Atrios' best idea EVER

I'd pay $50 for a Fox Fuckup of the Day segment. Crazy, Untrue Shit People Are Hearing on Radio would be priceless.

Moment of Brian Eno Zen

"The advantage the popular arts have is that they are not ideologically proud."

Oh, the vanities of ideological pride and the damage done.
[Stolen from Boing Boing]: A link to the 10-year-old interview from which this [quotation] was snipped. (via Warren Ellis)

Aaaaarrrrggghh!

Okay, I think I've had quite enough of this. I'm getting frustrated. Hitting the bottle hard frustrated. Smoking again frustrated. Running around naked screaming in the Wal-Mart parking lot frustrated.
First there were the computer problems: Right before the semester started, my desktop computer decided it was time to succumb to the trials and arrows of time, static and living with me. And succame¹ it did.
"No problem," I thought. "I have this supercool laptop that weighs a ton, but has a desktop processor and a gigabyte of RAM. I can survive the semester from Hell²"
If you listened close (and believed in such things), you could hear God chuckling mordantly.
So I set up the big laptop (more on the little laptop later) as the main machine, complete with USB-hub-and-device spiderweb and ergonomically correct keyboard and trackball. Hell, I even got the thing a riser so I wouldn't turn into Quasimodo trying to read a screen that seems to be at around knee level.
And I discovered something: Laptops, and certainly those that cram superhot desktop chips into their carcasses to get around the limitations of mobile chips (which, it turns out, have those limitations for very good reason), don't do well as the sole computer in a computing environment like mine: always on, always doing something. Other shortcomings directly related to my project, my reasearch and my classes soon showed. It couldn't run database applications at anything other than a glacial crawl. It didn't play nice with some of my peripherals. It took four times to install the printer software for my laser (I'm still not sure what, if anything distiguished the fourth time from any of the others). Then the main keyboard started having problems, like the escape key turning itself on for minutes at a time, or the alt key not working at all. I decided I could do without keyboard shortcuts for a while.
During this time, I was in negotiations with the VA for a replacement desktop. I set the bar pretty high: Athlon 64, lots of ram, lots of hard drive space; but I had my reasons, mostly that I was going to have to do six months worth of database and statistical work in two. Finally, I said to Hell with it and ordered the parts on my own. Hopefully the VA'll pay me back.
Everything came in. The boot drive was damaged, so I decided to do without until I could get it replaced. Then one of the two IDE PATA (for hard disk and optical drives) slots doesn't work. This can't be bourn, and I send the motherboard and drive back, and now I have a pretty case filled with parts. (The good news is, they're sending my boot drive today; the bad news is that without a motherboard it's just another part in the box; cue Pink Floyd.)
"Still," I thought, "I can get a lot done on the big laptop while I wait."
Then the AC adapter went out.
This leaves me with the little laptop, one that my dad got me in 1999 and that had been relegated to my daughter to run Winnie the Pooh Teaches Sex Education and other fine programs. Now it's in my office and it can't even handle running my Web browser and word processor at the same time. So I'm screwed, computationally speaking, until NewEgg gets me a motherboard.
So, that's the computer saga.
Then, today as I was answering nature's call and reading one of the several magazines that have been piling up in the last few months, I leaned to one side to begin the cleansing ritual. There was a loud pop and the toilet lurched to the left; if I hadn't been hemmed in by walls barely far enough apart to fit my shoulders, I'd have been spilled onto my face with the toilet following after.
Now, I have trouble with procrastination anyway; I like to say that I do my best work surrounded by the stench of absolute terror and the bracing effects of a shitload of stress. But I can resist the urge to become an amateur plumber³ enough to get some of my other work done. Often it takes an odious (pun? what pun?) task outside of my main responsibilities to get me to work on them. So off I go.

¹ I know this is wrong, and in fact when my friend Asya told me about the rapper who decided this word was the best way to flaunt his vocabulary, I laughed myself silly. But I digest.
² Perhaps nine graduate-level hours isn't hell for you, but it's certainly kicking my butt.
³ I do have a natural advantage here, having suffered from plumber's butt for many years.

Notes on a friend's questioning of media ignoring the ANWR vote in favor of steroids hearings

First, major league baseball isn't the only legal monopoly; there's still the other pro sports, almost everyone's cable service, and the emerging media megaliths. And the last two are far more pernicious than the sports monopolies. That said, I want my kids to play sports someday because I think they teach important lessons--but I've had to think hard about whether I want to encourage my kids' participation in activities where they might feel they have to use drugs to get by, fit in, level the playing field, whatever. Especially ones as powerful as steroids. So while I don't think the congressional hearings on the issue were all that great, they were appropriate: steriods is far from an athletes-only issue and as Congress has specifically exempted MLB from antitrust statutes, it has an interest in monitoring how it conducts business. Of course, per Crystal, it is an easy sell; if there's one thing the last decade of news has shown us, it's that covering millionaires is far more rewarding (in a fiduciary sense) than covering those below the poverty line.

Second, the only reason ANWR should matter to Joe and Jane Sixpack is that the pressure of public opinion is the only thing with a ghost of a chance at swaying our representatives from their ideological idiocy, and if we had public servants who took stewardship seriously we likely wouldn't have this problem. (Oh, well, shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills first.) But Joe and Jane have the Congress and Administration madly waving Social Security "reform" while they dismantle bankruptcy protection, cap tort awards and practice piss-poor medicine on a woman whose situation has been throguht the courts more times than a law clerk with diarrhea. I want ANWR preserved as much as the next person who's not strapping themself to a grizzly bear as a form of protest, but it's way down on my priority list. (And we all know that list is infallable.) So the inattention, on the public and news media's part, is somewhat understandable.

Finally, some words on "objectivity" and a news media gone horribly wrong. First, as I agree mostly with NYU's Jay Rosen that journalism is very similar to a religion (though I might expand it to include most of the "reason-based community"--and if you don't read Rosen's blog, PressThink, you really should), I am hopeful that we will look back in a hundred years and see this he-said-she-said bullshit masquerading as objectivity--or as our true goal, fairness--as the indulgences of our time. Sadly, Kevin's expectation that the audience will be able to tell a crackpot from an expert in the age of the soundbite is naive and mistaken. Much like juries accept anyone who sounds reasonable when he says the Earth is flat, viewers, listeners, and increasingly even readers think that because someone's quoted that they know what they're talking about and if there is an equal number of quotes, the issue is a tie and we can all go home now. If I could open up a bullshit-detector repair shop (and convince people they need such a service), I could do one hell of a lot of business, but until that happy day perhaps we journalists should stop taking the easy way out and start remembering that we're not in this to shmooze with bigwigs or to sleep late or whatever, we're in this to tell stories, inform the public, improve lives and watch over government and business and all the other things in the world that, unlike the majority of our audience, can damned well afford to protect themselves. Of course, I think the first thing the news media need to do is learn that they are not just another business, so one might question my sanity.

Nutter cred

There are days I feel like entering the town square, mounting my soapbox and screaming at passersby "Nothing is real! All is illusory!", just to establish my nutter cred, my madman's bona fides, but there are so few people in town squares today that I doubt my message would be heard.

Questions

The questions are always the same:

1. What do I know?
2. What do I want to know?

The latter, that infernal subset of the remainder of the former, is the devil that you don't know, and I can attest that while it is worse than the one you do know, the satisfaction of conquering it is worth many a trial, sling and arrow.

Consumers Union:

This is perhaps the best advocacy video ever made. Go take a look, and then send Congress a love note.

Release the hounds!

Okay, I'm selling a ton of stuff on eBay (username "piercepresley"; inventive, I know), lots of software and various tech items, figuring I'll get a better price that way than putting them on a table at our next garage sale (tentatively scheduled for the turn of the next millenium—we're still recovering from the last one). One of the items was a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Professional, which someone representing themselves as representing a church bought (of course, online, no one knows you're a dog) bought using the "buy it now" thing where you pay a set price on an item that as yet has no bids.
Now, I know I like promptness when I buy something, so I did the golden-rule thing and printed out a shipping label and packing slip (sometime I'll wax eloquent in praise of the eBay-PayPal marriage made in heaven), put everything in a bubble envelope and took it to the post office this afternoon to get it right off ASAP.
After dinner, I took a peek at eBay and noticed that the items sold list was down one. In my e-mail was a letter from eBay saying they had removed the listing because, basically, Microsoft had asked them to because the latter thought I was selling a version of the software that is discounted and to be sold as part of a premade computer (or with significant hardware, like a processor or hard drive). It's called an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) version.
Now, someone had asked me whether the software was new or used, OEM or retail. I answered honestly, and I think I said that while I believed it to be a retail version, it was possible that I bought it as OEM with the approprate hardware. (EBay has pulled the listing altogether, so I can't check what exactly I said.) But I also made it clear that I was not selling it as new, and that I had used it myself.
While I think the "licensing" of software is a travesty almost on a par with "business method" patents, I can understand that Microsoft doesn't want people buying up discounted software under certain rules then reselling it without continuing to follow those rules; that's fraud, any way you slice it, and I hate fraud. But we're not talking about Lucky's Pawn and Software, we're talking about Pierce Presley, individual, selling a CD-ROM and manual from a piece of software that's no longer on any of my computers and that I have even purchased an upgrade to (and I was planning on using some of the proceeds from the eBay sales to upgrade yet again).
I've shot a letter to eBay and Microsoft explaining my position. I don't know that it'll do anything for me, and I expect that as the product has already been paid for and shipped that the transaction will stand. But I got to wonder, how much of the price of a Microsoft product goes into preventing that man, Pierce Presley, from selling Office 2000 Pro?
Just to cover my ass, all trademarks used in this post are used in an editorial, good-faith sense and are not intended to infringe upon the rights of the holders. Your mileage may vary. Caution! Coffee may be hot. This is not a lifesaving device.

Prayer letters

I got the damnedest (pun intended) thing in the mail today: A prayer "rug" of paper, a letter telling me to use it immediately and return it, and a form to check off my needs so this church can pray for me; when it's not busy innundating me with pleas for cash, check, money order or, let a thousand angels sing, a credit card number.
Apparently I got the version with pictures of black women in the testimonial letter, but the image of Jesus on the "rug" looks pretty caucasian, as usual. If you take it as a given that Jesus was in Palestine during the time in question, don't you think somebody would have commented on there being this strange, pasty white dude running around with Jews and Greeks and Samarians? None of whom needed a tanning booth for beautiful golden skin, a la George Hamilton. The letter advises the recipient to look into Jesus' closed eyes, which will open when you've prayed enough for them to do so.
It's not that I'm against prayer. Prayer, good thoughts, psychic karma love power or whatever is generally one of the most benign (and even alimentary) things in religion or spiritualism. (A big exception is when one prays only to hear what they want to hear: that they're a good person or doing God's will; see Bush, George W.) One of the amazing things about humans is our ability to do things that aren't easily explained, and the last thing I want to do, secular though I may mostly be, is to kill the sense of wonder one rightly feels when observing human beings or our mother, Nature.
Then again, I'm not so sure that religions, especially those on the fundamental side of things, want us to feel wonder. Shock and awe, fear of an angry God, terror that one might be having too much fun in this world and won't get to rise up out of one's clothes when the Raputre comes; these are okay by them. Was it Mencken that said something about Puritanism (and God knows we've got a heaping helping of that crap running around) being the fear that someone, somewhere might be having a good time? Or Ben Jonson? Mark Twain?
Thing is, it's one of those phrases that people repeat, misquote, paraphrase and twist so often that it's hard to know whether you've got the right citation or not. (Another is the germ of the phrase, "Today's trade, tomorrow's competition". I know I've read several versions of it, and that may just be the version that stuck in my head, but finding the source is beyond me.)
One thing I will give St. Matthew's Churches of Tulsa, Okla.: There was nary a mention of the hellfire and damnation that I might suffer if I didn't pray on the thing. To support the positivity, I would send it back, for the next recipient to use and find benefit from, but they've put identifying marks on the return envelope. I suppose Matt. 6:3 doesn't apply to prayer rugs by mail.

FilmForce: Audio Clip: Robin Williams Sings Pixar's Freedom

I will admit that sometimes Robin William's riffs just don't seem as funny as I remember him being back in the comedy club days. That being said, this is one of his better recent ones, and it's on the Disney-Pixar deal ending. "That's like Apple saying, 'Fuck the iPod!'"
FilmForce: Audio Clip: Robin Williams Sings Pixar's Freedom

And now for something completely different ...

After all that political stuff, maybe you feel like making a killer bumper sticker that uses fonts based on rock band's logos, or maybe just a mock up of that Concert T-Shirt you were too broke, lame or young to go and get yourself. If so, I got ya covered. (Via Boing Boing, probably the best damned nonspecific geek blog on the planet.)

The "World's Smallest Political Quiz"

The Advocates for Self-Government (a self-proclaimed non-profit, non-partisan libertarian educational organization) has what it's calling the world's smallest political quiz, and while the current crop of Republicans' quiz could be constructed in a single question--"Will you drink the kool-aid?"--five personal and five economic ain't that bad. In the single-point anecdotal data of my own results, it seemed accurate.

Ja, ja, left of center, high on the personal side, low on the economic, verry interrestiing. Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother. Ten points to the first to respond with the movie referenced in the previous line. Redeemable wherever PiercePoints^TM are accepted.)

Then again, it seems that political revelation is in the air. Just before the election, an acquaintance who routinely tossed her votes away on Republican candidates when she lived in Pulaski County, Ark., for several years said the Bush lies on Iraq, the economy, etc. were going to force her to vote for John Kerry; lately, my best friend, who enlisted in the Ark. National Guard at 32 , basically said, "Wait a minute! I'm a Teddy Rooservelt Republican! What the nether hell am I doing supporting this bunch of thieves?" These aren't complete reversals, or even that much of a movement toward sanity (both still blame Clinton for everything from psoriasis to heartbreak), but rather an epiphany that the current White House gang and its enablers, facilitators and funders couldn't care less about them (and the "them in this case is those making less than a cool 10 million a year). Most on my side of things are wondering "where have they been", but we have our own blind spots, so do be hatin'.

Cutest damned kids ever.

As I sit here, not sleeping, not finishing my project proposal so I can get my damned master's and stop adding to my pile of student-loan debt, I wonder why I do this, why I'm so damned hooked on journalism that I'd kill my grandmother (had she not already rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible) for a byline or, a concept that makes me shudder with excitement, a "scoop." Why I despise the local paper as mostly hacks and fume that it won't just send the publisher, editor and a chorus line over the entice me to deign to join the staff.
So that one day I might stand amongst the wreckage in Bandu Aceh or Bagdad or Birmingham, Ala., with my lack of knowledge about the intriguing indigeonous culture and tell the folks back home in red state heaven all about the unwashed and the unlucky and the wall of water? To flap my gums or my fingers about the latest crisis this administration non intelligencium has concocted to convince rednecks and racists and robber barons that by golly, food stamps is going under, the British Virgin Islands may be chaste, but they have nukes we hear? Or that Geo. W. Bush killed every Vietnamese person over the age of 12 during the Vietnam Conflict but has been too damned humble to admit it? To turn from the death of 150,000 in a ameliorable natural disaster to provide wall-to-wall coverage of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's breakup?
Gosh, I want to be a player, to get to talk to powerful people who despise me and pretend I'm their friend like that stupid ass in the Dodge commercial. To whore myself for 240 thousand dollars by knocking my own teeth out and giving Rod Paige a gum job on my radio program. To put an attorney general under 41 and the AP boss who presided over the co-op's transformation from news wire service to scandalmongers in charge of vetting the small error in the midst of a lackluster and zeal-less "scoop" (of what ... shit?) on a story that's been beaten to death and repeatedly proven to at least a preponderance of the evidence, if not beyond a reasonable doubt. That's sure to improve the news and turn around its steady march into entertainment, obsolescence and irrelevance.
But no one has a taste for truth anymore. No one wants to be told what happened back then, or what happened in Ohio last year. John Kerry talked about the thousands who were disenfranchised in that state ... then said he didn't dispute the results. Christ, that's like saying the Constitution doesn't limit liberty but that you won't oppose slavery. Widely respected reporters at national newspapers write balanced stories pitting the president's version of Social Security's status against the agency and congress and independent numbers, identifying the latter as "the president's critics" because someone not on board mentioned the data. Judith Miller still has a job. Osama bin Laden lives and is free. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is a done deal. Donald "not the army you would like to have" Rumsfeld is still Secretary of Defense.
I don't believe journalists are not capable of affecting these things; I just think we have chosen not to, that even many of the best of us stare at the juggernaught of lies and cower lest we lose our jobs, our reputations, our faith in ourselves, our happiness. And now we're part of the problem.
Sadly, after almost 75 grand plus nine years and counting of moving toward this goal of being a great journalist, of speaking truth to power and empowering democracy, of having a career in one of the few things I've genuinely loved doing, I don't have any reason ... save a tottering momentum and the glistening hope that somehow I can change things, if just a little, for the better, if I keep trying, if I keep moving.
But sometimes momentum is all I have.

Inspiration: Jon Carroll on SFGate.com

Time to make stepladders out of some bones

The Rude Pundit
The Rude Pundit hits the nail on the proverbial head here. Too many times oppositions have tried to imitate or emulate the powerful in an attempt to draw support. But coming alongside is not the path to victory&emdash;you gotta get the hell out in front of people and lead, say clearly "Here is where I stand, here is what I'm for, here is how I want to help you," stop trying to be liked and start trying to be right.
Another thing it's clearly time to do is to stop surrendering the initiative and the very language of debate to the other side. We must fearlessly call the powerful when they try to smear and elide over facts with spin, we must stop trying to play the balancing game and start recognizing that a lie and a lie a thousand time worse than the first are NOT equal. Hiding behind the disingenuous stance that both sides lie only lets those willing to tell the biggest lie rape you.

Boing Boing: ClearChannel stations gave away boob-jobs for Xmas

Boing Boing: ClearChannel stations gave away boob-jobs for Xmas
yet another example of the right-wing and of course its corporate minions finding a way to profit off sex, prurience and objectifying women.

But then again what you expect from a political persuasion and include such wonderful people as, say, Newt Gingrich?

Challenge yourself, indeed

True hero athlete / Day's theme: Challenge yourself: "

Just when we thought we had a pure and simple hero, a millionaire athlete who gave up wealth and fame to become the ideal patriot, to make the ultimate sacrifice, his friends and family complicated everything. They turned Pat Tillman into a human being . . . .

Damned good column.

Here's a local reporter who won't know about the next time Bush is in town

From the Didn't They Get the Memo About Not Having Bad News files, comes this story from the (Dubuque, Iowa)Times Herald. (Ninth paragraph and onward.)
Big props to the old vet who wanted to "ask Bush a few questions." Especially when so much of the press won't do it for him.

Good question. Good f&*#ing question.

From the NY Times Op-Ed page Op-Ed Columnist: Where by Paul Krugman:

Still, the big story isn't about Mr. Bush; it's about what's happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn't. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?

You see, Paul, the Republicans have finally captured all three branches (not to mention a growing share of the fourth estate). Now they'll likely do pretty much anything to retain power. Besides, only crimes against the party matter; let the hoi polloi fend for themselves.

Salon.com | The blue dress of Baghdad

From Salon.com | The blue dress of Baghdad

Now, can we talk of impeachment? The rueful admission by former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the means to create them at the time of the U.S. invasion confirms the fact that the Bush administration is complicit in arguably the greatest scandal in U.S. history. It's only because the Republicans control both houses of Congress that we hear no calls for a broad-ranging investigation of the type that led to the discovery of Monica Lewinsky's infamous blue dress.

Impeachement?
Surely you jest.
That, like taxes, is only for the little people, Democrats and other nonhuman enemies of the GOP.

An example of the problem

SelectSmart.com Selectors:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
   
2. Green Party Candidate (97%)
   
3. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (86%)
   
4. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (82%)
   
5. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (80%)
   
6. Socialist Candidate (79%)
   
7. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (79%)
   
8. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (78%)
   
9. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (77%)
   
10. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (76%)
    
11. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (70%)
    
12. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (47%)
    
13. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (31%)
    
14. Libertarian Candidate (26%)
    
15. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (12%)
    
16. Hagelin, Dr. John - Natural Law (4%)
    
17. Bush, President George W. - Republican (1%)
    

First, these selectors are interesting things.
Second, from Kerry to Dean is only 16% difference, making the choice very difficult. I'm excluding 3rd-party candidates--I think unseating Bush and stopping the bleeding is too vital to consider a candidate without a chance. I don't think Bush won the last election, but I do think (somewhat) that third-party voters like myself made it close enough to steal.

Judge Chooses San Mateo County as Site of Murder Trial

From Judge Chooses San Mateo County as Site of Murder Trial:

By DEAN E. MURPHY
January 21, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20--Tourism officials in San Mateo County cheered wildly on Tuesday when a judge announced that the murder trial of Scott Peterson would be moved there.

Alas, for my republic, which has fallen so far as to cheer a murder trial for the money it brings!

Global War on Terrorism Medal and Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Service Medal

Global War on Terrorism Medal and Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Service Medal
The odd thing is, I might be eligible for this depending on the criteria. Damn shame the administration is trying to use a military decoration to conflate the war on terrorism with the Persian Gulf War(s).

NYT Op-Ed: One Nation, Under Secularism

From One Nation, Under Secularism By SUSAN JACOBY

"Today, many voters, of many religious beliefs, might well be receptive to a candidate who forthrightly declares that his vision of social justice will be determined by the 'plain, physical facts of the case' on humanity's green and fragile earth. But that would take an inspirational leader who glories in the nation's secular heritage and is not afraid to say so."

As much as I would like to believe this, I think Ms. Jacoby overstates the case. Too many Americans fear the reprisals some, and probably most, Christians would hand out as a result of even supporting someone of faith who dared support secularism.

Dispatches: The Military: Marines Plan to Use Velvet Glove More Than Iron Fist in Iraq

From The New York Times: Dispatches: The Military: Marines Plan to Use Velvet Glove More Than Iron Fist in Iraq:

"CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Dec. 10 � No force has a tougher reputation than the United States Marines. But the marines who are headed to Iraq this spring say they intend to avoid the get-tough tactics that have been used in recent weeks by Army units. "

More proof Marines are smarter than Army grunts. Of course, we have a lot more experience fighting "small wars" at the behest of the administration. One thing Marines pride themselves on is learning from mistakes and successes.
Lt. Gen. Conway sounds like one hell of a leader; so many in the military would have made noises like they were going to bring even more death and destruction, just to salvage ego and no matter what they had planned. To be willing to say, "We're going to try and work with the Iraqis" is a good sign for the sucess of the operation, as is sending in the Marines generally.
One last thing: Conway is too classy to make this point, but one advantage the Marines will have is that everybody is expected to have basic infantry skills, including ambushing, responding to ambushes, patrolling and operating both personal and crew-served weapons.
From MARINE CORPS ORDER 1500.51A--MARINE BATTLE SKILLS TRAINING (MBST) PROGRAM
5. Policy
a. Every Marine regardless of MOS will be taught those
fundamental combat skills needed to survive and fight on today�s
battlefield. The references contain the tasks and standards
required of Marines (private - gunnery sergeant). Sustainment of
these skills is the responsibility of commanders at all levels.
b. Combat skills proficiency is an integral part of every
Marine�s performance of duty. Commanders will consider a Marine�s
combat skills proficiency when assigning proficiency marks and
writing fitness reports.