter. Declassified 34 years later as a result of a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request, you can read it for yourself at the CIA’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room.

After reading the portion about John Roselli (a Mafioso recruited by the agency to murder Castro), further research led me to some interesting material about the Kennedy Assasination. Along the way I learned more about the following men: James Files; Mark Lane; and E. Howard Hunt (the Watergate break-in organizer). For instance, I learned that William F. Buckley Jr. worked with Hunt at the CIA’s Mexico City office in 1950. More interesting than that, however, I arrived at a plausible motive for the CIA to kill President Kennedy: because they were pissed off at him for failing to overturn the Castro regime. Aha!

We saw my friend D (H) perform with the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities at a benefit for Hollow Earth Radio yesterday, here they are/were:

One of my quick and comfortable meals is macaroni and cheese. Since I perfected the recipe I hereby share it with the world.

Frank & Annie’s Mac-n-Cheese:

Ingredients:

1 box Annie’s mac n cheese (any kind except NOT whole wheat)
some brie
some butter
some coarse black pepper
some dill weed

Steps:
Fill pot with water, cover and set to boil. Push Annie’s tail (open the box of noodles). Remove packet of dried cheese and throw it away. Dump noodles into boiling water and cook for approx 7 minutes. Once noodles are cooked, drain water from pot and add butter and stir. Add brie and stir it up. Add spices and stir some more.

This meal takes about 10 minutes to make and is nicely complimented with a cold beer.

Shawn Pogatchnik of the Associated Press reports that former President Jimmy Carter spoke at the ninth annual NGO Forum on Human Rights, which convened in Dublin last Tuesday. Carter accused the U.S., Israel and the European Union of seeking to divide the Palestinian people by reopening aid to President Mahmoud Abbas’ new government in the West Bank while denying the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.” Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas’ new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples.”

“All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there’s no effort from the outside to bring the two together,” he was reported to have said.

While he did make human rights a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, there is some irony here given that while in office Carter authored the Carter Doctrine, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. No matter that the United States is located in North America; our national interests are whereever we like and we will defend them to the death.

No U.S. administration has ever recognized the rights of Palestinians to self-determination, so why should they start now? Israel has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance from the U.S. since 1976. The U.S. turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear weapons. Clearly the U.S. is playing every card it can to minimize the Palestinians — a parallel could be drawn to how the U.S. treated native Americans after stealing their land and forcing them onto reservations. It could be rather convenient to have a friendly and powerful nation like Israel nearby our national interests in the Persian Gulf.

Does former President Carter really care about the Palestinians? If so it’s a little late in the game. The U.S. only cares about human rights when they align with our, um, national interests in the world. Perhaps if oil was discovered in Gaza, Hamas might gain a little leverage with the U.S.

Another example (besides Hamas) where the U.S. refuses to acknowledge democracy is Pakistan, where our feds strongly support General Musharraf, a self-appointed President who took power in a military coup which ousted the elected Prime Minister. The U.S. is providing no support for the popular democratic opposition in that country. So in other words, the U.S. loves democracy just as long as the guy we like gets elected.

Go, a game estimated at perhaps 4000 years old, has been played with slate and shell stones on wooden boards for millennia. Computers have been programed to play but thus far have never surpassed the rank of strong amateur. The biggest impact recently of computers on the go scene has been (1) the advent of internet-based go servers, which let people worldwide play each other 24 hours a day; and (2) the standardization of a file format for recording and subsequent reviewing of games called SGF.

Last April I discovered that a small software company Indigonauts was distributing a java implementation of a go recording program for cell phones. I’d been wanting such a program ever since I obtained my Razr V3, which included java. I downloaded it, and it worked, and I happily paid the 4.95 euros price Indigonauts was asking for their gome program.

Unhappily it turns out there are some features that are unavailable to phones without jsr75, phones older than midp2. Phones such as mine. Features such as saving to files outside of the java vm. Features that I want.

So this program gome has motivated me to upgrade my phone. I spent a little time researching what’s current and will be ordering my new phone soon (once I confirm with my service provider that I can migrate my sim chip, with their account, to the new phone).

And so we see how stones and wood help drive the economy of technology.

A few pictures from today’s 2007 Fremont Solstice Parade — it ain’t nothing but a party! Suzan and I enjoyed the festivities with our friends N and D from Salt Lake (visiting for the weekend) and CEG.

Q: What color did I paint the music room?
A: bianco.

Q: What books am I reading now?
A: Enclosure Josekis (Takemiya), Intuition (Fuller), Angle of Repose (Stegner), Book of Longing (Cohen).

Q: What is the vegetable equivalent of anchovies?
A: Olives.

Q: Who do I love?
A: Suzan.

Q: Which animals did we see on the islands?
A: Quick silent deer, swooping circling swallows, a soaring shrieking raven, a row of seagulls on the rooftop, sheep herded along the road by 3 black dogs, an unfortunate slug, a fiddler on the pebbly beach, a mysterious pet.

Q: How long is the wooden boat Peter is fixing and when was it built?
A: 50 feet, 1954.

Ain’t they cute?!