Music by the 'Numbers Stations'

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4167689

Top 25 e-mailed stories for the past 24 hours

Sonasphere

The new version of Nao Tokui's Sonasphere is out and is compatible with OS X 10.3. It has a few bugs, but it is a beta after all.

Anyway, a nice, principled compositional system. Obviously limited by its narrowly defined scope (sometimes this can be a very good thing), it does its job quite well.



[...]

From the very good blog Aposteriori.org.

CONGOTRONICS: KONONO N° 1

They can draft you into the army, and if you are in the army, you cannot leave:

And you can never come back:

...a person who has renounced U.S. nationality will be required to apply for a visa to travel to the United States, just as other aliens do. If found ineligible for a visa, a renunciant could be permanently barred from the United States. Renunciation of American citizenship does not necessarily prevent a former citizen's deportation from a foreign country to the United States. [...]

AVG IQ                                  AVG Income     '04 Electoral
(1) Connecticut..................113      $26,979          Kerry
(2) Massachusetts................111      $24,059          Kerry
(3) New Jersey...................111      $26,457          Kerry
(4) New York.....................109      $23,534          Kerry
(5) Rhode Island.................107      $20,299          Kerry
(6) Hawaii.......................106      $21,218          Kerry
(7) Maryland.....................105      $22,974          Kerry
(8) New Hampshire................105      $22,934          Kerry
(9) Illinois.....................104      $21,608          Kerry
(10) Delaware....................103      $21,451          Kerry
(11) Minnesota...................102      $20,049          Kerry
(12) Vermont.....................102      $18,834          Kerry
(13) Washington..................102      $20,398          Kerry
(14) California..................101      $21,278          Kerry
(15) Pennsylvania................101      $20,253          Kerry
(16) Maine.......................100      $18,226          Kerry
(17) Wisconsin...................100      $18,727          Kerry
(18) Virginia....................100      $20,629          Bush
(19) Iowa.........................99      $18,287          Kerry
(20) Oregon.......................99      $18,202          Kerry
(21) Colorado.....................99      $20,124          Bush
(22) Michigan.....................99      $19,508          Bush
(23) Nevada.......................99      $20,266          Bush
(24) Ohio.........................99      $18,624          Bush
(25) Alaska.......................98      $21,603          Bush
(26) Florida......................98      $19,397          Bush
(27) Missouri.....................98      $18,835          Bush
(28) Kansas.......................96      $19,376          Bush
(29) Nebraska.....................95      $19,084          Bush
(30) Arizona......................94      $17,119          Bush
(31) Indiana......................94      $18,043          Bush
(32) Tennessee....................94      $17,341          Bush
(33) North Carolina...............93      $17,667          Bush
(34) West Virginia................93      $15,065          Bush
(35) Arkansas.....................92      $15,439          Bush
(36) Georgia......................92      $18,130          Bush
(37) Kentucky.....................92      $16,534          Bush
(38) New Mexico...................92      $15,353          Bush
(39) North Dakota.................92      $16,854          Bush
(40) Texas........................92      $17,892          Bush
(41) Alabama......................90      $16,220          Bush
(42) Louisiana....................90      $15,712          Bush
(43) Montana......................90      $16,062          Bush
(44) Oklahoma.....................90      $16,198          Bush
(45) South Dakota.................90      $16,558          Bush
(46) South Carolina...............89      $15,989          Bush
(47) Wyoming......................89      $17,423          Bush
(48) Idaho........................87      $16,067          Bush
(49) Utah.........................87      $15,325          Bush
(50) Mississippi..................85      $14,088          Bush

Bush..... IQ:  91
Kerry.... IQ: 128


*	Retarded is considered 75-85.

http://www.commonalty.com/iq.txt


John Burke | Principal

the world famous 1104.ca

Coke adds life ... to cotton crops

Indian villagers find sugary fizzy drinks are the real thing

Tuesday, November 9, 2004 Posted: 0422 GMT (1222 HKT)

	An Indian street worker recycles old cotton in Kolkata.

GUNTUR, India (Reuters) -- Cotton farmers in some Indian villages are flocking to buy Coca-Cola and Pepsi, believing that the sugar in the fizzy drinks kills pests.

Farmers say scientists advised them to mix pesticides with a sugary syrup to control pests, and they found the mixture cheaper and more effective than pure chemicals.

N. Hamunayya, who has become a celebrity in his village in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, said his crop survived an attack of pests that had resisted other remedies.

"We found that all the colas had uniform effect on pests. The pests became numb and fell to the ground," he said.

[...]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/11/08/india.coke.reut/index.html

Agent Orange and Coca Cola.

Gotta Love it!

The dollar could slide still further, in spite of hitting an all-time low against the euro last week in the wake of George W. Bush's re-election, currency traders have said.

The dollar sell-off has resumed amid fears among traders that Mr Bush's victory will bring four more years of widening US budget and current account deficits, heightened geopolitical risks and a policy of "benign neglect" of the dollar.

Many currency traders were taken aback on Friday when the greenback fell in spite of bullish data showing the US economy created 337,000 jobs in October.

"If this can't cause the dollar to strengthen you have to tell me what will. This is a big green light to sell the dollar," said David Bloom, currency analyst at HSBC, as the greenback fell to a nine-year low in trade-weighted terms.

The dollar's fall comes as the Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise US interest rates by a quarter point to 2 per cent when it meets on Wednesday and to signal that it will continue with a measured pace of rate increases.

Speculative traders in Chicago last week racked up the highest number of long-euro, short-dollar contracts on record. Options traders have reported brisk business in euro calls - contracts to buy the euro at a pre-determined rate.

However, the market has been rife with rumours that the latest wave of selling has been led by foreign governments seeking to cut their exposure to US assets.

India and Russia have reportedly been selling US assets, as well as petrodollar-rich Middle Eastern investors.

China, which has $515bn of reserves, was also said to be selling dollars and buying Asian currencies in readiness to switch the renminbi's dollar peg to a basket arrangement, something Chinese officials have increasingly hinted at. Any re-allocation could push the dollar sharply lower and Treasury yields markedly higher. [...]

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/257979a6-30f4-11d9-a595-00000e2511c8.html

Garrison Keillor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Garrison Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an author and radio host.

He is best known as the founder and host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion (also known as Garrison Keillor's Radio Show on BBC 7 and in Ireland). Keillor's trademark storyline is the weekly News from Lake Wobegon monologue, a fictional town somewhere in Minnesota, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

Keillor's work includes:

• Home Grown Democrat (2003, ISBN 0670033650)
• Love Me (2003, ISBN 0670032468)
• Good Poems (2002, ISBN 0670031267)
• Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (2001, ISBN 0571210147)
• Wobegon Boy (1997 ISBN 0670878073)
• The Book of Guys (1993, ISBN 067084943X)
• WLT: A Radio Romance, (1991, ISBN 0670818577)
• We Are Still Married (1989, ISBN 0670826472)
• Leaving Home (1987, ISBN 067081976X)
• Lake Wobegon Days (1985, ISBN 0140131612); a recorded version of this won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-musical Album in 1988

Keillor has also written several articles for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Keillor is the host of The Writer's Almanac, a five-minute program which is broadcast daily on some public radio stations in the United States.

Mr. Blue

He also authored an advice column on Salon.com, titled "Mr. Blue". Following a heart operation, he resigned on September 4, 2001 in an article entitled "Every dog has his day" (http://www.salon.com/books/col/keil/2001/09/04/adieu/index.html):

Illness offers the chance to think long thoughts about the future (praying that we yet have one, dear God), and so I have, and so this is the last column of Mr. Blue, under my authorship, for Salon.

Over the years, Mr. Blue's strongest advice has come down on the side of freedom in our personal lives, freedom from crushing obligation and overwork and family expectations and the freedom to walk our own walk and be who we are. And some of the best letters have been addressed to younger readers trapped in jobs like steel suits, advising them to bust loose and go off and have an adventure. Some of the advisees have written back to inform Mr. Blue that the advice was taken and that the adventure changed their lives. This was gratifying.

So now I am simply taking my own advice. Cut back on obligations: Promote a certain elegant looseness in life. Simple as that. Winter and spring, I almost capsized from work, and in the summer I had a week in St. Mary's Hospital to sit and think, and that's the result. Every dog has his day and I've had mine and given whatever advice was mine to give (and a little more). It was exhilarating to get the chance to be useful, which is always an issue for a writer (What good does fiction do?), and Mr. Blue was a way to be useful. Nothing human is beneath a writer's attention; the basic questions about how to attract a lover and what to do with one once you get one and how to deal with disappointment in marriage are the stuff that fiction is made from, so why not try to speak directly? And so I did. And now it's time to move on.

Personal information

Garrison Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota. He is of Norwegian ancestry, he is a Lutheran, and he is a Democrat.

[...]

Lets be clearer....if needed!

"I was thinking today about how the 'red v. blue' states graphic is really misleading considering the slim margins that the candidates won some of those states by, so I sat down and created the map that's attached. In the dozens of hours I've been watching the news I haven't seen one like it, but thought that you and the BoingBoing readers might find it interesting. I think it definitely portrays our fellow states far differently than the extreme way we've been seeing to date."

In reality, the provisional ballots really weren't the issue because Kerry would have had to have won a statistically impossible 90 percent plus of those votes, which first would have had to be accepted as legitimate.

Kerry, realising the futility of pursuing the provisionals, conceded Wednesday morning in a phone call to George Bush despite John Edwards' reassurance at 2am Tuesday night that they would be counted. Ohio let down half of America and all of the world.

Now I know you must be asking: How can America be so ignorant? How can half of the most prominent nation on earth vote for an outright liar like George W Bush? How can they accept that this is the only administration that has lost jobs in recent times? How can they afford to pay the rising costs of war?

The truth is that America can't. One of the most shocking things to come out of this election was not the fact that Ohio was the disputed state this year, but the fact that the top voting issue was "moral values."

Prior to the election, the buzz words were "security," "the economy," and "health care." But in the final analysis, moral values -- heavily emphasised by the president -- edged terrorism and the economy as the top issue in this year's election. To the rest of the world, this makes absolutely no sense. With America still battling it out in Iraq and the world's security rating having fallen with a domino affect on American jobs and the US Economy, how does "moral values" come out on top?

Let me point out, though, that not all Americans are as stupid as this election might have you believe. This election was probably the most polarised in US history with very strong grass-roots campaigns and special efforts made to reach out to young voters. Before you reduce all Americans to foolish hicks, please understand this.

Republicans are usually conservative and prioritise religion, the extremists being evangelical. The south and middle of the country are mostly conservative, more concerned about family values and about what the Bible has to say. Therefore it was a brilliant campaign strategy for the Bush camp to go out and rally at churches in swing states, asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives. According to the polls, conservatives (read: Republicans) are mostly concerned about moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

America being very largely conservative and rural, care more about such moral issues versus the state of the world, the economy, and health care. The Bush administration has played on these people's emotions, blinding them to more proximate issues such as the aforementioned.

Bush chose his words well, citing God as his inspiration for taking on Iraq and making it a point that he is strongly against gay marriages, abortions, and public funding for stem cell research, some issues which Kerry was not so determined about in his own convictions.

In the aftermath of this election, Kerry supporters have felt alienated from the rest of country who voted based on faith rather than on real problems at hand. Many find it hard that America can maintain its status as a secular nation, when so many people voted based on the religious convictions of the candidates, partially ignoring the fact they are paying higher taxes, working longer hours with less pay, losing funding for education and paying more for medicine.

To Republicans, Bush is a godsend and he has come to instill good in the world -- ironic since he's a proven liar and has waged an imperialistic war of attrition. What kind of Christianity promotes lying and violence?

While some Republicans might acknowledge the poor state of affairs in America and abroad, most of them are probably banking on divine intervention to save them. I know that it is sad for the world that Bush was re-elected, but you need to understand that conservative Republicans don't care about the rest of the world.

They are happy as long as minorities such as homosexuals are denied their rights, they are happy as long as they can carry guns in public places, even happier when civil liberties are taken away.

Evidence of this lies in Ohio, which went red despite losing the most jobs under Bush's watch. Ludicrous. I was personally saddened by the result here in America. This race was tight, and I joined half of America in a fight against George Bush. Having voted for the first time in my life, I was confident Kerry would win, so convinced that I was dreaming about it, but when I woke up to the reality of the morning of Nov 3, I was horrified.

Kerry supporters expressed feelings of devastation and rage after Tuesday night's loss. Violent anger and frustration has been voiced all over internet forums and the solemn mood on campus was a complete contrast to the mood of election day created by the huge Kerry banners and nearly all the students wearing Kerry-Edwards pins screaming: Vote Kerry.

My only consolation was that Minnesota, my state of residence, went to Kerry. People have begun rumouring things as crazy as social civil war, and debating whether people from the south should be made to write essays as to why they're voting before being allowed to vote.

Many of my American friends are asking the same question as you probably have: What the hell is wrong with America?

Some even say they are fed up with this country and its system. The point is, not to damn all Americans since one half was on the side of the world, the other half being pre-occupied with whether homosexuals will take over the universe or not.

America is still beautiful for this democracy that it is and the opportunities it gives to everyone. Although I do not believe my day-to-day life will change because of this election, it will most certainly affect other people around the world.

Now that Bush has successfully proven he can be a complete fraud and still be re-elected this is his cue to do anything he wants, well armed with 9/11, the magical numbers which seem to be the answer to any sort of contention and protest.

Well, wake up world, get ready for four more years of the same.

While they are very critical, it's importance was shared by only half of the population. Not all Americans are as stupid as this election might have you believe. This election was probably the most polarised in US history with very strong grass-roots campaigns and special efforts made to reach out to young voters.

Zaied Ali is a university student in Minnesota, USA.
[...]

http://www.thedailystar.net/2004/11/07/d41107150291.htm

My emphasis.

If the half of america that has a braincell takes up the 20AC, then the rest of the world wont have do lift a finger.

It will all be over without a shot fired.