Follow up inside.

Sacre bleu! Waiters fired for being
French? (Reuters)

Other News: Bleu Rose exits the Mac
software business

BUSH
EMPLOYMENT PROMISES - UPDATE

As promised in February, here's an update on the US employment data. After a lot of ballyhoo in recent months, the US Department of Labour has released terrible July employment growth data, and quietly revised downwards the employment data for the previous two months. The latest 'preliminary' (subject to additional revision) numbers for June and July are 131.24 and 131.27 million respectively. Even assuming a resumption of the very modest increase rate in the Spring, employment is unlikely to reach 132 million by the end of the year. This compares to 132.4 million when Bush 'took' office four years ago, and 135.3 million promised last January (though by one interpretation of his mangled speech, he was really only promising 132.5 million). This would make Bush the first president since the great depression to record an absolute loss in total employment during his administration. In order just to match the 150 thousand new entrants to the labour force each month due to population increase, employment should be rising by 1.8 million per year, and should now be nearing 139 million. What's worse, the quality of the new jobs created has been exceptionally poor. Rather than creating high value, knowledge-intensive jobs to replace the jobs offshored to lower-wage countries, nine out of ten of the highest-growth sectors of employment are low-wage, low-expectation jobs (food service, secretarial etc.) Most growth continues to be in part-time and temporary jobs. No surprise that so many have just given up looking for work. So much for trickle-down economics, and the promised stimulus of Bush's tax giveaway to his rich friends. Yet a recent AP-Ipsos poll reports 46% of Americans 'approve' of Bush's handling of the economy. Who are these people and what have they been smoking?

SALON BLOG
DIRECTORY UPDATE - FEB.10/04

I have just updated the full Dire ctory of Active Salon Blogs. You can download it in Excel format by clicking on the link at the top of the right sidebar just below my e-mail link. It contains current information on the owner and subject of each blog, plus current sortable data on  hits/month and inbound blog counts. Please send me details of any missing and new Salon Blogs, and any errors in the Directory. I promise to post any updates I receive to the Directory spreadsheet regularly. Here are the summary statistics for the last month: Total hits for the month were about 950 thousand, down 12% from last month (the decrease was due entirely to a drop in hits for two blogs). Of that total, 700 thousand hits (72%) went to the top 11 (7%) active blogs. Median hit count remains about 700 per month, or about 20 hits per day. Inbound blogs totaled about 3700, up 16% from last month, with the top 11 active blogs accounting for almost exactly half of them. Median number of inbound blogs remains at 7. The approximate proportion of female Salon bloggers was 42%, the same percentage as a month ago. No longer blogging, it appears, are Subdude Citizen, who I'll really miss, Scott Summers' Taiwan Weblog, the Return of the King Countdown blog, Paul & Chris' Paris Travel Commentary, the very stimulating Mambrino's Helmet, and four relative newcomers, Quakergreen, Struggle for Progress, Graphite Furnace and Gabriela's Radio Weblog. Storyteller Hugh Elliott's Standing Room Only is back, as is Short 'n Oblique. Of the roughly 85 new Salon Blog numbers assigned this past month (#3326-3411), about 30 made at least one post, and the following 12 appear to be posting regularly. That leaves the number of active Salon Blogs at 160, almost unchanged from a month ago. Welcome to all new Sloggers. Insights from Today's Gospel (#3342) Boomer Mom / Suburban Malaise (#3343) Tales of a Stone Pilgrim (#3346) Reading A1 (#3364) Fortinbras Radio Weblog (#3368) The Fix-It Chicks (#3378) What Would Dick Think (#3379) Reggie E. Scott's Radio Weblog (#3388) I Cover the Blackboard (#3398) The Irregulars Blog (#3403) Post-Coital with a Modern Primitive (#3409) The Adventures of Sophie's Dildo (#3411) If I've missed your Salon Blog, or if you know of any active (posted within the last month) active Salon Blogs not in the directory, please let me know.

SALON BLOG
DIRECTORY UPDATE - APR.10/04

I have just updated the full Dire ctory of Active Salon Blogs. You can download it in Excel format by clicking on the link at the top of the right sidebar just below my e-mail link. It contains current information on the owner and subject of each blog, plus current sortable data on  hits/month and inbound blog counts. Please send me details of any missing and new Salon Blogs, and any errors in the Directory. I promise to post any updates I receive to the Directory spreadsheet regularly. Here are the summary statistics for the last month: Total hits per month were about 1.05 million, up 10% from February (due almost entirely to a rebound in Filchyboy's hit count). Of that total, 760 thousand hits (72%) went to the top 11 (7%) of active blogs. Median hit count remains about 700 per month. Inbound blogs totaled about 4150, up 10% from February, with the top 11 active blogs accounting for almost exactly half of them. Median number of inbound blogs remains at 7. The approximate proportion of female Salon bloggers was 42%, the same percentage as in January and February. No longer blogging, it appears, are the passionate Toby's Political Diary (#1282), Asia Business Intelligence (#1319), Everything That Sucks (Come Back, Amanda! #1691), Patriotically Incorrect (#2379),.Lean for Dean (#2429), Doublethink (#2521), Life in LA (We miss you, Claire! #2608), and 16 relatively new bloggers. David Harris is on hiatus. Mambrino's Helmet is back as The Forge. Of the roughly 240 new Salon Blog numbers assigned this past two months (#3412-3642 and #3743-3757), about 90 made at least one post, and the following 36 appear to be posting regularly. That leaves the number of active Salon Blogs at 174, up 14 from February. Welcome to all new Sloggers. Schnauzer Logic  #3435  Connecting the Dots  3437  Vanitas Personae  3446  Cassandra Predicts  3456   Two Fawn's American Indian Movement Pages   3467  Mindboggling Adventure Tales  3488  Bartholomew's Notes on Religion  3494  Saunter & Repose  3517 Avon Calling  3522  Bill Penrose's Radio Weblog  3530  The Cassandra Frost Collection  3531  Lumberg Boinked Her  3552  Screwing the Pooch  3557  Poli Sigh  3566  The Outer Edge  3573  Matriarch  3577  Oh My Stars  3580  The Poche  3591 Bob Rich's Weblog  3592 Douglas Moran's Radio Weblog  3597 XXX Rated Realist  3602  Rich Whiteley's Radio Weblog  3605 Manhattan Waiter  3612 The Grace Pages  3622 Lucy  3627  Vietnam Moving Wall in Worland WY  3628  Ashent TwentyThree's Radio Weblog  3632 What's in Scott's Head  3635 Monkey Labs  3637 Carnival Knowledge  3641 Infidelia  3744  1.21 Giggawats  3746 Docta Puella  3751  Enough  3752  Steve Simard's Radio Weblog  3753  Heart Attack Diaries  3757  If I've missed your Salon Blog, or if you know of any active (posted within the last month) active Salon Blogs not in the directory, please let me know. There's just one day left to find the missing Easter eggs (see post below), and a few of them are hidden in the above newbie blogs.

Sony's PSP: Available in Black, Black,
and Black

Looks like all those pastel PSPs Sony was showing at E3 were just a tease. According to an interview in Japanese game magazine Famitsu, Sony claims the various color PSPs were "just for reference. We plan to make the system black." I wouldn't worry too much, though. I'm sure if the PSP does well at all, color models will start showing up in no time at all.
Read [IGN via Portagame]

Chris Abraham: Evil Man in Black and His
Evil Black Suitcases Tackled by the Good
Guys

chrisabraham.com/2005/04/evil_man_in_bla.html
track this site | 5 links

BLACK
HUMOUR

No one who has read The Boondocks has a neutral opinion about its writer, Aaron McGruder. You either love him or hate him, or vacillate between the two extremes. The twenty-something radical leftie is working on a Simpsons-style animated series that will air, ironically, on Fox, probably next year, and as the New Yorker reported last month, he's managed to outrage almost everyone of every political stripe, including other cartoonists who say that he's gotten lazy (the strip is now drawn by Jennifer Seng, though McGruder still does the writing), and that he's relentless to the point of being tedious and unfunny. He is the most banned cartoonist in history, with many of the 300+ papers carrying the strip having cut it at one time or another. But as I think the above strip from last week shows, McGruder's biting wit has lost none of its edge, and demonstrates a fearlessness that goes beyond even what Doonsbury and Bloom County achieved.

Black. Duncan Black.

THINK
GLOBAL, ACT LOCAL: PETER SINGER'S
ONE
WORLD

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I'm opposed to unregulated 'free' trade, very worried about the extraterritoriality of the WTO, NAFTA, Davos and other corporatist captives, strongly opposed to domestic corporations 'offshoring' jobs, using influence with the Bush regime and other right-wing governments to circumvent social and environmental laws and responsibilities, and a great believer in taking the pledge to buy local, and in community self-sufficiency. At the same time, I'm a strong supporter of the UN and other multi-lateral NGOs, and I believe that we each have a responsibility for the well-being of all the people and creatures of this world. Some readers have said this view is inconsistent, and I wasn't quite sure how to respond to such charges. Fortunately, Peter Singer, in his recent book on global ethics, One World: The Ethics of Globalization, has come to my rescue. Singer sees no inconsistency between strong local autonomy, community, and self-sufficient economies on the one hand, and global responsibility on the other. The book is based on the Dwight Terry lectures at Yale in 2000, but has been updated to incorporate reflection on the events of 9/11 and the appalling Bush social, environmental and economic record. I'll have more to say next week about Bush's fraudulent and despicable Earth Day media blitz, and the major media's shameless lack of critical evaluation of the utter nonsense that his propaganda machine has been churning out this week on the environment -- newspeak of Orwellian proportions. The first part of Singer's book deals with environmental responsibility, and his prescription for increasing it -- immediate ratification of Kyoto by the US and other holdout countries, and introduction of an emissions trading mechanism to make the realization of Kyoto feasible (subject to the need for some oversight on the disposition of the proceeds of such trading when it involves autocratic governments). The second part of the book deals with the global economy, and Singer adroitly tears apart the Economist's (and other neocons') naive assertion that economic globalization somehow benefits both rich and poor countries. He then goes on to prescribe a substantial reform of the WTO and the GATT, which could actually lead to more equitable distribution of wealth and more efficient production of economic goods, while safeguarding human rights, labour and the environment. Unfortunately, the multi-national corporations and corporatists who hold sway in the WTO would never tolerate Singer's prescription, since it would entirely divert the benefits of economic globalization from their pockets to those of the world's poor. The third part of the book deals with international law, and Singer lashes out at Bush for his unconscionable refusal to ratify the International Court of Justice, and for the UN's continued hesitancy to accept a duty (not a right) to intervene in situations of genocide and other humanitarian crises, even within a single nation. Singer is sanguine about the limitations and dangers of 'global government', but supports strengthening the UN to enable it to act as a 'protector of last resort', and including in its mandate the responsibility to supervise elections in all member nations. The fourth and final part goes back to ethical principles and proposes that countries must, in this world where national boundaries no longer have any logistic meaning, set aside national interest and embrace, once and for all, global interest, impartially. That does not mean cultural homogenization, but imposes a responsibility for the reduction of inequality, both of economic resources and personal rights and freedoms. Always the pragmatist, Singer concludes by worrying out loud about how the responsibility for a global ethic could be managed: It is widely believed that a world government would be, at best, an unchecked bureaucratic behemoth that would make the bureaucracy of the EU look lean and efficient. At worst, it would become a global tyranny, unchecked and unchallengeable. These thoughts have to be taken seriously. How to prevent global bodies becoming either dangerous tyrannies or self-aggrandizing bureaucracies, and instead make them effective and responsive to the people whose lives they affect? It is a challenge that should not be beyond the best minds in the fields of political science and public administration. I'd like to believe that this was possible, because if it isn't, we're in serious trouble. We cannot expect national governments to set aside parochial interests, especially when this entails accepting a responsibility that would, for the richer nations, inevitably lead to a drastic redistribution of wealth to poorer nations and hence a sudden and sharp reduction in, at least, economic living standards (if not necessarily well-being). But as John Ralston Saul has so eloquently argued, larger organizations and institutions, whether public or private, are almost always, and inherently, less efficient, less agile, more resistant to change, more hierarchic, and less transparent than smaller organizations. So the challenge is to achieve the best of both worlds, having organizations of global scope and authority and responsibility, but broken up into sufficiently small, autonomous and dynamic units that they are sensitive, resilient, responsible and responsive to the people and communities they serve. We can only hope that "the best minds in the fields of political science and public administration", wherever they are, are up to the task.

To black hole, or not black hole, that
is the question

Update Fever! February / March 2003
Google Update finally arrives

UPDATE: i-mate released ROM update for
PDA2k Pocket PC Phone Edition

Update: Asante FR1104-G wireless router
firmware update

Google Update January 2003 - The Super
Bowl Update

Apples issues Security Update 2004-09-07
via Software Update

• CoreFoundation
• IPSec
• Kerberos
• libpcap
• lukemftpd
• NetworkConfig
• OpenLDAP
• OpenSSH
• PPPDialer
• rsync
• Safari
• tcpdump

UPDATE: Motorola released ROM update for
MPx220 Smartphone

Update Allegra : Google Index Update
2-2-2005

Update: Digital Performer 4.12 MAS and
AU Support Bundle Update

Update: CodeWarrior Development Studio
for Mac OS, v9.3 Update

UPDATE! October 2002 Google Update

Update: FileMaker xDBC/JDBC update

Software Update: Security Update
2005-003

Update: Photoshop CS MultiProcessor
Support Update

Update Garbo : Google Toolbar PR Update

Windows Update v6 Released as Microsoft
Update

Apple releases Java Update 1.4.2 Update
2

Software Update: Security Update
2004-06-07

Software Update: Security Update
2004-04-05

Update: Fibre Channel Utility Update

mac in black

The ink is black

Our Man In Black

Black Hat

If its PC, it must be black

Update: Retrospect 6 Driver Update
5.3.102

Update: Black & Bleu 10.0