Mon, 21 Feb 2005 04:04:07 GMT

Treason: Hurting America’s Feelings

Treason: itâs… Treason: Hurting America’s Feelings

Treason: itâs all the rage these days! From treasonous news executives to treasonous former Presidents everybodyâs doin it. In fact you may be a traitor and not even know it! ãThat is silly Fafnir I could never betray America I love it an eat twelve flags a dayä says you. Well a lotta traitors start off not even tryin to be traitors, it is just that easy to do! Treason isn’t just providin aid an comfort to the enemy. It’s providin not-aid an discomfort to America. Treason is hurting America’s feelings.

[snip]

Fafnir [Fafblog]

Read the whole thing so that you too may be able to identify treason when you see it.

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 21:50:15 GMT

Overstatement

“Charleston is where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers meet to form the
Atlantic Ocean.”

That’s Dave Winer quoting the special
Charleston, South Carolina Point of View as explicated by Dan
Conover of the Charleston Post and
Courier.

Isn’t that how all of us feel about the truths we represent and which we project
on the world? We all participate in the ultimate illusion: that the universe
somehow takes our personal interests into account and that if we can just stare
her down skillfully enough, Reality will bend to our demands. We constantly
seek allies in our quest for this affirmation and naturally there’s a good business in
being such an ally.

I remember well the questionable but entertaining child car seats of three or more
decades ago. These flimsy, miniature lawn chairs often featured little steering
wheels that your child manipulated to ensure your safe passage through the
vagaries of suburban traffic. Your toddler co-pilot sat next to you in the front
seat, blissfully unthreatened by uninvented airbags and the uninvented, ubiquitous
knowledge of what tragedy might happen to him. His purpose was to navigate a safe passage
home among the vagaries of traffic and noise and distraction.

Aren’t we all like those toddlers and the fans of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers?
We’re universally equipped with a point of view and a mechanism for projecting
our egos upon the Great Reality which we can surely learn to steer once we decipher
its special code. Control is the universal need of our species, so vital that
we will sacrifice our present and obvious good for the uncertain promise
of control of our destiny.

Actually, it’s not control we seek. It’s the illusion of
control and certainty. Any tribe will pay any price for that illusion. Our tribe
is currently paying more
for that illusion, in absolute terms, than has any tribe in the history of mankind.

[snip]

Without the good sense of traditional conservatives, do we have any hope of
waking up?

[Escapable Logic]

Read the whole thing, especially about the 3 tribes. I think the last point is very important. The good sense of traditional conservatives has provided a strong balance to America. That good sense is diminshed, resulting in a government that is rapidly putting us farther into debt than any recent Democratic one, all based on predictions that have little contact with reality. How long before fiscal conservatives wake up?

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 01:09:11 GMT

A Dossier on Your Life: Now Criminals May Have It. An odious outfit called ChoicePoint compiles electronic dossiers of financial and other personal data about Americans and sells the information to governments and businesses. Thanks to a California law requiring notification to people whose financial privacy may have been compromised, the company has fessed up to a grotesque privacy mess: selling the information to phony companies pretending to be legitimate businesses, as MSNBC first reported. This is undoubtedly the tip of an ugly iceberg.

The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow, aided by a grant from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has published a brilliant multimedia Web project and book about the private data-mongers like ChoicePoint and their growing ties to government snooping machines. It’s dismal stuff, and getting worse all the time.

UPDATE: In a story today, O’Harrow quotes a ChoicePoint executive this way: “ChoicePoint spokesman James Lee said the company learned for the first time yesterday the case involved people in states outside California.”

Yeah, right.

Where’s Congress in all this? Hiding, as usual, as the privacy of all Americans gets more and more illusory. [Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.]

But if you are not in California, you don’t have to be notified. I guess the free market will take care of things, right, since an over-regulated indutry is an inefficient one?

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 05:11:22 GMT

Barry Switzer. “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” [Quotes of the Day]

Mark Twain. “Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.” [Quotes of the Day]

Fyodor Dostoevsky. “Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” [Quotes of the Day]

Hannah Arendt. “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.” [Quotes of the Day]

A Theme?

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 04:07:59 GMT

Private Accounts: A No-Brainer.

Molly Ivins nails the problem with private accounts:

If you aren’t smart enough to figure out what’s wrong with President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, then you won’t be able to run one of the accounts-formerly-known-as-private, either.

Heh. Indeed.

By noemail@noemail.org (Sid the Fish). [Sid's Fishbowl]

Molly has a way with words. And this is actually a very true statement.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 04:52:32 GMT

Pesky General Tells the Truth and a Church Steps Up. Here’s what General Hagee said, to explain comments made by Lt. Gen. James Mattis of the Marine Corps. “Lt. Gen. Mattis often speaks with a great deal of candor. I have counseled him concerning his remarks and he agrees he… [Under The Same Sun]

Why do I have a vision of Sterling Hayden as Brig. Gen. jack D. Ripper saying this stuff. I mean saying ‘It’s a hell of a hoot.’ Or ‘It’s fun to shoot people.’ Both seem right up there with ‘Your Commie has no regard for human life. Not even his own.’ Or ‘I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.’ I guess it makes good press and helps recruit more Marines.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 04:38:54 GMT

Report: Non-Doctors Carried Out Amputations at Abu Ghraib. Truly disgusting. Time Magazine has a new report on the medical disarray at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The report is based on interviews with medical staff and a document it obtained about medical treatment at the prison and the… [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

Just when you could not think it could get worse. But none of the big guys will ever take any real heat from this.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 04:34:50 GMT

Obscenity. I’m not big on anti-obscenity crusades in general, but having just watched the nipple-free 2005 Super Bowl, it seems to me that if I were the parent of a young child I would be more troubled by my kids watching… [Matthew Yglesias]

Of course, my son (almost 15) when he sees these ads just quotes the comedian who said ‘If I had a four hour erection, I’d do more than Cialis. I’d see Mary and I’d see Jane.’

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 04:32:03 GMT

I’m actually a…. I’m actually a little surprised Vice President Cheney said this. But if he wants to be upfront about the folly of his administration’s proposal, who am I to complain? This from Fox … “We’re going to borrow $758 [b]illion over… [Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall]

Somehow, borrowing trillions of dollars more does not seem fiscally responsible but they want to do it. Unless their plan is to default on the money already owed to the trust fund. That would be really good.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 04:28:58 GMT

Bush Aiming to Screw Veterans Yet Again. The cynicism and duplicity of the Bush Administration rarely fazes… [Daily Kos]

But he has to make his tax cuts for the rich permanent somehow. There actually was an survey that showed that the VA hospitals have better average care than may other private systems. So let’s try to screw it up even more.

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:13:08 GMT

RENT, or STOMP, or CLOMP, or some piece of crap.

A little off-topic, but this is a promotional photo from the off-Broadway show COOKIN’!

They’re all playing cooks. In the show, they’re cooking a big Korean dinner, rhythmically. (Contain your excitement. CONTAIN IT!) And they put the woman in a chef’s coat with the belly cut out. You know, where the burners are.

I can’t even begin to express how stupid that is.

[Crooked Timber]

And, the men all have knives. She has salt and pepper mills. They are in sensible shoes. She is in spike heels. You’ve come a long way, baby!

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:10:16 GMT

Academic freedoms and Ward Churchill.

Stephen Bainbridge steps in for the right, and says that basic principles of free speech and academic freedom mean that Ward Churchill shouldn’t lose his job. I think he’s right; but I also think that there is something to Timothy Burke’s argument that Churchill shouldn’t have been invited to speak at Hamilton in the first place (the two positions are of course not contradictory). Not because of his extreme opinions – but because he seems to be neither a good nor thoughtful academic.

[Crooked Timber]

Now this is a much better way to approach the controversy. Tim BUrke’s link uses non-vitriolic terms to push back against Churchill. For instance:

Churchill, like others, constructs the hegemony of global capitalism and Western domination as being near-total. The unmitigated and simplistic totalizing that suffuses Churchill‰s writing makes it impossible to explain his own existence and professional success or anyone like him. He is incarnated impossibility of his own analysis. The only contradiction Western domination faces is produced, according to his oeuvre, by the dedicated and militant resistance of its subjects. But how is it possible that a totalizing system of domination permits such an uncompromising practicioner of resistance to publish over 11 books and occupy a tenured position at a university? (I know, I know: doubtless from a Churchillian perspective, the recent controversy is the system finally getting around to slapping him down. Quite a delayed reaction if so.)

This is the sort of discussion that this should be prompting, not whetehr the man should get to keep his job.

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:59:36 GMT

HIV vaccine trial breaks ground for future research. The results of the world’s first phase 3 HIV vaccine efficacy trial are reported in the March 1 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Although the vaccine was ineffective in preventing HIV infection, the trial represents a landmark in the fight against HIV and offers the scientific community a foundation on which to build future trials. [EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases]

Vaccines against HIV still remain difficult.

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:54:10 GMT

Pain’s new victims, pain’s new vanquishers. Cory Doctorow:
Steve Silberman has turned in a fantastic long feature for Wired Magazine in which he describes the way that the advances in body armor (which doesn’t cover legs or arms) has created a new cohort of disabled veterans with missing or badly disabled limbs. Concomittant with this is the rise of terrible, chronic pain, something that is being treated with new technology that blocks specific nerve-endings. This is a disturbing, fascinating piece.

The blocks used by Buckenmaier and his team are made possible by the recent invention of small, microprocessor-controlled pumps which bathe nerves in nonaddictive drugs that discourage the transmission of pain signals. The pumps also can be used for weeks after surgery, enabling soldiers to adjust the level of medication themselves as they need it.

For soldiers evacuated from the battlefield, the advantages of nerve blocks over traditional methods of pain control are clear. The wounded troops flying in and out of Landstuhl are often in misery or a narcotized stupor, while those treated with blocks remain awake and pain-free despite massive injuries.

This new war on pain is the brainchild of John Chiles, the Army’s chief anesthesiologist. “Places like Duke were doing great things with peripheral nerve blocks, but they had fallen by the wayside in the Army,” he says. “I wanted us to be on the cusp of these advances.” The Walter Reed program is supported by grants from the Murtha Neuroscience and Pain Institute, founded by the US representative from Pennsylvania. John Murtha, who was wounded in combat in Vietnam, visits the troops once a week at Walter Reed.

Link [Boing Boing]

Unfortuntely, war often leads to new technological developments. Treating pain is an obvious one.

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:52:09 GMT

iPod Stereoscope. David Pescovitz:
Paul Bourke’s iPod-Photo Stereoscope is an exquisite retro tech/new media mash-up:

For those wondering what “stereoscopic” is all about, viewing stereoscopic images give an enhanced depth perception. This is similar to the depth perception we get in real life, the same effect IMAX 3D and many computer games now provide. Stereoscopic viewing of any sort involves independent presentation of a different image, called a stereopair, to each eye. These stereopairs are essentially two different views of the world corresponding to the slightly different views our eyes see because they are separated horizontally….

Images can be downloaded to the IPOD-Photo, the images can subsequently be recalled and presented on the colour display. A series of images can also be presented manually or as a self running slide show with some user selected delay between each image. So to use this as a stereoscopic storage and presentation device one simply labels two IPOD-Photos as “left” and “right”, the images corresponding to each eye are installed on the appropriate IPOD-Photo.

Link (via Leander Kahney’s The Cult of Mac) [Boing Boing]

What a fun idea. The cheapest iPod Photo is $499. So for less than $1000 you can have an instrument that can display about 17,000 different sterograms.