Georgia conservatives seek to ban "evolution": Georgia is considering altering its statewide science curriculum to ban the word "evolution." According to Republican school superintendent Kathy Cox, the concept of evolution can still be taught but, if amended, the curriculum will refer to it as "biological changes over time." In a 2003, Georgia ranked 41st among all states in terms of student "well-being," and in 2002, the state's SAT scores were the second-worst in the nation. Don't educators in Georgia have something better to do than nix "evolution" from their lesson plans?

Update 2/1: Former president and Georgia resident Jimmy Carter issued a statement saying he was embarrassed by the proposal. "The existing and long-standing use of the word 'evolution' in our state's textbooks has not adversely affected Georgians' belief in the omnipotence of God as creator of the universe. There can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology, biology, and astronomy," he said. "There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith."

Voynich Manuscript: With the obsessiveness of Adolph Wölfli, the beauty of medieval illuminated manuscripts, and the schematic wonder of Paul Laffoley, the Voynich Manuscript is a stunning work of art. But it's also an unsolved mystery:

In 1912, the antiquarian book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich bought a number of mediaeval manuscripts from an undisclosed location in Europe. Among these was a lavishly illustrated manuscript codex of 234 pages, written in an unknown script.

Voynich took the MS to the United States and started a campaign to have it deciphered. Now, almost 100 years later, the Voynich manuscript still stands as probably the most elusive puzzle in the world of cryptography. Not a single word of this 'Most Mysterious Manuscript', written probably in the second half of the 15th Century, can be understood.

Details from the manuscript here. (Via Cabinet.)

Everybody Loves Stereotypes: Having spent last night at a biker/tiki bar with a Filipino-American friend who boozily excoriated the racist appropriation of his Polynesian heritage (we were just down the street from Dusty's Dagos, a bar that sells Italian sandwiches), this story caught my eye: Urban Outfitters has a line of shirts that regurgitates an old stereotype. While the one that reads "Everyone Loves an Irish Girl" was adorned with shamrocks, the "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl" version is illustrated with dollar signs and purses.

Nike bomb: Nike recently issued a press release stating they had nothing to do with an internet ad that links the company with terror in the Middle East. In the ad, a sneaker is visible in the foreground as bomb squad members examine a bloody stain on the concrete. The headline reads "You may not survive the blast. But your shoes will."

War games: The US Marines use the videogame Doom in their training, and the Department of Defense uses SimsNet. Now the Army's getting into the game with America's Army: The Official US Army Game. Watch this graphic footage of Apache attack helicopters killing Iraqis with 30mm cannons and you'll see how the game metaphor plays out in actual combat scenarios. Whee.

Artists I'm watching: Vancouver artist Brian Jungen fashions Nike Air Jordans into tribal masks and other motifs of northwest First Nation cultures—seemingly a depiction of the new consumer tribalism and the erosion of cultural identity brought on by the commodity culture. Work samples here, here, and here. Chicago-based artist Siebren Versteeg uses technology to comment on media and globalization. In Dynamic Ribbon Device he uses a net-connected computer to typeset a live AP wire newsfeed into a scrolling version of Coca-Cola’s “ribbon” logo.

Bush speaks: Ribs and ribs alone! The following is a January 22 press release that's posted on the White House web site. I'm not sure if the president's handlers are working on the downhome image thing, or if it's a "f*&! you" to the press, or merely a plug for the pork industry, but it sure seems out of place amid policy statements and speech transcripts:

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool
Nothin' Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico
11:25 A.M. MST

THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.

Q Mr. President, how are you?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm hungry and I'm going to order some ribs.

Q What would you like?

THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I'd like.

Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven't spent enough to keep the country secure.

THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that's exactly what we're going to do. But I'm here to take somebody's order. That would be you, Stretch -- what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It's part of how the economy grows. You've got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?

Q Right behind you, whatever you order.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib?

Q But Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?

Q Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. What would you like?

Q Ribs.

THE PRESIDENT: Ribs? Good. Let's order up some ribs.

Q What do you think of the democratic field, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I'm here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?

Q An answer.

Q Can we buy some questions?

THE PRESIDENT: Obviously these people -- they make a lot of money and they're not going to spend much. I'm not saying they're overpaid, they're just not spending any money.

Q Do you think it's all going to come down to national security, sir, this election?

THE PRESIDENT: One of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they're good, generally.

(Thanks, Ben.)

Dear Friends, I'm swamped. Until I'm not, may I direct you to the excellent news portal Cursor?

Media Concentration 101: Free Press runs a series of articles on the three ways corporate media concentration affects our lives: by determining our political fate, bombarding us with violence, and shrinking the number of stories we see.

War Profiteering 101: The Institute for Southern Studies runs an excellent series on the wonderful business opportunities the war in Iraq has brought to a select few companies. Don't miss "OCCUPATION, INC.," on the "reconstruction racket."

Logo Design 101: Graphic Design USA runs down the list of trends in corporate logo design, from Monsanto and BP's green approach to interlocking droplets a la Cingular.

Get Your War On! The State of the Union edition.

Appointocracy not democracy: The White House's plan for transferring power to the Iraqis gives lip service to democracy but, as Naomi Klein writes, is essentially an appointocracy: "Iraqi sovereignty will be established by appointees appointing appointees to select appointees to select appointees. Add the fact that Bremer was appointed to his post by President Bush and Bush to his by the US Supreme Court, and you have the glorious new democratic tradition of the appointocracy: rule by an appointee's appointee's appointees' appointees' appointees' selectees." What she thinks the administration's aims are really about? "For the White House, the only way for its grand economic plan to continue is for its military occupation to end: only a sovereign government, unbound by the Hague and Geneva conventions, can legally sell off Iraq's assets."

"I don't think they ever existed." David Kay, the just-resigned CIA official who led the hunt for Saddam's WMDs, now admits that a significant chemical and biological weapons program probably never existed in Iraq in the 1990s, casting the legitimacy of the war into even further doubt. But what about "weapons of mass destruction–related program activities" Bush talked about in the State of the Union?

Howlin' Howard: Howard Dean's infamous yearrrgh-rich concession speech in Iowa is making good fodder for cut-and-paste artists. Here's a site sampling said sound collages, plus a remix of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" to include Dean's war-whoop.

Isn't war great? Emphasizing that he's not a war monger, US General Peter Schoomaker says that war is "useful": "There is a huge silver lining in this cloud [the attacks of September 11]. War is a tremendous focus... Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have the fact that [terrorists] have actually attacked our homeland, which gives it some oomph."

Deserter: Michael Moore called George W. Bush a deserter for leaving his post for 12 months as a Guardsman in Texas in 1972-73. During a recent interview with Wesley Clark, Peter Jennings called such a claim "reckless" and asked Clark if he was going to distance his campaign from the filmmaker, despite the fact that no one has produced evidence to the contrary. Clark's admirable response: "Well I think Michael Moore has the right to say whatever he feels about this." Hopefully, the exchange will resurrect an issue the press hasn't mentioned since it first surfaced in the Boston Globe in 2000.

Statements on the State of the Union: The New York Times reports that, about Bush's speech to the nation last night, "unsurprisingly, he gave himself  high marks." A glance at the editorial pages of major papers around the region seems to say otherwise. A quick rundown:

The New York Times: "The president's domestic policy comes down to one disastrous fact: his insistence on huge tax cuts for the wealthy has robbed the country of the money it needs to address its problems and has threatened its long-term economic security. Everything else is beside the point."

The Washington Post: "Mr. Bush offered deserved tribute to the sacrifices of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq. But he provided no accounting of his mistaken or exaggerated allegations about Iraq's weapons in his State of the Union address one year ago. Instead he tried to cover the gap between what he described and what has been found with a brief and tortured reference to 'weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program activities.' ...In the face of record deficits, a costly new prescription drug program, and mounting costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was as breathtaking as it was unsurprising that Mr. Bush repeated his call to make the tax cuts permanent."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Bush didn't tell it straight. The state of the union is weaker than it should be and certainly weaker than it was when he took office. His wrongheaded foreign and domestic policies are to blame...This administration entered office enjoying the prospect of unprecedented federal surpluses totaling almost $6 trillion. It proceeded to waste those surpluses on tax cuts hugely larger than anything required for economic stimulus. The cuts weren't designed with stimulus in mind at all. They were crony capitalist raids on the federal treasury to benefit the very wealthiest Americans."

The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin: "But a president whose tenure has made America and the world a more dangerous place, and whose administration has presided over the loss of more than 2.3 million American jobs, is not in a position to ask Americans to stay the course."

Franken's co-host named: When Al Franken takes the mic at the new liberal radio venture to be launched by Progress Media this spring, a familiar co-host will share the airwaves: Minnesota Public Radio's Katherine Lanpher. (Via Cursor.)

FactCheck.org: When I saw the unflappable Brooks Jackson--director of Annenberg Political Fact Check and veteran journalist for the AP, Wall Street Journal, and CNN--on NOW with Bill Moyers this week, I knew this was the guy who could answer a pressing question. So I emailed him:

George W. Bush recently told Ken Auletta of the New Yorker, "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

Is that a fact?

Thanks,
Paul Schmelzer
Minneapolis

His reply:

I think Bush forgot about Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

--Brooks Jackson

Visit his site, FactCheck.org, for other facts he's debunked (or bunked).

Peace at 66° S, 65° W: An 8-person team of amateur Palestinian and Israeli mountain climbers have successfully scaled a previously unclimbed peak in Antarctica. The coalition, called Breaking the Ice, issued this statement at the top: "We have proven that Palestinians and Israelis can cooperate with one another with mutual respect and trust. We hereby declare that our peoples can and deserve to live together in peace and friendship." Read their expedition weblog here.

Stump of the Union: The State of the Union speech this year, to air Tuesday night, will serve the secondary function of, you know, illustrating the state of the union. But primarily, it's a campaign speech, according to administration insiders. Specifically scheduled one day after the results of the Iowa caucuses, the strategy is to distract from the Democrats' news in Iowa: "What you achieve by doing it quickly is to get people to focus on the president's positive agenda after two weeks of people beating his brains in and criticizing every aspect of his policies," an unnamed Republican said in the NY Times.

Big Box Lockdown: Wal-Mart's 15-year-old policy of locking in its overnight workers has a plausible enough rationale: keeping burglars out and employee theft down. But what happens when an employee breaks an ankle, goes into labor, or has a heart attack and can't get out?

Daily chuckle: George W. Bush tells the New Yorker, "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

Copywriting homonyms: Microsoft is suing a Vancouver 17-year old for trademark infringement. His crime--using his name, also a homonym for Microsoft, as his web address: www.mikerowesoft.com.

Approvals slipping: Bush has lost ten approval points since December 22, according to a CBS poll. His current ratings of 50% approving of his work and 45% disapproving is the worst he's fared during his presidency.

Resegregation trend continues: A new study by the Harvard Civil Rights Rights Project shows that schools today are as segregated as they were in 1969, a year after Martin Luther King's assassination. "Most schools in this country are overwhelmingly black or overwhelmingly white," said Elise Boddie of the NAACP. "We have still not committed ourselves as a country to the mandate of Brown versus Board of Education. If these trends are not reversed, we could easily find ourselves back to 1954."

State-sponsored vandalism? A controversial artwork in Stockholm, Snow White and the Madness of Truth, consists of a pool of blood-hued water and a small boat floating in it, bearing the photo of Palestinian suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who blew up herself and 21 others in October. Intended to "call attention to how weak people left alone can be capable of horrible things," according to Israeli-born artists Gunilla Skold Feiler and Dror Feiler, the work was vandalized by Israel's envoy to Sweden. Angered by what he perceived as anti-Semitism, Zvi Mazel disconnected cables supporting a spotlight so the lights came crashing down on the work. As Mazel was being escorted out, museum director Kristian Berg told him, "You are a diplomatic person, you should know how to behave." Berg later told a Swedish news agency, "He pulled out the plugs and threw one of the spotlights into the fountain, which caused the entire installation to short-circuit and made it totally life-threatening."

Ariel Sharon phoned Mazel to thank him for his actions, assuring that "the government stands behind him on this issue."

Read the text that accompanies Snow White and the Madness of Truth.

Latest stats from Iraqometer.com:

Civilian deaths 8,200
Bombs dropped 39,750
Wounded GIs 2,835
Coalition fatalities 599
Dead Iraqi soldiers 11,000
US troops in Iraq 143,000
Billions spent $109 billion

Old news in Iraq: American commanders in Iraq have admitted that they've been relying on World War I-era reports, compiled in 1918 by the then-ruling British, to understand the network of tribal sheikhs and reach out to the Shias. As the Independent writes, "The revelation is not likely to improve confidence in the ability of the US to sort out the deepening muddle over how it means to relinquish political power to the Iraqi people by this summer." Also: the US death toll hits 500.

Changing the tone: Dana Milbank and David Broder write of the death of civility in the nation's capitol, despite the president's promise 37 months ago to "change the tone in Washington, D.C. I believe things happen for a reason, and I hope the long wait of the last five weeks will heighten a desire to move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the recent past. Our nation must rise above a house divided."

Go Bob! U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, is suing the state's secretary of state and Palm Beach's county supervisor to require electronic voting machines to print out paper receipts that ensure tamper-free voting.

No Logo: At the World Social Forum, now going on in Mumbai, George W. Bush isn't the only one unwelcome: so are multinational brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The no-logo event geared toward finding solutions for a fairer world refused funding from the Ford Foundation, and made sure all computers were run on Linux, an open-source alternative to Microsoft.

Big-government Republicans: Six high-profile conservative groups--including the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth--have harshly criticized the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress for spending like "drunken sailors." Paul M. Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America, says, "The Republican Congress is spending at twice the rate as under Bill Clinton, and President Bush has yet to issue a single veto. I complained about profligate spending during the Clinton years but never thought I'd have to do so with a Republican in the White House and Republicans controlling the Congress." Paul Beckner, president of Citizens for a Sound Economy, warns that if Bush doesn't begin showing some fiscal restraint, "there's a real chance the Republicans' voter base will not be enthusiastic about turning out in November, no matter who the Democrats nominate."

Bush honors MLK by appointing racist judge: Last year, George W. Bush commemorated Martin Luther King Day by filing a brief intended to end affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School. This year, his celebration includes sidestepping Congress to appoint a former segregationist to the federal appeals court. Democrats filibustered the nomination of Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi in October, but Bush pulled a fast one, appointing the judge when Congress isn't in session, a move that means Pickering need not be confirmed by Congress and will have a seat on the bench until at least January 2005. "The president's recess appointment of this anti-civil rights judge the day after laying a wreath on the grave of Martin Luther King is an insult to Dr. King, an insult to every African-American, and an insult to all Americans who share Dr. King's great goals," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy. "It serves only to emphasize again this administration's shameful opposition to civil rights."

Plus: Pickering's record on race, and the lies he told about his record.