This morning I made it all the way to the final boarding line at Logan Airport in Boston without once having to show any ID. After swiping my credit card to get my printed boarding pass, I went through the security checkpoint without anyone asking to see my ticket or ID. The only time I had to whip out my wallet was when they were doing the meet, greet and ticket-rip at the entrance to the jetway. This contrasts with the last time I was at Logan a couple of months ago when I had to show ID every 10 minutes.

Of course, what could possibly happen at Logan Airport?

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I have a one-day trip to NJ tomorrow, beginning with a 6:30AM flight and returning in the evening. Thus, depending on the state of Wifi in the Garden State I may not be blogging. Do try to carry on without me.

BTW, I’m trying out a new presentation for these CIOs: Messiness as a Virtue.

But I’m still gonna iron my pants and put on a clean shirt.

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I don’t know about you, but most of my dreams aren’t nightmares and most aren’t particularly delightful. Usually, stuff just happens. Why then do we use the word “dream” as if it meant “delightful” or “perfect”?

My theory, based on nothing: When “dream” was first associated with “ideal,” it made sense because our dreams were better. Our dreams have been in decline ever since.

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Katriel Richman, and old e-acquaintance in Israel, writes:

On a personal note from my end, I’m trying to change the terms of my response to the Palestinian intifada by bicycling to Eilat on the Wheels of Love bike ride to benefit the children of Alyn. Over the last two years we’ve been reacting on the bombers’ terms, meeting the evil of the homicide terrorists with fences, closures and military force. The Alyn ride is a chance to respond to the intifada on our terms, meeting malevolence with benevolence.

It’s a 5-day bike ride from Jerusalem to Eliat to raise money for the Alyn Pediatric Hospital in Jerusalem, “Israel’s only rehabilitation center for disabled children and young adults that offers a full gamut of medical, paramedical and educational services seasoned with love and dedication.”

Katriel doesn’t mention that of course Alyn is open to Palestinian children as well as Israeli kids because that’s taken for granted.

You can give online at Network for Good. Katriel would appreciate if you were to fill in the “Designation” line with the words “Wheels of Love” and the “Dedication” line with the name of the rider you wish to sponsor (Katriel Reichman), but he’d appreciate it more if you just gave something.

Emily Skarzenski reminds us about The Hunger Site where simply clicking causes sponsors to donate to projects to reduce world hunger.

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Yang Jianli, a resident of Brookline, MA where I live, is being held by the Chinese government. He was a Tianamen protestor who , after being refused a passport many times, traveled back to China for a visit using a false one. He was caught and has been kept incommunicado.

The following letter has been signed by a number of US Congresspeople. If your representative’s name isn’t at the bottom of this message, could you please write or call him/her to urge him/her to sign?

There’s more information here and here. You can get the address of your Representative here.

Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

September xx , 2002

H.E. Jiang Zemin
President
People’s Republic of China

Dear President Jiang:

As you prepare for your meeting with President Bush in Texas in late October, we respectfully ask for your assistance with an urgent humanitarian matter. We hope that your government will respond to the concerns expressed by many Members of Congress regarding Dr. Yang Jianli, a legal U.S. permanent resident who has been detained incommunicado in the People’s Republic of China since April 26, 2002.

We believe that a prompt and successful resolution of his case would help to improve the climate between our two countries and to demonstrate the PRC’s commitment to internationally recognized principles of human rights.

We understand that Dr. Yang’s brother was told by the local authorities that on June 2, 2002, Dr. Yang was arrested and was being held somewhere in Beijing. In apparent violation of PRC and international law, none of Dr. Yang’s family members has been allowed to meet with him or has received written notification of his arrest and place of confinement. These factors have prevented Dr. Yang’s family from obtaining legal counsel for him.

Dr. Yang’s wife and children are American citizens residing in Massachusetts. His detention is a cause of growing pain and anguish to his family. We urge your government to assure that Dr. Yang is given a prompt and fair trial, permitted to meet with his wife and U.S. government representatives, and allowed to return to the United States to rejoin his family as soon as possible. This positive humanitarian gesture would be strongly welcomed by Congress.

Thank you for considering our requests, and for taking the time to address this important matter.

Already signed:

REP. CHRISTOPHER COX
REP. NANCY PELOSI
REP. TOM LANTOS
REP. SANDER M. LEVIN
REP. ED ROYCE
REP. DAN BURTON
REP. JOHN W. OLVER
REP. STEPHEN F. LYNCH
REP. MARTIN T. MEEHAN
REP. BARNEY FRANK
REP. FRANK WOLF
REP. DANA ROHRABACHER
REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH
REP. EDWARD J. MARKEY
REP. WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT
REP. JAMES P. MCGOVERN
REP. MICHAEL CAPUANO
REP. CONSTANCE A. MORELLA

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Pick any three countries and see what they’re the axis of. Great site.

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Andrew Odlyzko sent the following to the attendees of a small conference I was at recently:

U.S. Broadband Lines	U.S. Cell Phones
Dec 1999 2.8 M	Dec 1989 3.5 M
Dec 2000 7.1	Dec 1990 5.3
Dec 2001 12.8	Dec 1991 7.6
Dec 2002 20.0 (est.)	Dec 1992 11.0
&nbsp	Dec 1993 16.0
	Dec 1994 24.1
Broadband data for 1999-2001 from FCC statistics, covering both business and residential connections, with broadband defined as anything with more than 200 Kbps in at least one direction, cell phone data from CTIA

Thus broadband growth in three years equals cell phone growth over 5 years. Hence even though cell phones beat broadband connections by almost exactly a 10:1 margin as of Dec. 2001, they spread more slowly.

These figures come from an article called “The Many Paradoxes of Broadband.”

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Dan Gillmor has followed up last week’s column about ten decisions that made the Internet the good thing that it is with a column on the three decisions that are still to be made:

Freedom to create innovate
Customer choice and competition policy
Security and liberty

Dan’s assessment of the decisions we’re in the process of making in each of these areas is pretty glum. And, unfortunately, hard to argue with.

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When I was designing my blog, I made the aesthetic decision to remove the underlines from the links because underlines are such horrid little things. Instead, I made my links red, which I thought made them distinctive without making them like they were words I particularly wanted to emphasize.

Ralph Brandi wrote to me yesterday. Ralph is color blind. My links don’t look like links to him. Nor to anyone else with reg-green color blindness. So, the underlines are back in. For example, when I tell you that Ralph’s blog is here, you’ll see “here” underlined.

This being the day before Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, I hope Ralph and his color-blind sisters and brothers will forgive me.

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Chip forwards a link to what may be an important article in the Sunday Herald that claims that the “regime change” in Iraq is part of a larger plan put together by Bush’s cronies before he took office:

Bush planned Iraq ‘regime change’ before becoming President

By Neil Mackay

A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ‘regime change’ even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a ‘global Pax Americana’ was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), George W Bush’s younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

more…

It is literally a plan for US global domination. Or, more exactly, a plan to make our global domination more thorough, direct and undeniable.

Peter Kaminski points us to the actual report, Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

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