Palestinians Declare War on Hollywood

"Earthstation 5 is at war with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Record Association of America (RIAA), and to make our point very clear that their governing laws and policys have absolutely no meaning to us here in Palestine, we will continue to add even more movies for FREE."

    

A metaphor too far? Harry Potter and the Jewish Question (Jerusalem Post)

"Harry Potter books are becoming contenders for the title of bestseller of all time - a title held heretofore by the Bible. This isn't surprising, considering many of the themes in the series echo traditional Jewish values.

Wizards keep themselves separate from muggles (non-magical people). They live, work, and study in their own community and have their own values, rules, traditions, and way of life.

The students and faculty of Hogwarts come primarily from a noble lineage of wizards, though one can become a wizard through diligent study (and an innate spark).

The curriculum also resonates with Jewish beliefs. Charms class demonstrates that we affect the world with our speech; Potions teaches that what we eat affects our essence; Transfiguration classes teach self transformation. Care of Magical Creatures students learn to respect all living things; Divination class conveys the fact that there is meaning to the changing seasons and movement of the planets, and Defense against the Dark Arts emphasizes the need for constant vigilance in fighting the evil forces of the world."

    

So We've Defeated the Islamic Terrorists, eh? Victory Act: Redefining Drug Crimes As Terrorism (TalkLeft)

"While Attorney General John Ashcroft distracts us by parading around the country touting the Patriot Act, the equally dangerous, overly broad Victory Act bill is making the rounds through Congressional offices. The full name of the bill is the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003.

In a nutshell, the bill reinvents drug offenses as terrorism crimes. The ho-hum label of "controlled substance offense" will get a glossy makeover as many routine drug crimes become elevated into crimes of "Narcoterrorism.""

    

The New Couples Next Door (NYTimes)

WHEATON, Ill. — Mike and Sue Weinberg were out to dinner when their 6-year-old son, Jack, declared, "Mommy, I'm going to marry you." When Ms. Weinberg explained that she was already married, Jack persisted, "Then I'll marry Daddy."

"You can't marry Daddy," Ms. Weinberg said patiently, "He's a boy."

"But Mark and Kevin are boys," replied Jack, logic that his mother could not refute.

Mark Demich and Kevin Hengst, the couple across the street, are not actually married. Still, in the seven years they have lived in this Chicago suburb they have become like the Buckinghams, the Therrons, the Siconolfis — just another young family in the neighborhood, socializing porch to porch on summer evenings.

    

The Trouble with Harry (The Jerusalem Post)

"When Gili Bar-Hillel chose to translate Albus Dumbledore's favorite treat as "krembo" instead of his British favorite, "sherbet lemons," she had no idea just how much criticism she would draw."

    

The Memory Hole >The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile (The Memory Hole)

"It's no secret that the US educational system doesn't do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America's schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can't find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don't know who Abraham Lincoln was.

    

Oh, the generosity! Guantanamo may free children (BBC)

"The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has told the BBC the US military is hoping to release children it is holding there.

The BBC's Gordon Corera, in Guantanamo Bay, says the US's interviews with the three children - aged between 13 and 15 - reveal they may have been coerced into fighting in Afghanistan.

General Geoffrey Miller who leads operations at the camp is seeking to have the children released in recognition of their age and co-operation, our correspondent says.

"These juvenile enemy combatants were impressed, were kidnapped into terrorism. They have given us some very valuable intelligence. We are very close to making a recommendation on their transfer back to their home countries," General Miller said."

    

Why Once-Violent Neighborhoods Stayed Calm During the Blackout (Bob Herbert, NYTimes)

"The calm that characterized Bushwick and other rebounding neighborhoods during the recent blackout vindicates the housing initiative begun during the 80's. The progress of the last 10 years reminds us that investing in the poorest communities benefits the city as a whole."

    

PowerPoint Is Evil (Edward Tufte in Wired)

Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn't. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall.

Yet slideware -computer programs for presentations -is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.

Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

    

Record review: Boaz Sharabi 70 Greatest Hits Ever (Jerusalem Post)

" Instead of writing about this quadruple CD collection, it was tempting to just list the song titles of Boaz Sharabi hits and let them speak for themselves: "Latet," "Tni Li Yad," "Mishala," "Halavai," "Keshe'at Noga'at Bi," "Ezli Hacol Beseder," "Mi Yada Shekach Yiheyeh" (recorded at the height of the Yom Kippur War), "Brit Olam" and, a personal favorite, "Keshetavo," an anthem dedicated to MIA navigator Ron Arad.

Singer/songwriter/composer Sharabi, in a career spanning some 39 years, has given Israel a great many modern classics and - as this collection proves - also gave new life to ancient classics such as Dror Yikra and the Song of Songs.

And that is perhaps the secret of Sharabi's success. He has constantly crossed lines, avoided being categorized and, as a result, was the first "Yemenite" singer to make it into the mainstream without compromising his roots and music. He is today right up there with the Israeli big names - Matti Caspi, Arik Einstein, and Shlomo Artzi.

Surprisingly, his first hits weren't in Hebrew but English. Pamela, for example, in the early 1970s topped the charts of the foreign hit parade before being translated (although, unfortunately, this collection has only the Hebrew version)."

    

Cotton pickin' subsidies: Unilateral(Davos Newbies Home)

"West Africa has vast numbers of subsistence cotton farmers, struggling to keep their families alive with a couple of acres, a wooden plough and an ox. The US has 25,000 cotton farmers with vast farms and all the modern technology. You'd think that explains why west Africans are uncompetitive. In fact, it costs 23 cents to grow a pound of cotton in west Africa and 82 cents to grow it in the US. But the 25,000 US farmers receive annual subsidies of $6 billion. That's obscene. "