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Atomized Links:
theUsual Suspects:
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Atomized junior
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Sunday, July 31, 2005
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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  ;;
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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 ;;
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Thursday, July 28, 2005
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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 ;;
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005
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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. 
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 ;;
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Thursday, July 21, 2005
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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 ;;
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005
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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 ;;
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Sunday, July 17, 2005
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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 ;;
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Friday, July 15, 2005
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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 ;;
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
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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 ;;
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Monday, July 11, 2005
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Baseball in Washington DC
 As 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.
 The
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.
1:05:34 AM ;;
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Sunday, July 10, 2005
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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 ;;
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Thursday, July 7, 2005
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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 ;;
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Tuesday, July 5, 2005
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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 ;;
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Sunday, July 3, 2005
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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 ;;
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Saturday, July 2, 2005
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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 ;;
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