Monday, February 28, 2005


Last year Peter Gosselin of the LA Times wrote a 3-part series that tackled a subject that's probably the key economic story of the past 30 years: the steadily increasing risk and income volatility of the American middle class

Who Signed Sakher Hammad's WTC Basement Level Pass?
Who Murdered Katherine Smith?

Federal Whistleblower FIRED for Reporting
On-Going Extensive Briberies and Cover Up
Conspiracies of Feds Rewarding Felonies and
Giving Aid and Comfort to Illegal Muslims

George W. Bush's imperial procession through Europe took place in a hermetically sealed environment

DOWD: Well, I am old-fashioned. I think you actually have to tell the American people the truth before you go to war.
Never thought I liked old fashioned girls :-)

War Criminal?

Interesting results to poll about Temple Coach who acknowledged that he requested his "goon" player to be rough on Bball court which resulted in a (season ending) fractured arm of a player on the opposing team

"[Now I don't] have to watch adult videos back at the hotel."


27 February 2005
In Defense of Biblical Marriage

11,000 US soldiers dead from DU poisoning
Bob Nichols, www.globalresearch.ca

urban myths

Hunter: ...I don't think it's our war. I think it's Mr. Bush's war

This one made me laugh out loud

Aussie official: U.S. dollar may collapse

What is a Superdollar

NYC Central Park

MIAMI - (KRT) - Ten months after the fact, the Pentagon Tuesday disclosed the death of a Navy doctor at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

News from Oct. 2004: Nephew of Saudi FAA Chief Lived With, Funded 9.11 hijacker in San Diego

Just for Fun: Academy Awards

Sunday, February 27, 2005


WTC Demolition News for Nov. 2004-Tower Collapse questioned: Kevin Ryan's story hit mainstream paper

Funny Story - pharmaceutical company which sent anonymous Valentine's cards to Dutch gynecologists in a publicity stunt has been forced to apologize for sparking family arguments

From the Today Show

ChoicePoint execs sold shares before breach made public

The crisis of the US Army in Iraq

School Violence Pages
An Open Letter to a Local School Board

Critical Thinking:
What It Is and Why It Counts
Links to PDF

Belief & Brain Research

Howdy Doodyism, my friends, is on the march.

Duped? not all


Internet Fame Is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa

By ALAN FEUER and JASON GEORGE

Published: February 26, 2005

There was a time when embarrassing talents were a purely private matter. If you could sing "The Star Spangled Banner" in the voice of Daffy Duck, no one but your friends and family would ever have to know.

But with the Internet, humiliation - like everything else - has now gone public. Upload a video of yourself playing flute with your nose or dancing in your underwear, and people from Toledo to Turkmenistan can watch. Here, then, is the cautionary tale of Gary Brolsma, 19, amateur videographer and guy from New Jersey, who made the grave mistake of placing on the Internet a brief clip of himself dancing along to a Romanian pop song. Even in the bathroom mirror, Mr. Brolsma's performance could only be described as earnest but painful.

His story suggests that the quaint days when cultural trinkets, like celebrity sex tapes, were passed around like novels in Soviet Russia are over. It says a little something of the lightning speed at which fame is made these days.

To begin at the beginning:

Mr. Brolsma, a pudgy guy from Saddle Brook, made a video of himself this fall performing a lip-synced version of "Dragostea Din Tei," a Romanian pop tune, which roughly translates to "Love From the Linden Trees." He not only mouthed the words, he bounced along in what he called the "Numa Numa Dance" - an arm-flailing, eyebrow-cocked performance executed without ever once leaving the chair.

In December, the Web site newgrounds.com, a clearinghouse for online videos and animation, placed a link to Mr. Brolsma on its home page and, soon, there was a river of attention. "Good Morning America" came calling and he appeared. CNN and VH1 broadcast the clip. Parodists tried their own Numa Numa dances online. By yesterday, the Brolsma rendition of "Love From the Linden Trees" had attracted nearly two million hits on the original Web site alone.

The video can be seen here.

It was just as Diane Sawyer said on her television program: "Who knows where this will lead?"

Nowhere, apparently. For, in Mr. Brolsma's case, the river became a flood.

He has now sought refuge from his fame in his family's small house on a gritty street in Saddle Brook. He has stopped taking phone calls from the news media, including The New York Times. He canceled an appearance on NBC's "Today." According to his relatives, he mopes around the house.

What's worse is that no one seems to understand.

"I said, 'Gary this is your one chance to be famous - embrace it,' " said Corey Dzielinski, who has known Mr. Brolsma since the fifth grade. Gary Brolsma is not the first guy to rocket out of anonymity on a starship of embarrassment. There was William Hung, the Hong Kong-born "American Idol" reject, who sang and danced so poorly he became a household name. There was Ghyslain Raza, the teenage Québécois, who taped himself in a mock light-saber duel and is now known as the Star Wars Kid.

In July 2003, Mr. Raza's parents went so far as to sue four of his classmates, claiming they had placed the clip of him online without permission. "Ghyslain had to endure and still endures today, harassment and derision," according to the lawsuit, first reported in The Globe and Mail of Toronto.

Mr. Brolsma has no plans to sue, his family said - mainly because he would have to sue himself. In fact, they wish he would bask a little in his celebrity.

"I don't know what's wrong with him," his grandfather, Kalman Telkes, a Hungarian immigrant, said the other day while taking out the trash.

The question remains why two million people would want to watch a doughy guy in glasses wave his arms around online to a Romanian pop song.

"It definitely has to be something different," said Tom Fulp, president and Webmaster of newgrounds.com.

"It's really time and place."

"The Numa Numa dance," he said, sounding impressed. "You see it and you kind of impulsively have to send it to your friends."

There is no way to pinpoint the fancy of the Internet, but in an effort to gauge Mr. Brolsma's allure, the Numa Numa dance was shown to a classroom of eighth graders at Saddle Brook Middle School - the same middle school that he attended, in fact.

The students' reactions ranged from envious to unimpressed. "That's stupid," one of them said. "What else does he do?" a second asked. A third was a bit more generous: "I should make a video and become famous."

The teacher, Susan Sommer, remembered Mr. Brolsma. He was a quiet kid, she said, with a good sense of humor and a flair for technology.

"Whenever there were computer problems, Gary and Corey would fix them for the school," she said.

His friends say Mr. Brolsma has always had a creative side. He used to make satirical Prozac commercials on cassette tapes, for instance. He used to publish a newspaper with print so small you couldn't read it with the naked eye.

"He was always very out there - he's always been ambitious," said Frank Gallo, a former classmate. "And he's a big guy, but he's never been ashamed."

Another friend, Randal Reiman, said: "I've heard a lot of people say it's not that impressive - it doesn't have talent. But I say, Who cares?"

These days, Mr. Brolsma shuttles between the house and his job at Staples, his family said. He is distraught, embarrassed. His grandmother, Margaret Telkes, quoted him as saying, just the other day, "I want this to end."

And yet the work lives on. Mr. Fulp, the Webmaster, continues to receive online homages to the Numa Numa dance. The most recent showed what seemed to be a class of computer students singing in Romanian and, in unison, waving their hands.

Mr. Reiman figures the larger world has finally caught on to Gary Brolsma.

"He's been entertaining us for years," he said, "so it's kind of like the rest of the world is realizing that Gary can make you smile."


Musicians in Their Own Words: Manuel Barrueco

BBC Week in Pictures

Oscar Host Chris Rock

Cancer Could Wipe Out Tasmanian Devils

Hunter S. Thompson's Brilliant Presence

Writer's Note: This is a social criticism and commentary on religion, meant to stir thought and insight into a different way of seeing the world. My wish is not to offend anyone's beliefs, only to open minds to new realms of understanding and to what just might be possible. I do not claim to be right, or to know the truth. Quite simply, I wish only for the reader to absorb this essay with an open mind, willing to challenge all they have ever known and learned.

Objectivity in Independent Media
Part 1: Introduction

Objectivity in Independent Media
Part 2: “What You See is What Exists”
Kim Petersen & B. J. Sabri, www.dissidentvoice.org

KENTUCKY STUDENT'S STORY OF HIGH SCHOOL
RUN BY ZOMBIES LANDS HIM IN JAIL

Saturday, February 26, 2005


News Photos for Fun?

Louisville 2/19/2005, about Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? can be found right here. Want the real dirt on Michael? How he got his start? Want to know more about the crew? Check out our Bios section .
...about previous shows and guests.

The wines of 'Sideways'


"Apocrypha" by Valerie Fuchs at the Speed Art Museum is fueled by her interest in the "absence" of people and, often, their places in their communities.

Friday, February 25, 2005


A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Danny Schechter, "Weapons of Mass Deception" Filmmaker, Declares War on the War Propaganda Machine

Ritual & Sexual Torture in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib
Bad Blood

Your unconscious is making your everyday decisions

SUV Safety, see what you think.

A CONSERVATIVE TAKES ON WAL-MART....

Kevin Drum's response to Bainbridge, whose blog offers very few posts that have intellectual or philosophical merit.

Upon review, I realised that Bainbridge was responding to debate a Hugh Hewitt post, and I gotta give him some credit for that!

VIDEO: CNN reported no plane hit Pentagon

February 25, 2005 OP-ED COLUMNIST Kansas on My Mind By PAUL KRUGMAN

Call it "What's the Matter With Kansas - The Cartoon Version." The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security privatization. There's no hard evidence that the people involved - some of them also responsible for the "Swift Boat" election smear - are taking orders from the White House. So you're free to believe that this is an independent venture. You're also free to believe in the tooth fairy. Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors' organization of being against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they'll be back, and it's important to understand what they're up to. The answer lies in "What's the Matter With Kansas?," Thomas Frank's meditation on how right-wingers, whose economic policies harm working Americans, nonetheless get so many of those working Americans to vote for them. People like myself - members of what one scornful Bush aide called the "reality-based community" - tend to attribute the right's electoral victories to its success at spreading policy disinformation. And the campaign against Social Security certainly involves a lot of disinformation, both about how the current system works and about the consequences of privatization. But if that were all there is to it, Social Security should be safe, because this particular disinformation campaign isn't going at all well. In fact, there's a sense of wonderment among defenders of Social Security about the other side's lack of preparation. The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have spent decades campaigning for privatization. Yet they weren't ready to answer even the most obvious questions about how it would work - like how benefits could be maintained for older Americans without a dangerous increase in debt. Privatizers are even having a hard time pretending that they want to strengthen Social Security, not dismantle it. At one of Senator Rick Santorum's recent town-hall meetings promoting privatization, college Republicans began chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go." But before the anti-privatization forces assume that winning the rational arguments is enough, they need to read Mr. Frank. The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends." In Mr. Frank's view, this is a confidence trick: politicians like Mr. Santorum trumpet their defense of traditional values, but their true loyalty is to elitist economic policies. "Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. ... Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization." But it keeps working. And this week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front. It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the rule, not the exception. For example, for much of December viewers of Fox News were treated to a series of ominous warnings about "Christmas under siege" - the plot by secular humanists to take Christ out of America's favorite holiday. The evidence for such a plot consisted largely of occasions when someone in an official capacity said, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas." So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values. Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of smears to come. E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top