Alright, it's Saturday and time to clean 

Now where's my Gillmor Gang. Maybe it really was the last one this time.

I guess I'll be forced to put it off. I'll go read a book instead.

Later: It's going up. Also a Gillmor Daily (one on one) with Mary Jo Foley. Nothing terribly surprising there, but a pleasant chat.

Can't pick it up 

You know that old saying about a book you can't put down? Well, I'm reading The Jungle, and I'm having a hard time picking it up, just knowing I'll be all bummed out when I do. It's the complete text of the novel, which was uncovered in the 80s and found to include a lot more material on social conditions of the stockyards workers. The original concentrated more on the dirtiness of the business. Sinclair always maintained he preferred the edited version.

Still life in real and represented objects 

In fact, I only wanted to take a picture because the duckie and the pin cushion happened to be hanging out there together and I thought they looked kind of cute and iconic.

But if you wanted to get philosophical you could identify three artificial representations of real things, and three real things, and reflect on how that's what it's like to be a human being in society. Half of what you experience is real and half is only a representation of the real stuff.

Iran president 

What a whack job. And he doesn't seem to realize it.

There must be something in the Arab culture that makes leaders think people will buy whatever they say. In the first Gulf War, remember that crazy minister of info, and Saddam was constantly claiming victory over the U.S. right up to near the end. Is it that citizens in that region do believe things if they want to believe them, then the politicians think they can get away with the same thing when they talk to the rest of the world? I've heard that many Middle Eastern people believe stories about how all the Jews stayed home in New York on 9/11.

Maybe a blogger of Middle Eastern heritage could explain how all that works. Meanwhile, here is a book and documentary about Arab and Iranian reaction to 9/11.

Later: I just watched the video. Wow. No wonder people believe the conspiracy theories. I had no idea; I think I may have thought it more like a rumor that gets passed on through word of mouth. It's not like here, where crackpots make blogs about it; the theorists get credence on TV. You have to see this program -- you'll see academics stating it's been proven that Americans planned and carried out the attacks.

One thing they don't make clear or try to estimate is how many people believe it. Maybe the PDF book gets into that. They do have a short segment at the end showing what they call "reformists," pundits who urge Arabs to face the facts. One of them says the delusion is widespread, calling it a "nightmare that's overcome the Arab mind."