Take Me to the River

The blended family and I are en route to Chicago for a baptism this weekend. Rachel has two sisters in town, and it looks like my little brother will be attending college there in the Fall. So I'm pleased to have more opportunities to visit, since Chicago intrigues me; the benefits of a big-big city, with a faint overlay of Midwest affability.

Baptism, for those who may not know, is a sacrament. I've had several discussions, both in phone and by Internet, about how the sacramental aspect of Catholicism is one of the key differences with other types of Christianity. To non-religious people they appear to be simply rituals, bits of theater and ceremony that are timed to coordinate with life's transitions (birth, coming of age, becoming a reproductive adult, etc.). Understood in the context of faith they are an avenue to experience divine grace at work in our lives.

But to a baby, the sacrament of baptism really consists of noise, color contrasts, and being jostled around, followed by some guy dumping water on your head - after which you usually express your displeasure, but everyone laughs because they think it's cute. An small element of a hazing ritual, maybe - which is unfair to a baby - but it's the way you get welcomed to the club.

The Downside of Uptime

[Please see 'note' at the end of this post.]

Technical folks often think that "just fixing it" is enough.

My webserver was hosed for the third morning in a row today. No response was made to the email I sent to support, and again, after a while, the service was restored. In the past I've been very pleased with my provider, VizaWeb - even recommended them to others.

Fixing it without further explanation works the first or second time. But if the problem is recurring, people tend to want answers, even if they are obscure and technical. If the "check engine" light appears randomly for a few seconds on my dashboard I will become paranoid. Eventually the mind invents it's own explanations, or attaches itself to random correlations.

So an internal monologue springs into existence: "Why does the light only seem to appear when I go around corners? Is that a shuddering? I feel certain I will die with my family in a fiery ball of wreckage because my engine desperately needs checking."

But the technical expert can offer explanations that are calming, even if they are implausible. "I ran a full diagnostic. It's just faulty wiring," the mechanic tells me at the dealership - even though he really has no clue. Or my hosting provider could have likewise informed me that Larry the server tech spilled his Wendy's Frosty all over a router while swapping out a RAID controller, and they've temporarily switched to a backup with less capacity.

Or whatever. Technical blather is permitted - but the narrative must include the key detail of real human beings making a reasonable effort. It helps take the chill out of the faceless void of late capitalism. And your customers will thank you.

NOTE: My web hosting company, Vizaweb, did finally respond. The explanation is technical, but it looks like some very intense SQL scripts were being run on the same box where my site is hosted - and I have been the last in line for an upgrade to a faster processor (a Xeon instead of a P4). Again, they have been a very impressive company until this incident, and I appreciate the response. By no means should anyone evaluate their service solely on the basis of the original web post ...

Endorsement for Labor

Tony Blair is telling the citizens of his country not to vote for him if they honestly believe he acted on bad faith and knowingly lied about any of the issues leading up to the war.

Shrewd politics. The message isn't explicitly about Iraq, or WMD, or intelligence. He's telling the British public he has such a high regard for honest principles that he's encouraging others to act on theirs, even if they disagree. It's the political equivalent of Progressive offering insurance rates of it's competitors even when they are lower.

Of course he's ahead at the polls, so it's easier to be magnanimous.

Here was a guy who argued passionately before parliament that one of the key reasons to invade Iraq was to send a clear message to current and potential dictators that international organizations like the United Nations really mean what they say - and, at the end of repeated attempts at peaceful settlement, are willing to follow-through on a course of action. What a radical idea! I couldn't believe it when I saw it during Commons Hour, and I remember it distinctly - in part because his overall speech was so brilliant and lucid compared to the meatcleaver syntax from W that I even called family all over the country and told them to flip on C-SPAN.

Ah, me. The notion of an international body (and a prime minister) that stands on principles. We do need more of Tony and those quaint, liberal ideas.

Non-Fiction Tuesday

The highlight of the rally last week to support public library funding was delivered by a seventh grader. She drew a collective gasp - then enthusiastic cheers - by asking why our state government would support casinos but not public libraries.

It's nice to see the kids actively engaged in civic issues, instead of taking up the habits of indifferent suburbanites - or professional complainers.

So today, for the second day in a row, I am on my lunch break at the downtown library, typing away on a screen shaped like a wavy trapezoid (which no amount of fiddling with the monitor will correct). To my left are three young men wearing pantyhose ghutras enjoying games on Macromedia Flash. To my right is a man, wet with perspiration, who is - from the stacks of paper and the glimpse I saw of his screen - trying to run an entire small business on eBay.

Sure the computers are popular. And sure this is downtown.

But the place is busy. I've seen people with GED and job training manuals, students with book stacks at the copiers, and study groups. I walked past what looked like a class field trip, and overheard what appeared to be an animated exchange between two old men (one white, one black, both wearing tube socks) debating the merits of Dean Koontz. And of course the customer service at the circulation desk left something to be desired, but what do you expect?

It can't be any worse then we're getting from Columbus. Which reminds me - I wonder if our state officials ever visit this place.

Parliament Funkadelic

NixGuy highlights a quote by John McCain which suggests the 'do unto others' principle should guide changes to parliamentary procedure in the filibuster debate. In other words, don't make any rules you wouldn't want to live with if your party was out of power. And Nix dings Spacetropic 'cause he knows I like the Arizona Maverick, which should be no surprise to anyone.

Okay ... bait taken! This time.

Obstructionism is a bitter comfort for those who got whipped at the ballot box. Filibusters were popular among Republicans in the congressional minority during the first two years of Clinton - as Powerline reminds us, perhaps inadvertently, as they rail against their hometown paper.

The context is important. These days our culture war has been taken to 'the next level' by episodes like Shaivo and the Massachusetts courts, and it's become clear that the final battle will come down in the judicial branch. To this struggle the Left comes armed with clever mutations of the equal protection clause, while the Right totes along a Bible. So the voters get to witness many noble ideas being bluntly and crassly wielded in partisan warfare.

I understand GOP frustration. The Dems claim to be using filibusters to blockonly a few appointees - but these also happen to be the 10% that would likely move to the supreme court, where the hotbutton cultural issues always end up, sooner or later.

But I'm confident that the American public - if they clearly understood the question - would much prefer that Frist and company did the politics necessary, working with conservative Democrats to scrape together 60 votes for a judicial confirmation - instead of hauling off and changing the rules. It's always easier to fight than persuade.

Craiglist in Space

eastbayexpress.com | SWM Seeking Alien Hottie | 2005-04-20

Spiritus Monday

My favorite expression of our cultural struggle with religion is Flannery O'Conner's 'Wise Blood'. As a Catholic, a literature aficionado, and a firm believer that irony, satire, and deep faith can indeed coexist - how could I ask for anything more in a novel?

The key character, Hazel Motes, is the perfect skewer of the orthodoxy that can animate secular people to the point of lunacy. And these days, reading the news, it's hard to tell who seems more self-righteous - the people attempting to insert more religion into public life, or the people trying to keep it out.

Today we learned that the first campaign stop for Senator Bill Frist in the run-up to winning the Republican nomination for 2008 was a rally sponsored by the Family Research Council. The connection between this religious organization and the rules governing parliamentary procedure is mysterious to me, but it's enough to get the usual suspects worked into a lather.

Frist's cozying up to the bible thumpers might be too much. But the Democrats should be careful. In their attempt to thwart perceived 'zealotry' of fundamentalists they could easily alienate the vast center of America, which has never lost it's more quiet faith.

And among us papists, circumstantial evidence suggests that attendance could be on the upswing - buoyed by not only the death of John Paul II; but also by the news of Pope Benedict's message of continued optimism - which will only be unexpected to those who bought into standard the media line about his callous conservatism.

Jungian Shadow Puppets

The food pyramid has been redesigned once again. Large sections of the population apparently still haven't heard that high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods are less healthy than vegetables, exercise, and common sense.

Along those same lines, the puppet-crazed hippies that produce 'Sesame Street' have decided to give Cookie Monster a new song. Instead of 'C is for cookie / That's good enough for me' (a sentiment that, while unhealthy, also seems like an ode to a simpler, less materialistic age) the Cookie Monster's refrain will be changed to: 'A cookie is a sometimes food'.

Thus our fuzzy blue friend with an eating disorder joins the ranks of other Gen-X cultural icons that have been emasculated by progressive busybodies through a campaign of gradualism.

Sure, childhood obesity is a problem. But they could have kept the song, and accomplished the same objective by highlighting the 'monstrous' side of food addiction. Show Cookie Monster breaking into houses for a couple of fig newtons, being brutalized by 'The Count' and his goons for not paying back a loan, or trading his dignity for nothing more than a few Pecan Sandies. I say put the horrific, existential 'monster' back into Cookie Monster - take us through the spiraling abyss at the heart of his dependency on baked goods - and I'm willing to bet the kids of America will gladly eat their vegetables.

Holy Roman Firewall

The pope has an email address. This isn't a joke. (Thanks, Wes.)

How long will it be before somebody invites him on Friendster?

I wonder if the Vatican is like other workplaces. I wonder if the staff begins to email each other on Friday afternoons, asking if there's going to be a happy hour, where they should go, and debating the pros and cons of inviting the big guy.

I do know there's a missed marketing opportunity for the Catholic church. St. Isidore, the patron Saint of the Internet would be the perfect icon (literally) for a Vatican-sponsored brand of SPAM and Adware protection software for the high-tech faithful. Imagine a little halo at the bottom of your screen that glows and emits a heavenly chorus sound each time a harmful message is blocked.

Gorillus Americanus Obesus

A couple of years ago my daughter and I were at the zoo, looking at the primate exhibit. All we could see was the male alpha, a heavy, grizzled gorilla who had installed himself in the best patch of shade, and was picking away with little interest at a pile of green bananas.

As we watched, a lady gorilla emerged from the scrub, took a spot immediately in front of the male, and in plain sight of the crowd assumed a very expressive body position. You can see the human equivalent in the nightclubs in Newport. I think the correct zoological term for it is 'presenting'.

Instantly there was a gasp from the crowd, and most of the parents clapped their hands over eyes of the smaller children, and steered them away towards the reptiles or the insects - animals that were less likely to require candid, on-the-spot explanations of the basic transactions of reproductive commerce. (Thankfully my daughter had already ran ahead to the next exhibit.)

But the male gorilla didn't even move. He was mashing the bananas between his big leathery hands, and seemed to be on the verge of almost falling asleep. Why bother? Why emerge from that zone of comfort? Eventually he disappeared into a door in the rock wall.

A parable maybe, for congressional Republicans, for Americans in a global market, or for anyone who is complacent with the status quo. Rivals in the wild might have made him stronger. But in his cage he was the uncontested king.

Apoligies to Mike Meckler for what is probably more botched Latin.

Theory of Negativity

Sometimes I wonder, why bother with a weblog?

People don't want any fruitful volley of ideas. The culture war is so bitterly polarized that only two types of things sell: Either ammunition for firmly stomping down the other side, or the comfort offered by like-minded ideologues. Provide anything different and you're suspect, the object of bewilderment, or possibly attack.

I toy with the idea of adding comments to Spacetropic, but inevitably my mind is changed by the mental droppings I see in the comment section of various weblogs. I see how many bloggers have a Greek chorus of commenters that scrape along behind, delivering some crass variation of "Me too!" to every utterance.

Or the commenters are prissy antagonists. They resemble the product of the most insular type of home schooling, when Mommy said everything about them was brilliant, and they never had to knock elbows and learn to get along with other kids.

For now I am watching and sometimes participating on some local websites - notably Wes Flinn's Walk-In-Brain, NixGuy, and 'The Nati'. The first two very different politically and in terms of editorial content, and the last deserves more publicity as a solid, positive take of Cincinnati news. They all seem like respectable people.

Rarely do I ramble, and rarely am I cynical. I just wonder if all of this jabbering and invective can't actually be focused around a more productive social purpose.

Up the Beach

Last night for about the 7th time I bought 'Nothing's Shocking'. Thanks to cassettes left on dashboards, klepto roommates, and various ex-girlfriends I have purchased this album across several years and formats. Now the album exists as .AAC files and DRM code on my hard drive, and we'll see if this time around it's permanent, or if I need to purchase the music again a few years from now in yet another format.

I wish I could have written a check to Perry Farrell and cut out the middleman. It's not like I don't appreciate it. His trickster/shaman rock odyssey kept music alive in the years before Nirvana. I have some great stories from that era not suitable for the general public.

If I had received the songs by file sharing I might have been subject to a new law about to be signed by the president - and pushed by the record industry and their willing accomplices in Congress - which could have me put in jail for up to three years. Nothing's shocking.

Pop Theology

Catholic faith, at it's essence, is the radical idea of unqualified compassion towards one another. The other elements of doctrine - from the sacraments to the encyclicals on life and economics - are tied together with a theology built on that moral bedrock.

To listen to the news today you would imagine that contraception or the ordination of women are the core articles of faith. And as expected, the pundits are in overdrive. I watched MSNBC last night, and at one point I was sure Pat Buchanan was going cuff Carl Bernstein on the head.

In the end, what will change? In America millions of cafeteria Catholics will continue to walk past the steam tray of sin for the frosted bon-bons of forgiveness, while the conservatives will utter solemn prayers on their behalf.

But if conservatives imagine Benedict won't pursue any reformation, they may want to reconsider. There's something about being elected to any position 'for life' that causes people to tilt in unexpected directions upon their ascendancy. Pope John Paul was one example, and some members of the current U.S. Supreme Court are another.

Fishermen and Dancers

Instantly there will be criticism and a wrongheaded overlay of conservative/liberal political polarities that actually do not apply to matters of theology, faith, and doctrine. I can already hear Chris Matthews and his braying, adenoidal rant, and his show doesn't even come on for several hours.

From the scraps of commentary I have heard today, Ratzinger played a key role in the Second Vatican Council in the early 60s, and was at the time considered a progressive. Keep in mind that celebrating mass in English (or any vernacular language) was an almost radical idea in those days. As some sections of the church marched towards the left on certain teachings Ratzinger has continued to occupy the same ground. So now he's a conservative.

To some, "progressive" means that anytime a change is made it should be viewed as a door being cracked open, and it's time to shove harder. Mass in the vernacular? Heck, why not rap the Mass? Or act it out with sock puppets?

It's this way of thinking that brought American Catholics the mesmerizingly awful phenomenon of liturgical dancing. (If we can sing, why not dance?) Imagine a bevy of heavy-set middle aged women gliding down the aisles of church, flailing their arms and twirling about with streamers. They're certainly not the type of dancers that help focus the mind on the importance of the sacraments. Nor do they make Daddy want to give money.

I digress. In any event - welcome Benedict XVI. Today those of us that are Catholic have reason to celebrate. But challenges lie ahead.

Pope Smoke Boogie

I'll bet they're playing Jenga. Or maybe filling out 'Mad Libs'. Or ordering Rome's best pizza and having a Hong Kong action movie marathon. I'll bet JPII wrote a name down before he passed away, and they're dragging it out to make the enclave seem plausible.

In any event, I'm glad they didn't decide in one day. Especially here in America, lately, we expect our elections to be long and arduous, and preferably filled with all sorts of acrimony and false accusations. Given the weighty issues at stake (the future of Catholicism in the modern world, no less!) - it's entertaining to imagine Cardinal Dias of India holding Cardinal Danneels from Netherlands in a headlock, glasses askew, black robes fluttering everywhere, and cries of "break it up" -- while the Michelangelo-painted figures of the Sistine Chapel look on, aghast.

On a more serious note, in an (unlinkable) article in the WSJ today a commentator pointed out that the wants and needs of the 'liberal' side of the Catholic Church are unlikely to gain any traction in the new papacy. Half the church is third world, and decidedly conservative on many theological issues. Globalization, economic justice - yes. But don't expect liberalization on issues like contraception or lady priests.

As to the overall notion of a pope from the third world - and at the risk of sounding rarely and overtly religious - the Christ I know is decidedly and unequivocally on the side of the poor. Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers ...

UPDATE: Get pope news in realtime with MSNBC's Smoke Cam.

A20: Rally for Public Libraries

Some civic needs can only be met by the government. And one of the best examples can be found in our public libraries, which are currently in danger of being closed, or severely cut in Cincinnati. And the city branches are first on the chopping block.

This might appear to make sense, given the growth in the suburbs. But who needs those books more - the kid from a crime-ridden neighborhood or the kid from subdevelopment with a middle class family? The answer is actually both. We shouldn't have to choose. The social pathologies are different - gangs, maybe, versus Harris/Klebold suburban ennui - but books and education are a part of the same antidote in both instances. In our media age we need literacy more than ever. Go cut something else, or take more of my taxes.

If you work downtown, or if you're anywhere near the area, stop by Fountain Square on April 20th at 1:00 to rally in support of public libraries. I'll be there.

April Saturday

Maybe ten times a year it happens in Cincinnati, the temperature in the 70s, without humidity, and skies that are blue and clear. I hope everybody got outside today - and I hear it was beautiful all over the eastern part of America.

For my part I took advantage of my city neighborhood, and walked down the street, passing folks on their front lawns playing ball or having a cookout - and visited the local businesses for a haircut, and a stop at the local stores. (Try that in Mason or Westchester.)

This evening Rachel and I also caught 'Millions' by Danny Boyle. This filmmaker has a gift for combining magic realism and deftly drawn, true-to-life characters. The accents are a little thick for the American ear, but it's a very good movie, and I strongly recommend it. The little kid who plays the lead role is brilliant.

Smashed Glass

For lunch today I visited a place that appears, various signs and posters, to be run by people from Jordan. It's a short walk away downtown. I've been there before. When I got to the front door I stopped in my tracks. I entered, ordered a sandwich, and snapped a picture of the door with my cell phone.

This may have happened weeks ago. This may have been in the paper - but I can't find anything after hitting Google pretty hard. These people may not want any publicity (which is why I'm not being too specific). And it's theoretically possible that what appears to be three swift kicks in a glass door are actually the result of somebody's dissatisfaction with their falafel - and not rank hatred towards small business owners from the Middle East.

But I doubt it. Decide for yourself. Locals who want the specific restaurant name, email me. I’d love to see them get more business.

Public Image Limited

The chuckle-headed yammering that takes the place of discourse on local Cincinnati blogs rarely amounts to anything in terms of real political action. But lately there has been a stir about an issue that has some merit.

Our City Council provides for ‘public comment’. At 1:30 PM on Wednesdays members of the general citizenry can stand up and express their opinions, grievances, or once-in-a-blue-moon praise for the people who are ostensibly their representatives. Ask yourself if a less convenient time could possibly be identified for most average working people.

The rap against ‘public comment’ seems to be that the type of folks who usually step in front of the mike wear funny hats and capes, invent fictional names for themselves and ask for help dealing with the whisperings of their government brain implants. And having witnessed City Council meetings on cable access – which seemed to be filmed on A/V equipment borrowed from the local junior high – I can understand why the representatives might be a little embarrassed by the proceedings. (I expect it’s the source of much teasing when the representatives have dinner with their pals at the restaurants out in Kenwood or Mason.)

But if ‘public comment’ is going to be offered at all, why not offer it at a time when more 9 to 5 people can thin the herd of loons? It makes sense to me. Paul McGhee has a plan. And bloggers Save Our City and ‘The Dean’ have been punting this around. I think it's worth supporting.

Independent Nation

The perils of blogging are many indeed. It's easy to get swept away by hype. You are potentially at risk if you talk about your employer. And privacy, sooner or later, becomes a fanciful artifact of bygone days.

I'm beginning to think that transparency is the new techno- fundamentalist morality; I am forced to "be the same man on Saturday night as I am on Sunday morning" not because I am afraid of a wrathful god, but because technological fingerprints, Google memory, and those proverbial intersection cameras will record my every move from this day hence.

I willingly decided to live with this reality. But I'm amused by the deep desire to apply political categories. After spending a few weeks discussing politics with several friends (over email) who think I'm a Republican, I smiled when NixGuy called me a lefty.

It's understandable. I don't have a lot of sympathy for conservatives on cultural issues, but the liberals irritate me with their cynical foreign policy. And both sides seem to pollute our civic discourse with rancor and unnecessary venom.

Which is why it was nice to see John Avlon on The Daily Show last night promoting his book, Independent Nation. He made the case with vigor. Centrism can be a two-fisted, principled approach to political philosophy that might find a surprisingly large constituency.

Automatosis Spectacle

Andre Breton wasn't directly an artist, but instead occupied a position as the primary instigator of Surrealism, which he saw as the juxtaposition of "two distant realities" brought together to create a new, uncanny union.

Automatic writing was one way to access this condition. It basically consisted of stream of consciousness scribbling that supposedly revealed, in a torrent of words, the old fashioned Freudian psyche from which our demons (and angels) can sometimes emerge.

I bring this up because of SPAM. Yes, I am referring to the bulk email and junk marketing messages that clog up the Internet with offers of favorable mortgages or offshore brides. In recent years a cold war has erupted between email software vendors (aligned with ISPs) and the spammers. The first group tries to put in place filters, barriers, and protections - while the second group tries ever more elaborate schemes to get past the defenses.

The latest spamming tactic consists of sending - along with the marketing item - almost-random paragraphs full of words that sound very similar to written human correspondence. These text must be put together by increasingly smarter algorithms. A sample paragraph taken directly from a mortgage re-fi email:

Forms of speech are either
simple or composite. Examples of the weather,
as in any other means of excitement that presented itself too.
He would have conducted me
immediately into the presence of nose;
as an unusually large saucepan flew close by it,
and very that it felt quite strange at first;

Okay, okay. I added the line breaks at certain intervals - but only to make a point. These messages are becoming increasingly eerie, and much akin to automatic writing from cyberspace. I've started to browse my SPAM folder, in search of the perfect auto-surrealist couplet or cyberhaiku. There are millions of algorithms pounding away randomly at typewriters - when will we discover the next Hamlet?

Sour Lemon Lemonade

Some local bloggers have their panties in a twist because Tower Place Mall has decided to back away from offering their space as a venue for Cincinnati Fringe Festival. This inevitably gets run up the flagpole as another example of mean old conservative Cincinnati.

The criticism is fair, but it's 'on the nose'. A huge opportunity may be missed in our eagerness to fight the same battles, over and over.

If the purpose of the fringe festival is to challenge the viewers, why not take the Tower Place debacle and run with it, artistically? Why not write, on the fly, a piece of performance art that takes place at the High Temple of Tower Place, and creates characters around the building owners? Why not produce an opera where some pudgy corporate goon sings an aria about appeasing the narrow-minded everyman? Why not design posters that incorporate the Tower Place logo into Stalin-era propaganda graphics?

Have fun with it, and embarrass them. Think outside of the retail box. Stop talking about the creative class and start acting creatively, and with class.

Slacker Meets Roomba

Even while our public figures debate the culture of life, death, and the boundaries in between - it would appear that the machines around us have begun their slow march towards sentience.

Take Clocky. Designed by some sleepy-but-clever MIT student, this robotic alarm clock comes to life after you hit snooze, rolls off the nightstand and finds a hiding place somewhere in the bedroom. The next time the alarm goes off you must climb out of bed and hunt around for the damn thing before you can turn it off.

I don't know about you, but I'm not a morning person. With that kind of AM ritual it wouldn't take long before I would punt Clocky through an open window.

If this same type of thinking were applied to other household appliances, the cupboard would permit you exactly one filch of Girl Scout peanut butter sandwiches. If you went for a second pass it would detach itself from the wall, sprout cybernetic legs and feet, and run away. You have to chase it through the house and wrestle it to the ground for more cookies.

Magnus, Magnus

As a Catholic I am proud that my church closed the last chapter of the 20th century under the stewardship of Pope John Paul II.

I thought I knew his story - but how little I knew. During past few days of coverage I have been awestruck at the virtues that seemed to be combined, providentially, in this humble man from Poland: Faith, courage, intellect, humor, and an almost limitless energy that kept him engaged with the world. He just kept coming at you, smiling, in the name of peace - no matter if you were young, old, Soviet, American, Muslim or Jew.

Some American Catholics (and many who aren't Catholic, but feel obliged to offer their two cents) think the church "needs to change". And clearly some material realities of the church must always change, notably the bureaucratic practices of the too-fallible men who are charged with its leadership.

But the basic articles of faith are not subject to change. Like it or not - and I'll be the first to tell you, some of it is hard to like - the theological doctrine of the Catholic church is based on spiritual truth, which doesn't change. To pick an abrasive example, abortion can't be wrong for thousands of years and then suddenly become acceptable because social mores are different these days. Either it's always been okay or it never was at all.

But if we get hung up on inflammatory, political issues, we miss the blazing example of Karol Wojtyla's life. He confronted many of the most brutal challenges of the deadliest and most astonishing century in history and prevailed - armed with only humility, compassion and grace. This week I wonder how many of us have watched his departure, and contemplated that example, and quietly resolved to make better use of our numbered days on earth.

Sanctus Ioannes Paulus Secundus Magnus

Paks Americana

F-16s for everybody! Just sign this release saying that you've got your Islamic militant problem under control.

Actually, we're arming Pakistan and India not so they can fight each other, but so that China's efforts to improve relations with the subcontinent are met with equal in love and attention from the United States. It's another so-crazy-it-might-work scheme from Condi and the kids at State.

And it works fine as long as both parties are throwing rose petals like they were today (between intermittent gunfire) when the 'Peace Bus' crossed the border. But if the old rivalry between these two countries flares into open hostility, we will have provided them with the tools to make each other even more blowed up.

Why can't we equip our weapons systems with something like DRM? For those of you who don't sleep and breathe technology, DRM is a media protection scheme that prevents digital property (like songs and albums) to be used in any context besides those that the manufacturer intended. It prevents privacy. Supposedly.

If the functional equivalent was implemented on an F16, the pilot would be required to call the State Department - and if his or her country was still in the good graces of the U.S. a code would be provided that would unlock the all the missiles and bombs.

Wales Bewails

In a couple of months I'll be married, and it's the second time for both of us. So this news item about Prince Charles and Camilla jumped out at me: They have chosen to recite wedding vows that admit 'sins and wickedness' due to their status as divorcees.

Maybe these two feel extreme guilt. But I am surprised by the fact that these vows are included in the Book of Common Prayer - since the Church of England started (in part) to protest the right to divorce and re-marry.

Ghandi In Palestine

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1112668202855&p=1101615860782

Noncommercial Expressive Activity

BoingBoing link:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/06/slate_andrew_blum_on.html

Slate article:
http://slate.com/id/2116246/

Lest You Be Judged

When the final, battle royale in the culture war is joined, we can expect it to come down in the judiciary. Senator John Cornyn's remarks about the connection between courtroom violence and "unaccountable" judges have touched of the latest flare-up, and the New York Times is clamoring for his head.

Yesterday you could watch this bubble up in realtime on lefty blogs.

My first thought was that Republicans could use this to their advantage. Senator Cornyn could be thrown to the wolves, and a slow an painful inquiry could be made into this man's ethics. This would be satisfying to Democrats, and they deserve something nice after losing two branches of government. But unfortunately Cornyn's career seems otherwise noteworthy, and the issue at hand is a serious one. And, in terms of the potential to distract people from substantive public policy, Tom DeLay offers more grist for the mill.

My second thought was that Cornyn's remarks - which are mild on the surface - actually brought to mind Bill Mahr after 9/11. The actions of reprehensible people may be "understandable" - be they jihadists, fundamentalists, other the otherwise disgruntled - but all parties are obligated to work within the structures of constitutional, civil society.

It's a principle that cuts deeply in both directions. Fringe elements from both parties have no choice but to oblige, regardless of whether or not the winds of political fortune happen to be blowing in their direction on any given day.

God and Fascism

During the 24-7 pope coverage I caught a few moments of Colin Powell delivering his reflections on the pontiff and his influence - and articulating a point that might be lost on those who keep waving their arms about theocracy.

Those who assembled the constitution were products of the enlightenment, and they thought - get this - that our rights came from God. The framers believed that basic freedom wasn't simply a noble idea, or a nice-to-have, or something invented after a few drinks - but something constructed in the very essence of the human design with a divine hand.

And because our rights come from God, we are inoculated against tyranny. No man can take these rights away - be it Stalin, Mussolini, Ashcroft, Hussein, King George III, or MGM.

Governments, at their best, can only secure these rights. And Pope John Paul II could recognize true fascism in the communists and Nazis he saw in Poland - systems that were built to deny those rights. And while he understood that capitalism had the potential to obscure the importance of the individual with materialism - he saw it was much better than the alternative.

Which is why I don't have time for people bitching about fascism.

Don't talk to me about some pantywaist book clerk who got a mean phone call. If you soberly think because we’ve got a few Neanderthals like DeLay walking around for our entertainment – or because, during the last election, Christians voted like Christians - that because of things like this we are truly living under fascism - then you are either willfully narrow-minded or you don’t know anything about history.

Try reading a book.

MSNBC - Pat Salad? Buchanan gets doused in dressing

MSNBC - Pat Salad? Buchanan gets doused in dressing