...from the latest issue of Radar magazine, p.26: "But before long, people came to suspect that the danger of SARS had been exaggerated by the media. Or, as Dr. Donald Low, a member of Canada's so-called SARS containment team, put it, It's a bunch of bullshit." (Dr. Low is actually chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.)

I've lived in Alaska a total of 12 years plus a few summers; prior to last week I had never been to Fairbanks, Alaska's 2nd largest city. Thanks to the whimsy of a scheduling computer deep in the bowels of Alaska Airlines (the same one that wouldn't let me book a circle trip with frequent flyer miles), I flew from Seattle to Anchorage via Fairbanks, which makes about as much sense as flying from Guangzhou to Guilin via Nanning. That is to say, it doesn't make much sense. Insult to injury, I had a five-hour layover. From 1 am to 6 am.

Silver lining: it's mid-June. Fairbanks doesn't get midnight sun - it's a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle - but I waltzed out of the terminal into a very bright twilight and t-shirt weather. I waltzed in the direction of downtown, a few miles away. When I got to the edge of the asphalt parking lot, a gang of mosquitos attacked (Bloods, naturally) and I turned smartly around and waltzed back inside. Maybe winter is a better season to appreciate Fairbanks.

My next exciting layover comes in August, when I spend 6 am to 5 pm in Newark! And, for people who have been writing to figure out where I am (for good or ill), please note that my location is indicated on the home page, as is my summer travel itinerary.

Meanwhile, I logged in to find hate mail in my inbox. (sample: "America Love it OR Leave it.") This can only mean one thing: somebody has linked to my American Apology Shirt website. And that, in turn, can only mean one thing: more sales!

"Fixing an agency management problem doesn't make headlines or produce voter support. So if you're looking at things from a political perspective, it's easier to go to war."

I saw 52 movies and three shorts packages in 25 days, up slightly from 2001. I saw seven great movies, and six awful ones. I saw 12 non-fiction films. Overall, the quality of the festival was good if mixed; I missed most of the films that fellow pass-holders rated best, but I also missed many of the worst. The Secret Festival was especially good this year. Three movies featured castration, which was not something I really needed to see. I volunteered for several Special Events, and it was certainly more fun to work at the Opening and Closing night parties than to attend them. I was one of the doorkeepers for the VIP room at Closing, which was fun in part because as a volunteer I couldn't be fired or anything, so I just stuck to the letter of the instructions and got to refuse attendance to many many people.

I was also able to put some of the skills gained in China to use, particularly blocking out, as taught to me by little old ladies elbowing me out of the way at the bus stop. A surprising number of people attempted to walk behind me at full speed into the VIP room, and when I simply stepped back and asked for their tickets they would calmly make up an excuse as though they routinely tried and failed to crash parties and then they would leave. And so I'm not going to volunteer for any parties next year, because what the hell is the point of donating free labor to ensure that celebrities and "important people" have a private room to themselves to reassure each other how important they are? It's disappointing to see how utterly mainstream, establishment, star-worshipping the festival core group is. I suppose that's the inevitable path for the 29th year of what is now the biggest film festival in North America, but it's still disappointing. Anyway, I saw a lot of movies and a few of them were extremely moving and I never would have seen them otherwise and I recommend you try and see them, especially: The Cuckoo, House of Fools, To Be and To Have, the fourth Secret Movie, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Spring Subway, Respiro, and my festival favorite, Pingpong.

"It's a total release of the id," he said one Thursday last month as he sat in a Japanese restaurant in Madison ... "I think people are generally false. Even sitting here with you, we are putting on a front. But in [Anarchy Online] you can really let your true character out. If I want to be a pervert, I am able to do that in A. O. and be a pervert right off the bat."

Ms. Werner-Stenlund, who seems alternately befuddled and amused by her husband's other life, put in, "You are a pervert."

Tablet: Any chance of Kaiju Big Battel coming to Seattle?

TKC: Yes, Seattle would be a fine city to protect from giant city crushing monsters.

JUERGEN: I was surprised when I heard you were in Spy Games. How did that come about?

CHARLOTTE: I did that film just so I could kiss Robert Redford. He's a very kissable man, and I thought, "Maybe I'll never get another chance."

In testimony before the Senate, Olson denied any involvement in the Project -- but that testimony was later fully documented as false. Yet Olson is now solicitor general of the United States ...

"Coming out of the election," Republican congressman Peter King later said, "I didn't hear anyone discuss impeachment. It was over. Then DeLay took over." ... Since then he has been promoted for his "deranged" attack on the Constitution by being named House majority leader.

In 1998, Bret Kavanaugh ... coauthored the salacious so-called Starr Report ... Today, Bret Kavanaugh is deputy legal counsel at the Bush White House.

In 1995, Michael Chertoff was chief counsel for Sen. Alphonse D'Amato's Senate Whitewater Committee that churned endless baseless allegations against the Clintons. Since then, he has served as Attorney General John Ashcroft's assistant atop the Department of Justice's criminal division (and a leading force behind the authorship of the so-called PATRIOT Act) and been nominated by George W. Bush to the federal bench.

... Richard Mellon Scaife has been, by now, thoroughly exposed as the financier behind numerous false stories about the Clintons that led to the impeachment drive ... Yet that has not ... shamed numerous respectable institutions, including Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago, into declining his support.

... Even before the Lewinsky story broke, Murdoch's outlets remorselessly hyped malevolent stories about the Clintons -- from Whitewater to Travelgate -- even after they were proven to be false. In 1998 and 1999, their slanted coverage of the impeachment drama performed a singular disservice to the truth. They have never corrected their numerous false reports, let alone apologized for them.

...In the battle begun in 1998 between historians and journalists over the facts of the case and the legitimacy of impeachment, the historians have won.

But the journalists' insistence that we all put the matter to rest is itself a continuation of the partisanship and hopelessly confused logic that drove the impeachment effort in the first place. That insistence amounts to amnesty for abuses against the Constitution, some of which were committed by persons who now help to run the country, and who are utterly unapologetic for what they did.

Running total for SIFF this year: 33 movies (including shorts packages as 1 movie per package); 2 implied castrations on screen; 2 directors talking about masturbation on stage. That must mean something. After a slow first week, the festival has really picked up. Even a lot of the low-budget movies have a really good look - cinematography is the strength of this year's crop, and for a film festival that's not a bad thing. A lot, a lot, a lot of documentaries and non-fiction film, which is a nice change of pace. The Secret Festival has been quite strong.

Walking home last night I was about to jaywalk across Madison when I saw a rental cop checking out the bushes across the street, and this got me to thinking about evolution and camoflage. One of the creationist objections to evolution is that camoflage and mimicry couldn't have evolved, since an insect that looks only a little bit like a poisonous wasp doesn't derive any benefit, and thus can't transition from no similarity to sufficient similarity. (As an aside, is anybody aware of a scientist with any acamedic credentials who is opposed to evolution and is not religious?) Dawkins argues quite convincingly, and nature holds plenty of examples, that even a minor similarity can offer an evolutionary advantage. While under direct light in a museum exhibit one can readily pick out a camoflaged, stuffed bird in the foliage, in the real world life and death moment occur quickly, at the margins of perception. A bird that blends in just a little bit may be fifty yards closer to safe distance when the hawk is a mile away; a bug that looks a little like a wasp has an edge over all the bugs that look nothing at all like a wasp. And when I saw the rental cop, in a uniform that across the street at night without SPD for comparison looked convincing, I could clearly see his bare right hip, but I still declined to jaywalk because it just wasn't worth the risk of being mistaken. The power of mimicry.

IMAGINE a business organised as follows. The number of firms is fixed. New entrants are banned. The head of the business can threaten to close down a couple of enterprises to restrict supplies. This is possible because the activity is exempt from anti-trust law (the largest markets, such as New York and Los Angeles, have just two suppliers; most have local monopolies). Certain classes of employees are indentured servants. Rich firms pay a marginal tax of 34% of revenues to poor ones. And the government helps build the lavish corporate headquarters.

A very lovely second Sunday of SIFFing. I inadvertantly stumbled into a nice rhythm for the day: first, "Shorts: The Hush" was a collection of short films without any dialog. The Kenneth Branagh one, while falling prey to the same triteness that hampered the rest, was prettier. Then a fairly quiet French film by the seashore, then a dialog-free (and short: 70+ minutes) Hungarian film, and finally a gorgeous sea-side Italian movie. Also the secret movie this weekend was good, making two good ones in a row and much-needed relief from the recent string of stinkers.

A very calming, centering collection of films. Something very notable about this year's film festival is that almost everything looks really good. I think that's a positive quality for a film festival.

This month I read only books with cool titles.

Daley, Brian. Fall of the White Ship Avatar. 1986.

Mildly cheesy pulp sci-fi, with occasional bursts of readable prose. Par for the course for Daley.

Yao Mingle, The Conspiracy and Death of Lin Biao. 1983.

In 1970, China was surprised to learn that the beloved Marshall Lin Biao, military hero and designated successor to Mao, died in a plane crash in Mongolia while fleeing the aftermath of a failed coup attempt.

This book, published in English in 1983 and allegedly based on top-secret materials smuggled out of China, purports to tell the truth about the Lin Biao Conspiracy. It has many citations, but bibliography comprising "unpublished memoirs," "top-secret reports," and "confessions," is not especially unassailable. But it certainly all rings true, the details appear convincing, and I'm willing to take it as provisional fact.

Lin Biao was modern China's most successful general - so talented that he was able to decline the honor of leading the Korean War, which he considered unwinnable, without ending his career. He was also politically very capable, taking a key role in promoting Mao's cult of personality. Mao eventually designated him as successor, an event which led directly to his downfall.

By annointing Lin Biao, Mao had upset the balance of power among the second rung leadership. When Mao investigated a glowing medical report on Lin Biao and discovered it utterly false, he realized that Lin had little hope of outliving him and thus needed Mao's retirement or death to hold real power. Lin suspected that Mao realized what Lin knew, and so Lin ordered his son start recruiting conspirators.

His son Lin Liguo quickly created a conspiracy of hundreds of military officers, a conspiracy that eventually included the chiefs of the different military branches, equivalent to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lin Liguo prepared a massive rocket attach at a rail bridge along Mao's route for a Shanghai trip, but unable to get clearance from Lin Biao, failed to pull the trigger. Lin Liguo traveled to the resort town of Beidaihe to plead with his father, but Lin Biao was unwilling to commit to such an overt action. Lin Biao preferred his own plan, which was to fake a war with the Soviet Union, thus prompted Mao to hole up in a military installation outside Beijing, which Lin would then pump full of poison gas. Lin tried to initiate secret talks with Moscow to lay groundwork for a fake war, but his agents weren't taken seriously. So, he planned to start a real war.

Meanwhile, a second rocket ambush, on the train's return journey, was also staged but not executed.

Although unaware of the train ambushes, Zhou Enlai had infiltrated the conspiracy. In addition to being Mao's right-hand man and chief diplomat, we learn that he was also an accomplished spymaster. He had at least two moles in the conspiracy, including Lin Biao's daughter's fiancee, with whose help he ultimately compromised the daughter, who had been privy to everything. Mao invited Lin to dinner at the same installation where Lin had planned to lure and kill him. The conspiracy went into spasms, but in the end Lin went to the dinner, which was polite and uneventful. As his limo was driving out of the complex, it was destroyed by an anti-tank rocket. The remaining conspirators fled, on a jet and a helicopter, both loaded with cash and munitions. The jet was hit by surface-to-air missiles and ultimately crashed in Mongolia, while the helicopter pilot deliberately flew in circles around Beijing all night until forced to land.

Zhou called in the first general, told him that the others had cracked, and asked for a confession, which he recieved. He repeated the process for the other three. The generals were imprisoned but not executed. So, aside from changing the location of Lin Biao's death and the exact circumstances of the plane crash and contents thereof, and hiding the scope of the conspiracy, the official version was actually reasonably accurate. Moral of the story: don't hestitate when you are about to destroy the Chairman's train with rocket launchers. And, make sure the helicopter pilot is in on the conspiracy.

Gyamtso Rinpoche, Khenpo Tsultrim, Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness. 2001.

A summary of the main schools of thought of Tibetan Buddhism, with an emphasis on sufficient detail to meditate upon the truths presented. I'm not in the habit of reading religious texts cover to cover, but this was short and much less risible than any other religious writing I've ever looked at. I assume this reflects the nature of Buddhism as a fundamentally philosophical, rather than faith-based, doctrine. Buddhism, as explained by a shaved-head friend, is like scientists had spent thousands of years exploring the inner mind instead of the external world. It seems to me that the point of departure is Descartes, who asserts, "I think, therefore I am." Western science and philosophy go on from there, whereas Buddhists are only willing to grant, "I think, therefore I think," and start working from that point instead.

The Shravaka Approach: ... the clinging to the idea that one has a single, permanent, independent, truly existing self ... is the root cause of all one's suffering.

Compare with this description of major depression: "Eventually, you are simply absent from yourself. ... you are less than yourself and in the clutches of something alien. ... Rebuilding of the self in and after depression requires love, insight, work, and, most of all, time." (Solomon, Andrew. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. 2001.)

Following the Shravaka pattern of trying to be intimately aware of every moment of consciousness as it arises, at the Cittamatrin stage the meditator realizes that the division of each moment of awareness into an inner perceiving mind and an outer perceived object is a conceptual invention. ... there is no proof that there is any substance other than mind anywhere.

Madhyamikas ... do not consider the ultimate emptiness found by the Cittamatrins to be ultimate emptiness at all. ... The Madhyamaka Rangtong uses reason to establish that consciousnesses and their objects cannot be ultimately real, because in the final analysis each arises only in dependence on the other and neither has a self-nature of its own.

[The two branches of Rangtong are Svatantrika and Prasangika.] ... even though the Svatantrikas themselves think they teach an understanding that goes beyond concepts, from the Prasangika point of view their understanding is still subtly conceptual. ... [Prasangikas] refuse to use any reasoning to establish the true nature of phenomena. ... Their aim is to free the awareness of its conceptualizing habit and to let the ultimate nature of reality reveal itself in a totally non-conceptual way.

... From the Shentong point of view, the fault with both Svatantrika and Prasangika Madhyamaka is that they do not distinguish between the three different kinds of existence, the three different kinds of emptiness and the three different kinds of absence of essence ... The Shentong regards the concept of a stream of consciousness consisting of moments having knowing and known aspects as a misunderstanding of reality. ... the luminous self-aware non-conceptual mind that is experienced in meditation, when the mind is completely free of concepts, is absolute reality.

After much double-checking, the text for the t-shirt is done. Order up a few shirts before your next international trip. Domestic version also available (omits English, thus limiting your exposure to zealotous reprisals, under the theory that violent Bush apologists probably don't read Chinese, Arabic, Russian, French, or Spanish. Okay, don't wear even the domestic version in Miami).

Front: American Traveler International Apology Shirt.

Back: "I'm sorry my president's an idiot. I didn't vote for him."

In the six official UN languages.