Truman is making me crazy

His body clock is unbelievably accurate whether it's @ first light (time for me to wake up), his mid day snack or dinner time. If he weren't such an old sweetie (he will be 15 Nov 29) I would lose patience. For now I think of it simply as a wonder to enjoy. And I do, no matter how much I whine. 

I love women > Troy Patterson, a man who speaks my language...

From a Slate article written by Troy Patterson: "I write to you at one of the three peak seasons for girl-watching in North America. Sweater-sheathed Ms. October will knock 'em out in the fall, and the darling buds of May will spring fresh in their sundresses all too shortly, but meanwhile this is sultry deep August—impossibly flimsy fabrics, exquisite lengths of limb. Addled by murderous heat, provoked by brutal hot-to-trotness.... & now you can read the rest of the Slate article.

Huffington Post > Warren Buffett's Successor?

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Serving up some historic irony: "Warren Buffett is in the hunt for a successor. How do you secure yourself a spot atop his list of choices to take over as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway? Make him a cool $1.2 billion within three years. That's what Li Lu, who participated in the historic Tiananmen Square protest as a student, did."

We are -1 centenarian after the world's oldest condor passed away at age 100

Hector

Brooklyn Representative Anthony Weiner's UTube Moment..... Whew

Sign of the Times > the iStory, a narrative in 150 words of less

Here are 3 neat examples from Narrative

[1] Idolatry
by Sherman Alexie

Marie waited for hours. That was okay. She was Indian, and everything Indian--powwows, funerals, and weddings--required patience. This audition wasn't Indian, but she was ready when they called her name.

"What are you going to sing?" the British man asked.

"'Every Reservation Girl Loves Patsy Cline,'" she said.

"Let's hear it."

She sang only the first verse before he stopped her.

"You are a terrible singer," he said. "Never sing again."

She knew this moment would be broadcast on national television. She'd already agreed to accept any humiliation.

"But my friends, my voice coaches, my mother, they all say I'm great."

"They lied."

How many songs had Marie sung in her life? How many lies had she been told? On camera, Marie did the cruel math, rushed into the green room, and wept in her mother's arms.

In this world, we must love the liars. Or live alone.


[2] Resolution
by Kay Eldredge

Did you make any New Year's resolutions? he asked her.

Have I ever, since we've been together? No one keeps them.

Well--I have one for you.

Make your own.

I have: to say what's on my mind.

And you think I need improving . . .

Just . . . your walk.

What's wrong with my walk?

It's okay, but . . .

You know, someone's walk is pretty much who they are. I mean, you have your walk from the beginning.

Yours is a little--I don't know--stiff. You could try swinging your arms more. Or leading with your pelvis, like models do.

Runway models? You ever seen them in life, without makeup, walking in, like, a grocery store?

Listen, if you're satisfied with yourself . . .

Alright, alright. You mean something like this?

Yeah, that's it!

Like it from the back?

Fantastic. Really sexy and . . . Wait, where are you going?

I've just made a resolution: I'm walking.


[3] Friendship and Art
By Alan Ziegler

The buzzer rings near midnight. It is Robert, distraught. He has had a fight with his girlfriend and walked out. Can he stay with me?

Sure, I say, and put on some tea. We talk for a while. He leaves, and when I next see him, he says everything is all right. I feel good about helping to save a relationship.

Two years later I run into him on the subway. He tells me he is writing poems. He asks if I want to see one. As I read I realize it is about that night. I am portrayed as a cold person who barely tolerates the intrusion and says good-sounding things only to get rid of him.

"What do you think?" Robert asks, as if the poem were about roses in winter.

"It's nice," I reply, the words you use when you want to break a poet's spirit.

NY Observer > the guido effect

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Written by Max Abelson. [...] the cast of MTV's The Jersey Shore rang the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell. [and] the appearance of Snooki, The Situation and all their pals inspired those gloriously astute market masterminds at the Village Voice to craft a phenomenon named The Guido Effect.

Picking one stock each from the categories of Gym, Tan, and Laundry, the Voice saw a post-bell boost for the stocks of Nautilus Fitness, Energizer (which owns Playtex, which makes Banana Boat and Hawaiian Tropic) and Proctor & Gamble (the makers of Tide and Gain soap, plus, of course, Venus shaving products).

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• "Jersey Shore" Cast Rings Opening Bell At New York Stock Exchange (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)

German study > stare at boobs for longer life..... REALLY?

I hope to live to be at least 105.

Frankfurt, Germany, December 6 -- A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and increases their life expectancy. The rest of the story

Bulldog in heat

Bulldog in Heat

a good smelling office

A long, long time ago..... in a faraway world..... from somewhere in my past > The NYTimes critic John Corry reviewed "'Koppel Report' on TV Evangelists"

Palinisms are catching on > Jimmy Kimmel Live

[...] The U.S. now ranks 12 out of 36 countries in terms of college-educated citizens between the ages of 25 and 34. America formerly held the top spot.

According to an article from The Huffington Post: "Throughout America, popular opinion on college is shifting: More people now see it as an unnecessary waste of money, a new survey reveals." 

The NYTimes wonders why we spend so much effort on attracting & preparing Freshmen & forget the Sophomores. The drop out rate is too high.

While access to college has been the major concern in recent decades, over the last year, college completion, too, has become a leading item on the national agenda. [...]

While almost 70 percent of high school graduates in the United States enroll in college within two years of graduating, only about 57 percent of students who enroll in a bachelor’s degree program graduate within six years, and fewer than 25 percent of students who begin at a community college graduate with an associate’s degree within three years.

The [...] first five recommendations all concern K-12 education, calling for more state-financed preschool programs, better high school and middle school college counseling, dropout prevention programs, an alignment with international curricular standards and improved teacher quality. College costs were also implicated, with recommendations for more need-based financial aid, and further efforts to keep college affordable.

The Wall Street Journal's headline for its article is: "Fewer Americans See College as Good Investment"

Most Americans — 42.8% — said this year that saving for their own retirement was more important than saving for their child’s college education, indicating an increase from last year’s 40.7%. Consequently, the proportion of those who prioritized saving for their child’s education decreased — to 40.7% this year from 47% last year. This year, 16.5% said they were not sure, marking the greatest uncertainty over the last four years.

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• U.S. falls in graduate rankings (washingtonpost.com)
• Taking America from #12 to #1 (whitehouse.gov)
• Texans lag in college degrees (mysanantonio.com)

NYT > now this bit of information, if true, is really outrageous.

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From the NYT article: The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated on the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, triggering the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident.

The worker, Mike Williams, chief electronics technician aboard the Transocean rig, said the general safety alarm was habitually set to “inhibited” to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens. [...]

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• Workers Said Gulf of Mexico Oil Rig Was Unsafe, NYT Reports (businessweek.com)
• Deepwater Horizon alarms were switched off 'to help workers sleep' (guardian.co.uk)
• You: Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says (nytimes.com)

NPR obit > journalism legend Daniel Schorr dies At 93

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I worked with this guy.... very, very peripherally -- but I was at CBS News when he was there. He was a tough customer, not always pleasant, but always respected as a fine reporter. Both he and Roger Mudd  (someone for whom I had great respect & who is quoted in the obit) got shafted by CBS. It marked the beginning of the end of the golden era in news @ the Tiffany network. Read Schorr's obit by clicking here.

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• That was Daniel Schorr. (condalmo.wordpress.com)
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An Index of excellent dog training videos

This library of dog training videos, though not directly related to Bouviers, is a tremendous service both to dogs & their people. After all we DO live together so why not learn how to do it in harmony? Great expectations by humans of their dogs may be the greatest reason why so many dogs are abandoned annually. It's not their fault. They simply haven't been taught what you want from them. They are no different than children up to the age of 4.

YouTube > Bouvier skateboarding lesson

Miscellany > greening your period on the Huffington Post

WHAT? .....basketball dribbling in the Gaza strip?

The top U.N. aid official in Gaza says more than 7,000 children in the Palestinian territory have simultaneously dribbled basketballs for five minutes in an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. The event took place on a bombed-out airport runway near the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

 Read the entire story here.

Just in case you were shopping around for cheap open heart surgery

From The Huffington Post: MUMBAI, India -- It looks like an iPad, only it's 1/14th the cost: India has unveiled the prototype of a $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students, which it hopes to bring into production by 2011.

If the government can find a manufacturer, the Linux operating system-based computer would be the latest in a string of "world's cheapest" innovations to hit the market out of India, which is home to the 100,000 rupee ($2,127) compact Nano car, the 749 rupees ($16) water purifier and the $2,000 open-heart surgery.  Read the complete article here.

Luck isn't the best Homeland Security

Here is an apolitical commentary. When you read this New York Post article about the Times Square bomber, compare it to the Washington Post article about our behemoth of a security apparatus,  then think back on 'thwarted terrorist plots' in the recent past, you can't help but conclude that luck has too heavy a hand in the process. So now what?

A dream..... is it time for a(nother) therapist?

A train stops within a hair of where I was standing with a brown friend & a young black woman. I pushed them out of the way just as the train started to roll again. As the open door to the engineer went by me, I yelled at him: 'slow down you idiot'.

Next thing I knew: a tall muscular college student (appears to be a black man) starts accusing my friend of fleeing with his girlfriend or something when in fact he was just commenting on train or asking her for directions. I get between them & when it continued, I suggest we all get a cup of coffee together.

Next I see us approaching a coffee stand like in a subway station. But my friend finds an open briefcase w some papers. To the left of us was a person behind a counter who told him to leave briefcase alone -- he ignores this advice. 

There seems to be a trail of paper which the others start to follow. Then the rest of  us follow suit. We run into a street bum in the dark passageway with his cart & ask him if he has seen a dead body, an idea gathered before for some unknown reason. 

The others go ahead of me as I continue to question the bum. Finally I continue walking down the dark corridor. There are two other women walking in the same direction. They are going to work.

We are stopped @ a steel door which is extremely heavy to open -- which I just manage to do -- and one of the ladies helps too. 

On the other side of the door, the corridor continues but around a corner we run into a wall of smoke (tear gas??). There are 3 or 4 people who have hit the floor to avoid the smoke / gas. Truman is hunched down too & I snuggle up to him & ty throw my arm over him. 

Ahead there are a bunch of cops (heavy duty) w a dead body. And I woke up

Ban the niqab > women's rights or politics?

Personally, I find it interesting that Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon & Turkey ban it. They see it as a political statement.

In the United Stats it will eventually be seen as a matter of  religious freedom. And it has the makings of an interesting debate when it finally reaches our shores.

Read the reporting from one source here. And here's an editorial of interest (Monica C brought it to my attention) which frames part of the argument quite well except in matters of national security.

I wonder if the idea of the niqab in the U.S. will bring up visions of the hooded KKK? I'm not equating the two. I'm simply saying that the memory of hooded people running around doing disgusting things may be one of those elements that pops up when this issue emerges. Then, too, there are many SWAT type cops who don black masks revealing only their mouth & eyes. Pretty scary if you ask me.

Guess who > post a comment.

If no one gets it, I'll post the answer here in a few days.

Oksana Grigorieva grew up in Soviet-era Ukraine, where her father sold potatoes and her mother conducted an orchestra at the local chicken factory (she was paid in eggs). From a young age, she saw a future for herself on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

The last rhinoceros cow in Krugersdorp park, South Africa, bled to death on Wednesday after poachers hacked off her horn

[Reuters photo] Quoting from the Observer article Wildlife officials in South Africa say poaching in the country is at an all-time high: Already 136 rhinos have died this year, after 129 died in all of 2009. 

"The exercise takes them very little time," Mostert said. "They first fly over the park in the late afternoon to locate where the rhino is grazing. Then they return at night and dart the animal from the air. The tranquilliser takes less than seven minutes to act.

"They saw off the horns with a chainsaw. They do not even need to switch off the rotors of the helicopter. We do not hear anything because our houses are too far away. The animal dies either from an overdose of tranquilliser or bleeds to death." 

Conspiracy Theorists > Here is your chance to shine

Reported in the Huffington Post:

[...] less attention has been given to another blog blackout -- this time in the US: As CNET reports, some 73,000 blogs hosted by WordPress blogging platform Blogetery.com, were shut down last week by BurstNet , Blogetery's web hosting company. [...] According to CNET "nobody seems willing to say why or who is responsible." What is known is that BurstNet informed Blogetery's operator, via email, that the its service had been terminated "by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server."

Read the entire story here

2010/07/20 Updated & Clarified? I wonder but it's scary nonetheless.

In a press release, BurstNet has provided new information that sheds light on why over 70,000 blogs were shut down by the hosting service. 

"It was revealed that a link to terrorist material, including bomb-making instructions and an al-Qaeda “hit list", had been posted to the site," BurstNet explained.

In a previous email exchange, a BurstNet representative had said that "law enforcement officials" had requested the removal of the 73,000 Blogetery sites  However, it has since become clear that BurstNet shut down the blogs of its own accord after finding that they violated its policies.

"Upon review, BurstNet determined that the posted material, in addition to potentially inciting dangerous activities, specifically violated the BurstNet Acceptable Use Policy," the company wrote in a statement. "This policy strictly prohibits the posting of 'terrorist propaganda, racist material, or bomb/weapon instructions'. Due to this violation and the fact that the site had a history of previous abuse, BurstNet elected to immediately disable the system." 

This is an interesting read > Washington Post: "Top Secret America"

Here's the link.  And here's an op-ed piece titled "Time to Tame Washington's Intelligence Beast" from Time Magazine written by a former CIA operative in the Middle East. Are we heading for another Frank Church knee jerk episode in our political history or do we really have a problem? This is an extremely serious question. If you are truly interested in this subject, I suggest you read "Legacy of Ashes" before you try to answer the question.

3 more July blooms

Something I rarely do > help put Elizabeth Warren where she belongs

I just signed a petition to President Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren head of the new consumer protection agency. Timothy Geithner opposes her appointment which is a signal to me that she's definitely the right person. After all, Geithner ran the NY Fed while all the banking shenanigans were going on. And did nothing about  it.  But you can surely form your own opinion. Here's one article to start your thinking.  IMO, this is an important issue to consider. 

The Virgin Galactic Experience (might have looked funny the other way around) video > Travel into a weightless sub-orbital adventure for $200k

The Daily Beast compiled a list of REALLY CONFUSING movies which I include here as an adjunct to my review of "Inception"

Movie Review > Inception starring Leonardo De Caprio

"Inception" starring Leonardo DeCaprio directed by Christopher Nolan (Momento, Dark knight, Insomnia) is what I would call a REAL psychological thriller. Personal analysis helps.

Here we go.

Leonardo de Caprio -- the extractor -- specializes in subconscious security. He spies on, and tries to extract information from his target's psyche. To do it he has to get into the target's sub-conscious where ideas & truths run free. Our most natural experience with the sub-conscious is in dreams so De Caprio has a way to enter these dreams.

This movie naturally centers around a particularly difficult case. To succeed, the plan is two fold. 

First, the inception of an idea, i.e. planting/suggesting an idea to the target, since once implanted, there is no stopping it. Ideas and truths -- as well as fears & doubts -- roam freely in the sub-conscious; thus modern day psychoanalysis. The idea being that the inception of the idea will eventually lead to truth. 

But because of the complexity of this case, the other part of the plan involves, not one or two but three levels of dreams, i.e. the participants in the level one dream, are taken over by folks @ level 2, only to be supplanted by the folks at the 3rd level of the dream. This suggests the complexity of the target's defenses  protecting the truth. So you sit in a darkened movie theatre following Leonardo de Caprio (and others) pursue the idea implanted deep in the target's psyche.

The overall architect of this multi-tiered dream construct is non other than Ellen Page, the quirky star of current Microsoft commercials but most preciously starring in the wonderful "Juno".  I'm not sure why she was cast in this role except maybe it was her ability to provide a flat-line performance, i.e. objective, methodical, mathematical. 

Anyway, back to the plot.

The plot, i.e. the assignment, is to discover the final wishes of a dying tycoon: is he going to leave his company to his son or force him to strike out on his own? A pretty thin motive to be carrying such a heavy movie load but Mr. Nolan tries to bulk it up by having the dying tycoon's only competitor finance the whole caper for business reasons.

The trick here is to make sure that (1) there is enough time to complete the job & (2) that everyone is sufficiently asleep so they don't wake up & interrupt the flow of the various dreams which have to work in sync to succeed. 

Enter an East Asian character who has the right sleeping potion. He also has the music that, when played, awakens everyone from their drugged sleep. The sleep has to be deep enough to repel any doubts caused by outside influences (noise, light, etc.) because any of these would intrude on the dreams & create greater obstacles to retrieving the truth. These disturbed 'dreamscape' scenes are visually interesting.

Confused enough?

The last layer of this plot involves the investigator, himself, who is trying to 'return' home to his kids having left his wife behind in an earlier dreamscape where there was nothing but happy times. He is torn by the guilt of leaving her behind & returning to real life & the love of his kids. Each time any of these feelings enter his psyche, his wife appears & he has to interrupt his mission to deal with her.

At the end of this rather longish movie, everything is resolved. You might be a  little tired of thinking about what you just saw but you cannot deny that you were on a director's trip much as "Apolcalypse Now" was for Francis Ford Coppola. If you enjoy this sort of movie, you will probably enjoy this one, too. I did. 

Australia's $24 million plan to stop cows from burping so much

Quoting from food.change.org blog:

Cows may moo, but more often, they burp. A lot. But it's not cows' uncouth behavior that bothers scientists and environmentalists. It's the fact that every time a cow belches, it releases a little burst of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is about 21 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, so all that burping contributes to global warming. 

Are these folks just full of it? There's more to this potent story here.

Huffington Post > Victoria's Secret BEDBUGS

Victoria's Secret is the latest store to feel the bite of bedbugs.

A spokesperson for the store's parent company said a small area of the store on Lexington Avenue was treated for bedbugs.

The clothes infested with the critters were destroyed. The store was closed on Wednesday morning to deal with the problem and reopened later that day.

These latest bedbug woes come on the heels of infestations at Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister earlier this month. (Sorry I couldn't resist)

From the irony files > Letterman extortionist is nominated for an Emmy

Getty Photos > 45 Photos Of Politicians And Their Ice Cream

These two are my favorites of the collection: Clinton's expression & Blair's twin peaks.

Click this for a weird but interesting slo mo > A chameleon eats a bug ....scroll the video bar to 55 secs to avoid a lot of 'stuff'.

3 more July blooms

July Blooms

On a recent trip to Europe, 3 generations of a family (a Holocaust survivor, his daughter & his grandchildren) dance to Gloria Gaynor's tune "I Will Survive" at concentration camps & war memorials throughout Europe

... and this is what happened to me on my visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

July Blooms

OK, this may explain some of the problems in Arizona. I just saying...

A good belly laugh -- something we all probably use at this moment in history

Huffington Post > Was Mel Gibson biblically correct? Read on :-)

Book Review > Hot Springs by Stephen Hunter

First Sergeant Earl Swagger returns from the war in Europe & the the Pacific, a certified hero, a tough guy; winner of the medal of honor bestoyed on him by President Harry S. Truman.

With his young wife newly pregnant & still living in a military Quonset hut & ready to work at the local mill until he can afford a house in Polk County AK, Earl is recruited to help organize a group of highly trained shooters (including Audy Murphy) by a newly elected & ambitious prosecuting attorney named Becker, the group to be led by an old time FBI agent and fast draw named D.A. Parker. Their aim:  to clean up Hot Springs.

The group, drawn from varied locations & walks of life, train in a secret location with pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, military tactics & discipline. Earl's sergeantry comes in handy here. Up at 5:00am, stripping down weapons, reassembling them in the dark, shooting, shooting & more shooting,  physical exercise, eating & sleeping repeated day after day until, finally they are ready for 'battle'.

Their nemesis: Owney Maddox, the godfather of Hot Springs who runs all the whorehouses, gambling casinos, numbers rackets & the like. All the local politicians are in his pocket as are the judges & police. His enforcers are an ornery clan of ruthless hillbillies. They rule the city unopposed until D.A. Parker, Earl Swagger & the team start taking Owney's underworld kingdom apart piece by piece in one surprise raid after another.

This causes great consternation, not only for Owney Maddox, but also for the godfather's in the New York mob who consider Hot Springs their personal playground, their safe haven, a place where everything is under control, where they can let their hair down, go to shows starring Mickey Rooney, Dina Shore & other stars of the time, to drink, gamble & cavort with whores without fear of being hassled by the cops. 

There are four or five detailed story lines in this book. One of them has Bugsy Seigel visiting Hot Springs with his girlfriend, Virgina Hill, on his way out west to build a casino in a place called Las Vegas, a state where gambling is legal & Meyer Lansky sees the potential of a great investment for mob monies. 

Other story lines involve Earl's wife, Earl's family background, racial integration, loyalty, betrayal and final restitution. 

The book has the richness of extreme detail that all Stephen Hunter books have, interwoven with bits of history, mixed with the brutality of the times. This book is definitely a page turner. My only problem is that I find the dialog in Mr. Hunter's books a bit stilted but after a while you just accept it as you are swept away by the story. 

Other books by & information about the author, Stephen Hunter

• Wikipedia
• Random House
• Unofficial Stephen Hunter website

YouTube > a feel good video about a cat who walks w prosthetic feet

1st digital picture > created in 1957

Read the article accompanying this photo @ Wired Science about the man who invented the square pixel & why he's sorry he ever did.

NBC NEWS > Is this a joke? No, it's a new reality show.

Reacting to her 90 day sentence for flouting every court order ever issued in her direction, Lindsay Lohan tweeted "It is clearly stated in Article 5 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights that ... No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Who's got the really big tar balls? How about congress?

Even as more tar balls wash up, Congress is on pace to break its record on oil industry contributions. Samuel P. Jacobs from The Daily Beast has written a comprehensive article on why no one can stop the most uncappable cash spill in politics.

President Obama was so upset about the BP oil spill he announced he was looking for “whose ass to kick.” Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) was moved to ask whether companies with bad safety records should be banned altogether. Even oil-industry friendly Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) called for BP executive Tony Hayward to get his yacht down to the Gulf to help clean up oil.

The air in Washington is full of hostility toward the oil industry these days, the result of the Deepwater Horizon explosion nearly 80 days ago—and BP’s continuing failure to plug the resulting leak. So you’d think all those politicians might be a bit sheepish about collecting campaign checks from the beleaguered industry right about now.

“It’s definitely been challenging at times,” says IPAA’s Dan Naatz. But, he adds, “We haven’t seen anybody walk away from us.” You’d be wrong.  [...]

You should read the rest of this important article here. 

And here's a chart that lists the congressperson, their party affiliation, chamber, state & amount received from the the oil and gas industry. At the top of the list is Blanche Lincoln, Democratic Senator from Arkansas who has received $286,400.

Finally, here's another chart compiled by the Associated Press that shows how much members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee received in political contributions from oil and gas interests since the beginning of 2009.

I've been following Paul the Octopus' 100% accurate predictions (better than Joe Scarborough) on the this year's World Cup . He's had a lot of death threats; paella anyone? What? You don't believe me?

Here's a picture of poor Paul. If you want to read it on Huffington Post, here's the link.

In the face of threats that he would be turned in to calamari, Paul the Psychic Octopus has bravely, and accurately, predicted Germany's defeat by Spain yesterday. The German-based psychic octopus has now achieved a 100% accurate prediction rate for the World Cup 2010.

An unexpected media phenomenon of the World Cup, Paul has gained such popularity that German television has now started to broadcast his predictions on-air, with two reporters sitting by his tank, offering live commentary from his home at Aquarium Sea Life in Oberhausen, Germany.

Paul has become world renowned, but recently provoked hostility in South America after his quarter-final prediction where he correctly predicted that Argentina would lose to Germany. Some Argentineans even threatened to kill Paul and put him in a paella.

The newspaper El Dia offered a recipe for any Argentine patriots who managed to capture Paul: "All you need is four normal potatoes, olive oil for taste and a little pepper."

The Argentinan chef Nicolas Bedorrou suggested a harsher way to cook the octopus: "We will chase him and put him on some paper. We will then beat him in order to keep the meat tender and then put it in boiling water."

His keepers encourage Paul to make his predictions by putting mussels into two glass cubes, with each cube having one of the competing nations' flags on the front. Whichever mussel Paul chooses first is taken as his prediction.

Paul showed special talents from his early life in Weymouth sea life park in England. According to the park's entertainment director Daniel Fey: "There was something about the way he looked at our visitors when they came close to the tank. It was so unusual, so we tried to find out what his special talents were."

The first time Paul's psychic abilities were tested was during the UEFA Euro 2008 soccer championship when he was proven correct in 80% of predictions made. Paul's current keeper in Germany, Oliver Walenciak, says Paul is not bothered by the death threats sent by Argentinean supporters, some of whom now blame the octopus for their World Cup exit: 

"There are always people who want to eat our octopus but he is not shy and we are here to protect him as well. He will survive."

Paul's antics have been reported to millions throughout the world, adding yet another light-hearted and quirky twist to the great celebration of humanity that is the World Cup in South Africa. The phrases "Paul the Octopus" and "Pulpo", the Spanish for octopus, are both currently in the top 10 global trends on Twitter.

Octopi are apparently highly intelligent animals and have been shown to have a good short and long-term memory. Some say their intelligence is similar to that of a dog. It has been calculated that if you placed accumulator bets on the basis of Paul's predictions at the beginning of this World Cup, you would have now made a 131 times your money.

Yet don't base your pension plan on gambling on Paul's predictions during the next World Cup, as Paul is unlikely to live until 2014 - octopuses only live an average of 3 to 5 years, and he was born back in 2008. I can see already unprecedented grief for this octopus on his passing, perhaps even a state funeral, as millions unite in silence and the Last Post is played -- on a vuvuzela, of course.

Calamari will never taste the same again.

Does photoshopping like this make the editorial content suspect?

I don't pretend to know the answer nor even what I think about it yet. But I'm curious to know what you think -- especially those of you interested in media out there. Here's the story with some comments from the editor.

My commentary > news in the digital age

Much has been made about news in the digital age; it's proliferation onto internet blogs, u-tube videos, Skype interviews and the like.

One could make a strong argument that news content, i.e. definition & accuracy, has gone through a radical re-evaluation & we -- as a society -- are worse off because of it.  OTOH, the reverse may also be true, that the death of traditional TV journalism & newspapers, as we know it, may ultimately be a good thing. I worked in the news business during it's zenith (in the 60's, 70's & 80's) and am particularly sensitive to this charge.

I remember when an event occurred & if a news organization was lucky enough to be nearby & could cover the event with a film crew & a correspondent, the film first had to be processed, shipped, edited, narrated & finally aired within a 22 minute block of time alloted to an evening news program (I think it is the same 22 minutes today). Competition for that time, i.e. which story will 'make air', was very tough, based on what was adjudged to be the important news of that day. The criteria for what is important has changed drastically over time & therein lies part of the problem.

Another part of the problem was time, itself.  Or put it another way -- the immediacy of news. The historic  process of collecting television news was very time consuming. Under, even the very best of circumstances, it might have been days before a news item came before the public in it's final form. And that final form was dictated by the many hands it went through before it got to air: the source (there were only 2 real TV news organizations), where the camera was pointed & what kind of lens was used (50 mm best approximates eyesight), the correspondent's knowledge, that person's personality & state of mind, the producer's construct of the final story, the editor's editing & finally the executive producer or managing editor's imprimatur.  Sometimes it went beyond that to lawyers & executives. The same might be said for print reporters who obviously have different hurtles but still have to jump through hoops to get published in what continues to become a more and more difficult venue to support financially, i.e. traditional newspapers & news magazines.

Sure, over time, the processes I've described have gotten faster with the advent of satellites, video tape, computers and the like but the process is basically the same.

When I look into the future, the trend I see is more & more of these traditional venues being choked to death while -- at the same time -- I see citizen reporters flourishing. I think this is good.

For example I can point to citizen reporters who showed & tweeted us about what was going on inside the Iran democracy riots. Ditto for China. This kind of coverage is happening more & more. You see invitations for iReport(ers), requests to send in 'amateur' photographs & home videos of tornadoes & hurricanes and other events. And how many news events changed public opinion based on citizen 'journalists'? All you have to do is remember Matt Drudge's early scoops & the Rodney King video tape shot by a bystander for an answer. And do you remember the Pentagon Papers?

That genie will never be put back in the bottle & I think that's a good thing for modern 'journalism'. It creates competitive views. The problem is we simply have to learn how to digest it; we have to learn how to chew our news food 30 times before swallowing instead of gulping it down & fooling our mental stomachs that we're done eating. We can no longer afford to be spoon fed. We have to start eating healthier now & that will take some effort.  

Historically, in the widest possible view of 'journalism' as a social imperative, after radio, there were once  2 TV networks (CBS & NBC). Then 3 (ABC). Then 4 (CNN). Then cable, computers, the internet (blogs, u-tube, video streams & podcasts) & now cell phones, facebook, twitter, etc. 

Where did Barack Obama & Hilary Clinton make important announcements during their respective campaigns? Where does Sarah Palin currently make her political commentary? 

Maybe we need to find a better word than journalism & journalists to define what is happening today. For example, no longer does a news 'anchor' merit the same meaning as it once did. Anchors have morphed into news 'readers' mainly. Maybe journalists should become information merchants or maybe the word informer should take on a more positive meaning.  Do producers actually produce news?

Anyway, I feel the 5th column has a better chance of surviving than ever before since it is now so fractured. No longer can it be silenced. No longer can it be turned off as happens in many countries or co-opted by profits the way CBS News was by Tish, ABC News was by Disney & to a lesser degree, NBC News was by GE & who knows what will happen under Comcast management.

While a Rolling Stone article on General McChrystal certainly had an immediate effect on his future, the future of General Petraeus & others, it (1) did not change public opinion on the war in Afghanistan nor the conduct or direction of the war, itself.  Nor did it (2) advance the cause of journalists covering military affairs as we know from the new public affairs directives issued by Secretary Gates shortly after the publication of that Rolling Stone article. 

So while I agree that there are many bloggers out there who offer up opinions as news -- and even though those opinions may be based on faulty data or reasoning -- I can counter by saying there are many radio, TV network & cable TV shows dispensing inaccurate 'news' matter as well, but the fact that we now have so many other outlets means (to me), that there is bound to be a greater chance that the truth will finally emerge somewhere, somehow, like squeezing the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube.

I am constantly amazed how the network evening news, the morning shows, etc. not only cover the same damned stories in the same way, they also program them at the same time & take simultaneous commercial breaks. If that doesn't say something about the state of TV news.... and the kind of information we get from it daily, I don't know what does.

After 99 lashes, an Iranian mother could be stoned to death > What can be said about a society that condones this behavior?

Good news. This story has been updated here.

Macy's fireworks finale, july 4th 2010

Lick your chops > lunch 2010/07/05

• marinated shrimps barbecued
• mango sliced
• serrano ham
• cucumber sliced
• lettuce leaves
• crumbled feta
• spanish olives
• tomatoes sliced
• lemons sliced
• scallions 
• sprinkled olive oil

This dish was accompanied by a cooled rose wine spritzer.

Jib Jab > Founding Fathers' Rap 2010

A fascinating read > Washington Post article on Obama's national security officials on the night watch

Indeed this was fascinating reading, informative but discomforting. How much sleep does a person need to make good decisions & how much information can one person absorb & is that enough?

By Laura Blumenfeld

Friday, July 2, 2010; 5:13 PM

Dead of night, undisclosed location

Headlights approach on an empty road. A government agent steps out of an armored SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel.

"Here's the bag," the agent says, to the intelligence official. "Here's the key."

The key turns, and out slides a brown leather binder, gold-stamped "TOP SECRET." The President's Daily Brief, perhaps the most secret book on earth.

The PDB hand-off happens in the dead of every night, the time and location withheld, although witnessed. The book distills the nation's greatest threats, intelligence trends and concerns, and is written by a team at CIA headquarters.

"This is the one for the president," the intelligence official says, moving inside a secure building, opening the binder.

As dawn draws near, intelligence briefers distribute more than a dozen locked copies to Washington's nocturnals, a group of top officials charged by the president with guarding the nation's safety: CIA director Leon Panetta, national security adviser Gen. James L. Jones Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen, and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, among others.

With two wars, multiple crises abroad and growing terrorism activity at home, these national security officials do not sleep in peace. For them, the night is a public vigil. It is also a time of private reckoning with their own tensions and doubts. They read the highest classification of intelligence. They pursue the details of plots that realize the nation's vague, yet primal, fears.

It is all here, inside the brown leather binder. Black typeface on white paper, marked by red tabs and yellow highlighter, an accumulation of all the dangers hidden in the dark. Compiling them is an all-night process, and it begins every day at sundown.

8:40 p.m., on board special air mission, Andrews Air Force Base

There is no sun. The day fades from gray to black, it's raining and the motorcades are late.

"Are they coming soon?" The aircraft commander radios from the cockpit. Jet fumes seep into the government C-40, which was supposed to take off for Islamabad 10 minutes ago.

Leon Panetta boards first, drenched, wearing work boots. "Where do you want me?" he asks, looking around the cramped cabin. He flies to the Middle East so often, he says, "my body is probably somewhere over Ireland."

Tonight the CIA director will bunk with national security adviser James Jones at the back of a C-40, sharing a chair, a small couch and a lavatory stocked with Tylenol. The men will travel 16 hours and then drive into midnight meetings about terrorist networks in Pakistan. "The pressure is on," Panetta says. "We can't afford to sleep. It's like the nighthawk that has to keep circling."

The CIA is engaged in some of the most aggressive actions in the agency's history. Panetta is required to sign off on operations two or three nights a week.

"When I was [White House] chief of staff, Bill Clinton used to call in the middle of the night" to talk, Panetta says. "But in this job, when I get a call, it's a decision about life and death."

"Dr. Panetta!" Jones calls out, as he strides onto the plane. He holds up his phone, "I'm trying to get in touch with my Russian counterpart."

Panetta nods, sympathetic, "I have a call with Dianne Feinstein."

The crew urges them into their seats. Jones sets his watch to Pakistani time. Panetta keeps his synched with his home state, California. "What we do -- doesn't get done in regular time," Jones says. The White House situation room wakes him two to three nights a week. "We operate on a different clock."

A Panetta aide prepares 200-pages of background material, which maps the terrorist landscape in Pakistan. Jones calls his son, concerned about his pregnant daughter-in-law who's having complications: "I'm leaving. Let me know about Beth."

The plane lifts off, bumping and lurching through black clouds. The air ahead is rough. No one expects a good night.

10:52 p.m., the Intercontinental Hotel, Kansas City

"Good night!" says Robert Gates, on his way down the hall to his suite, stopping by Room 718, where Air Force sergeants are testing secure lines.

To prepare for a one-night hotel stay in Kansas City, Mo., an advance team paid $125 to clear the furniture out of Room 718. Then they filled it with 15 cases of communications equipment. They put a satellite dish on the balcony. They replaced the bed with a tent for reading secret cables, to shield it in case of concealed spy cameras. When a maid knocked to ask if she could straighten the pillows, one guy blinked: "Well, you could try."

The secretary of defense must be reachable at all hours. He transmits orders from the White House to the Pentagon in an era when troops operate in every time zone. If North Korea tests a nuclear weapon or Iran tests a new missile, Gates needs to know now. "I don't feel like I'm ever really off," he said earlier. "I have security and communications people in the basement of my house. They come up and rap on the basement door."

Next to his bedroom at home, he confers in a sound-proof, vault-lock space. He calls it "The Batcave."

Gates smiles. He radiates control: individual white hairs lie combed into place; a crack in his lips is smoothed repeatedly by ChapStick. But even this confident cabinet secretary -- the slightly feared Republican, whose status others covet by day -- slips, at night, into the shadows of doubt.

At his compound in Washington, he'll change into jeans and a baseball cap and take a walk after 11 p.m. He'll count the number of surveillance cameras watching him and look out into the dark and reflect on the "persistent threat. You know, and you wonder, what more can you be doing? What have we missed?"

"The actual physical threat to Americans today from abroad, in reality, is worse than it was in the Cold War. All you have to do is look at these repeated attempts to set off bombs in populated places. I think if you asked any of us what keeps us awake at night, it's the idea of a terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction."

And once Gates is awake and walking the grounds, beneath the hundred-year oaks, "the one thing that weighs on me most is knowing that our kids are out there getting wounded and getting killed, getting attacked." His voice falters. "And I sent them."

Wherever he is, whether the Batcave or Kansas City, he is followed by killed-in-action reports. They arrive by secure e-mail, slide into the room by classified fax.

11:45 p.m., Janet Napolitano's apartment

"This old fax keeps jamming," Janet Napolitano says, sticking her hand into the classified machine. Crumpled paper. "Oh, Lord."

The secretary for Homeland Security can't go to bed until she reviews a secret fax. She asks an aide to have it re-sent. She boils water for black tea.

"This time of night is the fourth act," says Napolitano, an opera fan. She rode home an hour ago in a motorcade accompanied by flashing lights and Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte." "There is the normal workday -- Act 1 -- with all the hearings on the Hill, banquets and news shows. But the real drama is behind the scenes, at very odd hours."

Recently Homeland Security has been trying to intensify efforts against domestic extremism, pushing Napolitano's own domestic life to the extreme. Though Napolitano lives by herself, tonight her apartment all but sings with characters and action. A Secret Service agent hulks outside. The kitchen answering machine bleats messages from her chief of staff. Rand Beers, the counter-terrorism coordinator, rings her bedside phone as she's stepping toward her gray slippers.

"No suspects or targets?" Napolitano asks Beers. "We'll talk to the undersecretary for intelligence about that."

She hangs up. Nighttime calls about terrorism investigations are "not unusual in the weird, sick world I inhabit." At 2 a.m., she has been called about adjusting outbound rules at airports to catch a fleeing suspect and about emergency communications with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. On a trip to Asia, a senior Napolitano staffer set her BlackBerry alarm to ring every hour, all night, so the staffer could check e-mail alerts.

To fall asleep, "to calm down my brain," Napolitano reads on the couch. "A lot of times I'm reading, and I'll wake up and the book is on my face." She lifts the 1,184-page "Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years." "I don't want to read this one before bed. If it falls on my face, I'll break my nose."

A shriek pierces the air -- the tea kettle boiling: "Let me get that, before the Secret Service comes in." The secure fax whirrs -- the secret memo: "Ah, bueno. Here it is. It's hot."

Napolitano reads the hot document. Drinks her hot tea.

12:01 a.m., Eric Holder's kitchen

"Ice tea for me!" Eric Holder says. He jokingly cracks the door of his liquor cabinet. If Napolitano's nights are operatic, the attorney general's are notably calm.

At 11 p.m., Holder turned off the lights in the room where his son sleeps. He removed the iPod earbuds from his sleeping teenage daughter. His wife, a gynecologist who for years was jangled awake -- "I could do her calls by now, 'how far apart are your contractions? Okay, you're 5 centimeters,' " -- is also in bed upstairs.

Holder now sits down at the kitchen table. He spreads legal papers across the round, granite surface and puts his legs up. At his Justice Department office, he plays Tupac and Jay-Z. Not here. He keeps it so quiet, he notices when the refrigerator motor clicks off.

All day, voices bombard Holder, advocating discordant legal remedies for terrorism. "So much of national security has been politicized," he says. "There's a lot of noise."

Only at night can he contemplate: "What's best for the case? What's best for the nation?" Here, he makes his most difficult, controversial decisions. At 1 a.m., eating Chips Ahoy, Holder determined that 9/11 detainees should stand trial in New York, and that terrorist suspects should be tried in federal court. The conflicting demands filled him with tension: "That tension to be independent, yet part of the administration."

Of all the nighthawks, Holder occupies the loneliest perch. He is the president's friend, yet as the government's chief law enforcer, he has to stand aloof. White House aides roll their eyes behind his back; Hill critics roll their eyes to his face. His predecessors understand: "There's an AG's club. Former Republican AGs call and say, 'Hang in there!' "

Holder does, one midnight at a time. He turns off the lights around the house, even in the kitchen, except for the bulb above the round table. Sitting alone, in a cone of light, he listens. "I need a place and time to step away from the opinions, and other voices, and almost -- "

The house is silent. " -- hear my own voice."

12:35 a.m., White House Situation Room

The night duty officer can't hear his own voice. A White House maid is vacuuming. "Can you wrap it up?" He plugs a finger in his ear and presses his mouth to the classified, yellow phone: "This is the Situation Room. We are going to try to connect Gen. Jones with his Russian counterpart."

"Yes, sir," replies a communications officer at the end of the line, cruising on Jones's C-40 toward Pakistan.

The national security adviser is 37,000 feet over the Atlantic, bunking with Leon Panetta. Jones has changed out of charcoal pinstripes into a Georgetown sweatshirt. He checked an e-mail update about his pregnant daughter-in-law. "No baby yet," his son said. There are complications, and Jones is concerned.

Before he can sleep, Jones also needs to talk to Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko, to help negotiate a tougher stance on Iran's nuclear program. The Situation Room officer who handles secure calls for the West Wing is trying to locate Prikhodko, who's traveling in Kiev.

Jones stands by. He is a 6-foot-4, heavily decorated former Marine and a light sleeper. He heard about his own son's birth in a monsoon on a hilltop near Cambodia, over the battalion radio at 1 a.m. As supreme allied commander in Europe, he learned that when darkness falls, opportunities rise.

Even as a boy, Jones was not afraid of the dark. He was afraid of Russia. His parents would talk soberly about the iron curtain. The image "terrified me as a child. Millions of people in prison, behind a so-called curtain."

Now a presidential envoy, Jones finds himself on many nights dialing Moscow, capital of his boyhood bogeymen. If the cold war of Jones's youth seemed scary, "this world has me more concerned. The threats we face are asymmetric and more complex." And so he calls, at all hours, old adversaries to connect against the new threat.

It is 12:53 a.m., almost 8 a.m. in Kiev. The White House night officer reports, "Prikhodko's secretary said it might be an hour, or an hour and a half, to reach him." The officer mutters: "Our guys are up and working at 6 a.m."

On board the C-40, the CIA director takes a pillow and lies on the couch. Jones covers himself with a thin blanket and dozes in a chair.

At the White House, they dial the Russian's cellphone again. It rings 12 times. Another officer stands: "Got to go to the 1 a.m. Threat SVTC."

1 a.m., ops center conference room, National Counterterrorism Center, Virginia

The 1 a.m. Threat SVTC organizer says, "One minute to kickoff."

The secure video teleconference, convened by the National Counterterrorism Center, marks the apex of Washington's night watch. Feeds from 16 different watch-floors blip onto a large screen. Dimly lit faces of men and women at the State Department, Coast Guard, NORTHCOM and others, cover an entire wall.

"Good morning, everyone," the organizer says, pressing a button on the microphone. "We're gonna brief three items." The FBI and NSA present terrorism reports.

Many nights an item prompts a call to wake the NCTC director, Michael Leiter, 41, the junior member of the nighthawks. He displays a copy of the Declaration of Independence, next to a deck of baseball-style cards of high-value terrorist targets: "I keep the ones who are dead on top. It's a little macabre, but that's the world we live in." When the NCTC calls in the middle of the night, he is often half-awake.

"Bed is the worst place for me," Leiter says one evening, nodding toward his blue comforter, under the blades of his bedroom ceiling fan. "The mind keeps running."

The NCTC, created after 9/11 to integrate intelligence, produces a daily threat matrix, which averages 15 or more wide-ranging terrorist threats against American interests, outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. In a 12-hour shift, analysts sift through 4,000 reports. "I can't shut that off; what else might be going on?"

Of all the jobs, counterterrorism intelligence seems the most likely to induce nightmares. Days before he resigned in May, Leiter's boss, director of national intelligence and former Navy admiral Dennis C. Blair, talked about a dream he first had years before as head of the Pacific Command and was now having again: "I'm running the ship aground. I'm sitting out on the bridge, and I see it coming -- but I can't keep it from happening. I see a crumpled bow of the ship and sailors dying."

Leiter, a Bush appointee, also has had anxiety dreams, ever since Christmas, when his agency failed to detect a man who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane: "I'm getting called, someone says there's been another attack. Oh, my God -- "

Then he wakes up. And he reaches for a pad in the dark and scribbles ideas. "I terrify my staff at 7:15 a.m. and say, I was having trouble sleeping last night and I thought of something."

Leiter's nighttime tension is haunting, yet oddly creative: "My brain keeps working while I'm sleeping." New ideas churn, the ceiling fan turns and the blades chop at black air.

3:42 a.m., Mike Mullen's front yard

No sound, no movement, except rotor blades chopping black air, as a helicopter buzzes over Adm. Mike Mullen's brick Colonial. Minutes later, a light blinks on in his second floor window. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is starting his day.

Mullen opens his front door at 4:03 a.m. in shorts and sneakers, his eyes still slitty, his voice a note deep. "Let's go," he says to his security detail.

Mullen drives to the Navy Yard gym, where he gulps a protein shake and bench presses 255 pounds. Big Dave, his trainer, barks: "The baddest chairman ever!"

But the admiral understands that to be baddest, he has to get ahead -- every day -- of the day. Fight the current war; anticipate the next one. Where will the next terrorist attack originate? "Yemen is a great worry. Somalia is a failed state. But we have to try to pay attention to the rest of the world, too. We don't anticipate well where stuff comes from in these wars. Our ability to predict is pretty lousy."

As senior military adviser to the president, Mullen steeps his predawn routine in anticipation. He drives to the gym through a night fog, scans headlines, reads e-mails from commanders, clips four stars to his collar and packs his seven briefcases of paperwork, all before 6:30 a.m.

Yet for all his talk about anticipating the future, Mullen is the nighthawk who is drawn deeply to the past. A Bible sits on his kitchen microwave. He slips into his dress service khakis, while reading the ancient wisdom of the Proverbs.

The enemy America's fighting, he says, "killed 3,000. But they would like to kill 30,000, or 300,000. They're still out there, trying. It's not their religion. It's not Islam. It's an evil that doesn't believe in anything we believe in. They don't value civilization. They have no limits in what they'll do to kill us. "

A Jerusalem, olive-wood cross swings from his rear view mirror. His headlights shine on the empty road.

Dead of night, undisclosed location

Headlights approach on the empty road. A government agent steps out of an SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel. An intelligence aide approaches him.

"Good morning."

"Good night."

The two silhouettes merge for a moment. "In this city, people have no idea what's going on," the intelligence aide says, nodding toward buildings with darkened windows.

The agent drives away, after handing off the brown leather binder, gold-stamped "TOP SECRET." The President's Daily Brief.

Briefers fan out across the city, distributing locked copies, modified for each department.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's briefer rolls her satchel in on wheels. FBI director Robert Mueller gets briefed, he says, "365 days a year, even on Christmas, even on vacation." Napolitano scours her book over one of her four morning cups of coffee. Holder unzips his while riding the motorcade to his office: "If you read it, you're left with the reality of how many organizations are trying to harm our people. . . . I'm not in a good mood when I get to work. You don't get used to it. You just don't." He taps his window: "It's armored."

At the White House, outside the Oval Office, a briefer arrives to deliver the president's report. Rahm Emanuel is there, and counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan. National security adviser Jones joins them. Since Jones returned from Pakistan, Russia agreed to toughen Iran sanctions. Jones's daughter-in-law gave birth to a boy.

"The baby was 10 weeks premature," the general says quietly. His grandson is being kept at the hospital under round-the-clock watch.

The president walks out. "All right," says Barack Obama, eating a handful of cherries between meetings. "Come on, guys. Let's go."

Nine men file into the Oval Office, under the wings of an American eagle carved into the ceiling. Obama and Vice President Biden sit in the middle. Jones sits on a side couch. They all are holding the gold-lettered brown binders, the book of threats, written in the hours of darkness.

Morning light from the Rose Garden pours in from the east and the south. A mahogany grandfather clock ticks loudly. Jones takes a deep breath, runs his finger to the edge of the binder.

The room is bright. The president crosses his legs and looks at his men. What happened in the night?

Researchers Alice Crites and Lucy Shackelford contributed to this story.

This article was reported over the course of eight nights and five mornings. The reporter was present and witnessed the events in each scene, at the locations and times indicated at the top of each section. In the section titled "12:35 a.m. White House Situation Room," which describes communications between the White House and a C-40 aircraft en route to Pakistan, the reporter was at the White House.