So much news

Fortunately, there's some good news amongst everything going on these days, like the Episcopal church making history with their first female presiding bishop and the Army Times calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation right before the mid-term elections.

There's bad news, also, of course. The situation in Oaxaca is awful (an interesting side note: it's amusing that Bush meets with other foreign leaders whose elections were fraught with charges of fraud). Speaking of Bush, his home state has started running webcams trained on the border between Texas and Mexico so that internet users can watch and report any illegal immigrants trying to cross the border. It's reminiscent of Mao's technique of getting people to turn each other in. Perhaps this will backfire though. Anyone who wants to cross has someone send in reports of suspicious activity in other regions to draw the border patrols away.

Yesterday, on my way to the Go club, I walked through a large rally/protest in Trafalgar Square about climate change. There was a reassuringly large number of anti-Bush signs. If you haven't already done so, you should take the time to read the excellent three part article by Elizabeth Kolpert that appeared in the New Yorker last year:
The Climate of Man-I
The Climate of Man-II
The Climate of Man-III

Last night was supposedly Guy Fawkes night here in England, celebrating or condemning (I'm still not sure which--perhaps both) the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. I had been told that there would be bonfires, but I didn't see any. There were some fireworks, but it seems that there are fireworks pretty much every night here in London.

Some song lyrics:

god told the angel "go see about john"
so he flew from the pit with the moon round his waist
gathered wind in his fists and the stars round his wrists
cryin' holy, holy to the lord
--Neko Case, "John Saw that Number"