Women are apparently designed to like the smell of male perspiration. It seems to be a pheremone thing.
It doesn’t mean that the French are on to anything, though. The experiment required that the guys go without deodorant for four weeks–not without bathing.
And now they’re going to have to sleep in it. The (elected) head of the Iraqi Kurds says that French and Russian oil contracts with Saddam’s regime should expire with him, and it.
French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq “will not be honored,” Kurdish Prime Minister Barhim Salih said in Washington Friday, just before a series of high-level meetings with Bush administration officials.
“A new Iraqi government should not honor any of these contracts, signed against the interests of the Iraqi people. The new Iraqi government should respect those who stood by us, and not those who stood beside the dictator,” Salih added.
Pretty simplisme, eh?
And now they’re going to have to sleep in it. The (elected) head of the Iraqi Kurds says that French and Russian oil contracts with Saddam’s regime should expire with him, and it.
French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq “will not be honored,” Kurdish Prime Minister Barhim Salih said in Washington Friday, just before a series of high-level meetings with Bush administration officials.
“A new Iraqi government should not honor any of these contracts, signed against the interests of the Iraqi people. The new Iraqi government should respect those who stood by us, and not those who stood beside the dictator,” Salih added.
Pretty simplisme, eh?
And now they’re going to have to sleep in it. The (elected) head of the Iraqi Kurds says that French and Russian oil contracts with Saddam’s regime should expire with him, and it.
French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq “will not be honored,” Kurdish Prime Minister Barhim Salih said in Washington Friday, just before a series of high-level meetings with Bush administration officials.
“A new Iraqi government should not honor any of these contracts, signed against the interests of the Iraqi people. The new Iraqi government should respect those who stood by us, and not those who stood beside the dictator,” Salih added.
Pretty simplisme, eh?
The Dixie Chicks are already starting to see some career repercussions from their political stance.
[Update at 11:18 AM PST]
Don’t mess with Texas.
Someone over at Free Republic is reporting that the biggest country station in Lubbock (Natalie Maines’ home town) is going to have a Dixie-Chicks-Free Weekend, during which they won’t play anything by the group.
[Update at 1:34 PM PST]
Apparently they’re unhappy about it in San Antonio, too.
And KZLA, a country station in Los Angeles, is currently running a poll on the issue of whether or not they should continue to play them (no permalink). (They’re still offering specials on their albums, though.)
It’s spreading like a prairie wildfire.
[Yet another update at 2:20 PM PST]
A station in Houston is running a similar poll.
[Update at 5:30 PM PST]
Apparently Ms. Maines realizes that she really stepped in it. She’s issued a half-hearted, Trent Lott-like apology. She’s not really sorry she said it, of course–she only regrets that there are any consequences for her uttering her no-doubt heartfelt feelings (as opposed to actual thoughts).
We’ll see if it’s enough to end the boycotts. There’s no doubt that their record sales will suffer as a result, though she may have mitigated some of the damage with this pro-forma statement.
[Saturday morning update]
Well, it’s not all bad. Most C&W stations are continuing the boycott, but they’ve picked up one new venue for their music. According to this article from the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Pacifica affiliate (a so-called “progressive” radio network that makes NPR sound Republican) will start playing them “all the time.” Guess this is the first step toward finding a new audience…
The Dixie Chicks are already starting to see some career repercussions from their political stance.
[Update at 11:18 AM PST]
Don’t mess with Texas.
Someone over at Free Republic is reporting that the biggest country station in Lubbock (Natalie Maines’ home town) is going to have a Dixie-Chicks-Free Weekend, during which they won’t play anything by the group.
[Update at 1:34 PM PST]
Apparently they’re unhappy about it in San Antonio, too.
And KZLA, a country station in Los Angeles, is currently running a poll on the issue of whether or not they should continue to play them (no permalink). (They’re still offering specials on their albums, though.)
It’s spreading like a prairie wildfire.
[Yet another update at 2:20 PM PST]
A station in Houston is running a similar poll.
[Update at 5:30 PM PST]
Apparently Ms. Maines realizes that she really stepped in it. She’s issued a half-hearted, Trent Lott-like apology. She’s not really sorry she said it, of course–she only regrets that there are any consequences for her uttering her no-doubt heartfelt feelings (as opposed to actual thoughts).
We’ll see if it’s enough to end the boycotts. There’s no doubt that their record sales will suffer as a result, though she may have mitigated some of the damage with this pro-forma statement.
[Saturday morning update]
Well, it’s not all bad. Most C&W stations are continuing the boycott, but they’ve picked up one new venue for their music. According to this article from the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Pacifica affiliate (a so-called “progressive” radio network that makes NPR sound Republican) will start playing them “all the time.” Guess this is the first step toward finding a new audience…
The Dixie Chicks are already starting to see some career repercussions from their political stance.
[Update at 11:18 AM PST]
Don’t mess with Texas.
Someone over at Free Republic is reporting that the biggest country station in Lubbock (Natalie Maines’ home town) is going to have a Dixie-Chicks-Free Weekend, during which they won’t play anything by the group.
[Update at 1:34 PM PST]
Apparently they’re unhappy about it in San Antonio, too.
And KZLA, a country station in Los Angeles, is currently running a poll on the issue of whether or not they should continue to play them (no permalink). (They’re still offering specials on their albums, though.)
It’s spreading like a prairie wildfire.
[Yet another update at 2:20 PM PST]
A station in Houston is running a similar poll.
[Update at 5:30 PM PST]
Apparently Ms. Maines realizes that she really stepped in it. She’s issued a half-hearted, Trent Lott-like apology. She’s not really sorry she said it, of course–she only regrets that there are any consequences for her uttering her no-doubt heartfelt feelings (as opposed to actual thoughts).
We’ll see if it’s enough to end the boycotts. There’s no doubt that their record sales will suffer as a result, though she may have mitigated some of the damage with this pro-forma statement.
[Saturday morning update]
Well, it’s not all bad. Most C&W stations are continuing the boycott, but they’ve picked up one new venue for their music. According to this article from the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Pacifica affiliate (a so-called “progressive” radio network that makes NPR sound Republican) will start playing them “all the time.” Guess this is the first step toward finding a new audience…
One more good catch by Paul (you can tell I’ve been stuck on Geek Press for a while this morning)–an essay by Dan Dennett on postmodernism and truth.
Here is a story you probably haven’t heard, about how a team of American researchers inadvertently introduced a virus into a third world country they were studying.(1) They were experts in their field, and they had the best intentions; they thought they were helping the people they were studying, but in fact they had never really seriously considered whether what they were doing might have ill effects. It had not occurred to them that a side-effect of their research might be damaging to the fragile ecology of the country they were studying. The virus they introduced had some dire effects indeed: it raised infant mortality rates, led to a general decline in the health and wellbeing of women and children, and, perhaps worst of all, indirectly undermined the only effective political force for democracy in the country, strengthening the hand of the traditional despot who ruled the nation. These American researchers had something to answer for, surely, but when confronted with the devastation they had wrought, their response was frustrating, to say the least: they still thought that what they were doing was, all things considered, in the interests of the people, and declared that the standards by which this so-called devastation was being measured were simply not appropriate. Their critics, they contended, were trying to impose “Western” standards in a cultural environment that had no use for such standards. In this strange defense they were warmly supported by the country’s leaders–not surprisingly–and little was heard–not surprisingly–from those who might have been said, by Western standards, to have suffered as a result of their activities.
These researchers were not biologists intent on introducing new strains of rice, nor were they agri-business chemists testing new pesticides, or doctors trying out vaccines that couldn’t legally be tested in the U.S.A. They were postmodernist science critics and other multiculturalists who were arguing, in the course of their professional researches on the culture and traditional “science” of this country, that Western science was just one among many equally valid narratives, not to be “privileged” in its competition with native traditions which other researchers–biologists, chemists, doctors and others–were eager to supplant. The virus they introduced was not a macromolecule but a meme (a replicating idea): the idea that science was a “colonial” imposition, not a worthy substitute for the practices and beliefs that had carried the third-world country to its current condition. And the reason you have not heard of this particular incident is that I made it up, to dramatize the issue and to try to unsettle what seems to be current orthodoxy among the literati about such matters. But it is inspired by real incidents–that is to say, true reports.
It’s a long, but worthwhile read.
Also via Paul–a satellite image that shows very clearly the ancient outline of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan–the one believed to taken out the dinosaurs.
Paul Hsieh has discovered a site that has real but funny names of molecules, elements and minerals. My favorite was the mineral named cummingtonite.