Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Hostages

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We’re now taking hostages…

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

…in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, Protocol 1, Section III, Chapter 1, Article 75, Paragraph 2:

The following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by civilian or by military agents: (a) violence to the life, health, or physical or mental well-being of persons, in particular: (i) murder; (ii) torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental; (iii) corporal punishment; and (iv) mutilation; (b) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, enforced prostitution and any form or indecent assault; (c) the taking of hostages; (d) collective punishments; and (e) threats to commit any of the foregoing acts.

(via Atrios)

Bush/Cheney vs. Dean

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This is flat-out amazing.

Last Friday, it was announced that tomorow, Monday the 28^th^, there would be a special fundraising dinner in Columbia, South Carolina to benefit the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign. This dinner is a \$2000 per plate fundraiser, expected to raise \$250,000 (from 125 people).

The good folks over at the Dean campaign decided to turn this into a challenge, and “brought back the bat“. Their goal was to see if in three days — this weekend, from Saturday through Monday at midnight — they could match that \$250,000 goal through their grassroots fundraising efforts.

Today, just before 11pm eastern time, with a full 24 hours left before the Monday midnight deadline, they hit the \$250,000 mark.

As of 11 pm EDT, 4,629 Americans have contributed \$250,733.20 to the Dean Team vs. Bush-Cheney Challenge.

We know that many of you have waited to contribute until tomorrow, the day of Cheney’s fundraiser.

You’ll notice the second bat doesn’t have a goal. It will be up to you and thousands of other Americans to fill that bat up to whatever amount you can by midnight, tomorrow. We’ve matched the Bush-Cheney fundraising machine. Tomorrow, let’s see by how much we can surpass them.

And wait til you see what we plan on doing with the additional money you help raise tomorrow. It’s top secret, but we can tell you this — it will surprise everyone.

We’ll be giving you half hour updates all day tomorrow, beginning at 8 am.

This is what it’s all about. Not \$2000 a head dinners so the fat cats can buy their “special interests” by keeping the status quo, but by people all across the country giving what they can, because they believe in a candidate, and because they want to make a change for the better.

Koosay, Eebay, and Ooday

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You’ve probably noticed that there are many different spellings of Arabic names depending on which news source you are reading. The truth is that there is no consensus how to write Arabic words in English. If we are going to investigate Arabic names we must therefore use phonetic spellings. Saddam’s sons then become Koosay, Eebay, and Ooday.

Now if we translate those names from Pig Latin back into English we have Skoo Bee Doo. Is this a veiled reference to the cartoon dog from the 1970s, Scooby Doo? Can it be anything but that?

Well consider this. Scooby Doo’s final year of first-run shows was 1977. It was also in 1977 that Saddam Hussein came to power in the ruling Baath Party.

Coincidence? You decide.

— Bernard Slattery

(via Glenn)

Metabetablog

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Here’s an interesting project: metabetablog.

Metabetablog is a graphical representation of the TypePad beta testing experience, a compression of data generated in this evolving blogging environment. Each entry contains a dense chunk of sample content from the top ten most recently-updated blogs from the TypePad Devlog, gathered just before posting. The posts can be read as generative poetry, as text-snapshots, as sand through the hourglass…

I mention this because my last post got incorporated into the latest creation. Made me laugh.

Importing MT archives: month by month

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I’m starting work on importing my archives from The Long Letter into Eclecticism.

What I’m dealing with is simply the fact that I have archives dating back to November of 2000. While Movable Type has an ‘export’ feature, it exports everything. With fewer posts, that might be less of an issue, but since I’m going to have to go through post-by-post to double-check URLs, add pictures, and so on, I wanted to see if I could figure out how to import one month’s worth of posts at a time, instead of the whole kit and kaboodle.

Here’s what I ended up with…

  1. Create a new Archive Template, and put the following code into the template: 
     TITLE:
 AUTHOR:
 DATE:
 PRIMARY CATEGORY:
 CATEGORY:
 -----
 BODY:

 -----
 EXTENDED BODY:

 -----
 EXCERPT:

 -----
 COMMENT:

 AUTHOR:

 EMAIL:

 URL:

 IP:

 DATE:

 -----
 PING:

 TITLE:

 URL:

 IP:

 BLOG NAME:

 DATE:

 -----
 --------
  2. In MT, under the ‘Weblog Config’ button, go to the ‘Archiving’ section. Click the ‘Add new…’ button, set the Archive Type to ‘Monthly’, and the ‘Template’ to the name of the new template that you just created, then click ‘Add.’

  3. You should now have two options under the ‘Monthly’ archive type. Switch over to the new archive template that you just created, and put the following in the ‘Archive File Template’ box:

    export/.txt

  4. Click the ‘Rebuild Site’ option, choose the ‘Rebuild Monthly Archive Only’ option, and click the ‘Rebuild’ button.

    Once MT is done rebuilding, you should have a series of files inside an ‘export’ directory inside your site’s archives directory (in my case, that ended up being /longletter/archives/export/, your configuration may be slightly different). There will be one file for each month, named something like 2003-07.txt.

  5. In TypePad, under the ‘Manage’ tab for your weblog, choose the ‘Import/Export’ option. In box A, put in the URL for your first month’s export file (for me, this was http://www.djwudi.com/longletter/archives/export/2000-11.txt). Leave the ‘Encoding’ drop-down menu set to ‘Unicode’, and hit the ‘Import’ button.

  6. There is no step 6. You’re done!

So that’s it. Now that I can go month by month, I’ll import one month, go through each post to make sure all the links are correct, then move on to the next month. This will probably take a while, as I’ve got close to three years of posts to check, but I’m on my way!

And the word ‘PROJECT’ flashed before my eyes…

When You're Evil

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I found this song by Voltaire on a sampler from Projekt Records. It’s a good sampler, but this is easily the best of the bunch. Gypsy-ish melody, music that’s mostly violin and drumkit, and wonderful lyrics that sound to me like they’re sung with a quite mischevious glint in the eye. Gets me grinning every time I hear it.

When the Devil is too busy,
and Death’s a bit too much,
They call on me — by name you see —
for my special touch.
To the gentlemen I’m Miss Fortune,
To the ladies I’m Sir Prize,
But call me by any name,
any way it’s all the same…

I’m the fly in your soup,
I’m the pebble in your shoe,
I’m the pea beneath your bed,
I’m a bump on every head,
I’m the peel on which you slip,
I’m a pin in every hip,
I’m the thorn in your side,
Makes you wriggle and writhe —

(Chorus)
And it’s so easy when you’re evil!
This is the life, you see
The Devil tips his hat to me.
I do it all because I’m evil,
And I do it all for free…
Your tears are all the pay I’ll ever need.

While there’s children to make sad,
While there’s candy to be had,
While there’s pockets left to pick,
While there’s grannies left to trip down the stairs
I’ll be there, I’ll be waiting round the corner
It’s a game, i’m glad I’m in it
’cause there’s one born every minute.

(Chorus)

I pledge my allegiance to all things dark
And I promise on my damned soul
To do as I am told, Lord Beelzebub
Has never seen a soldier quite like me,
Not only does his job but does it happily.

I’m the fear that keeps you awake,
I’m the shadows on the wall,
I’m the monsters they become,
I’m the nightmare in your skull,
I’m a dagger in your back,
An extra turn upon the rack,
I’m the quivering in your heart,
A stabbing pain, a sudden start.

(Chorus)

And I’d do it all for free,
Your tears are all the pay I’ll ever need.
And I’d do it all for free,
Your tears are all the pay I’ll ever need.

It gets so lonely being evil.
What I’d do to see a smile,
Even for a little while,
And no one loves you when you’re evil…

I’m lying though my teeth!
Your tears are all the company I need!

And who says Goth’s don’t have a sense of humor? ;)