found in democratic

Taliban Told U.S. It Would Give Up Osama - Middleman

U.S. and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the Sept. 11 attacks to discuss terms for Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary.

But no agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001.

ZDF television quoted Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman, as saying he tried to broker a deal between the Americans and the purist Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were sheltering bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

He quoted the Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him."

recreation of a poll recently found on CNN.com

[Poll #304498]

(no subject)

Computers may be a boost to young minds

Preschool children who use a computer appear to develop better learning skills than peers who lack computer savvy, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

In a study of 122 children aged 3 to 5, those exposed to a home or school computer either alone or with someone else three to four times a week scored higher on tests that gauge school readiness and cognitive development than non-users, said the study published in the journal Pediatrics.

Some earlier studies have found computer use improves children’s fine motor skills and improves recognition of numbers and letters.

(no subject)

Pentagon Prepped Torture Defense

The report required Rumsfeld's approval for the use of four interrogation methods, and he has approved their use on two prisoners. It was not clear which methods were covered by that approval. At Guantanamo Bay, current practices included depriving detainees of food, making them stay up for four days, stress positions and body cavity searches.

The report concludes that "The infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture," and says "Good faith may be a complete defense" to torture charges.


***
Call me crazy, but after you do one cavity search at Guantanamo, which is a superprison, generally you don't need to do more. At least, if you're looking for contraband and not performing the search for the pain thereby afflicted.

a comment I made in about_poetry

The reader is NO PART of the poem, and should be of little or no interest to the poet while he is composing it. A poet, at least one with personal integrity, cares about honestly (and artfully) expressing his ideas. To subject his ideas to the filter of what the (possible eventual) readership might think, is to pervert (or at least dilute) the ideas.

When one is composing a poem, there is obviously an audience, even if it's an audience of one (the poet himself). You may not think the poet is part of the audience; you haven't substantiated that opinion. If the poet isn't even going to read his own work, then who is he writing for?

If the poem is written to be read, then the poem has an audience in mind, even if that audience is vaguely defined.

If the poet goes into a poem thinking there is no audience, there is little reason for him to think about the craft involved in writing. Who else is the craft for? It's not for the poet himself, as he already knows what he means. If the poet is merely writing to write, there is no need to use tropes or imagery, no reason to submit his writing to the rigors of figurative language, no need to grope for just that right word.

So, if there is craft involved, there is probably the assumption that the piece will be read by more than the author himself. That implies an audience.

To say that the audience should not be thought of gives ammunition to all those "poets" who claim that the reader "just didn't get" what they were writing. Odds are, their writing was unclear to anyone who couldn't read their minds. Poetry is not a mind-reading exercise. The reader can't know what the author's intentions were. The only way the reader has any idea of what the author is talking about is through the author's word choice and manipulations with language. And, again, if there is no conception of an audience, there is no need for an author to think very deeply about word choice or language manipulation.

I'm not saying the author should pander to the audience. Just that the author probably assumes that there will be a wider readership than just him alone. Don't confuse or collude these two very distinct ideas.


(Read the whole [?] discussion here. [In truth, the originator of the thread can't usually seem to get his replies in the correct threads, so he replies in a brand-new post. The conversation has been going on since last Friday.])

Here's something for you to chew on.

Reagan: The Retake (at Washington Post; sorry for those who haven't taken the time to register for free)

Some might be particularly interested in the characterization given by Rick Perlstein, at the bottom of the column.

Rich.

After assessing my own behavior on about_poetry, I took the time to send veritasinverse an email to apologize.

I come back online tonight and find that not only has he not responded to my email (okay, fine), but he's deleted all of his posts from about_poetry and left this as his calling card.

Wow. Guess I've done all I can do.

Edit: He did reply, and apparently he accepts my apology (he says that he took no offense in what I wrote). So now, I really don't know why he deleted all of his posts. At first I thought it was the taking-my-ball-home syndrome, and now it could still be that, but the possibility's diminished.

Maybe I'm not meant to understand.