Short Takes. Er. Hurrahpertif. Um. Quick Bites.

by emptywheel

So let's see what the rest of the world was doing while some of you were watching a rerun of "Bush Levels with America."

Perhaps appropriately, given Bush's rerun last night, New York City officials have announced they've redesigned Freedom. Freedom sounds like a fortress wrapped in filigree:

The new design for the 82-story signature building at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan calls for an almost impermeable and impregnable 200-foot concrete and steel pedestal, clad in ornamental metalwork...

And guess what? When you redesign Freedom it ends up adding a year or two to construction times. Don't expect Freedom to be done until 2010, if construction stays on schedule.

Meanwhile, back at the GWOT, it seems that the Orange Alert announced at Christmas of 2003--the one where we cancelled all the flights of our allies' main airlines? Well, it was a bogus alert, based on someone seeing ghosts in Al-Jazeera's newscrawl.

CIA analysts mistakenly thought they'd discovered a mother lode of secret al-Qaida messages. They thought they had found secret messages on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language television news channel, hidden in the moving text at the bottom of the screen, known as the "crawl," where news headlines are summarized.

Perhaps in response to hysteria such as this, the National Academy of Science has decided to go ahead and publish their controversial study of the vulnerability of our milk supply to bioterrorism.

federal officials felt the material had enough potential for misuse to warrant a last-minute effort to halt publication. That effort, which delayed the report's release by a month but ultimately did not keep it from becoming public, proved to be as contentious as the publication itself. It has assured the report's place in the scientific canon as one of the first test cases of how to balance scientific freedom and national security in the post-Sept. 11 era.

Meanwhile, over in Europe, they spent nine hours yesterday reenacting the Battle of Trafalgar in celebration of its bicentennial. Only this Battle of Trafalgar was the peace-loving EU kind of battle. The fleet included ships from 35 nations (more than are left in the Coalition of the Willing!) and "the French flagship, the vast nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, played Rule Britannia from its loudspeaker."

And, if it's not already obvious, we're still trying to come up with a title for our daily open thread. We had some interesting suggestions yesterday--got anything to add?

Comments

[emptywheel]

It's really worth reading a description of the Trafalgar fun. Every description I've seen is simultaneously hysterically funny and oddly melancholy.

[al-Fubar]

Something about re-enacting the Battle of Trafalgar with a French aircraft carrier brightens my whole morning! Badly needed, after last night's absurd speech.

The less said about secret messages encoded in the al-Jazeera crawl, the better. (It's amusing, though, if perfectly logical, that the al-Jazeera crawl moves left to right.)

Title for the open thread? How about "Open Thread?" :)

-- Rick Robinson

[Kagro X]

Well, a false Orange Alert every once in a while is a small price to pay for keeping John Nash busy.

[DemFromCT]

We thought of Open Thread, but it seemed too geeky and post-modern. We thought of Thread, Open and Open Thread: The Movie, The Book, The Ashtray but it didn't have the ring we were looking for.
we thought of Bit Bytes, Short Takes, Shortcake, and got hungry and ate lunch.

Nothing fits, just yet.

Maybe we should peruse the city municipal guides and do a Landfill Thread.

[emptywheel]

Landfill Thread. I like that.

Or maybe Spun Yarn? Knit Yarn?

Rick, I hope you linked through and saw the description of Her Royal Majesty, suffering from a cold, reviewing the fleet from her post on an Ice-Breaker. Really!

I'm actually growing obsessed by Trafalgar II. Consider--more countries were willing to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the keystone of British hegemony than are willing to support the collapse of our own hegemony. Does that say people just prefer to go with winners? Or that, with two centuries of distance, the dignified British Empire looks better than ours by comparison? Does someone have Niall Ferguson's number--because I'd really like his insight on this!

[Crab Nebula]

"The Spool". relates to thread. first thing in my head in the morning. therefore not necessarily good.

[al-Fubar]

Yes, indeed I clicked through to read about Her Majesty's sniffles.

A certain nostalgia for the British Empire might be in order. On the whole, the Brits were fairly good at imperialism, at least after their disagreeable experience in North America in the late 18th c. Having learned, they generally avoided similar awkward episodes.

Most of all, perhaps, when the British Empire passed its sell-by date, they gave it up with some dignity and even a bit of panache - snapped salutes and bagpipes playing as the Union flag was lowered for the last time over time zone after time zone. Compare to the French, who twice paid dearly for lessons that would have been extremely instructive for us, if only we'd paid attention.

-- Rick Robinson

[emptywheel]

Rick, yes, I've thought of that dignified dying of empire more than once. Sad thing is, even if we backed out with dignity now, we'd have given the "subjects" of our "empire" Hollywood and Baywatch instead of a great education, as the English did.

But we're not going to back out with dignity, are we. Instead, we've got people watching Battle of Algiers, where they seem to have taken notes as if it was the only approach.

[RonK, Seattle]

"The Next Harrumph"?

Harrumph!!! How quaint -- they re-enact Trafalgar, we re-enact Vietnam.

[emptywheel]

WOW! Did we ever just get kicked in the shins!!!

The Australian Government has rejected an invitation from the Bush administration to participate in top-secret talks about how to deal with the rise of China.

Australia is apparently worried the meetings will offend China.

But now, after they've spilled the beans, they've not only ensured that Australia doesn't offend China, but that US does offend China, now that our secret meetings have been leaked!! This is priceless. Something I usually expect out of really catty pre-pubescent girls.

And we think we still are the dominant power in Asia??

[emptywheel]

Oops. Forgot the link. Here's another glimpse of our diplomatic genius:

At the first meeting, those attending decided to call themselves the Halibut Group.

The name grew out of an in-joke - none of the China experts there could work out how to say "halibut" in Mandarin.

Not that I know how to say halibut, either. But I can tell you how to say, "we don't have any beer" if you want me to.

[Kagro X]

Wow, that's some joke. One step short of calling it the "We Rikey Fleedom." Hardy-har-har.

[jonnybutter]

As mentioned in an earlier thread, the fabulous Sen. Coburn of OK is acting pres. of the Senate right now, and, as is his wont, seems to be working a crossword puzzle to relieve the tedium. If anybody's interested, tune into C-SPAN 2 and wait for a shot of the chair.

[Kagro X]

Hmm. I need an eight-letter word for why they only let one girl go to the bathroom at a time in Oklahoma public schools.

[jonnybutter]

HA

[muledirver]

Diminutive Assessments shortened to: Dim Ass

[James]

I still don't know how to put links, but anyway, this is a pretty good Washington Post article on the CW turning from a definite Rehnquist retirement to a definite non-retirement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902836.html

I wonder if all of this is to fake Democrats out, catch them off guard for when the retirement does happen. Some right-wing blogs are saying Rehnquist will retire on July 5, O'Connor at Labor Day, and then a third justice next year.

What bothers me about all the "O'Connor's husband is near death, she has to be with him" talk is if that was the case, why is she teaching a course during her time off? Wouldn't she be spending all her time with her husband?

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