Christiern

He might also have taken up serial killing or child abuse--one speculation is as good as the next. I agree with Chris, the most reasonable solution would have been to give Williams life in prison, a place from which he could continue to contribute his positive efforts.

Published on Tuesday, October 25, 2005 by Agence France Presse US Judge Sets December Date to Execute Nobel Peace Prize Nominee This undated photo provided by the family of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, shows Williams in the visiting area of San Quentin State Prison in California. A judge signed a death warrant Monday, Oct. 23. 2005, and set December 13, 2005, as the date Williams will be executed, for four murders he committed in 1979. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Williams Family) A US judge signed a death warrant for a former street gangster and convicted killer who went on to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in tackling youth violence. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders set a December 13 date for the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, noting that his appeal against his death sentence had been rejected by the US Supreme Court on October 11. "I am signing the warrant of execution," the judge said as several dozen opponents of the death penalty looked on in the crowded courtroom. Williams, who co-founded Los Angeles' deadly Crips gang, was convicted in 1981 for the murders of four people and has been incarcerated in a small cell on the death row of San Francisco's San Quentin prison since then. But since receiving his death sentence, Williams, 51, has renounced his gang past, penned children's books, been the subject of a television movie starring Jamie Foxx and been nominated for the world's top peace prize. "The Stanley Williams case is about a man who has done what I think is the most important thing a man can do in this country, and that is reach out to the youth of this country with books, with tapes ...," Williams lawyer, Peter Fleming, said outside the courtroom. Williams' legal team will appeal to movie star California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on November 8 for clemency and to reduce the prisoner's sentence from death to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Supreme Court's decision earlier this month cleared the way for Williams' execution by lethal injection -- unless Schwarzenegger intervenes. But no condemned murderer has been granted clemency in California since 1967. Outside the courthouse, demonstrators held up signs proclaiming "Executions Teach Vengeance and Violence", "Abolish the Death Penalty" and "Stop the Execution of Stanley Tookie Williams -- Keeping Him Alive Saves Lives." A number of Williams' supporters chanted, "Let Tookie live!" Tookie's Corner Williams was 16 when he and a high school friend -- Raymond Washington, who was later killed -- began the Crips street gang in South Los Angeles in 1971. Known as "Big Took" to fellow Crips, Williams helped build the gang into a nationwide criminal enterprise that continues to spawn street violence more than 30 years later. He was convicted and sentenced to death for committing four 1979 murders, but he has consistently maintained his innocence. The first victim in the killings, which took place during two separate robberies two weeks apart, was a 23-year-old convenience store worker. A witnessed who received immunity from prosecution testified at trial that he, Williams and two other men took 120 dollars from the store's cash register before Williams shot the young man execution-style and mocked the gurgling sounds the victim made as he lay dying. Williams was also found guilty of the shotgun murders of a family of three people in a Los Angeles motel. Williams, who presented an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the killings, argued in his appeal that Los Angeles County prosecutors had engaged in racial discrimination by seeking to keep black people off his trial jury.

MAREN

Yes, that's why I said that Apple was the first home computer to offer these things. Steve Jobs saw a mouse and graphic interface while given a tour of Xerox, and took it from there. Apropos vision, Jobs was also the first to get rid of the floppy disk. Jobs also missed a few times, but he was mostly right.

mgraham:"But that raises a question if Macs are soooooo much better can cost alone explain their lack of market share?" It's a catch-22 of sorts. PCs were much cheaper, because IBM did not exercise its proprietary rights. That resulted in systems that were much cheaper than Apples (one could even build/assemble one's own), so more people owned PCs, which gave programmers a bigger incentive to write for the PC platform. The interesting thing is that Apple sells more Macs than most PC manufacturers, because it's them against a vast number of PC'ers. Apple is always ahead, of course. Windows is an attempt to emulate the Mac look, functionality and feel. Mac was the first home computer to offer a graphic interface, a mouse, a floppy disk, a hard disk, etc. Finally, let me point out that Apple did once license it's OS to other manufacturers. There were several clones, but the change did not benefit Apple. The Steve Jobs returned to the company and changed things around. It is remarkable that Microsoft, with all its money and huge staff has not been able to innovate. I bought my first Apple computer in 1980 (had a Tandy before then) and when the Mac came out (in 1984) I bought one of those--a great concept, I thought, but limited computer power. That changed with the Mac II, and things have steadily improved since then. In '84, I also bought a PC, but DOS was a horror and the early Windows versions were Payless to Apple's Stuart Weitzman. Windows has come a long way as it follows the Mac trail, but the vision thing is still missing. Now that Macs will be switching to Intel chips, the future should be interesting.

mgraham, your but is a measure of quantity rather than quality. Payless probably outsells the competition, but would you walk in their shoes if you had a choice?

Clause: "Apple is the underdog..." Yes, in much the same way that Rolls Royce is.

It is possible to play all the right notes and convey only the message that you played all the right notes. That's what I always get from Sandoval and most of the time from Mr. Gumbo.

OP-ED COLUMNIST October 20, 2005 Rain Forest Jekyll and Hyde? By BOB HERBERT Please welcome the latest entry to the Chutzpah Hall of Fame: the mighty Chevron Corporation. On Oct. 28, during a gala ceremony at its headquarters in San Ramon, Calif., the company, which until May was known as ChevronTexaco, will honor the latest recipients of the annual Chevron Conservation Awards. The awards are meant to recognize the achievements of men and women who have "helped to protect wildlife, restore wilderness, create natural preserves and parks, and institute educational programs to heighten environmental awareness." Meanwhile, Chevron's lawyers are in Ecuador defending the company against charges that it contributed to one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. The company is accused of dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste, over a period of 20 years, into the soil and water of a previously pristine section of the Amazon rain forest. According to a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of some 30,000 impoverished residents of the rain forest, this massive, long-term pollution has ruined portions of the jungle, contaminated drinking water, sickened livestock, driven off wildlife and threatened the very survival of the indigenous tribes, which have been plagued with serious illnesses, including a variety of cancers. Chevron, which likes to promote itself as a champion of the environment, contends that no such catastrophe occurred. A spokesman told me yesterday that the billions of gallons of waste that was dumped "wasn't necessarily toxic." "We've done inspections," the spokesman said. "We've done a deep scientific analysis, and that analysis has shown no harmful impacts from the operations. There just aren't any." You would have a very difficult time selling that story to the people in the rain forest who have been drinking and bathing in water fouled with the byproducts of oil-drilling processes. Parents have watched their children play and their livestock feed in areas contaminated with oily substances. Pits that perpetually ooze gunk and oil are ubiquitous. Two years ago, a reporter from The Times iinterviewed a man named René Arévalo who lived near a separation plant that was once operated by a Texaco subsidiary. The house in which Mr. Arévalo and his five children lived had been built on a mound of dirt that covered a pit where wastewater had been dumped. The family got its water from a well. "If you dig here just a meter deep," said Mr. Arévalo, "you hit oil. The water is contaminated, very contaminated. But we drink it. What else can we do?" Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001. From the early 1970's to 1992, the Texaco subsidiary was part of a consortium that ran the oil-drilling operations in an area of virgin rain forest known simply as the Oriente - the East. Texaco discovered oil there in the late 60's. According to nearly all accounts, neither Texaco nor its primary partner in the consortium, Ecuador's state oil company - Petroecuador - paid much attention to the effects of the venture on the surrounding environment and its people. Tremendous amounts of waste generated from the drilling, extraction, processing and transportation operations - billions upon billions of gallons - were dumped into unlined pits in the ground or poured into freshwater streams. "The systematic way that they disposed of toxic waste in Ecuador was to dump it into open-air pits that they dug out of the jungle soil, or directly into rivers, streams and swamps in one of the most delicate ecosystems on the planet," said Steven Donziger, who is part of a team of American and Ecuadorean lawyers handling the lawsuit. Crude oil was also spilled in the jungle, millions of gallons of it. Disasters of this kind, involving poor people in remote areas of foreign countries, tend to stay low on the level of awareness of the American news media. The suffering tends to go unnoticed by the outside world. The families in the vicinity of the Ecuadorean oil-drilling operations have had to drink from contaminated rivers and streams because they had such limited access to running water. And any pollution-related illnesses they may contract pose an even greater danger than normal because of their abject poverty and the absence of adequate health care. Officials at Chevron do not see any of this as their problem. They will tell you that they've cleaned up any mess they might have made, and then some. And they will deny to their dying breath that they have harmed anyone. After all, they're champions of the environment.

In some cultures, that's dinner, Conrad. Think positive!

What can I say but...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! LEEWAY!

OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS October 17, 2005 Recipe for Destruction By RAY KURZWEIL and BILL JOY AFTER a decade of painstaking research, federal and university scientists have reconstructed the 1918 influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide. Like the flu viruses now raising alarm bells in Asia, the 1918 virus was a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, the scientists reported. To shed light on how the virus evolved, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database. This is extremely foolish. The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous. First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus. Second, release of the virus would be far worse than an atomic bomb. Analyses have shown that the detonation of an atomic bomb in an American city could kill as many as one million people. Release of a highly communicable and deadly biological virus could kill tens of millions, with some estimates in the hundreds of millions. A Science staff writer, Jocelyn Kaiser, said, "Both the authors and Science's editors acknowledge concerns that terrorists could, in theory, use the information to reconstruct the 1918 flu virus." And yet the journal required that the full genome sequence be made available on the GenBank database as a condition for publishing the paper. Proponents of publishing this data point out that valuable insights have been gained from the virus's recreation. These insights could help scientists across the world detect and defend against future pandemics, including avian flu. There are other approaches, however, to sharing the scientifically useful information. Specific insights - for example, that a key mutation noted in one gene may in part explain the virus's unusual virulence - could be published without disclosing the complete genetic recipe. The precise genome could potentially be shared with scientists with suitable security assurances. We urgently need international agreements by scientific organizations to limit such publications and an international dialogue on the best approach to preventing recipes for weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands. Part of that discussion should concern the appropriate role of governments, scientists and their scientific societies, and industry. We also need a new Manhattan Project to develop specific defenses against new biological viral threats, natural or human made. There are promising new technologies, like RNA interference, that could be harnessed. We need to put more stones on the defensive side of the scale. We realize that calling for this genome to be "un-published" is a bit like trying to gather the horses back into the barn. Perhaps we will be lucky this time, and we will indeed succeed in developing defenses for these killer flu viruses before they are needed. We should, however, treat the genetic sequences of pathological biological viruses with no less care than designs for nuclear weapons. Ray Kurzweil, an inventor, is the author of "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology." Bill Joy, founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, is a partner at a venture-capital firm.

THE CORONER October 17, 2005 For Trumpet-Playing Coroner, Hurricane Provides Swan Song By SHAILA DEWAN A campaign poster shows Dr. Frank Minyard circa 1980 NNEW ORLEANS, Oct. 12 - "I went down to St. James Infirmary/Saw my baby there/Stretched out on a long white table/So sweet, so cold, so fair." If this tune, made famous by Louis Armstrong, happens to be a favorite of your local coroner, then either you are alarmed, or you are from New Orleans. If your coroner also plays the trumpet, is known as Dr. Jazz, and marches in funeral processions wearing a white suit, then he is Dr. Frank Minyard, a living illustration of the intimate connection between music and death in New Orleans. Dr. Minyard, who has been the elected coroner of Orleans Parish since 1974, has dealt with capsized riverboats, plane crashes, frequent murders and police brutality investigations. On the slab in his basement morgue, he has seen friends and mayors and people who were both. Now, he has met his greatest challenge: the hundreds of bodies collected from New Orleans and its neighboring parishes since Hurricane Katrina. At 76, on the brink of a retirement that was supposed to combine oyster dinners at his favorite restaurants with a simple life on his cattle farm on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, Dr. Minyard has found himself living in an R.V. on the grounds of a temporary federal morgue in St. Gabriel, a small town just outside Baton Rouge, grappling with the still-increasing death toll, the bewildering red tape and the urgent calls of bereaved families. The process of identifying Hurricane Katrina's victims has been criticized as painfully slow, and amid the parceling of blame state officials have accused Dr. Minyard of obstructing the process by declining offers of help despite a staff decimated by displacement and layoffs. It is criticism he shrugs off, saying in an interview, "If they need someone to point the finger at, that's O.K. with me." Sometimes he views the current challenge as the natural culmination of his life. "This is something that I was just destined to do," he says. Other times, he sounds less certain, as on a recent day when he paid a rare visit to his French Quarter apartment. Above the sofa, against the baroque burgundy wallpaper, were photographs of Duke Dejan, Milton Batiste, Danny Barker and other musical mentors, and a blow-up of a snapshot that has become the popular Dr. Jazz souvenir shop poster - and once, during his only contested election, was a campaign sign. It shows Dr. Minyard circa 1980, standing on the levee in his white suit, playing the trumpet. Of the people on the wall, he is the only one still living. "God has given me this swan song," he said, "to see if I am - to see if I am up to it." In the kind of twist that might strike New Orleanians as perfectly natural, their coroner began his medical career as an obstetrician. Before that, he was a tall, blue-eyed pretty boy: a lifeguard in the summers and, once, second runner-up in a Mr. New Orleans bodybuilding contest. During medical school, he said, he spent his summers in New York City giving "nightlife tours." By the late 1960's, Dr. Minyard had a successful practice, a family, a tennis court and a swimming pool, beside which he was sitting one day when he heard Peggy Lee singing, "Is that all there is?" "Prior to that I was very selfish, like most young doctors and lawyers and dentists," said Dr. Minyard, who gave up his private medical practice soon after he became coroner. "I was just trying to get the Cadillac and the country club membership." His pursuit of the coroner's office had nothing to do with the dead and everything to do with Sister Mary David Young, a Catholic educator who ran a breakfast program for poor children and called Dr. Minyard for fund-raising help. "She told me, 'The mothers of these kids, they're all prostitutes and shoplifters,' " Dr. Minyard recalled. "I said, 'Well Sister, nobody's perfect.' " But it was worse than that. Some of the women were heroin addicts, and to help them Dr. Minyard and Sister Mary David eventually founded what he says was the city's first methadone clinic. Soon, he wanted to give methadone to addicts in jail, and learned that in Louisiana, whose legal system is based on the Napoleonic Code, the coroner was responsible for the medical care of prisoners. The coroner at the time opposed methadone treatment for inmates, Dr. Minyard said. The first time Dr. Minyard ran, in 1969, he lost to the incumbent. But four years later, he and a slate of other candidates viewed as reformers - including Harry Connick Sr., the "Singing D.A." - were swept into office. Another of those candidates, Edwin Lombard, now a state appeals court judge, recalled his befuddlement the first time he saw Dr. Minyard campaign: "I said, 'This guy's a nut.' He's walking through the audience blowing the trumpet - off-key, too." As a child, Dr. Minyard learned to play the trumpet by ear. His mother and grandmother were ragtime piano players. His father was descended, he says, from one of two Minyard brothers who were sprung from the Bastille at the onset of the French Revolution. "I never did learn how they got into prison," he said. "They were probably thieves and cutthroats." His parents met on a riverboat. In a city obsessed with heritage and hijinks, this history helps make Dr. Minyard a classic character. "In any other city," he says, "I couldn't be elected dog catcher." Instead of pursuing a career in music, Dr. Minyard went to medical school at Louisiana State University. He did not pick up a trumpet again until his late 30's, when he was guest on a radio talk show answering medical questions and his mother called to say she was having his old horn refurbished for his 12-year-old son. His mother was unaware that their conversation was being broadcast, and it led to an invitation for Dr. Minyard to come back and play. The recital was not a critical success. "Pete Fountain called in and said, 'If that's music, I'm going to shoot myself because I don't want to be associated with it,' " Dr. Minyard said. However inexpert his playing, Dr. Minyard became devoted to jazz, and soon he was sitting in with the venerated Olympia Brass Band and hiring musicians as morgue assistants to help them make ends meet. In his first year as coroner, he was arrested while playing in the French Quarter to protest a crackdown on street musicians. As he likes to tell it, the judge told him to do something constructive with his trumpet, so he started Jazz Roots, an annual concert featuring the city's musical royalty that has raised $800,000 for city charities over the past 30 years. It is advertised on the coroner's Web site, along with a sample of Dr. Minyard's trumpet playing. "In 31 years I've had nothing but happiness in a job that deals with unhappiness," Dr. Minyard said over a truck-stop lunch near the morgue. He has dined with Fats Domino and played the trumpet for Mike Wallace. Once, on the airport tarmac, Pope John Paul II blessed his trumpet. But lately, things have been grim. When the flooding began, Dr. Minyard tried to swim to his office, and ended up marooned there four days. The process of identifying Hurricane Katrina's victims may take more than a year to complete. And though his own property and family were largely spared by the storm, the vast majority of Louisiana's 1,035 dead are what he calls "my people." A few weeks ago, when he had a moment alone, the coroner took out his trumpet and played a tune he had played hundreds of times before. "Do you know what it means," his horn sang, "to miss New Orleans?" This time, he said, the song made him cry.

Bessie Smith did not die as a result of having been denied admittance to a whites-only hospital???? Get outta here! You're pulling my leg!

Obsessed? Try disgusted. Perhaps this thread should be laid to rest, Jim. Sorry I re-introduced it.

Please demonstrate the position. ← It ain't missionary, that's all I'll say about that, Chuck.

Go to the "Genius Bar" thread at www.applenova.com and click on Forums (on the upper left side). Someone will have an answer--or it may already be there.

Patti Page? No, of course not! It was to replace my periodic tributes to Ethel Merman.

I think it's great that Redbone brought a Lee Morse CD to the studio. Most artists are too self-centered to do things like that. Reminds me of a time when I interviewed Billie Holiday for my radio show in Philly--she urged me to play recordings by Annie Ross.

The new 60G is said to hold 15,000 tunes--is that not enough for anyone? BTW, I just downloaded and tried out the new iTunes (6) and see that they have added music videos, TV series, and audio books. As I poked around and searched on my name (thinking it might bring up my interviews with Lester Young and/or Ruby Smith) I amazed to find that I am available for about $2.99, being interviewed by Francis Davis's wife on "Fresh Air." Where are my royalties?

One who is known more for the position he holds than for his music ... WM

If you want to know what happened at Jazz Corner's Speakeasy today, look for a thread titled: "It's A Miracle the Blacks Don't Slit All Our Throats... Resident race card dealer, Rainy Day, is at it again. I won't say more, her kick-off post and that which follows says it all.

Here's what it looks like-- Here's the new iMac G5 with built-in EyeSight camera, a mighty mouse, and a remote control that allows you to show movies, slide shows, etc., or simply play (and choose) your music from across the room. It's also slimmer than its predecessor, but not pricier.

This is in the NY Times today--I found it interesting. Use this thread to reflect changing times ... A Dubai shop window proclaims, "Blessed Ramadan," and a pants suit.