Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting in 1974, as well as a variety of other work experience, but have been, in recent years, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring major clinical depression and bipolar disorder. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. I'm available as a fill-in Guest Blogger at mid-to-high-traffic blogs that fit my knowledge set.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their 'tendency' is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 618
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 30 sign-ups; 24 cancellations; Total= 6
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 8 sign-ups; 3 cancellation; Total= 5
Patron subscribers to date at $50/month: 10 sign-ups; 6 cancellations; Total= 4
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration. Later note: forget I ever said this.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger, Abi Frost,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes
COKE AND DAVID BRIN AND JO WALTON. David Brin gives his version here. Jo Walton gave her version here.
I'm supposed to be professional and neutral, but being past that, I'll note that I enjoy much of David Brin's writing, and have had, um, professional encounters in which he has fulfilled his stereotype for, um, exuberant overbearing, um, enthusiasm.
This dating back to when I was a small time editorial personage doing stuff like throwing parties at Windycons for Avon Books, whom I then edited for, in the mid-Eighties, and to similar experiences.
Jo Walton, while being a flawed human being like the rest of us, delivers an account I do not question. (I view it through my own filters, as through my interpretation of her filters, but I do not question it.) She's also a nifty writer herself.
Here's the Plotka fan news site's version. Those who wish to investigate further should know how to do so on their own.
I'm a big fan of coke-pouring-on-the-head anecdotes at sf conventions, myself, having witnessed several, and near-missed others, from Dave Langford on The Scientology Rep (Fred Harris) to less pleasant incidents. (Don't get mer started on Scientology-at-sf-con anecdotes-and-rants.)
As always, we at Amygdala remain a fount of potential sf field gossip, which we'll never tell, unless you ply us with drinks and bribes. And then we won't tell. Unless we want to.
THAT DAMNED SLEEPY STUFF AROUND YOUR EYES: Answered here.
The substance collects around the eyes because of irritation. During the day, the dried mucus consists of salts and proteins secreted by glands in response to dryness or exposure to pollution. The mucus continues to collect and dries out in the corners of your eyes while you're asleep even though tears keep the eyes moist.
The tears have three separate components. The innermost tear layer coats the surface of the cornea and is called the mucous layer or mucin. The middle tear layer is an aqueous layer produced by the lachrymal glands and supplies salt, proteins and other compounds to the cornea. The outer tear layer is composed of oil from the meibomian sebaceous glands in the eyelids. This helps to prevent evaporation of the watery tears from the surface of the eyes.
NASTY HEADACHE, along with the now usual shortness of breath, and an even nastier pain around the right kidney. I'm continuing to drink lots of water, and have downed a bunch of prescribed vicodine, as well as Restoril, and, of course, the usual blood pressure stuff. Unsurprisingly, feel like crap.
Watching Gladiator, which works better than it did on the broken tv I saw it on the first time a couple of years ago, which showed everything at half-light/very dark. Only semi-historic, but, hey, very sweaty, and better than any film with "Demetrios" in it.
Wish major pain over right kidne would go away. It, like, hurts a lot. I apply my usual hope: indigestion. Ate a lot of parmesan rice this afternoon, and sucked down some nice pastry, which my housemate Carroll was kind enough to pick up for me. That must be causing the pain, right?
Will drink more water; this will stop damned pain on right back side; for sure.
CATCHING UP, like, to that last West Wing, where the Vice President did, you know, that thing, and the guest star who is the new regular, who came over from that over famous show, and in which that stuff happened: whew.
Aren't you glad I'm confiding in this with you? Without spoilers?
TALKING TO MYSELF: Sitemeter has been regularly telling me for the past week or so (er, okay, couple of months, since i used to be a heavy hitter) that I'm getting about 4-8 hits an hour, at peak.
In the last hour, 9.
Given that most of those are Google and other search engine hits, I congratulate anyone reading this for dedication to this site. Newer bloggers: it's a cold world out there!
PALEO-CONSERVATIVE BUCHANANITE Justin Raimondo raves on:
Screw you, Horowitz. You babble on about how "there is a growing liberal-conservative alliance in general ideological terms," and how those nasty old paleoconservatives are just ruining this emergent "consensus." Tough, buster. Your "consensus" isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and is headed for the trash-can just as surely as the final number of the Partisan Review. So get used to having The American Conservative around, Irving old boy -- and I hope every issue is like an arrow through your shriveled up heart. Long live TAC! Long may it publish -- and prosper!
It's a tad difficult to understand why anyone would take this quasi-fascist loon as worth ever citing. Maybe he and his hero whom he nominated to be President, Pat Buchanan, are great thinkers. I have trouble seeing that.
Read The Rest Scale: to your heart's content.
Read all about American Uber Alles, er, America First -- there's an historic movement worth defending.
We're all supposed to be oh-so-exercised over Senator Rick Santorum's apparent distaste for homosexuality, but pardon me if I yawn.
[...]
Okay, so Santorum hates queers.
[...]
Yet this is the most unbelievably sleazy, underhanded stealth operation launched by Israel's amen corner since the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, as the point is to ensure that universities that engage in or permit criticism of Israel face cuts in federal funding.
Etc., etc., on "Israel's amen corner," etc., repeatedly, as originally voiced by Raimondo's hero, Patrick Buchanan.
This sinister nonsense more than confirms the paleoconservative critique of the neocons.
I have this weird idea that there are (some; others not) people supporting Raimondo because his site is entitled "anti-war.com," and haven't actually spent some time bothering to note that he is a self-proclaimed "paleo-conservative," who is also an acolyte of Patrick Buchanan, and basically, well, what do you think of Buchanan's views? Raimondo's are identical, though more frankly abusive and disgusting (no, not always; Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Nixon also had some sound points).
Have you spent a few hours with Raimondo's writings? I don't understand how anyone can cite him credibly, whether they are libertarian, conservative, or, migod, leftist/liberal.
Okay, I'm calmer now. Blood pressure better. Hmm, maybe back to the computer games, away from the political stuff. No, wait, there's a Buffy rerun!
Hey, know what? While I'm sick, the format of Amygdala, after a solemn decision by our editorial board, which required a fierce proxy fight at the stockholder's meeting, is switching slightly towards a mildly more chatty, conversational, diary, format, as occasion and mood warrants, as opposed to our historic tendency to avoid that.
We have made this decision in light of the decision and preferences of our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Research Officer, and Chief Evangelizer, who took a vote together, in view of the fact that Our Founder is attempting to avoid being bored shitless.
THE AWOLBUSH.COM PAGE is here. Remember, that's not the "AOLBUSH page," which is about how G. W. Bush keeps signing up for free AOL accounts, and quitting before the hours run out.
Read The Rest Scale: Bush supporters will likely ignore it, though could have either fun or apoplexy trying to refute it; Bush haters will wildly enjoy.
GAMBLING IS A VIRTUE, right? On William Bennett, author of The Book of Virtues:
If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler. Indeed, in recent weeks word has circulated among Washington conservatives that his wagering could be a real problem. They have reason for concern. The Washington Monthly and Newsweek have learned that over the last decade Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where he is a "preferred customer" at several of them, and sources and documents provided to The Washington Monthly put his total losses at more than $8 million.
"I don't play the 'milk money.'"
Bennett has been a high-roller since at least the early 1990s. A review of one 18-month stretch of gambling showed him visiting casinos, often for two or three days at a time (and enjoying a line of credit of at least $200,000 at several of them). Bennett likes to be discreet. "He'll usually call a host and let us know when he's coming," says one source. "We can limo him in. He prefers the high-limit room, where he's less likely to be seen and where he can play the $500-a-pull slots. He usually plays very late at night or early in the morning--usually between midnight and 6 a.m." The documents show that in one two-month period, Bennett wired more than $1.4 million to cover losses. His desire for privacy is evident in his customer profile at one casino, which lists as his residence the address for Empower.org (the Web site of Empower America, the non-profit group Bennett co-chairs). Typed across the form are the words: "NO CONTACT AT RES OR BIZ!!!"
To be sure. My bet is that this story will appear again. And again.
And I ain't prostituting myself to say so. Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5.
THE CINCS: James Fallows looks at Dana Priest's The Mission, a shaggy look at the regional Commanders In Chief, their proconsul position, the general structure of the US military, and various anecdotes of her military reportage career.
The book is well-written and is full of sharp details and vignettes. For instance: that only two members of the Special Forces team that called in air strikes in Afghanistan had ever been on horses, before they got to the battlefield and realized that horses were the only way to get around. Or the reason for a gruesome "friendly fire" episode in Afghanistan, when a precision-guided bomb homed in precisely on an American unit: An Air Force controller changed the batteries on a GPS targeting unit but "did not realize that after the battery was changed, the machine would revert to displaying the coordinates for the GPS's location, instead of those for the intended target."
In the modern military, handheld Personal Digital Assistant training is something that needs to be moved into Basic, since anyone who knows anything about PDAs knows that a battery pull does a reset. Since it wasn't in the training, a bunch of people died. (My point, not Fallows'.)
Read The Rest Scale: decent piece, 2.5 out of 5; the book sounds interesting.
LOYALTY DAY: I think "Loyalty Day" is idiotic. But George W. Bush didn't invent it.
It actually started as one of the more ludicrous anti-Communist efforts in the 1930's, and proclaimed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1947, and was adopted by the States and territories in 1949.
It was signed as Pub. L. 85-529, 72 Stat. 369 by President Eisenhower on July 18, 1958. Later it was written as Public Law 87-20 on April 7, 1961.
So far as I know, not even Prescott Bush had anything to do with this. Here's a potted history. Here are some of Bill Clinton'sproclamations on Loyalty Day.
It's also known as TITLE 36, Subtitle I, Part A, CHAPTER 1, Sec. 115. of the US Code.
I don't like George Bush. I also don't like misinformation and double standards, even on trivia such as this. (I also wish people would bother to check their facts before they rant, though we all err on this on occasion, of course.)
I do wonder how many leftists actually know the origin of May Day as Labor Day, and that said origin is American.
THE UPDATE THING: Back from Boulder's People's Clinic, where I saw the nice Dr. Ottoman ("just think of a sofa, or the Empire"), got stabbed for blood, and otherwise examined and such-like.
I double-checked my bad-at-numbers memory on my blood pressure against the hospital record, and it turns out that when I said on Tuesday that it had been 220/140, I was wrong! Sorry for misleading everyone! Not to worry!
It was actually 240/146.
Today, after daily doses of clonidine and Accupril, it was down to 172/110.
They cheerily informed me what I already knew: a) there's no way to tell if I have bacterial or viral pneumonia, but it's most likely the latter, in which case the daily Doxycycline antibiotic does nothing for me; b) I could get better on the pneumonia front in anywhere from a few days to a few weeks; just gotta wait and see.
So I have another appointment in two weeks, and should call if I get worse, and meanwhile, well, I'm sure it will just be a few days, so that "no income" thing won't really matter.
Otherwise, they repeated familiar instructions: do as little as possible; rest; sleep; drink fluids; exert yourself as little as possible.
I can do that!
Well, now I can finally get around to watching my videotapes of The Insider and Riverworld and a few others I've had waiting; and I have lots of old favorites to rewatch, as well: Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Hudsucker Proxy, Chasing Amy, Forbidden Planet, Broadcast News, and so on and so forth.
Plus catch up on Starcraft and Jedi Knight and Alpha Centauri and Age of Kings and such-like.
Lastly, I hear there's some "internet" thing I might look into. So since I'll probably be posting more over the next couple of days, please do feel free to drop by a couple of times a day or more. And if you do: thanks!
Four parents of gay children had a fiery private exchange tonight with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The meeting did not go well, and Mr. Santorum, who has infuriated gays by likening homosexuality to incest and bigamy, left in a hurry, tripping over a chair, the parents said.
"What we tried to do in this meeting was reach him on a human level, and we found no humanity there," said Melina Waldo, a former constituent of Mr. Santorum who lives in Haddonfield, N.J. She said he was "condescending, belligerent, argumentative and arrogant."
A spokeswoman for Mr. Santorum, Erica Clayton Wright, described the meeting as "a very professional and polite exchange." She declined to give details, however, saying, "Constituent meetings are private."
[...]
The meeting, with a heated exchange, ran 30 minutes, the parents said. The parents, Mrs. Kirschner said, insisted that the comments were hurtful to their children. Mr. Santorum, they said, wanted to talk about legal terms, insisting that he was just arguing against a right to privacy and that his remarks had been taken out of context.
Finally, an aide interrupted the session and told Mr. Santorum that he would have to leave.
"He couldn't get out of there fast enough," Mr. Kirschner said.
I love the old "out of context" routine; don't you?
THOSE WHO SURRENDER LIBERTY FOR SECURITY... you can complete the Ben Franklin quote, right?
I want my government to do many reasonable, and a few unreasonable, things to try to keep me secure. But this seems way out of line, and the sort of thing to keep the closest possible eye on.
The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas -- known as "national security letters" -- requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.
I assume you've already noticed that:
Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times last year, -- an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before. The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said.
TIME-BINDING: Avedon Carol has thoughtfully posted some ancient pictures of certain science fiction/net personalities here. See me as a thin, long-haired, 17-year-old hippie-type in 1976.
See also other friends of mine from the Seventies and later, such as Avedon, Jon Singer, Seth Briedbart, and my old friend Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who, typical of our up-and-down relationship over the years, some months ago removed me from his blog list of "Friends," de-linked me entirely, and subsequently banned me from posting comments to his fine blog.
Congratulations to Avedon on her increasing recovery from eye surgery, and apologies to her for not e-mailing her or otherwise taking note of this earlier. Prior to my onset of pneumonia, I'd been neither reading nor writing e-mail, nor scarcely being online at all, for about two months, due to the job I started at that time. But I still wish I'd found a moment to drop a line to Avedon, and apologize to her that I didn't; I'm very glad she's getting better, and has resumed her normal blog.
(Incidentally, I'm temporarily suspending my policy of e-mailing everyone I mention here, to let them know; illness-induced exhaustion causes me to plead lack of energy, and I throw myself on the mercy of the court; I'm having enough trouble having energy to sit up and read, and do this bit of typing -- but if I didn't do this, I'd go stir-crazy.)
(2003-05-01) -- U.S. President George Bush will take over where Keanu Reeves left off when he stars in 2004 release of The Matrix IV: Re-Elected.
Mr. Bush, whose popularity ratings shot off the chart today when he landed in a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier, said he's eager to put on the dark shades.
"Laura and I loved the first movie," said Mr. Bush,"And I'm sending some Secret Service guys to stand in line and get tickets for Reloaded. It's great to have a franchise so successful that you know more than a year in advance it will be a winner."
In The Matrix IV: Re-Elected, an older Neo continues his fight against a machine that saps the energy of the people, keeps them dependent and creates an artificial reality so convincing that the people don't realize they're really slaves.
Keanu Reeves, when informed of the decision to cast Mr. Bush, reportedly said, "Whoa."
Emmy-winning scribe has informed Warner Bros. TV and NBC that this will be his final season with "The West Wing." He is expected to announce his decision this afternoon.
Move comes after a particularly tough season for "West Wing," now in its fourth year, which has seen a dramatic ratings decline in the wake of tough competition from ABC's "The Bachelor" and Fox's "American Idol"-fueled 9 p.m. Wednesday comedy block.
Sorkin has written most episodes of "West Wing" since the skein bowed. He still has another year left on his deal at Warner Bros. TV.
Fellow exec producer Thomas Schlamme is also leaving.
Jeez, and just after the Bartlett White House hired another Republican. More here, including:
The show that was once weekly water-cooler talk has suffered enormous ratings erosion this season and been completely overshadowed by the real White House.
"The show veered so far away from reality," one Hollywood TV agent commented yesterday. "In the Clinton years the show mirrored reality; now it's a whole other alternative universe."
[...]
The studio and the network yesterday afternoon countered the departures by announcing that John Wells, the show's other executive producer, will step in for Sorkin.
John Wells Productions produces "The West Wing" with Warner Bros. TV. (Wells also produces NBC's "ER" and "Third Watch" and has a long-term deal at Warner Bros.)
"Sadly, we always knew this day would come and have been assembling a talented group of writers, directors and producers to assist in this transition," Wells said in a statement.
According to TV folks in Hollywood, rumors had been flying for weeks that something was afoot on the drama series, including the never-ending reports of tension between Sorkin and Warner Bros. over his continued late delivery of scripts, causing budget overruns and production delays. NBC execs complained that he wouldn't take the network's "notes" on episodes.
"He's always been a gigantic pain," one industry exec told The TV Column. "But they were okay with him so long as the ratings stayed up."
[...]
This season, for the first time in the show's run, the ratings are heading down at a fast clip. Last season "The West Wing" was a top 10 show; this season it's down to No. 23.
At this point last season, the show was averaging more than 17 million viewers each week; this season it's down 22 percent, to 13.5 million viewers.
More important to NBC, the show had fumbled nearly 30 percent of its 18-to-49-year-old audience, the demographic that advertisers covet and that NBC sells.
Apparently they all went off to watch "The Batchelor," suggesting that Sorkin didn't lose Republican/conservative viewers, but Moron-Americans.
Read The Rest Scale: 0 out of 5 on the Variety piece, 2 out of 5 on the WashPo.
"By the year 2002, we can have a federal government with a balanced budget or we can continue down the present path towards total fiscal catastrophe." -- Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, 1995
When, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one Party to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected its leaders to one alleged core belief, and to bind themselves with equal pomp and gravity to a contradictory core belief, as the Laws of Politics and Political Winds entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they have a Pretty Good Explanation. Or So you would Think. Especially when the First Belief comes Wrapped in a pompous Document with a lot of Bullying Language about how Noble its adherents are and what Scum any opponents Must be.
There are plenty of available reasons to explain why someone might have voted for the famous Contract With America in 1995, including a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced federal budget, and why today that same someone is an enthusiastic backer of President Bush's tax-cut proposal, which will take a $300 billion-plus budget deficit and push it higher. "Those pills are finally kicking in," might be one such explanation.
I WROTE a funny little bit here when I woke up last night at 3 a.m., unable to breath, but then Blogger ate it, and then refused to work for the next two hours, after which I got back to sleep. Now it's working again, but no sign of my eaten entry having been cookie-saved. Oh, well, that's Blogger cookie-d'oh! for you.
Meanwhile, I don't seem the slightest bit better, and I have to say that this pneumonia thing just isn't the fun it's cracked up to be. I don't know why people like it so. I think I want my money back. Also, more oxygen. I'm fond of oxygen. It and I go back a long way together, and we've had many great experiences. I definitely recommend it over both pneumonia and even oldmonia.
JACK CHICK, WORLD-CLASS NUTBAR, is featured in a long profile by LA Magazine.
I've been a follower of Chick's insane little comic pamphlets ever since first encountering them somewhere around 1970. Particularly memorable was a camping outing I was on with a Jewish youth group when I was 13, and the campers just over from us were a group of same-aged Christian fundamentalist evangelists, who duly attempted a full-course press into the evening, around the campfires, to convince us of our need to save ourselves from burning in hell.
Many Jack Chick tracts were produced to convince us of the terrible flaws in our thinking. Attempts to point out that the most logical of the arguments were nothing more than classic circular reasoning ("How do we know that's true?" "It's in the Bible." "How do you know your Bible is true?" "Because God wouldn't let it be false." "How do you know God wouldn't let it be false?" "It says so in the Bible.") didn't make any more of a dent with them than they made with us.
But it was quite one of the most entertaining nights of the trip, and, obviously, memorable.
RACISM: THANK GOD IT'S ALL IN THE PAST. Appalling.
ALBANY, Ga., May 1 -- A year after holding their first integrated prom, some students at Taylor County High School have decided to again hold a separate, private party for whites only.
[...]
Juniors are in charge of planning the prom each year and last year they decided to have just one dance -- the first integrated prom in 31 years in the rural Georgia county 150 miles south of Atlanta.
Until then, parents and students organized separate proms for whites and blacks after school officials stopped sponsoring dances, in part because they wanted to avoid problems arising from interracial dating.
This year, a small number of white juniors decided they wanted a separate prom.
[...]
The school has 439 students, 232 of them black. McCrary and a white friend passed out fliers informing students of all races that they would be welcome at the May 9 prom at nearby Fort Valley State University.
The private prom is Friday night 50 miles away in Columbus.
Erin Posey, a white senior, said the entire junior class joined together in hosting last year's prom, but this year's junior class wasn't as unified.
"I think a lot of seniors were disappointed," she said. "Now we have to choose between two groups of friends."
Posey plans to attend both proms.
Keen sense of moral understanding there. This is how one demonstrates neutral, balanced, fairness: attend both the racist and non-racist event. What could be fairer?
What a brave stand to take.
Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5. (Geez; time for more blood pressure medicine.)
HOLY DATA, BATMAN!: More and more churches are earning bucks by leasing use of their steeples and bell-towers as cellular antennas.
Across the country, but particularly on the densely populated coasts, cellular companies are under pressure to find creative ways to improve call coverage despite community opposition to unsightly free-standing transmission towers. Increasingly, they are hiding transmission equipment inside and alongside structures like flagpoles, smokestacks, grain silos and water towers.
Church steeples and crosses can be an ideal spot for a tower, especially in small towns that lack other tall structures, said Jim Fryer, an analyst in Lansdowne, Pa., who follows the cellular tower business.
"When churches were originally built, they wanted them to be the tallest structure in the area - the closest to heaven, or so people could hear the bells," Mr. Fryer said.
[...]
Churches that allow cellular antennas to be installed - often by more than one carrier - reap an average of $1,000 to $3,000 a month in fees, in addition to the cost of having the steeple rebuilt.
[...]
Finally, a way must be found to keep a steeple's traditional inhabitants, bats and pigeons, away from the equipment, Mr. Hormann said.
[...]
At the church in Ipswich, there was similar concern. It was resolved after the phone company hired a consultant from M.I.T. "to explain the energy-generating microwaves to us and help us to understand that we wouldn't glow on Sunday morning," Pastor Ebersole said.
Isn't getting closer to God supposed to make you feel all glowy?
Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5 if you want more detail.
ONE OF THE PLANNERS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH is said to have been captured. Walid Ba'Attash, aka Tawfiq al-Atash, aka Tawfiq bin Atash.
American officials believe that Mr. Ba'Attash was the mastermind behind the Cole attack, and was also a leading participant in a critical meeting of Qaeda operatives in Malaysia in January 2000 that may have been called to plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Two of the 19 hijackers involved in the attacks on New York and Washington also attended the Malaysia meeting.
Mr. Ba'Attash has been on the C.I.A.'s list of top Qaeda leaders. Once he is turned over to the United States for questioning, as American officials expect, Mr. Ba'Attash will be the only person in American custody who attended that planning session, and he may be able to provide the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. fresh insight into the inner workings of the Sept. 11 plot.
That would be nice. It would also be nice if one were able to have more trust in the US government giving accurate information on this sort of thing. Given the record of the past year, all one can do is hope, and try to cross-correlate information as it comes out in the future.
THE TEN SUGGESTIONS: Eugene Volokh asks and answers:
How many of the Ten Commandments are actually implemented as legally binding obligations under modern American law?
[...]
It turns out that the answer today is pretty much 3. For a full rundown, see here, but here's the basic scoresheet:
1. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." No. 2. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." No. 3. "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain." No. 4. "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. . . . . [On the Sabbath] thou shalt not do any work . . . ." Basically no -- there are still a few Sunday closing laws, but they surely don't apply nearly as broadly as the Commandment does; no-one would punish you for working at home on the Sabbath, for instance. 5. "Honour thy father and thy mother . . . ." No. 6. "Thou shalt not kill." Yes. 7. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Not in practice legally enforced today, though some states do still have criminal prohibitions on adultery on the books. 8. "Thou shalt not steal." Yes. 9. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." Yes, more or less. 10. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, . . . wife, . . . manservant, . . . maidservant, . . . ox, . . . ass, [or] any thing that is thy neighbour's." No.
So three (killing, stealing, false witness) commandments are legally enforced today, and one can make a plausible -- though I think ultimately unpersuasive, chiefly for pragmatic reasons -- argument that a fourth (adultery) should be, too. As to the other commandments, I think very few people, including most devout Christians, would want the government to enforce them to their natural scope.
Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5 for an excellent scholarly explanation of why:
Even if one thinks that the Bible is a proper source of legal guidance, a Biblical prohibition of something is not itself a sufficient reason for secular law to prohibit it, too....
BULLET TIME AND THE BURLY BRAWL: Wiredarticle on Matrix special effects. Detailed tech stuff, such as:
Then Reeves and Weaving each sat down on a stage in front of five Sony HDW-900 video cameras. The massive datastreams from these cameras - one gigabyte a second - were treated like holy water; even the cameras' color-correction software was disabled to prevent any loss of data. Instead of recording to tape, which requires compression, the cameras were modified to send uncompressed data to a bank of high-end PCs that stored it on a huge disk array. "The scene in that room was surreal," Gaeta recalls. "There's this guy onstage, and his face is surrounded with this fucking Cape Canaa-averal backup system."
[...]
The old Bullet Time rig had produced the illusion that reality was a big CAD file, but it was just an effect, not a three-dimensional world that could be manipulated as easily as if it really was a CAD file. The universal-capture rig enabled ESC to smuggle the faces of Neo and Agent Smith across the border between the digital and the real, into Gaeta's Matrix - a zone where skyscrapers, skin, flames, and marauding machines are all re-created equal.
What this means for moviemaking is that once a scene is captured, filmmakers can fly the virtual camera through thousands of "takes" of the original performance - and from any angle they want, zooming in for a close-up, dollying back for the wide shot, or launching into the sky. Virtual cinematography.
How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.
[...]
Before I leave ESC headquarters, I ask Gaeta where the brothers got their codename for the film.
"The Burly Man is the title of the script on Barton Fink's desk. We all loved that movie," he explains. "The lesson at the end of it is that after all these ordeals, all this agony, you finally arrive at the culmination of your entire life's work - and it's a wrestling picture.
As an aside, I'll note that I hold no brief with people who are rude to telemarketers. It's perfectly easy to simply say "thanks, I have no interest in your services; please put me on your no-call list," and then hang up. That's all that's necessary, and to otherwise abuse a poor schlub who is making around $7/hour and is, pretty much by definition, in such a job out of desperation and inability to, at that time, find a better one, is to vent anger on another victim, not on a responsible party.
Now, if you want to call up the owner of the firm to complain, that's another story.
In the toughest move to date against unsolicited commercial e-mail, Virginia enacted a law yesterday imposing harsh felony penalties for sending such messages to computer users through deceptive means.
The law would be enforced against those who use fraudulent practices to send bulk e-mail, commonly known as spam, to or from Virginia, a state that is headquarters for a number of major Internet providers, including the nation's largest, America Online.
The new statute adds criminal penalties for fraudulent, high-volume spammers. It outlaws practices like forging the return address line of an e-mail message or hacking a computer to send spam surreptitiously. Those found guilty of sending more than 10,000 such deceptive e-mail messages in one day would be subject to a prison term of one to five years and forfeiture of profits and assets connected with these activities.
Insufficient. While you're in prison, you should, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, be surrounded by twenty speakers, each shouting a message about how you are a trusted soul and I am the son of the late dictator of Nigeria and I can enlarge your penis and breasts while you need these ink cartridges to start your new business online which will make you a fortune by finding you a date....
Meanwhile, the FTC's three day conference on spam opened yesterday.
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 for more news on the legal front regarding spam.
Fantasy Sex Roleplaying Game Releases October 2003
Valar Project Inc, headed up by WotC's Anthony Valterra, is planning to release the Book of Erotic Fantasy in October 2003 - "the first roleplaying game, compatible with the best selling Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, that deals directly with sex and sexuality."
Wizards of The Coast Does Not Approve:
Wizards of the Coast is in no way associated with the product, "The Book of Erotic Fantasy," referenced recently on [websites]. We find the subject matter distasteful and inappropriate and do not endorse, condone, or approve of its use with the Dungeons & Dragons game. While the OGL license allows anyone, even our employees, to produce products that are compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards does not approve or control the theme of any third-party D20 product.
Here's a bit I like:
A generation of fantasy roleplaying game enthusiasts grew up wondering what the elf maiden looked like without those gauzy robes. They read "Lord of the Rings™" and fantasized about Arwen™. They read Conan™ and wondered if other fantasy heroes compared to the prowess of the legendary barbarian. In 2003 all the curiosity about sex in the realms of fantasy will be satisfied.
A) Wow. All curiosity about said sex, huh? These folks must be killer imagineers.
B) Y'know, some people doubtless entertained erotic fantasies about Arwen (though only if they were heavily into the appendices), and about Conan, but I really doubt anyone had such about Arwen™ or Conan™.
I'm probably wrong, though. Given that for every kink that can be thought of, someone out there has it, there probably are some folks who get hot only over entities that are entity™.
Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5 for a lot more on the fantasy lives of fantasisers.
(I'd find it a pleasant change of pace to be panting because of erotic thoughts, just now, rather than because of pneumonia -- no noticiable improvement yet this morning.)
HI! MY NAME IS! AND MY HOBBIES AND INTERESTS AND KINKS ARE.... I like this.
It's sorta like Friendster, but in the real world: electronic name tags that can store personal information and wirelessly share it with other people around you. The nTag, as it's called, has 128K of memory, a two-line display, and built-in infrared. The idea is that besides just putting your name and where you're from you could also list your hobbies or favorite movies or whatever, and so that people with similar interests could automatically find each other:
When two attendees come within 3 to 5 feet and their nTags are facing each other, information is shared between the tags, using invisible infra-red beams of light. George Eberstadt, an nTag company co-founder, says the system uses advanced software to figure out what information to show on the tags' displays. And the algorithms aren't looking for just 'matching' information, but for topics that would hopefully 'break the ice' and generate social interaction."
SCRAP THE DMCA: Since that's not on the table, here's a smale scrape of a start.
Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) has written the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act (HR 107), which would make it legal to, among other things, create an archival copy of a CD or DVD. Good fix for a bad law - but why not just blow up the DMCA instead?
The music industry began using a novel tactic yesterday in its fight against music piracy -- sending instant messages that pop up on the computer screens of people as they are swapping unauthorized copies of songs.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five major music companies and hundreds of record labels, is using the instant-messaging systems of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services to notify users that they may be violating copyright laws by "uploading" songs to be copied free by other users.
[...]
The RIAA is calling the IM campaign "targeted education." The RIAA has software that enables it to find users swapping songs on the Internet. When users sign up for file-sharing services such as Kazaa and Grokster, they can opt to open their computer hard drives to outsiders.
Other RIAA software travels the Internet, identifies file sharers, and sends "notice and takedown" messages, telling file-sharers to cease or face lawsuits or prosecution.
Reports that the RIAA will soon be sending meatware known as "thugs" ("Vinny 1.1") to the dwellings of people they suspect of copyright infringement to deliver similar messages can not be verified at this time.
ROOSTING: You and I have both read endlessly about prescription drug benefits as a national American political issue.
Well, holy fricking Jeebus Christos (the guy who does the wraps, you know): those five prescriptions came out, getting generics, to be ~$140 for a few days supply.
Apparently I'll have to work on diet and exercise, because I can't possibly afford to lower my blood pressure at a cost of ~$120 a week.
Just thinking about it raises my blood pressure.
I can only imagine what the emergency room stay and tests will cost, and I'd rather not. I started a new job a bit over two months ago. In a bit over one month, I have health insurance! No prescription drug coverage, though.
Meanwhile, immense thanks to those who have sent best wishes. I'm astonished at the response of you all, including people I'd never thought had a clue I existed, such as Mickey Kaus [you never know who might read you -- ed], and people I've corresponded with many times, but not recently, and greatly admire, such as James Lileks, and friends I've just not been in touch with for too long a time, such as Kathryn Cramer.
Mucho thanks awfully and also to those who have suggesting tapping my tip jar, such as Thomas Nephew and Glenn Reynolds and others. My. I wasn't even, like, trying for sympathy, what with life going decently, if not splendidly, with an adequate (if not more) job, a stable living situation, and all that there. People can be good. I thank you all.
Incidentally, is there anyone else out there whose brain gets turned to mud/jello/cotton candy by taking antibiotics? Because I suddenly remembered that I've always had that happen. And.... ooh, pretty colors.
I VOW: This will never be a group blog site. This will never be a group blog. You will never read multiple voices posting to Amygdala. It won't happen here. (Yeah, I have a ton of fun playing at "our staff," "our board," "our employees," etc.; it's a game, dude.)
For all my playful use of voice, this will always remain the blog of, well, me, me, me, me. Gary Farber.
Not that, of cousrse, I don't love many group voice blogs I love a bunch of them.
They're just not me.
Not now, not ever.
It's a stubborn individualist thing.
And I may, therefore, as we've seen, because, alas -- and alas, and alas, and alas -- keep you waiting for some weeks or months. At times.
Oops. Sorry about that. I can't even promise to keep it worthwhile.
I'd really like to know, and particularly from British readers and leftish readers.
Honest. Because it reads very sensibly to me: so am I missing anything, in your view?
Read The Rest Scale: for those interested in someone growing up as a left-wing American in the Sixties who then moved to Britain and found flaws in Old Labour -- at least 4.5 out of 5.
HI, KIDS! I'm just back from a lovely five hour stay at Boulder Community Hospital. Good news! I probably don't have SARS -- though there's no test, and they could consider me a "suspect" case, given my near-fit of the profile -- but they won't, unless I get worse!
It's only pneumonia I've had for (at least) four days now! Go, me!
Good news! I didn't have a heart attack last night! I only have a highly enlarged heart valve and incredibly high blood pressure! Yay!
Apparently 220/140 is a bad thing.
So then they kept sticking my ass with needles, and then giving me little pills, while the Magic Monitor kept automatically checking my blood pressure every ten minutes, and bleeping off alarms each time.
Hours would pass, I'd be given more little pills, and they'd come back, frowning and with brows furrowed, and my blood pressure Just Wasn't Dropping.
Finally it did come down to hovering vaguely near 160/115, and they decided to free up the room (woohoo: your own examining room; BCH not comparable to Bellevue Hell, I kid you not), though they did all give me the impression that they were rather expecting me to imitate a character from David Cronnenberg's Scanners at any moment.
What's that, you ask? Do I have a fever? Now, would I write like this if I didn't have a fever?
Well, yes, as you know, of course I would.
But since you've so kindly asked, yes, I do have a (mild) fever, and mostly have been coughing my lungs out and panting for breath. But, hey, they gave me five different prescriptions! Including for Vicodin for the chest muscle pain! Woo-hoo!
So please excuse me; I'm now going to spend some time looking at fractal images and exclaiming: "Wow... the colors, man! The colors!"
(Comments addressed to me best left in the comment box, if it's working; god knows when I'll feel up to cleaning out my e-mail inbox of several thousand spams to find the Real Mail.)
Helpful suggestions for how the Tories can return to power in Britain. Once:
The Conservatives were invincible.
Now? It's hard not to feel a twinge of pity. And an even stronger sense that we at the Guardian could, if we wanted, do it better. So, unencumbered by party internal loyalties and enmities, we would, we thought, brain-storm our way to a new, revitalised Conservative party.
And then we would share. With you the reader, of course, and with the Tories themselves. Not because of any of that old, pious "we want an effective opposition" nonsense, but out of pure, vainglorious hubris.
[...]
As Ben said of his New Labour: "Blair's main message was to say 'We used to be mental and now we aren't', and that was basically it."
CHILDREN ESCAPING FROM FROM TOTALITARIAN HELL: Harrowing, detailed, account of one young North Korean, and what happens to others like him.
Next to Heo was the Evergreen School's only girl, and its voluble alpha, Se-ok, a 19-year-old with pretty, almost fragile features and a gift for languages. There was also a boy named Yum, an erratic rebel with dyed orange hair who owned a motorcycle and came and went from the house much like a stray cat. Meanwhile, a boy named Han, who rarely talked and had a dark stoicism suggesting some hidden pain, sat quietly before another computer terminal, a flowering scar on his face. And then there were the others: Kum, in love with his trumpet; Kang, in love with his soccer ball; Yong, perhaps the most handsome and well dressed; and Seoung, who was always smiling at the constant banter among housemates.
[...]
These other refugees were the only ones who could understand the digital speed at which their lives were changing -- and what it meant, too, to feel like aliens on a different planet.
LITTLE DID I KNOW that someone opened an RSS LiveJournal feed of this blog. Thanks, I guess.
I wonder if there's an e-mail about this in the thousands of e-mails I've let pile up due to getting an increasingly larger number of hundreds of spams per day?
Yet it was in Najaf on April 2, well before the rituals of the devout got underway, that a throng of Iraqis gathered around an American reporter to plead for water and to list their hopes. One man, a civil engineer, succinctly laid out the benefits that he thought Americans could help bring to Iraq.
"We want very nice," the engineer, Quesay Mohammed, said.
What else, he was asked.
"Democracy!" he said. A few people around him muttered their approval.
"Whiskey!" he said, raising his voice. This time, more people laughed, and some applauded.
MATRIX, MATRIX, MATRIX: Interviews with Keanu Reeves, Carrie Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishburne (come a long way from when he was fifteen, spending that year in the Phillipines, acting in Apocolypse Now). Lots more stuff, interviews with other members of the production.
Interestingly, the director of photography, who has done all four Wachowski Brothers films,
...GOT HIS START serving on "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi's early cult classics "Darkman" (1990) and "Army of Darkness" (1993)....
(He's now working on The Amazing Spiderman.)
Read The Rest Scale: will you choose the red pill, or the blue pill, Neo?
SARS -- THE CHINESE EXOTIC ANIMAL MARKET CONNECTION.
An hour south of Guangzhou, the Dongyuan animal market presents endless opportunities for an emerging germ. In hundreds of cramped stalls that stink of blood and guts, wholesale food vendors tend to veritable zoos that will grace Guangdong Province's tables: snakes, chickens, cats, turtles, badgers, frogs. And, in summer, sometimes rats, too.
They are all stacked in cages one on top of another -- which in turn serve as seats, card tables and dining quarters for the poor migrants who work there. On a recent morning, near stall 17, there were beheaded snakes, disemboweled frogs and feathers flying as a half-alive headless bird was plunked into a basket.
If you were a corona virus, like the one that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, it would be easy to move from animals to humans in the kitchens and food stalls of Guangdong, a province notorious for exotic cuisine prepared with freshly killed beasts.
Indeed, preliminary studies of early SARS victims here in Guangdong have found that an unusually high percentage were in the catering profession -- a tantalizing clue, perhaps, to how a germ that genetically most resembles chicken and rodent viruses has gained the ability to infect thousands of humans.
I'd like my SARS with curry, please. Extra, extra, extra, extra, extra hot.
Fun in ever-laid-back Singapore:
"Welcome to Singapore! Are you feeling well today?" chimes a chorus of nurses, their faces covered by masks, their eyes by goggles, their bodies by yellow hospital gowns. Passengers coming from other countries with SARS are guided to pass through a high-tech thermal scanner that picks up temperatures over 100. Masked soldiers are there to escort away those with fever.
Those who pass muster are given a card warning that they might have been exposed to a deadly disease. Those who are feverish are whisked, without apology, into a 10-day quarantine, and Singapore means business. Video cameras will be installed in the home by a security firm, to make sure patients do not stray. Those few who do are tagged with an electronic wristband that records their movements.
But even in a small country, placing thousands on quarantine has been a strain. Last Monday, after a case of SARS was discovered in a vendor at Singapore's largest vegetable market, the Ministry of Health ordered all 2,400 food sellers to report for quarantine, up from a total of 467 quarantined before. Since 80 percent of the country's vegetables pass through the Pasir Panjang Market, restaurants were bracing for a shortage of greens.
SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABS, as published by Newsweek, an excerpt from GEARHEADS: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports by Brad Stone.
About 500 Bay Area dwellers showed up. They were artists and hackers, students and computer scientists. Many echoed the same excited sentiment: Finally, after a wait of several years, the robots of SRL -- Survival Research Labs -- were about to walk the earth once more.
The show was scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. In typical SRL manner (and despite the urgency of the e-mail), the guerilla arts group kept the crowd waiting outside for an hour. While the spectators lingered, two uniformed Berkeley police officers walked by, poked their heads into the makeshift doorway, and started asking questions. "What the heck is going on here? What are those . . . things . . . inside?"
[...]
On one side the stationary contraptions were lined up in an orderly row that belied the mayhem they were about to produce. Most conspicuous were the two racing tires of the Pitching Machine. Powered by a 200-horsepower V-8 engine, the wheels would spin in opposite directions, taking two-by-four wooden planks from a conveyor belt and spitting them out at 120 miles per hour, like rounds of machine-gun fire. Next to the Pitching Machine was the long, phallic shaft of the Shockwave Cannon. This fiendish contraption would harness explosions of acetylene and oxygen, directing an eardrum-splitting blast of air and noise that could break windows 700 feet away. Next to that was the mechanism simply dubbed "Boeing." It was an actual jet engine with fuel injectors and an ignition system, designed to produce a long spear of fire -- a flamethrower on anabolic steroids. Finally, closest to the audience, was the Pulsejet, calculated to generate a constant thunderous roar of 140 brain-crunching, permit-flouting decibels.
D. D. HARRIMAN, WATCH OUT: More private space ventures, including Jeff Bezos In Space! Paul Allen In Space! Mysterious warehouses! Neal Stephenson a paid employee!
And probably... Jews In Space! (Echo reverb effect dies down.)
YOU WANT SCALE? I'LL GIVE YOU SCALE. Nifty site charting length and height at one pixel per meter real life Earth buildings and structures along with all the starships of Star Trek, Babylon 5, and other visual sf. Realize just how big that Star Wars Space Slug is! (See also the MegaPenny Project; you'll thank me one novemtrigintillion times.)
Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 for visual amusement. (Via BoingBoing.)
Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria has the perfect intellectual pedigree (Indian-born, educated at Harvard, conservative) for a fast-changing world, and the kinds of friends in high places who can push a career into overdrive. The first Muslim secretary of State? Don't bet against it.
By Marion Maneker
My friends all say i'm going to be Secretary of State," Fareed Zakaria muses from a banquette in the Grill Room at The Four Seasons. "But I don’t see how that would be much different from the job I have now."
The 39-year-old Newsweek foreign-affairs columnist is about to expand on this thought. But then Donald Marron, the former CEO of PaineWebber, walks over with Ken Duberstein, the former Reagan lieutenant, in tow. Cordial and courtly, Zakaria charms the two elder lions before picking up the thread of conversation. He's not boasting. He's comparing the core requirements of his job as a columnist -- boning up on policy positions, balancing competing points of view, then making a clear, stick-out-your-neck decision -- to the job of running the State Department.
Would he want the job? Before he can answer, Mort Zuckerman, who's been having lunch with Ed Kosner, the editor of Zuckerman's Daily News, heaves into view. Zuckerman praises the young man genuinely, then moves on. But a few feet away, at the top of the restaurant's stairs, the real-estate developer and media dabbler stops to examine a blowup of the cover of Cosmopolitan, directing guests to an advertiser's lunch in the Pool Room next door. Zuckerman considers the voluptuous model who seems to be staring at Zakaria with a smoldering look, then delivers his punch line: "This guy's so hot even the cover girl wants to meet him."
