Posts from — December 2004

Yes, it’s the time of year when the Sun dies and must be re-born through an elaborate ceremony that involves some form or type of sacrifice, such as finding gifts for people you can’t stand and smiling brightly as you receive yet another gift based on an urban legend that you actually like truly stomach-wrenching color combinations.

Of course there was a time when the Solstice sacrifices were more visceral and the evergreen was covered in things that pleased only ravens and such, but we have put all that behind us by opting for the possibility of electrocuting one another and causing chaos on the power grid.

What a brilliant idea: moving a large supply of pre-kindling soaked with highly flammable resins into your house, loading it down with petrochemical-based ornaments, lacing it with heat-producing electrical devices, and surrounding the base with cardboard boxes and tissue paper. You just can’t have a traditional celebration without a proto-bonfire in your living room.

I do think that followers of Mithras might want to curtail their typical birthday service in light of Mad-Cow Disease, but global warming will certainly make the services in the oak wood in traditional druidic robes more comfortable.

When you put up your stocking on the mantel and put out the turnips for Gouger, Rooter, Tusker, and Snouter as well as the pork pie and sherry for the Hogfather, you can rest assured the Sun will come up, because it just slipped around back to return the lager it rented.

Enjoy! You have nothing to fear, except that sniveling little creep with the camera/phone at the office party or the eggnog that was put out rather early causing you to suspect that the bits on top aren’t nutmeg. [The pictures probably won’t appear on the ‘Net and the brandy will surely take care of the salmonella.]

In another classic case of misdirection, the Pentagon is responding to Spc. Thomas Wilson’s question to Rumsfeld in Kuwait by talking about the great strides they have made in upgrading the armor on Humvees. While I’m sure the Specialist is pleased to know about these improved Humvees, he was probably hoping for information about providing armor for the vehicles his unit operates: trucks and tractor-trailers.

Not only is there no existing program to upgrade the vehicles for transport units, there isn’t even a plan to start such a program. For those who remember the recent case of the Guardsmen who refused to haul the tainted fuel, this was their basic complaint.

To be sure, there are explosive devices that will take out tanks, but the transport units would like enough protection to stop bullets from AK-47s and shrapnel.

As has been known for centuries: armies are dependent on supply lines. The fact that our Army truckers are not supplied with: armor, maps, GPS units, or radios, shows the basic failure of our current Defense Department leadership. This isn’t a new problem that is the result of the shift from conventional to guerrilla warfare, this problem has been part of the entire operation: anybody remember Jessica Lynch and her transportation unit?

Ron Zook is apparently going to be a football coach in the Big Ten [Illinois]. I don’t know Mr. Zook and couldn’t care less about American football, but his story says a lot about the “adults of voting age” in Florida. Mr. Zook had a contract to coach at the University of Florida, but after a disappointing season in which his team only won 7 of 11 games and only received an invitation for the Peach Bowl, Florida decided he had to go, even though it meant paying him $350K+/year for the remaining term of his contract.

These are the same people who voted to re-elect a man to head the nation that has had a dismal four-year term and no major wins against any opponent.

But then again the coach of the Florida Gators receives a compensation package worth five times as much as the President of the United States, so you have to take into consideration the relative importance of the job to the people of Florida.

Happy Chanukah to my Jewish friends. I miss the latkes and jelly doughnuts my roommates received for the holiday at college. [Their grandmothers were afraid they wouldn’t celebrate or couldn’t get “real” food at that terrible Baptist university.] It was a great break.

[Note: Colgate University was founded by one of my distant relatives, among others, to train American Baptist ministers. Chapel attendance was required, even if you weren’t Baptist, but it was primarily a liberal arts institution. All three of my roommates were Jewish.]

a date that will live in infamy…

Thus America was pulled into World War II. Today 20 survivors of that attack are just down the road attending a memorial service at the Museum of Naval Aviation on NAS Pensacola to honor the sacrifice of those killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor 63 years ago.

Kevin Drum needs to start Catblogging again to harmonize his thought processes before commenting on an article by Peter Beinart and the liberal problem with terrorism.

As near as I have been able to tell liberals don’t like terrorism. I would venture to say that your average liberal has a general aversion to all types and kinds of violence. For some, their dislike of violence leads them to pacifism, which rejects any war.

Liberals could adopt the view of the Republican Party towards Communism in the 20th Century, when they called Communists nasty names but undermined any attempt at taking real action. Hold hearings and destroy innocent people with innuendo, but actually do something that didn’t involve thugs and payoffs, not a chance.

I think all liberals might get behind a movement to call Osama bin Laden nasty names, but allow him to roam free – except that’s Bush’s program.

I think the war against Afghanistan was the right thing to do. I think it would have been the right thing to do when Bill Clinton wanted to do it, but couldn’t because of the Republicans in Congress. I think it would have been the right things to do when it was determined that bin Laden was behind the attack on the USS Cole. The reality is that it took the death of thousands of Americans to get the Republicans off their tired butts and finally take action.

I think that an attack on the enclave of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Kurdish area of Iraq prior to this stupid war would have been the right thing to do any of the three times it was suggested. Instead, with the Republicans in charge, nothing happened.

Why should liberals waste any brain cells telling people how to combat terrorism when the voters in the US re-elect those who have proved beyond doubt that they don’t have a clue: the Republicans were in charge on September 11th, 2001 and the voters have rewarded them for their incompetence. Not one individual has been penalized for that catastrophic failure, and the only person who has rendered a meaningful apology for the failure was a holdover from the Democratic administration.

For the record: both communism and fascism were state-sponsored, while Islamic terrorism has no territorial base. Conventional military tactics and weapons can be quite useful in combating state-sponsored terrorism – you attack the base.

There is no shortcut for dealing with the distributed nature of Islamic terrorism: you have to pick up a thread and follow it back to its origin. This is not something you can do from a cockpit or a tank turret; this is not a military mission. This is best accomplished by those who are trained for it: detectives and spies.

Here’s an analogy that bloggers should be able to understand: state-sponsored terrorism is like those who use Blogspot: if the Blogspot server is taken down everyone who uses it is silent. Al-Qaeda is like the independent bloggers, you have to locate individual servers by backtracking on the ‘Net and even then they can evade you with mirror sites.

People’s Republic of Seabrook is hosting the 37th edition of the Carnival of the Cats, titled: Carnivale de los Gatos.

Details for entries are at the main site.

I had to pick up some things yesterday and noticed in several stores that they have started using “made for Muzak” versions of Christmas music rather than commercial versions.

I have no doubt that someone got a promotion for this cost-saving idea of avoiding royalties to recognizable artists, but if you are going to penny-pinch why not consider recordings from your local music programs. I’m sure that any small [tax deductible] donation would be appreciated by these under-funded efforts, the participants would be flattered by the exposure, the local community would laud the store’s civic-mindedness, and there might actually be some spirit injected into the effort.

I feel certain that there is a college fine arts program in the area that would be happy to use their facilities to generate the media necessary for the store’s equipment, as there is always a grad student lurking about who needs something to “plump up” their resumé. It could also provide another item for the impoverished music departments to hawk at their fund-raisers, a Christmas CD.

Microsoft has announced it’s new web log service: Spaces, and the devil is in the details.

The ever vigilant nose of the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, Steve Bates, detects the all too common Bellevue bend in what sounded like a straight forward proposition. Microsoft has server space and wants to increase traffic and ad revenue so it parcels out space to people who want to express themselves. Blogging is a growing phenomenon on the Internet, and MS wants a piece of it, to ensure its continuing dominance in all things relating to computing.

Having dealt with Microsoft since the days of Mbasic and Z-80 cards for Apple ][‘s I felt I knew the Microsoft Version 1.0 drill: sort of worthwhile software that would be debugged by early adopters at no cost to the company and a result that was vaguely usable and loaded down with features no one could ever imagine using in real life after their entry into high school.

I anticipated tie ins to other MS products and services, probably some really annoying help function that interfered with actually using the product, and a result that would only really look right in Internet Explorer

While all that may be true, what I didn’t foresee were the terms concerning content. Steve lays it out: censorship and a loss of copyrights.

It’s not simply that they can reject your posts, nor that they will have the right to use your work without paying you, they also have the right to edit your work under their terms of use. This sounds a lot like intellectual sharecropping: you do the work and “Massa William” makes the money.

Sorry, Bill. I wouldn’t work for you if you paid me, so I certainly won’t do it for free.

“In every age the common interpretation of the world of things is by some scheme of unchallenged and unsuspected presuppositions; and the mind of every individual, however little he may think himself in sympathy with his contemporaries, is not an insulated compartment, but more like a pool in a continuous medium — the circumambient atmosphere of his time and place.”

F. M. Cornford Foreword of Thucydides Mythistoricus

This was an amazing insight for me personally when I stumbled across it in research on a paper regarding heroes in literature. This is a truth: if you are a rebel, what you oppose is determined by your time and place.

We are all biased, but if we recognize the existence of the bias we can adjust for it when looking for the truth. Don’t judge history by modern standards; judge it by its own standards.

This concept is vital in the intelligence field. You must see your opponent as he sees himself to understand what he may do. What is insane for you; may be eminently reasonable according to his “circumambient atmosphere”.

At its root the word privilege means one’s own law. People of privilege don’t believe that they are required to live by the laws that are in place for common people. Their world doesn’t include a concern for those outside their class.

While most think of money when discussing privilege, expand the view to include a belief system. If you believe that you are one of the select, why concern yourself with the views of those who are not?

What they say can only be understood from within their frame of reference and they are making no effort to understand, nor communicate with anyone who refuses to accept their weltansicht. The burden is for the outsiders to craft their speech using the terms and definitions of the privileged, as that is the only assurance that any communication takes place. You don’t have to accept the views of the privileged, but you have to understand them.

Friday Cat Blogging [^tm Kevin Drum]

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Oh, look, it’s a picture of Granny.

He must have fixed something, or that replacement for the printer you clogged with hair does tricks.

She must have killed something recently because she looks kind of relaxed in her tree.

Come on, get off your tired butt and get up here!

I don’t think he’s going to like this, and I don’t see why you need me.

Look, he’s busy with something outside and I want to finish before he gets back. I need you to control the black rat.

Mouse, he calls it a mouse.

I know about mice. I have chased mice all my life. I have eaten mice. That is not a mouse!

The only mouse you ever ate was that one Granny hauled in after we refused to go near the dove Mom caught, and you didn’t even eat as much as I did.

No one has ever eaten as much as you do! Now let’s get going!

Okay, okay…no need to get excited…geesh. What are we doing?

We are catblogging.

Why?

It’s traditional. We are cats. This is a blog. Ergo, there must be catblogging.

Where did you learn about this? I don’t remember Mom or Granny talking about catblogging. Actually, I don’t remember Granny talk about anything that didn’t involve disemboweling. Granny really liked blood and guts.

You’re a tom, you don’t think they’d talk about important things with you. There’s only one thing toms think about, and you were tutored before that became a problem.

Let’s not get into that. That hurt. Nobody said education was going to be that painful.

Stop complaining and get up here so we can blog.

Ooof…Ouch! It’s a lot easier when he’s here to keep the chair from spinning…Okay, now what?

We go out to Giggle…urr…Google and put in cat and blog…Okay, now hit the button…the other button you idiot!

No need to shout. This rat is slippery and you didn’t say which button. It’s not like there’s an ickron…uhm…symbol saying this is the button.

Bring the arrow down and hit the button on the first one, if it isn’t too difficult…hmm…try the next one…next…next. Hey, they don’t let the cats say anything, it’s just pictures, and some of them aren’t even cats, that one looked like a weasel. What’s with all of the basset hounds?

Continue…what’s this? It’s a Labrador and he’s blogging and sounds like a Republican! We should sue for misrepresentation.

I don’t think it’s nice to start frivolous law suits…I mean the courts have important things to do…

Keep it up, and I’ll tell him you’re a Republican.

Hey, that’s not something you should say, even joking. So now what do we do? You don’t think he’s going to start with the camera again? What a pain, you’re just getting to sleep and he blinds you with the flash.

He can’t do it. He needs the equipment you knocked off the desk two years ago, after the last bout with the camera…unless he’s planning to get another…uhh…scanner, that’s what you broke.

Well, he should have known better than to put it in the best sun in the room.

I had hopes of getting something organized, but we’ll have to wait until those other cats wake up to the possibilities. Let’s shut it down. Stop! What did you hit?

I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.

Oh, well, no harm done…probably. If there’s a problem, it’s your fault.

Hey, this was your idea. Why is it my fault?

Because you’re not the brightest light on the ferris wheel, and humans tend to excuse the mistakes of the stupid. Besides, I’ve already got him conditioned to think every disaster is your fault. Now hit the blue button on the box…

A second panblogic¹ theme today is the refusal by CBS, among others, to air an advertisement by the United Church of Christ because it is purportedly in conflict with the intention of some people to pass a Constitutional amendment banning people of the same sex from having and enjoying the benefits of partnership agreements.

Aside: Why is it whenever politicians want to limit somebody’s rights, they claim they are protecting children and/or families? Unless politicians have found another way of doing it, every human being was at some point a child, and every human being is the member of a family. That’s the way it works.

I was drawn specifically to the thinking of John McKay at archy, probably because we are both old enough to remember when CBS was worth watching.

CBS was for years the number one network for broadcast journalism with people like: Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevaried, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Daniel Schorr, and Walter Cronkite. Most of the news features that you see today were first created on CBS, and some of those represent the best of American television. They have sold out and that fall certainly qualifies as a tragedy based on the heights they once occupied.

[1] Pan-blog-ic (pan bloj ik) adjective – prevalent throughout the blogging community. [I coined the word in the “Words” entry just below.]

Merriam-Webster has a list up of the “Top Ten Words of the Year” and since blog sits on the top of the list, blogtopia [^tm skippy, another marauding marsupial] has exploded with comments. The patron of Friday Cat Blogging found it via Talk Left, the Beeb has an article [Oxford dictionary wonks added the word last year], Steve Gilliard uses it to tee off on heir presumptive to Tom Browkaw, Brian Williams, and so a topic spreads like a panblogic virus.

I have a personal fondness for number ten: defenestration, throwing something [usually a person] out a window. This was a favorite manner of dealing with people who disagreed with your religious views during the Reformation. The forces of the Catholic Queen Mother of France, Catherine de Medici, used defenestration to eliminate approximately 13,000 Huguenots on August 24th, 1572, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

Actually I find the practice a bit troubling. When you’re pitching Protestants out of the fourth floor windows, how can you be sure there aren’t nuns walking by on the street below? Would you called it a miracle if a Protestant’s life was spared from imminent termination by the intervention of the body of a passing Priest whose robes cushioned the descent to the cobblestones. If the Priest died and the Protestant didn’t, would those who ejected the Protestant receive praise for their intent or penance for the result? Troubling questions indeed.

It is similar to the problem of Witch discovery. The concept had merit: good Christians had souls, souls must have weight, ergo Christians with souls must weigh more than Witches who had no souls [having sold them to Satan]. It was well known that heavy objects sank in water, while light objected floated. This leads to the water test: if a person sinks, they have a soul; if they don’t sink, they must be a Witch without a soul. Some scientific method there, but a rather glaring philosophical problem: no one survives the test.

They could, of course, be relying on the counsel of Arnaud-Amaury, Papal legate to the Catholic forces at the siege of Bézier, who had the task of finding approximately 200 heretics in a town of between 10,000 and 20,000 Catholics. When the town fell on 22 July 1209, he supposedly said: “Kill them all! G-d will recognize His own!” [actually being abbé de Cîteaux, and French, he probably said something like “Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens!”]

Edit to correct who Brian Williams replaced. Thanks, Michael.