Tuesday, August 10, 2004
:: "How to be Idle" An excellent article, via Ran Prieur:
For all modern society's promises of leisure, liberty and doing what you want, most of us are still slaves to a schedule we did not choose. Why have things come to such a pass? Well, the forces of the anti-idle have been at work since the fall of man. The propaganda against oversleeping goes back a very long way, more than 2,000 years, to the Bible. Here is Proverbs, chapter 6, on the subject:
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
(I would question the sanity of a religion that holds up the ant as an example of how to live. The ant system is an exploitative aristocracy based on the unthinking toil of millions of workers and the complete inactivity of a single queen and a handful of drones.)
Christianity has promoted bed-guilt ever since. This passage from the Bible is used as a bludgeon by moralists, capitalists and bureaucrats in order to impose upon the people the notion that God hates it when you get up late. It suits the lust for order that characterises the non-idler.
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:: The Dangers of Viewing Art So I was in D.C. this weekend, and, having been there a gazillion times, my only real desire was to peruse the classics of Western Art on display at the National Gallery. They have an excellent selection of Medieval Christian art and some good stuff from the Impressionists. It was literally the only thing I wanted to do in the Capitol. I didn't want to deal with the extra security in place in the gubmental facilities. I just wanted to go into a nice, cool gallery and look at amazing masterpieces.
Imagine my surprise, then, upon entering the building and having to submit to a walk through metal detectors and a search by extremely surly security guards.
The security at the National Art Gallery was tighter than the security at National Airport. Having some snarky asshole poke through your bag with a drumstick kind of takes away from the art-viewing experience, you know?
You know you're living in a police state when you have to get searched and harassed to go look at some paintings.
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Tuesday, August 03, 2004
:: gawn Well, I'll be taking a lil' break from the blog, here. I'm packin' my pocketknife and some socks into a red paisley bandana and tyin' it onto a long pole, then headin' out to the uncharted lands of "orange alert-dom".
Should be back in a week or so. Meanwhile, here're some good links to occupy your time while I'm gone:
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Monday, August 02, 2004
:: Interesting! Is the Maryland Mystery Beast a "shunka warak'in"?
UPDATE: They caught a fox with mange in a "humane" trap set up to catch the critter! I don't know-- check out the slideshow. Doesn't really look the same to me. Still, tho', maybe they are all mangy foxes.
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:: Bleh! The oceans are turning to acid.
I always figured I'd have to tell my grandkids (if we're still around at that time) that we used to be able to swim in the ocean when we were their age . . . .
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Friday, July 30, 2004
:: MORE birds! This time an article from earlier this year, from China:
More than 10,000 birds died mysteriously in eastern China's Jiangsu province, dropping like rain from the sky, state media reported Thursday.
Farmers and other witnesses in Sangongdian village in Taizhou city saw flocks of bramble finch suddenly fall from the sky Tuesday, the Beijing Youth Daily said.
And one from last year: more herons gone from Minnesota.
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:: Heh. As much as I hate to admit it, I think this MSN analysis is pretty spot-on:
With a few exceptions, most of the credentialed bloggers came off like cyberhayseeds in the big city. Many dared for the painfully obvious as they updated their posts. Most of the blogging entries I have read ranged from the insufferably pedantic to the sublimely mediocre. There were exceptions, of course, but the see-me, hear-me tenor of their reporting was only exceeded by the vapidity of the banal commentaries peddled as analyses.
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:: Here's a great article by Greg Palast, about John Kerry. It sums up pretty much every impression I had about the guy's speech (other than the fact that he should smile more often and gesture less frequently).
They're playing "Johnnie B. Goode" over the loudspeakers. Democrats are hopping up and down like JFK never went to Dallas; like Bill Clinton didn't blow it for us; like there's a chance to bring the boys home alive; like America can crawl out of Dick Cheney's bunker and look at the sun again.
But has Johnnie Kerry been good so far?
He told us tonight about some poor bastard in Ohio whose job evaporated when his company unbolted the equipment and sent it south. Hey, Johnnie, didn't you vote for NAFTA?
I applauded when he said the White House should stop treating teachers and school kids like fugitives from justice and help them out. But, Johnnie, didn't you vote for George Bush's "No Child's Behind Left" assault on public education?
Then there was that little story meant to show us all he is a Man for All Seasons, above party politics. "I broke with many in my own party," he said, "to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do." No, John, it wasn't. It was craven political cowardice, going with the anti-government hysteria that put a knife into the heart of the programs you cried over tonight.
This "Democratic Party Unity" bullshit makes me sick.
Some people are probably concerned by the anti-Kerry tones of some of my postings. Really, though-- all I'm interested in is getting past the "ABB" blinders so that maybe some of those who vote for Kerry know what they're in for. I was just as hard on Dean when he looked like the front-runner.
Look, I don't write for the center-left-partisans, as any of my three-or-so regular readers know by now (well, I try to write for everybody, but they don't read me). I'm just trying to be an actual philosopher here, someone who likes to cut through empty rhetoric and examine the structures beneath. It may seem cynical, but it's actually hopeful. I know that if a moron like me can get underneath the illusion, anybody can do it.
And, I can't afford to give lip service to a neoliberal corporate shill who wants troops to stay in Iraq, wants to expand imperialism under the guise of "free trade," wants to continue to pour money into the "drug war" and add cops to the streets, wants to continue to support a nation **that is walling off part of its population**. *I can't support someone because they're marginally less soul-deadening than BushCo.* Sure, he's not driven by an insane cabal of religious maniacs, but if someone is repeatedly punching me in the face, what difference does it make why he's doing it? Stalin was pretty secular, as I recall; was he "better" than W. because he was a secular nutjob and not a fundamentalist Christian?
So-called "progressives" who support Kerry are being taken for a fucking ride! Opponents of the war who support Kerry are being swindled! Those who deny the Divine Right of Corporations who vote for Kerry are betraying their convictions! It's like George W. Bush is a gun to my head, and the Kerry people are saying "eat this giant pile of shit and you won't get shot. Do you want a gun to your head for the next four years, or do you want to shovel the shit into your mouth for breakfast, lunch and dinner?" Yeah, I'll maybe eat the shit so I don't *die*, but you goddamned well better count on the fact that I'm gonna be bitching my head off the entire time.
I'm still not saying whether I'll vote for Kerry or will instead limit my vote to local and regional matters (and I'll never tell! this I swear!), but I also maintain that the Anybody But Bush mentality is a dangerous game. I may be able to hold my nose and pull the lever (or touch the screen), but I'm going to be screaming BULLSHIT at the top of my lungs the entire time.
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:: Mystery critter update: They've got new pictures! The Thing has a really striking tail.
I wonder: with all of the mystery beasts of late, and the disappearing/dying birds, etc. etc., are we in some sort of "Reality Flux" state, where the fabric of what we collectivly perceive is coming a bit loose at the ends?
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:: Sci-fi fan? Are you a fan of a particular science fiction show on the television or perhaps the movies? Do you enjoy writing things about the show online, perhaps creating fun databases where other fans can come and learn about the show?
If so, the Department of Justice would like a word with you, and they'll use the USA PATRIOT act to find you.
Stinkin' terrorist scum.
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:: Orniscopy For thousands of years, in a good many cultures (notably ancient Greek, Rome and Tibet), those with a mystical bent would turn to oracles and prophets and augurs and shamans who would be able to divine the future by observing the flight and cries of birds. When one thinks about this, it makes perfect sense-- birds occupy the skies, and just as human behavior can be modified by changes in environment, one would imagine the same for the behavior of birds. This is one of the reasons I find all of the bird stories I've featured lately so ominous. For thousands upon thousands of years, looking for patterns in the behaviour of birds was a perfectly reasonable practice. Ancient cultures tended to picture the universe more holistically than we. I'm of the opinion that what we consider "bird divination" was actually a corrupted method of interpreting changes in bird populations that signified changes in the environment. This method had, after all, thousands of years to develop.
I bring this up because I've come across yet another bird article, and I wonder what Tieresias, who knew the language of the birds, would have made of this:
Disaster at sea: global warming hits UK birds
By Michael McCarthy Environment Editor
30 July 2004
Hundreds of thousands of Scottish seabirds have failed to breed this summer in a wildlife catastrophe which is being linked by scientists directly to global warming.
The massive unprecedented collapse of nesting attempts by several seabird species in Orkney and Shetland is likely to prove the first major impact of climate change on Britain.
Martin Heubeck of Aberdeen University, who has monitored Shetland seabirds for 30 years, said: "The breeding failure of the guillemots is unprecedented in Europe." More than 6,800 pairs of great skuas were recorded in Shetland in the same census; this year they have produced a handful of chicks - perhaps fewer than 10 - while the arctic skuas (1,120 pairs in the census) have failed to produce any surviving young.
The 24,000 pairs of arctic terns, and the 16,700 pairs of Shetland kittiwakes - small gulls - have "probably suffered complete failure", said Mr Ellis.
In Orkney the picture is very similar, although detailed figures are not yet available. "It looks very bad," said the RSPB's warden on Orkney mainland, Andy Knight. "Very few of the birds have raised any chicks at all."
The counting and monitoring is still going on and the figures are by no means complete: it is likely that puffins, for example, will also have suffered massive breeding failure but because they nest deep in burrows, this is not immediately obvious.
But the astonishing scale of what has taken place is already clear - and the link to climate change is being openly made by scientists. It is believed that the microscopic plankton on which tiny sandeel larvae feed are moving northwards as the sea water warms, leaving the baby fish with nothing to feed on.
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Thursday, July 29, 2004
:: Wow! This is one of the most fascinating articles I've read in a long time. It's about a conspiracy-theory based internet scam.
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:: Creeped out. I can't help it. I get creeped out by stuff like this: "Rand Beers, the national security adviser to the Kerry campaign, opened a high-level briefing with a warning: 'In many ways, the goals of the two administrations are in fact not all that different.'" and by stuff like this: "As undersecretary of state for international drug enforcement under Clinton, Beers signed off on a defoliating program in South America in which a substance similar to Agent Orange was sprayed over would-be coca fields along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border. When an environmental group filed suit on behalf of Ecuadorian peasants who claimed—with the support of the Red Cross—that the sprays had caused the destruction of all crops as well as severe birth defects in humans and livestock, Beers responded by insinuating that the plaintiffs had ties to al Qaeda through the Colombian FARC rebels. But heck, at least he's not George Bush. Right? Isn't that what we're supposed to be thinking this week?"
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:: What the? I guess this makes a kind of naive sense.
Economists have long been interested in why some countries are rich and why some countries are poor. Differences in labor productivity, inflation, and saving and investment rates are traditional economic explanations for variations in wealth across countries. But when these explanations fall short, researchers sometimes turn to noneconomic factors. Two such factors are a country’s legal and social institutions. Religious factors can also help explain variations in economic growth, many economists are increasingly finding. In particular, in countries where large percentages of the population believe in hell, there seem to be less corruption and a higher standard of living.
Better call BushCo-- tell 'em to crank up the Hellfire and Damnation speechifyin'.
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:: Well well well! Looks like another one of those "Maryland Mystery Beasts" turned up in *Texas*. Since it's Texas, the guy who saw it summarily shot it. That's horrible, but at least we may find out what the thing was. *Sigh.* "There's somethin' weird. Let's kill it."
In other weird animal news, check out "Hogzilla!"
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Wednesday, July 28, 2004
:: This is pretty cool. Check out www.ilovebees.com
Dig around a little bit online and you'll find out what it's all about. Still, it's pretty danged impressive.
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:: Now here's a book I'd like to peruse:
The book, Bonjour Paresse (a nod to Françoise Sagan's 50s novel, Bonjour Tristesse or Hello Sadness), pledges to explain why it is in your interest to do the least work possible and will tell you how to damage the system from within "without appearing to do so".
An antidote to the recent rash of US-import, career-enhancing self-help books by business management gurus, it rails against corporate culture and preaches a philosophy of active disengagement.
It is an elegantly written call to arms to the "neo-slaves" of middle management and the "damned of the service industry", condemned to dress up as clowns all week and waste their lives in pointless meetings.
The terrible bit (and proof that we need such a powerful message) is that the author '. . . faces a disciplinary hearing next month, accused of attempting to "rot the system from within".' I wonder if she'll be forced to drink hemlock . . . .
Here's hoping it gets translated into English.
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:: Again! Again! I'm going to start posting this once every couple of weeks or thereabouts, just so it's handy . . . .
Let's expand on this for a moment. See if you can guess the logical fallacy, then click the link to find the answer:
1) You must vote for either Bush or Kerry.
2) You cannot prove that conspiracies abound, therefore all conspiracy theories are wrong.
3) We should outlaw gay marriage because bestiality and polygamy will follow if it's legalized.
4) You should support the free expression of democracy and vote for John Kerry.
5) If you do not vote for the Democrat this year, your children will not recieve adequate health care.
6) Sure the soldiers at Abu Ghraib acted horribly when they tortured prisoners, but they were low-income victims of the "system" who were socially disadvantaged/only following orders.
7) You can't disagree with George W. Bush, because if you do, the terrorists will have won.
8) It's obvious to anyone but lunatics that the war in Afghanistan had nothing to do with building a pipeline.
9) Dennis Kucinich cannot win the Democratic nomination because polls show overwhelming support for Howard Dean.
10) John Kerry will make a horrible President because he looks so silly in this photograph.
11) The Food and Drug Administration says that aspartame is completely safe for human consumption, therefore I will continue to use it.
12) Unnamed sources indicate that terrorist "chatter" is at an all-time high, therefore we are increasing the terrorism threat warning level.
13) George W. Bush is a great President because he's obviously one of the people-- just look at that cowboy hat!
14) Out of 1,000 people polled, the majority agree that the Ten Commandments should be publicly displayed. Therefore, the country wants the Ten Commandments on display.
15) Some trial lawyers are greedy money-grubbers, therefore John Edwards will make a horrible vice-president.
16) The President is like the CEO of the country. Therefore, government should be run like a business. (I know-- similar to an argument on the linked page, but it's apt.)
17) Most articles in the Seattle Times have a conservative slant, but that doesn't mean the paper is biased-- it's just a coincidence.
18) Our research shows that abstinence is the most effective way to prevent AIDS.
19) It's good to try to curb the spread of nuclear proliferation. Therefore, we should invade Iran.
20) Because Hitler was an evil dictator, and evil dictators must be stopped, we must invade Iraq.
21) The planet's temperature is rising, therefore humans must be causing global warming.
22) George W. Bush is an evil President who manipulates our voting mechanisms, therefore we must vote Bush out of office.
23) Ronald Reagan personally ended the Cold War with his policy decisions.
24) The Iraqi insurrection calls for more U.S. troops.
25) A misguided interpretation of Islam caused the 9-11 attacks.
26) You have to agree that The Project for a New American Century must have the correct worldview because they say so in their writings.
27) We should support the death penalty. Murderers must pay the ultimate price for what they have done.
28) If you oppose tax cuts for the wealthy, you most likely think we should pay higher taxes. But George W. Bush doesn't want people to have to pay higher taxes.
29) All homosexuals are gay, and that happy fellow just said that he's feeling "gay" today, therefore he must be a homosexual.
30) Bush's speech was unusually lucid today.
31) Islamic suicide bombers are horrible murderers. Therefore, all Muslims are horrible murderers.
32) Because mainstream Christian churches preach for peace, Joe Smith, a Christian, must be a pacifist.
33) If George W. Bush is a capable president, terrorist attacks will decrease. Terrorist attacks have decreased. Therefore George W. Bush is a capable president.
34) If I support the Democratic Party, then I will vote for John Kerry. I do not support the Democratic Party, therefore I will not vote for John Kerry.
35) John Kerry voted for the war in Iraq. He wants to send more troops if he is elected. John Kerry is the best candidate for the antiwar movement.
36) All right-wingers are politically Pro-Life. Someone who is politically Pro-Life opposes abortion. Therefore all political Pro-Lifers are right-wingers.
37) All Shi'ites are Muslim, and no Kurds are Shi'ites, therefore no Kurds are Muslim.
38) All Green Party members are leftists, and all Green party members want Bush out of office, therefore all those who want Bush out of office are leftists.
39) All Protestants are Christian. Some Christians are not rational. Therefore some Protestants are rational.
40) All protestors at the G-8 summit are radical leftists. Some radical leftists bomb dumpsters and break windows. Therefore, some of the protestors at the G-8 summit will bomb dumpsters and break windows.
41) I invaded Iraq because God told me to.
42) You're just voting for Kerry because you're a Democrat.
43) Terrorists are typically brown-skinned.
44) Someone is a true American if and only if they vote.
45) A Democracy is a system of government which employs a democratic process.
46) In order to maintain our free society, it is essential that we sacrifice some of our civil liberties.
Pshew! So how'd you do?
I left out a few-- feel free to add more, or come up with other examples.
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:: Quote of the Day: "I'd rather sleep under a bridge, eating trash out of a Dumpster, than murder human beings for Halliburton." -- Ted Rall, "Boycott the Military"
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
:: Sometimes, "holy crap" is the only phrase that fits:
A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.And check out this graf: "Meanwhile, experts at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, have developed a super-virus, harmless to humans, which produces proteins that can block or reduce the effects of cocaine." Maybe it's just me, but I'm a little uncomfortable with *anyone* "creating" a SUPER-VIRUS!
Under the plans, doctors would immunise children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection. The scheme could operate in a similar way to the current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme.
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.
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:: Billmon Billmon has the most honest partisan convention commentary I've seen so far. He's the only one who seems willing to point out just how cheesy and manipulative the whole damned thing is.
At about 10 pm eastern time we arrived at the inevitable 9/11 remembrance event on the program. It came dangerously close to crossing the line into both saccharine sentimentality and political exploitation. The sight of the crowd holding up lighters and matches was way too reminiscent of a rock concert - or worse, a scene from Spinal Tap. And bringing out the young violinist to play (of course) Amazing Grace felt manipulative, even if it wasn't meant to be. (God help us when the Republicans cut loose on the same theme next month.)
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