Broken promise

Where is that year of Africa? I don't see any debt relief yet.

More holiday movieblogging

Just got back from Jarhead at the cheap theatre. Holy crap.

Reminded me of Band of Brothers somewhat, with all the waiting, all the nothing. Also a wee bit of Apocalypse Now.

I wonder why American culture doesn't have any real system for honoring combatants. The end of the film presents the post-war characters as entering a sort of re-assimilation into the general society that mirrors my own imagining of what a returning soldier must be faced with. It seemed so very abrupt. I wonder if the expectation of instant integration arises from our old notion of the citizen soldier, of the ready conversion of our nation's people between civilian and military. This would make more sense if everyone served, which we clearly don't. I wonder too if the expected resumption of ordinary life comes from society's lack of understanding of what it is to be a soldier, of what it means to live through combat. It seems to me that we give little to no attention to the lives of those we've sent to Iraq in our names, and it's therefore not surprising that we don't pay much attention to them when they return. But isn't that weird? How many other cultures have placed so little value on the returned warrior?

Perhaps the neocons have finally succeeded in creating their perfect, politically acceptable war, one which the American public can forget and passively permit. But this sort of war robs those who sacrifice for us the dignified recognition of and long-term repayment for that gift. To me, that seems like an unacceptable price for easy war-making, one with more serious and lasting ramifications than even the immediate loss of life involved.

Movement building

I wonder if the largely successful New York City transit strike will be helpful in reversing the trend of decreasing unionization, or whether it just represents a short reprieve in organized labor's continued decline. Apparently they won on almost everything, which is good considering that the entire media establishment had sided with the MTA and Mayor Bloomberg.

Lies, damn lies, and 64 percent

Just because 64 percent of Americans say that the NSA should be able to monitor phone calls between suspected foreign terrorists and people in the United States does not mean that those respondents approve of breaking the law to do so. Kaus says some more at the Huffington Post.

Southern strategery

Much is being made in the blogosphere about Novak's recent statement regarding Trent Lott's potential retirement:

When George W. stood aside while Trent Lott was tossed out, I wrote on Dec. 23, 2002, that the secret liberal theme behind his defenestration was that "the GOP's Southern base, the bedrock of its national election victories, is an illegitimate legacy from racist Dixiecrats.

Now, three years later, that bedrock may be eroding.

It's that last part that has everyone excited. I think it's too soon to start partying, but it seems there has been some theorizing about this potential power shift for some time. Digby has a most interesting piece quoted - go read it.

Syriana

On a belated note, go see it if you haven't. Worth the price of theatre admission, whatever your exorbitant market demands.

Thoughts on wiretaps

I haven't got much, aside from some simmering outrage at the right-wing attempts to re-brand president Bush's lawbreaking as patriotic defense of the country. What is this country beyond its principles, I ask? Because he sure isn't protecting those. Via mcjoan at Kos, Eugene Robinson:

The reason we don't do these absurd things, of course, is that we see a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. That bright line is the law, drawn by Congress and regularly surveyed by the judiciary. It can be shifted, but the president has no right to shift it on his own authority. His constitutional war powers give him wide latitude, but those powers are not unlimited.

Maybe the administration believe in the sort of defense of America as espoused by some characters in Syriana, that we ought to sustain at any cost the American lifestyle. I think that's a pretty base view of what this nation is, that to equate America with unfettered consumption is to make a mockery of the freedoms people have always come here to find. We shouldn't sacrifice something so precious as privacy for the kind of security Bush has in mind.

Christmas failed

Looks like the market isn't doing so well, despite the recent capitalism extravaganza. Another reason we should privatize social security!

Christmas catblogging

Snippy McGee

Rough quotes from today's Bush press conference:

"Democracies don't war, democracies are peaceful countries."

Reeaally? Our country isn't making war? Or maybe we're not a democracy anymore...

Actually, Bush is just quoting from the democratic peace theory, which is basically the idea that the world would be all peachy if everyone elected their leaders, and we are therefore justified in doing whatever is necessary to bring that about. Well, that seems to be the Bush administration take on it at least. Problem is, the whole theory, as I learned in intro political science three years ago, has been rather debunked. Guess nonworking theories still function as justification within the White House, though.

"We're guarding your civil liberties ... by checking up on these programs regularly."

Hmm. A branch of the government checking itself. That sounds plausible. Bit curious that NASA's in charge of that, but I guess physicists are a fairly fastidious lot.

"I hope you can feel my passion about the patriot act"

Because it is soooo hot - want to touch the heiny.

I just loved the joke about his no-two-part-questions rule being an executive order not subject to congressional oversight, by the way. Because there's nothing funnier than the loss of my civil liberties and the destruction of the constitution.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead

No more Internet Explorer for Mac.

It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.

And that's from Microsoft.

Thoughts on illegal acts by President Bush

Bush, via Atrios:

Bush said in his address that it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al- Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

I find it difficult to believe that the illegal wiretaps were necessary if that's true. How difficult is it to get a warrant for someone with a "clear link" to terrorism? If the link is really that clear, I suspect there are very few magistrates who would block such a move, barring a vast conspiracy by the terrorists to infiltrate our justice system. The only likely motivations I can think of for President Bush's 30 authorizations of illegal searching are that (a) the administration fears a terrorist infiltration like the one just mentioned and feels that the system can't be trusted (and so many of the wiretaps were in fact targeting magistrates and court officials), or (b) people in the white house feel they should be able to do whatever the hell they want. The first seems pretty far-fethced to me.

Bob Barr makes some good points about the second attitude:

BARR: Well, the fact of the matter is that the Constitution is the Constitution, and I took an oath to abide by it. My good friend, my former colleague, Dana Rohrabacher, did and the president did. And I don't really care very much whether or not it can be justified based on some hypothetical. The fact of the matter is that, if you have any government official who deliberately orders that federal law be violated despite the best of motives, that certainly ought to be of concern to us.

He's damn right it out to be of concern. Rule of Law may be outmoded in the eyes of certain of those among the administration, but it's the foundation of our political power as citizens, and whenever it's challenged we owe it to ourselves to react swiftly and with vengeance.

Also, Dana Rohrabacher is a moron:

BARR: And the Constitution be damned, Dana?

ROHRABACHER: Well, I'll tell you something, if a nuclear weapon goes off in Washington, DC, or New York or Los Angeles, it'll burn the Constitution as it does. So I'm very happy we have a president that's going to wiretap people's communication with people overseas to make sure that they're not plotting to blow up one of our cities.

Yes, because the Constitution only matters as long as a physical copy of it is not destroyed, and like a 19th-century army who's lost its flag, we'll all give up democracy and surrender to the terrorists over a piece of paper getting ripped up. Actually, the only way to destroy the Constitution is to ignore it - our freedom exists only so long as we collectively believe in it, so every time we praise a president for breaking the law, we actively undermine our freedom. We could have a billion copies of the Constitution, and they'd just be toilet paper if everyone felt as Rohrabacher does.

AIDS maps

I love maps. I can spend hours looking at a particularly interesting representation of just about any geographical area, which is why Google Earth is really dangerous.

I also love charts - a good graphical depiction of data can really get me thinking.

I really love it when the two are combined, especially in the form of a cartogram, a re-proportioned map. There were a lot around showing the US by population after the 2004 election debacle, a sort of cathartic "we're not that tiny" scream by spatial-visualization-inclined Democrats.

I finally got around to making some of my own; here's my first set, comparing wealth to AIDS in the world:





Yes it's too late, no this isn't healthy. But when depressed, I get very creative.

Finals

OK, no updates until Thursday night, hopefully.

Grey Tuesday

Wondering what's going on here? Just a little protest on teh internets. From BoingBoing:

Today is Dean Grey Tuesday, a net-wide day of protest over Warner Brothers attempt to censor a stupendous noncommercial mashup album called American Edit that remixes Green Day's album American Idiot.

The album really is stupendous, and highly boingboing - I've noticed old favorites like George Bush Doesn't Like Black People and I am the Doctor in there. It's worth downloading on musical merit alone. But the larger issue here, the freedom of expression through remixing other artists' works, makes downloading important.

Promise chain delivery

SGAC had a good day yesterday, with a successful delivery of the promise chain to Senator Frist's office, despite exceedingly poor turnout. CNN and Roll Call camera-people joined the demonstrators in the office until they were told to leave, at which point they filmed from immediately outside the glass doors of the office.

Drug Dealers

Keep a Child Alive has an interesting site up about their donation-supported generic pharmaceutical purchasing campaign. The political issue is stated well:

To protect their own profits, American pharmaceutical companies stand in the way of affordable generic AIDS drugs

But the goodness kind of ends there, and the thrust of KaCA's Drug Dealer campaign seems to be the sort of retail activism that gives participants the impression that they're acting to save lives, while they in fact fail to effect the sort of systemic changes which are necessary to end the AIDS pandemic. And I could buy tons of Drug Dealer t-shirts without having anything near the impact that Bill Gates' tax dollars would. Individual donations will not end AIDS, political change will.

Philanthropy

In the Post:

Bill and Melinda Gates are talking about their favorite subject: the world's biggest challenge and what can be done.

The challenge is global health inequity.

Worth reading.

What global warming?

Surprise, surprise:

Despite the Bush administration's adamant resistance, nearly every industrialized nation agreed early Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.

Who would've guessed the Bush administration would continue to be stupid on the environment? At least everyone else seems do be doing the right thing...

You forgot Poland

Well you did, didn't you? Well, they won't let Bush; apparently, all that military support comes at a price.

Geek Break

Macrumors is running a story citing speculation that Apple may drop firewire in some computers. Um, that would be a bad idea (cough, video cameras, cough).

Ugh

The internets are slow as balls here - and by balls I mean dial-up.

Metro fares not increasing?

Thankfully, Metro managers have recommended a budget whereby there will be no hike in fares, as cost increases will be offset by larger local government subsidies instead. This alone is good news, but is made sweeter by the addition of 72 rail cars and considerable dedication to increasing Metrobus reliability. However, there are yet important proposed reforms that remain unfunded, such as increased service during some weekends and holidays, and pay raises for janitorial staff. I look forward to the public hearings in the spring.

Other university labor disputes

GW pro-labor folks should really talk to the grad students up at NYU, who just got screwed. Atrios gets it right:

Certainly there are understandable reasons why administration and faculty would be a nervous about such a thing, though the fact that they often are demonstrates just how "liberal" academia can be sometimes. Nonetheless the arguments in the end boiled down to "how dare our employees expect that we treat them like employees instead of indentured servants!" which is basically what the lofty goal of grad students unions is. Not all faculty treated grad students like that, of course, but there wasn't much of a mechanism in place to prevent it from happening either.

This sounds a lot like the core argument in GW's fight over adjunct faculty.

Why variable music download prices would suck

Adam Penenberg has an interesting piece over at Slate about online music sales models. He's right to criticize the record-industry plan of arbitrarily charging more for hits than less popular songs (sure, cell phone users may be willing to pay $3 for a ring-tone, but they don't really buy a whole lot of those, and cell phone users are not a good representative sample of the population). The proposed song stock market approach has some serious issues, though.

Firstly, operating a market that has only demand (as the supply of downloadable songs is effectively infinite, there being no physical good changing hands) is a bit of an unprecedented oddity, and might be unpredictable. Before any grand experiment is undertaken in such a huge industry, there ought to be real study of fictitious markets like those in Everquest and other online gaming communities.

Penenberg touches on the more critical problem in his last paragraph - legal online music sales are only one component of a larger music economy, one that includes peer-to-peer file sharing. Consumers have shown themselves to be not entirely adverse to resorting to such methods of acquiring music in the face of prices deemed to be too high, and so would likely return to whatever network they used before if the fledgling legal music sources started charging even higher prices. Hits are, after all, of a fairly peculiar nature. Some social phenomenon brings a song to the forefront, and many sales are generated by a must-have-it-now attitude within some population. If, under the market model, the cost of a song takes off, these people will not wait for the price to retreat - they'll find the song somewhere else. That's a sale of the song that will be lost forever. In the long run, it seems that it would be preferable to be less immediately greedy and get everyone to buy the song.

The final question I have about the proposal is how anyone makes money off of less popular songs with this model. Under the current iTunes system, with all songs priced the same, success in the music business would be tied directly and linearly to total sales volume. The market approach would seem to punish small-time artists for whom the impact on profit per song is proportionately much higher than for the superstars, who'd seem to make even more money. The genious of the iTunes way is that it supports a long-tail content paradigm, whereas the variable-price method undermines its effectiveness in supporting small fish.

I see a solution to this last bit, though - if there are to be variable market-driven prices, the only component that should vary should be the proportion that goes to the record labels. They're the ones who expend the extra costs and risks of promoting musicians to superstardom, and I'd be satisfied if they reaped their bloody rewards for that. Musicians, meanwhile, should get paid per song, such that while popularity does benefit a musician, the marketing failures don't doom an artist to a pittance compared with better-marketed crap. As far as I can see, this would satisfy everyone on the content-providers' side. As to customers, I'm not big into pop, so I'll be happy to pay less for my eclectic songs, especially with the knowledge that I'm not getting a deal by screwing the artist. Pop fans will end up stealing a lot of music, though, which will lead to more industry hand-wringing and ill-informed attempts to control content, and the whole thing will fall apart. That would suck, since it actually works now. What was that about "if it ain't broke....?" Oh, right.

The war on christmas

This (via Atrios) is hilarious:

“Christian conservatives complain nonstop about the ‘War on Christmas,’ but there really isn’t any such war,” said Beyond Belief Media president Brian Flemming , a former fundamentalist Christian who is now an atheist activist. “So we have decided to wage one, to demonstrate what it would look like if Jesus’ birthday were truly attacked.”

Check out their ad and trailer.

Sequel

Turns out all the plaques to the fallen are wrong - this isn't Gulf War II. Howard Dean is probably right that we're repeating mistakes of Vietnam, namely that we've engaged ourselves in an unwinnable war against insurgency and seek to claim victory by handing authority over to an ill-prepared army vastly outmatched by its adversaries. This isn't anything new. Nor is Bush's hollow defense:

"Of course, there will be debate, and of course, there will be some pessimists and some people playing politics with the issue," he said. "But, by far, the vast majority of the people in this country stand squarely with the men and women who wear the nation's uniform."

Squarely with? On what planet? Behind is barely justifiable rhetorically, but with? I'm not certain I've seen any sign of the kind of sacrifice our troops are making lived out here at home. Neither consumers at large nor our government appear to be tightening belts for the war effort. I see no acknowledgment that we're being asked to give up our brothers' and sisters' lives. We live disassociated from the War, and the only component necessary to the act of "support" of the troops seems to be a failing to exhibit dissent. Mere silent compliance is not a war effort, it's political disengagement. We owe those we've sent into harm's way more than that, more than empty rhetoric, more than dedication without planning. We owe them the kind of realistic consideration as proffered by Dean.

Troubling

I joined the EFF and ACLU today. If this is any indication of what school administrations want to do, all student bloggers ought to:

Anybody with any “blog sophistication” won’t take statements on student blogs very seriously. But what if you are a university administrator who knows little about blogs and is very thin-skinned about anybody saying anything that might in any way reflect badly on your program or students or faculty?

You might go ballistic over a student blog.

This is exactly what happened when Marquette Dental School Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Denis Lynch learned of a student blog that made one negative comment about a professor (who was not named), a negative comment about 25% of the year-two dental school class (with nobody named) and talked about going out on a few occasions and drinking too much.

According to a pretty draconian letter, the student was suspended, his scholarship was revoked, he'll be forced to make up a semester at his own, additional expense, and he'll have to apologize publicly. Personally, I'd leave any school run by such imbeciles as would require this, but I understand if he goes through with it anyway - hard to change your entire life plan based on a blog. Sad that the University can't seem to see it that way.

Hatchet Job

OK, I'm more and more convinced that Tyler Hahn is satire - no one could actually be this dumb:

As we enter into the Christmas season, so do we again inevitably enter into our annual battle against the godless secular left. Each and every Christmas season, the stories of anti-Christmas (more broadly, anti-Christian) attacks grow more absurd.

In a widely underreported debacle, Wal-Mart's true colors (primarily Communist Red), have begun to show through.

First things first - there is no War on Christmas, unless you count the one being waged inside Bill O'Reilly's head. Second, Wal-Mart's communist? Um kay.

Wal-Mart is, in fact, one of the most purely capitalistic institutions on the planet, known for sacrificing its own employee's well-being for the sake of profit (though maybe Wal-Mart's negligence is actually a nod to the need for a welfare state, as that's what underpaid employees must rely upon for healthcare?) No, Sam's super-conglomerate-club is not communist. Godless, perhaps, but that's different. That it's so capitalist actually leads to the conclusion that "happy holidays" is probably the most profitable way for Wal-Mart to approach the winter shopping season. If "Merry Christmas" made more money, they'd use it.

I'll spare you a thorough fisking of Hahn's latest atrocity, and leave you with this thought:

Serious Christians ought to be thankful that the materialist binge that is holiday shopping is being divorced rhetorically from the holiday celebrating the birth of Christ, as the cognitive dissonance this has caused has certainly led to a lot of misunderstanding of the teachings of Christ. Anyone who cares about christianity should see the commercialization of its second most important holiday as having been a bad thing, and the secularization of shopping as, conversely, a good thing.

The real threat to Christmas comes from those who want to confuse it with buying stuff.


... can't resist correcting Hahn on one more bit:

Even the United States Postal Service, which has for years produced stamps with beautiful and historic paintings of Madonna and Child, this year halted production of "religious stamps" in favor of pictures of "holiday cookies."

This claim has been dealt with:

"It's absolutely not true," said Diana Svoboda, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh district. Next year's printing will include a new Madonna and the price stamped over her left shoulder will explain why a new one wasn't printed this year: Rates are going up to 39 cents per letter Jan. 8.

Is Hahn a moron, ideologue or work of satire? Hard to tell.

DeLay still out

The major significance of today's court action upholding the indictment of Delay is that he's not eligible to be the House Majority Leader so long as he's under indictment. This is a big defeat for DeLay, even if it does look like he's won something.

Geek Break

OK, so that's pretty much been all this is recently. Nonetheless, I must brag:



Frontrow runs better than I'd ever have expected, even on my increasingly dated powerbook. Go Apple.

Have a Mac? Try this. Don't have Mac? Try this.

The system is broken

Alito is the wrong person for the Supreme Court - he just doesn't have the legal scruples to defend our liberty, as demonstrated by his justification of police shooting an unarmed, teenage robber. From Armando:

Alito wrote that he saw no constitutional problem with a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed teenager who was fleeing after a $10 home burglary.

"I think the shooting [in this case] can be justified as reasonable," Alito wrote in a 1984 memo to Justice Department officials. Because the officer could not know for sure why a suspect was fleeing, the courts should not set a rule forbidding the use of deadly force, he said.

"I do not think the Constitution provides an answer to the officer's dilemma," Alito advised. A year later, however, the Supreme Court used the same case to set a firm national rule against the routine use of "deadly force" against fleeing suspects who pose no danger. "It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape," wrote Justice Byron White for a 6-3 majority in Tennessee vs. Garner. "Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so."

I agree that due process is an issue here. That Alito would dare argue that an innocent person (for a suspect is by definition not yet proven guilty) may be shot without a clear, immediate safety risk is startling, and is the kind of attitude that I think should disqualify one from serving on one of our most important line of defense against executive despotism. However, we do not currently have a system of ensuring that nominees to the Supreme Court are properly vetted, as what has arisen is almost purely a political game. Advise and consent must be reworked so that dangerous candidates such as Alito appears to be may be examined, not rubber stamped.

Flock/Flickr Test

Trying out some other toys...

Flock Test

Well, I decided to check out the Flock developer trial, after seeing some fun possibilities on Flickr. It's working out so far, though it's obviously not ready for Beta yet. The native editor looks like it'll be nice, but I sure do miss having spellcheck as I type, which even the blogger web form has access to through Safari.

technorati tags: Flock

Idiots

The War on Christmas is back - with tons of idiot elves to help good old Santa Oreilly

Wrathful Dispersionism

Satire is a wonderful thing, especially when turned on nonsensically popular fallacies:

Linguists here in Canada have been following closely, with a mixture of amusement, bemusement, and, it must be admitted, a little trepidation, the deliberations of our neighbours to the south, who are currently considering, in a courtroom in Pennsylvania, whether "Wrathful Dispersion Theory," as it is called, should be taught in the public schools alongside evolutionary theories of historical linguistics. It is an emotionally charged question, for linguistics is widely and justifiably seen as the centrepiece of the high-school science curriculum—a hard science, but not a difficult one to do in the classroom; an area of study that teaches students the essentials of scientific reasoning, but that at the same time touches on the spiritual essence of what it means to be human, for it is of course language that separates us from our cousins the apes.

The opponents of Wrathful Dispersion maintain that it is really just Babelism, rechristened so that it might fly under the radar of those who insist that religion has no place in the state-funded classroom.

It really is worth reading it all, especially for the delicious satire of a satire one 'graph from the bottom.

Chrestomathy is my new favorite word, by the way.

DeLaymander

The problem with political appointees is that they tend to make decisions based on political considerations. The latest example comes from the justice department, where officials suppressed findings that the Texas redistricting plan was illegal:

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

It also shouldn't be surprising that the illegality of the redistricting was clear to the Republicans who designed it, but that they went with it anyway.

The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options.

But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress.

I hope this victory at any cost approach backfires. Stories like this haven't gone anywhere yet, though, and so far Republicans have been getting away with it.

GW SGAC in the Press

SGACer Kathy Wollner had a letter published in the Hatchet:

At GW, students pride themselves on being politically active and knowledgeable about world issues. But solely wearing bracelets and joining listservs does not constitute student activism. This day serves as a reminder to the world, to all of us, that we have promises to keep. Student activism can make a difference, but only with effort and commitment.

Rock on.

Also, a glowing article from the Daily Colonial, with a killer lead:

GW students are seeing red. They see other students baring red ribbons on their chest, 2,800 red balloons in University Yard, and a long red construction paper chain with hundreds of links. Red seems to have dominated the Foggy Bottom campus.

Stop, love, and blood. All red. All for today.

WAD

Well, all that blowing paid off - we had a rockin' World AIDS Day on the University Yard:



We were on the local news, but I don't have a link for that yet.

SGAC in the news

Poz Magazine online has a good article.

WAD insanity

World AIDS Day is here. For GW SGAC, that means blowing up 2400 like 2800 balloons. No, I'm not exaggerating.



And that's only a fraction.