Wanna know what I think about the Pervian meteorite?
Worst case: there’s a shooting war in space.
Keep readin’, stranger.
September 19, 2007 archive
Sep 19 2007
Burning Man & Community
(Photos by A. Chandler Moisen, except where indicated. Click the pics to enlarge)
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Impressions of the Burning Man
The Burning Man was eighty feet high
~ Gawaine Caldwater Ross |  flickr creative commons |
Sep 19 2007
Stay in the Green Zone
Condi’s apology to al Maliki may not have yet made it to the ‘hood’.
BAGHDAD – The United States on Tuesday suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials throughout Iraq except in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone following a weekend incident involving private security guards in which a number of Iraqi civilians were killed.
Sep 19 2007
how do we change people?
is that what we need to do?
is it what we’re doing?
is it even possible?
who knows how to do it?
is there more than one way?
are some ways better than others?
what if people won’t be changed?
can we only change ourselves?
can we even change ourselves?
must we change ourselves?
Sep 19 2007
We are shareholders of brand America
We are shareholders of brand AmericaTM. It is our brand and our reputation.
How proud we were of brand AmericaTM. The brand name on any product we produced set it apart from all others. We were proud of brand AmericaTM and all that it stood for. Our products were not perfect, but they were always improving. When a product was defective, we owned up to it and vowed to do better! Never satisfied with the status quo, we always demanded better of ourselves and everything brand AmericaTM produced. Most of all, we took pride in the fact that our most cherished and sought after brand AmericaTM products such as liberty, freedom of speech, voting rights, and protection of civil liberties, were available and affordable to all.
Seven years ago, brand AmericaTM was hi-jacked by a band of counterfeiters. They have robbed the company coffers, gutted the warehouse, and sold the contents on the black market. These interlopers refuse to provide the resources to produce quality brand AmericaTM products. They exploit the employees and treat their customers with disdain.
Sep 19 2007
Global Warming: Bad, Worse, Worst
Three recent news accounts reveal the reality and complexity of the looming global disaster. Anyone who has studied human evolution knows that we’re a resilient species, but we’re going to be put to the test.
Bad.
The Associated Press had this little story:
Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
At face value, that sounds kind of cool. Take a cruise from Alaska to Europe. Or from Alaska to New England, via the Beaufort Sea.
Except that this could make for some brand new military tensions. As the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute explains:
With the ice disappearing, the currents and narrow channels pose less of an impediment to navigation: an experienced sailor could now take a large tanker through the straits during the late summer and early autumn. Governments are gradually waking up to this new reality. In 2001, a report prepared for the US Navy predicted that, ‘within five to ten years, the Northwest Passage will be open to non-ice-strengthened vessels for at least one month each summer.’ A briefing given to the Canadian defence minister, Gordon O’Connor, in February 2006 was confident that ‘the Northwest Passage could be open to more regular navigation by 2015’ if ‘the current rate of ice thinning continues’.
And as CNN and the BBC explain, the valuable natural resources under the Arctic are already causing disputes.
But even more dangerous than any of that is what this means for the rest of the world. The melting of the ice up north means rising sea levels. Everywhere. More on that, below.
Sep 19 2007
A constructive suggestion to John Kerry
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Posted for NuevoLiberal, due to the 24hr rule
.
I found the incident at the John Kerry event at University of Florida to be very disturbing from several perspectives.
Based on the following video clips:
1. http://www.youtube.c…
2. http://video.nbc6.ne…
3. http://www.starbanne… (youtube version)
4. http://www.youtube.c…
here are my thoughts: once the student (Andrew Meyers) was given the mic, he should have been allowed to properly finish the questions and then allowed to hear what Kerry had to say. Should he have been unruly beyond that point, then removing him from the hall may have been justified.
Sep 19 2007
A constructive suggestion to John Kerry
.
Posted for NuevoLiberal, due to the 24hr rule.
I found the incident at the John Kerry event at University of Florida to be very disturbing from several perspectives.
Based on the following video clips:
1. http://www.youtube.c…
2. http://video.nbc6.ne…
3. http://www.starbanne… (youtube version)
4. http://www.youtube.c…
here are my thoughts: once the student (Andrew Meyers) was given the mic, he should have been allowed to properly finish the questions and then allowed to hear what Kerry had to say. Should he have been unruly beyond that point, then removing him from the hall may have been justified.
Sep 19 2007
A constructive suggestion to John Kerry
Posted on behalf of NuevoLiberal
Due to the 24hr rule
I found the incident at the John Kerry event at University of Florida to be very disturbing from several perspectives.
Based on the following video clips:
1. http://www.youtube.c…
2. http://video.nbc6.ne…
3. http://www.starbanne… (youtube version)
4. http://www.youtube.c…
here are my thoughts: once the student (Andrew Meyers) was given the mic, he should have been allowed to properly finish the questions and then allowed to hear what Kerry had to say. Should he have been unruly beyond that point, then removing him from the hall may have been justified.
Sep 19 2007
Speaking of Democracy
A young University of Florida student was tasered yesterday by campus police when attempting to ask a question of John Kerry. Kerry was speaking at a free forum at the University’s O’Connell Center (Home of the two-time defending NCAA Basketball champions, the Florida Gators). The Gator championships, 2006 and 2007 in basketball and the 2006 championship in football are high points for Florida. The tasering of the undergrad student, yesterday, is one of the University’s and consequently, Florida’s lowest points. It was a strike against the freedom of speech.
Sep 19 2007
On Zombies and Suburbs
Inspired by last night’s frequent zombie-related comments in this essay, combined with my lack of a literature diary for this week (I had a very good fill-in on dailykos), I decided to post an actual essay on zombies.
If that seems too fluffy a topic, it shouldn’t be: genre fiction is very serious stuff among academics, because it sometimes has greater insight about contemporary social and political issues than mainstream art (for a variety of reasons, but that’s a whole nother topic). Where genre fiction has its hardest time is with middlebrow critics: no horror films have won an Oscar for best picture, for example.
With that in mind, I want to turn back to what I’ll unapologetically call the greatest of all horror films – maybe not the scariest, maybe not the best-acted, but certainly the richest and most thought-provoking: a low-budget 1978 gorefest called Dawn of the Dead. If nothing else, the film is an excellent snapshot of mainstream American culture on the cusp of a particular type of collapse (the 1980s), and a brilliant combination of social critique, dire prediction, and philosophical density. It’s also funny as hell and set the high (low?) water mark on what was considered an acceptable display of violence and gore. But let’s start with some background:
Sep 19 2007
Welcome to…..
“Blessed Be this kitchen of Air, Fire, Water and Earth
Be warmed by the Sacred light of the Goddess
May all that is Created here by means both Magickal and mundane bring nourishment,healing and sustenance,
and cause harm to none.
With love and peace,with joy and Magick,
be now and always filled.
So let it be!”
~source unknown >>