Musings and rants about politics and geekery with a distinct Chicago flavor.
How many roads must a man walk down,
Before you can call him a man?
Yes, and how many seas must a white dove sail,
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times must a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take
‘Til he knows that too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
— Bob Dylan, 1963
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
“You seem to have a Type B personality. Your personality draws characteristics from each of the other personality types, that is, Type A and Type C. Either you adjust your behavior depending on the situation, or you tend to be moderated in your attitudes. In any case, you are the most balanced of the three personality types.”
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Another essay that I just need to reprint in its entirety, gakked from here. Why reprint the whole thing, instead of linking? Well, to me, it just seems to really NAIL exactly what my feelings are about this election.
A Fight for the Nation’s Soul
Every four years, when a presidential election comes lumbering into view, some tiny, precious percentage of the talk that vomits out of the television turns to actual policy. Among the endless blather about personality and character, and amid the steady stream of attacks and lies, there is some small bit of information that attempts to define how a particular person will actually govern. ItÕ³ helpful, for those that can fish it out of the torrent of muck, in picking who you would like to see steering the ship of state for a while. An understanding of policy is vitally important in making an informed choice.
And this is the first election where I donÕ´ care about it at all.
For the first time in my life, policy is playing no role in who IÕ going to vote for come November. Before, it was always an over-riding factor: Who has the better plan? Who has the better tools? Who will get us to where we all want to be, smoothly and safely?
But this year, something more profound is at play. This year, for the first time in my life, I feel like those in power have fundamentally different goals than I do, not only in means, but in ends. IÕ¶e disagreed with dozens, even hundreds, of policies of previous administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, but always felt as if they were just details, to be worked out politically. TheyÕ²e the standard back-and-forth of a functioning society. Policy is the tool used to head towards where we all want to be. I can live with policy, even those I donÕ´ agree with.
But this year is different.
* * * * * *
9/11, the saying goes, changed everything. But it shouldnÕ´ have. It shouldnÕ´ have changed what this country is fundamentally about, and what we fundamentally believe. It should have reaffirmed it, not only in patriotic bumper stickers and American flags, but in our hearts. We believe in our principles, we could have said to the world, no matter what you do.
George Bush chose a different road. Instead, he began sacrificing those principles, in ways great and small, for political gain. He has used the tragedy of that day to change not only how we as a nation are moving, but where we are headed. And that saddens and frightens me more than I can say.
Anonymous, indefinite detentions; warrentless surveillance; Total Information Awareness; pre-emptive war. This is the record of the Bush Administration, of its fundamental capitulation of the principles of this nation. Lines, hundreds of lines, are being crossed; some tentatively, some enthusiastically; some overtly and some in secret. And each transgression chips away at the foundation of what this country is and what it stands for.
And that is profoundly wrong. These are important, even sacred, lines; ideals and philosophies that people died to defend. These are lines that define us as a nation and as a people. They are not tools of policy and they are not debatable. No Ò³afetyÓ can mitigate this betrayal, no Ò³ecurityÓ can sooth this loss.
HereÕ³ something I havenÕ´ seen said in a long time: The principles that this country were founded on are more important than the country itself. I would rather see the Constitution preserved than the nation. I would rather fight for what we believe in and lose tomorrow than see the United States of America last a thousand years at the cost of our values. Because our principles cost lives, and as soon we are no longer willing to pay that bill, then weÕ²e just another Hobbesian nightmare, waiting our turn on the ash heap. Every sacrifice we make Ò´o protect our freedomÓ becomes the sacrifice of a piece of our soul.
The Bill of Rights is worth three thousand lives Ñ even three thousand innocent lives. More than worth it. ItÕ³ worth my life. ItÕ³ worth yours. ItÕ³ worth the lives of the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people who have died to defend it in the past two hundred and thirty years. It worth all of it, and more. The defense of the Constitution is the most profound act that any citizen can undertake, and any attack on the Constitution Ñ no matter the motivation Ñ the most fundamental treachery.
For George Bush to sacrifice any of the rights of that document in the name of Ò³afety,Ó of Ò³ecurity,Ó should automatically disqualify him from the office he seeks to retain. It is not a question of policy, but of the national soul.
And whatever else the people of this country achieve in however long it survives, none will match our founding document. Because it is not just a thing, but an idea, and a transcendent idea at that. It has made everything else possible. And if you start to chip away at that foundation Ñ for whatever reason, no matter how noble the cause Ñ thereÕ³ really no reason to keep whatÕ³ built on it. Because it will be a structure created on sand and dust and failure. It canÕ´ survive, and doesnÕ´ deserve to.
Policy will not play into my decision who to vote for this year, because we are past policy. We are past politics. This is a fight for the fundamental principles of this country, the fundamental ideas. And I refuse to let our uniqueness, our place in history, our greatness be murdered at the alter of fear and expedience.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
A woman, J., was arrested and spent time in Pier 57. I think her account needs to be shared with others. I read this here:
On Tuesday the 31st my friend Sarah and I were on our way home from vacation.Ê We were driving right through New York City and were listening to news on the radio about the protesters at the Republican National Convention.Ê We wanted to stop and bear witness to the protests.Ê We wanted to add two to their numbers, if only for a few moments, as we each had to be at work on Wednesday.Ê We drove to town, parked the car in a garage and rode the subway downtown.Ê We had heard that there was to be a rally in Union Square Park from 5:00 - 7:00 pm.Ê It was published information and it never occurred to us that we would be participating in anything illegal.
We arrived at Union Square around 5:00 pm and didn’t see anything particularly organized.Ê There were lots of people milling about with signs, costumes, and leaflets.Ê There were lots of police surrounding the park.Ê It felt a little bit like a stew simmering: everyone was waiting for someone to do something illegal.Ê The protesters wanted the cops to infringe on their rights, and the cops were waiting for the protesters to become violent.Ê We milled about for a bit, took some pictures.Ê Then we headed a few blocks downtown to meander through the streets of the village.Ê I work at a used bookstore and wanted to visit The Strand.Ê After a few hours of sightseeing, we thought, before dinner let’s see if we can find this rally again. It was almost 7:00 pm and the rally was scheduled from 5:00 - 7:00 pm.Ê We again saw no signs of an organized rally, but after a few minutes a band started playing and swaying and then walked away from the park.Ê People followed them and we followed to see where they were going.Ê It never occurred to us that we were participating in anything illegal.
We crossed Union Square East and then turned into 16th St.Ê There were people walking in the streets, but I made a point of always staying on the sidewalk.Ê We were following a bunch of people.Ê A line of police closed off the intersection at Union Square East and 16th St.Ê Some people took off running for Irving St to get out of that block, but we stayed on the sidewalk and didn’t run.Ê We didn’t want to look like we might be doing something wrong. It never occurred to us that we were participating in anything illegal.
Soon a line of police closed off the other intersection at Irving and 16th, trapping us on 16th St.Ê We didn’t get on the street, we didn’t climb onto anything to see what was happening, we didn’t yell, we didn’t attempt to run, we didn’t appear violent in any way.Ê There were probably 100 of us together there on the south side of 16th St, I think that the police had trapped other bubbles of people on the north side and farther up and down the sidewalk.Ê We saw the police roll out a yellow net, a mesh bolt of fabric that they unrolled and used to push us into a tight group.Ê At one point a policeman yelled at us violently and angrily that we had brought this upon ourselves.Ê He was walking past us on the sidewalk and he yelled and screamed; and this was the moment when I became seriously afraid.Ê I was standing closer to the street, not pressed against the walls of the buildings, and I was afraid that he would grab me and hurt me: I was very scared.Ê The police never gave us an opportunity to move, to disperse, they never told us that we were about to be arrested, and they never said a word, besides this one officer who scared the shit out of me.Ê It never occurred to me that this would happen.Ê I didn’t know that we had participated in anything illegal.
Eventually the police pressed us tightly together into a group. And then they kept pressing.Ê They grabbed instruments from the band members and threw them into the road.Ê Then they grabbed the band members, the group held onto them, but the police pulled these individuals away and tossed them into the road.Ê The police were pressing us and pulling individuals who were on the perimeter away.Ê People were shouting to the police: “Tell us what to do and we’ll do it” and instructing us to hold onto the individuals the police were grabbing: “Don’t let them take them away.”Ê I was on the perimeter of the group and I was scared that they would grab me next.Ê I was standing right next to a street sign, there was a bicycle tied to the sign and it had fallen, and I was standing on the bicycle; every time the police pressed us I grabbed on to the sign and Sarah grabbed on to me, and I prayed that I wouldn’t fall and break an ankle on the bicycle.Ê I was scared like I have never been before.Ê I was carrying a bag and yelled at Sarah to get her ID out and gave her some money, and someone else passed around a Sharpie and we wrote the number for the National Lawyers Guild on our arms.Ê This was when I really knew that we were in trouble, even though it had never occurred to me that I had done anything illegal.
The cops pressed and we held onto each other, they pulled people out of the group and took them away somewhere.Ê The cops looked like they didn’t know what to do and I certainly didn’t know what to do.Ê Eventually they had us sit down.Ê When we sat they started handcuffing us.Ê Before they got to me, I snuck my cell phone out and left a message for my sister “I think Sarah and I are about to be arrested, if we get separated we are going to call you to find each other, leave your phone on and stay near it.” That was the last call I would make for 28 hours.Ê I wouldn’t be released for 49 hours.
Know Your Rights
I have never done anything illegal in my life. No illegal drugs, no underage drinking, I don’t even smoke cigarettes. I had complete faith in the legal system of this country. I never thought that I would be arrested, much less arrested without any explanation.Ê I had no idea what my rights were as a citizen under arrest.
I now know that I have the right to hand out leaflets, rally on a sidewalk, set up a moving picket line, and wear costumes.Ê I cannot block any building entrances or have more than 3 people wearing masks (including bandanas).Ê I need a permit to march in the street, rally in a park with more than 20 people, or use electronic amplification.Ê I do not have the right to resist a search (although I can say that I do not consent to the search).Ê I am not entitled to a phone call while being detained, and there is no limit to how long they can hold me.
The police were instructed to lie to us, to pacify us, to tell us that they would move us soon, “It will only be a little longer.” Some police were honest and said they didn’t know what was going on, while others took out their hostility on us, blaming us for “clogging the system” and lecturing us about how we deserved what we got.Ê There were instances of sexism and verbal abuse.Ê We were held in numerous cells and we were often reshuffled with people from other cells, a tactic I believe was purposeful to help discourage solidarity.
Many police, I think unfamiliar with the plastic, zip-tie-like handcuffs put them on too tight inflicting much damage and pain.Ê I saw people with bruises and swelling, one person had surely endured nerve damage and possibly a broken wrist.Ê One person had just had shoulder surgery and her request to be handcuffed in front was ignored, hours/days later she was sent to the hospital in a sling.ÊŠ Fortunately I was only in handcuffs for four hours the first night, and the next day for three hours as they transported me again.Ê My cuffs were undeniably too tight, but I suffered no bruising.
Under Arrest
We sat handcuffed on the sidewalk for over three hours while the police figured out what to do with us.Ê We were denied food, water, the opportunity to use the restroom, or our cell phones.Ê Finally we were transported (in a city bus) to Pier 57, a holding area.
I was held for 14 hours in Pier 57, also called “Guantanamo on the Hudson,” a warehouse previously used by the MTA as an automobile garage.Ê The conditions were appalling.Ê There were numerous cages built out of wire fence and razor wire.Ê The concrete floor was filthy, covered with oil residue, soot and chemicals, there were in fact still signs posted around the facility warning of the chemicals.Ê People experienced rashes, chemical burns, asthma attacks and head to toe filth.Ê Some chose to stand or sit against the fence all night, but I was so exhausted I lay right on the ground and was caked and covered in filth.
We were initially held in a large cage while our arresting officer filled out paperwork and had our property “safeguarded.”(They took our property in exchange for a pink voucher slip that once released we could present with ID to have the property returned.)Ê There were about 600 of us in that first cage.Ê There were four Porta-Johns that we could wait in an hour-long line to use.Ê There was water near the Porta-Johns, so I would’ve had to wait in line again just for water (to drink only, they would not let us wash our hands).Ê We were given an apple.Ê Later I was moved to a smaller female only cage, about 20×40, there were almost 100 of us.Ê Two Porta-Johns were accessible in the cage, as was a waterspout, though paper cups were hard to come by.Ê In this cage I was given a bag with two sandwiches: white bread with government cheese.Ê Fourteen hours with one apple and two crappy sandwiches.
I read that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the air quality at Pier 57 had been tested and determined safe, and that the average stay in Pier 57 was 90 minutes, with 8 hours as the longest (I was there 14).Ê I also heard that the day after we were held in Pier 57 they laid carpet in the cages, covering up something.
Wednesday morning around noon my name was called, and I was moved to a different smaller cage in preparation for being transported to Central Booking.Ê (Fortunately Sarah’s name was also called and we traveled there together, once we arrived we were separated and I didn?t see her again until we were released.)ÊŠ We waited in this smaller cage almost an hour for a vehicle to become available, and then were handcuffed for the short ride that took over an hour.
Arriving at Central Booking we were again searched and I spent time in three cells before I was fingerprinted around 8:00 pm.Ê I was held in two cells and in hallways finally arriving where I would spend the night around 11:00 pm.Ê It was here that we were able to use the phone, or at least some of us were able to use the phone before the guards grew tired and refused to respond to any more phone requests.Ê There were about 27 of us in this cell.Ê Here we were given soap and toilet paper for the first time, and those women who were on their periods were given appropriate products.Ê There was not enough room for us to all lie down, some chose to remain sitting on the bench, I curled as best I could on the floor in the space available.Ê We were denied blankets and the police refused to close the windows.Ê Every two hours they would come in and sweep the cell making us all stand or sit with our feet raised.Ê Every few hours they would wake us up again bringing food, white bread sandwiches (can you believe they had soy meat as an option), milk cartons, rotten apples, peaches, and once I had an orange that tasted like heaven.
I stayed in this cell the longest; my name was not called until around noon Thursday when we were told that we were about to get our mug shots.Ê They pulled five of us (from various cells) into the hall and chained us together (the usual way of moving around Central Booking).Ê The NYPD were then going to put us back in a cell, when the Corrections Department insisted that we not be chained and locked in a cell at the same time.Ê We were unchained and locked up in a small cell right next to the one I had just left.Ê An officer told us he would be back in 15-30 minutes to take us downstairs for mug shots (an hour and a half later he did in fact apologize for not being able to come get us when he said he would).
Mug shots and waiting in various halls took two hours and then a new group of us were taken to another cell.Ê This time I waited over three hours before my name was called and I was transported to a new cell, this time to see an attorney.Ê From there it took another two hours until I stood in front of the judge and was released.Ê It was 8:30 pm Thursday night, I had been put in handcuffs on the sidewalk of 16th St. at 7:30 pm Tuesday night.
Released
It was an anti-climactic moment.Ê The judge said I was free, the attorney nodded kindly to me and I turned around in the courtroom.Ê I didn’t even know which way was out.Ê I walked past a few people sitting waiting for friends, out a set of double doors, into a hall where lots of people were milling about.Ê I found a representative from the National Lawyers Guild and gave her my name telling her I had been released (earlier from a call inside the prison we had each given our names and any complaints).Ê I wandered outside, crossed the street and found our supporters.Ê All throughout the previous night we could hear people on the street chanting for our release and letting out whoops and hollers every few minutes, they were a blessing for those of us inside.Ê They boosted our morale and we chose to believe that every whoop and holler meant someone else was released.Ê I kept waiting for the whoops and hollers that would be mine.Ê By the time I was released, 8:30 pm, a lot of our supporters had dwindled, but they were still there with food and water and hugs.Ê One person I had befriended while inside rushed over to me and gave me a huge hug.
The next step was property pickup.Ê Sarah and I had set that place as our meeting place and rather than find a pay phone and call my sister to see if she was out I thought I?d get over to property pickup as fast as I could.Ê The police had given us a sheet with directions when I got my property voucher but the route they described had been barricaded.Ê I got pretty lost before I ended up at a trailer on the side of the road with a makeshift line formed out of police barricades and entirely surrounded by police.Ê Sarah wasn’t there although a lot of people said they had seen her back in jail and they thought she was on her way out soon.Ê One person was so concerned that I find Sarah she offered to hold my spot in line so I could walk back to the courthouse to look for her.Ê And that’s where Sarah was, wandering around shaky and lost, teary and spent.Ê There was no way she could have made her way to property pickup.Ê I thank that women for enabling me to go find her.
We waited together in line at property pickup for two hours.Ê At one point barricaded in place, surrounded by police and waiting, I commented that it didn’t feel all that different being free.Ê I was able to get my bag, but my camera is being held as arrest evidence so I need to go to the DA’s office and get a release before I can get it back.Ê I expect that on Tuesday, after the holiday, I will drive to NY and wait again in interminable lines both at the DA’s office and then at the Property Clerk’s Office.Ê I witnessed people who were unable to get their stuff back.Ê One person had initially refused to give her name so her property was checked under Jane Doe, but her release had her name aka Jane Doe. The police officers said since she couldn’t show ID with the name Jane Doe on it she couldn’t have her stuff.Ê There was a lawyer with her, but I don’t think she was able to get it.Ê Another person had lost her wallet right before being arrested; in fact she had only been in NYC for thirty minutes before she was arrested, so she had no ID.Ê I knew of another person who’s ID was in her car, but her car keys were in her bag, I don’t know what became of her property.
It was almost midnight when we made it back to the garage where I had parked the car (fortunately in a garage and not towed, ticketed or broken into).Ê The garage was in a hotel where many delegates were staying.Ê It was a surreal experience walking amongst them, smelly, dirty, hungry, without having slept in two nights. We got more than a few unpleasant glances.Ê I then drove the two hours home to Philly where we were welcomed with banners, signs, flowers and balloons from our roommates.
The Truth?
I have been amazed at what the news has been saying about those of us arrested.Ê I hear that there were 1,200 arrests in four hours on Tuesday, over 1,900 arrests all week, the most for any political protest.
I feel that many of us in jail were not protesters; there were a lot of innocent bystanders swept up in the arrest nets.Ê There were people on their way home from work, people heading out for dinner, and people like us.Ê At the same time there were also people who expected to be arrested, people who were staging acts of civil disobedience, performing sit-ins or refusing to move when requested.Ê A lot of people were warned by the police that they were about to be arrested, and a lot of us were given no chance at all.
I have read articles that said that no one requested medical attention.Ê In every cell I was in someone requested medical attention.Ê At Pier 57, people were experiencing rashes, chemical burns, asthma and other possibly chemically induced conditions, people repeatedly requested medical attention, frequently even chanting for it, and I never saw anyone at Pier 57 receive any type of medical attention.Ê Once we were at Central Booking a few people were sent to a medic.Ê I personally saw a person suffering from a migraine and another with a kidney infection taken to a medic.Ê I heard of a person who had massive bruising and injuries from the police and the handcuffs taken to medics.Ê Sarah takes medication twice a day and had missed four doses, she saw a doctor who wanted her to go to the hospital.Ê We had been told that people who went to the hospital waited in the Emergency Room to be seen in order of severity and then came back to Central Booking to pick off waiting where they had left.Ê Sarah did not want to add 12 or so hours to her waiting time and she refused to go to the hospital.
I read a few editorials that said that the protesters were violent and deserved to be locked up.Ê While I was in New York City, I saw no violence on the part of the protesters, but instead plenty of violence and violent behavior from the police.
The police have said that they were prepared for 1000 arrests each day of the convention, and they also said that they delay in processing us was because we clogged the system.Ê Both cannot be true.ÊŠ
Wednesday, from prison, we heard from the National Lawyers Guild (someone would always call them when we had a chance to get to a phone) that there was an order to have us released by midnight.Ê We heard that the NYPD stalled and at an appeals court on Thursday the State Supreme Court ruled that everyone held over 24 hours be released by 5:00 pm, and that for each person held longer the city would be fined $1000.Ê (I personally wasn’t released until 8:30 pm.)Ê Here are some articles to that effect.
Guantanamo on the Hudson
City May Have to Pay Protesters
Some people in one of my cells at Pier 57 still had a cell phone and they called Democracy Now, this is a transcript of their talks.Ê Most of them were arrested where I was on 16th St and most weren?t even protesting.
Guantanamo On the Hudson: Detained RNC Protesters Describe Prison Conditions
I believe that we were held until the convention was over.
I believe that that the mass arrests were a tactic to discourage any protesting.Ê There are people who are full-time direct action activists, but when the level of commitment is raised from one afternoon of protesting to three days of work lost, people are likely to be scared away.Ê I know that I personally am unlikely to attend any protest that is not legally permitted and well organized.Ê At the same time I feel that my arrest and subsequent detaining have encouraged me to become even more aware of politics, my rights and any possible influence I might have over issues that concern me.Ê I plan to monitor non-mainstream news sources daily to stay alert and aware.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I have had the most fucked-up yet interesting time scooting around the iTunes Music Store this morning.
“You Suck,” by ‘Various Artists’ on ‘Punk Seven Inch CD Vol 1. Um, all I can say on this one is … be prepared. And don’t have the volume really hugely up.
“Famine,” by Sinead O’Connor. She raps. Yes, she raps. And … er … well, actually, download this one. The lyrics are a really weird conspiracy theory about how there never really was an Irish potato famine, and how the English are evidently responible for every single Irish citizen’s (living and dead) psychological problems. (And, if that isn’t enough for you, “Tradition,” from Fiddler in the Roof, is mixed in.)
Ever wonder what it would sound like if Robin Williams and Bobby McFerrin covered the Beatles’ “Come Together“? Or Jim Carrey did “I am the Walrus“? Surprisingly, yes, these exist. (Jim Carrey, towards the end, yells into the mike, “I defiled a timeless work of art!” Heh.) So, surprisingly, they’re actually kind of good, in a very odd way.
Wish I could say the same about something that has a serious chance of being the Antichrist’s Youth Brigade. Yes, it’s the Satanic children known as the Kidz Bop Kids. The reason these little kids are so freaky is that they sing these very adult lyrics to their songs.
“The Time Warp,” if you can believe it.
Thank God that “pelvic thrust” became “the way you shake it.” However, Magenta’s subsequent lines with “fantasy free me” and “with voyeuristic intention” stuck around. And Columbia’s stanza:
Well I was walking down the street just a-having a think
When a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink.
He shook-a me up, he took me by surprise.
He had a pickup truck, and the devil’s eyes.
He stared at me and I felt a change.
Time meant nothing, never would again.
remained in its entirety. I don’t think I’m out of line in saying, “What the fuck?” I’m not exactly Mr. Conservative Far-Right here (ACLU cardholder, thank you very much), but should prepubscents really be singing these lyrics? This is being marketed as kids-safe?
That’s not the worst of it, though. NO, SIR-EE. Yes, they’ve done the most horrible offense you’ve ever heard. They’ve covered “Toxic,” by Britney Spears.
Go look at the lyrics. The entire thing is drug references linked with heavy horniness. (”I need a hit / baby, give me it.”) THIS IS OKAY FOR YOUNG LITTLE KIDS TO SING? MY FRICKIN’ GOD!
Okay. Vented. Feeling better.
Found a few good other tracks. I can’t believe how frickin’ applicable to Dubya and the Iraq war the lyrics to “Blowin’ in the Wind” is, so I picked up some amazing covers of it by Neil Young, A.P.P.L.E., and Peter, Paul & Mary.
I also picked up “Killing Moon,” by Echo & the Bunnymen, which I heard on the trailer to the Director’s Cut of Donnie Darko, which I saw on Friday. But I’ll share that in a different blog entry.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I’ve recently come across some good quotes I wanted to blog:
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
— Herman Göring to Allied psychologist Gustave Gilbert at the Nuremberg trials, 18 April 1946
“The plain truth is that we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny speck surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then — poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that’s very, very funny.”
— Charles Simic
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
— Mark Twain (apocryphal)
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Phew. I am tired as hell at the moment. Exhausted, and even perhaps a little bit ill. But, I shelled out $75 to attend a cooking class this evening, and I’ll make it even if I’m puking into the carrots. Just kidding … it’s really not quite that bad. I’ve just been having unpleasant dizzy spells. Guess I need to pick up a pregnancy test. (Ba-DUM dum. Tip your waitress.)
I wanted to write a blog entry about what I’ve been reading over the last few weeks. I had a family reunion in California the first week of August, and learned that the son of one of my cousins was working his way through the Chronicles of Narnia. That inspired me to start going through them again as an adult. I knew, from a reference in one of Neil Gaiman’s short stories, that the Chronicles had a heavy Christian influence on them, but I hadn’t realized the extent until I reread them this time around.
It was actually pretty shocking. Aslan is very obviously Jesus Christ. The Emperor-over-the-Sea is most likely God the Father, although Aslan often takes that role, too, frankly. The Stone Table is the Cross. It’s likely that Edmund, at least in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, is Judas (although, if truth be told, that analogy I didn’t perceive on my own, but instead through some other website).
None of the above was shocking, but what was was how much the septology slanders Muslims. It’s obvious, as you read through the description of Calormen, that it’s a amalgamation of Middle Eastern countries: he describes their skin tone, way of dress, and many other details that makes it pretty much crystal-clear. But throughout all seven novels, ‘Tash,’ their god, is an evil demon-god, and it is made clear in the seventh novel that he is very much a figure analogous to Satan, although, frankly, that role might also be attributable to the White Witch and/or the witch we see in The Silver Chair.
The Last Battle is pretty much a re-telling of Revelations, interestingly enough, with the coming of an anti-Christ figure … or, in this case, an anti-Aslan figure pretending to be Aslan but indeed not. The analogy is somewhat tweaked, in that the actual anti-Aslan is an innocent and rather witless donkey named Puzzle, who is manipulated by the arguably true ‘anti-Aslan,’ a monkey whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head. The final chapters of the novel involve the end of the land, and, to be honest, despite my misgivings about the novels, has to be the all-time most beautiful description of heaven I’ve ever read. It’s right up there, for me, with the cinematic depiction of the afterlife seen in the movie What Dreams May Come.
I suppose what bothers me is not only the anti-Muslim depiction of Calormenes that runs through most of the novels, but also the sheer fundamentalism of the books. C.S. Lewis appears to be a hell of a judgmental bastard, whether it’s his depiction of Eustace Scrubb’s parents’ lifestyle, his casual write-off of Susan in the final book (which prompted a Neil Gaiman story with an intriguing title which I’m dying to read, called “The Problem of Susan“). I suppose one of the things that I dislike is his insulting dismissal of the concept of Allah (Tash) and God (Aslan) being the same God viewed differently, which is promptly adopted by the villains of the piece for a short time as “Tashlan.” Of course, I’m not sure if that was instead oriented towards some long-forgotten theological theory of God and Satan being the same entity … if so, that analogy would make more sense.
Rereading the Chronicles was fun, I won’t deny that. It is a very rich world, and a very British world, and the sense of hominess, valor, and sheer good that permeates Narnia speaks to the idealist inside of me who sometimes tires of the grayscale world of reality, where people are both good and bad, and the most insane evils can come from a leader who firmly believes he is working for God. Let me be even more blunt: there could never be a Narnian version of Bill Clinton. King Billian, so to speak. Even putting aside the sexual elements of Clinton’s errors, he’d be damned for his lying, without a glance towards the good he would have done for the ‘kingdom.’
In short, sanitized Narnia is comforting and cozy to slip into, like an old sock, but it’s not real, and it harbors the prejudices of yore. For that reason, it even strikes me as, perhaps, a little dangerous.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
King Features goes through extraordinary measures to prevent you from linking to a particular strip, so I’ll share with you the ’script’ of two of today’s comics that I thought were a tad remarkable.
Hagar: In our business, you have to destroy the enemy before he destroys you!!
Lucky Eddie: What if the other guy isn’t even trying to destroy you?
Hagar: That’s the chance you have to take …
Anyone see a Bush allegory there? And here’s another one:
Beetle Bailey: Why do we have to train in this heat?
Sgt. Snorkel: Because we might have to fight in the Mideast.
Beetle: Couldn’t we find some cooler hot spots?
Interesting to run across both of these on one day.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
This posting is a community experiment started by Minding the Planet to see how a meme represented by a blog posting spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet; results and commentary will appear there in the future.
Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate Ð the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.
The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawstw98qwrt189849813907azq4
(this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google for all results of this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post at Minding the Planet; Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.
INSTRUCTIONS
To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and fill out the info below, substituting your own information in your posting, where appropriate.
(Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers):
- I found this experiment at URL:
http://www.michaelhanscom.com/
- I found it via ÒŽewsreader SoftwareÓ or Ò‚rowsing or Searching the WebÓ or Òn E-Mail MessageÓº Newsreader Software - NetNewsWire
- I posted this experiment at URL: http://salubrity.blogspot.com
- I posted this on date (day, month, year): 06 August 2004
- I posted this at time (24 hour time): 20:10:57
- My posting location is (city, state, country): Chicago, IL, USA
OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):
- My blog is hosted by: Blogger
- My age is: 29
- My gender is: Male
- My occupation is: Legal assistant
- I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: NetNewsWire
- I use the following software to post to my blog: Web interface
- I have been blogging since (day, month, year): Honestly unsure.
- My web browser is: Safari
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I’m experiencing a bit of an unpleasant situation at the moment.
Briefly:
People at Bare Bones Software: (pointing finger at Unsanity) Our application crashes because of your haxies!
People at Unsanity: (pointing finger at Bare Bones) You’ve got an application that crashes at the drop of a hat!
People at Bare Bones Software: You got your chocolate in our peanut butter!
People at Unsanity: You got your peanut butter in our chocolate!
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Update: Welcome, readers of Boing Boing! You might want to check out my linklog, too, if you’re of a mind to.
You’ve probably heard about how Edwards is Kerry’s veep choice. But the Post got it wrong. Heh. They’ve taken down the article, but not before someone posted it to Usenet:
New York Post
July 6, 2004
Kerry Picks Gephardt
John Kerry has chosen Rep. Richard Gephardt, the veteran congressman from Missouri, to be his running mate, The Post has learned.
Gephardt, 63, a 28-year veteran of the House of Representatives, could be named by the presumptive Democratic nominee as the party’s vice-presidential candidate as soon as today.
The Massachusetts senator was set to announce the winner of the veep-stakes at a rally this morning in Pittsburgh, according to several reports last night.
With the July 26 Democratic convention in Boston looming, Kerry is looking for some advantage in the polls, and is hoping his choice of running mate will be the answer.
The polls have consistently shown him neck and neck with President Bush.
Gephardt, who was House majority leader from 1989 to 1995 and minority leader until 2002, could be an asset to Kerry in key battleground states in the Midwest.
He also has long been known as a supporter of organized labor, which leans heavily Democratic.
Gephardt had been one of those vying for the Democratic nomination along with Kerry, but folded up his operation after failing to win the caucuses in the neighboring state of Iowa.
He also lost an attempt at the nomination in 1988 to Michael Dukakis.
After holding local office in his native St. Louis, Gephardt was first elected to Congress in 1976.
He is a graduate of Northwestern University and the University of Michigan law school.
He’s has an extensive political resume, but he may be too experienced. Gephardt could be viewed by voters as too much of a Washington insider.
There was early speculation that Kerry was going to make a bold choice by crossing party lines and asking Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) to join the ticket. But McCain embarrassed Kerry by publicly declining.
Then many thought Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) would be the one, when it was learned he had cut short a family vacation at Florida’s Walt Disney World last week so he could rush to see Kerry in Washington.
They met Thursday, according to sources close to the Kerry campaign.
But the sources also noted that Kerry held positive meetings with Gephardt and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.
Many Democrats had urged Kerry to turn to his former opponent Edwards, 51, whose youthful appearance and sunny campaign style during the primary made him a favorite among party activists.
Edwards also could have been competitive in the south, and the choice of Gephardt could be a sign that Kerry is “writing off” that region.
Edwards also lacked experience.
He is a one-term senator whose lack of seasoning in foreign affairs could have made voters nervous about his ability to assume the presidency during a war or an international crisis.
It was thought that Kerry felt more comfortable with Gephardt than any of the other candidates.
He even said he would have supported Gephardt if he were not running himself. Vilsack, 53, was the least known of the top contenders.
The Iowa governor was believed to be personally liked by Kerry and also hailed from the Midwest, but he was virtually unknown to voters.
Besides Pittsburgh, Kerry will also be in Indianapolis today and will head to Cleveland, Cincinnati and Milwaukee before coming to New York at the end of the week for several fund-raisers.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I’m blown away by Apple’s preview of Tiger. And not in a good way. Not in a good way at all.
Apple is now developing a substantial history of intellectual property theft from third-party developers. (Lest I be sued, on the laughable assumption that anyone from Apple would ever end up reading this blog entry, let me state outright that that sentence, and indeed this entire entry, is merely my opinion.)
Sherlock 3 was an obvious rip-off of Watson (scroll down to “What is the relationship between Watson and the new Sherlock 3?”), which was so good it was evidently was just sold to Sun. Panther’s Application Switcher is a direct rip-off of LiteSwitch.
And Tiger manages to rip off not only Konfabulator but LaunchBar as well, with its new releases of Dashboard and Spotlight, respectively. Hell, with Dashboard, they didn’t even bother to rename the term for the mini-programs — Apple’s calling theirs “Widgets,” too.
I really would like to see Proteron, Arlo Rose, and Objective Development take Apple to court on this one.
My ire is beginning to be raised. I will be looking quite skeptically at the concept of purchasing Mac OS 10.4. Right now, the only thing that is making me think about it is that evidently Tiger will introduce the use of metadata in the system, something I’ve been desiring for a while.
(Update: now with linky goodness.)
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
My nightly postings of links were becoming a major, time-consuming project that would take a great deal of time out of my life. I sought to change things to shorten the time involved, and have done so. Unfortunately, this shift to a new system involves the end of my days at LiveJournal.
The linklog posting will continue, but courtesy of Del.Icio.Us. If you prefer webpage browsing, you can check my linklog at http://del.icio.us/WCityMike. If you prefer to read via syndication (such as NetNewsWire, etc.), you can subscribe to this feed.
I have created a weblog on Blogger called Musings of a Chicagoan for times when I’m in the mood to muse more at length. The Atom feed for that can be subscribed to here.
I hope that if you’ve enjoyed my links or my thoughts, you’ll make the transition to the new locales. Take care.
Update: has created a LiveJournal that works off my Del.Icio.Us syndication feed, which is called . Enjoy. 
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 at the local Century Theatres theater this afternoon. I was encouraged. This is, essentially, the widescale, publicized argument that I have been wanting the Democrats to make for the four years that Bush has been in office. Unfortunately, few Democrats stopped going ‘meep’ until an election year hit us, and then only because Howard Dean came in and made such a loud noise that the other Democratic candidates ran the risk of looking like wimps if they didn’t grow a pair.
One of my favorite moments of the film (don’t read any further if you’d like to be surprised) is Moore’s coverage of Bush’s flight suit escapade, where he took an F-16 out to an aircraft carrier, landed in a flight suit, and pronounced “mission accomplished.” Moore chose as background music the theme to the 1980s sitcom “The Greatest American Hero.” Well, the lead-in to the ‘believe it or not’ chorus is:
Look at what’s happened to me,
I can’t believe it myself.
Suddenly I’m up on top of the world,
It should’ve been somebody else.
What a delicious moment of irony. And the footage of Ashcroft singing his own composition, “Let the Eagle Soar,” was, as always, surreal.
Sometimes, blogs become huge and are read by thousands of people. Sometimes, they’re just written for the act of writing. The latter purpose is really what I’m writing this for. As I’ve grown into an adult, I’ve found that writing a private journal for myself really doesn’t seem to offer me any incentive. My brain sort of says, “Well, no one will ever read this except yourself, and you already know these thoughts, so, really, what is the use?” With public blogging, there is at least the illusion that I am trying to explain this to someone out there, even if I am really just speaking with myself.
This also differs somewhat in that this will only be the product of moments where I feel as if I want to express something. Prior attempts at blogging arose, at least in part, from the desire to impart links which I thought were of interest. That function is now being fulfilled by my linklog at Del.Icio.Us, to which I can toss a link and accompanying description with just the touch of a keystroke. Very convenient!
This is also the product of some reading I’ve been doing — a book called From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. It is by a person named Fred Anderson, who, apparently through sheer strength of will, transformed his eating habits and dropped from a high of 371 pounds down to 195 pounds. His online journal (I’d offer a link, but it’s no longer online, since it’s essentially the substance of the book) details the mental attitude he took, and it’s a fascinating one. I agree with some critics that a lot of his thought patterns may come from other motivational gurus’ philosophies, but it feels more like distillation than plagiarism.
I’m also working with some software called Life Balance, which is a really excellent “to do” application. I can schedule things to recur a set time after I check them off, or every Saturday, and I can also prioritize tasks and effort. It’s a bit hard to describe it all in one whack, but as a review of it said, text editor is to Microsoft Word as to-do application is to Life Balance.
Anyway, that’s enough for a first post — I have other stuff to get to.
I should let you know, by the way, that I am listening to an MP3 of Phish doing a “James Brown” version of Hanson’s “MMMBop,” and despite having heard it a number of times, it still brings a smile to my face.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Hey, readers o’ my LiveJournal.
I have been trying to figure out a way that I could possibly do the whole blogging thing a little easier, so I’m going to briefly try a tweak to my blogging lifestyle, based on this journal entry, which seems to echo my own style and mental processes.
So, possibly temporarily (possibly permanently), I’m moving the operation over to Delicious.
Webpage, and RSS feed.
(There’s nothing there this second, because I haven’t gotten home tonight and started my usual blogging.)
It could be that I will then use the LiveJournal for stuff I want to rant more at length about (and or quote deeply from), and Delicious for the one-shot more “linklog”-type stuff.
We’ll see.
By the way, I’ve temporarily opened up commenting to everybody (whether you’re a LiveJournal user or not), and if you read me (either on the RSS feed or on LJ or through your ‘friends’ view), would you please mind just dropping a comment? Implementing a counter appears to be an extreme pain in the neck with the customizations I’ve got set up, and I’m curious how much of a readership I’ve got. (If you’re a jerk and decide this’d be a great time to start trolling me, keep in mind LiveJournal logs your IP address.)
— Mike
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
A little bit saddened to hear this:
The Washington Post noted the sloppy dress habits of the mourners who filed into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, “perhaps America’s most sacred secular site,” to pay respects to President Reagan.
“[Some of the mourners wore] flip-flops, cargo shorts and T-shirts, their flabby midsections exposed,” noted the Post. “Some young women wore ultra-mini skirts and halter tops.”
Really disrespectful.
Not surprised to hear this:
Ann Coulter, the arch-conservative commentator who looks like the kind of woman who shows up at bachelor parties with a raincoat, high heels, a boom box and a bodyguard, wrote a column about the passing of Ronald Reagan.
So how many paragraphs did Coulter manage before she turned her tribute to Reagan into an attack on liberals?
Answer below.
[...]
The answer to the Coulter quiz: She made it through one whole paragraph lauding Reagan before launching the l-word:
“America’s greatest president has gone home. God worked through Ronald Reagan on Earth and now He’s taken him back. . . . Thanks to him, the United States … never ceased to be, as Reagan said, ‘a place to escape to’ — the last stand on Earth.
“No thanks to liberals, I might add. More enraging than their revisionist history of Reagan is liberals’ revisionist history about themselves. Now liberals claim they liked Reagan at the time. This is extremely believable –aren’t we all fond of someone who regularly exposes us as liars, cowards and hypocrites? It’s just human nature.”
If we could channel this woman’s hatred of liberals into an energy source, it could light the Vegas Strip for a decade.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Okay, damn it, that’s really cool. George H.W. Bush celebrated his 80th birthday by frickin’ skydiving from 13,000 feet. The winds were too strong for him to do it alone, so he jumped in tandem with a member of the U.S. Army parachute team. That’s just frickin’ cool, I gotta say. Skydiving at 80 … hat’s off to you, George. (Evidently Gorbachev came to visit him for his BD.)
Here’s another neat story:
MLB.com
June 13, 2004 7:20 pm ET
Sanders sends ‘em home happy
By Alan Eskew
ARLINGTON — Reggie Sanders did not play Sunday for the Cardinals, but for many of the 41,087 in attendance at Ameriquest Field, he was the hero of the day.
In the third inning, Gary Matthews Jr. of the Rangers fouled a ball into the seats and a burly man leaped over a row, knocking over a 4-year-old boy with his legs, and grabbed the baseball.
The incident was caught on television cameras and the fans began to chant for the man to give the boy the ball, but he refused. Sanders saw what had occurred on a television in the clubhouse. In between innings, Sanders came out and summoned the boy and his mother to near the Cardinals’ dugout and gave him a bat and ball as the crowd cheered.
“It was definitely an unfortunate situation,” Sanders said.
Sanders said the bat was one he had used in a game.
“I won’t talk about the guy,” Sanders said. “He’s not worth talking about.”
Cards reliever Steve Kline also witnessed the incident on television and sent the man over a gift, a Cardinals shirt, which he signed, “tough guy and ball stealer.”
The shirt, however, was never delivered. The unidentified man left the premises soon after Sanders’ good-will gesture and could not be found.
Class act, Mr. Sanders. Class act.
I’m sorry, I just love this photo. Heh. McCain just looks like every other guy, goin’, “Oh, man, am I bushed.”
The International Red Cross says that the U.S. has to either charge Hussein or release him by the time we hand over Iraq to the new provisional government.
Huh. Something I learned in Boy Scouts was wrong: if the flag touches the ground, it doesn’t have to be burnt.
Dollar store toothpaste can evidently be very troublesome.
You know you’re in trouble when government legislation begins to sound like horror movies. Such as The Return of the Son of PATRIOT:
The bill, known as the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act of 2003, or HR 3179, was introduced last September by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) and was co-sponsored by Rep. Porter Goss (R-Florida), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a possible contender to replace departing CIA chief George Tenet.
It contains four sections that first appeared in a proposed piece of legislation dubbed Patriot Act II. That proposed law was discovered last year by the Center for Public Integrity just weeks before the invasion of Iraq. Patriot Act II, or “Son of Patriot” as critics called it, was written by the Justice Department to expand Patriot Act powers, but the department was forced to shelve the proposal after news of it created an uproar.
But critics, like conservative former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Georgia), say that rather than abandoning the legislation altogether, the department has been extracting provisions and having sympathetic lawmakers slip them one by one into new bills to pass the legislation piecemeal. At least five other bills pending in Congress also contain provisions from Patriot Act II, but HR 3179 is the one that’s in imminent danger of being passed under the radar.
Last year, a Patriot Act II provision was slipped into the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2004 at the last minute and passed quickly before legislators opposed to it had time to fully examine it. The Intelligence Authorization Act, an annual bill that allocates funds for intelligence agencies, is a must-pass bill that generally gets drafted and passed quickly in secrecy.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
This weekend, I caught the Joe Schmo Show marathon on SpikeTV, and really enjoyed it. After a little bit of Googling, I found this excellent Slate article that described very well how I felt about the show. I’ll definitely be giving the sequel a try.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Oh, boy:
In a cellular telephone interview, Tomo Razmilovic told Zoran Sagolj of the Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper Thursday that he might return to the U.S. after taking a two- or three-week holiday on a yacht off the coast of his native Croatia.
Yeah, I know you want to lock me up … I’ll be back in, oh, say, three weeks, ‘kay?
Signal Orange.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I don’t think I’ve linked to this one yet, and if I’ve not, it’s amazing. Ashcroft refuses to turn over the infamous ‘torture’ memorandum to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and they actually grow a pair. The footage is absolutely amazing. Sen. Biden is my new hero.
I created an iMix based on RetroCrush’s 50 Coolest Song Parts.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. It’s so simultaneously funny and sad.
It looks like Ralph Nader is pulling votes only from John Kerry, despite what he says — enough that, again, he’s going to give the Presidency to Nader. If he does, frankly, he’s going to be the target of some real intense hatred. Take a look at these poll results, if you don’t believe me.
Speaking of John Kerry, listen to his old rock ‘n’ roll band, The Electras.
Evidently, the plane carrying Kentucky’s governor to Ronald Reagan’s funeral in Washington had a transponder malfunction, which “led air traffic controllers to report an unauthorized plane in the large restricted airspace over Washington” (photograph, article):
In the Rotunda, where the former president was to lie in state, an army officer ran in yelling, “Evacuate the building now.” Uniformed military officers started running, heels clicking on the marble. Senators also ran.
Police told women to take off their shoes and run. If people dropped items, they were told to leave them. Some officers even loudly counted down the minutes to “impact.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s move like our lives depend on it. I mean it!” a Washington, D.C., police officer shouted as lawmakers and staffers poured into the streets.
Police hustled House Speaker Dennis Hastert — second in line to the presidency — away in a secured motorcade. Across the street, at the Supreme Court, several justices were whisked away in cars as an alarm sounded and officers yelled, “To the basement, to the basement.”
You may remember that we have not seen all of the torture photographs from the Abu Gharib prison. From someone who has: “You haven’t begun to see evil … horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.”
If we’re ever going to advance as a people, we’re going to have to start making a serious effort to learn when to let shit go.
They have found an animal in the woods of North Carolina that even mammalian experts can’t identify (with photograph).
This is kind of cool.
This is rather impressive. An online comic artist says, “Listen, you idiots who keep sending me nasty e-mails. Send me a year’s salary, and I’ll quit my job and pay attention to you.” Well, they sent him a year’s salary.
This movie trailer for Hunting the President talks about how Clinton was brought down. It’s obviously heavily biased, but it’s nevertheless whetted my interest.
You have to love the image they used with this advertisement. Yes, the perfect use of a voice changer is when a man with a creepy, homicidal look on his face is calling a bunch of a teenage girls.
From the Museum of Hoaxes:
It’s prom time, and parents of seniors at Newfield High School all received a letter in the mail ffering their child a free ‘protection package’ comprised of condoms and lubricant to help them celebrate the night in a fun, but safe, way. The letter was a prank, and a very successful one if judged by how much it managed to annoy school authorities. The School Superintendent fumed that the prank demonstrated “inexcusable and reckless behavior that diminishes every student in the senior class.” I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the reaction the pranksters were hoping for.
Naperville, it turns out, has an extremely stupid law on the books. If you are 21 or younger and in the presence of someone else underage who is drinking, then you are in violation of Naperville’s presence restriction ordinance. Those morons do not seem to comprehend that the U.S. Constitution applies to teenagers, as well, too. They can be convicted when they do not do anything illegal, but the person next to them does?
The least erotic moments in cinema history. I’ve seen Showgirls and agree with them on that scene.
Oooooh. Want to buy a replica of the very first Encyclopedia Brittanica? (However, I really can’t see spending money on this, given all the other stuff I’d rather purchase. Still, I’d love to browse through this, or check it out of a library somewhere.)
If you’re a Tarantino fan and/or a Star Wars fan, you might enjoy Imperial Dogs. It’s not up yet, but the schwag they have up at the moment looks fun.
10 foods you should never eat. God knows I’ll probably never pop open a bag of Bugles again (or if I do, I’ll know exactly what I am eating).
This is amazing: a credit card with a 65% annual interest rate.
Evidently, the famous homicidal killer Son of Sam has a blog. Okay, life is officially disturbing.
FARK Photoshop Contest: What do Trek actors do in the off season? Quite funny.
The movie Garfield is getting some of the worst reviews in history — its Rotten Tomatoes page shows that about 91% of the nation’s critics think it sucks. My favorite quote is by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s critic, who says, “This isn’t a movie, it’s a marketing ploy.”
However, I’m surprised that The Stepford Wives isn’t getting better reviews — it’s only at 32%. I saw it last night and loved it. Favorite quote on that page is: “Rudnick’s screenplay is filled with smart dialogue and funny pop-culture references, including some well-observed parodies of reality TV programming.”
This is a pretty interesting article about a sleep machine that a Japanese company is developing. They seem much more concerned about their employees’ energy level than most American companies. Here’s more:
At the “Vitality Diagnostic Corner,” a “sleep counselor” leads visitors through a 30-minute, Matsushita-developed software program designed to pinpoint sleep problems and put out a “sleep profile.”
With that out of the way, customers are free to pass into a separate bedroom and get down to business with the sleep machine.
The 30-minute session in the sleep room — about the size of a small hotel room and programmed with a control panel in the wall — starts with the bed upright like a recliner. A huge TV screen is positioned high above the dresser to meet perfectly with your line of vision, showing verdant scenes of a river ambling through a forest.
Gentle guitar and piano music plays against a backdrop of trickling water and birdsong.
After a few minutes relaxing like that, the sleep machine takes over: the lights slowly dim, the TV screen goes blank, the music dies down — but the stream still babbles — and the bed lowers into sleeping position.
Hold onto the sheets for what comes next: a mechanical massage. The mattress vibrates and bulges strategically under your upper and lower back, stretching your spine to its limits.
Eventually, the lights turn off completely, the massage peters out and air is released from the mattress, allowing your body to settle gently into place — and into the first dream of the night.
The sleep machine eases you out of your dreams as well. The lights come on slowly and the TV turns on with a crystal lake on the screen. The curtains open automatically to morning, and the bed lifts you into sitting position.
In an effort to get the PATRIOT Act renewed, evidently the Bush Administration is outright fibbing about efforts to reduce it:
The 30-second spots suggest that proposed changes to the Patriot Act would bar federal agents from using new surveillance and investigative powers against terrorists that it claims are “routinely” used against common criminals. In actuality, the main Patriot-fix bill, supported by conservatives and liberals alike, called the Security and Freedom Ensured, or SAFE, Act would simply narrow several of the Patriot ActÃs most contentious provisions, requiring greater judicial review and more checks against abuse. Nothing in the act would eliminate the secret search and surveillance powers authorized or expanded in the Patriot Act.
Lest you think we as a species have progressed beyond it, a family was turned away from a New Jersey pool because they were black.
A state Department of Justice went around confiscating licensed, legal guns. Even though I’m not precisely wild about an armed citizenry, if they did this, it was an obvious and blatant violation of the Second Amendment.
This, however, I don’t quite understand the huge hubbub about. After all, if I have to provide a thumbprint to cash a check, why shouldn’t I be required to provide one when purchasing something that could kill someone? It doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me, frankly. Then again, it does create a slippery slope. More and more thumbprinting could become suddenly “reasonable,” such as when buying a car (to prevent car fraud and/or hit-and-runs). And then where do we go from there?
The Memory Hole, the website which posted photographs of our servicemen coming home (as well as the Iraqi abuse photographs, is being blocked from soldiers’ computers as “politically extremist.”
Um, maybe it’s not a great idea to transmit credit card numbers on an unsecured WiFi network:
According to statements provided by Timmins and Botbyl following their arrest, as recounted in an FBI affidavit filed in the case, the pair first stumbled across an unsecured wireless network at the Southfield, Michigan Lowe’s last spring, while “driving around with laptop computers looking for wireless Internet connections,” i.e., wardriving. The two said they did nothing malicious with the network at that time.
It was six months later that Botbyl and his friend Salcedo hatched a plan to use the network to steal credit card numbers from the hardware chain, according to the affidavit.
As Declan points out, GIMP could pretty much just laugh in the EU’s face:
Computer and software manufacturers are to be forced to introduce new security measures to make it impossible for their products to be used to copy banknotes. The move, to be drafted into European Union legislation by the year end, follows a surge in counterfeit currency produced using laser printers, home scanners and graphics software. Imaging software and printers have become so powerful and affordable that production of fake banknotes has become a booming cottage industry.
And now, the criminalization of art under the PATRIOT Act begins.
Sounds good to me!
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Wow. Anna Nicole Smith lost a lot of weight.
Looks like Jack Chick has another hate-filled cartoon tract out, this time on gay marriage. (He even wrote an accompanying letter.) As long as you know what you’re getting into, they usually make a pretty interesting read, if only for psychological purposes and knowing what the ultra-fundies are spreading ’round.
Just realize that this stuff is written in a completely alternate, very askew universe.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
*guffaw* (And I’m so glad I’m male.)
Evidently, a kid put his school up on eBay. The plus side? The school administrators actually had a sense of humor about it.
What a wonderful bit of theater:
I spend this morning reading the transcript of the AG’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, and I think this exchange with Pat Leahy perfectly captures the Abbott and Costello quality of it:
LEAHY: Has there been any order directed from the president with respect to interrogation of detainees, prisoners or combatants, yes or no?
ASHCROFT: I’m not in a position to answer that question.
LEAHY: Does that mean because you don’t know or you don’t want to answer? I don’t understand.
ASHCROFT: The answer to that question is yes.
Lysenkoism.
“ChristianExodus is orchestrating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of dissolving that State’s bond with the union.” Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, then.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
“Is it … boiling hot?”
How do they do that?
Once in a while, you run across a website that you hope to God is some sort of social commentary-style parody. (Edit: Yeah, evidently it is parody. Thank God.)
See lizard. See lizard jump on news anchor. See news anchor do something hilarious (WMV).
Jesus. This is just what we need:
Test subjects can’t see the invisible beam from the Pentagon’s new, Star Trek-like weapon, but no one has withstood the pain it produces for more than three seconds.
People who volunteered to stand in front of the directed energy beam say they felt as if they were on fire. When they stepped aside, the pain disappeared instantly.
What do you think of this ad they’re considering broadcasting on Arabic television? I frankly don’t think it’d be a bad idea.
Can someone make this for Congress, please? It’s really pretty damn cool. (Take a look at the entry for my uncle and aunt’s member of Parliament, if you’d like to see how it works.)
Here is an incredibly well-written editorial about this crap known as a “free speech zone” and its effects on Wisconsin during Dubya’s campaign trip:
The Capital Times
May 13, 2004
When King George Travels, Liberties Suffer
By John Nichols
The King made a royal visit to Wisconsin last week, and as is common when monarchs travel, individual liberties were suspended.
King George Bush’s bus trip across western Wisconsin closed schools and roads, prevented residents from moving freely in their own communities, and prevented citizens from exercising their free speech rights.
All in all, it was a typical George W. Bush visit.
But there’s a slight twist.
People in western Wisconsin, who hold to the refreshingly naive notion that they live in a republic as opposed to an imperial realm, are objecting.
“There’s a pattern of harassment of free speech here that really concerns me,” says Guy Wolf, the student services coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “If they’re going to call it a presidential visit, then it should be a presidential visit - where we can hear from him and he can hear from us. But that’s not what happened here, not at all.”
Wolf and other La Crosse area residents who wanted to let the president know their feelings about critical issues came face to face with the reality that, when King George travels, he is not actually interested in a two-way conversation.
Along the route of the Bush bus trip from Dubuque to La Crosse, the Bush team created a “no-free-speech” zone that excluded any expressions of the dissent that is the lifeblood of democracy. In Platteville, peace activist Frank Van Den Bosch was arrested for holding up a sign that was critical of the president. The sign’s “dangerous” message, “FUGW,” was incomprehensible to children and, no doubt, to many adults. Yet, it was still determined sufficiently unsettling to the royal procession that Van Den Bosch was slapped with a disorderly conduct ticket.
Up the road in La Crosse, the clampdown on civil liberties was even more sweeping. Wolf and hundreds of other Wisconsinites and Minnesotans who sought to express dissents were videotaped by authorities, told they could not make noise, ordered not to display certain signs and forced to stand out of eyesight of Bush and his entourage. Again and again, they were told that if they expressed themselves in ways that were entirely protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, they would be “subject to arrest.”
“Everyone understood the need for basic security for the president, but none of us could understand why we had to give up our free speech rights,” explained Wolf.
La Crosse Mayor John Medinger shares that concern. The Bush-Cheney campaign leased a portion of a local park where the royal rally was held. Yet, Wisconsinites who wanted to protest Bush’s visit were told they could not use a sound system in a completely different section of the park.
“I want to find out why the whole park was used when only a portion was leased,” Medinger told the La Crosse Tribune. “So when demonstrators were told they couldn’t have (sound) systems, the question is why.”
The Bush-Cheney campaign paid a $100 fee to use one part of the park, but disrupted much of the city. Medinger is now assessing the full cost of the royal visit and hopes to deliver a bill to the campaign, which State Elections Board attorney George Dunst says the Bush campaign should pay. Other communities, including Prairie du Chien, are looking at following Medinger’s lead.
But the challenge should not just be a financial one. The Bush visit attacked First Amendment rights up and down the Mississippi. A lot of people are owed apologies.
In a monarchy, of course, the King never apologizes. But in a democracy, the president is supposed to be accountable to the people.
By pressing demands that the charges against Frank Van Den Bosch be dropped and that the White House and the Bush-Cheney campaign apologize for participating in an anti-democratic endeavor, residents of western Wisconsin can, and should, take up the cause of this country’s founders. It is time once more to challenge a King named George.
Ooooh. I like this site.
The City of Baltimore is running into a problem: their people are kinda lazy about throwing away e-mails, their e-mail servers are collapsing, but public record laws are governing exactly how they can empty things out.
You may not have heard it, but America, bit by bit, city by city, is telling Washington, D.C. (via legislation!) that the Patriot Act can go fuck itself.
A humorous Wired news article about Lawrence Lessig looking at his inbox and quietly going, “Holy shit.”
The blogger has a point — but man, to do that takes more than a little chutzpah, assuming he’s conscious of it (how could he not be?).
A really interesting column by a wife who remembers the days when Michael Jackson was normal, and ponders the transformation. Worth clicking through for the day pass.
You should read this article, despite its length. If you don’t want to read the whole thing (behind the cut tag), then at least read this and this.
Wall Street Journal
Monday, June 7, 2004
Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture
Security or Legal Factors Could Trump Restrictions, Memo to Rumsfeld Argued
by Jess Bravin
Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn’t bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn’t be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren’t getting enough information from prisoners.
The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by national-security considerations or legal technicalities. In a March 6, 2003, draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, passages were deleted as was an attachment listing specific interrogation techniques and whether Mr. Rumsfeld himself or other officials must grant permission before they could be used. The complete draft document was classified “secret” by Mr. Rumsfeld and scheduled for declassification in 2013.
The draft report, which exceeds 100 pages, deals with a range of legal issues related to interrogations, offering definitions of the degree of pain or psychological manipulation that could be considered lawful. But at its core is an exceptional argument that because nothing is more important than “obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens,” normal strictures on torture might not apply.
The president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture, the report argued. Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the “necessity” of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or “superior orders,” sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no “moral choice was in fact possible.”
According to Bush administration officials, the report was compiled by a working group appointed by the Defense Department’s general counsel, William J. Haynes II. Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker headed the group, which comprised top civilian and uniformed lawyers from each military branch and consulted with the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. It isn’t known if President Bush has ever seen the report.
A Pentagon official said some military lawyers involved objected to some of the proposed interrogation methods as “different than what our people had been trained to do under the Geneva Conventions,” but those lawyers ultimately signed on to the final report in April 2003, shortly after the war in Iraq began. The Journal hasn’t seen the full final report, but people familiar with it say there were few substantial changes in legal analysis between the draft and final versions.
A military lawyer who helped prepare the report said that political appointees heading the working group sought to assign to the president virtually unlimited authority on matters of torture — to assert “presidential power at its absolute apex,” the lawyer said. Although career military lawyers were uncomfortable with that conclusion, the military lawyer said they focused their efforts on reining in the more extreme interrogation methods, rather than challenging the constitutional powers that administration lawyers were saying President Bush could claim.
The Pentagon disclosed last month that the working group had been assembled to review interrogation policies after intelligence officials in Guantanamo reported frustration in extracting information from prisoners. At a news conference last week, Gen. James T. Hill, who oversees the offshore prison at Guantanamo as head of the U.S. Southern Command, said the working group sought to identify “what is legal and consistent with not only Geneva [but] … what is right for our soldiers.” He said Guantanamo is “a professional, humane detention and interrogation operation … bounded by law and guided by the American spirit.”
Gen. Hill said Mr. Rumsfeld gave him the final set of approved interrogation techniques on April 16, 2003. Four of the methods require the defense secretary’s approval, he said, and those methods had been used on two prisoners. He said interrogators had stopped short of using all the methods lawyers had approved. It remains unclear what actions U.S. officials took as a result of the legal advice.
Critics who have seen the draft report said it undercuts the administration’s claims that it recognized a duty to treat prisoners humanely. The “claim that the president’s commander-
