A recent article on George Lucas, the Presidio, and the URI in the Canada Free Press is an excellent example of the yellow journalism that now plagues the Internet, particularly in the blogging domain. Instead of providing the courtesy of a link to the article, I'll just talk about it instead. Some might say I'm engaging in a yellow tactic myself — but then again, I don't claim to be producing news at Conscientia.

I'll give you a couple of choice quotes though:

"Lucas creatures join the murky, hypocritical, we-have-a-monopoly-on-peace taxpayer-supported Neverland of the populous United Nations brethren." …

"URI claims that since 1996, over 1,000 people have participated in six regional conferences around the world. The cathedral in Chartes, France is the latest to join the movement. Its global headquarters and interfaith board of directors are located in San Francisco. Supporters have waited since 1996 for the release of a draft charter from the organization, and the draft is scheduled for release in June of 2005."

PBS's Robert X. Cringeley thinks Intel is poised to buy Apple (removed dead link; SF 2025), saying "Apple's Decision to Use Intel Processors Is Nothing Less Than an Attempt to Dethrone Microsoft. Really." What is a fan of upstart competitors to do when his favorite upstart (Apple) might merge with one of the upstarted (Intel as opposed to AMD)? Course its sheer speculation at this point, but Cringley makes fascinating observations. Since a friend mentioned two days ago not wanting to replace his broken Powerbook, as it would be obsolete in a year or two, I've wondered why Apple would make such a big announcement and risk major sales losses. Hm...

2¹⁴— that's the maximum number of files in a folder on the Windows operating system. If you fill this up, you don't get any more (unless you move a few files to another directory). In layman's terms, that 16,384 files. Just thought you should know.

A lonely flame chases away
The velvet embrace of dark
Claws extending toward my spirit.

Spirit not only lives but
Dies as the fire extinguished
By imbalance of nourishment.

The dancing gaiety ebbs every
So often blow the bellows,
Resuscitate soul, psyche, spirit.

Though she burns she is not sun,
Rather radiant rays of moonlight
Captured under forests' eaves.

The forest is the father of my
Fears and bearer of my hopes,
Nursemaid of my dreams.

O live on forest!
Live on my hopes, my dreams!
Even the whispering fears too,
For ye are all but one—
In spirit.

April 7, 2005. San Francisco, USA – The United Religions Initiative Global Council in March voted to endorse the Darfur Unity Statement in recognition of the continuing necessity for international intervention in the Darfur region of Sudan. Originally signed by over 100 non-governmental agencies in July of 2004, the Save Darfur Coalition's Unity Statement remains relevant today with over two million refugees in need of aid and death toll estimates in the region now exceeding 300,000 (the statement can be found at www.savedarfur.org).

When the anti-globalization riots occurred in Seattle in the late 90's, it seemed that none of the major news reports bothered saying just what they were protesting against. Yes, they said "globalization," but nothing about why the protesters saw globalization as a rampant evil. Thankfully I was part of a few networks that touched on this movement and passed its news on, so I knew that it wasn't just creeping materialism they were against, and it wasn't development per se that they hated: rather, it was the wholesale exploitation of third world countries for the continuing benefit of the first world, and, increasingly, specific transnational corporations. Postcards From The Global Food System (#3) (dead link removed; SF 2025) at WorldChanging last week brought this all back, and serves as a terrific introduction to the problems of globalization without regard for local conditions, cultures, and needs.

Yesterday's Minnesota Public Radio story Finding culture and history in the suburbs was perhaps the most poignant I've ever heard, spotlighting a wonderful program in a Minneapolis suburb and displaying the full power of audio to move the heart in ways text alone cannot.

The slam against suburbs is they lack culture or history. Wrong and wrong. Eden Prairie school children are discovering their suburb is loaded with culture and history, but it takes some digging to find it. Students at Eden Prairie's Oak Point Intermediate School interviewed elders in their community including people from other countries. They've put the stories to song.

When a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off Indonesia sent gigantic waves crashing down on hundreds of thousands of hapless souls, countless people around the world asked: where is God? Touching on an ancient question that has plagued monotheistic believers through the ages, people wanted to know how their God could allow such horror to afflict innumerable innocent individuals in some of the poorest areas of the world. Nearly 170,000 are known to have died. Thousands of villages, fishing boats, places of worship, farms – decimated. Colin Powell remarked that it was worse than a war zone. We’ve seen the images and heard the tales of woe – and where was God?

Go read Jared Diamond's (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) report in Harper's Magazine, The last Americans: environmental collapse and the end of civilization. Then donate a few dollars to the Red Cross or other aid agencies working in South Asia (tangentially connected, but it must be said). From the report:

One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse. Few people, however, least of all our politicians, realize that a primary cause of the collapse of those societies has been the destruction of the environmental resources on which they depended. Fewer still appreciate that many of those civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth, and power.

More to the point, who is human, and what is normal? And, can a computer have "human" rights? These are deep philosophical questions with real-world (or potential real-world) application, as shown in How About Not 'Curing' Us, Some Autistics Are Pleading (NY Times) and in Man and the Machines (dead link removed; SF 2025) (Legal Affairs). And what about animals that possess "theory of mind?"