Atomized junior


Dedicated to the smallest particles of meaning on the web
Atomized Links:



theUsual Suspects:



 

Atomized junior

Sunday, July 31, 2005
 
Is this the end of Atomized

In a brief word, No. At the same time I have no permanent solution to the problem. Which is, that twenty minutes from now the University of Maryland College Park is going to shut down FTP access to its servers in favor of SSH and sFTP. I have no new computer yet. I have nothing which will run the latest version of Fetch or Fugu. Radio Userland has only a old built in FTP engine for pushing posts to your own hosting server. Radio's community servers? No.

I will be tending Atomized manually from my work computer which has an approved sFTP motor. In a week or so I'll buy a modern iBook and place Fugu on it and will for a period try manually updating Atomized by pryng the pieces out of the "rendered" back-up folder and placing them where they ought to be in the Atomized folder on the Wam AFS Server. I will probably replace the page once a week unless I think something is timely and has to be posted right then. If I do this there will probably be several posts to a page swap. It won't really be a web log if I'm treating it like that. But it's not like the Userland people care. If for some reason It proves impossible to update a Radio site that way I will communicate through the old Atomized [sr] page.

If this all or any of this proves to be cumbersome, I'm switching to Typepad and you'll read about that and whatever URL that gains me here. I envision always calling this buggy Atomized Jr at any rate. Although the phrase "the Kinetic Approach" has a nice sound to it. Thats modern U S military talk for those things which they do, and do so well.


11:48:45 PM    comment [];trackback [];
A sense of permanence

Enduring Freedom by numbers. I read an Alternet article; Sam Graham Nelson, a phone interview with former senator Gary Hart AlterNet: War on Iraq: Operation: Enduring Presence. A portion:

"If the topic of permanent bases in Iraq seems unfamiliar, it's because, as Hart noted, there's been barely a whisper about them in the mainstream media. While the deteriorating situation in Iraq is making headlines daily, it's been two months since any reports on the presence or construction of bases have emerged from major press outlets."

While every so often this makes it into to the press. It's a topic generally no one wants discussed. The Pentagon isn't keen on opening up on strategic considerations strung halfway between political and military, nor it seems is it happy about having all its current military installations in Iraq be artificially temporary and thinly protected - to perserve the fiction that we are not planning a long term occupation of Iraq.

Garrisoning the oil fields is what this war was about. Wolfowitz said as much in Vanity Fair two years ago. Not only are the oilfields of Iraq second only to the Saudi fields, but the US military presence in the region, was originally thought by the imperial brain trust of the Bush administration to be better moved from Saudi Arabia to Iraq. Less obtrusive, less of a target, less of a management problem.

Looking over this Reuters article on central asia bases Rumsfeld wants to keep U.S. bases in Central Asia we get an indication that the public line is no permanent presence: ""We've said all along we have no intention of permanent U.S. bases in the region," said a senior U.S. defense official traveling with Rumsfeld, declining to say when operations in Afghanistan would no longer require the bases."

The original plan for Iraq would have had all this proceed smoothly, the war was envisioned as more of an assisted coup than a protracted war. I always think of that column Safire wrote a few years ago when he was trying to prove there was no insurgency. He believed if the State Dept. had only signed off on the original division+ sized liberation army Ahmed Chalabi was supposed to have descended into Iraq with - this rabble would have been dealt with somehow, before it began.

Now after expressing indignation and incredulity at the idea of setting some sort of timetable or set benchmarks for winding down our role in this this war it turns out they intend just that KR Washington Bureau | 07/27/2005 | Top U.S. general says troop withdrawal from Iraq possible in 2006. Chalabi was eventually flown in on a plane provided by the asst Secretary of Defenses office, initialy into one of Iraq's former strategic airbases in the western desert. These bases individually, certainly collectively, have the potential to replace whatever we have been obliged to give up in Saudi Arabia. They were laid out near pumping stations of the major oil pipeline from the Iraqi oil fields into Jordan. They are called H-1 H-2, and H-3.

H-3 has a cluster of airfields, H-3 Northwest for instance is about ten NM away to the NW. There are other pipelines; T and K, and other pumping stations Some in the Northern Kurdish area's, the principle remains the same. I like Google maps. I had the idea these bases would be easy to find I just asked Google where Iraq was and poked about til I found them. It wasn't quite as simple as that. It took me a couple of hours to get the hang of it. Getting oriented is easy with the scale slider set about halfway, but you're unlikely to pick up manmade environmental items unless you're several steps smaller in scale. Don't be fooled by being able to see roads, linear objects like roads, will be visible before other manmade objects.
The plan Drawing Down Iraq - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com seems to be to draw down the American and British Forces to make the Iraqi's pick up the insurgent fight whether they want to or not. The reduction would bring our forces down to around the level of two divsions which I would expect to withdraw out of Iraq's urban areas to hardened facilitiess capable of being expanded to much larger operating objectives quickly. These will be US divisions in rotation there for twenty years or more. If not at H one two and three then something very similar.
12:13:35 AM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, July 28, 2005
 
Mr. Roberts

Mr. Roberts: he's a republican. I wasn't expecting President Bush to put Noam Chomsky's name forward so I'm not surprised by this development. There is no such thing as a stealth nominee. Try as they might to fly him that way. No one is player enough to be given the nod for the Supreme Court without letting his views and services be known and useful to someone. Justice Souter was an anomaly, but he was not the leading choice, perhaps not even second, it's likely he was never vetted in detail. How people grow as individuals when they get a seat on the court is not knowable, but their initial positions are.

The administration picked someone who was a Washington insider, known professionally but not widely. Still, someone whose bonafides and political PH are certifiable quantities. The more we get to know him the more conservative he will appear because that is who he is: Roberts's Rules.

Strange logic. Nina Totenberg had a segment on NPR consisting of sound bytes of his various appearances before the Court; NPR : Looking at Roberts' Record Before the Court. In one he argued against a gender bias case involving a abortion clinic blockade, because they denied access to everyone there was no class-based animus, this he trumpeted. But, it is not men they're trying to keep out of the clinic is it? The point he made so triumphantly is absolutely vacant. It is trite and betrays arrogance. I don't like the idea of abortion. At the same time I am aware the central conflict in the issue is not the horror of third trimester abortions or identifying the miraculous moment of pregnancy. Culture of life is an obscurist's slogan, there is never any complete life that enters the concern of the anti-abortionist. It is about control of reproduction. It is about control of the things that women's bodies do, that men's bodies cannot do. The rights women have concerning their bodies. There is no truly comparable dissipation of the the rights men hold over their bodies in our Law. This points back equally to the uniqueness of reproduction and uniqueness of the Laws Roe v. Wade would be overturned to achieve. There shouldn't be any doubt that he will vote to overturn Roe V. Wade when that time comes, understand that the administration has no doubts there.They were never going to nominate anyone they had any doubts about.

Documents have been released not without some tugging Quarrel Brewing Over Judge Roberts Memos - New York Times showing Judge Roberts to be a strong junior voice in the Reagan administration Documents Show Roberts Influence In Reagan Era. Memos and position papers marking advocacy of Judicial restraint argument as tactic . Advocacy of executive supremacy. Is it advocacy or ideology when one speaks of "the constitution as it should be read?" Some memos contain marginalia outlining a Justice, and abortion as demonstrating a certain unsuitability on the bench or for the concept of Judicial review at all (only with the right Judges). Still he has told all the Senators on his debutante dance card he will not be an ideologue Justice. It should be recognized a statement like that means nothing. It should also be recognized from these documents, that at that point in his life he certainly was a right wing ideologue Files From 80's Lay Out Stances of Bush Nominee - New York Times. Ah, but those were heady and revolutionary times. More pertinent may be his work in later years in the White House Counsel's office for Reagan and the elder Bush administration Democrats Want More Documents on Roberts. His handlers have signaled strongly that we won't be seeing any of that.

Having said all this I don't see that he should be strenuously opposed. He does not have the lack of humor or ingenuinely assumed false humor of the monomanically dangerous. The hearing should be thorough , thorough enough that no one  votes for they know not what. His relationship to the Federalist Society has been handled in an unforthcoming and unbecoming  fashion. Beyond that and other similar issues, vote and be done with it.


11:52:50 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Tuesday, July 26, 2005
 
Blue Screen Blues

I killed my computer for a couple days. Unintentionally, no statement involved. I didn't mean to kill it - it was an accident. It wouldn't start up. just a big blank blue screen, cousin of microsofts big empty blue screen, your computer's way of telling you, "Yes I'm not functioning, but don't worry be happy". I'm not sure exactly what it was: the "user wheel" got corrupted, or something in the start-up folder. In the end I solved it in the time honored Apple/Mac way of going in through a start-up disc and randomly moving files out the system libray folder then restarting until it finally let me log in. A picture named Nicole_v_Gravity.jpg Now though the bonds of trust between my data and this, the machine they live in are strained . Such mission critical data as oh say ... a picture of my niece falling off a pogo stick . An Mp3 of the Didjits doing the original version of Killboy Powerhead - opposed to the Offspring's cover. Husker Du's In a Free Land Important stuff like that.

Also I never want to see the words /sbin/ fsck -y / ,  /sbin /mount -uw / again. Or anything of the sort.
chmod 1775!
reboot!

9:46:28 AM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, July 21, 2005
 
Body Politics

 On the Lehrer Newshour last week there was a discussion of sentences for so-called white collar crime, I laughed because that morning I dug  through my closet of textbooks-from-a-previous century  Skolnick, Herbert Jacob, Chambliss and Seidman, that sort of thing. Just to recall to mind terms like "mobilization of bias". To trace the logic that white collar crime wasn't really crime, not the proper subject of law and order, or deserving of incarceration. After all who gets hurt?

 Piling on (15 yards and automatic first down).  This is essentially how Salon views today's Washington Post's FP post on the State Dept. briefing memo covering Joseph and Valarie Wilson  Salon.com Politics. Considering that the Wall street journal had written a similar  article several days earlier, It seemed like a gratuitous movement of pg 16 fare to page one. After looking over reports that some reporters, pundits and even capital hill politicians were faked out of their socks by the timing and result of the Presidents Supreme court nominee, it may have been that the Washington Post suspected some wagging of dog was occuring. When your  already engaged in a multi region war multistate war political misdirection requires a full measure of nuance and spectacle washingtonpost.com Spun Silly.

 The more I read and learn of this Plame leak the more likely it seems to me that Rove, Libby inc. thought that the leak was self-justifying that it would be obviously viewed as such. They seem to have made only moderate and half hearted attempts to wipe their fingerprints off this.  . Rove I recall is a former Young Republican (my memory tells me that at U Maryland this group called themselves Young Americans for Freedom. I met this sort coming to college out of the Navy at a time when I still thought I might be a republican. They went a long way towards convincing me I wasn't.  There no such thing as a former young republican its a permentant adolescence . This group always seems to be at the center of hostility and extreme divisiness in American Politics and Polity. Rove's excuse for obesssing on Wilson and ploting revenge acording to the Wapost acticle on last Sunday "he's a Democrat" Rove's Most Telling Words By Michael Tomasky, The American Prospect. There is something about the YAF that just isn't right. Something about their worldview that doesn't encompass the give and take of a democracy. That doesn't see the opposition as something to be bargained with dynamically engaged, but simply to be crushed - eliminated. Something that doesn't make any distinction between this nations real enemies and their political opponants. Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo:  July 17, 2005 - July 23, 2005 Archives arranging the tea leaves of a New York Times article Asks why politics and national security had gotten so intertwined that  operatives Rove and Libby wrote George Tenets - the director of Central intelligence - public statement on the "16 words". People are right to stop and think about this because it is quite frankly a profoundly odd thing to have occurred. Not less so for what they had him say.

This administration's pushing the YAF turks into the vanguard had put themselves in a situation where I don't beieve that they can any longer tell the difference between national security, ideology, and personel security. Neither do I think they have been capable for some years now at keeping their struggle within the boundaries of law, and are now in a state where they must continually and arbitrarly adjust the law around their behavior. Whether its declaring they didn't do what what was done, that what was done wasn't against the law, or in retrospect they've decided it shouldn't have been, or at the least in this case when the investigation became formal (which is the point in the proceedings where you have to stop shredding documents, and deleting emails) gathering in a helpful twelve-hour heads up What Did the President Know?  This is what they've done. because it is the only way left open to them. This is not leadership, nor is it an ethical position.


11:48:24 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Tuesday, July 19, 2005
 
Recipe for disaster

I hate web sites that are designed only to be viewed in broadband. A few years ago you saw a lot of that when web designers or those that wrote the checks were convinced that nationwide ubiquitous broadband was just around the corner, especially if the masses could be herded around that corner. When it became clearer that wasn't going to happen just then, best practice moved in the direction of designed information - doing more with less (bandwidth) and not abusing the user. I, a dial-up internet user, learned to simply avoid catoagories of sites that just couldn't grasp that concept. Any sort of vehicle retail site, any tv show, any network.

Yet here I am watching the spinning beachball of death (Mac) as my browser wheezes it's way through Food Network.com. How did it come to this?

It all began late this afternoon. Tran was setting out her daily snack. this is her habit at work and because its usually something she has made and brought from home, she is usually keen to eat it herself. Sometimes; though, she wants to share and talk about what it is and how it is made. When we talk I talk about things I like. Well, always, I talk about things I like, and my interests. But sometimes we talk about food. What she had today was something that looked vaguely like a veal sausage. Tran said it was fish meat. Prepared first by whacking it with a mallet for a half-hour to an hour[!], then you mix the - I assume - paste by that point with spices and whole black pepper. This is shaped and steamed and for only a moderate length of time i think. It is then cooled and served on a bannana leaf. She cut some into slices and I tried it. To sight it had a dense spongelike appearence, biting into it was similar to some czech sausages but much smoother and not crumbly and having a flavor like crab meat. She said you had to use meat that was very fresh and low in lipids otherwise it would not achieve the right consistency when steamed. It was very nice. This is not a recipe; though, because I am recalling all this hours later from memory. She did not tell me its name because she doesn't think it has an english name.

She had been energized over the weekend by watching a great deal of the Food Network on cable tv. I don't have cable. So I do not know this Mr. Puck or any of these iron chefs. She was trying to describe a steamed fish recipe she saw over the weekend but like me was having trouble recalling all of the details from days earlier. This is where the world wide web has it's place and purpose, because I believe what she was describing may have been this: Food Network: Asian-Style Steamed Snapper with Baby Bok Choy.


11:50:14 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Sunday, July 17, 2005
 
Imminent Domain

A tale of two towers.

Of all the cases the Supreme Court handled in the last session "KELO ET AL. v. CITY OF NEW LONDON ET AL.(pdf) is the one that has rumbled in the belly of the zeitgeist the most. This is the case where the court did not overturn an eminent domain taking in New London, which the city thought would accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number. Most issues these days lead toward a distinct political mitosis. This one just seems a writing mass of mitochondrion. A writhing nonetheless which believes it looks over a divide. The Constitution in exile crowd, who were the ones who had piloted this ship into the harbor were dissappointed bitter even, but hardly stunned. They knew most of all at the radical and revolutionary nature of their position. But a large groundswell began to grow of outraged libertarians and stunned conservatives, and the politicians are noticing Candidates in New Jersey Agree on Eminent Domain - New York Times.

No lawyer I, so it wasn't until I noticed the cartoons seemed to be having a hard time finding their feet on this that I thought of writing anything. Compare Tom the Dancing Bug and Prickly City on this. Prickly City was on this theme all week so you can tick back and look at the others as well. I tried the usually reliable Wikipedia: Eminent domain-Wikpedia which has servicable but somewhat thin coverage, weighted towards recent events and lacking full development of this principle, which has the result of making this outcome seem starker than it actually is. The law and planning community professionals and journalists I saw on TV or read in the immediate wake of the decsison pointed you have to be fairly ignorant of the law and have little or no history in you to not realize this has been the law for 40 or more years. I saw little horror or confusion among these people concerning this. Virtually all of the interstate system within metropolitan areas were built on land obtained this way. 40 years of urban renewal, or as one commentator acidically termed it a few weeks ago "negro removal". Well yes. That's what they used to call it. In nearly every American city this went on for years. Now that I think about it I'm not surprised that many of those who have thrown themselves into high dungeon over this did not realize it was the way of law and American progress. This and who it had been used against are far far beneath the radar of this crowd.

My father loves to tell a story about a Massachusetts political figure, a state attorney general I think who had a man show up on his door step and stick him with a knife. The politician got what was coming to him my father felt. The man's house had been bulldozed to build a highway. My Dad has been indignant at the political process since FDR was in office. He loves the highways; though, every last asphalted inch of them. Yet when they wanted to put a successor to Logan airport outside of Boston (where we lived) He sent me around to the neighbors with a petition against it. Fair value is only what the state can afford to make a project happen, he knew this. I 95 was originally routed to plunge into the center of Washington right over significant neighborhoods of North East, and Takoma Park. Takoma Park! Not in their back yard. The spur never got built, I 95 stops short of the city a few miles from my apartment and routes meekly into the beltway for a circumspect drive south.

The outraged right's position requires them to leap over the developer who really initiates projects these days, and to whom the great avalance of profit descends upon, and fix instead their outrage on the red herring issues of how developers sell their projects to what city councilmen or town selectors they need to. The tax revenue wrinkle was a minor extension that did not deviate from established principle of the law. To try to rope this matter into an argument against the courts or government has an absurdity to it right from the start. I suppose if a developer takes your property for their price without involving the government, this lot would simply run naked and homeless down the street clutching their penny-brite and cheering capitalism. Good for them.

I recall reading a columnist of a conservative stripe, this was in the years following the 11 Sept 2001 attacks, after the last set of multi state electric grid failures and the shut-down of the Space Shuttle program, trying to see a broader picture. America has lost its will the argument ran. The power companies had told this person that they would build power plants and power lines to deliver every last erg of power America needs, but people-power by granola-crunchers stop them, and wishy washy politicians won't lead past them. Similarly we allow a handful of casualties, no more than who are killed every week in car crashes in any city shut down the entire space program. In the days of exploration whole ships would routinly sail off the edge of the earth and yet the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English would just send another one out right after it. As well our enemies have learned that we lack the fortitude to suffer casulties in war, if they shoot down a single helicopter we run home. If Nimby is the acronym to name the former then Nwimcyd (not with my child you don't) covers the latter. America may not be suffering from a failure to be great, so much as it no longer has enough poor neighborhoods to build power plants and refineries in, or poor neighbors to send off to our wars.

A tale of two towers. In Washington DC there are two communications towers. One, the Georgia Avenue tower Google Maps - washington DC geoave tower I can see from my bike ride to work in College Park even though it is six or so miles away. It is several hundred feet tall. The Wisconsin avenue tower Google Maps - washington DC wiscave tower, you can not really see until you come into Tenley town, this is west of Rock Creek Park. It is not much more than a hundred feet. It would be higher, I'm told, but it was unsuitable for the neighborhood. Lawsuits have stopped its construction.


11:39:40 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Friday, July 15, 2005
 
Notorious Jumping Rove of Calaveras county

Signs are that White House has determined to hold fast around Karl Rove. At least as long as they can. Last week I was prepared to whip up a post on the Karl Rove affair re: Valarie Plame (to distinguish it from others) painted in various shades of indignation. Reporters Cooper and Miller were headed to jail for contempt. Robert Novak unaccountably wasn't. The principle in abstract was noble journalists protecting sources speaking to the public in contravention of the prohibitions of arrogant power. In detail it wasn't so much. Whoever they were protecting wasn't a whistleblower as much as political hatchetman. Going into last week-end it seemed things were suddenly breaking and no longer were the forces of obfuscation strangling the public interest.

What's come out since thing has illustrated how murky and complicated the situation really was. How Rove had signed releases that Cooper and Miller understood as not releasing them at all. Until Cooper and his attorney decided that they could interpret statements that Rove's attorney was making as giving them genuine release. My guess is that that may have caught team Bush a little off guard. I think they felt they had Cooper's notes and memos to his editors sewn up tight. As far as Judith Miller's motovations go; I have no idea. Miller, as some recall, was the New York Times reporter that moved the administrations Weapons of Mass Destruction gambit into the "mainstream media". This was the set of stories that the NY Times later disavowed in a painful front page mea culpa. Her original stories form a significant portion of the Administration continuing and fatuous "It wasn't just us everyone believed Saddam had 'em" defense. Her martyrs crown isn't fitting her that well.

Who is the political cordex of the Bush adminsistrtation at the moment. As nearly as I can tell by reading the press and more tellingly reading Rove's face when pictures of him turn up - Rove still is. He is calling the shots (at Cooper, at Wilson, at Plame : bang! bang! bang!) and calling the wagons into a circle about himself. I don't believe in trial by public bum's rush. Mr. Rove's standing in terms of the law is best left to the Mr. Fitzpatrick and the grand jury convened specifically to sort this out. At the same time I believe Rove should be dismissed from the public payroll. This wouldn't prevent him from being the Presidents political advisor unless his legal situation worsens; That largely rests on whether he Novak, and others  created a cover up by trying to coordinate their stories. Regardless of legality it is malfeasant to use privileged information to engage in political vendetta's. This is a position the administration hasn't hesitated to take concerning unco-ordinated leaks, they'll have to live with it for this one too.


12:08:06 AM    comment [];trackback [];

Wednesday, July 13, 2005
 
TypePad?

I had a comment on my earlier post about the imminant demise of this web log as it has existed. The University of Marland is taken its servers and putting them behind a sFTP shield wall where Radio Userland can not follow. The commentor, Mr. Dash, suggested using Radio Userland as the clinet for a web log in the Typepad community, which he says many others also do. I've been trying to determine what this would involve but I think the idea is externally a typepad weblog, but to me internally the Radio content manger and its integrated RSS aggragator (which I like) still on my machine. This is looking increasing attractive as I look into it. I believe its possible to export an entire Radio weblog archive into Typepad as well.

I have 18 days to figure out something.


11:49:31 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Monday, July 11, 2005
 
Baseball in Washington DC

A picture named April_Nats.jpgAs things pause for the All Star break and as I clean up the folders I dump all my digital pictures in I thought I'd put up a little photo tribute to Baseball in Washington DC. The first two pictures are from a night game in April, this was I think the third home game - it was chilly.

A picture named Dad at Nats game AprilThe person in the second picture is my Dad. His name is Hugh. I never put pictures of myself in this web log, but I got no problem putting pictures of my Dad up. The Nats won this game - we stayed till the end.

The third picture here is from a day game in June we left before the end and even got back to my sisters house before it ended - in extra innings. They lost. All the tickets for these games came from my Sister Ellen who bought a 20 game plan for the season with parking.


A picture named Day game in june



1:05:34 AM    comment [];trackback [];

Sunday, July 10, 2005
 
the ice age

Years ago I read a book called the Ice Age, by Margaret Drabble . I think I read it because the band Joy Division had a song Living in the Ice Age. It didn't take much to get me to read a book back then. Now,"nothing will hold, nothing will fit, so it's into the cold with a smile on your lips - when your living in the ice age." It was a good book without being a great book, but I'd recommend it, so go read it, if you feel inclined. It's about England particularly London in the mid 1970's.

I flipped on a radio next to my bed after my alarm went off last Thursday; early so the news of the bombings filtered in under a certain hypnotic osmosis before I was really awake. The sets of thoughts that came to me later were that, at this time last summer, my sister Ann and her family had been in London. They had ridden on the London subway the double decker buses, they were pulling the original double deckers with the on/off platform back out of service last summer. The picture of that bus shredded and opened like a tin of meat, stays with me. They say the bus explosion may have been an accident, its bomb may have been heading elsewhere. Its not as though we have to travel abroad to suffer violence or that not doing so will save us. It is about the perception, In Americans, Lurking Fears Rise to Surface - New York Times, that zones of safety are shrinking. And as well  the prime topic of conversation remains forever fixed around fear Bombings Rewrite G-8 Agenda - New York Times.

What is the purpose: what could anyone expect this to accomplish? I don't have a window into the mindset of these individuals. Terror for a purpose, or just terror. Evil or a way of being soured below human empathy with the human condition. An inhumane life. There is something about this that sometimes seems artificial. Fantasy violence manifested crudely (London Bombs Seen as Crude; Death Toll Rises to 49 - New York Times) into our real world, but not representing real oppression or clash of civilizations. A psychopathic flailing against the culture of their obsession, the west. Previously it seemed rare for such violence to be directed deliberately and directly, not collaterally against civilians. Ordinary working class people in the daily journeys of their life. Without even an anonymous phonecall before the blast "There is a bomb" (even the IRA did that). This is violence learned at a remove, through movies and videos through lectures, through hate filled propaganda taken up by impressionable minds: For a Decade, London Thrived as a Busy Crossroads of Terror - New York Times. Who may not have any direct experience with the level of violence they inflict. Street gang culture of the bored and soulless. I read that there are indications that these may be European Arab islamists, a new Al qaeda of European born and European drifted. Is there; then, an Al qaeda leadership still in existence which can form a uniform and coherent program of what they want, and organize review and control campaigns that lead to such specific result. What do these attacks say about to that question?

Concerted efforts by our governments may prevent a cataclysmic attack - one that would cause thousand or hundreds of thousands of casualties, but we can not prevent attacks that can kill dozens of hundreds - not and remain an open society. The war we fight should proceed in positive acknowledgment of that.


11:35:29 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, July 7, 2005
 
E mail from the University

There was an e-mail from the OIT Dept (office of information technology) at the university in my in-box this morning. Something to the general effect of "Dear sir, Our findings determine you have communicated with your university provided file space using email and FTP during the previous six months. As of 01 Aug 05 this will no longer be allowed, we require Secure File Transfer Protocol for access, and cleartext communication will be blocked." They've never allowed CGI on student or worker staff accounts, the WaM server, only on faculty and department accounts. So no movable type etc.

Now this is unfortunate because Radio Userland only comes (and will only ever come) with a generic FTP engine. Searching through the R U boards makes it clear they - the few people left caretaking Radio Userland - are aware of ISPs converting to SFTP and are meeting this with a massive yawning shrug. They suggest turning off upstreaming and getting hold of a SFTP engine like Fugu (which UMD OIT have contracted with and will provide) and writing an Applescript to have it take over what the upstream was doing. Yeah I'll get right on that. Except my iBook won't run Fugu which only runs on OS X.2.5 and above. Oh and I know absolutely nothing about Applescript at the moment.

I don't like the notion of being forced to spend money to upgrade my equipment to a work around solution. Money that on a clerks salary I don't have. Or adapting to another weblog software and starting from scratch at a complete different URL. It is far more likely that Atomized Junior will cease publication at the end of this month.
11:54:11 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Tuesday, July 5, 2005
 
EFF Legal

: I finally got around to reading through the EFF legal guide for bloggers. This was widely linked to when it first appeared about a month ago. I should have found time to look over it over last week, when I was reviewing the FEC's hearings on internet communication (Web logs largely) it would have fit well with that discussion. The EFF has put together a liability gloss that's bound to be useful to most web loggers with separate sections on intellectual property, online defamation, media access, and workplace issues. There is also a companion site  that is documenting cease and desist letters, the rich man's glock 9, and their effect on the Web log world Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

My own feeling about this is that no matter what you write about standards of behavior are going to tighten up a little, even a lot. Which is to say there will be standards of behavior. The blogsphere is not simply a loosely jointed version of the newsgroup world, or heaven forfend the modem bulletin board world. It is far bigger, more visible, more mainstream. It will find itself expected to live into the norms of the outside world not the norms of a compartmented subculture.

The  mental model I have for Atomized jr. is that it is a conversation between citizens, free to assemble, quietly in small groups, to talk about life  culture and views. Of course my mental model also includes a bunch of people in the back looking around and saying "hey I thought there was going to be free beer and ice cream here, not some idiot droning on about nothing." It is this sense of public/private conversation that informs my sense of ethics, and at the same time, causes me to see the difference between this manner of reporting and journalism proper being merely a matter of degree and extention. The informality of web logs disguises the reality that it is speech to a crowd rather than just conversation among friends, no matter how rigorously you structure your writing to one form or another you should see you have responsibilities that mirror to some degree those of professional writers; like columnists or journalists.  I have no use for anyone who insists on anomynity. A nom du blog to protect ones privacy from a hungary world is one thing. Indulging in behavior that requires it, is another. Defamation of others, not disclosing relationships with the campaigns or businesses one writes about are certainly in that latter catagory.


11:58:29 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Sunday, July 3, 2005
 
UCC faces off

 The United Church of Christ (UCC) is is in the news over this weekend A church's struggle over gay marriage | csmonitor.com they are holding their biannual general synod. A meta-church council meeting of sorts. Josh Marshall has posted on this on TPM, as well. I suppose I should have said 'we' instead of 'they', but I'm not sure I've done the homework neccesary. A UCC synod is generally not a time for the faint hearted.

One thing they touch on in the CS monitor article linked above, is the de-centralized structure of the UCC, anything decided by the General Synod is little more than suggested guidance to any individual church. Some churches like the one I grew up in in Massachusetts are quite conservative, others less so. Like First Church here in DC. Over all this way of organizing seems to encourage the synod, when it meets, to stake out crisp and profiled positions. One of the main things attracting attention this time around are the proposals concerning same-sex marriages: one for, one against, one to think about it some more. I don't know any of the people who are at the synod or even what type of people the assembly breaks down into. There is a UCC Blog (running on Mambo open source software) covering this which does offer a glimpse into this proceeding, the mind sets of some involved. And some of the other issues being discussed.

  There are proposals calling for a divestment campaign from companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine and calling for the removal of the not yet fully installed wall between Palestine and Israel. As a native New Englander I generally accept the premise that good walls make good neighbors. Of course A 'good wall' is a wall built along a fair boundary, but a wall. Here spring is the mischief in the UCC, problem is its not elves exactly.

  The UCC I hope can work these issues out without proceedings degenerating into the steel cage match that other denominations have gone through

----
addendum: today (Monday) I just heard on the ABC evening news that the meeting endorsed the same-sex marriage proposal United Church of Christ Backs Gay Marriage.


11:55:32 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Saturday, July 2, 2005
 
Romulus

As part of my campaign to discover new music and musicians who have in fact been around for years without my having any idea they existed. I would direct your attention to Sufjan Stevens particularly the song "Romulus". The last time I heard this song on the radio, I decided I needed to know its name and who did it. It may be a song about being brought up by wolves, so far as I can tell. This is a methaphor that can cut two ways. It could refer to being brought up by wolves, essentually referencing them. One can see, as well, that this lends itself to a statement about what a person becomes - who is raised by wolves. Or possibly it's just about a town called Romulus.

I'm always surprised to go and find this sort of thing in the iTunes store but there it is complete with a biography Greetings from Michigan - the Great Lakes State. Sefjan Stevens. These, which look like ordinary links and come from iTunes, will cause your browser to put up a user prompt declaring it can show you what you seek, but only if you have iTunes and you allow the browswer to launch it Sefjan Stevens Biography - iTunes Music Store.

Yet, I could barely find a thing there for Daddy Yankee, go figure. I'm considering learning Spanish just to know what Karla the host of Pepsi Musica is saying [turns out when I talked about that show previously, that was the debut episode 'Pepsi Musica' to Launch on Telefutura Network Saturday, April 24 ].

I read somewhere that Sufjan Stevens, satisfied with the way "Greetings from Michigan" turned out, endeavors to travel through and write a song album - [chalk that up to cognitive dissonance ] for every state in the union.

A song about July

"I say your uncle was a crooked french canadian, who was gut shot running gin...and the water rolls down the drain and the water rolls down the drain... July July July! it never seemed so strange." July July : the Decemberists "

11:22:34 PM    comment [];trackback [];


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.
Click to see the XML version of this web page.
Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
2005 Paul Bushmiller.
Last update: 7/31/05; 11:50:59 PM.