KZNI

LOOK AT THE DATE

2010-04-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

In other April 1st news, lefties acknowledge the hype over Obama's tax cuts is a massive smokescreen to obscure the crippling debt and deficit already accruing under Obamacare.

"Yeah, we've known the whole time those tax cuts aren't so much as a drop in the bucket of acid about to be dumped in America's face-- a bucket of acid marked Insolvency," confessed Mao Mao Amerikkkastein, a prominent left-wing activist who changed his name in college to ace his Social Justice final without having to bother with the formality of a written thesis.

"It was just good rhetoric to scream at Teabaggers. Made them look uninformed, if you didn't think too hard about it. And by 'thinking hard about it,' I mean 'failing to pretend adding a multi-billion bureaucracy to the health-care system will somehow cut costs.' I also mean 'failing to pretend that the need for the individual mandate somehow isn't proof in itself that we just don't have the means to (further) socialize medicine.'

"Look," continued Amerikkkastein, squatting to spray diarrhea on both an American and an Israeli flag, "We're not stupid. We know Canada can only... HHNNNGH, excuse me... afford Single-Pay because, thanks to American military might, they can spend dick on national defense. And since we read British news sites obsessively, we know Europe's system is as least as big a crapshoot as ours. Obviously Obamacare isn't going to work. Hell, even Medicare's about to go tits up.

"But certain failure or no, we're supposed to try anyway. That's the moral thing to do. In fact, I don't get why the" --Amerikkkastein waves his arms sardonically-- "supposedly Christian Teabaggers aren't down for this. I guess they've forgotten that part in the Bible that says 'Render unto Caesar what is God's, so Caesar can do God's work for Him.' Hypocrites, man."

Democrats and Other Retards:

2009-05-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Obama, as you know, has named his Supreme Court nominee. I'm sure many of you are worried that the big, scary right-wing conspiracy is going to launch another of its vicious smear campaigns against soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor, spreading all stripe of fib and slander. Like we do.

Fear not. We know how hard it gets out there for a woman, trying to break the glass ceiling and everything. We'll play nice.

In fact, we'll treat her with no less than the same tact, fairness, due praise, and respect you gave Sarah Palin last year.

Rest assured.

2009-03-20T08:00:00.001-07:00

Friends and family keep telling me I'm not funny. I think my latest volley of Tweets disproves that once and for all.

brizoni Weird spike of math nerd snobbery at XKCD today. The "B" is all the differentiating context "billion" needs from "million," homey.
less than 5 seconds ago from web

brizoni Ooh, 69 updates. Nastay.
less than 5 seconds ago from web

brizoni But now it's 70.
less than 5 seconds ago from web

brizoni 71.
less than 5 seconds ago from web

brizoni 72.. 3!
less than 5 seconds ago from web

SPD FTW

2009-03-17T07:43:00.001-07:00

Babelfish Experiment

2009-03-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

The low one in stereos of the car warped the Kids’ the untiring pornography of the computer of the appreciation of music approximately in the same way warped its sexuality. They don’ t hears music, them feels it. It’ tactile s. E the low one in the majority (because it triturates words, Zoni? It’ s ALL) stroke wasn’ of the daily pay-Gangsta; t projected to be tactile, as soon as only sounds as the mud in the cars where you couldn’ t hears a meteor to hit on secondary woofer.

This entrance was typed in Babelfish. Translated the Portuguese, then in return to the English. How much meant it will survive to the trip? Not very.

I knew Babelfish would twist “sub” into “secondary”! I knew it!

I’m starting new blogs on Blogger and WordPress. They’ll be mirrors of the livejournal until I think of something else to do with them.

Then why start them at all, you ask? I wanted to have accounts to comment on blog systems other than Blogger (would have signed up with TypePad, but it costs money! Can you believe it? Paying for a service?). True, I could have just gotten accounts and not blogged, but that feels too much like squatting.

I think that should do it

2009-03-15T16:48:00.001-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:45:00.001-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:41:00.001-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:38:00.001-07:00

"And she looks like Blossom!" Never gets old.

flush post 13

2009-03-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

Sebbin more to go.

flush post

2009-03-15T16:35:00.001-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:31:00.001-07:00

FORGIB-A-NESS, PREASE!

flush post

2009-03-15T16:30:00.001-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

How many of these should I make? 20?

flush post

2009-03-15T16:25:00.001-07:00

Down TO the cement mixer.

plush fost

2009-03-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

flush post

2009-03-15T16:12:00.001-07:00

Restarting this blog. Pushing the old posts to the waaaaaay back of the attic.

Almost said "closet" there. Have to remember not to use that particular metaphier. Except to be hurtful.

flush post

2009-03-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

Glad I snatched up my own name on blogger a while back.

Not that it was in any danger of getting snatched by anyone else. At any time.

flush post

2009-03-15T16:08:00.001-07:00

Flushy flushy flush.

flush post

2009-03-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Dusting off this blog. Need to clear some brush.

flush post

2009-03-15T16:04:00.001-07:00

this post is cleaning the pipes

2008-02-06T16:01:00.000-08:00

I'm here now.

PIAT: "What are we going to do about these Muslims?", part 1

2008-01-24T23:20:00.000-08:00

Tim Marshall, writing for Sky News, the News Corp-owned paper that broke the Abu Ghraib story*, asks the right question: "If I insult you, am I responsible for your violence?" I imagine your reflexive answer is "no", but then you remember we're talking about Muslims, a non-white culture (by and large, relax), and you hold your tongue. Even if rioting to the tune of 136 deaths isn't OK, insulting the faith of a less white, less Western, less technologically-advanced people is clearly so horrible and egregious that it's not OK to criticize whatever reaction said insulted group may exhibit, lest we approach even the appearance of regarding said insult w/ anything less than angry condemnation. Is this the gist?

Here I have to digress a bit.

I'm obsessed w/ author R.F. Laird, in much the same way Ayn Rand's admirers are obsessed w/ her, being too dazzled by her innovations to be sufficiently critical of her**. But like Rand, the weight and scope of Robert's insights into the ticking guts of life is worth going crazy over at first. Not to fawn, but it's close to how it must have been to have cared about thinking during that long lull between Aristotle and anyone else, where his contribution to cognition is such an impressive leap forward his contemporaries can be forgiven for not seeing the flaws in his system for a long while.

Case in point, from the book of Swarthmorons (get it?) in The Boomer Bible, chapter 35:

You will find that this first rule of the academic path makes all your scholarship marvelously easy and simple,
2 Because there will be no dilemmas to deal with,
3 No difficult decisions to make,
4 And no analysis needed
5 For any question you may wish to inquire into,
6 Just look for the Others in the vicinity of your question,
7 And develop your positions and arguments accordingly,
8 Without thinking about it at all.
9 and if one set of Others comes into conflict with another set of others,
10 Rest assured that right is always on the side of the Others who are less white,
11 Less male,
12 Less western,
13 And less advanced technologically. [EA]

Among other things, TBB is a study in contrast. Once upon a time not long ago, the regular bible was, front to back, what we believed about we came to be, how we were supposed to regard right & wrong, how an ideal man could behave, and so on. Laird got to wondering what a bible of our current beliefs would look like, and by and by, a starkly different sort of holy book took shape.

Aren't the above verses a perfect description of how we choose sides in matters of global conflict? And not just when two "Others" are fighting. David Horowitz mentions the contribution of a leading intellectual during the Vietnam war:

Meanwhile, Sartre, a consummate sophist, attempted to solve the problem in advance by declaring that the Communists were by definition incapable of committing war crimes: "I refuse to place in the same category the actions of an organization of poor peasants... and those of an immense army backed by a highly industrialized country." [EA]

We can get away w/ this haughty morality for only so much longer. There's a sizable chunk of Islam doing their damndest (and gaining momentum) to replace our (admittedly flawed) civilization w/ a barbarous (literally, not pejoratively), shittier system of law and government. Unlike our throwback religious idiots, their fundamentalist D-Bags are willing and eager to kill. What are we going to do about them? Nuking their culture off the face of the earth isn't an option. Neither is letting them be, as 9/11 and the Cartoon Wars**** demonstrated. What are we going to do w/ this large group of fanatical (again, literally, not as in "crazed"), hair-trigger murderers? What solution could there be?

Did I ever tell you my old idea for the Flush Islam blog? Each day I'd read a few pieces of the Koran, use them as toilet paper, and write a running commentary on what I'd read and what I'd thought of it. I'd play the commentary straight, leaving the bitter snark to the photos of soiled Koran pages that would accompany each entry.

The point of such a cruel insult? Twofold. To vent my frustration at our unwillingness to acknowledge and literally depict what I saw as the incontrovertible shitiness of Islam, and to demonstrate that shitiness by showing that Muslims can't behave properly when insulted and therefore should be regarded as something near dangerous children and treated appropriately; hence "Flush"***** (see ³).

It's a good thing I never started that blog. Only very recently have I figured out that making the cruel point isn't a bit as worthwhile as comprehending a problem well enough to know what to do about it and how, and if I had figured that out somewhere near "Houd"... wiping your ass w/ the Koran is a tough gesture to take back.

*Wikipedia and Google say it was 60 Minutes II that broke the scandal, which isn't how I remember it. I could be wrong.

**Whether you agree w/ whatever you've heard about her, Ayn Rand was hella smart, and right hella more often than she was wrong.

Commonly, she'd be (broadly) right in her premises and (basically) wrong in the extrapolations of those premises she'd use as examples or elaborations. From Wikipedia, here's a good summary of her philosophy of art:

The Objectivist theory of art flows fairly directly from its epistemology, by way of "psycho-epistemology" (Objectivism's term for the study of human cognition as it involves interactions between the conscious and the subconscious mind). Art, according to Objectivism, serves a human cognitive need: it allows human beings to grasp concepts as though they were percepts.

Objectivism defines "art" as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments" — that is, according to what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect Objectivism regards art as a way of presenting abstractions concretely, in perceptual form.

I'd add a couple minor qualifiers, such as broadening the pyramid of acceptable topics going up to the "romantic realism" capstone, but at it's core that's the best definition of art I've come across; certainly the most useful, even if it doesn't pinpoint exactly what we sort of mean in the back of our heads when we typically talk about "art". In Objectivism, art is relaying ideas and telling stories about life. Sold.

But look how overly narrow she is w/ this specification:

Photography, for example, is invalid to her (qua art form) because a camera merely records the world exactly as it is and has very limited, if any, capacity to carry a moral message beyond the photographer's choice of subject matter.

Whoa, chief. You could argue successfully that a photographer is afforded, in that work, less opportunity for creative artistry, and his work is less art-as-such to whatever degree it's documentarian (which it can't help but be at least somewhat), but to say that limitation invalidates it as art...? 'Fraid that's pure error, Ayn. Like you gave it a little extra enthusiastic push of emphasis that ruined it, like a soup w/ just too much salt. And because of her initial concept of art, and a thousand other genius reconceptions, her more adoring fans can't bring themselves to look at where her philosophy frays.

***Horowitz continues: "Of course, the NLF-the 'organization of poor peasants' to which Sartre referred was created by the Hanoi regime, whose own army, supplied with high-tech weapons by the Russians and the Chinese, was America's main opponent in the south." [EA]

****Here's an existential brainmine for you: Of all the possible histories, we live in a timeline where one can write the phrase "Cartoon Wars" w/ a straight face.

*****Thinking about it, I would have thought to work in "flush" in the sense of "square up", as in "how can we square Islam up w/ the rest of the world in peace?", as the blog progressed.

Muhammad Cartoon fallout continues

2008-01-20T17:41:00.000-08:00

I was gonna sum up the Ezra Levant story for you, but he beat me to it this afternoon:

1. Two years ago, the now-defunct Western Standard magazine reprinted the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. I was the publisher.

2. In response, a radical Muslim imam named Syed Soharwardy asked the Calgary Police Service to arrest me. They didn't, of course. So Soharwardy complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission, a government agency. Here's his hand-scrawled complaint; here's my reply. For two years, using government lawyers and taxpayers money, they have been pursuing me, infringing on my natural rights of free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

3. On January 11th, a government "human rights officer" interrogated me for 90 minutes. Instead of bowing my head, I used the opportunity to challenge the moral and legal basis of the complaint, and the human rights commission itself.

4. I recorded the interrogation and posted video clips to YouTube. In the past week, they have been viewed nearly 400,000 times and were at one point the fifth most watched videos on all of YouTube. Though Canadian talk radio shows and op-ed columnists have covered the story well, I have seen only one newspaper report on the subject. I can't understand why mainstream reporters and editors do not think it's newsworthy that a publisher can be summoned by a government bureaucrat, and grilled as to his political thoughts. I'm pleased, though, that the support from pundits has come not just from the right, but from the enlightened left.

5. I've got some ideas of what people can do. Although my case is being prosecuted by the hapless, lame-duck provincial government of Alberta, it is politically more likely that change will come first to the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission. That commission is currently hounding columnist Mark Steyn on similar thought crime charges.

Not a lot I can add to that. The Western Standard is only defunct in the world of print; it's just been net-exclusive for a few months. If you pick a login here, you can size up westernstandard.ca. There's a great article on Marc Emery, from whom until very recently you could freely buy mail-order pot.

The YouTube clips, where Levant stands up w/ entirely no hope to the pleasant face of governmental annihilation, are the main attraction. Here's clips 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. He's the real deal.

And:

139 dead in Cartoon-related riots. How good does the dimmest Christian look next to these numbnuts?

Mars by 1970!

2008-01-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

and much, much more here. Can you imagine?

PIAT: Joe Horn again

2008-01-16T20:49:00.000-08:00

Sick sick sick sick sick. All kinds of colors coming out of me, including the patent-pending Neon Brown. Blog neglected. Never again*.

Commenter "gr8tfuldaniel" pointed out that Joe Horn spotted the two crooks breaking into his neighbor's home, not his own. I knew that, but only learned it after I wrote the essay I reposted on the 5th. I neglected to edit; I just copy and pasted. My bad.

This adds an element of him-haw complexity, but doesn't really change how I feel about all that happened. Here's the squinty dimension, from this NYT article:

“I had no choice,” Mr. Horn said when he called 911 back. “They came in the front yard with me, man.” Captain Corbett said that a plainclothes officer had pulled up just in time to see Mr. Horn pointing his shotgun at both men across his front yard, that Mr. Ortiz had at one point started to run in a way that took him closer to Mr. Horn, and that both men “received gunfire from the rear.” That fact, alone, however, was not necessarily conclusive, Captain Corbett said. “It tells an investigator something, but not everything,” he added. “They could still have been seen as a threat.” [from now on, "Emphasis Added" gets abbreviated as "EA". I have faith you can keep up]

I've had cats run past me when I'm louder than they'd like. My first thought is usually "what are you thinking, running towards me to get away from me?" followed closely by "I guess it worked, though". If Ortiz really did just happen to pick an unfortunately circuitous escape route, something like CatRun must have been going on, but I can't picture a terrain situation where a straight "away" isn't the best direction to run from a gun. Maybe there was some bravado involved, maybe Ortiz's initial charge was a feint. Since they were from Columbia, I doubt it (the "whut!" shoulder shake is hella American).

Compounding this, I think Horn was (not trying to be flippant this time) playing deputy, too. His excited "move, you're dead" was a mangled "stop or I'll shoot", constituting in Horn's mind a de facto citizen's arrest.

And you know what? That's good enough. Did they deserve to die? Not really, but they didn't exactly deserve better, you know? It's not great that it happened, but it's sure as hell OK that it happened. And everyone involved in the issue who feels that way has conducted themselves exemplarily, which is awesome. Right wins this time.

*I should write for Ellen, I'm such a card.

Willie 14.13

2008-01-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

Someone commented on the last entry, which I'll respond to tomorrow, when I have time to do it justice. Until then, here's a scrap.

(15:20:41) Zoni: oi

(15:21:03) Adam Zero: hui!

(15:21:07) Adam Zero: How goes it?

(15:21:09) Zoni: good

(15:21:29) Zoni: I'm trying to calucate execution rates for countries

(15:21:41) Adam Zero: dang.

(15:21:44) Zoni: not sure exactly how to do it, though

(15:21:52) Zoni: I have figures for executions and population

(15:22:04) Zoni: do I just divide, then?

(15:22:18) Adam Zero: That's the naive way to do it.

(15:22:27) Adam Zero: (Naive meaning... without further info, not the offensive meaning).

(15:22:28) Zoni: I thought it looked wrong

(15:22:47) Adam Zero: You'd have to also consider how many of the population are convincted for offenses with executable punishments.

(15:22:57) Adam Zero: for instance, in Islam, rape is an executable offence.

(15:23:10) Adam Zero: However, you need 2 male witnesses or 4 female witnesses to convict someone of rape.

(15:23:19) Zoni: so I'd need death row numbers, too

(15:23:23) Adam Zero: Ya.

(15:23:33) Zoni: trickier to get

(15:25:02) Adam Zero: Exactly.

(15:25:20) Adam Zero: There's a good website for social sciences data though... can't remember the name though.

(15:25:24) Adam Zero: It's like Pullap or something.

(15:25:33) Zoni: In China, "In the past the government collected a "bullet fee (åå¼¹è´¹)" from the relatives of the condemned."

(15:25:39) Adam Zero: Hahahahaa!!!!

(15:26:02) Zoni: that's some cold shit

(15:26:17) Adam Zero: Indeed.

(15:26:19) Adam Zero: China would do that.

(15:26:45) Adam Zero: Supposedly in their schools, there is this "teacher" that runs from room to room just yelling at the kids and telling them to shut up.

(15:26:52) Adam Zero: This person doesn't actually teach or anything.

(15:27:03) Zoni: nice

(15:28:09) Adam Zero: Yep... job securite.

(15:29:35) Adam Zero: bullet fee.

(15:29:40) Adam Zero: That's an awesome album name

(15:29:42) Zoni: heh

(15:31:08) Zoni: looks like China's all over the place

(15:31:25) Zoni: in more ways than one

(15:31:32) Adam Zero: Ya... I have a feeling the next 30 years might have a civil rights movement.

(15:31:33) Adam Zero: Hahah

(15:33:11) Zoni: I feel like we have one more bout of reactionary governmental communism, then a gradual easing off into quasi-capitalism, Shanghai-style

(15:34:42) Zoni: what I need is a nice table of capital punishment data covering maybe 10 years, all figures from a single source

(15:34:49) Zoni: and I'm just not finding it

(15:35:09) Adam Zero: What's your hypothesis?

(15:36:23) Zoni: just to see which countries are most kill happy, and to look at the numbers and see what that might say about each

(15:37:03) Zoni: most kill happy by rate and tally, I should clarify

(15:37:30) Zoni: wikipedia say china has the highest tally, but Singapore has the highest rate

(15:37:50) Adam Zero: Well... China's population simply dwarfs Singapore.

(15:38:00) Zoni: exactly

(15:38:40) Adam Zero: You'd kind of expect the country with highest capital punishment rate to have a lower population.

(15:40:17) Zoni: yeah

(15:40:49) Zoni: and looking at just what it takes to calculate it, I think capital punishement figures aren't really indicative of anything by themselves

(15:41:26) Adam Zero: China is bloodthirsty compared to modern Europe with capital punishment.

(15:41:50) Zoni: isn't it abolished in the EU

(15:42:46) Adam Zero: huh, I have no ide.a

(15:42:49) Adam Zero: What are your thoughts?

(15:44:48) Zoni: It seems reasonable to me that an offense (or series of) can be so egregious that, barring genuine rehabilitation, the risk that that person could have contact w/ human beings is unacceptable

(15:45:23) Zoni: where exactly to draw that line, I don't know off the top of my head

(15:45:45) Adam Zero: That's close to me, actually.

(15:45:52) Adam Zero: I mean, prison has two purposes:

(15:46:02) Adam Zero: rehabilitation and confinement.

(15:46:08) Zoni: right

(15:46:11) Adam Zero: If someone has no psychological hope...

(15:46:22) Adam Zero: why waste everybody's time killing him by imprisonment

(15:46:43) Adam Zero: (him or her)

(15:46:58) Adam Zero: I just do'nt knkow what to think about public executions.

(15:47:23) Zoni: I do think the hair-splitting over "humane" ways of killing are a joke

(15:48:15) Zoni: as if sparing someone we want dead anyway a traumatic last few minutes or seconds puts us on any kind of moral high ground

(15:48:52) Zoni: The death penalty has been totally abolished in almost all European countries (47 out of 50). A moratorium on the death penalty is a condition of membership in the Council of Europe and abolition is considered a central value to the European Union.
Only in Belarus and Kazakhstan (a small part of Kazakhstan is in Europe) is it still practiced - this being one reason for which they have been refused membership into the Council of Europe.

(15:49:09) Zoni: Russia maintains it for ordinary crimes, but observes a moratorium in practice. Their last execution was in 1996.

(15:49:33) Adam Zero: huh

(15:49:46) Adam Zero: Strange, and their crime rates aren't really that much worse than America as far as I know.

(15:50:19) Zoni: pretty sure it's a difference of philosophy over there, not practicallity

(15:54:30) Adam Zero: True.

(15:54:45) Adam Zero: Well.. I always hear Americans complaining about the cost of our prison systems.

(15:54:56) Adam Zero: I guess our figured lead the world in the amount of imprisonment.

(15:55:11) Adam Zero: *figure

(15:55:20) Adam Zero: *figures and by this I mean rate.

(15:55:23) Zoni: right

(15:55:50) Zoni: I think prisoners should have to work to stay alive

(15:56:33) Zoni: not Battle Royale-style, but there should be an similar element of economic risk that exists on the outside

(15:56:42) Adam Zero: es

(15:56:43) Adam Zero: *yes

(15:56:58) Adam Zero: I guess a large concern is the amount of people who get reimprisoned.

(15:57:04) Adam Zero: I am all for chain gangs.

(15:57:17) Zoni: there's plenty of rocks that need breaking

(15:57:22) Adam Zero: Lol.

(15:57:58) Adam Zero: And after release, they can make it singin' blues traditionals in the night clubs.

(15:58:32) Zoni: Or, maybe would could defer any economic gains beyond basic survival until after they get out

(15:59:17) Zoni: I'm not sure what would cross the line into cruelty, but there could be a free outside place to sleep, and sleeping on a bed indoors could be a privilege

(15:59:34) Adam Zero: Haha

(16:00:19) Zoni: the idea being, rooms and food cost taxpayers money

(16:00:26) Adam Zero: Indeed

(16:01:14) Zoni: and gym equipment and cable tv and all that

(16:01:17) Zoni: and laundry

(16:02:49) Adam Zero: ya.

(16:03:01) Adam Zero: Heck, minus the anal rapage and beatings, prison has a lot of amenities.

(16:03:27) Adam Zero: And those things shouldn't be the downside to prison.

(16:03:47) Zoni: Yeah. Even I don't have cable.

(16:04:01) Zoni: This is what got me thinking to begin with

(16:04:17) Zoni: I think the "unusal" part of "cruel and unusal" screws us up

(16:06:14) Zoni: it's used as a loophole for those who want capital punishment abolished

(16:06:26) Zoni: and it's sloppy language to begin w/

(16:07:28) Zoni: I'm sure it seemed like a sensible qualifier for "cruel" when it was written,

(16:08:06) Adam Zero: Family Guy: "Should we reword the second amendment, though?"

(16:08:21) Adam Zero: "What do you mean, how could it be any clearer? Everyone has the right to a pair of bear arms to hang in their home!"

(16:08:33) Zoni: heh

(16:08:35) Zoni: like that shirt

(16:11:13) Adam Zero: I have to take off.

(16:11:23) Adam Zero: Be sure to post whatever you come up with.

(16:11:27) Zoni: will do

(16:11:29) Adam Zero: peace

Pulling It All Together: Joe Horn

2008-01-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

I have a habit of getting worked up for a couple weeks about stories in the news, then forgetting them entirely, when I should be integrating them into a personal history of how I saw the world around me as it happened.

I wrote the following (I'd give myself too much credit to call it an "essay", as if I know how to write, but "pissy rant" swings that pendulum back too far) back in December, and barely chanced upon remembering it today. Chronology assembly begins now.

- - -

Joe Horn is an out-of-shape (really he's fat, that old-guy style fat, but I'm showing restraint and civility for reasons I'll explain later on), middle-aged Texan who witnessed two men breaking into his home, and, after several minutes of hand-wringing w/ the 911 operator whether to grab his new shotgun and confront them, ends up going outside and shooting the men, killing them both. Horn is white, the two burglars were black. At least one of the burglars left behind a family: a wife and an 8-month-old son.

Quanell X, a figure in the New Black Panther Party, took a group of what looks like on the video around 20 to protest and speak to the media in front of Joe Horn's home. They were met by a few hundred counter-protesters , including some bikers. Conservative blogger Blogs of War took this video showing the counter-protesters getting as loud and rowdy, by far, as I've ever seen a group of people get without violence breaking out:

Doesn't take long for Quanell X (do I just call him "X"? "Mr. X" There's no way to treat his placeholder last name as normal and not seem sarcastic about it, and calling him just Quanell has a similar air of derisive flippancy) to briskly haul ass away from Horn's home (I don't think Horn was home-- haven't read anything about any reaction of his to the protest) and chat up the media at safe distance from the angry din.

To their credit, the visibly livid counter-protesters not only don't chase after Mr. X, they keep their protestations evidently racism-free, with not so much as a stray N-bomb showing up on any of the video-- the closest is a muffled "my neighborhood" in a white woman's voice sounding like "my nigger" at first blush, which is funny on a couple levels. Quanell X, though, takes the spectacle of a large, intimidating white mob and Rashomons sights and sounds that just weren't there.

(go to 7:20 and watch to the end for an egregious distortion, then skip back to 7:02 for a more understandable, though still wrong, reaction)

My temptation, of course, is to angrily applaud Joe Horn's actions, then cite Chris Rock's "Black People vs. Niggas" routine as a preface to the biggest carpet N-bombing since Tokyo in 1944. But I've come to understand I'm not smart enough to get good n' pissed off and think straight at the same time. So if my ugly ass wants to make sense of anything, I have to imitate all the civil, erudite discussions I've seen on PBS or wherever the hell it was, where the debaters address each other as "my worthy opponent" and mean it, and smile and shake hands at the end and aren't gritting their teeth and muttering "Yo Mama" vulgarities under it all.

To say the least, I'm out of practice, so for now I'm just amassing facts and putting them together as best I can. I don't totally know what to think about the Joe Horn jigsaw, because I only have so many pieces. I think I can make out what looks like a photo cabin in the woods, but maybe a deer or some other woodland creature is the real focus of the thing, and all those pieces are still rattling around in the box. And maybe what I thought was gray sky is really a couple upside-down pieces. Don't know yet, is the whole point.

Ashley Madison, and a taste of Fuck It

2008-01-02T13:59:00.000-08:00

First Carolla show after the break! And no more Bonnaduce (he's not terrible, but on that show he was a big dollop of toothpaste in your fresh-squeezed orange juice)! Couldn't wait for the podcast; had to set my alarm for an injuriously early hour and stream the thing live.

Radio is small enough that it can get away w/ dubious (legally and otherwise) sponsorship. We in Portland have a commercial for what amounts to CD and DVD rental, that flat-out says to copy items and take them back. Two adult stores I can think of advertise all hours of the day. And all those CreditYes.com commercials stink of-- I don't know how else to say it-- a depressing lowness of human spirit.

But this morning I heard a commercial that blows those out of the water like fishing w/ an atom bomb. WARNING: May inflame bile duct:

My heart isn't broken; I just want it to beat faster!
I'm taking off the halo and doing this for me!

At the risk of breaking Godwin's Law (again), I'm going to compare ashleymadison.com to The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party and talk some about "fuck it" philosophy. Clearly, both groups come from a "fuck it" epiphany. I'm sure Ashley Madison (assuming that's the name of the founder) was having a conversation w/ a friend about dating sites one day and said "You know what? I'm gonna start a dating site for cheating! Yeah, cheating! Fuck it!" Likewise, one in the angry (they'd say "concerned", no doubt) group of friends who would go on to form the LNSG said, having grown weary of the constant qualifications and disclaimers needed to endorse any distinct thing the Nazi's ever did, "No, fuck it, let's just call ourselves Nazis." Hurriedly putting his hands out reassuringly, he continued. "We don't have to be dicks. We don't have to kill a bunch of people, obviously. But we already believe strongly in national identity and pre-Christian ethics, and the swastika is an Indo-European symbol, you know? It's not like Hitler has dibs on what an ancient symbol means or whatever, right? Let's just be Nazis. Fuck it. Our flag can be green instead of red or something."

And you know what? It may be a just a trick of language, but in Ashley Madison I've found an organization worse than Nazis. I'm pretty sure the Free-Market Hippie Nazis aren't secretly racist (if you were, and wanted to hide it, the swastika logo would be the first thing to go), but check out the full-on lies in the AM FAQ:

Q: Does Ashley Madison encourage infidelity?
A: No, Ashley Madison does not encourage anyone to stray. In fact, if you are having difficulty with your relationship, you should seek counseling.

However, if you still feel that you will seek a person other than your partner to fill your unmet needs, then we truly believe that our service is the best place to start.

At Ashley Madison, you can communicate with other like-minded adults who may be more sympathetic to your circumstances. You never compromise your safety, privacy or security and will never have to reveal your identity unless you choose to.

You can go at your own pace and change your mind any time you wish.

If you don't like who you're with, or think you shouldn't be with them, you should look for someone else. Gee, makes sense when they say it like that.

You know why it makes sense? Because your brain is sneaking in one of three different ways to complete that thought. Either you're fitting in "you break up with them, and then, and only then, " after "think you shouldn't be with them"; or "and you can stay with the first person while you look because you had a long conversation early on in the relationship that ended in an agreement that monogamy is a crap expectation and flings were understood to if anything strengthen your commitment to each other" after "look for someone else"; or a new sentence "And don't break up with your current partner, since you might decide your other options aren't as good, or something" at the end. Can Ashley Madison have simply forgotten one of these crucial qualifiers?

Even more, I like how they toss out a bit of non-objectionable superfluousness at the end to deflect criticism. Straight out of Sun Tzu.

Q: Doesn't a service like Ashley Madison make it Easier for people to Stray*?
A: Of course not. People don't stray because it is easy or convenient. Most stray because they are missing something in their relationship and feel they need or deserve more than their primary partner offers.

Providing a service like ours does not make someone more likely to stray any more than increasing the availability of glassware contributes to alcoholism. No report contradicts this finding. On the other hand, putting up barriers and making it difficult to stray has never discouraged infidelity; if anything, it simply makes people want to even more.

Since they don't encourage infidelity, they must have forgotten to mention how you're supposed to leave you "primary" partner. Easy mistake. Or maybe it's so obvious that my thinking it even needs to be pointed out reflects poorly on me.

Oh, and "no report contradicts this finding"? We're giving science the final say on everything, at all, now? I'm gonna be presumptuous and say my judgment is sufficient that a dating service for infidelity does in fact make infidelity easier. Or do I have to get official confirmation whenever 2 + fucking 2 comes up, too?

Ah, I've made my point. My brain needs a rape shower.

*this Question submitted by Ben Franklin, writing Under one of his many Pseudonyms. Get It?

Any lingering hope for Mike Huckabee? This'll kill that.

2008-01-01T22:57:00.000-08:00

When asked if it is hypocritical to make an announcement about not running negative ads, and then show a negative advertisement to dozens of members of the national and local media, Huckabee said he had to show the ad to prove its existence.

Good thing I already wasn't voting for him, right?

I created this blog not 20 seconds ago...

2007-12-30T16:03:00.000-08:00

...and nothing's sadder than an empty blog (except things that matter). Here go.

Is downloading music wrong? I'm reluctant to really think about this, because I've got a hard drive full of legitimately purchased music. I try to-- or like to tell myself-- that I primarily (used to be only) download stuff that isn't in print, but in the last year or so that's become a bit lax-- and that's not the understatement it might seem at first. Still, I think morally I'm in good shape. I download stuff I can't pay* for, and stuff I wouldn't pay for and wouldn't get if I couldn't get it free, but I never download instead of buying.

Now, is downloading music legally wrong? Who knows. Depends on which Billy-from-Family-Circus trail of interpretation the Courts choose to enforce. The RIAA is still doing their damndest to muddy the issue. Washington Post has the skinny:

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said. [contemptuously astonished emphasis added]

What's the term for playing a shell game w/ equivalent ideas to lie? Does "Sophistry" cover that? Look at the obfuscation by the phrase "I suppose we can say" for a moment. The assumed truth at the foundation of Ms. Pariser's argument here is the blanket statement "unauthorized copying is theft". "I suppose we can say" is the diplomatic way of saying "though it seems inescapably contradictory, since 'unauthorized copying is stealing', technically it makes a kind of technical sense that making a copy outside the physical disc, even for use by the person who owns that disc, is theft." She wants you (and the judge) to regard that idea as paradoxical but true, not contradictory and false.

Luckily, it's easy enough to get out of this "you have to admit" trap, because it turns out it's OK to restate and even revise your assumptions when they lead you into stupid. Here, we can start by asking the RIAA under what definition of "theft" could making a backup or portable copy for yourself possibly fall. We can continue by questioning the, hey look at this, legality of a literal interpretation of the "unauthorized copying is prohibitied" copyright notice that will be a part of any response they have to our first objection.

And hey look at this too, the Post article does just that, right after Jennifer Pariser's cognitive blasphemy:

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

Writer Marc Fisher doesn't cite any sources for this claim, so his next point isn't hammered home as vividly as I'd like:

As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don't usually kill off old media: That's the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer. [emphasis added]

Movie theater operators thought the arrival of TV in the 50s would be the death of them-- more than a few people remember theaters hanging giant "Fight Pay TV" banners on their marquees. Jack Valenti once said, and I'm still stunned this isn't an urban legend, " I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

See, I wanted this to be a quick post, but now I've gone all thorough. What I'm very gradually getting at is I like downloading most of all because it means the old logistic limitations on distributing content have been overcome by leaps and goddamn bounds. I look it as innovation on the order of the goddamn car. And I understand there's issues of due compensation that still need ironing out; I get that. In these years 2000+ of ours that doesn't have so much as a simple jet pack to offer, it'd be a criminal shame if one of the few working bits of future we have got choked to death by an approach to law that deliberately didn't concern itself w/ right & wrong. It'd suck real bad if we chose that future.

*by which I mean can't pay the artist & others involved for the item because it isn't produced any more, so they won't see a dime from any used copy I buy anyway.