Headline from the Eastside Journal in 1941, “Agent Explains Care of Chickens After Blackout.”

Microscopic daggers on fabric can kill microbes! You’ll notice that it only works with natural fibers, this may influence uniform fashions.

Premise: you’re interested in Bollywood films on DVD, but you don’t know where to start.

Solution: a list of Indian films from your local library on DVD, ranked in order of the length of the waiting list, since presumably this is a rough indicator of popularity.

All titles are on DVD, and (probably) from 2002

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas 143

Mujhse dosti karoge! 116

Kabhi khushi kabhie gham– 110

Ek chhotisi love story 107

Raaz 85

Badhaai ho Badhaai 80

Bas itna sa khwaab hai 76

Company 70

Pyaar ishq aur mohabbat 67

Kasoor 65

Om jai jagadish 56

Jodi no. 1 43

Jis Desh mein Ganga Reehta hai 30

Abhay 23

An excellent example of a visual display of information that is immediately clear is again provided by The Economist. Just think how much less obvious this information would be as a list of percentages.

Yes, this is exactly my kind of thing: Snackspot.

There’s been a lot of linkage to summaries and discussions of this New Yorker article about how SecDef Rumsfeld is a stupid, petty dictator who over-ruled his top planners at every turn when they told him he needed more troops on the ground. Most discouraging feature of the article for me: frequent comparisons to Viet Nam. When I was a cog in the Military-Industrial Complex, I heard many times that we needed to stop planning to fight the last war, since the next war was invariably different. We have demonstrated yet again that even when we are fighting the last war, it’s different, and assuming it would be the same has bitten us hard on the ass:

The immediate goal, [a former intelligence official] added, was for the Army and Marine forces “to hold tight and hope that the Republican Guard divisions get chewed up” by bombing. The planner agreed, saying, “The only way out now is back, and to hope for some kind of a miracle—that the Republican Guards commit themselves,” and thus become vulnerable to American air strikes.

“Hope,” a retired four-star general subsequently told me, “is not a course of action.”

The article is interesting, if discouraging, reading.

Lest we forget, SARS is still out there, and it’s apparently more contagious than we thought. Two suspected cases in King County and, according to the CDC, one in Alabama, though their Public Health website’s news releases seem most concerned with Smallpox vaccinations.

An article in the NY Times, popular on Blogdex today, says that a lot of today’s teens are anti-abortion. Interestingly, a quote toward the end of the article reveals a fairly profound misunderstanding on the part of at least one young person:

“There are better contraceptives—RU-486, the morning-after pill—along with an emphasis on sex ed, abstinence and slogans like, ‘Not me, Not now,'” said a sophomore at Hunter College High School in Manhattan whose father did not want her to be identified. “Abortion isn’t such an issue, because getting pregnant isn’t such a prevalent problem among my peers.”

If they think that the morning-after pill—to say nothing of RU-486, f’r Chrissakes—will continue to be available after a ban on abortion, they have a rude awakening in store. The anti-abortionists would outlaw most women’s hormonal contraceptives on the grounds that they can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, so it’s hard to imagine they would overlook methods that are explicitly post-fertilization.
On the bright side, those arguments don’t apply to men’s hormonal contraception. On the down side, I’m not optimistic that men have any interest in managing their fertility. But I’m probably just cranky from my unmodulated hormones.

I have come to realize that pretty much any emotion I have shows on my face. Someone came by today and commented that I had seemed upset when he had complained to me yesterday (he assured me that he wouldn’t make a fuss about the problem he had complained about. Unfortunately, I’m supposed to listen to those sorts of things with calm and objectivity. I thought I was, but apparently I’m high.) It’s a good thing that I really do enjoy my job, or everyone would know that I didn’t.

I’ve decided that this is a good thing. I’m a straightforward (perhaps even simple) person, at least emotionally.

I Used to Believe is a site for all the goofy stuff you thought as a kid. It’s the kind of site to share with your mom.