Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
21 reasons for war with Iraq, by 10 key players, circa September 2001 through October 2002 via a study by University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign student Devon Largio (now graduated).
The table below illustrates who deployed each rationale.
(via BOP)
“Injected With a Poison (Pat Krimson)” by Khan, Praga from the album Injected With a Poison (1998, 4:49).
An important, if amusing, find in Wittenberg recently: Martin Luther’s toilet.
German archeologists say they have discovered the toilet on which Martin Luther wrote the 95 Theses that launched the Protestant Reformation.
Luther frequently alluded to the fact that he suffered from chronic constipation and spent much of his time in contemplation on the toilet.
Experts say they have been certain for years that the 16th century religious leader wrote the groundbreaking Theses while on das klo, as the Germans call it. But they did not know where the object was until they discovered the stone construction after recently stumbling across the remains of an annex of his house in Wittenberg, southwest of Berlin, during plans to plant a garden.
Something tells me dad will get a kick out of this.
“Blisters on My Brain” by Lo-Fidelity Allstars from the album Y2K: Beat the Clock (1998, 6:45).
This is jaw-droppingly cool — a simple ‘brain in a jar’ that can learn how to play a flight simulator.
A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.
The “brain” – a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish – gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level.
[…]
“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”
Sure, today they’re flying a flight simulator. Tomorrow, they’ll be betting Quatloos on how well we fight. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…
(via Ben Hammersley)
Some excellent comments from Doc Searls’ sister:
The story has changed. It is not about the candidates anymore. That is just cursory coverage of their bus-embedded reporters, and equal-time sound bites. He said ying/he said yang.
The story now IS the election. The election process. Not only the dangers of chaos, early-voting, registration mess-ups, the stolen signs, the various scenarios of a challenge to the results, the legalities and the larcenies.
The real story is the engagement of the people. The passion to recall. The fear of change or the unknown. The push to get the youth out. The lack of the population’s ennui amidst their fatigue from the rancor.
The recognition that, whomever you’re voting for, the stakes are too high.
And that the prime lesson learned from 2000 is that every vote CAN count.
I put on a bumper sticker for the first time (A Veteran for Kerry) this election. The one I would like to put on would read:
We can blame the last four years on Bush, but we can only blame the next four on ourselves.
Also another thought this morning as one of the morning shows were talking about a poll re the youth vote and how historically young voters vote like their parents.
I think those “historical” statistics are about to be broken. This election is divisional. It is being fought out daily between husbands and wives, between lovers, between generations in the same house, friends, at the workplace, on teams, everywhere. And I think that is because everyone realizes how important this election is for America. How we chose our next president may be about what what we are as a country, as a democracy. But who we chose is about who we are as a people. And that is very personal.
There is a lot being said about the “uncommitted” but that is the wrong word. They are not uncommitted, they are torn. They cannot make up their minds because IT MATTERS.
It is not just about being passionate over our choice, it is about trying to convince others. There might be loud, vicious political rhetoric in the medias, but there is also intense, heartfelt dialog in the homes, at work, in restaurants, in chat rooms, on the campus, in gyms, on the golf course, in the flu shot lines, at the soccer game, in the car on the way to the mall.
My favorite bit: “We can blame the last four years on Bush, but we can only blame the next four on ourselves.” So very true.
Though, I certainly hope this gentleman doesn’t end up dying for his country — he’s a 70-year old retired doctor who’s been called into service.
Dr. John J. Caulfield was incredulous about the Army’s “unsolicited communication” inviting his return to active duty toward easing increasing wartime demands on military medical treatment facilities.
He disregarded the first postcard last December and the second and subsequent phone messages on the answering machine, not from any unwillingness to serve — “My government has never asked me to do anything I ever refused” — but figuring they used the wrong mailing list, it’s not really me they want.
The Army persisted. Would Dr. Caulfield, oral surgeon and Vietnam veteran, retired from military service in 1980 and civilian practice Jan. 1, be willing to return to active duty in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan? The negotiations began with Dr. Caulfield asking, “Do you know how old I am?” They did, and age doesn’t matter, “We want you.”
Dr. Caulfield, who turned 70 Aug. 7, reports to Fort Benning, Ga., Oct. 17 for what he and the military describe as “voluntary deployment” with the 325th Combat Support Hospital in Bagram, Afghanistan.
At least it’s good to know that Bush has assured us that our military isn’t overstretched and that there won’t be a draft. After all, why in the world would we need a draft when we can just re-enlist 70-year old retirees?
(via Terrance)
[Update:]{.underline}
So there was Wallace on television Thursday night, telling KNTV (Ch. 11) how excited he was at the prospect of serving his country. A friend of his had called the television station.
The only problem is that the whole thing was a joke — a big one that got out of hand.
It went a little bit farther than I'd planned,'' said Wallace's son-in-law, Mark Flaa of San Jose.It was supposed to have been a family thing, one of those things you get ribbed about for the next 10 Christmases or something.”Flaa had gone to great lengths to make the joke work — getting copies of a friend’s orders to serve in Iraq and mailing what he wrote to his brother in Seattle, so the letter could be mailed from Fort Lewis in Washington.
And he knew his father-in-law would call him, which he did. What he didn’t count on was Wallace going on TV. Flaa didn’t find out until a few minutes before Wallace’s interview with KNTV aired on the 11 o’clock news Thursday night.
Thanks to Mike for the update!
“You’ll Be Under My Wheels ” by Prodigy, The from the album Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (2004, 3:56).
It appears that last night when I was adding the latest batch of spam URLs to MT-Blacklist’s blacklist, I inadvertently added one entry that was just the string “tp:“. Now, I have no idea what that string is, or where it pops up in adding comments, but apparently Because that string pops up in any URL (http://…) that ended up blocking all comments that included a URL, including in the author info fields, across all of the sites on my server.
Oops.
This has been corrected, and comments now appear to be functioning correctly again. Thanks to Kirsten for pointing this out when she mentioned that comments with curse words were being blocked.
Curse words?
My goodness — just what kind of foul-mouthed people do I associate with, anyway? Shocking, I tell you!
Little fuckers.
;)
“Chao-wera” by ¡TchKunG! from the album Post World Handbook (1996, 12:03).
I just recently subscribed to Wonkette and started reading on a regular basis. One of the things they feature is daily missives from the White House pool of reporters — brief snippets of the day’s events, some of which are later turned into full reports, others are left by the wayside. What I’m really enjoying about a lot of these is the off-the-cuff humor that keeps popping up…
Flight and motorcade uneventful. Bush was accompanied on AF1 by his daughter Barbara, in tight jeans, and by Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove, who were not wearing tight jeans.
This is a bit too far away for me to show up, but if anyone who stops by here is in the Boston area, you can help set a world record and raise money for the AIDS Action Committee tomorrow night!
Well, a local Rocky Horror troup called Teseracte Players of Boston is performing Rocky Horror 13 times in a row, with the same twenty-one cast members, to break the world record. This will take place at the Dedham Community Theatre who’s holding the event as a benefit for the AIDS Action Committee. It starts this Friday night, October 22, at midnight and runs through Sunday. You don’t have to watch all the shows if you can’t – but if you want to see Rocky Horror Picture Show, live in New England and can’t normally stay up until all hours, here’s your chance to see it performed in the middle of the day on a Saturday. You’ll be seeing a record set and helping out the AIDS Action Committee. Not a bad deal.
(via Something Positive)
“I Love Being Married” by Foxworthy, Jeff from the album You Might Be a Redneck If… (1993, 16:46).
Calling Donnie Darko — we found the plane to go with your engine.
Kalitta Air flight 825 was en route to New York’s JFK Airport after refueling in Chicago when the number one engine fell from the plane, Local 4 reported.
The plane’s electronics warned of engine trouble just before midnight, the station reported.
Pilots were forced to make an emergency landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
The FAA and police are searching from Lake Michigan to the Battle Creek area for the engine, the station reported. State police have no reports of where the engine fell.
Trains. Trains are nice. I’m traveling in trains from now on.
“Love to Hate You (Bruce Forest)” by Erasure from the album Love to Hate You (1991, 7:39).
You may remember that a couple weeks ago, Bush’s hometown paper The Iconoclast endorsed John Kerry for President.
Reaction to their endorsement has been strong — to the point where they wrote a second editorial, detaling some of that reaction. It’s not a pretty picture.
We expected that perhaps a few readers might cancel subscriptions, and maybe even ads, but have been amazed at a few of the more intense communications, some of which bordered on outright personal attacks and uncalled-for harassment.
We have been told by several avid Bush supporters that the days when newspapers publish editorials without personal repercussions are over.
[…]
The new mode of operation, I am told, is that when a newspaper prints an editorial of which some sectors might disagree, the focus is now upon how to run the newspaper out of business. Out the window are the contributions the newspaper has made to the community in the past and the newspaper s extensive investment in the community.
We do understand peoples rights to pull subscriptions and ads, and to express a differing opinion, but we have some trouble understanding threats and payback since in politics there are often a variety of options. For the publishers to herald one of the options should be no cause for persecution.
[…]
Unfortunately, for the Iconoclast and its publishers there have been threats big ones including physical harm.
[…]
Several young members of our staff covering Tonkawa Traditions this past weekend were angrily harassed and threatened that they must leave, which cut short their ability to fully do their jobs and instilled in them considerable fear for their safety. These reporters had nothing to do with that editorial. They were part-time college students working to pay their way through school and better themselves.
Although several members of the community are upset at the newspaper, there are still those who want us to continue with local coverage as we have in the past. We do have concern for the safety of our staff, however, and find it troubling when they are bullied and cannot do their jobs.
“The days when newspapers publish editorials without personal repercussions are over?” What kind of bullheaded, stupid insanity is this?
So truly sad.
(via MeFi)