Memoriam

I'm old enough to remember Bhutto's rise to power in the 80s, and was old enough at the time to wonder why what we called "Third World" nations back-in-the-day managed to have female leaders when the good ol' USA hadn't. (It was, after all, the groundbreaking decade of Indira Ghandi, Maggie Thatcher, Cory Aquino, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Sandra Day O'Connor, et. al.) How interesting--and significant--that the places (I'm looking at America, France and Canada in particular) that claim to be the mailing addresses of freedom and equality and human rights somehow seem to keep putting white, straight Christian guys in charge.

I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton, and think that her Presidency would be DOA due to the hysterical anti-Clinton ravings of the right infecting the middle. But I'm starting to think that it would be worth the price of the blue team going four-and-out to smash that glass ceiling for once and all. I'd be happy to do it myself, but for some crazy reason the world hasn't yet made me its Benevolent Dictator For Life. Maybe it's related to the crazy reason that I never win the lottery (for which I've never bought a single ticket).

Across two scripts, Shakespeare's Henry V laments the weight of the crown, "subject to the breath of every fool,"--the burden and nuisance, in a nutshell that keeps me at arm's length from active involvement in politics. Mercifully, I've only ever experienced that (up close) on a very local level. "Local" as in the kind of politics where Letters to the Editor and cranky old people with nothing better to do than attend board/council meetings are the hazards of the trade.

Bhutto took her shot, and I salute her pure nerve, playing with higher risk (i.e. wearing a bigger bulls-eye) than her male counterparts. The deluded soul who gave her (and nearly two dozen other people) what passes for martyrdom has, I fear, signed in blood the death-warrant of Pakistan. Musharraf has been living on borrowed days for years already. It's a matter of time before the long-dodged bomb or bullet or blast finds its mark. Time that may well have been shortened by today's assassination. Then an already-corrupt dictatorship will give way to corrupt anarchy and thence to corrupt theocracy. The first theocracy to have nuclear weapons at their fingertips.

Somebody stop my feet from dancing...

To me, the saddest part is that the deaths are even more wasted than any loss of life. Pakistan will certainly not be shocked into collective tolerance and cooperation.

And here in 'merica, the lesson will not be absorbed because, quite bluntly, we expect "those brown people" to slaughter each other with aplomb. The notion that our own waxing dictatorship, fueled by the blatant anti-intellectualism and jack-booted arrogance of the Christian Right might just be pulling us down the same road would never, EVER occur to most Americans.

The right kind of bias

I'm stuck with an El Cheapo hosting company for the pro bono coding I do for one of my quirky hobbies. The problem with that--other than the comotose tech. service that will have us switching providers in February, if not before--is the fact that I'm stuck with the sorry excuse for a scripting language known as PHP.

If I were foolhardy enough to allow hecklers for this, my little soapbox, I could count on language Jihadist rebuttals in 5...4...3...2...1...

But I don't. So there.

I fell in love with Java at the tail-end of the dot-com era for one reason: Documentation. Both for internal error messages as well as APIs. Sun's slipped on that recently, and I am not happy about it. But their more slovenly attempts to document an increasingly Byzantine welter of packages, classes and functions is still head-and-shoulders above what's offered by PHP.

Case in point: I fat-fingered the name of the database to which I was connecting. Any rational programmer would expect the code to fail at the line that attempted to connect to the database. But no--never mind I was even a good little geek and had a fail-statement ready in case it didn't connect. PHP didn't even fail when I attempted to execute the query. No, it actually failed when I tried to retrieve the contents of the recordset.

And that, folks, in unacceptable. Bad enough that PHP tries to enforce a half-@$$ attempt at typing--meaning that you don't declare the type up front--the data type is actually set on first use, after which point the type is apparently set in proverbial stone. So, in a sense, the programmer gets the worst of both worlds: All the ambiguity of VBScript/JavaScript, without the trade-off of on-the-fly mutability (convenient for building things like SQL strings without having to cast all numeric values to strings).

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. I'd just as soon go back to classic Visual Basic or even C++, were Java not available. I frankly Just. Do. Not. Grok. what anyone sees in this language, much less why it's so ubiquitous on LAMP servers. I have a more than healthy respect for the handiwork of the open source community. Surely there's something better.

Another reason to diet

So I scratched soda nearly 100% from the menu--I think I've had two cans in six months, maybe even longer than that. Now corn oil and corn syrup products will be drastically cut back. (Fortunately, I wasn't looking at corn-based alternative fuels because they just aren't efficient.) Here's why: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/286357

Biologically, your senses of smell and taste are supposed to diminish as you age. But I'm instead finding that my palate is turning into a right snob. So I'm having a hard time feeling particularly virtuous about ditching the dumbed-down, hyper-hydrogenated, cloying concoctions that pass for nourishment in our franchised food wasteland. But if I arrive at the office door and my body is surprised that it's already climbed three floors of stairs, that's All Good.

Not that I expect to be down to my college weight anytime soon. Dearest and I are far too fond of wine with dinner, real butter, sour cream, red meat, etc. for me to be in much danger of that. But hacking back the calories that are as tasteless as they are useless (and, apparently, environmentally devastating) isn't the worst thing I could do for my body--or the world at large.

I can just see the billboard...

"Ask your doctor about honey."

Granted, I'm a fan of the scientific method (as opposed to incumbent folk wisdom), but it still warms the cockles of my heart to see Grandmother Nature get one over on Big Pharma: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071204/ap_on_he_me/honey_for_cough

Not that, I'm...umm...biased or anything... (Touchdown for the black and gold team!) [dorky grin]

Trust: a geeky perspective

Well, I feel silly. A milestone birthday arrived today, and in addition to the bother of baking the expected cheesecake for co-workers, I lingered at my post two hours late last night and was in an hour early this morning to thwart any attempts at fitting my cubicle for its "suit of sables". As it turns out, that flavor of hazing is (by recent HR fiat) verboten. I suppose that every great once in a while, the firm's martinets can be a force for good--the law of averages, if no reason else...

The odd thing is the contrast between whom I would have expected to be the instigators and the one--according to my inside source--who was actually plotting it until she was warned off.

The notion of trust has been a dominant theme chez psyche this week, actually. On Monday I had to tell a friend that she had committed a middling breach of my trust, and have yet to receive any reply, much less apology. If there's an upside to being a control-freak, it's that one's feelings are not exempt from the illusion of "controllability". Even building a large fence around the swamp-kingdom of emotion is a form of control. And so the partitions between where someone can and cannot be trusted have been erected. I've done the same over the years with people who have hurt me far, far more deeply. And life, as is its wont, goes on.

In college Psychology 101, I never did quite grok the difference between rationalization and intellectualization. And still don't, even after twenty years and change. To me, intellectualization seems to say to oneself, "If I can find a high-fallutin' explanation for what I'm doing, I don't have to feel guilty about it." Which is still a rationalization to my mind, albeit with a philosophical/scientific pedigree. Yet here I find myself intellectualizing the impulse to throw trust under the bus. In my present mood, trust is less a warm, fuzzy emotion than it is a mechanism for minimizing the amount of information that we have to process. To wit: Streamlining thousands of friend-or-foe decisions each day down to mere dozens. From that perspective, trust can be restyled as mental laziness, something that makes me squirm whenever I discover it in myself.

On the flip side, though, I can also see a complete absence of trust having a corroding effect on the spirit, as well as the practical downside of making one seem less trustworthy. And, perhaps, even become less trustworthy--particularly if one rationalizes bad behavior by projecting one's motives on everyone else. Not good in any number of ways, quite apart from also being another incarnation of mental laziness.

All the same, this week is a good proverbial kick in the shins to start paying more attention to the agendas around me. Obliviousness is a pricier luxury than I thought.

Two faces of terrorism

Purely by coincidence, I caught two links from CNN that essentially capture the reason that we will ultimately lose the war that our so-called leaders have declared on terrorism. The domestic part of the exercise makes about as much sense as the police trying to solve a bank robbery by spending the next six years frisking everyone who writes a check. To wit, after years of subjecting everyone from children to the elderly to the degradation that comes from being considered a terrorist out of hand, our planes are just as likely to be bombed out of the sky as they ever were. Kudos for the GAO, even though the whole thing makes me just furious.

And, from a linked article, a reminder that terrorists can also be Caucasians in Armani or Prada. And I'm not talking about that Rapture-ready capitalist swine Eric Prince of Blackwater fame. Our government isn't the only one willing to outsource terrorism. Dearest and I haven't been buying Chiquita for awhile because of this. In the same way that I haven't knowingly put a dime in Nestle's pocket since learning of the infant formula monstrosity back in the 80s.

But, typically, once wheels start turning in any enterprise so mammoth, correcting course is well-nigh impossible, to say nothing of stopping before the whole behemoth rolls off the cliff.

The other edge of the theocratic sword

Normally, it's the evangelicals that can't seem to firewall religion and politics. And their bad habits are rubbing off on a crowd that should definitely know better after a few thousand years of worldly meddling. Ummm...didn't they teach you about Paolo Scarpi in the seminary? I would think that the smackdown that Venice laid on the Pope the last time your crowd tried calling the shots in the world of Mammon would have made an impression? I mean, it's only been 400 years or so, but to people who've been in business since the first century CE, what's a few paltry centuries, really?

Why-oh-why are more people not calling for the churches to be taxed and regulated and financially scrutinized when they meddle in politics? Every other rabble-rouser has to do it--why the free ride here? Oral Roberts University is scrambling to cover its backside so as not to lose its tax-exempt status after their own shenanigans--why not the entire Catholic Church? Like the GOP, they could probably use a scandal that doesn't involve sex for a change. Glass houses, an' all...

But in both cases, arguing with a theocrat will get you about as far as debating a drunk. The self-deception necessary to live in that zone I hope to never understand.

Capitalist arguments for socialized medicine

State-sponsored medical care is again in the popular lexicon, and if you care to cock an ear in the direction of BosNyWash, you'll catch the purr of the well-oiled, finely-tuned FUD machine running at full throttle. FUD, in case your vocabulary is a bit out of date, stands for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", and is a favorite tactic of the Powers That Be when they find themselves short of valid alternatives. Microsoft in the '80s and '90s was famous for squashing upstart competitors/technologies with this tactic.

So, as a public service to those fed up by the current cronyist system, here are a few questions/counterpoints for those who are--culpably or ignorantly--amplifying the FUD machine by parroting its talking points:

1. If Canada and the UK and all those socialist countries have such horrible health care, why does the United States have a lower life expectancy? Why are infant mortality rates higher here? Why do more women per 100,000 die in childbirth in the U.S.? And why, pray tell, do we pay such premium rates for the privilege of ranking so abysmally in such critical benchmarks?
   
2. More to the point, if "socialized medicine" is so terrible, why do its opponents--I'm looking at you, Mister Mayor of Nine-Eleven--lie so egregiously about it?
   
3. For the "I don't want the government making decisions about my health care" crowd: So....explain to me how having a faceless drone in a mega-corporation cube-farm make those decisions is any different. Oh, but wait! You can't vote CEOs out of office. That's the difference. Except that doesn't play into the FUD talking-points. Ooops.
4. And, by the bye, if you're so effin' concerned about government intrusion, exactly where the @#$%^&* have you been these past six years while AT&T and friends were feeding your calls/data to Big Brother Bush? Did I hear any gnashing of teeth from you folks at right and center while the Bush Regime canceled your slice of habeus corpus simply by calling you an "enemy combatant"? Ummm, no, actually. Why? Because the FUD told you to STFU and not distract your Alphas from their naked power-grab. That's either hypocrisy or some extremely messed-up priorities--there's no third way about it.
   

I highly doubt that the apologists for Merck, Travelers, et. al. will have any sensible retort, so please feel welcome to borrow the above ripostes. Assuming that plain ol' Common Sense hasn't supplied them already.

So, after scraping those bits of stupid off the bottoms of our shoes, let's move along to some reasons why, from a capitalist standpoint, so-called "socialist medicine" makes sense. Understand, though, when I mean "capitalist", I mean it more in the Adam Smith sense. Not our current plutocratic feudal system, wherein its suzerains and satraps earn more in a year than some Third World countries.

1. The current "capitalist" system is only benefiting a small segment of the economy to the detriment of others. Everyone else--assuming that they offer/subsidize any health benefits to their employees--faces increased premiums. Thus, they either take a direct hit to their bottom line, or they waste resources trying to re-negotiate, jiggle the plans, etc.
   
2. If the business decides not to take the hit, it then loses an advantage in hiring better people. Which doesn't show up as a line-item on the balance sheet, but can take a company downhill in the long run. (You like working with morons? Keep arguing for the status quo.)
   
3. Or, let's step outside the normal nine-to-five world. Let's suppose instead that you have a great idea for a business, and have been disciplined enough to accumulate the capital to survive its infancy. What, more than anything, is stopping you from quitting your job to get your new business off the ground? It's better than a guess that that consideration is who will cover you and/or yours if someone gets sick. COBRA doesn't apply b/c you left voluntarily. Big Insurance doesn't want to bother with your nobody chump change. In economics, that's called a "barrier to entry," which Big Insurance and its cronies have now created--not just within their own industry, but throughout an entire friggin' economy, peeps. And that, friends and bretheren, is an intolerable state of affairs, pure and simple. Intolerable even without all the noise that's made about small business doing the lion's share of job creation. Bottom line: If you want to speed along the WalMart-ization of every last business sector, please feel free to keep echoing the FUD.
   
4. And, finally, it's time to chuck the myth of the free market in an age of mega-mergers. Thanks to a $200-million plus vote-buying spree in the late 90s, the line between insurance companies and financial services has been irrevocably blurred. That basically means that the decisions about whether to cover your treatment, what you pay for premiums, etc., are directly affected by the Wall Street pony-track. And if you honestly think that the fat years will even out the lean, you need to take a hard look at the dosage of your meds. This is an industry where Sandy Weill can collect over a billion dollars for leaving a mess for his successor (Charles Prince), who himself has been shoved out the door (after pocketing mere hundreds of millions, poor thing) for losing over six billion dollars, plus a fifth of Citibank's market value. Think that this won't affect Traveler's bottom line in some Enron-style account-jiggling? (I forget who bought out whom, frankly; suffice it that they are joined at the hip.) Think that the chastened likes of Weill and Prince will humbly return their salaries and stock options so that your premiums won't spike? Yeeeeah...
   

None of this, of course, addresses the issue of whether or not the US Government, with a mandate to create a national health care or health coverage system, will do so without it being a complete mess and/or giveaway to its corporate paymasters. That's another question entirely.

But that very question is precisely what must be addressed and debated. Right now, I'm not seeing much that would pass for public discourse. The proponents and opponents of so-called socialized medicine are merely lobbing volleys of talking points at one another. Basically it becomes a smackdown between the Michael Moore fanclub against the lobbyists of Big Insurance and Big Pharma. And that will get us precisely nowhere. As our premiums continue to go up and our coverage melts. That is, assuming that we can get coverage in the first place.

Prom Queens and Presidents

I'm currently indulging in John Julius Norwich's "The Middle Sea", which is a history of the Mediterranean area from prehistory into WWI. I like Norwich--have to restrain myself from spending a not-inconsiderable sum on his three-volume History of Byzantium, actually--because he (and/or his editors) have this uncanny sense of how much detail to offer. I also admire his ability to struggle away from the classic disease of historians--namely to become serial biographers. Too often the true movers and shakers are treated like the chorus of classical Greek tragedy while the attention is lavished on the more dashing/romantic/outrageous characters who--in the parlance of our mainstream media--make for good press. Not to mention a certain retrospective (and unilaterally inaccurate) cult of personality. Which is never a good thing, whether in history or in present life.

As we swing into the last year of a U.S. Presidential election-cycle, I find myself cringing at what can only be termed "tribalism" in politics. Honestly, there's no better word for it. Mind you, I detested pep rallies in high school. And party politics are, at their roots, a pointless waving of the colors by a numbers-drunk, but otherwise passive crowd in the bleachers. Thus we send sports teams to the field, soldiers to mutilation and death and defilement of their basic humanity. And also, of course, our political "gladiators" to the arena. There is absolutely no difference between the three in terms of crowd dynamics.

It can be said of politicians more so than our other tribal champions that they--to ape Hamlet--did make love to this employment. Yet, I do wonder what it says about us that we must have our champions at all, and more so to demand that they be the vessels of every several hope we have, not to mention that they be anathema to the vices that we find most noxious. What is wrong with us that we cannot be our own champions, our own liberators?

Perhaps it's because I'm a loner by nature, but I think that we can leave at least a third (and I'm being conservative with that guesstimate) of the problems of the human race at the feet of pure tribalism, which in itself implies hero-worship: For all tribes must have their chieftains, no? To what end the Ponzi scheme of power? Sadly--to my mind--evolution (biological and especially social) does not appear to select for loners in our species. Perhaps in a more loner-friendly environment, ideas would (for once) have to stand on their own merits, rather than boiling down to popularity contests. That certainly wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to this species or what passes for civilization.

Another dispatch from Linuxland

I'm becoming more comfortable with the OpenSUSE distro., although I thought that I was going to have to rebuild the installation (and all the customization/add-on work) a few days ago. I'm not positive, but I think that I erred in switching back over to the Windows box while installing updates through the YaST-based updater. When I switched back and started clicking around, I hung it up But Good. After noticing that the hard drive's LED indicator had been dark for at least several minutes, I just pressed the power button and counted alligators. But the system wouldn't POST when I tried to power it back on. That's the first time it's done that since pitching Ubuntu. But it did it, which tells me that it's the hardware and not the operating system, and a quirk I'm going to have to learn to live with. Maybe it's just luck, but holding in the power button for a fraction of a second longer than I normally would seems to be the silver bullet for that problem. AI would be redundant--this thing already has a mind of its own.

It seems that I grabbed OpenSUSE nearly steaming from the build (Oct. 4th release date), so I may have awhile to wait before the next kernel update is made available. I haven't quite figured out how that works. Ubuntu's team, for their own reasons, locks itself into a six month development cycle. If there some arbitrary schedule for OpenSUSE, I have yet to discover it.

For the time being, I'm slowly migrating my "stuff" over to the Linux box. Not to the point where I'll trust it with, say, my Thunderbird files or anything, but the writing and HTML and Java work has been ported. I'm paranoid enough to back everything up to key drive for now. We'll see how long it takes me to become complacent...

YaST really had me scratching my head the other night, though, when I tried to install the MySQL database. Darned if I ever found the installation directory (although I did find one of its files properly placed in the init.d folder), and there were no mysql-d type daemons in the process list either. I should have enough time this weekend to try to install it with non-RPM binaries. (I doubt that I'll ever be competent or independent enough to install from source, though.)

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, one thing that I do miss from the Windows environment is the mouse-motion scroll on applications--i.e. pressing down the mouse button to activate, then moving the mouse up or down to direct the scrolling. Firefox in Linux doesn't do that trick, for instance. And I realized that I may have to jump back on the Windows box to re-work a graphic because the font it uses may not be supported. Just little stuff like that.

It feels good to have the brain puzzling out things again, but I feel so scattered lately. So many things have to be put in place before I have a proper development setup, which includes a test server (that doesn't double as my workstation) and the network infrastructure that implies for a mixed-OS household. I was hoping to hang out my shingle again as a (very part-time) lone-gun developer after the first of the year, but not enough of the pieces will come together by then, I'm afraid. The first of the year is significant in that I will have ditched the hobby-related responsibilities that tend to bogart what free time school and work leave. Sadly, that's even with Dearest taking up so much of the slack. A skosh over two months more of it, though, and then I'm tetherless.

What's wierd is that I still feel somewhat guilty about it. I didn't think there was enough "chick" instinct in me for that, which is wierder still. More than half of the (official) group can't seem to tear themselves away from the fun/glamorous stuff long enough to understand that they'd be fun/glamorous stuff by themselves and entirely on their own dime if it weren't for people willing to scope out meeting sites, balance the books, put together the get-togethers, publish the newsletter, maintain the website, chat up possible new members, file reports, yadayadayada. Oh, but let the minority who do take on those chores dare to complain, and it's their own fault for "trying to do too much." If you're an office-holder in any volunteer-based (or otherwise vastly underpaid) group, I expect that you grok this to its fullest, no?

Grrrr...

Which brings me back to an earlier theme, that of intelligent selfishness--close kin to what Adam Smith termed "enlightened self-interest" some two-centuries-and-change ago. I haven't had enough downtime to go "walkabout" in my own psyche for awhile, but I feel the building urgency to deal with the fundamental dissatisfaction in my job as well people on the periphery of my life (not the great, good friends that I've known since my teens, mostly newer folks). Basically it boils down to the sense of not being met half-way. And that sense is becoming just too persistent and pernicious to politely ignore anymore. So it's high time for emotional triage. And I think that's all I'm going to say about it for now.

Sigh...another rant

I think that it was FDR who said, "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made." The folks sounding the alarm about global warming could well say the same.

The fact that the Bush Junta is (ahem!) "grooming" the testimony of its own officials on the subject of global warming (again!) just says it all, doesn't it? As ringing endorsements go, it almost makes the Nobel Prize pale by comparison.

Funny how this regime freely lifts the skirt of your phone call, email, financial, etc. data, yet swaths its own in a lead birka. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear--isn't that how it works? Oh, wait: That only applies outside the Oval Echo Chamber. Silly me...

Feh. At this point, any official who doesn't immediately resign after being muzzled should be brought up on charges of treason like her/his higher-ups. I used to have mixed feelings about the death penalty, but after this band of brigands, I'm sorry that keel-hauling has gone out of fashion.

A candidate for Keith Olberman

Good thing that the gutless windbag in this article preferred to remain nameless. Good thing for her/him, anyway. What got my back up was the ham-fisted judgementalism on someone's decision to have a child by their dead soldier-spouse. Memo to the US Military Leadership: The men and women that your Cluster@#$%-in-Chief sent to their deaths may have sworn everything but their souls to you, but their widows and widowers didn't. You don't own them, so just STFU when someone tries tidying up the mess this illegal war has made of their life. Oh, and ship this REMF to Iraq while you're at it.

But it's the usual case of the head of the fish stinking first. An organization that can't abide homosexuality, yet punishes rape victims while coddling their attackers. As usual, if it's not the male deciding the how and the where and when, a wanted child is a mistake. Or, in this case, a possible "regret" and an ethical "dilemma".

So whoever you are, here's a big fat FU. You're just lucky that your organization has such a practiced hand at shielding louts like you. If you worked in anything like the Real World--as opposed to your REMF sinecure--your sorry sexist @$$ would be on the curb right now. They don't make enough middle fingers for moralizing busybodies like you.

Another day, another distro.

Well, not exactly. I've made forays into the Linux world with RedHat (pre-Fedora), Mandrake (pre-stupid lawsuit) and Ubuntu (Dapper or Edgy, I can't remember). OpenSUSE 10.3 (GNOME interface)--Novell's alms--was the smoothest installation I've had so far. I had to replace the network card for Mandrake. Ubuntu never did get along with the extra-large monitor, and there were issues with the machine not wanting to boot, which hasn't [crossing toes] happened thus far with OpenSUSE.

And--wonder of wonders--it came with the Java Development Kit pre-bundled. For someone who still qualifies as a "stupid noob," that was a delightful bonus. No having to figure out where this particular flavor of Linux keeps its config. files and hoping that I don't stuff something up by hacking in a couple new environment variables. No being bitten by the little "gotcha" that I had on Ubuntu because of OpenOffice. Considering that the new machine will be used for writing software (mostly in the Java programming language), this alone darned near made me Snoopy-dance.

But I had a minor epiphany after my initial configuration/customization: The jihad flame-wars that are waged over distributions of Linux suddenly made sense, not from the standpoint of nerd elitism, but generic human nature.

To wit: If operating systems were religions, UNIX would be Catholicism--not much variation on the basic doctrine. Linux, by the same metaphor, would be Protestantism--with all the tendencies to splinter into new branches. And like Protestantism from the Luther/Calvin glory days on down, each sect views every other sect as a mouth-breathing rabble of heretics. ;-)

After being burned by the last distribution (actually a recommended add-on that "fixed" my chunky screen resolution by destroying my ability to use anything but a command-prompt), I'm postponing the migration over from my four-year-old Windows computer until I've run through a few updates, particularly for the kernel and hardware drivers.

But for now, it's a new toy to play with--and many thanks to Dearest for assembling it! I'm typically pretty diligent about backing up data, so I won't lose everything if the thing crashes and I move onto the next great distribution. And so I'll offer my cautious and qualified kudos to Novell for demonstrating that for-profit and open-source don't have to be mutually exclusive. I can only hope that they have the wit to treat their developers well, and continue putting out a product that's doesn't make even a stupid noob feel stupid while using it.

Contrasts

In case you need to swat your local tinfoil-hat internet troll railing against the "atheist" ACLU, this link will come in handy for bitch-slapping him/her hard enough to knock the foam from around her/his mouth. (Call me cynical if you will: Cue the swiftboating in 3...2...1...) [wry grimace]

Speaking of the ACLU, though, Mewonders how it's coming along in its defense of the Baptist preacher arrested for hitting on an undercover cop. Both preacher and police officer were male, by the bye. Like the poor schlep's gonna get a fair trial in Texas otherwise... (In case anyone needs the reminder, the 1996 Texas Republican Party's platform included a little gem about outlawing homosexuality, IIRC.)

But if that isn't enough schadenfreude to get you though the longer Fall nights, how about McCain praying every night" that we won't go to war with Iran? He was for war with Iran before he was against it, doncha know? [extra-sarcastic eyeroll] I've thought for months now that the guy's gone 'round the twist--just in a different direction than his AZ predecessor Barry Goldwater went in the late 80s and 90s. And good shuttance to the both of them--although BG's suggestion that "every good Christian ought to kick Jerry Falwell right in the @$$" made me laugh out loud.

But getting back on topic... I can respect the Captain Brown's Christianity in that he actually seemed to have kept reading his Bible when the fire and brimstone gave way to that feel-good, touchy-feely New Testament. Are there any more like you at home? Seriously.

Kudos

A short break from my HTML fist-shaking at the world's cupidity and stupidity today. Surprisingly for a liberal who supports wildlife causes and sometimes makes donations to the Humane Society, I don't have any philosophical objections to hunters donating game to food pantries and soup kitchens. Of course, having to replace my front quarter-panel last fall because a kamikaze deer ran into it head-on makes it a little more personal. There are just too d--ned many of them in our vicinity, and hand-wringing won't change that. Starvation, CWD, and car collisions are not humane alternatives to hunting.

Voluntary segregation is still segregation

I noticed a piece in the Toronto Star last week that covered the popular hesitation to publicly fund religious schools for Jewish and Islamic students. Supporters of such funding point to state funding of Catholic Schools. Turns out that this just re-opens an old debate.

Which in turns reopens, for me, an old speculation of why anyone needs religious-based instruction six days a week in the first place. Is it so difficult to drill ten little commandments into someone? Don't steal, don't kill, don't lie, etc. How hard is that, really? Are parents really so insecure about their ability to provide the proper example to the next generations that they must outsource it to so-called professionals? Or are they afraid that they may (by genetic fluke or whatever) have unwittingly spawned a demon-seed sociopath that must be tamed with the threat of hellfire? (If so, teaching a fledgling sociopath to revere a genocidal, child-murdering, human-sacrifice-demanding Great Sociopath in the Sky is not particularly bright.)

Or is the insecurity purely cultural? Growing up surrounded by those from similar backgrounds is somehow a bulwark against becoming just another drone in a homogeneous capitalist wasteland? Granted, I'm watching it happen to my nephews, and it's not a pretty sight. But I can't see that imposing additional conformity by segregating them into an artificially-defined subset of their peers is the key to helping them develop their own identity.

And so I hope that the Canadians will have the good sense and political will to cut off the tap for the outdated tradition of funding Catholic schools. It's a revenant from a more bigoted era, and makes as much sense as paying reparations to the American descendants of African slaves. The evil men do lives after them, to be sure. Yet when the redress outlives the evil, it's time to give the whole thing a decent burial and channel those resources into righting present wrongs.

The stupid! It burns!

Gotta be the stupidest thing to come out of the Bush junta lately, which is saying something. Seriously, are these people even trying anymore?

Earlier this year the story was: Illegal immigrants are baaaaad because...because...um...they're a terrorist threat? Except that Timothy McVeigh was an American. And the 9/11 terror-cells had their paperwork in order. Drat. Strike that one.

[Fast forward a few months.]

Okay, how 'bout this: Illegal immigrants are baaaaad because they carry disease? Except that 'round that time, some WASP lawyer carrying a raging, virulent TB strain caused a minor panic. Nope, nobody buyin' that one either.

[Fast forward a couple more months.]

Ooh! Ooh! Chertoff's got it! Illegal immigrants are baaaaad for the environment? Brilliant! What Chertoff said!

[Blink.]

[Blink.]

Did I just read that? The Bush Regime wringing its hands over pollution?!?! Never mind the fact that the average American pitches 4.5 pounds of trash. Every Effin' Day. Multiply that by 365 and that's 1642.5 pounds per year. If we're lucky, 365 pounds of that are recycled. But, then, the whole tu, quoque thing is a huge waste of time to the sociopaths currently infesting the Executive Branch.

Fortunately, this is all pathetically transparent political schtick. Otherwise it'd surely be a sign of the (very imminent) Apocalypse. I should be grateful for that. Yet I can't seem to savor any spiteful satisfaction at the lurchings of this lame-duck Presidency. The neocon Götterdämmerung is causing too much collateral damage to be entertaining. I won't bother to replace my burned-out irony meter until January, 2009...if even then.

Aiyeee.

Completely unrelated, except in the sense of "Did I just read that?", another goodie from Yahoo! News:

TUCSON, Ariz. - Recent tests have shown that a brain-eating amoeba is in Tucson's water supply, but experts say the microscopic bug doesn't pose any health risks.

I mean, I realize that the Rethuglicans since Reagan onward have done their d--ndest to dumb down 'merica an' all. But have we indeed sunk to such a low that a microorganism capable of eating one's brain is not considered a "health risk"? Yes, I have to admit that I wouldn't be all that surprised if the amoebae have a lobbiest at the FDA. But still...

The business-section book title you'll never see

"Dominatrix, CEO"

See, I'm a control-freak, and I'm stuck with a couple of less-than-compatible (meaning with me) software developers on "my" project. One is a prima-donna cowboy code-slinger with a nasty passive-aggressive streak. He works remotely, too--somebody stop my feet from dancing. [sour look] The other is amiable enough, but soooo Not About that whole taking responsibility thing. Worse, he's still too green in our outfit to know what he's talking about sometimes. (Not that that stops him, mind you...)

The mature internalization of this whole situation would be to chalk my current frustrations up to karma payback for the similar aggravation I've caused my past supervisors.

Yeeeeah, like I'm gonna be mature: C'mon, this is office politics we're talking about. FSM forfend! This calls for the refined brutalities of the Cubicle Warrior-culture: Make me nag for status? Ha! Here's a conference call invitation on your calendar. And we're gonna enter your deliverables into Microsoft Project and set you up for the water-torture of reminder email! How's THAT gonna feel?!

But, seriously, I'm quite soberly reconsidering my resolve not to become a manager that I wouldn't want to work for. The fact that I am even reconsidering that disturbs me. Fortunately, my twisted sense of humor arrives to rescue me from undue soul-searching.

Understand that I detest office politics because they're basically high school all over again--except that in adult life the consequences are much further-reaching. But...what if I were to view things through an entirely different lens? Instead of seeing the feudal power-struggles as locker-door clique turf-wars, how about viewing the dynamics as dominance and submission, albeit without the rubber and leather trappings? You must admit that the view is far less dreary than warmed-over adolescence. Although it does carry the downside of the "Eeeeeeeewww!" factor--possibly even to the point of wanting to put out your inner eye with a white-hot poker and/or boil your brain in bleach. I take no responsibility for that, however: You change the lens at your own risk. Personally, I find the view through the high-school lens far more disturbing.

Which, after thinking about it for all of sixty seconds (if that), made me realize that the standards of business writing have indeed dropped so low that one could perhaps bang out a management book on that theme. "Leadership Secrets of the Marquis de Sade," anyone? (In which case, I totally call dibs on the idea!)

Now, if you'll excuse me, The Cowboy hasn't accepted his meeting invitation, so it's time to break out (and break in) the flogger... Metaphorically speaking. Unfortunately.

Back from across The Pond

Dearest and I are back from the UK today, the longest vacation that either of us have ever taken, either together or separately. We're pretty much on the same wavelength for the post-mortem: We're glad that we did it--finally setting foot off our native continent--but the investment of time and money (and no small amount of frustration/annoyance) was not profitable. Speaking purely for myself, I'd be ten times as recharged if I had spent 18 days at home, reading and puttering.

But like all my learning, the education comes the hard way. Which, on the upside, means that the lesson is absorbed. I can forget my squeamishness about being the "ugly American," at least in the UK. With a few (very!) notable exceptions, the Brits I met were no better-mannered than the stereotypical East Coast denizen. Understand that part of that perception is merely my natural reaction to the cattle-market culture of any metropolis. I was raised in small Midwestern cities, and their ethos of humility and politeness somehow managed to make an lasting mark on the opinionated, self-centered little monster that I was--and still can be.

My impression of London is that it could be any metropolis...just with some nifty old stuff tucked here and there. Actually, though, if you want "Merrie Olde England", York is a much better place for that. Evensong at York Minster literally made me weep for its beauty. And, two days later, having a quiet cider by a crackling fire in a building that had been built circa 1417 CE (but had been a pub only since the 1700s, you understand) was pretty mind-blowing, at least for someone who prizes recorded history. Like this History Nerd, for instance.

Minimalist post

Beekeeping from three thousand years ago. Interestingly, it looks more like modern boxes than medieval skeps. (In the medieval system, the hive and its inhabitants were more or less destroyed to "harvest" the honey. Not cool. Like life isn't short and impersonal enough for a worker bee...)

Dancing the lighter sidestep

There's still so d--ned much outrage to go around. But I seem to be OD'ing on Crook and Liars lately. Plus, I'm re-acquainting myself just now with Supertramp's "Crime of the Century", forewarned from memory to skip past the faux psychosis of "Asylum" like I always do with "Mother" on The Police's "Synchronicity". And with a sunny--but not too warm--summer Sunday and a 70s rock soundtrack, I'm afraid that I have to work at outrage.

Two bright spots in the week's news, too: Warner's sabre-rattling at the White House and the fact that the waste/fraud whistleblower scandals caught the attention of Forbes. Normally, I'd expect the boot-licking business media to ignore anything that they can't spin to the credit of Republicans. Maybe Forbes and Fortune are trying to distinguish themselves from the Wall Street Journal, now that Agent Murdoch is busily re-wiring it for his Matrix. Who knows? I'm just tickled to see inconvenient realities like this rubbed into the faces of MBA PHBs still moronic enough to think that the Bush Regime is "pro-business" for anyone other than Haliburton, Blackwater, and Big Oil. (Ha! Swallowed the red pill by accident, did we? Welcome to the Reality-based Community. Don't take the bullets personally; The Matrix is out to get everyone.)

Oops, this post was supposed to be "lighter", wasn't it? Bad blogger!

Actually, this--meaning www.blackle.com--isn't "lighter" at all. But, then, that's entirely the point. I've already forgotten where I found out about Blackle, but the basic idea is that every time you want to make a regular Google search, you can save electricity because it doesn't cost your monitor as much energy to render black pixels as it does white. Google's Advanced Search feature isn't included in Blackle, but I don't even use that ten percent of the time. Blackle certainly won't save the world, but it doesn't hurt, so why not switch your browser's home page?

I'd say that I finished reading "Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day", except that it was more of an intensive skim for a book review needed to fill empty newsletter space. Only four more benighted issues before I hand the wretched thing off to someone who will actually relish the job--and who is guaranteed to add sorely-needed style. At the same time, I also give up maintaining the (largely redundant) website, packing it off to someone else who ~thinks~ he's going to enjoy it. That'll last for about a month. So I'll have the additional joy of watching the nitpicker become the nitpicked. He and I are both prima donnas, no question, but I'm Patton to his Montgomery. And that'll be plenty obvious after Jan. 1st, mark my words.

Speaking of books, it's a given that I won't have time to snarf the last half of Harry Potter VII before vacation, but I'm not sure I want its bulk tagging along, even for the sweet sake of whiling away two trans-Atlantic flights.

But the afternoon is starting to slink off, and I still need to go into work by way of remote access. And "Crime of the Century" has given up its seat for "Breakfast in America", which is as good a cue as any to get on with the business that pays for "the jumbo across the water"...

Dreading the sequels

Dad and I share a love of black and white horror movies. You know, the black and white menace of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Cheney Jr. and all that. When I was little, it was sort of my weekly treat to stay up late with Dad and watch horror flicks from the 30s and 40s. However, I was allowed to do so with the proviso that I didn't cover my eyes during the scary parts. To this day, I wonder whether Dad knew that I "cheated". I'd sit with my feet on the couch, watching right above knee-level, and scootching down ever so slightly to watch my knees if the music turned too ominous.

This early exposure to the macabre probably explains a lot of my personality. Yet I never did develop a taste for slasher flicks of the 1980s. Nay: Too vulgar for the genteel and relatively bloodless world of black and white, wherein the monster could at least be counted on to just stay the heck dead, already. (Although monsters did sometimes manage to procreate--i.e. all the "Son of" movies. Mind you, given how B&W movie-characters were as asexual as Barbie and Ken, we'll probably never know how, exactly, this procreation actually happened.)

But going on six years into the horror-show known as the GWOT, I realize that real-life horror is actually the worst of both worlds: The monsters escape after siring new incarnations.

Cases in point: GW Bush will retire to his dude ranch, having taking Reagan's place as the living Caesar-God in the pantheon of the Far Right. Cheney will withdraw to a Forbidden City-esque setup where the clamor from the enraged peasants cannot reach his ears. Suffice it to say, both will almost certainly die untried by any court save History's.

But, the optimist might object: Tho' the monsters escaped, they have been effectively neutralized, have they not? Surely one can take comfort from the fact that they will never again take the reins of state, yes?

No, not really. And here's why I refuse to take that as any consolation.

Dearest actually managed to sit--nostrils pinched firmly together, methinks--through Cheney's rationalization of his 1994 description of a Saddam-less Iraq as a sectarian "quagmire". You guessed it: "9/11 changed everything."

Dearest and I had precisely the same response to that. To wit: "9/11 changed everything. Except reality." Four hijacked planes did not stop Shiite hating Sunni, Sunni hating Shiite, nor either hating Kurd. Four planes did not bestow an iota of strategic competence on the chickenhawks who milked the tragedy to share its spoils with the unholy alliance of theocrats and plutocrats who helped them to their ill-gotten offices. Four planes did not render our armed forces in any way more fit for nation-building in two very alien cultures. And, lest it be trampled in the heat of rhetoric, four planes did not change the fact that Iraq had @#$%-all to do with their hijacking or subsequent mis-use.

Any sensible person realizes that. But by repeating the lie that those four planes magically changed "everything" for anyone other than those directly affected, fledgling monsters like Guiliani, Romney, Huckabee, Brownback, Thompson, et. al. are spawned and suckled by the politics of fear and hate and shameless revisionism. And thus are electorates dumbed down by the Weapons of Mass Distraction.

That's a sad-sack "sequel" by any measure. Yet--as Ash of the "Evil Dead" movies could well tell you--we haven't run short on monsters, not even the first generation ones. As I write, Karl Rove shrinks away from the constables' flashlight-beams, slithering into the darkness in search of a new host. Dearest, I must admit, had the right of it a few years ago: "Rove-sputin" is neither a genius nor invincible. All the same, there is no question that he is still highly dangerous while at large, and most especially when out of sight. I haven't yet decided whether a Lord Voldemort or a Sauroman anology is most apt here, but you get the idea.

And, meanwhile, the latest candidates for monster-in-chief continue to seek the tanna-leaf elixir of money and the pulpiteering that will sustain them through the election cycle. They will slurp from the corporate/PAC chalices, even to the lees. And make whatever transfigurations are necessary to purge any trace of the humanity that would damn them in the eyes of right-wing priests and pundits.

Cutting the purse-strings of election fund-raising seemed daunting at best (despite the best efforts of Sen. Feingold). Finding and snipping the Dominionist puppet-strings on top of that seems downright Sisphysian. In Hollywood horror terms, this just doesn't jibe: As bad as it can get, horror movie heroes never have to fight two evils at once. They just have to pay attention to the music, really. Be that as it may, ducking behind my knees and not watching isn't an option nowadays. Not for me, not for any of us.

When Anglophiles go bad

Growing up 'merican an' all, I precociously appreciated the sacrifices made by our forebears to give us our way of life. And I showed my gushing gratitude by fully exercising my birthright to watch far, far, too much television. Particularly PBS, which in those days, was overly reliant on British programming. (I say "in those days" because I haven't willingly watched a TV program in years. So I have absolutely no idea whether or not PBS has "gone native" under the Bush regime.) But suffice it to say that I was indoctrinated into Anglophilia early in life...or at least that's my excuse. Ironic, when you think of it: Kicking the Brits out of their own colony, only to use our tax dollars to buy BBC brainwashing 200 years later. I mean, there's bygones being bygones and all that, but...

Anyhoo.

Two to three decades on and much appalling British history studied, I've yet to lose the Anglophilia. But as much as I despise that tendency in myself, I am very, very excited to be leaving for the UK--my first trip off my home Continent, in fact--in a few weeks.

So excited that it's taking its toll in signature "me" fashion. "Are you making lists yet?" teased Dearest a few nights ago. Ha! Mere lists aren't even the half of it. I'm amazed that I've only had my archetypal "missing the plane" nightmare once since booking the tickets.

Never fear, I'm making up for the lack of psychosis in so many other ways. I've dutifully plowed through Fodor's London guidebook and Rick Steves' London guidebook. (The latter's useful in some ways, but what a kitschy style! Gimme straight-up Fodor's any day...) I've spent evenings on the living room floor matching up the map of London with the map of the Tube--and am still not finished. And then there's the highlighted spreadsheet of opening/closing times for all the things we want to visit. To which I'm starting to add pubs (none built before 1800 need apply) and other amenities. Tickets are booked for The Globe. And I peek at the Leicester Square webcam during the early part of workdays, so that I can get an idea of how non-tourists dress before I clothes-shop. And I'm actually thinking things like, "Gee, I really need to get brown walking shoes, and within the next week or so, just to make sure that there's enough time to break them in."

Aiyee. And this with weeks to go.

Things that I absolutely will revel in, no matter how touristy or eccentric:

• Riding the top level of a double-decker bus
• Trying Wensleydale cheese (hat tip to "Wallace and Grommit")
• Sitting on the steps of Traitor's Gate (Helene Hanff's brainchild)
• Visiting the tomb of my all-time lunch box hero, Elizabeth I
• Having Yorkshire pudding in Yorkshire (hat tip to the "All Creatures Great and Small" series)
• (Most especially) Watching the mushroom cloud form over Dearest's head while we're in Leeds and Yorvik.
  

I am highly disappointed, however, in the V&A's closure of the galleries that I most wanted to see--those of their textiles collection, including the magnificent Opus Anglicanum embroideries from the 14th and 15th centuries. Also, I learned far too late that the waiting time for tickets to the closing of the Tower Gate (which hasn't been skipped a night--not even for the Nazi's sweet sakes during The Blitz--in 700 years) is two months, even reckoning without Her Majesty's Postal Service. That Big Ben's chimes will be out of commission while I'm there isn't a tenth of the blow to my anticipation.

But we're finally, really, and truly going to England! WHEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Offshoring: A modest proposal

Being a programmer by trade, the topic of offshoring is something that typically has my rapt attention. As I understand it, it saves corporations something in the range of 20 - 40%, although you and I as American consumers, realize by 3% in savings. Something that I highly doubt Adam Smith would smile upon.

Most Americans seem to be square with outsourcing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to the cronies of the Bush Regime. And not too much kerfuffle has resulted from the CIA's offshoring of torture. And, of course, the firestorm from last' month's revelation that even internal CIA operations are handled by contractors didn't seem to give Congress pause before they tipped yet another bottle of White-Out on the Bill of Rights.

So, when I ran into this headline about the illegal arms sale to Iraq being outed by the Italians, I couldn't help but think, "Why don't we just go The Full Monty and offshore the entire intelligence-gathering enchilada to these folks?" Let's face it: Our team's been dropping the proverbial ball at least since we were blindsided by Khomeni in 1979. Italy's spooks, by contrast, have to deal not only with foreign troublemakers using their country as the crossroads that it's been for a centuries, but the home-grown nuisance of the Cosa Nostra besides. (Naturally, this kind of offshoring won't happen--the TSA will be outsourced to El Al before you ever see that .)

After all, if we can offshore the manufacture of weaponry (and d---ned near everything else) to China, how much further down the slippery slope do we have left to slide, really?

Playing catch-up

The links and such that I've sent myself for passing along are piling up. In fact, a number of them have 404'd already, if that tells you anything. I'm actually supposed to be baking cookies tonight, but my sinuses are draining--the dregs of last week's cold I hope--painfully. It's been a busy couple of weeks between work and extracurriculars. I don't think that it will slow down much between now and the time Dearest and I leave for vacation.

Speaking of whom, Dearest sent this along tonight. The ancients used honey to preserve bodies because of honey's antibacterial properties--a sometime nuisance for we mead-makers. (Actually, there's a schadenfreudish, possibly apocryphal, story about a couple tomb-robbers getting their comeuppance that way--but that's another tale for another time...) But apparently the observations of the ancients are taking up the slack for the shortcomings of modern antibiotics.

Actually, I've since forgotten where I found this piece of spot-on defiance in the face of egregious fear-mongering. The FDR and Churchill bit darned near had me cleaning off my monitor screen, 'cuz it caught me so out of left-field. I sooooo wish I knew enough about this dude to look him up. He could knock back pints on my tab all night.

I nabbed the following off Slate.com. It Just Says It All, doesn't it? Sad thing, is, this was published slightly before the Ninnyhammer Sissypants Wing of the Democratic Party wedged dynamite in the cracks of the trunk and pushed the plunger:

But stepping away from politics... It's a good thing that I don't believe in St. Peter--well, not the "Saint" part, anyway--because I certainly wouldn't want his job when Bill Gates rings the doorbell of the Pearly Gates. I have a mixed admiration for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and this just adds to the "mixed" part of it. It's part of what I call the "Marshal Petain" conundrum, namely the illusion that by staying on the inside, you can offset the negative effects of your collaboration by mitigating what would otherwise have been a much harsher situation. I hope to never have to make Petain's decision.

And, in the "News of the Wierd" category: Disciplinary protocol for Thai police officers apparently now involves a day of wearing pink "Hello Kitty" armbands, which--despite a few quasi-feminist scruples--I have to applaud as highly efficient creativity. Understand that this is not about police officers in particular. I've actually had many positive experiences with the constabulary of my state. One of them gave me a lift to the auto shop (and hung around while the tow truck was called). Another even changed my tire in a bitter, windy November night. My applause stems more the fact that the people in question could keep working...and were not likely to fall down on their duties in the near future. Rather like Harvey McKay's description of the black armbands at the "stand-up strike" of disgruntled Japanese corporate workers. If we could concoct similar sanctions for the cowboy coders who have made my work life particularly annoying these past few weeks, it would be well...

When bad things happen to worse people

Dearest kindly brightened my day with the news that another of of the Almighty's loudmouthpieces was caught "with his pants down and his wallet out" as Dearest put it. Except that's not quite correct. Checkbook would be more to the point. Except that that's not quite correct, either. Seems that the Rev. reported the checks missing.

Hmmm...lessee here: That would involve bearing false witness and adultery AND stealing (given that the check would have not been honored). In other words, three Commandments down in one shot. You have to admire the multi-tasking, if nothing else...

If I believed in Hell, I'd hope for a special place reserved for such Prurient Puritans. Satan wouldn't even have to work at it.. Just lock 'em all in the same room. Naked. With every sex toy and XXX film ever made. Imagining the eternal tension between holier-than-thou and hornier-than-thou more than offsets the "EEEEeeeeewwwww!!!" factor--trust me on this.

Got any more bright ideas, Mr. President?

Three cheers for schadenfreude: At least the s(t)eamy Vitter/Allen/Burkman highjinks these past two weeks may well pay off in 2008. That being said, it's a sad state of...errrr...affairs to find yourself rooting for Larry Flynt to help clean House (and Senate) of their "Do as I say, not as I do" faction.

All the same, that's been the one hopeful spot in the political week. And then there's everything else. For instance that Global! War!! On!!! Terror!!!! What do we 'mericans have to show that could possibly be worth going-on-half-a-trillion dollars, over four thousand US lives (I'm including the contractor body-count), our birthright Constitution maimed and still bleeding, and the accelerated ill will of our fellow travellers on this Spaceship Earth?

• 24% of the senior leadership positions at the Department of Homeland Security (an Orwellian name if ever was) are vacant. Mmmm-hmmm, that would be the people who are supposed to stand between us and Big, Bad, Bin Ladin. Missing from their posts. And did we mention that in two years the DHS had 844 cybersecurity "incidents"? Do the long division, peeps: That's over one per day.
  
• Which, perchance, explains why getting your mitts on enough radioactive material to FUBAR a city block is just so d---ned easy these days.
  
• And those troublemakers from Iran and Syria who are embarassing our little nation-building exercise in Iraq? Turns out that they're more likely to hang their head-wraps in Saudi Arabia. You know, those repressive b@$+@rds our extortionist gas prices keep in power?
  
• But it appears that this may not be the chiefest of our concerns. Because al-Qaeda got its groove back.

Yeeeeeah....it all just gives you a warm, cozy feeling, dun'nit?

In any branch of our military, such mortally dangerous incompetence would guarantee a court-martial and sacking. But not for its Decider-in-Chief. Yet, by now, Napoleon's (alleged) advice to "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" is moot. "Cui bono?" no longer matters: Impeachment should be not only "on the table," but served as the main course. Primarily for the sake of future Americans now endangered because the bar for governance has been lowered--to the point where a trench has to be dug for it. And---even more to the point--the unprecedented proceedings which remove the President and Vice-President from office should be immediately followed by handing both (and their hench(wo)men) over to the Hague to answer to the world's justice.

Plainly put: Mere impeachment is not enough. This Administration has thumbed its nose at public sentiment, Constitutional boundaries, and the covenant that those in power make with History when they assume office. If China can execute its food and drug inspector for corruption, why should we not insist on such accountability from those whose venality and hubris and sheer myopic incompetence have cost thousands of lives? Let them meet the same fate as Keitel, Jodl, Streicher, et. al.: Choking on the ashes of their legacies, ears ringing with the calumny of History, on their way to an ignoble and ignominious grave.

Now we're all Charlie Brown

Some days it feels like I wasn't born with enough capacity for outrage. 'Cuz this one's a doozy. A federal appeals court has ruled that those suing the NSA for its illegal eavesdropping do not have sufficient legal standing to bring the almighty NSA to justice.

Now, unless I'm woefully under-informed, to prove damages, you have to provide evidence that you were being illegally wiretapped.

Seriously now, what do you think the odds are that any-old-one can obtain the evidence in the first place? Yep--you guessed it. About the same as the likelihood of Osama bin Laden dropping by Oktoberfest for a brat and a Leinie's.

Forget the football, Charlie Browns: It's time to aim for Lucy. Remember this next November. Tattoo it on the insides of your eyelids if necessary. But do not, Not, NOT let the b@$+@rd$ who confirmed these police state sympathizers stay in office.

Another bee in the swarm

(Actually, this time I'm not actually talking about bees. I'm merely making good on saying that I'd chip in with my tuppence of text to the Blog Against Theocracy swarm. So with apologies to those on whom I've previously foisted these observations/ opinions, here goes...)

Arthur: I am your King!

Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you.

Arthur: You don't vote for Kings!

Woman: Well, how did you become King, then?

Arthur: The Lady of the Lake,...[angels sing]...her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your King!

Dennis: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Arthur: Be quiet!

Dennis: Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Arthur: Shut up!

Dennis: I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Arthur: Shut up, will you? Just shut up!

Dennis: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!

If you find Monty Python's send-up of Arthurian politics in the least bit funny, then you will understand why I think that theocracy is such a very bad idea. Basically, it boils down to this: Putting yourself in charge of other people because you think you talk to supernatural beings is as ridiculous as crowning yourself King in "some farcical aquatic ceremony". Only far, FAR more dangerous.

Plainly put, theocracy is based on faulty principles that make it disasterous in practice. And it is more than high time that well-meaning people stopped listening to the silky lies of those who would graft a steeple onto the halls of government.

If this country, as some claim, was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, the principles in question were, quite bluntly, the wrong ones. Mainly I'm thinking of slavery and the second-class status of women--both as much a fact of life in 1776/1789 as they were in the ancient world. Moreover, the Bible's worldview is blatantly monarchist, something which our Founders quite emphatically distanced themselves. Scripture has diddley to say about voting. That came to us from the (pagan) Greeks and the Norse. In short, the "Judeo-Christian principles" argument is an outright lie coupled with stealing credit for ideas that were created by non-Jews/Christians.

But (the well-meaning Christian might ask), what about the Ten Commandments that are the basis for our laws? Last time I checked, it wasn't against the law to covet, commit adultery, party on the Sabbath, worship other Gods (with the penalty that your children unto the third and fourth generation are punished for your lack of faith), etc. Really, only murder, stealing and perjury have made it into the laws of this land. But Judeo-Christian principles can hardly claim to hold a monopoly on those values. Those kinds of things are pretty much frowned on anywhere you look. Including under Communist rule, I might add. Again, a lie coupled with plaguarism.

And so, failing on the merits of the historical record (as well as basic logic), the well-meaning Christian will fall back on trying to divine the intent of the de-facto "patron saints" of American democracy. (That would be the folks that we remember today, with maybe Lincoln allowed to tag along.) After all, if their pastors/priests know the mind of the Almighty, how hard can it be for them to commune with the shades of guys who have only been dead a couple hundred years?

Were the Founders of the United States Christian men? Mostly. No argument there. That's how they were raised, for pete's sake. Would anyone expect them to suddenly become Buddhist? Did they also assume that most Americans were and would continue to be Christian? Absolutely. (Again, is this surprising?) Did they necessarily consider that a thing of unqualified good? Maybe not so much. What tends to be glossed over in the hagiography-and-handwaving that passes for high school history is that the very deep rifts between Puritan, Baptist, Quaker, et. al. were a large concern in the politics of the day. This was a world in which it was not unheard-of for people to be driven out of town (and hanged when they didn't stay banished) for the "crime" of not following the crowd.

As much as we've manage to demolish many of the barriers to full participation in society since 1789, basic human nature does not change. The brotherhood under Christ is as much of a pretty lie as it was centuries ago. Establish a "Christian" government in this country, and you'll see its many factions fall on each other like hungry dingoes, and in less than a New York nanosecond. The internecene butchery of Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will be a minor kerfuffle in comparison to the "Our Jesus can beat up your Jesus" war that would erupt here. Bluntly put: If the arsenal and resources of the most powerful nation are up for grabs, you can bet your collection plate tithe that the battles will NOT be rhetorical. The likes of Pat Robertson (who has no moral qualms with assasination) and company will guarantee that.

Detritus

There are any number of things that fell by the wayside when I morphed into what passes for an adult. A small sample:

• I used to consider a steady diet of television (the four major food groups: ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS) my birthright as an American.
  
• I used to believe that the thought actually counts.
  
• I once considered any bottle of wine worth opening when it bore a sketch of a chateau/manor, and a British or French brand name.
  
• I once had a taste for pastels and Rococco. (Mom hasn't yet realized that I've outgrown this. For her sake, pretty-please don't rat me out.)
• For some time, my most cherished wish was to be able to fly under my own power.
• When I was young, I could actually eat Velveeta cheese straight-up.
• Once, I believed that my mother was right about bad people being bad because they didn't feel loved.
  

And I used to like holidays. Really I did. July 4th was one of the better ones, actually. Sitting on the bank of the river, wanting--despite being old enough to know better--to catch one bright petal of those flowers of light--and to have it stay lit forever. Now all the holiday means to me is two weeks of white trash neighbors failing to amputate parts with firecrackers. And being annoyed with the VFW types who tend to monopolize the day. (You folks have your own friggin' holiday. And I take that one QUITE seriously, thank you very much.) And, in general, just not being able to shake the feeling of living in a decaying empire. Not necessarily "decaying" as in the fall of Rome. More like 18th Century Venice: All Carnivale and courtesans before Napoleon's thugs rolled in. Yes, a Venice analogy will do well enough, I think.

And so the Fourth joined the churchyard clique of standard-issue holidays that I've learned to dread (and often despise) for their empty, tchotchke-spangled mummeries.

A few of the B-list festival days have survived, though, and are now well-tended as part of a careful cross-breeding program with the few private holidays eked out of the workaday calendar. Enough of a menagerie, I think, for the erstatz grown-up who still likes peanut butter and fast carnival rides and Dr. Seuss and dollhouses and the heady perfume of a freshly-opened box of crayons and...

Career planning exercise

It's said that one must be prepared for opportunity. So, over the years, I've been accreting a mental checklist for such time as the people of the world come to their senses and elect me El Supremo Presidente for Life.

Until last night, I had overlooked one Cabinet Position that now seems like such a no-brainer--de rigeur, even, for an Enlightened, (mostly*) Benevolent Dictatorship: A Politeness Czar! Why didn't I think of it before? [insert obligatory auto-smacking of forehead] Give Judith Martin powers that barely fall short of my own [insert mental image of subpoenas engraved on vellum parchment], and public discourse would clear up immediately. Well, nearly immediately. After a few (ahem!) "examples" are made of the most egregious offenders.

For instance, Ms. Martin would have the power to schlep the Fred Phelps clan, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, et. al. off to the newly-established Witless Protection Program. Then, still on the government nickel, alter their appearances via cosmetic surgery. (In Ann's case, that might not require too much work: leave her there long enough for her roots to grow out and the years of bulb-tanning to run their course--it shouldn't take long, from the looks of it.) Nationalize their assets, and require them to spend the rest of their lives actually working for a living. Preferably in low-end retail.

See, I think that the essential problem with the way that Western-style executive "Cabinets" are arranged is that they address the symptoms and not the underlying disease. When I'm elected Autocrat of damp little planetary jewel that we like to call "Earth", the arrangement would be significantly different. The Cabinet positions on my informal laundry-list include:

• Ministry of Fair Play (the largest and most powerful office). The Ministry has the responsibility to ensure that your access to education, health care, clean air, safe food and water, housing, and other vital services( private or public) is not affected by the color, gender, ethnicity, or neural wiring you happened to be born with. The Ministry is charged with making second-class citizenship unequivically verboten. Lobbyists will be required to wear armbands onsite, and have all communications with public officals immediately made public. The office bears some of the burden, also, for stopping the rich and powerful from squishing the poor and the voiceless, although some duties are shared with the Ministry of "Stop Acting like You're the Only Person On this Planet, D---it!".
  
• Ministry of Personal Accountability (the second most powerful office). This office has the entire judiciary system under its purview. It is additionally charged with the mission of ensuring that professional athletes, actors, supermodels, quote-unquote celebrities, rock stars, and corporate malfeasants lose both their position and public recongnition, similar to the treatment prescribed above for hate-mongering "provocateurs". The educational system is also the baliwick of this Ministry. Literacy rates will soar after underachievers are sent for six-month stints in the industrial concentration camps otherwise known as sweatshops for a "lesson" in the workings of The Real World. Additionally, the public service currently being done more or less pro-bono by the folks at The Darwin Awards will be underwritten by public funds.
  
• Ministry of "Stop Acting Like You're the Only Person on this Planet, D---it!" Given how many wars are started by epidemic levels of ego-poisoning at the upper eschelons of government, the military, logically, answers to this office. In lieu of a large standing army/navy/air force/marine corps, the military will instead heavily emphasize Navy Seal-type teams whose mission is to kidnap the sabre-rattlers and demogogues of this world and bring them to top-secret "training" facilities. In lieu of more mundane forms of torture, detainees will instead be subjected to communication style self-assessments, anger-management group therapy, and nonsensical team-building exercises such as building hats with spaghetti and masking tape. Detainees who show progress will be spared the ultimate horror of the Office Christmas Party. The responsibility for enforcing environmental protection laws also falls under this Ministry. Greenpeace will be issued submarines and torpedoes. Lastly, conspicuous consumption will be permitted in the name of libertarian principles, albeit in a heavily taxed form. Additionally, purchasers of goods designated as conspicuous will have pigs Barq-tooed on their foreheads.
• Ministry of Politeness - This, in spirit, could well be described as the secular version of the Unitarian Jihad. As The Police so rightly observed in the early 80s, "Poets, priests and politicians/have words to thank for their positions." Poverty and hopelessness cause quite enough collateral damage, thank you very little, without REMFs upending their gasoline cans on already-flammable situations. In the same spirit, road rage will be punishable by the offending party being forced to bike or bus for six months. And, in the interest of checks and balances, El Supremo Presidente has very little sway over this office, and merely claims the humble title of her U.J. name, "Sister Molotov Cocktail of Fairmindedness".
  

Now, the pettifoggers may complain that the categories represented by these Ministries seem somewhat vague in name, and perhaps even an organizational chimera in practice. Yet, I posit that the world's problems cannot be truly compartmentalized. I've maintained for nearly twenty years that our worldly ills can be distilled down to morons and @$$holes. Criminalizing arrogance and stupidity themselves in lieu of their (random) subsets seems to make more sense somehow.

But. (You knew that there had to be a "but," didn't you?)

As important as it is to minimize the (alas, inevitable) damage done by the morons and @$holes, it is drop-dead critical that no one is exempted from taking responsibility for their knowledge and beliefs, as well as their actions (and inactions). Simply put, there is no point in levelling the playing field for bench-warmers.

I suspect that the blowback from the "personal accountability" initiatives may actually be more severe than that from divesting the robber baron thugs of their ill-gotten gelt and influence. But once the bullhorns of demogoguery have been turned off, the warlords defanged, the monopolies disenfranchised, the oligarchies disbanded, the castes homogenized...who knows? People might actually get a little used to relative civility in addition to calling the shots in their own lives. And I even dare hope that a taste for real achievement (even failure at something that you put your heart and sweat into IS an achievement) will supplant the addiction to the soma that so many have a vested interest in spoon-feeding us. [insert wistful, misty-eyed sigh] An aspirant to World Dictatorship's gotta have her dreams, y'know...

---
* Some restrictions on benevolence apply. El Supremo Presidente for Life reserves the right to muzzle loud drunks, cellphone-addicts, incessantly barking dogs and bratty children at will.

A hodge-podge...even for this blog

This version of classical Rome ("Rome Reborn") seems far, far too surgically sterile, but makes the ancient city seem more tangible than anything short of an extensive museum exhibit (such as the Pompeii/Herculaneum one that Dearest and I saw in Quebec two summers ago).

During yesterday's "book bender," I couldn't resist adding "Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day" to the stack. I was so stoked that John Julius Norwich has another sweeping history (the kind he does best), this one on the Mediterranean. I typically revel in rediscovering his "Venice: a History" every few years, but haven't been able--shockingly--to justify the expenditure for all three volumes of his "Byzantium".

A friend sent me this link, "Women in Art", which is an animation of a different sort. I had a laugh at how many I recognized via costume research. There is also much to chuckle about in how men want to perceive women. Do they mentally airbrush us in real life? I can't help but wonder. There's more than a little irony in the fact that the friend who sent it to me has such an incredibly keen eye for beauty, except where he himself is concerned.

And, sort of on the same theme of beauty and perception, I darned near Snoopy-danced in my chair when I learned that the thought-provoking "Evolution" ad that Olgivy and Mather did for Dove won a Grand Prix.

Intelligent selfishness

Is there such a thing as "intelligent selfishness"?

That's a rhetorical question, but only in part. Yesterday (Saturday), I made the decision to work on a frivolous project rather than do most of the things that I should do. As a result, I have enough fabric pieces cut to keep my needle busy for, quite possibly, months. Frivolous stuff, mind you: It's not like I'm sewing clothes for the poor. But this brand of laziness is somehow different than if I had intended to spend the weekend in "virtuous" work, but instead crawled into a book that I've read a dozen times.

"Frivolous" as the weekend was, I still did go to the bank, pick up finch kibbles, attend a two-hour meeting, type and post three-and-a-half pages of meeting notes online, and ship my Dad's birthday/Father's Day present. But it still feels like I've thumbed my nose at adulthood. And y'know what? That feeling is just The Bee's Knees.

Yet all day I've worn a trinket-necklace that my Grandfather brought home from the First World War (as a present for whom, we don't know--he didn't marry my Grandmother until 1929) . The little blue glass dog is usually my talisman against whining, remembering that he walked in the bitterest Minnesota weather to break rock for the pittance that fed his family during the Great Depression. (It is necessity trumping nature that has kept me from sloth in the last decade or so of my life: Such a talisman is a practical matter, not a fond memento. Trust me on this.)

Grandpa died in my first year, Grandma after I started Kindergarten. I didn't have the luxury of knowing them as anything but a child. To this day, I wonder whether they'd be proud of me for things like my schooling and being able to support not only myself, but another person if need be. Or whether they'd be too scandalized by my unrepentant insistence on living on terms much different from what they were raised to believe are the "right" ones. Either way, I think that they understood that living entirely for others--even with the best of intentions--is ultimately counter-productive.

So, as much as this sounds like a self-excusing rationalization, I honestly don't believe that they would begrudge me the day that I confiscated. For the first time in well over a month (nearly two, actually), I don't feel the press of the wall against my back, though none of the things that I'm supposed to be doing have mysteriously vanished.

A tree-hugging double-header

At work, we're being more or less strongarmed into learning about building buildings along "green" guidelines. Which, in principle, is fine for this aging liberal. Although for a shop that's mostly programmers and CAD drafters, certification as a "green" builder is really just lipstick on the proverbial chicken. So, as you might expect, this latest putsch is ad majoram gloriam the Glad-hander in Chief.

But despite the cynicism, I'm actually putting my back into the wheel for this, on three counts:

1. It allows me to annoy the Alpha-Secretary, asking why we don't "walk the walk" with organic shade-grown free-trade coffee, or unbleached napkins/paper plates, or recycle more than just cans (which wouldn't be done if yours truly didn't take care of it), etc.
   
2. It's a chance to show up the intellectual prima-donna(s) of the office with a better score on the certification exam.
3. It's easier than Real School. And--for a change--the firm pays for it.
   

So in the spirit of sustainablility, thinking outside the proverbial box, and the guerilla mentality that this so often requires, here's a link to greywater treatment for the average homeowner (as opposed to the terminally dollar-goggled contractors my parent firm typically deals with).

And, with complete lack of segue, I've sworn off soft drinks for good. I never made time to corroborate the accounts of Coca-Cola's terrorist--in the fullest sense of the term--tactics in union-busting for their South American bottling plants. This barbarity, on the other hand, was enough to push me back to water, tea, coffee, wine and the occasional shortlisted beer. Coke's only been around for--what?--like a hundred years or something? Yet somebody still feels the need to test it on animals? To the point of cutting open chimpanzees' faces to study nerve impulses? WTF?!??!?!

I suppose that I can at last count my allergy to NutraSweet a blessing: I at least haven't directly subsidized this bull$#!+ in just under two decades. And it's not just the fluffy tree-hugger in me that freaks out at these monstrosities, mind you. The sheer gratuitous, asinine stupidity of it galls me as much, if not more. D'you mean to tell me that corporations have NOTHING better on which to squander their gelt than funding (ahem) "studies" of fruit juices treating artificially induced erectile disfunction in rabbits?!?!?!?! (No, seriously. I am not making this up. Read to the end of the article.)

“It’s very easy to characterize scientific research like this in a bad light,” said Dr. John A. DeSimone, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who had been working under the Coca-Cola grant. “To do medical research, you sometimes need an animal model.”

Well, excuse the @#$%% out of my simple layperson's understanding, but this is hardly a "medical" matter. This is NOT a cure for cancer, AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, et. al. If anything, these products are inducing medical problems, not solving them. You just have to boggle at the Wal-Mart prices for which consciences are bartered. And Dr. DeSimone's is unmistakeably one of them. Characterize it in a "bad light"? As if there's any "good light" for this. Oh, please...

That's enough ranting for one evening. Those links have been cooling their proverbial heels in my GMail account for nearly two weeks, so I wanted to pass the first along as fodder for thought, and rant about the second.

Reading

A little bit of serendipity in my reading life: I snarfed the new translation of Elie Weisel's "Night" within a few hours of picking it up. And days later, another testament from that era is unveiled for the world at large: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070604/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_holocaust_diary. The relapsed English major who lives inside me was spinning a few alliterative comments ("courage and cravenness", "humanity and horror"), but, on second thought, that would be like pasting rhinestones on a priceless work of art. Rutka and Elie do quite well without my embellishment.

Speaking of books, I stayed up until nearly two in the morning a couple weeks back to polish off "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". I'd been gape-jawed enthralled with Strange at the Battle of Waterloo, and the Venetian meeting of Strange and Drawlight was nearly as powerful. The denouement was quite well-done, with everything coming together to its bittersweet ending. Yet, oddly, the sense that the story is truly "over" is missing. Mind you, there's not much wiggle-room for a sequel; still, "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" had the feel of being merely a chapter in a larger book not yet finished. Apart from too much ink given to the incredibly tedious gentleman with the thistle-down hair, it's a glorious read. If I hadn't been running short on lucidity at that hour, I probably would have sniffled a few times at the victory of love over pettiness and ego.

And, lastly, a link to an LA Times article about a (re-)re-discovered manuscript of Archimedes. Science nearly stifled by religion and chicanery...until science comes to its rescue: How apt. And, by the bye, if the git who forged the paintings that covered part of the text is still alive, I'll pay to be first in line to smack the effin' twit into his/her next incarnation. Moron.)

I left it too long between the essay-chapters of "Why I am not a Christian," so I'm missing some of the full effect. I personally think that Russell uses an ever-so-slightly oversized hammer on religion, even making allowances for the historical context. I'm not sure whether Marx and Engels could have more deeply despised the poison-laced Ovaltine the bourgeoisie claim as "morals" than Russell. Yet, surprisingly, the "Nice People" chapter wasn't nearly vicious enough--not for me, at least. I like Bertrand Russell because he is spot-on in calling out Fascism and Communism as competing religions, not outgrowths--and especially not the "logical" conclusions--of atheism itself. Once the Church is dismantled as an obstruction to the revolution, the wrecking crews can't seem to resist building a similar structure on the site, can they? The state is merely swapped in for God, its bureaucracy for the priesthood, and its perpetrators for prophets. Perhaps Russell speculates on the "why" of this elsewhere. Sadly, I haven't encountered this yet (and I'm almost finished with the book). Perhaps between different covers...

That's all the book-related goodness I have at my to pass along just now. Further reading will have to wait until after this coming weekend, when people with DNA similar to mine will be congregating some three hours away. I have promised to be among their number, and will be hosting a few fellow pilgrims besides.

Party checklist

Just back from helping two friends paint their house in preparation for selling it. Dearest and I owed them big-time for helping us move several years ago.

During the wall-washing and taping and such, I compiled a mental checklist of how do do a painting party or moving party the right way. Or at least my idea of the "right" way. So I'm posting it as a public service to anyone who has to call in friends, rather than pay professionals, for these unpleasant (though karma-building) jobs:

___ Don't procrastinate on the prep-work. It won't kill you to have it done ahead of schedule, for pity's sake. If your friends think they're coming over to help you move, they should not have to help you pack.

___ For love of the FSM, have a Plan. Then make a backup Plan in case the original Plan goes astray due to mishaps or people not showing up.

___ Clean the place thoroughly. "Thoroughly" as in, "We could perform surgery in the bathroom and pre-wash our scalpels in the toilet." Moving and painting are sweaty, ooky jobs as it is.

___ Arrange to have children and pets out of the house, or at least out from underfoot for the duration.

___ Stock the refrigerator/cooler with beverages and have munchies at the ready, even if you're feeding folks later on.

___ Have enough equipment and supplies on hand for everyone.

___ Take responsibility for being the straw boss, knowing what has to be done, and communicating that to everyone else. Don't just get stuck into your piece of the job and ignore what's going on around you.

___ Better still, have a checklist posted. (H/t to Dearest for the idea)

___ If possible, have another person designated as gopher, namely the fetcher and finder of things, who orders the pizza, restocks the 'fridge, etc.

___ Take care of yourself, but also expect to work harder than what you ask of anyone else.

___ Understand that the people helping you are working for YOU, not for beer and pizza. They can buy their own freakin' pizza and beer, and have the rest of the day/weekend/whatever to do something they'd really rather be doing. Don't undermine the karma--you might need to ask these same people for help again soon.